60 Polıteía
Greeks and the old is perhaps overdrawn; it may introduce more clarity into
the matter than actually exists. But his discussion is, nonetheless, strikingly
reminiscent of the one description we have of a member of the gerousía ad-
dressing the Spartan assembly. In that account, the Heraclid Hetoimaridas
is represented as having gone to great lengths in attempting to persuade his
compatriots and, in particular, the bold and impetuous young that it is impru-
dent for a land power like Sparta to go to war against a maritime power like
Athens for the hegemony of the sea.^67 In truth, most of the time, the gérontes
must have been a force for that caution for which Sparta was so notorious.
Most of the time, the gerousía must have been a bastion of tradition. Precisely
because the gérontes were not in a position to initiate positive action, they
could exercise extraordinary influence and even power without becoming
themselves a threat to the regime; and in the end, their oversight was the best
guarantee against any disruption of that set of social and economic arrange-
ments that fostered Spartan homónoıa.
A Mixed Constitution
There is little purpose in disputing whether the Spartan regime was aristo-
cratic or egalitarian and whether its constitution was democratic, monarchical,
or oligarchic. As Plato, Aristotle, and the other ancient writers understood,
the truth was more complex. In a “well-mixed” regime such as Lacedaemon, the
peripatetic tells us, “each of the extremes is revealed in the mean.” For those
within the Lacedaemonian citizen body, the social and economic arrange-
ments were far more egalitarian than any known elsewhere in Greece. But—
at least in the late archaic and early classical periods, when Sparta was still
populous—that citizen body was itself recruited by a weeding-out process in
which prowess and courage, cunning and hardiness, and physical beauty and
charm all played a great part. As a pólıs that placed greater emphasis on fos-
tering civic virtue than did any other community in Hellas, Sparta was—even
by Greek standards—extremely aristocratic. At the same time, however, Lace-
daemon was a republic. Ultimately, she referred all fundamental decisions to
a popular assembly, and she selected her most powerful magistrates from the
entire citizen body by a procedure akin to the lot. In this respect, she was—by
those same Greek standards—extraordinarily democratic.^68 Nonetheless, the
presence of hereditary basıleîs claiming descent from Zeus points to divine-
right kingship, and that of a small, elective council drawn from a narrowly