Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/371

 LARGE POWERS OF THE EPIIORS. 355 eitixens not less than by the meanest. 1 Both the internal police and the foreign affairs of the state are in the hands of the ephors, r/ho exercise an authority approaching to despotism, and alto- gether without accountability. They appoint and direct the body of three hundred young and active citizens, who performed the immediate police service of Laconia: they cashier at pleasure any subordinate functionary, and inflict fine or arrest at their own discretion : they assemble the military force, on occasion of foreign war, and determine its destination, though the king has the actual command of it : they imprison on suspicion even the regent or the king himself: 2 they sit as judges, sometimes indi- vidually and sometimes as a board, upon causes and complaints of great moment, and they judge without the restraint of written laws, the use of which was peremptorily forbidden by a special Rhetra, 3 1 Xenophon, Republ. Laced, c. 8, 2, and Agesilaus, cap. 7, 2. 2 Xenoph. Rep. Laced. 8, 4 ; Thucydid. i. 131 ; Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 14 - "/.lav fj.eyu7.7jv Kal laorvpavvov. Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 13, f vouotf e-yypaoi(. Plato, in his Republic, in like manner disapproves of any general enact- ments, tying up beforehand the discretion of perfectly educated men, like his guardians, who will always do what is best on each special occasion (Re- public, iv. p. 425). 3 Besides the primitive constitutional Rhetra mentioned above, page 345, various other Rhetras are also attributed to Lykurgus : and Plutarch singles out three under the title of " The Three Rhetrae," as if they were either the only genuine Lykurgean Rhetrae, or at least stood distinguished by some peculiar sanctity from all others (Plutarch, Qusest. Roman, c. 87. Agesilaus, c. 26). These three were (Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 13 ; comp. Apophth. Lacon. p. 227) : 1. Not to resort to written laws. 2. Not to employ in house-building any other tools than the axe and the saw. 3. Not to undertake military expeditions often against the same enemies. I agree with Nitzsch (Histor. Homer, pp. 61-65) that these Rhetrae, though doubtless not actually Lykurgean, are, nevertheless, ancient (that is, probably dating somewhere between 650-550 B. c.) and not the mere fictions of recent writers, as Schomann (Ant. Jur. Pub. iv. 1 ; xiv. p. 132) and Urlichs (p. 241 ) seem to believe. And though Plutarch specifies the number three, yet there sqems to have been still more, as the language of Tyrtseus must be held to indicate : out of which, from causes which we do not now understand, the three which Plutarch distinguishes excited particular notice. These maxims or precepts of state were probably preserved along with the dicta of the Delphian oracle, from which authority, doubtless, many of them may have emanated, such as the famous ancient prophecy '