[606] Besides the primitive constitutional Rhetra mentioned above, page 345, various other Rhetræ are also attributed to Lykurgus: and Plutarch singles out three under the title of “The Three Rhetræ,” as if they were either the only genuine Lykurgean Rhetræ, or at least stood distinguished by some peculiar sanctity from all others (Plutarch, Quæst. Roman. c. 87. Agesilaus, c. 26).
These three were (Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 13; comp. Apophth. Lacon. p. 227): 1. Not to resort to written laws. 2. Not to employ in house-building any other tools than the axe and the saw. 3. Not to undertake military expeditions often against the same enemies.
I agree with Nitzsch (Histor. Homer. pp. 61-65) that these Rhetræ, though doubtless not actually Lykurgean, are, nevertheless, ancient (that is, probably dating somewhere between 650-550 B. C.) and not the mere fictions of recent writers, as Schömann (Ant. Jur. Pub. iv. 1; xiv. p. 132) and Urlichs (p. 241) seem to believe. And though Plutarch specifies the number three, yet there seems to have been still more, as the language of Tyrtæus must be held to indicate: out of which, from causes which we do not now understand, the three which Plutarch distinguishes excited particular notice.
These maxims or precepts of state were probably preserved along with the dicta of the Delphian oracle, from which authority, doubtless, many of them may have emanated,—such as the famous ancient prophecy Ἁ φιλοχρηματία Σπάρταν ὁλεῖ, ἄλλο δὲ οὐδὲν (Krebs, Lectiones Diodoreæ, p. 140. Aristotel. Περὶ Πολιτειῶν, ap. Schol. ad Eurip. Andromach. 446. Schömann, Comm. ad Plutarch. Ag. et Cleomen. p. 123).
Nitzsch has good remarks in explanation of the prohibition against “using written laws.” This prohibition was probably called forth by the circumstance that other Grecian states were employing lawgivers like Zaleukus, Drako, Charondas, or Solon,—to present them, at once, with a series of written enactments, or provisions. Some Spartans may have proposed that an analogous lawgiver should be nominated for Sparta: upon which proposition a negative was put in the most solemn manner possible, by a formal Rhetra, perhaps passed after advice from Delphi. There is no such contradiction, therefore, (when we thus conceive the event,) as some authors represent, in forbidding the use of written laws by a Rhetra itself, put into writing. To employ a phrase in greater analogy with modern controversies—“The Spartans, on the direction of the oracle, resolve to retain their unwritten common law, and not to codify.”
[607] Ἔδοξε τοῖς Ἐφόροις καὶ τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ (Xen. Hellen. iii. 2, 23).
[608] The case of Leotychides, Herod. vi. 72; of Pleistoanax, Thucyd. ii. 21-v. 16; Agis the Second, Thucyd. v. 63; Agis the Third, Plutarch, Agis, c. 19: see Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 5.
Respecting the ephors generally, see Wachsmuth, Hellen. Alterthumskunde, v. 4, 42, vol. i. p. 223; Cragius, Rep. Lac. ii. 4, p. 121.
Aristotle distinctly marks the ephors as ἀνυπεύθυνοι: so that the story alluded to briefly in the Rhetoric (iii. 18) is not easy to be understood.
[609] Thucyd. i. 67, 80, 87. ξύλλογον σφῶν αὐτῶν τὸν εἰωθότα.