Agis, however, pursued his design, and having procured his friend Lysander to be elected one of the ephori, immediately laid his scheme before the senate. The chief heads of his plan were: “that all debts should be totally remitted; that the whole land should be divided into a certain number of lots; and that the ancient discipline and customs of Lycurgus should be revived.” Warm debates were occasioned in the senate by this proposal, which at last was rejected by a majority of one only.[27] Lysander in the meantime convoked an assembly of the people, where after he had harangued, Mondroclidas and Agesilaus beseeched them not to suffer the majesty of Sparta to be any longer trampled upon for the sake of a few luxurious overgrown citizens, who imposed upon them at pleasure.[28] They reminded them not only of the responses of ancient oracles, which enjoined them to beware of avarice, as the pest of Sparta, but also of those so lately given by the oracle at Pasiphae, which, as they assured the people, commanded the Spartans to return to that perfect equality of possessions, which was settled by the law first instituted by Lycurgus.[29] Agis spoke last in this assembly, and to enforce the whole by example, told them in a very few words, “that he offered a most ample contribution towards the establishment of that polity, of which he himself was the author. That he now resigned his whole patrimony into the common stock, which consisted not only of rich arable and pasture land, but of six hundred talents besides in coined money. He added, that his mother, grandmother, friends and relations, who were the most wealthy of all the citizens of Sparta, were ready to do the same.” The people, struck with the magnanimity and generosity of Agis, received his offer with the loudest applause, and extolled him, as the only king who for three hundred years past had been worthy of the throne of Sparta. This provoked Leonidas to fly out into the most open and violent opposition from the double motive of avarice and envy. For he was sensible, that if this scheme took place, he should not only be compelled to follow their example, but that the surrender of his estate would then come from him with so ill a grace, that the honour of the whole measure would be attributed solely to his colleague. Lysander, finding Leonidas and his party too powerful in the senate, determined to prosecute and expel him for the breach of a very old law, which forbid any of the royal family to intermarry with foreigners, or to bring up any children which they might have by such marriage, and inflicted the penalty of death upon any one who should leave Sparta to reside in foreign countries.