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56 Dr Arnold on the legislative assembly of the state % from all command over Spartans, civil and military, from the public tables and edu- cation, and from the city of Sparta. The entire government of these two classes, as well as of their own order, was vested in the Spartans, whose political constitution may be briefly described as follows. The legislative sovereignty was shared between the great assembly of all the Spartans, and the gerusia, which body could alone initiate any legislative measure: while the assembly could only accept or reject it as proposed to them, nor could anything be said except by a public magistrate. The judicial sovereignty was shared by the gerusia and the Ephors : the former had the criminal, the latter the chief part of the civil jurisdiction. Besides the command of the army most of the other administrative powers belonged to the Ephors, who were annually chosen by the Spartans from their own body. This being; then the construction of the Lacedaemonian state, the question is whether it was by the Greeks consi- dered as an oligarchy on account of the situation which the the words of Pausanias dvopa iroTe oXu/ulttlovlktiv appear to refer to a period earlier than the establishment of the Eleutherolaconians by Augustus, yet the Laconian Perioeci were virtually independent from a much earlier period, probably from 369 B. c. after which Sparta never fully recovered her authority, and certainly from 192 B. c. after the defeat of Nabis. But the Perioeci doubtless approached the condition of the helots much more nearly than that of the Spartans ; for although they were sometimes employed in places of trust and authority (Time. viii. 6. 22. cf. Xen. Anab. v. 1. 15), yet when the numbers of the Spartans had much diminished, the state was forced to employ even helots in public situations (Xen. Hell. iii. 5. 12). The oppression of the Perioeci and their readiness to revolt appears from many pas- sages, Clinton, F. H. Part ii. p. 406. n. g. Generally too perioeci are joined with slaves, as if they belonged to the same general class. Thus Plato says, that when his perfect state is corrupted, the governors will enslave those whom they formerly protected, irepLoiKovi t€ Kal ot/ceVas exoi/Tes, De Rep. VIII. p. 547. Aristotle makes the perioeci of Crete correspond to the helots of Sparta, ii. 10. So in another place he says that the best of all is that the husbandmen should be slaves, of different races; the next best that they should be perioeci of a barbarous race: Pol. vii. 10. compare what Isocrates Pan. p. 270 c. says of the Spartans, ^6v h'ifjLov TrepLoiKovs woLt^aaardaLy KaTaSov(x)(7ap,6Vov9 avTcZv tcl^ i//^u)(as ovdku rTTov i} Tas Ttav ot/ceTwi/. 22 Gottlmg on Aristot. Pol. p. 464. infers that the Perioeci were not admitted to the eKKXr}(TLa from the words of Archidamus in addressing that assembly, tt^o? fiev yap UeXoTTOVvrja-iov^ Kal dcrTvyeln-ova^ Trapo/uLOLo^ rip.oov rj dXKr], Thuc. I. 80 by dcTTvyeiTove^ understanding the ireploLKOL. But the two words signify the same thing by different means. Peloponnesians are opposed to Athenians as being without the Isthmus; ao-Tuyetroi/e?, the neighbours of Lacedaemon, to those who like the Athenians, yf^v e/ca? exovai^ whose territory lies at a distance.