238 HISTORY OF GREECE. tionary ; but there seems nothing in them wl.ich fairly merits the appellation, in the sense which that word now bears, if we consider accurately what the Spartan kings were in the year 400 B. c. In this view the associations connected with the title of king, are to a modern reader misleading. The Spartan kings were not kings at all, in any modern sense of the term; not only they were not absolute, but they were not even constitutional kings. They were not sovereigns, nor was any Spartan then* subject ; every Spartan was the member of a free Grecian community. The Spartan king did not govern ; nor did he reign, in the sense of having government carried on hi his name and by his delegates. The government of Sparta was carried on by the ephors, with frequent consultation of the senate, and occasional, though rare appeals, to the public assembly of citizens. The Spartan king was not legally inviolable. He might be, and occa- sionally was, arrested, tried, and punished for misbehavior in the discharge of his functions. He was a self-acting person, a great officer of state; enjoying certain definite privileges, and exer cising certain military and judicial functions, which passed as an universitas by hereditary transmission in his family ; but subject to the control of the ephors as to the way in which he performed these duties. 1 Thus, for example, it was his privilege to command the army when sent on foreign service; yet a law was made, requiring him to take deputies along with him, as a council of war, without whom nothing was to be done. The ephors recalled Age- Bilaus when they thought fit ; and they brought Pausanias to trial
- Aristotle (Polit. v, 1, 5) represents justly the schemes of Lysander as
going Trpbf rb pepof n Kivqaat rj?f Tro^irelaf olov upxqv nva /caraor^om TJ avefalv. The Spartan kingship is here regarded as upxv rif one office of state, among others. But Aristotle regards Lysander as having intended to destroy the kingship Karahvaat, rqv Paaihtiav which does not appear to have been the fact. The plan of Lysander was to retain the kingship, but to render it elective instead of hereditary. He wished to place the Spartan kingship substantially on the same footing, as that on which the office of the kings or suffetes of Carthage stood ; who were not hereditary, nor confined to members of the same family or Gens, but chosen out of the principal families or Gentes. Aristotle, while comparing the (3aaifalf at Sparta with those at Carthage, as being generally analogous, pronounces in favor of the Carthaginian election as better than the Spartan hereditary transmission. (Arist. Polit. ii, 8, 2.)
