It would be interesting to know what were the opinions and judgments of Spartans of the better time concerning these relaxed forms of government. We may well suppose that they did not view them in a favourable light. The people of Athens must indeed have appeared to them in general, as a Lacedæmonian in Aristophanes(867) expresses himself, as a lawless and turbulent rabble. For this reason they refused in the Peloponnesian war to negociate with the whole community; and would only treat with a few selected individuals.(868) Upon the whole, the state of Sparta, being, in comparison with the general mutability of the Greeks after the Persian war, like the magnet, which always pointed to the pole of ancient national customs, became dissimilar, both in political and domestic usages, to the rest of Greece;(869) and for this reason the Spartans who were sent into foreign parts either gave affront by their strangeness and peculiarity, or, by their want of consistency and firmness, forfeited that confidence with which they were everywhere met. Chapter X. § 1. Tenure of land in Laconia. § 2. Partition of the land into lots, and their inalienability. § 3. Law of inalienability of land repealed by Epitadeus. § 4. Lacedæmonian law respecting marriage portions and heiresses. § 5. Similar regulations respecting landed property in other states. § 6. The syssitia of Crete and the phiditia of Sparta. § 7. Contributions to the public tables in Crete and Sparta. § 8. Domestic economy of Sparta. § 9. Money of Sparta. § 10. Regulations respecting the use of money in Sparta. § 11. Changes in these regulations. Taxation of the Spartans. § 12. Trade of Peloponnesus. Monetary system of the Dorians of Italy and Sicily. 1. Having now considered the individuals composing the state in reference to the supreme governing power, we will next view them in reference to property, and investigate the subject of the public economy. It is evident that this latter must have been of great simplicity in the Doric states, as it was the object of their constitution to remove everything accidental and arbitrary; and by preventing property from being an object of free choice and individual exertion, to make it a matter of indifference to persons who were to be trained only in moral excellence; hence the dominant class, the genuine Spartans, were almost entirely interdicted from the labour of trade or agriculture, and excluded both from the cares and pleasures of such occupations.(870) Since then upon this principle it was the object to allow as little freedom as possible to individuals in the use of property, while the state gained what these had lost, it is manifest that under a government of this kind there could not have been any accurate distinction between public and private economy; and therefore no attempt will be made to separate them in the following discussion.