Plut. Agis, § 13. But this was at a late period, when rich men and usurers had monopolised all the wealth of Sparta. ----- It is certain, therefore, and admitted even by Mr. Müller, that whatever may have been the intention of the original Spartan institutions, their severity was soon relaxed, and wealth with all its concomitants, introduced into the state. Even so far back as the ages before the Persian war, as we learn from the speech of Leutychides,[1537] at Athens, foreigners found no obstacle to prevent their bringing gold and silver to Sparta, where one of the most distinguished citizens undertook the keeping of a rich Milesian’s money, whose children he afterwards endeavoured to defraud. Could he have made no use of this money he would scarcely have desired to retain it. The share of the plunder accruing to Sparta in the Persian war was evidently not confined to the public coffers, though we may possibly allow that the Persian subsidies went to the defraying of national expenses.[1538] At all events certain it is that Sparta, about the time of Socrates, was by many regarded as the wealthiest state in Greece, and that not as a community, but individually, reckoning their estates in Messenia, the number of their slaves, Helots and others, their splendid studs, and vast droves of cattle. Nay, their wealth in gold and silver is particularly specified, with the additional remark, that for many ages the precious metals had been flowing into that country, both from Grecian and barbarian sources,[1539] but that no one had ever seen any flow out, an observation which Montesquieu,[1540] and others have applied without reflection, to Hindústân. ----- Footnote 1537: Herod, vi. 86. Footnote 1538: Müller, l. iii. ch. x. § 11. Footnote 1539: Plat. Alcib. i. t. v. p. 342, seq. This inferior production, with its admiration of courts and eunuchs, cannot be Plato’s, but contains, nevertheless, several curious facts. On the subject of Spartan wealth, however, it perfectly agrees with Plato’s own opinion in the Hippias, t. v. p. 414. Cf. Bitaubè, Sur la Richesse de Sparte. Nouveaux Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences et des Belles Lettres, de Berlin, xxxvii. 559. Footnote 1540: Esprit des Loix, xxi. 12. -----