According to the testimony of Plutarch, when Lycurgus entered upon the duties of lawgiver he went to Crete, and while there examined the laws of that people; those of them which he considered wise and suited to the needs of a commonwealth and which were based on principles involving the highest interests of the people, he incorporated into his system. Now the Cretans were a branch of the Doric stock,[192] and as among them descent and rights of succession were still traced through women, it would seem that they had preserved much of that simplicity of manner which characterizes primitive society. Upon his return from Crete Lycurgus made an equal division of the land, and as he could not induce the people to surrender their treasures, he prohibited the use of gold and silver currency and substituted iron in its place. To a great quantity and weight of this metal he assigned a slight value, so that to lay up a small amount of wealth a whole room was required, and for the removal of a moderate sum of money a yoke of oxen must be employed. When this became current many kinds of injustice ceased in Lacedæmonia. “Who would steal or take a bribe, who would defraud or rob, when he could not conceal the booty, when he could neither be dignified by the possession of it, nor if cut in pieces be served by its use?”[193] There is little evidence in support of the statement of Plutarch that Lycurgus attempted to establish a community of goods among the Spartans. Although he caused the landed possessions which had been parcelled out to individuals to be returned to the state, too much interest had already become attached to personal possessions to have made a division of this kind of wealth possible. [192] Aristotle’s _Politics_, book ii. [193] Plutarch’s _Lycurgus_. A legislator may not enact laws with the expectation of seeing them enforced which are not in accord with the temper of the people, and the degree of success which attended the legislation ascribed to Lycurgus proves that the great mass of the people were in sympathy with many of the measures which he proposed for the government of Sparta. It is plain that the object of the person or persons, whom history has named Lycurgus, was a return to the simpler manners and purer customs of a more primitive age, which the growth of the aristocratic spirit and the accumulation of wealth in masses in the hands of the few threatened entirely to subvert; and, as a community of goods was at this time impossible, he, or they, sought to level the distinctions between rich and poor by exalting virtue and moral excellence above the mere possession of wealth and hereditary titles.