2. Although similar partitions of land had perhaps been made from the time of the first occupation of Laconia by the Dorians, the later division into 9000 lots cannot have taken place before the end of the first Messenian war.(881) There is something very remarkable in the historical account, that Tyrtæus by means of his poem of Eunomia repressed the desire of many citizens for a redivision of the lands.(882) It may be explained by supposing that the Spartans, who before that time had possessed allotments in Messenia, from which they then obtained no returns, wished that new estates in Laconia should be assigned to them.(883) At the time, however, of that division Sparta must in fact have had about 9000 fathers of families (or, according to the ancient expression, so many οἶκοι), of which each received a lot; for families and lots were necessarily connected.(884) If then we suppose that every family of a Spartan was provided with a lot, the chief object was to keep them together for the future by proper institutions: and to ascertain the means which were employed to attain this end (for they were upon the whole successful) is a problem which has never yet been satisfactorily solved.(885) The first part was the preservation of families, in which the legislator was in ancient times assisted by the sanction of religion. Nothing was more dreaded by the early Greeks than the extinction of the family, and the destruction of the house;(886) by which the dead lost their religious honour, the household gods their sacrifices, the hearth its flame, and the ancestors their name among the living. This was in Sparta provided against by regulations concerning heiresses, adoptions, introductions of mothaces, and other means which will presently be mentioned: those persons also who had not as yet any children were sometimes spared in war.(887) The second means was the prohibition to alienate or divide the family allotment,(888) which necessarily required the existence of only one heir,(889) who probably was always the eldest son.(890) The extent of his rights, however, was perhaps no further than that he was considered master of the house and property; while the other members of the family had an equal right to a share in the enjoyment of it. The head of the family was styled in Doric ἑστιοπάμων, _the lord of the hearth_;(891) the collective members of the family were called by Epimenides the Cretan ὁμοκάποι, that is, literally, _eating from the same crib_;(892) and by Charondas ὁμοσίπυοι, or “_living __ upon the same stock_;”(893) and by the Spartans perhaps παῶται.(894) The master of the family was therefore obliged to contribute for all these to the syssitia, without which contribution no one was admitted;(895) we shall see presently that he was able to provide this contribution for three men and women besides himself; the other expenses were inconsiderable.(896) If, however, the family contained more than