circumstance alone it is evident how little opportunity the legislator had for fresh enactments, since custom can never be the work of one person. From this view of the subject we can also explain why Hellanicus, the most ancient writer on the constitution of Sparta,(31) made no mention of Lycurgus (for which he is ignorantly censured by Ephorus),(32) and attributed what are called the institutions of Lycurgus to the first kings, Procles and Eurysthenes. It also follows, that when Herodotus describes the Spartans before the time of Lycurgus, as being in a state of the greatest anarchy,(33) he can only mean that the original constitution (the τεθμοὶ Αἰγιμίου) had been overthrown and perverted by external circumstances, until it was restored and renewed by Lycurgus. Lycurgus, of whose real or imaginary existence we have already spoken,(34) must at the time of Herodotus have been considered a mythical personage, as he had a temple, annual sacrifices, and, in fact, a regular worship.(35) Now it is the tendency of mythological narration to represent accordant actions of many minds at different times under the name of one person: consequently, the mere name of an institution of Lycurgus says very little respecting its real origin and author. 8. The legislation of Lycurgus was, however, according to ancient traditions, aided by the support of Crete and Delphi, and the connexion between the religious usages of these states thus influenced their political condition. The form of government which was prevalent throughout the whole of Crete, originated, according to the concurrent testimony of the ancients, in the time of Minos; and it has been already shown that the Dorians at that time extended their dominion to this island, which thus received their language and customs.(36) In Crete therefore, the constitution founded on the principles of the Doric race, was first moulded into a firm and consistent shape, but even in a more simple and antiquated manner than in Sparta at a subsequent period.(37) Thus Lycurgus was enabled, without forcing any foreign usages upon Sparta, to take for a model the Cretan institutions which had been more fully developed at an earlier period; so that the constitutions of Crete and Sparta had from that time, as it were, a family resemblance.(38) When therefore we are told that a pæan singer and expiatory priest of Crete, by name Thaletas of Elyrus,(39) sent by the command of the Pythian oracle, composed the troubles and dissensions of Sparta by the power of his music, and that he was the instructor of Lycurgus;(40) it is easy to perceive that the latter part of this account is an addition, made without any attention to chronology; but the operation of Cretan music upon the regulation of political affairs, is strictly in the spirit of an age, and of a race, in which religion, arts, and laws conduced far more than among any other people to attain the same end, and had their basis in the same notions.