The Spartans, as Plutarch asserts, held the first rank in Greece for discipline and reputation full five hundred years, by strictly adhering to the laws of Lycurgus; which not one of their kings ever infringed for fourteen successions quite down to the reign of the first Agis. For he will not allow the creation of those magistrates called the ephori, to be any innovation in the constitution, since he affirms it to have been, “not a relaxation, but an extension, of the civil polity.”[11] But notwithstanding the gloss thrown over the institution of the ephori by this nice distinction of Plutarch’s, it certainly induced as fatal a change into the Spartan constitution, as the tribuneship of the people, which was formed upon that model, did afterwards into the Roman. For instead of enlarging and strengthening the aristocratical power, as Plutarch asserts, they gradually usurped the whole government, and formed themselves into a most tyrannical oligarchy.
The ephori (a Greek word signifying inspectors or overseers) were five in number, and elected annually by the people out of their own body. The exact time of the origin of this institution and of the authority annexed to their office, is quite uncertain. Herodotus ascribes it to Lycurgus; Xenophon to Lycurgus jointly with the principal citizens of Sparta. Aristotle and Plutarch fix it under the reign of Theopompus and Polydorus, and attribute the institution expressly to the former of those princes about one hundred and thirty years after the death of Lycurgus. I cannot but subscribe to this opinion as the most probable, because the first political contest we meet with at Sparta happened under the reign of those princes, when the people endeavoured to extend their privileges beyond the limits prescribed by Lycurgus. But as the joint opposition of the kings and senate was equally warm, the creation of this magistracy out of the body of the people, seems to have been the step taken at that time to compromise the affair, and restore the publick tranquility: a measure which the Roman senate copied afterwards, in the erection of the tribuneship, when their people mutinied, and made that memorable secession to the mons sacer. I am confirmed in this opinion by the relation which Aristotle gives us of a remarkable dispute between Theopompus and his wife upon that occasion.[12] The queen much dissatisfied with the institution of the ephori, reproached her husband greatly for submitting to such a diminution of the regal authority, and asked him if he was not ashamed to transmit the crown to his posterity so much weaker and worse circumstanced, than he received it from his father. His answer, which is recorded amongst the laconick bons mots, was, “no, for I transmit it more lasting.”[13] But the event showed that the lady was a better politician, as well as truer prophet, than her husband. Indeed the nature of their office, the circumstances of their election, and the authority they assumed, are convincing proofs that their office was first extorted, and their power afterwards gradually extended, by the violence of the people, irritated too probably by the oppressive behaviour of the kings and senate. For whether their power extended no farther than to decide, when the two kings differed in opinion, and to overrule in favour of him whose sentiments should be most conducive to the publick interest, as we are told by Plutarch in the life of Agis; or whether they were at first only select friends, whom the kings appointed as deputies in their absence, when they were both compelled to take the field together in their long wars with the Messenians, as the same author tells us by the mouth of his hero Cleomenes, is a point, which history does not afford us light enough to determine. This however is certain, from the concurrent voice of all the ancient historians, that at last they not only seized upon every branch of the administration, but assumed the power of imprisoning, deposing, and even putting their kings to death by their own authority. The kings too, in return, sometimes bribed, sometimes deposed or murdered the ephori, and employed their whole interest to procure such persons to be elected, as they judged would be most tractable. I look therefore on the creation of the ephori as a breach in the Spartan constitution, which proved the first inlet to faction and corruption. For that these evils took rise from the institution of the ephori is evident from the testimony of Aristotle, “who thought it extremely impolitick to elect magistrates, vested with the supreme power in the state, out of the body of the people;[14] because it often happened, that men extremely indigent were raised in this manner to the helm, whom their very poverty tempted to become venal. For the ephori, as he affirms, had not only been frequently guilty of bribery before his time, but, even at the very time he wrote, some of those magistrates, corrupted by money, used their utmost endeavours, at the publick repasts, to accomplish the destruction of the whole city. He adds too, that as their power was so great as to amount to a perfect tyranny, the kings themselves were necessitated to court their favour by such methods as greatly hurt the constitution, which from an aristocracy degenerated into an absolute democracy. For that magistracy alone had engrossed the whole government.”
From these remarks of the judicious Aristotle, it is evident that the ephori had totally destroyed the balance of power established by Lycurgus. From the tyranny therefore of this magistracy proceeded those convulsions which so frequently shook the state of Sparta, and at last gradually brought on its total subversion. But though this fatal alteration in the Spartan constitution must be imputed to the intrigues of the ephori and their faction, yet it could never, in my opinion, have been effected without a previous degeneracy in their manners; which must have been the consequence of some deviation from the maxims of Lycurgus.
It appears evidently from the testimony of Polybius and Plutarch, that the great scheme of the Spartan legislator was, to provide for the lasting security of his country against all foreign invasions, and to perpetuate the blessings of liberty and independency to the people. By the generous plan of discipline which he established, he rendered his countrymen invincible at home. By banishing gold and silver, and prohibiting commerce and the use of shipping, he proposed to confine the Spartans within the limits of their own territories; and by taking away the means, to repress all desires of making conquests upon their neighbours. But the same love of glory and of their country which made them so terrible in the field, quickly produced ambition and a lust of domination; and ambition as naturally opened the way for avarice and corruption. For Polybius truly observes, that as long as they extended their views no farther than the dominion over their neighbouring states, the produce of their own country was sufficient for what supplies they had occasion for in such short excursions.[15] But when, in direct violation of the laws of Lycurgus, they began to undertake more distant expeditions both by sea and land, they quickly felt the want of a publick fund to defray their extraordinary expenses. For they found by experience, that neither their iron money, nor their method of trucking the annual produce of their own lands for such commodities as they wanted (which was the only traffick allowed by the laws of Lycurgus) could possibly answer their demands upon those occasions. Hence their ambition, as the same historian remarks, laid them under the scandalous necessity of paying servile court to the Persian monarchs for pecuniary supplies and subsidies, to impose heavy tributes upon the conquered islands, and to exact money from the other Grecian states, as occasions required.
