A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

114 Sparta and the Peloponnesian League
ally garnish the feast with wheaten loaves. So that from
beginning to end, till the mess breaks up, the common
board is never stinted for viands, nor yet extravagantly
furnished.
IV.
The Periceci and the Helots
The land
system.
Plutarch,
Lycurgus,
8.
The Crypteia.
lb. 28.
Greece, 59 f.
Ancienl
Wo'rld, 112 f.
Putting his proposal immediately into practice, he
divided the outlying lands of the state among the periceci,
in thirty thousand lots, and that immediately adjoining
the metropolis among the native Spartans, in nine thousand
lots, for to that number they then amounted. Some
say that Lycurgus made six thousand lots, and that
Polydorus added three thousand afterwards; others that
he added half the nine thousand, and that only half was
allotted by Lycurgus.
Each man's lot was of such a size as to supply a man
with seventy medimni of barley, and his wife with twelve,
and oil and wine in proportion; for thus much he thought
ought to suffice them, as the food was enough to maintain
them in health, and they wanted nothing more. It is said
that, some years afterwards, as he was returning from a
journey through the country at harvest-time, when he saw
the sheaves of corn lying in equal parallel rows, he smiled,
and said to his companions that all Laconia seemed as if
it had just been divided among so many brothers.
In all
these acts of Lycurgus we cannot find any traces
of the injustice and unfairness which some complain of
in his laws, which they say are excellent to produce courage
but less so for justice. And the institution called
Crypteia, if indeed it is one of the laws of Lycurgus, as
Aristotle tells us, would agree with the idea which Plato
conceived about him and his system. The Crypteia was
this: the leaders of the young men used at intervals to