104 Politics and Geopolitics
late in the eighth century; and we are told that he was still alive but incapaci-
tated by old age, pain, and sorrow in 669 when his Agiad colleague Polydorus
was defeated in battle by the Argives at Hysiae. As we have already seen, tra-
dition attributed to Theopompus the institution of the ephorate, to Polydorus
the establishment of a system of public land allotments, and to the two to-
gether a journey to Delphi for the purpose of securing divine sanction for the
Great Rhetra, which specified the rules governing the operations of the Spar-
tan assembly and sanctioned the articulation of the citizen body in terms of
both the old order of tribes and the new order of villages. It is, moreover, telling
that, after its reorganization, the Carneia was structured in much the same
manner: under the presidency of three groups of five as yet unmarried néoı.^17
All of this would make sense if Theopompus took the lead in effecting
a functional equivalent of the tribal reforms known to have taken place else-
where, converting the ephorate from an aristocratic office associated with the
Dorian tribes into a democratic office representing the citizens resident in
Sparta’s five villages; if the two kings joined together to carry out a reform
establishing the sovereignty at Lacedaemon of an army assembly articulated
into units defined first and foremost by place of residence and only second-
arily by tribe; and if the reorganization of the Carneia and the establishment
of the Gymnopaidiai were connected with this transformation. It would make
even better sense if after the revolt in Messenia—when there was, Tyrtaeus
testifies, social discontent, a shortage of food, and pressure for a redistribution
of land at Sparta^18 —Polydorus rallied support for a reconquest of that rich
province by promising, to the fury and dismay of aristocrats who had once
exclusively profited from the labor of those who farmed the Stenyklaros plain,
that everyone serving in Sparta’s new hoplite army would be awarded by token
of his contributions as a Spartan warrior a lifetime interest in an allotment of
land farmed by Messenian helots in the territory reclaimed.
None of this should be regarded as certain.^19 But we are told that Poly-
dorus was assassinated by an enraged aristocrat; and it is revealing that, in
later years, the ephors honored this putative champion of the common people
by having his image carved on their seal of office.^20 Moreover, the hypothesis
suggested here has the virtue of explanatory parsimony. The supposition that
Sparta’s constitution contains elements frozen in place, reflecting three dis-
tinct stages—monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic—in the city’s political
development, would account for the complex and seemingly contradictory
character of that city’s institutions. The presumption that there were two