It occurred to me one day that Sparta , though among the most thinly
						populated of states, was evidently the most powerful and most celebrated
						city in Greece ; and I fell to
						wondering how this could have happened. But when I considered the
						institutions of the Spartans, I wondered no longer. Lycurgus, who gave them the laws that they
						obey, and to which they owe their prosperity, I do regard with wonder; and I
						think that he reached the utmost limit of wisdom. For it was not by
						imitating other states, but by devising a system utterly different from that
						of most others, that he made his country pre-eminently prosperous.