affairs of commerce, but their chief study being to praise what was honourable, and contemn what was base in a light satiric vein of talk which was instructive and edifying to the hearers.  Nor was Lykurgus himself a man of unmixed austerity:  indeed, he is said by Sosibius to have set up the little statue of the god of laughter, and introduced merriment at proper times to enliven their wine-parties and other gatherings.  In a word, he trained his countrymen neither to wish nor to understand how to live as private men, but, like bees, to be parts of the commonwealth, and gather round their chief, forgetting themselves in their enthusiastic patriotism, and utterly devoted to their country.  This temper of theirs we can discern in many of their sayings.  Paidaretus, when not elected into the three hundred, went away rejoicing that the city possessed three hundred better men than himself.  Polykratidas, when he went with some others on a mission to the generals of the great king, was asked by them, if he and his party came as private persons or as ambassadors?  He answered, “As ambassadors, if we succeed; as private men, if we fail.”

And when some citizens of Amphipolis came to Lacedaemon, and went to see the mother of Brasidas, Argileonis, she asked them whether Brasidas died bravely and worthily of Sparta.  When they praised him to excess, and said that he had not left his like behind, she said, “Say not so, strangers; Brasidas was a noble and a gallant man, but Sparta has many better than he.”

XXV.  Lykurgus himself composed his senate, as we have seen, of the persons who took part in his plot; and in future be ordained that vacancies should be filled up by those men, upwards of sixty years of age, who were adjudged to be the most worthy.

This seemed the greatest prize in the world, and also the most difficult to obtain; for it was not merely that a man should be adjudged swiftest of the swift, or strongest of the strong, but he had to be chosen as the best and wisest of all good and wise men, and, as a prize, was to obtain power to regulate the morals of the state, as he was intrusted with powers of life and death, and disfranchisement, and with all the highest penalties.

The elections took place as follows:  The citizens were all assembled, and certain men were placed in a building close by, where they could neither see nor be seen, but merely hear the shouts of the general assembly.  They decided these, as indeed they did other contests, by shouts of approval, not of all at once, but lots were cast, and each candidate in the order denoted by his lot came forward and silently walked through the assembly.  The men locked up in the building had writing materials, and noted down who was cheered most loudly, not knowing who each man was, beyond that he was first, second, third, and so on, of the candidates.  They then told the number of the man for whom there had been most voices, and he crowned himself with a garland and offered sacrifice