It is the opinion of some writers that although Lycurgus did not inaugurate a new set of institutions, nor materially change the constitution of the state, the great service which he rendered to the Spartans was the remarkable system of discipline which he is supposed to have inaugurated. Of this Mr. Rawlinson says: “It must always remain one of the most astonishing facts in history, that such a system was successfully imposed upon a state which had grown up without it.”[194] Of the fact, however, that the state had not grown up without it there is ample evidence. On this subject Curtius remarks: It is certain that the Spartan discipline in many respects corresponds to the primitive customs of the Dorians, and that by constant practice, handed down from generation to generation, it grew into the second nature of the members of the community.[195] [194] Book i., essay i. [195] _History of Greece_, book ii., chap. i. From the facts at hand it is quite evident that Lycurgus did not originate that system of discipline through which it is claimed Spartan greatness was achieved. The fact has been noted that when he entered upon the duties of lawgiver he sailed for Crete, and, “having been struck with admiration of some of their laws,” he resolved to make use of them in Sparta.[196] As the discipline of Lycurgus constitutes the principal feature of the government ascribed to him, and as his models were for the most part drawn from the Cretans, it is only reasonable to suppose that this remarkable system was itself, in part at least, copied from them. It appears that among the Cretans, as among all peoples among whom female influence is in the ascendency, the children belonged to the mother, and that women owned, or at least controlled, their own households; they did not, therefore, follow the fathers of their children to their homes. In Crete, “the young Dorians were left in the houses of their mothers till they grew up into youths.”[197] As Cretan mothers had charge of their sons until they were grown up, it is not unlikely that the discipline which Lycurgus attempted to copy was a system inaugurated under matriarchal usages, but which in Sparta in the time of Lycurgus may have become somewhat relaxed. However, that the primitive discipline of the Dorian people was not extinct among the Spartans of this time is observed in the warlike character of the males, and in the express testimony of Aristotle that Spartan men had become inured to hardships by means of their frequent campaigns. To restore, or rather to intensify this discipline, seems to have been the object of Lycurgus; yet that he lacked greatly in judgment is shown by the measures which he put into execution. We are informed that [196] Plutarch’s _Lycurgus_. [197] Curtius, _History of Greece_, book ii., chap. i.