Plutarch dates the first origin of corruption, that disease of the body politick, and consequently the decline of Sparta, from that memorable period, when the Spartans having subverted the domination of Athens, glutted themselves (as he terms it) with gold and silver.[18] For when once the love of money had crept into their city, and avarice and the most sordid meanness grew up with the possession, as luxury, effeminacy and dissipation did with the enjoyment of wealth, Sparta was deprived of many of her ancient glories and advantages, and sunk greatly both in power and reputation, until the reign of Agis and Leonidas.[19] But as the original allotments of land were yet preserved (the number of which Lycurgus had fixed and decreed to be kept by a particular law) and were transmitted down from father to son by hereditary succession, the same constitutional order and equality still remaining, raised up the state again, however, from other political lapses. Under the reign of those two kings happened the mortal blow, which subverted the very foundation of their constitution. Epitadeus, one of the ephori, upon a quarrel with his son, carried his resentment so far as to procure a law which permitted every one to alienate their hereditary lands, either by gift or sale, during their lifetime, or by will at their decease. This law produced a fatal alteration in the landed property. For as Leonidas, one of their kings, who had lived a long time at the court of Seleucus, and married a lady of that country, had introduced the pomp and luxury of the east at his return to Sparta, the old institutions of Lycurgus, which had fallen into disuse, were by his example soon treated with contempt.[20] Hence the necessity of the luxurious, and the extortion of the avaricious, threw the whole property into so few hands, that out of seven hundred, the number to which the ancient Spartan families were then reduced, about one hundred only were in possession of their respective hereditary lands allotted by Lycurgus.[21] The rest, as Plutarch observes, lived an idle life in the city, an indigent abject herd, alike destitute of fortune and employment; in their wars abroad, indolent dispirited dastards; at home ever ripe for sedition and insurrections, and greedily catching at every opportunity of embroiling affairs in hope of such a change as might enable them to retrieve their fortunes. Evils, which the extremes of wealth and indigence are ever productive of in free countries.