552 HISTORY OF GREECE. all the better-known period of history which we shall hereaftei traverse. The ephors are the general directors of public affairs' and the supreme controlling board, holding in check every other authority in the state, without any assignable limit to their pow- ers. The extraordinary ascendency of these magistrates is par- ticularly manifested in the fact stated by Aristotle, that they exempted themselves from the public discipline, so that their self-indulgent year of office stood in marked contrast with the toilsome exercises and sober mess common to rich and poor alike. The kings are reduced to a certain number of special functions, combined with privileges partly religious, partly honorary : their most important political attribute is, that they are ex officio gen- erals of the military force on foreign expeditions. But even here, we trace the sensible decline of their power. For whereas Herodotus was informed, and it probably had been the old privi- lege, that the king could levy war against whomsoever he chose, and that no Spartan could impede him on pain of committing sacrilege, 2 we shall see, throughout the best-known periods of this history, that it is usually the ephors (with or without the senate and public assembly) who determine upon war, the king only takes the command when the army is put on the march. Aristotle seems to treat the Spartan king as a sort of hereditary general ; but even in this privilege, shackles were put upon him, for two, out of the five ephors, accompanied the army, and their power seems to have been not seldom invoked to insure obedience to his orders. 3 The direct political powers of the kings were thus greatly cur- tailed ; yet importance, in many ways, was still left to them. 1 Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 14-16; 'Ecr2 <5e Kal f/ diaira ruv ' ot'fievTj T(f> povTiT/f^aTi rr^ TroAfwf avrri [lev -yap uvEtfievr) Ziav eari- iv <5 otf uA/lof /iuAAov {nreppaM.ei tiri rb OK^r/pav, etc. 8 Herodot. vi. 56. 3 Aristot. ii. 7, 4: Xenoph. Republ. Laced, c. 13. Tlavaaviaf, irelaaf TUV v rpeif, ffuyet Qpovpuv, Xenoph. Ilellcn. ii. 4, 29; typovpav tyyvav o< i, iii. 2, 23. A special restriction was put on the functions of the king, as military commander-in-chief, in 417 B.C., after the ill-conducted expedition ofAgis, son of Archidamus, against Argos. It was then provided that ten Spartan counsellors should always accompary the king in every expedition (Thucyd
