Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/270

 248 HISTORY OF GREECE. ble character. A second sacrifice gave yet worse promise ; and on the third, the terrified prophet exclaim sd, " Agesilaus, the n re- lation before us imports that we are actually in the midst of our enemies." They still continued to sacrifice, but victims were now oifered to the averting and preserving gods, with prayers that these latter, by tutelary interposition, would keep off the impending peril. At length, after much repetition, and great difficulty, favorable vic- tims were obtained; the meaning of which was soon made clear. Five days afterwards, an informer came before the ephors, com- municating the secret, that a dangerous conspiracy was preparing, organized by a citizen named Kinadon. 1 The conspirator thus named was a Spartan citizen, but not one of that select number called The Equals or The Peers. It has already been mentioned that inequalities had been gradually grow- ing up among qualified citizens of Sparta, tending tacitly to set apart a certain number of them under the name of The Peers, and all the rest under the correlative name of The Inferiors. Besides this, since the qualification of every family lasted only so long as the citizen could furnish a given contribution for himself and his sons to the public mess-table, and since industry of every kind was inconsistent with the rigid personal drilling imposed upon all of them, the natural consequence was, that in each generation a certain number of citizens became disfranchised and dropped off. But these disfranchised men did not become Perioeki or Helots. They were still citizens, whose qualification, though in abeyance, might be at any time renewed by the munificence of a rich man ; 3 so that they too, along with the lesser citizens, were known under the denomination of The Inferiors. It was to this class that Kina- don belonged. He was a young man of remarkable strength and courage, who had discharged with honor his duties in the Lykur- gean discipline, 3 and had imbibed from it that sense of personal 1 Xenoph. Hellen. iii, 3, 4. 2 See Vol. II, Ch. vi, p. 359 of this History. 3 Xen. Hellen. iii, 3, 5. Oi-of (Kinadon) 6' rjv veaviffKoe Kal rb eldof sal Tffl> TJJVXTJV eilpUffTOf, OV [J.EVTOI TUV 6/J.OlUV. The meaning of the term Ol opoioi fluctuates in Xenophon ; it some- times, as here, is used to signify the privileged Peers again De Repub. Laced, xiii, 1 ; and Anab. iv, 6, 14. Sometimes again it is used agreeably to the Lykurgean theory ; whereby every citizen, who rigorously discharged his duty in the public drill, belonged to the number (De Rep. Lac. x, 7). There was a variance between the theory and the practice