Politics and Geopolitics 101
that an elected archonship replaced at Athens hereditary kingship and lifelong
rule by a member of the royal family, and it is clear that in the aftermath this
city was governed by an hereditary aristocracy of men who called themselves
the Eupatrids. It was at about the same time that Corinth is said to have re-
placed the Bacchiad kingship in that city with an annual magistrate chosen
from within the sizable Bacchiad clan, and we are told that, at some point be-
fore the reign of Pheidon, who turned his kingship at Argos into a tyranny, the
Heraclid monarchy of that city had had its prerogatives sharply reduced.^10
The story told in brief by Ephorus and Aristotle and more fully elaborated
by Plutarch suggests that Sparta’s trajectory was a variation on this trend. Ly-
curgus was, they tell us, the uncle of Charillos, the rightful king, and while his
nephew was under age, he had served as regent on the young man’s behalf.
When Charillos came to maturity, Lycurgus dutifully turned over the reins of
authority, took leave of Sparta, and sailed off to Crete, where he sojourned for
a time at Lyktos, the earliest known Spartan colony. At the time of its foun-
dation, this new establishment had purportedly adopted laws of local origin,
which were attributed to the island’s legendary ruler Minos. When, in due
course, Lycurgus returned to Sparta, he found that Charillos had come to
exercise tyrannical power; and, with the help of twenty-eight Spartans from
leading families, he effected an aristocratic reform inspired by, if not modeled
on, the mode of governance that he had witnessed at Lyktos on Crete.^11
This story is no doubt a simplification of the truth, and the attribution to
Lycurgus of twenty-eight well-born allies makes it read as if it were an aetio-
logical tale told to explain the origins of the aristocratic board of elders at
Sparta known as the gerousía. There is this, however, to be said in its favor. To
begin with, although Lacedaemon is the city first described in our surviving
sources as being in possession of a polıteía—a constitution, a regime, and for-
malities distinguishing citizens from outsiders—the evidence available strongly
suggests that it was on Crete that constitutional government, the rule of law,
and citizenship first emerged in Greece. Second, there was at Thera, which
appears to have been settled from Lacedaemon in the middle of the eighth
century during Charillos’ reign, not only a king descended from its founder,
as there appears to have been early on also at Taras. There was also, as we have
seen, a board of ephors; and, tellingly, there is reason to believe that there was
a gerousía as well—for that institution is known to have existed at Cyrene,
which was founded by Thera in about 630, and at Euhesperides, which was
founded, in all likelihood not long thereafter, by Cyrene. Moreover, office-