358 HISTORY OF GKKECE. An assembly thus circumstanced, though always retained as a formality, and though its consent on considerable matters and for the passing of laws (which, however, seems to have been a rare occurrence at Sparta) was indispensable, could be very little of a practical check upon the administration of the ephors. The senate, a permanent body, with the kings included in it, was the only real check upon them, and must have been to a certain extent a concurrent body in the government, though the large and imposing language in which its political supremacy is spoken of by Demosthenes and Isokrates exceeds greatly the reality of the case. Its most important function was that of a court of criminal justice, before whom every man put on trial for his life was arraigned. 1 But both in this and in their other duties, we find the senators as well as the kings and the ephors charged with corruption and venality. 2 As they were not appointed until sixty years of age, and then held their offices for life, we may readily believe that some of them continued to act after the period of extreme and disqualifying senility, which, though the extraordinary respect of the Lacedaemonians for old age would doubtless tolerate it, could not fail to impair the influence of the body as a concurrent element of government. The brief sketch here given of the Spartan government will show that, though Greek theorists found a difficulty in determin- ing under what class they should arrange it, 3 it was in substance 1 Xcnoph. Rcpubl. Laced. 10; Aristot. Polit.ii. 6, 17 ; iii. 1,7; Demosthcn. cont. Leptin. c. 23, p. 489 ; Isokrates, Or. xii. (Panathenaic.) p. 266. Tho language of Demosthenes seems particularly inaccurate. Plutarch (Agesilaus, c. 32), on occasion of some suspected conspirators, ,vho were put to death by Agesilaus and the ephors, when Sparta was in imminent danger from the attack of Epameinondas, asserts, that this was the first time that any Spartan had ever been put to death without trial.
- Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 18. Compare, also, Thucydid. i. 131, about the guilty
Pausanias, xcaTevuv x9W a(sl ttaXbitetV TJ/V diaflohqv ; Herodot. v. 72 ; Thucyd. v. 16, about the kings Leotychides and Pleistoanax ; the brave and able Gylippus, Plutarch, Lysand. c. 16. 8 The ephors are sometimes considered as a democratical element, because every Spartan citizen had a chance of becoming ephor; sometimes as a despotical element, because in the exercise of their power they were subjeo* to little restraint and no responsibility : see Plato, Legg. iv. p 7J.2 ; Aristot Polit. ii. 3, 10 ; iv. 7, 4, 5.
