not--the one composed of men, busy, stirring, ambitious, in the
vigour of life--the other of veterans, past the ordinary stimulus of
exertion, and regarding the dignity of office rather as the reward of
a life than the opening to ambition. Of two such assemblies it is
easy to foretell which would lose, and which would augment, authority.
It is also easy to see, that as the ephors increased in importance,
they, and not the gerusia, would become the check to the kingly
authority. To whom was the king accountable? To the people:--the
ephors were the people's representatives! This part of the Spartan
constitution has not, I think, been sufficiently considered in what
seems to me its true light; namely, that of a representative
government. The ephoralty was the focus of the popular power. Like
an American Congress or an English House of Commons, it prevented the
action of the people by acting in behalf of the people. To
representatives annually chosen, the multitude cheerfully left the
management of their interests [136]. Thus it was true that the ephors
prevented the encroachments of the popular assembly;--but how? by
encroaching themselves, and in the name of the people! When we are
told that Sparta was free from those democratic innovations constant
in Ionian states, we are not told truly. The Spartan populace was
constantly innovating, not openly, as in the noisy Agora of Athens,
but silently and ceaselessly, through their delegated ephors. And
these dread and tyrant FIVE--an oligarchy constructed upon principles
the most liberal--went on increasing their authority, as civilization,
itself increasing, rendered the public business more extensive and
multifarious, until they at length became the agents of that fate
which makes the principle of change at once the vital and the
consuming element of states. The ephors gradually destroyed the
constitution of Sparta; but, without the ephors, it may be reasonably
doubted whether the constitution would have survived half as long.
Aristotle (whose mighty intellect is never more luminously displayed
than when adjudging the practical workings of various forms of
government) paints the evils of the ephoral magistrature, but
acknowledges that it gave strength and durability to the state.
"For," [137] he says, "the people were contented on account of their
ephors, who were chosen from the whole body." He might have added,
that men so chosen, rarely too selected from the ch