GEROUSIA (γερουσία, Doric γερωΐα), the ancient council of elders at Sparta, corresponding in some of its functions to the Athenian Boulē. In historical times it numbered twenty-eight members, to whom were added ex officio the two kings and, later, the five ephors. Candidates must have passed their sixtieth year, i.e. they must no longer be liable to military service, and they were possibly restricted to the nobility. Vacancies were filled by the Apella, that candidate being declared elected whom the assembly acclaimed with the loudest shouts—a method which Aristotle censures as childish (Polit. ii. 9, p. 1271 a 9). Once elected, the gerontes held office for life and were irresponsible. The functions of the council were among the most important in the state. It prepared the business which was to be submitted to the Apella, and was empowered to set aside, in conjunction with the kings, any “crooked” decision of the people. Together with the kings and ephors it formed the supreme executive committee of the state, and it exercised also a considerable criminal and political jurisdiction, including the trial of kings; its competence extended to the infliction of a sentence of exile or even of death. These powers, or at least the greater part of them, were transferred by Cleomenes III. to a board of patronomi (Pausanias ii. 9. 1); the gerousia, however, continued to exist at least down to Hadrian’s reign, consisting of twenty-three members annually elected, but eligible for re-election (Sparta Museum Catalogue, Nos. 210, 612 and Introduction § 17).
Fuller discussions of the gerousia will be found in Aristotle, Politics, ii. 9, 17-19: Plutarch, Lycurgus, 5, 26; G. F. Schömann, Antiquities of Greece; The State (Eng. trans.), p. 230 ff.; G. Gilbert, Constitutional Antiquities of Sparta and Athens (Eng. trans.), p. 47 ff.; C. O. Müller, History and Antiquities of the Doric Race (Eng. trans.), iii. c. 6, §§ 1-3; G. Busolt, Die griechischen Staats- und Rechtsaltertümer (Iwan Müller’s Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, iv. 1), § 89; Griechische Geschichte, 2te Auflage i. 550 ff.; A. H. J. Greenidge, Handbook of Greek Constitutional History, 100 ff.; H. Gabriel, De magistratibus Lacedaemoniorum, 31 ff.
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GERRESHEIM, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine Province, 6 m. by rail E. of Düsseldorf. It contains a fine Romanesque church, dating from the 13th century, which forms a portion of an ancient nunnery (founded in the 10th century and secularized in 1806), and has extensive glass manufactures and wire factories. Pop. (1905) 14,434.
GERRHA (Arab. al-Jar‘a), an ancient city of Arabia, on the west side of the Persian Gulf, described by Strabo (Bk. xvi.) as inhabited by Chaldean exiles from Babylon, who built their houses of salt and repaired them by the application of salt water. Pliny (Hist. Nat. vi. 32) says it was 5 m. in circumference with towers built of square blocks of salt. Various identifications of the site have been attempted, J. P. B. D’Anville choosing El Katif, C. Niebuhr preferring Kuwet and C. Forster suggesting the ruins at the head of the bay behind the islands of Bahrein.
See A. Sprenger, Die alte Geographie Arabiens (Bern, 1875), pp. 135-137.