Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/363

 LYKURGEAN RHETRA. ^547 another change, perhaps intended as a sort of compensation for this bridle on the popular assembly, introduced into the constitu- tion a new executive Directory of five men, called Ephors. This Board annually chosen, by some capricious method, the result of which could not well be foreseen, and open to be filled by every Spartan citizen either originally received, or gradually drew to itself, functions so extensive and commanding, in regard to inter- nal administration and police, as to limit the authority of the kings to little more than the exclusive command of the military force. Herodotus was informed, at Sparta, that the ephors as well as the nisi ad suum arbitrium immutatam) accipcre voluerit, senatores et auctores abolento totam." Now, in the first place, it seems highly improbable that the primitive Khetra, with its antique simplicity, would contain any such preconceived speciality of restriction upon the competence of the assembly. That restriction received its formal commencement only from the rider annexed by king Theopom- pus, which evidently betokens a previous dispute and refractory behavior on the part of the assembly, In the second place, the explanation which these authors give of the words cKo^iav and eiide'caif, is not conformable to the ancient Greek, as we find it in Homer and Hesiod : and these early analogies are the proper test, seeing that we are dealing with a very ancient document. In Hesiod, /i?i)f and OYCO/UOC are used in a sense which almost exactly corresponds to rigla. and wrong (which words, indeed, in their primitive etymology, may be traced back to the meaning of straigltt and crooked). See Hesiod. Opp. Di. 36, 192, 218, 221, 226, 230, 250, 262, 264; also Theogon. 97, and Fragm. 217, ed. Gottling; where the phrases are constantly repeated, Idelat, dittac, aitol.ial 6'iKai, <TKo/Uot fivdoi. There is also the remarkable expression, Opp. Di. 9. fteia 6e T' idvvei OKofaov : compare v. 263. Mwere [ivdov-. also Homer, Iliad, xvi. 387. Ol (31% dv dyopy ovco/Uuf Kpivuci de/ucraf; and xxiii. 580. i&ela ; xviii. 508. of fiera roiai 6iKrjv Idvvra-a elirij, etc. If we judge by these analogies, we shall see that the words of Tyrtaeus, estate f)^Tpatf, mean " straightforward, honest, statutes or conventions " not propositions adopted without change, as Nitzsch supposes. And so the words aKo7.iav lAotro, mean, " adopt a wrong or dishonest determination" not a determination different from what was proposed to them. These words gave to the kings and senate power to cancel any decision of the public assembly which they disapproved. It retained only the power of refusing assent to some substantive propositions of the authorities, first of the kings and senate, afterwards of the ephors. And this limited power it seems always to have preserved. Kopstadt explains well the expression ff/eo/Udv, as the antithesis to th* epithet of Tyrtseus, evdsiate fnjrpatf (Dissertat. sect. 15, p. 124).