some to carry, and a great deal of it in quantity and weight was but a little in value. And perhaps all the old money was so, coin consisting of iron, or in some countries, copper skewers, whence it conies that we still find a great number of small pieces of money retain the name of obolus,[1] and the drachma is six of these, because so much may be grasped in one's hand. But Lysander's friends being against it, and endeavoring to keep the money in the city, it was resolved to bring in this sort of money to be used publicly, enacting, at the same time, that if any one was found in possession of any privately, he should be put to death, as if Lycurgus had feared the coin, and not the covetousness resulting from it, which they did not repress by letting no private man keep any, so much as they encouraged it, by allowing the state to possess it; attaching thereby a sort of dignity to it, over and above its ordinary utility. Neither was it possible, that what they saw was so much esteemed publicly, they should privately despise as unprofitable; and that every one should think that thing could be nothing worth for his own personal use, which was so extremely valued and desired for the use of the state. And moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men's private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large. For it is probable that the parts will be rather corrupted by the whole if that grows bad; while the vices which flow from a part into the whole, find many correctives and remedies from that which remains sound. Terror and the
- ↑ Obelus, a small spit or skewer, is probably the same word with obolus, the Greek penny, the sixth part of a drachma: drachma, a handful, comes from drassonai, to grasp in the hand; thus in Homer, dragma, of the stalks of corn in the reaper's hands. "As when reapers, facing each other, cut a swathe in a rich man's field, of wheat or of barley, and the handfuls fall thickly, so stood the Trojans and Achæans, fighting:" and again of the gleaners, in the shield of Achilles.
