50 Polıteía
they took office, they apparently subjected all of the retiring magistrates to the
eúthuna. Thereafter, they had the authority to suspend their fellow officials at
any time. Individually, the ephors judged civil suits. As a board, they func-
tioned as moral censors and criminal justices empowered to impose fines on
malefactors; and, in capital cases, they could hold preliminary fact-finding
hearings before joining the thirty members of the gerousía to form a jury com-
petent to banish or execute the accused.^44
The importance of the ephors is perhaps most obvious from their relation-
ship with the two kings. Here, they had clearly defined prerogatives designed
to make manifest and to enforce the sovereignty of the political community as
a whole. They alone remained seated in the presence of a king; they alone had
the power to summon the kings, to jail them, and even to fine them for mis-
conduct; and in and after the fifth century, if not before, when one of the kings
led out the army, two of their number ordinarily accompanied him to observe
his every action and to give advice when asked.^45
One Eurypontid king is said to have remarked that “the magistrate rules
truly and rightly only when he is ruled by the nómoı and ephors.” His coupling
of the rule of custom and law with the rule of the ephors is not an accident. At
the time of his institution, the Spartan basıleús made a compact with the pólıs
in which he swore to maintain her nómoı. Each month thereafter, the ephors
exchanged oaths with the kings, the latter swearing to reign in accord with
“the established nómoı of the city,” the former pledging to “keep the kingship
unshaken” as long as the latter abided by their “oath to the city.” There was a
threat implicit in the ephors’ part of the bargain, and they had the power to
make good on it. Every ninth year, the five chose a clear and moonless night
and remained awake to watch the sky. If they saw a shooting star, they judged
that one or both kings had acted against the law and suspended the man or
men from office. Only the intervention of Delphi or Olympia could effect a
restoration.^46
Similarly, if the ephors judged that a king or regent had acted against the
interests of the city, they could arrest him and bring him to trial on a capital
charge just like any other Spartan citizen. In the course of the turbulent fifth
century, they were to exercise this prerogative time and time again: Cleomenes
and his colleague Leotychidas, Pausanias the regent and his royal son Pleistoa-
nax, Agis and his younger contemporary Pausanias the king—all of these were
brought to trial (some repeatedly) and all but Agis were eventually convicted
and banished or immured and starved to death.^47 Of the fifth-century kings,