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Updated: June 14, 2025
"Do you suppose that commerce that trade that maritime energy that fleets which ransack the shores of the world, will not obtain a power greater than mere brute-like valour? But as ye will, as ye will." "As we speak our forefathers thought," said Gelon. "And, Pausanias," said Cleomenes gravely, "as we speak, so think the Ephors."
I have indeed heard Lacedæmonians say that Lysander wrote to the Ephors, saying "Athens is taken;" and that they wrote to Lysander in answer, "To have taken it is enough." But this tale is merely invented for effect. The real decree of the Ephors ran as follows: "This is the decision of the Lacedæmonian government. Throw down the walls of Peiræus and the Long Walls.
Agesilaus led his son into the large hall, which was the main chamber of the house; and pacing up and down the wide and solitary floor, questioned him closely as to the truth of the stories respecting the Regent which had reached the Ephors.
Agis thought his uncle Agesilaus was heartily with the change, and so had him chosen one of the Ephors; but, in truth, all Agesilaus wanted was to be free from his debts, and he persuaded the young king that the lands could not be freshly divided till all debts had been cancelled.
"Die criminal an Heracleid king's blood the victor of Plataea my friend Pausanias!" "Rather he than Sparta. What sayest thou?" "Neither, neither," exclaimed Lysander, wringing his hands "impossible both." "Impossible both, be it so. I place before the Ephors the terrors of accrediting that charge, in order that they may repudiate it.
He did not venture on an engagement with the numerous and warlike forces of the enemy, although repeatedly invited by them to fight: but, observing that Plistoanax was a very young man, and entirely under the influence of Cleandrides, whom the ephors had sent to act as his tutor and counsellor because of his tender years, he opened secret negotiations with the latter, who at once, for a bribe, agreed to withdraw the Peloponnesians from Attica.
This able and eminent Arcadian forcibly represented to the ephors the danger of forfeiting the Athenian alliance, and the insufficient resistance against the Persian that the fortifications of the isthmus would afford. The ephors heard, and immediately acted with the secrecy and the vigilance that belongs to oligarchies.
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.
At first the Lacedæmonians paid no attention to complaints brought against him; but when Pharnabazus, who had been wronged by Lysander's depredations on his country, sent an embassy to Sparta to demand justice, the Ephors were much enraged. They put to death Thorax, one of his friends, whom they found in possession of silver coin, and they sent a skytale to him bidding him appear before them.
"Nay, nay," said Periclides, with his austere smile, "thou givest me a wit and a will that I have not. But as chief of the Ephors I watch over the State. And though I design nothing, this I would counsel, On the day we answer the Ionians, we shall tell them, 'What ye ask, we long since proposed to do. And Dorcis is already on the seas as successor to Pausanias."
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