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Instead of the gloomy brows and the harsh tones of rivals envious of your fame, hosts of friends aspiring only to be followers will catch gladness from your smile or sorrow from your frown. There, no jarring contests with little men, who deem themselves the equals of the great, no jealous Ephor is found, to load the commonest acts of life with fetters of iron custom. Talk of liberty!
So great was the discouragement of the Lacedaemonians at the loss of their fleet that the Ephor Endius proceeded to Athens to treat for peace on the basis of both parties standing just as they were. The Athenian assembly was at this time led by the demagogue Cleophon, a lamp-maker, known to us by the later comedies of Aristophanes.
Whereupon Lysander, who was still ephor, resolving to be revenged on Leonidas, drew up an information against him, grounded on two old laws: the one forbids any of the blood of Hercules to raise up children by a foreign woman, and the other makes it capital for a Lacedaemonian to leave his country to settle among foreigners.
Having calculated and considered all this, agreeably to his plan of keeping the two sides equal, he now sent for the Peloponnesians and gave them pay, and concluded with them a third treaty in words following: In the thirteenth year of the reign of Darius, while Alexippidas was ephor at Lacedaemon, a convention was concluded in the plain of the Maeander by the Lacedaemonians and their allies with Tissaphernes, Hieramenes, and the sons of Pharnaces, concerning the affairs of the King and of the Lacedaemonians and their allies.
At that moment an officer entered on the conclave, and approaching the presiding Ephor, whispered in his ear. "This is well," exclaimed Periclides aloud. "A messenger from Pausanias himself. Your son Lysander has just arrived from Byzantium." "My son!" exclaimed Agesilaus eagerly, and then checking himself, added calmly, "That is a sign no danger to Sparta threatened Byzantium when he left."
The same ephor asked him, whether now at least he did not repent his rashness. To which the young man answered, that though he were to suffer the extremest penalty for it, yet he could never repent of so just and so glorious a design.
"There were ephors, too," he reminded me, and we laughed. Hammerfeldt was our ephor. There was a banquet that night. I sat at the head of the table, with my mother opposite and Hammerfeldt at her right hand. The Prince gave my health after dinner, and passed on to a warm and eloquent eulogy on those who had trained me.
Like the other components of the Spartan constitution, the name and the office of ephor were familiar to other states in the great Dorian family; but in Sparta the institution soon assumed peculiar features, or rather, while the inherent principles of the monarchy and the gerusia remained stationary, those of the ephors became expanded and developed.
"Be not deceived. What must be, must; it is but a little time earlier than Necessity would have fixed. Wouldst thou take the command?" "I? The Gods forbid." "Then, if thou wilt not, I know but one man." "And who is he?" "Dorcis." Agesilaus started, and, by the light of the moon, gazed full upon the face of the chief Ephor. "Thy kinsman, Dorcis? Ah!
We have one plain duty to perform, and that is to save our faithful allies from ill- treatment. The time for words is past leave them to the transgressor. Our part is to act, at once, and with all our might, and put down the overwhelming insolence of Athens." Then, in his capacity as Ephor, Sthenelaidas, without staying for further argument, forthwith put the question to the Spartan assembly.
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