Politics and Geopolitics 117
chies in the cities of Greece. By 504, however, they were so renowned for this
policy that a Corinthian could not only take them to task for proposing to
depart from it. By doing so before an assembly of their Peloponnesian allies,
he could also actually hold them to this standard and even force them to aban-
don their plans for a change of course. It was, he implied, unthinkable that
they should jettison the policy that had given them within Hellas the extraor-
dinary moral authority that they then possessed. “The sky will be found be-
neath the earth and the earth above the sky,” he is said to have proclaimed,
“and human beings will have their dwelling-place in the sea and the fish, theirs
where men were formerly—when you, Lacedaemonians, overturn the equal
sharing of power [ısokratía] and prepare to bring back tyrannies in the cities.”^53
Plutarch mentions a number of tyrants whom the Lacedaemonians
ousted. The earliest among these were the Cypselids of Corinth and Ambracia
and Aeschines of Sicyon, the last of the Orthagorids. We also possess in frag-
mentary form a papyrus mentioning the Agiad king Anaxandridas and a
Spartiate named Chilon, who is elsewhere said to have held office as ephor in
or soon after 556/55 and to have been elected to the gerousía after he reached
the age of eligibility. The document expressly links the latter with Aeschines’
expulsion from power.^54
This Chilon, who became ephor at a time when he was already advanced
in age, was a consequential man. He was celebrated as one of the Seven Sages
of Greece, and Aristotle attributes to him the Greek moral precept Mēdèn
ágan—“Nothing too much!” At Sparta, he is said to have made the ephorate
as important as the kingship. He clearly made a difference, and we can easily
guess how, for there is evidence suggesting that he may have been the architect
of Sparta’s bid for hegemony within the Peloponnesus.^55
By Herodotus we are told a remarkable story concerning Anaxandridas.
This Agiad king is said to have married his sister’s daughter and—despite the
homoerotic ethos of ancient Lacedaemon and the practice of wife-sharing—
to have become exceptionally fond of the dame. Because, however, his wife had
borne him no son and heir, the ephors urged him to divorce her and marry
another woman. When he refused, the ephors consulted with the gérontes and
presented him with another suggestion, intimating that, if he did not take it,
there would be dire consequences. He was on this occasion asked to marry a
second wife, and this—no doubt reluctantly—he in obedience did. We do not
know whether Chilon was a member of the board of ephors that made Anax-
andridas an offer he could not refuse, but we can reasonably presume that he