52 HISTORICAL TALES.

tries, everywhere studying the laws and customs
which he found prevailing. In Ionia he obtained a
copy of the poems of Homer, and is said by some
to have met and conversed with Homer himself.
If, as is supposed, the Greeks of that age had not
the art of writing, he must have carried this copy
in his memory.

On his return home from this long journey Ly-
curgus found his country in a worse state than be-
fore. Sparta, it may be well here to say, had always
two kings; but it found, as might have been ex-
pected, that two kings were worse than one, and
that this odd device in government never worked
well. At any rate, Lycurgus found that law had
nearly vanished, and that disorder had taken its
place. He now consulted the oracle at Delphi, and
was told that the gods would support him in what
he proposed to do.

Coming back to Sparta, he secretly sSenoreHe a
body-guard of thirty armed men from among the
noblest citizens, and then presented himself in the
Agora, or place of public assembly, announcing that
he had come to end the disorders of his native land.
King Charilaus at first heard of this with terror,
but on learning what his uncle intended, he offered
his support. Most of the leading men of Sparta
did the same. Lycurgus was to them a descendant
of the great hero Hercules, he was the most learned
and travelled of their people, and the reforms he
proposed were sadly needed in that unhappy land.

These reforms were of two kinds. He desired
to reform both the government and society. We