Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/106

82 so as to suit the needs of a City-State, and the various worships have their appointed priests. And those which the kings hold, they hold, not like the Homeric Basileus, as part of an undefined, but as , i.e. privileges specially reserved to them. So it is also with the administration of justice. In jurisdiction Herodotus mentions but two kinds of suits which came to them for decision, and both are of a special and limited character — the one relating to certain contingencies in the devolution of property, and the other to the maintenance of the public roads. In cases of bloodshed the kings shared jurisdiction with the Gerousia, and all ordinary disputes seem to have been decided by the Ephors, i.e. by magistrates of later origin than the City-State itself. Only in war, i.e. outside of the ordinary range of State-life, does the Spartan king still seem to be supreme, and even here he is beginning to be mistrusted. As early as the end of the sixth century B.C. Cleomenes I., the most original and remarkable of all the Spartan kings, was brought to trial for alleged misconduct; and several other instances, both of trial and punishment, are recorded in the two following centuries. Being thus made responsible for their conduct in war, they gradually lost the essential part of those military prerogatives which Herodotus describes. In the fourth century B.C. they were little more than nominal kings, while the Ephors, an elected board