The relation which, according to these Doric principles, existed between an inferior and a superior, between the private citizen and the magistrate, also extended to the Spartans and other states, as the former were for a long time considered as aristocrats when compared with the other Greeks. This superiority was not caused by external preponderance and compulsion, but by the internal acknowledgment that strict laws and a well-ordered discipline belonged to them above all. It is often curious to remark how great was the power of a Lacedæmonian cloak and stick (σκυτάλη καὶ τρίβων, as Plutarch says) among the other races of the Greeks:(861) how, as it were by magic, the single Gylippus, although by no means the best of his nation, brings union and stability into the people at Syracuse, and first gives all their undertakings force and effect; on more than one occasion a single Spartan was enough to unite squadrons of Æolians and Ionians of Asia, and make them act in common; and even at the times of the dissolution of the Grecian name, we see Spartans acting as the generals of mercenaries bound by no other law than the firm and decided will of their leaders. Many of the noblest and best of the Athenians always considered the Spartan state nearly as an ideal theory realised in practice; and, like Cimon and Xenophon (whose decided preference for Sparta, though perhaps sometimes prejudicial to his own country, must not be called folly), joined themselves to this state with zeal and eagerness, even to the prejudice of their own interests. The preference of all the followers of Socrates for Sparta is well known;(862) and Lycurgus, the most just of financiers, united to an aristocratical disposition an admiration for the laws of Lacedæmon.(863) It is singular that men of such eminence, both in a practical and theoretical view, should express their admiration of a state,(864) which modern writers(865) have often represented to us as a horde of half savages. Nor must the judgment of the persons above mentioned, who were without doubt sufficiently acquainted with the object of it, be attributed to a morbid craving after a state of nature which the Athenians had for ever lost.