52 Polıteía
on policy. But of this there is not a hint in our sources for the archaic and
classical periods.^51
Thus, as board after board of ephors served, then retired, and as the géron
tes slowly died off, a strong king endured, exercised his prerogatives, and
worked the political and social system to benefit his friends and to impose
a burden of gratitude on those judged to be politically prominent. Nearly al-
ways, Aristotle tells us, the ephors were nonentities utterly undistinguished;
and, at least in his day, when the public allotments had been privatized, they
tended to be poor men who were easily bribed. In a given year, a particular
king might find himself in difficulties and might deem it prudent to remain
quiet, but he knew that the annual game of chance by which the ephors were
chosen always offered the hope for a board more favorable to his cause or
more easily corrupted. The institution of the ephorate would not alone have
staved off tyranny. The fact that the kingship was dual was essential for accom-
plishing that feat. When the two kings were united, the ephors may not have
had the authority to withstand them.^52
In his account of the foundation of the Roman republic, Dionysius of
Halicarnassus depicts the great Brutus as a somewhat scholarly advocate of
dividing the royal office between two consuls. The Lacedaemonians have done
so “for many generations,” he explains.
And because of this arrangement of their políteuma, they have maintained
the best order [eunomeîsthaı] and they have been the most successful and
happy [eudaımoneîn] of all the Hellenes. If the power is divided in two
and each has the same strength, those who hold sway will be less insolent
and less oppressive. From this equal sharing of honor and lordship [ısotí
mou dunasteías], the most likely result would be that each will feel a sense
of reverence and shame [aıdō ́s] before the other, that each will be able to
prevent the other from conducting his life in accord with the dictates of
pleasure, and that each will compete with the other in seeking a reputation
for virtue.Centuries after the decline of Lacedaemon, this was the historian’s analysis of
the kingship at Sparta.^53
It was almost inevitable that there be rivalry between the two basıleîs. As
Dionysius’ testimony suggests, the aristocratic ethos virtually dictated the con-
flict between the two houses which came to be the norm. It is symptomatic of
the situation that, in the fourth century, each Spartan house appears to have
had clients of differing political persuasion in cities of the Peloponnesus such
as Phlius, Mantineia, and Elis. If the leading men in those cities looked to the