And now, glutting his anger at the Lacedaemonians and unworthily trampling upon them in their misery, he treated their constitution in the most cruel and most lawless fashion. For he took away and abolished the system of training which Lycurgus had instituted, and compelled their boys and their young men to adopt the Achaean in place of their hereditary discipline, being convinced that while they were under the laws of Lycurgus they would never be humble. For the time being, then, owing to their great calamities, the Spartans suffered Philopoemen to cut away, as it were, the sinews of their city, and became tractable and submissive; but a while afterwards, In 184 B.C. ( Livy, xxxix. 34 ). having obtained permission from the Romans, they abandoned the Achaean polity, and resumed and re-established that which had come down from their fathers, so far as was possible after their many misfortunes and great degeneration.