The kings owed the religious functions they performed as priests, as they did their
political positions, to hereditary title. In around 330 BC Aristotle noted that the kings
were generally responsible for the relations between the community as a whole and
the gods (ta pros tous theous;Politics1285a6–7). Consequently, the kings occupied
a special position at Sparta. In detailing the kings’ prerogatives (gerea), Herodotus
significantly indicates that they took charge of the preservation of oracles from
Delphi: ‘‘It is they that keep the oracular responses, and the Pythian messengers
share the knowledge of them’’ (6.57). As Anton Powell has shown, such a prerogative
could furnish the kings with arguments with which to influence political decisions,
and they could perhaps suppress obstructive prophecies, but, as he also notes, ‘‘The
question whether Spartan authorities oftenconsciouslymanipulated divination for
their political ends is difficult’’ (1994:290). (On the oracle of Pasiphae at Thalamai,
to the west of Taygetus, and on the political significance of the oracles that could be
given to the ephors there, see Richer 1998a:199–212).
Furthermore, the kings were not the only ones to inherit public functions of a
religious character. According to Herodotus again, ‘‘the heralds [ke ̄rykes], the musi-
cians of theaulos[a sort of oboe] and the sacrificers [mageiroi] inherit their father’s
trade’’ (6.60; cf. Berthiaume 1976, 1982). Herodotus subsequently returns to the
heralds and tells us that there was at Sparta a sanctuary (hieron) of Talthybius, the
herald of Agamemnon, and also that there were ‘‘descendants of his called Talthy-
biads, who have had the prerogative [geras] of undertaking all heralds’ missions from
Sparta’’ (7.134).
The Spartans believed that the qualities that enabled one to appeal to the gods
with greatest efficacity attached to individuals and could be inherited. So, for the
sake of effectiveness, they had to ensure that some functions of a religious character
were transmitted within defined families. (We may think also of the manner in
which some families, such as the Eteoboutadai, the Praxiergidai, the Bouzygai,
the Eumolpids, and the Kerykes, retained defined religious functions at Athens.)
But it was in the critical sphere of war, in which the future of the city was known
to be at stake, that the hereditary religious role of the kings could be of particular
value.
Gods and cults of war
Herodotus says of the Spartan kings of his own time that they have ‘‘the right to
direct war where they want, and no Spartan can oppose them for risk of incurring
pollution [agos];... the right to sacrifice as many victims as they wish on external
expeditions, and the right to keep the skins and chines of all victims’’ (6.56). This
appears to show that in the fifth century the Spartan kings still had the appearance of
sacred leaders of a sort, whose word had to be respected absolutely on pain of
religious sanction. And Xenophon’sConstitution of the Lacedaemoniansillustrates
the distinctive religious role a king was still, in around 378–6 BC, supposed to play on
military campaign (13.2–3, on which see Rebenich 1998 and Lipka 2002 ad loc.; for
the date see Meulder 1989):
But I wish...todescribe how the king sets out on campaign with the army. First of all, in
Sparta, he makes sacrifice to Zeus Leader of the Army [Age ̄to ̄r] and to the deitiesThe Religious System at Sparta 241