before him. Public business was not resumed for ten days after the burial. The king was succeeded by his eldest son, but a son born before his father's accession to the kingship had to give way to the eldest of those who were born after the accession. If there were no children, the succession fell to the nearest male kinsman, who was likewise the regent in the case of a minority. The gerontes or elders whom we find in Homer advising the II.Gerusia, king and also acting as judges have developed at Sparta into a body or Council of fixed number, forming a definite part of the constitution, called the of Elders (or gerusia. This Council consisted of thirty members, including the Gerontia). two kings, who belonged to it by virtue of their kingship. The other twenty-eight must be over sixty years of age, so that the council was a body of elders in the strict sense of the word. They held their office for life and were chosen by acclamation in the general assembly of citizens, whose choice was supposed to fall on him whose moral merits were greatest; membership of the Council was described as a "prize for virtue." The Council prepared matters which were to come before the Assembly; it exercised, as an advising body, a great influence on political affairs; and it formed a court of justice for criminal cases. But though the Councillors were elected by the people, they were not elected from the people. Nobility of birth retained at Sparta its political significance; and only men of the noble families could be chosen members of the Council, And thus the Council formed an oligarchical element in the Lacedaemonian constitution. every People. Every Spartan who had passed his thirtieth year was a III. Apella, member of the Apella, or Assembly of Citizens, which met or Assembly month between the bridge of Babyka and the stream of Knakion. In of the old days, no doubt, it was summoned by the kings, but in historical times we find that this right has passed to the ephors. The assembly did not debate, but having heard the proposals of kings or ephors, signified its will by acclamation. If it seemed doubtful to which opinion the majority of the voices inclined, recourse was had to a division. The people elected the members of the Gerusia, the ephors and other magistrates; determined questions of war and peace and foreign politics; and decided disputed successions to the kingly office. Thus, theoretically, the Spartan constitution was a democracy. No Spartan was excluded from the apella of the people; and the will of the people expressed at their apella was supreme. "To the people," runs an old statute, "shall belong the decision and the power." But the same statute granted to the executive authorities— "the elders and magistrates "- -a power which restricted this apparent supremacy of the people. It allowed them "to be seceders, if the people make a crooked decree." It seems that the will of the people, declared by their acclamations, did not receive the force of Ephorate. 124 law, unless it were then formally proclaimed before the assembly was It The five ephors were the most characteristic part of the political constitution of Sparta. The origin of the office is veiled in obscurity; it was supposed to have been instituted in the first half of the eighth century.1 But we must distinguish between the first institution of the office and the beginning of its political importance. is probable that, in the course of the eighth century, the kings finding it impossible to attend to all their duties were constrained to give 66 overseers were up the civil jurisdiction, and that the ephors or appointed for this purpose.2 The number of the ephors would seem to be connected with the number of the five demes or villages whose union formed the city; and perhaps each one of the ephors was assigned originally to one of the villages. But it cannot have been till the seventh century that the ephors won their great political power. They must have won that power in a conflict between the nobility who governed in conjunction with the kings, and the people In that struggle the kings who had no share in the government. represented the cause of the nobility, while the ephors were the representatives of the people.3 A compromise, as the result of such a conflict, is implied in the oaths which were every month exchanged between the kings and the ephors. The king swore that he would observe the laws of the state in discharging his royal functions; the ephor that he would maintain the royal power undiminished, so long In this ceremony we have the as the king was true to his oath. record of an acute conflict between the government and people. The democratic character of the ephorate appears from the fact that The mode of election, which is any Spartan might be elected. described by Aristotle as "very childish," was practically equivalent When the five ephors did not agree among themselves, the minority gave way. to an election by lot. 1 The Alexandrines seem to have had an ephor-list reaching as far back as It is perhaps of more importance 757 B.C.; but we cannot build much on this. that the ephorate existed in the Laconian colony at Thera; but what most of all proves its antiquity is its close inter-connexion with the whole framework of the Spartan constitution. 