XXVII.  In all these acts of Lykurgus, 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 Krypteia, if indeed it is one of the laws of Lykurgus, as Aristotle tells us, would agree with the idea which Plato conceived about him and his system.  The Krypteia was this:  the leaders of the young men used at intervals to send the most discreet of them into different parts of the country, equipped with daggers and necessary food; in the daytime these men used to conceal themselves in unfrequented spots, and take their rest, but at night they would come down into the roads and murder any Helots they found.  And often they would range about the fields, and make away with the strongest and bravest Helots they could find.  Also, as Thucydides mentions in his History of the Peloponnesian War, those Helots who were especially honoured by the Spartans for their valour were crowned as free men, and taken to the temples with rejoicings; but in a short time they all disappeared, to the number of more than two thousand, and in such a way that no man, either then or afterwards, could tell how they perished.  Aristotle says that the Ephors, when they first take office, declare war against the Helots, in order that it may be lawful to destroy them.  And much other harsh treatment used to be inflicted upon them; and they were compelled to drink much unmixed wine, and then were brought into the public dining-halls, to show the young what drunkenness is.

They were also forced to sing low songs, and to dance low dances, and not to meddle with those of a higher character.  It is said that when the Thebans made their celebrated campaign in Lacedaemon, they ordered the Helots whom they captured to sing them the songs of Terpander, and Alkman, and Spendon the Laconian; but they begged to be excused, for, they said, “the masters do not like it.”  So it seems to have been well said that in Lacedaemon, the free man was more free, and the slave more a slave than anywhere else.  This harsh treatment, I imagine, began in later times, especially after the great earthquake, when they relate that the Helots joined the Messenians, ravaged the country, and almost conquered it.  I cannot impute this wicked act of the Krypteia to Lykurgus, when I consider the gentleness and justice of his general behaviour, which also we know was inspired by Heaven.

XXVIII.  When the leading men of the city were thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his institutions, and the newly constituted state was able to walk by itself without leading-strings, and bear its own weight alone, then, as Plato says of God, that he was pleased with the world that he had created, when it first began to live and move, so was it with Lykurgus.  He admired the spectacle of his laws in operation, and, as far as was possible by human prudence, he desired to leave it eternal and unchangeable.