If we reflect that human nature is at all times and in all places the same, it seems to the last degree astonishing, how Lycurgus could be able to introduce such a self-denying plan of discipline amongst a disorderly licentious people: a scheme, which not only levelled at once all distinction, as to property, between the richest and the poorest individual, but compelled the greatest persons in the state to submit to a regimen which allowed only the bare necessaries of life, excluding every thing which in the opinion of mankind seems essential to its comforts and enjoyments. I observed before that he had secured the esteem and confidence of his countrymen, and there was, besides, at that time a very lucky concurrence of circumstances in his favour. The two kings were men of little spirit, and less abilities, and the people were glad to exchange their disorderly state for any settled form of government. By his establishment of a senate consisting of thirty persons who held their seats for life, and to whom he committed the supreme power in civil affairs, he brought the principal nobility into his scheme, as they naturally expected a share in a government which they plainly saw inclined so much to an aristocracy. Even the two kings very readily accepted seats in his senate, to secure some degree of authority. He awed the people into obedience by the sanction he procured for his scheme from the oracle at Delphos, whose decisions were, at that time, revered by all Greece as divine and infallible. But the greatest difficulty he had to encounter was to procure the equal partition of the lands. The very first proposal met with so violent an opposition from the men of fortune, that a fray ensued, in which Lycurgus lost one of his eyes. But the people, struck with the sight of the blood of this admired legislator, seized the offender, one Alcander, a young man of a hot, but not disingenuous disposition, and gave him up to Lycurgus to be punished at discretion. But the humane and generous behaviour of Lycurgus quickly made a convert of Alcander, and wrought such a change, that from an enemy he became his greatest admirer and advocate with the people.