Historians unanimously agree, that wealth with its attendants, luxury and corruption, gained admission at Sparta in the reign of the first Agis. Lysander, alike a hero and a politician; a man of the greatest abilities and the greatest dishonesty that Sparta ever produced; rapacious after money, which at the same time he despised, and a slave only to ambition, was the author of an innovation so fatal to the manners of his countrymen. After he had enabled his country to give law to all Greece by his conquest of Athens, he sent home that immense mass of wealth, which the plunder of so many states had put into his possession. The most sensible men amongst the Spartans, dreading the fatal consequences of this capital breach of the institutions of their legislator, protested strongly before the ephori against the introduction of gold and silver, as pests destructive to the publick. The ephori referred it to the decision of the senate, who, dazzled with the lustre of that money, to which until that time they had been utter strangers, decreed “that gold and silver money might be admitted for the service of the state; but made it death, if any should ever be found in the possession of a private person.” This decision Plutarch censures as weak and sophistical.[16] As if Lycurgus was only afraid simply of money, and not of that dangerous love of money which is generally its concomitant; a passion which was so far from being rooted out by the restraint laid upon private persons, that it was rather inflamed by the esteem and value which was set upon money by the publick. Thus, as he justly remarks, whilst they barred up the houses of private citizens against the entrance of wealth by the terror and safeguard of the law, they left their minds more exposed to the love of money and the influence of corruption, by raising an universal admiration and desire of it, as something great and respectable. The truth of this remark appears by the instance given us by Plutarch, of one Thorax, a great friend of Lysander’s, who was put to death by the ephori, upon proof that a quantity of silver had been actually found in his possession.
From that time Sparta became venal, and grew extremely fond of subsidies from foreign powers. Agesilaus, who succeeded Agis, and was one of the greatest of their kings, behaved in the latter part of his life more like the captain of a band of mercenaries, than a king of Sparta. He received a large subsidy from Tachos, at that time king of Egypt, and entered into his service with a body of troops which he had raised for that purpose. But when Nectanabis, who had rebelled against his uncle Tachos, offered him more advantageous terms, he quitted the unfortunate monarch and went over to his rebellious nephew, pleading the interest of his country in excuse for so treacherous and infamous an action.[17] So great a change had the introduction of money already made in the manners of the leading Spartans!
Plutarch dates the first origin of corruption, that disease of the body politick, and consequently the decline of Sparta, from that memorable period, when the Spartans having subverted the domination of Athens, glutted themselves (as he terms it) with gold and silver.[18] For when once the love of money had crept into their city, and avarice and the most sordid meanness grew up with the possession, as luxury, effeminacy and dissipation did with the enjoyment of wealth, Sparta was deprived of many of her ancient glories and advantages, and sunk greatly both in power and reputation, until the reign of Agis and Leonidas.[19] But as the original allotments of land were yet preserved (the number of which Lycurgus had fixed and decreed to be kept by a particular law) and were transmitted down from father to son by hereditary succession, the same constitutional order and equality still remaining, raised up the state again, however, from other political lapses.
Under the reign of those two kings happened the mortal blow, which subverted the very foundation of their constitution. Epitadeus, one of the ephori, upon a quarrel with his son, carried his resentment so far as to procure a law which permitted every one to alienate their hereditary lands, either by gift or sale, during their lifetime, or by will at their decease. This law produced a fatal alteration in the landed property. For as Leonidas, one of their kings, who had lived a long time at the court of Seleucus, and married a lady of that country, had introduced the pomp and luxury of the east at his return to Sparta, the old institutions of Lycurgus, which had fallen into disuse, were by his example soon treated with contempt.[20] Hence the necessity of the luxurious, and the extortion of the avaricious, threw the whole property into so few hands, that out of seven hundred, the number to which the ancient Spartan families were then reduced, about one hundred only were in possession of their respective hereditary lands allotted by Lycurgus.[21] The rest, as Plutarch observes, lived an idle life in the city, an indigent abject herd, alike destitute of fortune and employment; in their wars abroad, indolent dispirited dastards; at home ever ripe for sedition and insurrections, and greedily catching at every opportunity of embroiling affairs in hope of such a change as might enable them to retrieve their fortunes. Evils, which the extremes of wealth and indigence are ever productive of in free countries.
Young Agis, the third of that name, and the most virtuous and accomplished king that ever sat upon the throne of Sparta since the reign of the great Agesilaus, undertook the reform of the state, and attempted to re-establish the old Lycurgic constitution, as the only means of extricating his country out of her distresses, and raising her to her former dignity and lustre. An enterprise attended not only with the greatest difficulties, but, as the times were so corrupt, with the greatest danger.[22] He began with trying the efficacy of example, and though he had been bread in all the pleasures and delicacy which affluence could procure, or the fondness of his mother and grandmother, who were the wealthiest people in Sparta, could indulge him in, yet he at once changed his way of life as well as his dress, and conformed to the strictest discipline of Lycurgus in every particular. This generous victory over his passions, the most difficult and most glorious of all others, had so great an effect amongst the younger Spartans, that they came into his measures with more alacrity and zeal than he could possibly have hoped for.[23] Encouraged by this success, Agis brought over some of the principal Spartans, amongst whom was his uncle Agesilaus, whose influence he made use of to persuade his mother, who was sister to Agesilaus, to join his party.[24] For her wealth, and the great number of her friends, dependants, and debtors, made her extremely powerful, and gave her great weight in all publick transactions.