[582] Αἲ δὲ σκολιὰν ὁ δᾶμος ἕλοιτο, τοὺς πρεσβυγενέας καὶ ἀρχαγέτας ἀποστατῆρας εἶμεν. (Plutarch, ib.)
Plutarch tells us that the primitive Rhetra, anterior to this addition, specially enjoined the assembled citizens either to adopt or reject, without change, the Rhetra proposed by the kings and senate, and that the rider was introduced because the assembly had disobeyed this injunction, and adopted amendments of its own. It is this latter sense which he puts on the word σκολιὰν. Urlichs (Ueber Lyc. Rhetr. p. 232) and Nitzsch (Hist. Homer. p. 54) follow him, and the latter even construes the epithet Εὐθείαις ῥήτραις ἀνταπαμειβομένους of Tyrtæus in a corresponding sense: he says, “Populus iis (rhetris) εὐθείαις, i. e. nihil inflexis, suffragari jubetur: nam lex cujus Tyrtæus admonet, ita sanxerat—si populus rogationem inflexam (i. e. non nisi ad suum arbitrium immutatam) accipere voluerit, senatores et auctores abolento totam.”
Now, in the first place, it seems highly improbable that the primitive Rhetra, with its antique simplicity, would contain any such preconceived speciality of restriction upon the competence of the assembly. That restriction received its formal commencement only from the rider annexed by king Theopompus, which evidently betokens a previous dispute and refractory behavior on the part of the assembly.
In the second place, the explanation which these authors give of the words σκολιὰν and εὐθείαις, is not conformable to the ancient Greek, as we find it in Homer and Hesiod: and these early analogies are the proper test, seeing that we are dealing with a very ancient document. In Hesiod, ἰθὺς and σκολιὸς are used in a sense which almost exactly corresponds to right and wrong (which words, indeed, in their primitive etymology, maybe traced back to the meaning of straight and crooked). See Hesiod. Opp. Di. 36, 192, 218, 221, 226, 230, 250, 262, 264; also Theogon. 97, and Fragm. 217, ed. Göttling; where the phrases are constantly repeated, ἰθεῖαι δίκαι, σκολιαὶ δίκαι, σκολιοὶ μῦθοι. There is also the remarkable expression, Opp. Di. 9. ῥεῖα δέ τ᾽ ἰθύνει σκολιὸν: compare v. 263. ἰθύνετε μύθους: also Homer, Iliad, xvi. 387. Οἳ βίῃ εἰν ἀγορῇ σκολιὰς κρίνωσι θέμιστας; and xxiii. 580. ἰθεῖα; xviii. 508. ὃς μετὰ τοῖσι δίκην ἰθύντατα εἴπῃ, etc.
If we judge by these analogies, we shall see that the words of Tyrtæus, εὐθείαις ῥήτραις, mean “straightforward, honest, statutes or conventions”—not propositions adopted without change, as Nitzsch supposes. And so the words σκολιὰν ἕλοιτο, mean, “adopt a wrong or dishonest determination,”—not a determination different from what was proposed to them.
These words gave to the kings and senate power to cancel any decision of the public assembly which they disapproved. It retained only the power of refusing assent to some substantive propositions of the authorities, first of the kings and senate, afterwards of the ephors. And this limited power it seems always to have preserved.
Kopstadt explains well the expression σκολιὰν, as the antithesis to the epithet of Tyrtæus, εὐθείαις ῥήτραις (Dissertat. sect. 15, p. 124).
[583] Herod. i. 65: compare Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 7; Aristot. Polit. v. 9, 1 (where he gives the answer of king Theopompus).
Aristotle tells us that the ephors were chosen, but not how they were chosen; only, that it was in some manner excessively puerile,—παιδαριώδης γάρ ἐστι λίαν (ii. 6, 16).
M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, in his note to the passage of Aristotle, presumes that they were of course chosen in the same manner as the senators; but there seems no sufficient ground in Aristotle to countenance this. Nor is it easy to reconcile the words of Aristotle respecting the election of the senators, where he assimilates it to an αἵρεσις δυναστευτικὴ (Polit. v. 5, 8; ii. 6, 18), with the description which Plutarch (Lycurg. 26) gives of that election.