Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/23

 GOVERNMENT OF SPARTA. 7 unresponsible Executive Directory. Assisted by endless dissen- sions between the two coordinate kings, the ephors encroached upon their power on every side, limited them to certain special functions, and even rendered them accountable and liable to punishment, but never aspired to abolish the dignity. That which the regal authority lost in extent (to borrow the just remark of king Theopompus) 1 it gained in durability: the descendants of the twins Eurysthenes and Prokles continued in possession of their double sceptre from the earliest historical times down to the revolutions of Agis the Third, and Kleomenes the Third, generals of the military force, growing richer and richer, and reverenced as well as influential in the state, though the directory of ephors were their superiors. And the ephors became, in time, quite as despotic, in reference to internal affairs, as the kings could ever have been before them ; for the Spartan mind, deeply possessed with the feelings of command and obedience, remained comparatively insensible to the ideas of control and responsibility, and even averse to that open discussion and censure of public measures, or officers, which such ideas imply. We must recollect that the Spartan political constitution was both simplified in its character, and aided in its working, by the comprehensive range of the Lykurgean discipline, with its rigorous equal pressure upon rich and poor, which averted many of the causes elsewhere productive of sedition, habituating the proudest and most refractory citizen to a life of undeviating obedience, satisfying such demand as existed for system and regularity, rendering Spartan personal habits of life much more equal than even democratical Athens could parallel ; but contributing, at the same time, to engender a contempt for talkers, and a dislike of methodical and prolonged speech, which of itself sufficed to exclude all regular interference of the collective citizens, either in political or judicial affairs. Such were the facts at Sparta ; but in the rest of Greece the primitive heroic government was modified in a very different manner : the people outgrew, much more decidedly, that feeling of divine right and personal reverence which originally gave 1 Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 1.
 * uthority to the king. Willing submission ceased on the part