6. In the present chapter we have frequently had occasion to mention the laws of Zaleucus (the earliest written code which existed in Greece),(1070) actuated by a belief that they were of Doric origin. The Epizephyrian Locrians, amongst whom these laws were in force, were indeed for the most part descendants of the Ozolian and Opuntian Locrians.(1071) Aristotle describes them as a collected rabble, in the true spirit of a mythologist, carrying to the extreme the opposition between recent regularity and early anarchy. These Locrians, however, at the very first establishment of their city, received the Doric customs, Syracusans from Corinth having contributed largely to its foundation,(1072) besides which the Spartans are said to have colonized Locri during the first Messenian war. Although the time may be doubtful, it is an additional confirmation of the fact, that in an ancient war with the inhabitants of Croton, the Locrians applied for assistance to the Spartans, who promised them the assistance of their gods of war, the Tyndaridæ. Locri was therefore considered a Doric state, a character which was likewise preserved in its dialect. The constitution was also an oligarchy,(1073) in the hands apparently of a number of Doric and Locrian families. We find in this state, as well as in its mother-city Opus, the hundred families who, by virtue of their nobility, enjoyed a large share in the government.(1074) But that the aristocracy was united with a timocracy appears to me to be proved by the senate of a thousand; which, under the presidency of the cosmopolis, constituted a supreme court of justice,(1075) and appears to have been formed in the manner stated, if we may judge from the analogy of the senates of Rhegium and Agrigentum: which argument seems to have the greater weight, as such numerous councils of an aristocratic character do not appear to have existed in Greece, and they were evidently not democratic.