at Delphi, and received instructions as to how he should act to
bring about a better state of affairs.

Plutarch, who tells so many charming stories about the ancient Greeks
and Romans, gives us the following account. According to him the brother
of Lycurgus was king of Sparta. When he died Lycurgus was offered the
throne, but he declined the honor and made his infant nephew, Charilaus,
king. Then he left Sparta, and travelled through Crete, Ionia, Egypt,
and several more remote countries, everywhere studying the laws and
customs which he found prevailing. In Ionia he obtained a copy of the
poems of Homer, and is said by some to have met and conversed with Homer
himself. If, as is supposed, the Greeks of that age had not the art of
writing, he must have carried this copy in his memory.

On his return home from this long journey Lycurgus found his country in
a worse state than before. Sparta, it may be well here to say, had
always two kings; but it found, as might have been expected, that two
kings were worse than one, and that this odd device in government never
worked well. At any rate, Lycurgus found that law had nearly vanished,
and that disorder had taken its place. He now consulted the oracle at
Delphi, and was told that the gods would support him in what he proposed
to do.

Coming back to Sparta, he secretly gathered a body-guard of thirty armed
men from among the noblest citizens, and then presented himself in the
Agora, or place of public assembly, announcing that he had come to end
the disorders of his native land. King Charilaus at first heard of this
with terror, but on learning what his uncle intended, he offered his
support. Most of the leading men of Sparta did the same. Lycurgus was to
them a descendant of the great hero Hercules, he was the most learned
and travelled of their people, and the reforms he proposed were sadly
needed in that unhappy land.

These reforms were of two kinds. He desired to reform both the
government and society. We shall deal first with the new government
which he instituted. The two kings were left unchanged. But under them
was formed a senate of twenty-eight members, to whom the kings were
joined, making thirty in all. The people also were given their
assemblies, but they could not debate any subject, all the power they
had was to accept or reject what the senate had decreed. At a later date
five men, called ephors, were selected from the people, into whose hands
fell nearl