to the gods, followed by many of the young men, who congratulated him, and by many women, who sang songs praising his virtues and his felicity.  As he went from one temple to another, each of his relatives used to offer him food, saying, “The state honours you with this banquet.”  But he would pass by them all, and go to his usual mess-table.  Here nothing uncommon took place, except that he was given a second ration, which he took away with him; and after dinner, the women of his own family being at the doors of the mess-room, he would call for the one whom he wished to honour, and give her his portion, saying that he had received it as a prize, and gave it to her as such.  This caused her to be greatly envied by the other women.

XXVI.—­Moreover, he made excellent regulations about funerals.  In the first place, he abolished all silly superstition, and raised no objections to burial in the city, and to placing tombs near the temples, in order to accustom the young to such sights from their infancy, so that they might not feel any horror of death, or have any notion about being defiled by touching a dead body, or walking among tombs.  Next, he permitted nothing to be buried with the dead, but they placed the body in the grave, wrapped in a purple cloth and covered with olive-leaves.  It was not permitted to inscribe the name of the deceased upon his tomb, except in the case of men who had fallen in war, or of women who had been priestesses.  A short time was fixed for mourning, eleven days; on the twelfth they were to sacrifice to Demeter (Ceres) and cease from their grief.  For, in Sparta, nothing was left without regulation, but, with all the necessary acts of life, Lykurgus mingled some ceremony which might enkindle virtue or discourage vice; indeed he filled his city with examples of this kind, by which the citizens were insensibly moulded and impelled towards honourable pursuits.  For this reason he would not allow citizens to leave the country at pleasure, and to wander in foreign lands, where they would contract outlandish habits, and learn to imitate the untrained lives and ill-regulated institutions to be found abroad.  Also, he banished from Lacedaemon all strangers who were there for no useful purpose; not, as Thucydides says, because he feared they might imitate his constitution, and learn something serviceable for the improvement of their own countries, but rather for fear that they might teach the people some mischief.  Strangers introduce strange ideas; and these lead to discussions of an unsuitable character, and political views which would jar with the established constitution, like a discord in music.  Wherefore he thought that it was more important to keep out evil habits than even to keep the plague from coming into the city.