54 Polıteía
fectively divorced from the exercise of power, the prestige of its members would
have been sufficient to guarantee that its recommendations were generally
honored. Demosthenes and Aristotle both speak of election to membership in
the gerousía as “the prize allotted to virtue,” and Plutarch makes it clear that
being selected was the highest honor which could be conferred by the pólıs
on a citizen. Elsewhere, by means of an anecdote, he makes manifest the po-
litical import of being in this fashion esteemed. On one occasion, when a cer-
tain Demosthenes, a Lacedaemonian notorious for his lack of self-discipline,
brought a sensible measure before the Spartan people, they voted its defeat.
Fearful lest the opportunity pass, the ephors acted quickly, selecting by lot one
of the gérontes to present the proposal once again. “So great,” the biographer
concludes, “is the influence that can be attributed in a republican regime
[polıteía] to confidence in a man’s character and to its opposite.”^58
As the Spartan name suggests, the gerousía was a council of the aged.
Twenty-eight of its thirty members—all but the two kings—were always men
of experience and proven worth over the age of sixty. Drawn exclusively from
the priestly caste that seems to have constituted the city’s ancient aristocracy,
directly elected by popular acclamation, and guaranteed the office for life, the
gérontes performed three functions: the first, probouleutic; the second, judi-
cial; and the third, sacerdotal. With the ephors presiding, the “old men” met
to set the agenda for the assembly, and thereafter they could annul any ac-
tion on its part that exceeded the authority which they thereby conferred. In
capital cases, the gérontes joined the ephors in forming a jury; and in circum-
stances left unclear, they apparently functioned as augurs.^59 No legislation
could be enacted and no war declared without their permission, and it was
prudent for magistrates to consult the gérontes on all matters of administra-
tion entrusted to their care.
The kings and the ephors had particularly strong reasons for heeding the
advice of these old men. Whether a king or former official was eventually in-
dicted for malfeasance of office, because it was left to a board of ephors annu-
ally and more or less arbitrarily chosen, was largely a matter of chance. But
whether the defendant would then be convicted, because the matter was en-
trusted to a tribunal dominated by gérontes elected for life, was a subject for
calculation—even if, in capital cases, as one scholar argues, the verdict and
sentence had to be confirmed by the public assembly.^60
It is no wonder that we are expressly told with regard to the gerousía what
is not said at all with respect to the ephorate—that those eligible for election