The most important cause of the 1st Messenian War was the lack of cultivable allotments and the demand for land redistribution. The sharing out of the lands of Stenyclarus to landless Spartans does not seem to have solved the problem. After the end of the 1st Messenian War, so Plutarch tells us, the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus asked for advice from the Delphic Oracle, in order to go ahead with reforms that would solve the crisis. The divinely-inspired oracular text - rhetra - was Sparta's founding charter. It laid down the distribution of the population into tribes and obai (villages), and shared power between the Senate, a body of thirty which drafted the laws, and the Apella (the people's gathering), which voted them through. So as to free Sparta from wealth's excesses and crimes, Lycurgus redistributed the land in thirty thousand allotments for perioikoi and nine thousand allotments for Spartans.

Even though modern research questions the historicity of the person of Lycurgus, the reforms attributed to him outline with broad sweeps of the brush the beginnings of the Spartan state. The two kings from the Agiad and Eurypontid families had resricted powers. They took part in the Senate; led the army; possessed a temenos (farmstead) in the regions of the perioikoi; and had the right to a greater portion of war booty. They also presided over most of the religious rituals. The Senate, where twenty-eight life members aged over sixty, plus the two kings, took part, prepared the preliminary agendas and functioned as a supreme court. The way senators were elected was singular. Traditionally, candidates would present themselves at the Apella and those who won the loudest applause would be elected. Modern scholars are not agreed about the powers of the Apella, which was convened once a month. Some scholars argue that it functioned like the Assembly of the demos in democratic cities; others, that it simply passed or rejected by acclamation the Senate's decisions. The institution of five ephors elected by the whole of the free citizen body and serving for one year looks as if it came later. The first among the ephors was the eponymous archon, and presided over the Apella. It was the ephors who organized the army in time of war, two of them accompanying the king on campaign. They also had supervision of the upbringing of the young and of administration, as well as legal capacities that extended even to the kings.

Those who counted as citizens (or homoioi) were all who had been born of a Spartan father; tilled an allotment of land; and were at least thirty years old. Perioikoi were free inhabitants of Laconia who did not have civic rights but did serve in the Spartan army. At the bottom of the social pyramid were helots, dependent villagers who were essentially state property.