2 We have no knowledge of the local institutions in the towns of the perioeci, which would probably throw some light on details of the Spartan constitution. Polemon's work, On the Cities in Lacedaemon, has unfortunately not survived. 3 The Eurypontid kings probably smoothed the way for the compromise. It has been suggested that such names as Archidamos, which occur among the Eurypontids but not among the Agids, allude to their popular attitude. The ephors entered upon their office at the beginning of the ephors were criminal judges also. constitu This unique constitution cannot be placed under any general Character head, cannot be called kingdom, oligarchy, or democracy, without of Spartan misleading. None of these names is applicable to it, but it partici- tion. pated in all three. A stranger who saw the kings going forth with power at the head of the host, or honoured above all at the public feasts in the city, would have described Sparta as a kingdom. If one of the kings themselves had been asked to define the constitution, it is probable that he would have regretfully called it a democracy. Yet the close Council, taken from a privileged class, exercising an important influence on public affairs, and deferring to an Assembly which could not debate, might be alleged to prove that Sparta was an oligarchy. The secret of this complex character of the Spartan constitution lies in the fact that, while Sparta developed on the same general path as other states and had to face the same political crises, she overcame each crisis with less violence and showed a more conservative spirit. When she ought to have passed from royalty to aristocracy, she diminished the power of the kings, but she preserved hereditary kingship as a part of the aristocratic government. When she ought to have advanced to democracy, she gave indeed enormous power to the representatives of the people, but she still preserved both her hereditary kings and the Council of her nobles. SECT. 2. SPARTAN CONQUEST OF MESSENIA In the growth of Sparta the first and most decisive step was the conquest of Messenia. The southern portion of the Peloponnesus is divided into two parts by Mount Taygetus. Of these, the eastern part is again severed by Mount Parnon into two regions: the vale of the river Eurotas, and the rugged strip of coast between Parnon and the sea. The western country is less mountainous, more fruitful, and Messenia. blessed by a milder climate, nor is it divided in the same way by a mountain chain; the hills rise irregularly, and the river Pamisus waters the central plain of Stenyclarus where the Greek invaders are said to have fixed their abode. The natural fortress of the country was the lofty rock of Ithome which rises to the west of the river. It is probable that under its protection a town grew up at an early period, whose name Messene was afterwards transferred to the whole country. The fruitful soil of Messenia, "good to plant and good to ear," Early conas a Spartan poet sang, could not but excite the covetousness of quest of Messenia. her martial neighbours. It is impossible to determine the date of the First Messenian War with greater precision than the eighth century. Legends grew up freely as to its causes and its course. All that we know with certainty is that the Spartan king, under whose auspices it was waged, was named Theopompus; that it was decided by the capture of the great fortress of Ithome; and that the eastern part of the land became Laconian. A poet writing at the beginning of the seventh century would have naturally spoken of Messene or Pherae as being "in Lacedaemon." When the Second War broke out towards the end of the seventh century, it was either history or legend that the previous war had lasted twenty years. Legends grew up around it in which the chief Legend of figure was a Messenian hero named Aristodemus. The tale was Aristothat he offered his daughter as a sacrifice to save his country, in obedience to the demand of an oracle. Her lover made a despairing effort to save her life by spreading a report that the maiden was about to become a mother, and the calumny so incensed Aristodemus that he slew her with his own hand. Afterwards, terrified by evil dreams and portents, and persuaded that his country was doomed, he killed himself upon his daughter's tomb. demus. senians. As the object of the Spartans was to increase the number of the Condition lots of land for their citizens, many of the conquered Messenians of the Meswere reduced to the condition of Helots, and servitude was hard though their plight might have been harder. They paid to their lords only one-half of the produce of the lands which they tilled, whereas in Attica at the same period the free tillers of the soil had to pay five-sixths. The Spartan poet Tyrtaeus describes how the Messenians endured the insolence of their masters :— As asses worn by loads intolerable, For some generations they submitted patiently, but at length, when |