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71 Spartan Constitution. ^1 perverted by its system of legal rewards the standard of right and wrong, succeeded only in training its children into warriors, brave indeed to an admirable degree, but de- void of the frankness and sincerity which usually character- ize the soldier : for though in their dealings with one an- other they found it their interest to practise that honesty which the proverb attributes to men united in a bad cause, yet towards foreign states their conduct was as notorious for bad faith as for an uniform regard for their own ex- clusive advantage ^^. Gr. C. L. were open to the Spartan citizen only on the same condition that a public inn is open to a modern traveller, that he pays for the food which he consumes. The more attentively we consider the Spartan constitution, the more marvellous it seems that it lasted so long. "^^ See Thuc. v. 105, where the remark of the Athenians is not made at ran- dom, although it comes from an enemy : and the passages collected in Meursius Misc. Lac. III., Miiller, Vol. ii. p. 410. n. c.