termed the Equals or Peers1, the other the Inferiors. 2 It seems not improbable that this distinction may have arisen, when the franchise was extended in the reign of Polydorus, and it may easily be conceived, that it was not established without opposition. To the Equals, who appear to have composed a select assembly, the election of the Senate seems to have been exclusively reserved: but the lower franchise must have entitled to a vote in the general assembly which elected the Ephors. This too was perhaps the occasion of an ordinance enacted under the sanction of Delphi in the reigns of Theopompus and Polydorus, by which the powers of the general assembly were expressly limited to the simple receiving or rejecting of propositions presented to it, without change or addition.4 The assumption of such an enlargement and consequent graduation of the franchise, would also afford the easiest way of reconciling the various accounts of the origin of the ephoralty. Herodotus ascribes the institution of this office to Lycurgus, perhaps only in a sense in which we might also do so, if Lycurgus be considered as a representative of the ancient Spartan constitution. Other writers, with as good reason, describe the ephoralty as an innovation introduced by Theopompus, the colleague of Polydorus, who is said to have been reproached by his queen with having thus parted with the best half of the royal prerogatives, and to have vindicated his prudence by alledging, that by this concession he had secured the remainder to his successors. In the latest times of Sparta Cleomenes endeavoured to spread an opinion there, that the ephors had been originally appointed by the kings, when occupied by the Messenian war, to fill their place at home in the seat of justice, but that these new magistrates made their authority first independent, and then paramount over that of the kings themselves. Asteropus is named as the ephor who contributed most to strengthen the power of the 1 ὁμοιοί. 3 ἡ μικρὰ ἐκκλησία, 2 ὑπομείονες. college; but he is said to have lived many generations after their first institution.1 This account of the origin of the office, though not improbable in itself, is rendered very doubtful both by the example of Cyrene, by the number of the ephoral college, and by the analogy of other states, which seems to indicate, that at Sparta the civil and criminal jurisdictions were originally separate from each other, and that neither was ever wholly in the hands of the kings. And as the criminal jurisdiction belongs to the senate, it is most probable that the civil was from the first exercised by the ephors. And this may very early have been united with a censorial authority, such as we find was possessed by the ephors of Cyrene. The antiquity of this branch of the Spartan office seems to be proved by the obsolete symbolical language of the edict, with which the ephors regularly entered upon it, in which they bade the citizens shave the upper lip, and obey the laws.2 This general super intendence over the execution of the laws was an attribute of the ephoralty, which might often bring it into collision with the royal authority, and, in the hands of a dexterous and enterprising man, might alone have proved an instrument of unlimited power. It may have been by virtue of this that the ephors received an oath (if we may believe Xenophon, every month) from the kings, that they would govern according to law, and in return bound themselves and the nation to a conditional obedience, in terms not unlike those used on similar occasions by the Aragonese. Another prerogative of the ephors, which enabled them at the end of every eight years - a period observed for many purposes from early times by the Dorian race— -to suspend the functions of the kings, would seem to have been connected with a religious, rather than a political, character of their office. They chose, it is said, a clear but moonless night, to observe the sky, and the appearance of a meteor in a certain quarter was regarded as a token of the displeasure of the gods against the kings, who were 1 Plut. Cleom. 10. 2 Plut. Cleom. 9. forthwith interdicted from the discharge of their office, and could only be restored by the intervention of an oracle. But besides these powers, the ephors, in later times, possessed that of convoking the assembly of the people, of laying measures before it, and of acting in its name and it was undoubtedly this representative character which afforded them the principal means of encroaching on the royal prerogatives, and of drawing the whole government of the state into their hands. This last, the most important branch of their authority, may have arisen in the reign of Theopompus, and from the cause to which Cleomenes assigned the institution of the office itself, the temporary absence of the kings. That it was unknown in earlier times, seems to follow from the two ordinances cited by Plutarch, which regulated the assembly of the people, and which are silent as to the functions of the ephors. But still it may be reasonably doubted, whether that enormous increase of their power, by which it came to overshadow all others in the commonwealth, was derived solely or mainly from any such accident, and whether it was on this account that the