sire a reform; the
interference of Lycurgus was solicited; his rank and his travels gave
him importance; and he had the wisdom to increase it by obtaining from
Delphi (the object of the implicit reverence of the Dorians) an oracle
in his favour.

Thus called upon and thus encouraged, Lycurgus commenced his task. I
enter not into the discussion whether he framed an entirely new
constitution, or whether he restored the spirit of one common to his
race and not unfamiliar to Sparta. Common sense seems to me
sufficient to assure us of the latter. Let those who please believe
that one man, without the intervention of arms--not as a conqueror,
but a friend--could succeed in establishing a constitution, resting
not upon laws, but manners--not upon force, but usage--utterly hostile
to all the tastes, desires, and affections of human nature: moulding
every the minutest detail of social life into one system--that system
offering no temptation to sense, to ambition, to the desire of
pleasure, or the love of gain, or the propensity to ease--but painful,
hard, steril, and unjoyous;--let those who please believe that a
system so created could at once be received, be popularly embraced,
and last uninterrupted, unbroken, and without exciting even the desire
of change for four hundred years, without having had any previous
foundation in the habits of a people--without being previously rooted
by time, custom, superstition, and character into their breasts. For
my part, I know that all history furnishes no other such example; and
I believe that no man was ever so miraculously endowed with the power
to conquer nature. [129]

But we have not the smallest reason, the slightest excuse, for so
pliant a credulity. We look to Crete, in which, previous to Lycurgus,
the Dorians had established their laws and customs, and we see at once
the resemblance to the leading features of the institutions of
Lycurgus; we come with Aristotle to the natural conclusion, that what
was familiar to the Dorian Crete was not unknown to the Dorian Sparta,
and that Lycurgus did not innovate, but restore and develop, the laws
and the manners which, under domestic dissensions, might have
undergone a temporary and superficial change, but which were deeply
implanted in the national character and the Doric habits. That the
regulations of Lycurgus were not regarded as peculiar to Sparta, but
as the most perfect development of the Dorian constitution, we learn
from P