who advised the Spartans not to receive the gold and silver coinage into their country, but to continue to use that which their fathers had used.  This was iron money, which had first been dipped in vinegar when red hot, so that it could not be worked, as its being quenched in this manner rendered it brittle and useless, while it was also heavy, difficult to transport from place to place, and a great quantity of it represented but a small value.  It appears probable that all money was originally of this kind, and that men used instead of coin small spits[150] of iron or copper.  For this reason we still call small coins obols, and we call six obols a drachma, meaning that this is the number of them which can be grasped by the hand.

XVII.  The motion for sending away the money was opposed by Lysander’s friends, who were eager to keep it in the state; so that it was at last decided that for public purposes this money might be used, but that if any private person were found in possession of it, he should be put to death:  as if Lykurgus had been afraid of money itself, and not of the covetousness produced by it, which they did not repress by forbidding private men to own money so much as they encouraged it by permitting the state to own it, conferring thereby a certain dignity upon it over and above its real value.  It was not possible for men who saw that the state valued silver and gold to despise it as useless, or to think that what was thus prized by the whole body of the citizens could be of no concern to individuals.  On the contrary, it is plain that national customs much sooner impress themselves on the lives and manners of individuals, than do the faults and vices of individuals affect the national character.  When the whole becomes corrupt the parts necessarily become corrupt with it; but the corruption of some of the parts does not necessarily extend to the whole, being checked and overpowered by those parts which remain healthy.  Thus the Spartans made the law and the fear of death guard the houses of their citizens so that money could not enter them, but they did not guard their minds against the seductions of money, nay, even encouraged them to admire it, by proclaiming that it was a great and important matter that the commonwealth should be rich.  However, I have discussed the conduct of the Lacedaemonians in this respect in another book.

XVIII.  From the proceeds of the plunder which he had taken Lysander set up a brazen statue of himself and of each of the admirals[151] at Delphi, and also offered up golden stars to the Dioskuri, which stars disappeared just before the battle of Leuktra.  Besides this, in the treasury of Brasidas and the Akanthians there used to be a trireme made of gold and ivory, two cubits long, which was sent to him by Cyrus as a present on the occasion of his victory.  Anaxandrides of Delphi also tells us that Lysander deposited there a talent of silver, fifty-two minae, and eleven of the coins called staters, which does not agree with the accounts given by other writers of his poverty.