Greed Among the Cretans
Among the Cretans the exact reverse of all these arrangements
-- 497 -- obtains. The laws allow them to possess as much land
as they can get with no limitation whatever. Money is so
highly valued among them, that its possession is not only
thought to be necessary but in the highest degree creditable.
And in fact greed and avarice are so native to the soil in
Crete, that they are the only people in the world among whom
no stigma attaches to any sort of gain whatever. Again all
their offices are annual and on a democratical footing. I have
therefore often felt at a loss to account for these writers
speaking of the two constitutions, which are radically different,
as though they were closely united and allied. But, besides
overlooking these important differences, these writers have
gone out of their way to comment at length on the legislation
of Lycurgus: "He was the only legislator," they say, "who
saw the important points. For there being two things on
which the safety of a commonwealth depends,—courage in
the face of the enemy and concord at home,—by abolishing
covetousness, he with it removed all motive for civil broil and
contest: whence it has been brought about that the Lacedaemonians are the best governed and most united people in
Greece." Yet while giving utterance to these sentiments, and
though they see that, in contrast to this, the Cretans by their
ingrained avarice are engaged in countless public and private
seditions, murders and civil wars, they yet regard these facts as
not affecting their contention, but are bold enough to speak of
the two constitutions as alike. Ephorus, indeed, putting aside
names, employs expressions so precisely the same, when discoursing on the two constitutions, that, unless one noticed the
proper names, there would be no means whatever of distinguishing which of the two he was describing.
