take their directions from the ephors in the conduct of a campaign. Every month the kings and the ephors took an oath of fidelity, the former promising to rule in accordance with the constitution, the latter to be loyal in their obedience, on the condition just mentioned. As in our own country, there was a continual tendency to make royalty a position of honour rather than of power, which was the more remarkable in Sparta, as the office was universally regarded as held by divine right, and as lying at the foundation of the nation’s tide to its territorial inheritance derived from Heracles. The social system introduced by Lycurgus about the beginning of the eighth century B.C., under the direction, as was believed, of the Delphian oracle, was founded upon a species of communism to which only those were admitted who were full citizens of Sparta, and had sufficient property to contribute their appointed quota to the expenses of the common mess. All the citizens without exception had to conform with the utmost regularity to a rigorous code of discipline, which was fitted to produce habits of courage, strength, endurance, self-denial, and simplicity of life. The training of the boys for military service, to which citizens were liable from their twentieth to their sixtieth year, began when they were seven years old. They were not only trained to athletic exercises and feats of strength, but they had also to content themselves with the plainest food and the scantiest clothing. As they approached manhood it was considered to be in the interests of religion, and pleasing to the goddess Artemis Orthia in particular, that they should be severely scourged, and it was no uncommon thing for young lads to die under the operation without betraying any sign of suffering. To be able to bear pain without flinching, and to become inured to the severest hardships and privations, was looked on as the chief end of a manly education.