Historians unanimously agree, that wealth with its attendants, luxury and corruption, gained admission at Sparta in the reign of the first Agis. Lysander, alike a hero and a politician; a man of the greatest abilities and the greatest dishonesty that Sparta ever produced; rapacious after money, which at the same time he despised, and a slave only to ambition, was the author of an innovation so fatal to the manners of his countrymen. After he had enabled his country to give law to all Greece by his conquest of Athens, he sent home that immense mass of wealth, which the plunder of so many states had put into his possession. The most sensible men amongst the Spartans, dreading the fatal consequences of this capital breach of the institutions of their legislator, protested strongly before the ephori against the introduction of gold and silver, as pests destructive to the publick. The ephori referred it to the decision of the senate, who, dazzled with the lustre of that money, to which until that time they had been utter strangers, decreed “that gold and silver money might be admitted for the service of the state; but made it death, if any should ever be found in the possession of a private person.” This decision Plutarch censures as weak and sophistical.[16] As if Lycurgus was only afraid simply of money, and not of that dangerous love of money which is generally its concomitant; a passion which was so far from being rooted out by the restraint laid upon private persons, that it was rather inflamed by the esteem and value which was set upon money by the publick. Thus, as he justly remarks, whilst they barred up the houses of private citizens against the entrance of wealth by the terror and safeguard of the law, they left their minds more exposed to the love of money and the influence of corruption, by raising an universal admiration and desire of it, as something great and respectable. The truth of this remark appears by the instance given us by Plutarch, of one Thorax, a great friend of Lysander’s, who was put to death by the ephori, upon proof that a quantity of silver had been actually found in his possession. From that time Sparta became venal, and grew extremely fond of subsidies from foreign powers. Agesilaus, who succeeded Agis, and was one of the greatest of their kings, behaved in the latter part of his life more like the captain of a band of mercenaries, than a king of Sparta. He received a large subsidy from Tachos, at that time king of Egypt, and entered into his service with a body of troops which he had raised for that purpose. But when Nectanabis, who had rebelled against his uncle Tachos, offered him more advantageous terms, he quitted the unfortunate monarch and went over to his rebellious nephew, pleading the interest of his country in excuse for so treacherous and infamous an action.[17] So great a change had the introduction of money already made in the manners of the leading Spartans!