The Ephors (The Overseers/High Magistrates)

The Ephors, whilst absent from the Great Rhetra (whether owing to their non-existence at that juncture, or, if extant, their occupancy of a post of but minor consequence), merit discussion here, as they constituted the fourth institution of substantive import in the Spartan constitution. Five Ephors were elected annually from the entire citizenry, and by the fifth century, they had ascended, constitutionally, to the station of the most puissant public officials. It was they who superintended the quotidian affairs of state, and furthermore, they constituted the principal executive organ, implementing the decrees of the Assembly, over which they presided (Thucydides 1.87). They were also charged with the adjudication of private suits, rendering judgements in separate sittings (Aristotle, Politics 1275b), and, conjointly with the Gerousia, presided over the trial of a king (Pausanias 3.5.2). They exercised superintendence over other public officials, possessing the authority to suspend, imprison, and even bring capital charges against them (Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaimonians 8.4). Paramount amongst their responsibilities was the supervision of the agoge, the protracted and rigorous system of state education indispensable to the exacting standards of the Spartan army.

In the sphere of foreign affairs, they received foreign ambassadors to ascertain the object of their missions, prior to presenting them before the Assembly. In times of war, the responsibility devolved upon them to organise the conscription of the army, determining its requisite size for the impending campaign (Xenophon, Con. of the Lac. 11.2), and they may even have wielded the power to issue directives to commanders (though not to the kings) in the field. When the king embarked upon an expedition with the army, he was invariably accompanied by two of the Ephors, who acted as overseers. Aristotle regarded the Ephors as the most potent of the four principal institutions of state, yet also the most susceptible to corruption:

Aristotle, Politics 1270b:

For this post exercises total dominion over the gravest affairs of Sparta, yet the Ephors are drawn from the entirety of the populace, with the consequent likelihood that men of impoverished circumstance attain ofice, who, by reason of their impecuniousness, are readily subject to venality.

However, he did recognise that it was this post, rather than dominion within the Assembly, that served to maintain the populace's contentment with their constitutional position within the state.

Finally, it should be explicitly stated that two erstwhile commonplace notions concerning the Ephors ought to be relinquished: firstly, that the boards of Ephors adhered to a continuous, corporate policy; and secondly, that they were engaged in a perpetual struggle for power with the kings. The Ephors were subject to annual rotation and (almost assuredly) were ineligible for re-election for a second term. With respect to the first issue, there is ample reason to surmise that divergences of opinion concerning policy not only existed between successive boards of Ephors, but also amongst individual members of the selfsame board. Frequent and profound discord, even personal animosity, arose between the kings, and it is plausible that each king enjoyed the support of partisans amongst the Ephors. With respect to the second issue, the perceived conflict between the Ephors and the kings appears to stem from two sources: the monthly exchange of oaths, whereby the kings swore to govern in accordance with the law, and, conditional upon their adherence thereto, the Ephors would uphold their rule (Xenophon, Con. of the Lac. 15.7); and the purported animosity during the reign of Cleomenes I. In point of fact, the Ephors are mentioned but twice in Herodotus’ account of Cleomenes’ career, and neither instance may be construed as indicative of bitter conflict. It is imperative to bear in mind that the Ephors, for all their constitutional power, held office for a mere annum, thereafter returning to political obscurity, whereas the prestige of the king was of enduring duration. Consequently, it is hazardous to infer from the Ephors’ constitutional power that they exerted undue influence; any Ephor who displayed excessive zeal in the exercise of his constitutional power to the detriment of a king was acutely cognisant of his vulnerability to retaliation at the hands of the selfsame king in subsequent years.

The most significant and politically momentous feature of the Great Rhetra was its declaration that sovereign power, viz. the authority to ‘render a decisive verdict’, was vested in the Spartan Ecclesia (Assembly). This was almost certainly the first written hoplite constitution, and was deliberately committed to writing, unlike other ‘rhetrai’ (decrees), as it enshrined their rights in constitutional law. As previously elucidated, the historian is confronted with the challenge of ascertaining a date and a political context for so remarkable a document. Scholarly opinion has assigned the Great Rhetra to dates ranging from the early seventh century (699–675) to the latter half of the same century (650–600). Similarly, the political context is variously posited as either following the success of the First Messenian War (c.730– c.710), when the hoplites felt emboldened to assert their rights; or during the Second Messenian War (possibly waged circa 660 to 650), when military defeat and war-induced hardship engendered political unrest; or subsequent to the conclusion of the Second Messenian War (date undetermined), when military success spurred political agitation for reform.

The circumstance that Sparta evaded tyranny, and that the Great Rhetra conferred upon the Spartan hoplites the political power that their counterparts in other states only secured through supporting revolution and tyranny, renders the mid-seventh century (c.650) the most compelling date and political context for its introduction. The Spartan aristocracy would have been deeply troubled by the success of King Pheidon of Argos, cited by Aristotle (Politics 1310b) as an exemplar of a king transitioning into a tyrant, in harnessing the hoplites to overthrow the aristocracy circa 670; by the success of the tyrants of Sicyon and Corinth in the 650s, Orthagoras and Cypselus, respectively; and by the recent memory of King Polydorus, who had championed the grievances of the ordinary Spartan, resulting in his assassination at the hands of an aristocrat. It was the Second Messenian War (or Messenian revolt), which transpired around the epoch of these tyrannies, and its all-encompassing threat to Sparta’s very existence, that proved to be the constitutional turning point in Sparta’s history. The Great Rhetra, by vesting sovereign power in the hoplites, was intended to redress their political grievances and to furnish them with the incentive to preserve Sparta from annihilation.