2.5
but left the acquisition of wealth wholly unrestricted, and paid no attention to the great increase of poverty and its gradual influx into the city. And yet it was his duty at the very outset, while as yet there was no general or great disparity of means, but people still lived on much the same plane, to make a stand against rapacity, as Lycurgus did, and take measures of precaution against its mischiefs; for these were not trifling, but furnished the seed and source of the most and greatest evils of after times.
2.6
But as regards the redistribution of the land, Lycurgus, in my opinion, is not to be censured for making it, nor Numa for not making it. In the one case, the resulting equality was the foundation and base of his polity; but in the other, since the allotment of lands was recent, there was no urgent reason for introducing another division, or for disturbing the first assignment, which probably was still in force.
