Life of Lycurgus, 7

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7And they were actually able to persuade the city that the god authorized this addition to the rhetra, as Tyrtaeus reminds us in these verses:—

“Phoebus Apollo’s the mandate was which they brought from Pytho,

Voicing the will of the god, nor were his words unfulfilled:

Sway in the council and honours divine belong to the princes

Under whose care has been set Sparta’s city of charm;

Second to them are the elders, and next come the men of the people

Duly confirming by vote unperverted decrees.”

2Although Lycurgus thus tempered his civil polity, nevertheless the oligarchical element in it was still unmixed and dominant, and his successors, seeing it “swelling and foaming,” as Plato says,[8] “imposed as it were a curb upon it, namely, the power of the ephors.” It was about a hundred and thirty years after Lycurgus that the first ephors, Elatus and his colleagues, were appointed, in the reign of Theopompus. 3This king, they say, on being reviled by his wife because the royal power, when he handed it over to his sons, would be less than when he received it, said: “Nay, but greater, in that it will last longer.” And in fact, by renouncing excessive claims and freeing itself from jealous hate, royalty at Sparta escaped its perils, so that the Spartan kings did not experience the fate which the Messenians and Argives inflicted upon their kings, who were unwilling to yield at all or remit their power in favour of the people. And this brings into the clearest light the wisdom and foresight of Lycurgus, when we contrast the factions and misgovernment of the peoples and kings of Messenia and Argos, who were kinsmen and neighbours of the Spartans.

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