When by these means he had exterminated every species of luxury, he next removed all temptation to the acquisition of wealth, that fatal source of the innumerable evils which prevailed in every other country. He effected this with his usual policy, by forbidding the currency of gold and silver money, and substituting an iron coinage of great weight and little value, which continued the only current coin through the whole Spartan dominions for several ages. To bar up the entrance of wealth, and guard his citizens against the contagion of corruption, he absolutely prohibited navigation and commerce, though his country contained a large extent of sea coast furnished with excellent harbours. He allowed as little intercourse as possible with foreigners, nor suffered any of his countrymen to visit the neighbouring states, unless when the publick business required it, lest they should be infected with their vices. Agriculture, and such mechanick trades as were absolutely necessary for their subsistence, he confined to their slaves the Helots; but he banished all those arts which tended either to debase the mind, or enervate the body. Musick he encouraged, and poetry he admitted, but both subject to the inspection of the magistrates.[8] Thus by the equal partition of the lands, and the abolition of gold and silver money, he at once preserved his country from luxury, avarice, and all those evils which arise from an irregular indulgence of the passions, as well as all contentions about property, with their consequence, vexatious lawsuits. To ensure the observance of his laws to the latest posterity, he next formed proper regulations for the education of their children, which he esteemed one of the greatest duties of a legislator. His grand maxim was “that children were the property of the state, to whom alone their education was to be intrusted.” In their first infancy, the nurses were instructed to indulge them neither in their diet, nor in those little froward humours which are so peculiar to that age; to inure them to bear cold and fasting; to conquer their first fears by accustoming them to solitude and darkness; and to prepare them for that stricter state of discipline, to which they were soon to be initiated.