of five, whose powers were not defined by ancient and hallowed custom, and could therefore be easily extended as convenience or necessity suggested, raised their authority to such a pitch that Plato could describe it as "exceedingly like that of a tyrant."[1]
We need not here enter into the question how all this change was brought about, nor does it belong to the scope of this chapter. Spartan history is extremely obscure, and we know neither details nor dates of the rise and progress of the Ephorate; nor can we certainly discover how far the other elements in the constitution, the Gerousia and the Assembly of the people (apella), also had a share in trenching on the original prerogatives of the kings. Enough has been said to show that a monarchy might survive in a State of conservative tendencies long after kingship had disappeared both from Greece and Italy, but that it survived in outward form rather than in reality, still bearing unmistakably the signs of its origin in the heroic age, yet ceasing gradually to do the work of an effective State-magistracy.
But Sparta in this, as in many other ways, stands alone in the history of the City-State. She never was a pioneer in political development. Shut away in her "hollow" valley among the mountains, she did not feel the influences which, from the eighth century onwards, began in the rest of Greece to change the simple form of
- ↑ Plato, Laws, iv. 712 D.
