III. We have already seen[88] that the Spartans in prehistoric times lived under a system of government which I have called dual heroic kingship: their political institutions were in most respects the same as those of the other Greeks in the heroic age, but they regularly had two kings reigning at the same time, each being head by descent of one of the two royal houses. After the establishment of the dual heroic kingship but still in the prehistoric age the Spartans introduced further modifications in their system of government: and since their descendants, whether rightly or wrongly, believed that the wise lawgiver Lycurgus had been the author of these changes, the modified system of government is known as the constitution of Lycurgus. This celebrated constitution is defined in a ῥήτρα or solemn compact said to have been dictated to Lycurgus by the Delphic priestess and accepted by the Spartans: Plutarch has preserved a document which professes to be the original text: and, though the pretensions of this document to extreme antiquity are probably unfounded, there is no doubt that it gives a truthful account of the government[89]. It orders Lycurgus "to found a temple of Zeus Syllanius and Athena Syllania, to divide the people into tribes (φυλαί) and obes (ὠβαί), to establish a senate of elders, thirty in number with the commanders (i.e. the kings), to hold assemblies at fixed times between Babyca and Knakion, and so to propose measures and take decisions on them: and that the commons (δᾶμος, δῆμος, the whole of the Spartiatæ) should have (? the decision?)[90] and authority." Thus the constitution of Lycurgus retained all the three component parts of the system to which I have given the name of dual kingship, the two kings, the council of elders, and the assembly of the people: but it prescribed that the meetings of the king and elders and people were to be held no longer according to the caprice of the kings but at fixed times and between two places which were both in the town of Sparta or close to it: the council of elders was to consist of exactly thirty members, the two kings being included in that number: and the assembly of the people was to possess authority (κράτος). [88] See p. 35.