§ 1. Simplicity of the Law of Sparta. § 2. Spartan System of Judicature. § 3. Penal system of Sparta: fine, infamy, § 4. exile, and death. § 5. Origin of the laws respecting the penalty of death in the Doric states. § 6. Connexion of Locri with the Doric race. § 7. Laws of Zaleucus. 1. The law, as well as the economy, of the Dorians, seems to bear a character of very great antiquity, as far as our scanty means of information permit us to judge. It exhibits strong marks of the early time at which it originated, and it is impossible not to recognise in it a certain loftiness and severity of character. For this reason it was ill suited to the circumstances of the more unrestrained and active manners of later times, and only owed its continuance to the isolated situation in which Sparta succeeded in keeping herself. Thus the civil law was less definite and settled here than in any other part of Greece in early times, as property was, according to the Spartan notions, to be looked upon as a matter of indifference; in the decrees and institutions attributed to Lycurgus, no mention was made of this point, and the ephors were permitted to judge according to their own notions of equity. The ancient legislators had an evident repugnance to any strict regulations on this subject; thus Zaleucus, who, however, first made particular enactments concerning the right of property,(1023) expressly interdicted certificates of debt.(1024) The laws of that early period had a much more personal tendency, and rather regulated the actions of every individual by means of the national customs. It was nearly indifferent whether those actions immediately concerned other persons or not; the whole state was considered as injured and attacked when any individual did not comply with the general principles. Hence the ancient courts of justice exercised a superintendence over the manners of the citizens, as, for instance, the Areopagus at Athens, and the Gerusia at Sparta: hence the extensive interference of the law with the most private relations, such, for example, as marriage. But the history of nations is a history of the progress of individual liberty; among the Greeks of later times the laws necessarily lost this binding force, and obtained a negative character, by which they only so far restrained the actions of each individual, as was necessary for the co-existence of other members of the state. In Sparta, however, law and custom retained nearly equal power; it will therefore be impossible to treat of them separately, and we must be satisfied with some observations upon the judicial system in Sparta and other Doric states.