The conspirator thus named was a Spartan citizen, but not one of that select number called The Equals or The Peers. It has already been mentioned that inequalities had been gradually growing up among qualified citizens of Sparta, tending tacitly to set apart a certain number of them under the name of The Peers, and all the rest under the correlative name of The Inferiors. Besides this, since the qualification of every family lasted only so long as the citizen could furnish a given contribution for himself and his sons to the public mess-table, and since industry of every kind was inconsistent with the rigid personal drilling imposed upon all of them,—the natural consequence was, that in each generation a certain number of citizens became disfranchised and dropped off. But these disfranchised men did not become Periœki or Helots. They were still citizens, whose qualification, though in abeyance, might be at any time renewed by the munificence of a rich man;[454] so that they too, along with the lesser citizens, were known under the denomination of The Inferiors. It was to this class that Kinadon belonged. He was a young man of remarkable strength and courage, who had discharged with honor his duties in the Lykurgean discipline,[455] and had imbibed from it that sense of personal equality, and that contempt of privilege, which its theory as well as its practice suggested. Notwithstanding all exactness of duty performed, he found that the constitution, as practically worked, excluded him from the honors and distinctions of the state; reserving them for the select citizens known under the name of Peers. And this exclusion had become more marked and galling since the formation of the Spartan empire after the victory of Ægospotami; whereby the number of lucrative posts (harmosties and others) all monopolized by the Peers, had been so much multiplied. Debarred from the great political prizes, Kinadon was still employed by the ephors, in consequence of his high spirit and military sufficiency, in that standing force which they kept for maintaining order at home.[456] He had been the agent ordered on several of those arbitrary seizures which they never scrupled to employ towards persons whom they regarded as dangerous. But this was no satisfaction to his mind; nay, probably, by bringing him into close contact with the men in authority, it contributed to lessen his respect for them. He desired “to be inferior to no man in Sparta,”[457] and his conspiracy was undertaken to realize this object by breaking up the constitution. [454] See Vol. II, Ch. vi, p. 359 of this History. [455] Xen. Hellen. iii, 3, 5. Οὗτος (Kinadon) δ᾽ ἦν νεανίσκος καὶ τὸ εἶδος καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν εὔρωστος, οὐ μέντοι τῶν ὁμοίων.