got twice as much to eat as any one else, and there was general mourning when one of them
died. They were members of the Council of Elders, a body consisting of thirty men (including
the kings); the other twenty-eight must be over sixty, and were chosen for life by the whole
body of the citizens, but only from aristocratic families. The Council tried criminal cases, and
prepared matters which were to come before the Assembly. This body (the Assembly) consisted
of all the citizens; it could not initiate anything, but could vote yes or no to any proposal
brought before it. No law could be enacted without its consent. But its consent, though
necessary, was not sufficient; the elders and magistrates must proclaim the decision before it
became valid.
In addition to the kings, the Council of Elders, and the Assembly, there was a fourth branch of
the government, peculiar to Sparta. This was the five ephors. These were chosen out of the
whole body of the citizens, by a method which Aristotle says was "too childish," and which
Bury says was virtually by lot. They were a "democratic" element in the constitution, *
apparently intended to balance the kings. Every month the kings swore to uphold the
constitution, and the ephors then swore to uphold the kings so long as they remained true to
their oath. When either king went on a warlike expedition, two ephors accompanied him to
watch over his behaviour. The ephors were the supreme civil court, but over the kings they had
criminal jurisdiction.
The Spartan constitution was supposed, in later antiquity, to have been due to a legislator
named Lycurgus, who was said to have promulgated his laws in 885 B.C. In fact, the Spartan
system grew up gradually, and Lycurgus was a mythical person, originally a god. His name
meant "wolf-repeller," and his origin was Arcadian.
Sparta aroused among the other Greeks an admiration which is to us somewhat surprising.
Originally, it had been much less different from other Greek cities than it became later; in early
days it produced poets and artists as good as those elsewhere. But about the seventh century
B.C., or perhaps even later, its constitution (falsely attributed to Lycurgus) crystallized into the
form we have been considering;
* In speaking of "democratic" elements in the Spartan constitution, one must of course
remember that the citizens as a whole were a ruling class fiercely tyrannizing over the
helots, and allowing no power to the perioeci.