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Updated: June 14, 2025
The winners in these contests were given beautiful prizes, which were much coveted. Lycurgus hoped to make the Spartans a strong and good people. To hinder the kings from doing anything wrong, he had the people choose five men, called ephors, to watch over and to advise them. Then, knowing that great wealth is not desirable, Lycurgus said that the Spartans should use only iron money.
His face brightened singularly at Lysander's words. He came forward and opened his arms. "Embrace me now, my boy! my brave boy! embrace me now! The Ephors are not here." Lysander turned, sprang up, and was in his father's arms. "So thou art not changed. Byzantium has not spoiled thee. Thy name is uttered with praise unmixed with fear.
But in ancient states the testimony of a slave was always regarded with suspicion. The ephors refused to believe the evidence offered to them unless confirmed by their own ears. For this purpose they directed him to plant himself as a suppliant in a sacred grove near Cape Taenarus, in a hut behind which two of their body might conceal themselves.
Thus it was a rule of the Spartan constitution that every eighth year the ephors should choose a clear and moonless night and sitting down observe the sky in silence. If during their vigil they saw a meteor or shooting star, they inferred that the king had sinned against the deity, and they suspended him from his functions until the Delphic or Olympic oracle should reinstate him in them.
The Ephors, though they were sufficiently aware that this blow had ruined the Spartan power, and that their primacy over the rest of Greece was gone for ever, yet gave orders that the dances should not break off, nor any of the celebration of the festival abate; but privately sending the names of the slain to each family, out of which they were lost, they continued the public spectacles.
Soon after this revolution, Lysander, his year expiring, went out of his office, and new ephors were chosen, who gave Leonidas assurance of safety, and cited Lysander and Mandroclidas to answer for having, contrary to law, canceled debts, and designed a new division of lands.
What Xenophon tells us of him, that by complying with, and, as it were, being ruled by his country, he grew into such great power with them, that he could do what he pleased, is meant to apply to the power he gained in the following manner with the Ephors and Elders.
And therefore, the ephors, Aristotle is my author, when they entered upon their government, made proclamation to the people, that they should shave their mustaches, and be obedient to the laws, that the laws might not be hard upon them, making, I suppose, this trivial injunction, to accustom their youth to obedience even in the smallest matters.
The regulations which I have mentioned are beneficial alike in peace and in war; but if any one wishes to learn what the lawgiver contrived better than other legislators with reference to military proceedings, he may attend to the following particulars: In the first place, then, the ephors give the cavalry and infantry public notice of the years during which they must join the army, as well as the artizans; for the Lacedæmonians provide themselves in the field with an abundance of all those things which people use in a city; and of whatever instruments an army may require in common, orders are given to bring some on wagons and others on beasts of burden, as by this arrangement anything left behind is least likely to escape notice.
"When a Helot is brave, the Ephors clap the black mark against his name, and at the next crypteia he suddenly disappears." "Pausanias may share the same fate as his Helot, for all I care," quoth Uliades. "Well, Athenians, what say you to the answer we have received?" "That Sparta shall hear of it," answered Aristides. "Ah, but is that all?
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