Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/461

 AGIS. 453 one should be free from their debts ; all the lands to be divided into equal portions, those that lay betwixt the watercourse near Pellene and Mount Taygetus, and as far as the cities of Malea and Sellasia, into four thousand five hundred lots, the remainder into fifteen thousand ; these last to be shared out among those of the country people* who were fit for service as heavy-armed soldiers, the first among the natural born Spartans ; and their num- ber also should be supplied from any among the country people or strangers who had received the proper breeding of freemen, and were of vigorous body and of age for military service. All these were to be divided into fifteen companies, some of four hundred, and some of two, with a diet and discipline agreeable to the laws of Lycurgus. This decree being proposed in the council of Elders, met there with opposition ; so that Lysander immediately convoked the great assembly of the people, to whom he, Mandroclidas, and Agesilaus made orations, exhorting them that they would not suffer the majesty of Sparta to remain abandoned to contempt, to gratify a few rich men, who lorded it over them ; but that they should call to mind the oracles in old time which had forewarned them to beware of the love of money, as the great dan- ger and probable ruin of Sparta, and, moreover, those recently brought from the temple of Pasiphae. This was a famous temple and oracle at Thalamus ; and this Pasi- phae, some say, was one of the daughters of Atlas, who had by Jupiter a son called Amnion ; others are of opin- ion it was Cassandra, the daughter of king Priam, who, dying in this place, was called Pasiphae, as the reveafer of oracles to all men.f Phy larch us says, that this was Daphne, the daughter of Amyclas, who, flying from Apollo, was nians. phaeirt, to show or reveal,^)an, to all.
 * The periceci, or subject Laco- | Pasiphae, who pasi phaei ;