reign of Theopompus was fixed on as the epoch of their creation. But if in this reign the franchise was extended to a body of new citizens, who nevertheless were not admitted to a complete equality of privileges with the old ones, the ephors, as representatives of the whole people, would henceforth stand in a new position with respect to the kings and the senate, which was elected from and by the higher class. The comparison which Cicero draws between the ephoralty and the Roman tribunate, would in this case be more closely applicable than he himself suspected, and it will serve to throw light on a seeming contradiction which strikes us in the character of the ephors, who are allpowerful, though the class which they more especially represent enjoys only a limited franchise. But as the relations of the several classes of Spartan citizens underwent great changes in the course of their history, the causes which maintained the stability of these relations in later times will demand a different explanation in its proper place. Here we may observe, that Aristotle speaks of the mode in which the ephors were elected, as no less puerile than that adopted in the case of the senate; from which we must infer that there was little difference between the two, and are led to suppose that an allusion of Plato's, by which he seems to intimate that chance had some share in the creation of the ephors, does not refer to the form of the election, but to another mark of a democratical office: for such the ephoralty appeared to the ancients, when considered with respect to its origin, though it was tyrannical in the extent of its power. This seems never to have been defined, and therefore probably varied with the character of the men who held it, and the state of the times. But it is remarkable that, with the substance, the ephors assumed the outward signs of the supreme authority. The royal dignity was forced on all occasions to bow to them; and as they could control the proceedings of the kings by their orders, could fine them for slight offences at their discretion, and could throw them into prison to await a trial on graver charges, so they alone among all the Spartans kept their seats while the kings were passing, whereas it was not thought beneath the majesty of the kings to rise in honour of the ephors, and it was their acknowledged duty to attend, at least on the third summons, before the ephoral tribunal. will however be seen, that, even when the power of the ephors was at its greatest height, the kingly station continued to confer important prerogatives, and means of extensive influence; and Agesilaus, who went beyond all his predecessors, in the respect which he showed to the ephors, was the most powerful prince of his house. It It has probably been owing to the poetical form in 1 Leg. iii. 11. ἐγγὺς τῆς κληρωτής δυνάμεως. Goettling supposes that lot decided between candidates who had been elected: but the words may refer to the democratical character of the electors, which, according to Plato's view, rendered their choice as capricious and uncertain as if it had been determined by lot; and indeed Aristotle speaks of the ephors as οἱ τυχόντες. which the events of the first Messenian war have been transmitted to us, that we hear so little of the part which Argos took in it. But it appears from some facts which have been accidentally preserved, that, as might have been expected, she was far from remaining inactive, while her enemy was engaged in the struggle with Messenia, but that she seized this opportunity of recovering Cynuria. And there is even reason to believe, that it was at this period she made herself mistress of the whole eastern coast of Laconia, as far as Cape Malea, and of the island of Cythera, which, as we learn from Herodotus, once formed part of her territory. These conquests may probably be attributed to Pheidon, who is usually called tyrant of Argos, but was, in fact, a hereditary ruler, the tenth from Temenus, though he had broken through the restraints which limited the kingly power at Argos.. It seems to have been Pheidon's aim to assert the supremacy of his house over the other branches of the Heracleid race, and to enforce all the titles which he derived from his mythical descent.2 On this ground, in the eighth Olympiad, he deprived the Eleans of their presidency at the Olympic games, which, as legends told, had been founded by his divine progenitor, and conferred it on the Pisans. It may have been in prosecution of this vast plan, that he furnished his brother Caranus with the means of founding a little kingdom, which became the core of the Macedonian monarchy. This powerful and active prince introduced a new system of weights and measures, which bore his name, and replaced the old rude money by a more convenient coinage, called the Æginetan, because it was in Ægina, which formed a part of his territories, that he established his mint. He may also have extended his dominions along the western coast of the Argolic gulf, as far as Malea: a rocky barren tract of little value, except as it afforded a passage into the heart of Laconia. At the death of Pheidon his genius and fortune seem to have deserted the Argives: and these conquests, 2 Strabo, viii. p. 358. 1 Aristot. Pol. v. 8. |