atter of
usage and precedent. Accordingly, after fully organizing the
government on the plan which he had arranged, and announcing the laws,
and establishing the customs by which he intended that the ordinary
course of social life should be regulated, he determined to withdraw
from the field and await the result. He therefore informed the people
that he was going away again on another journey, and that he would
leave the carrying forward of the government which he had framed for
them and initiated in their hands; and he required of them a solemn
oath that they would make no change in the system until he returned.
In doing this, his secret intention was _never_ to return.

Such was the origin, and such the general character of the Spartan
government. In the time of Pyrrhus, the system had been in operation
for about five hundred years.[O] During this period the state passed
through many and various vicissitudes. It engaged in wars, offensive
and defensive; it passed through many calamitous and trying scenes,
suffering, from time to time, under the usual ills which, in those
days, so often disturbed the peace and welfare of nations. But during
all this time, the commonwealth retained in a very striking degree the
extraordinary marks and characteristics which the institutions of
Lycurgus had enstamped upon it. The Spartans still were terrible in
the estimation of all mankind, so stern and indomitable was the spirit
which they manifested in all the enterprises in which they engaged.

[Footnote O: The precise time at which the events connected with the
early history of Sparta really occurred is not satisfactorily
determined, so that the dates placed at the heads of the pages can
only be regarded as approximations.]

It was from Sparta that the message came to Pyrrhus asking his
assistance in a war that was then waging there. The war originated in
a domestic quarrel which arose in the family of one of the lines of
kings. The name of the prince who made application to Pyrrhus was
Cleonymus. He was a younger son of one of the Spartan kings. He had
had an older brother named Acrotatus. The crown, of course, would have
devolved on this brother, if he had been living when the father died.
But he was not. He died before his father, leaving a son, however,
named Areus, as his heir. Areus, of course, claimed the throne when
his grandfather died. He was not young himself at this time. He had
advanced beyond the period of middle lif