Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/467

 CHAP. XIII. RtVOLUTIONS OF SPAKTA. 461 from them by religion and law.' There was still an- other class, called the inferiors, i:io,ueloveg^^ who were probably the younger, disinherited sons of families. Finally, above all these was raised the aristocratic class, composed of the men called the Equals — ouoiot. These men were indeed equal among themselves, but were much superior to all the rest. The number of this class is not known; we know only that it was very small. One day one of their enemies counted them in the public square, and found some sixty of them in the midst of a multitude of four thousand people.^ These Equals alone had a part in the government of the city. "To be outside this class," says Xenophon, "is to be outside the body politic."^ Demosthenes says that a man who entered the class of Equals became by that alone "one of the masters of the government."* "They were called Equals," he further says, "because equality ought to reign between the members of an oligarchy." On the composition of this body we have no precise information. It was recruited, as it should seem, by election ; but the right of electing belonged to the body itself, and not to the people. To be admitted to it was what they called, in the official language of Sparta, the reicard of virtue. We do not know how much wealth, rank, merit, and age were required to compose this virtue. It is evi<lent that birth was not sufficient, since there was an election. We may suppose that it was rather wealth which determined the choice in a city ' Aristctle, Politics. VIII. G (V. C). Xenophon, Ilellenica, V. 3, 9. ' Xenophon, Ilellenica, III. 3, G. ^ Xenoplion, Ilellenica, III. 3, 5. ■• Xenophon, Gov. of Laced., 10.
 * Demosthenes, in Leptin., 107.