being a mystic number, formed by seven
multiplied by four, and being the first perfect number after six, for
like that, it is equal to all its parts.[A] But I think that he probably
made this number of elders, in order that with the two kings the council
might consist of thirty members in all.

[Footnote A: 14, 2, 7, 4, 1, make by addition 28; as 3, 2, and 1 make
6.]

VI. Lykurgus was so much interested in this council as to obtain from
Delphi an oracle about it, called the _rhetra_, which runs as follows:
"After you have built a temple to Zeus of Greece and Athene of Greece,
and have divided the people into _tribes_ and _obes_, you shall found a
council of thirty, including the chiefs, and shall from season to season
_apellazein_ the people between Babyka and Knakion, and there propound
measures and divide upon them, and the people shall have the casting
vote and final decision." In these words tribes and obes are divisions
into which the people were to be divided; the chiefs mean the kings;
_apellazein_ means to call an assembly, in allusion to Apollo, to whom
the whole scheme of the constitution is referred. Babyka and Knakion
they now call Oinous; but Aristotle says that Knakion is a river and
Babyka a bridge. Between these they held their assemblies, without any
roof or building of any kind; for Lykurgus did not consider that
deliberations were assisted by architecture, but rather hindered, as
men's heads were thereby filled with vain unprofitable fancies, when
they assemble for debate in places where they can see statues and
paintings, or the proscenium of a theatre, or the richly ornamented roof
of a council chamber. When the people were assembled, he permitted no
one to express an opinion; but the people was empowered to decide upon
motions brought forward by the kings and elders. But in later times, as
the people made additions and omissions, and so altered the sense of the
motions before them, the kings, Polydorus and Theopompus, added these
words to the _rhetra_, "and if the people shall decide crookedly, the
chiefs and elders shall set it right." That is, they made the people no
longer supreme, but practically excluded them from any voice in public
affairs, on the ground that they judged wrongly. However these kings
persuaded the city that this also was ordained by the god. This is
mentioned by Tyrtaeus in the following verses:

"They heard the god, and brought from Delphi home,
Apollo's oracle