Either from his own ambition, or from the suggestions of others, Lysander came now to conceive the idea of breaking the succession of the two regal families, and opening for himself a door to reach the crown. His projects have been characterized as revolutionary; but there seems nothing in them which fairly merits the appellation, in the sense which that word now bears, if we consider accurately what the Spartan kings were in the year 400 B.C. In this view the associations connected with the title of king, are to a modern reader misleading. The Spartan kings were not kings at all, in any modern sense of the term; not only they were not absolute, but they were not even constitutional kings. They were not sovereigns, nor was any Spartan their subject; every Spartan was the member of a free Grecian community. The Spartan king did not govern; nor did he reign, in the sense of having government carried on in his name and by his delegates. The government of Sparta was carried on by the ephors, with frequent consultation of the senate, and occasional, though rare appeals, to the public assembly of citizens. The Spartan king was not legally inviolable. He might be, and occasionally was, arrested, tried, and punished for misbehavior in the discharge of his functions. He was a self-acting person, a great officer of state; enjoying certain definite privileges, and exercising certain military and judicial functions, which passed as an _universitas_ by hereditary transmission in his family; but subject to the control of the ephors as to the way in which he performed these duties.[422] Thus, for example, it was his privilege to command the army when sent on foreign service; yet a law was made, requiring him to take deputies along with him, as a council of war, without whom nothing was to be done. The ephors recalled Agesilaus when they thought fit; and they brought Pausanias to trial and punishment, for alleged misconduct in his command.[423] The only way in which the Spartan kings formed part of the sovereign power in the state, or shared in the exercise of government properly so called, was that they had votes _ex officio_ in the Senate, and could vote there by proxy when they were not present. In ancient times, very imperfectly known, the Spartan kings seem really to have been sovereigns; the government having then been really carried on by them, or by their orders. But in the year 400 B.C., Agis and Pausanias had become nothing more than great and dignified hereditary officers of state, still bearing the old title of their ancestors. To throw open these hereditary functions to all the members of the Herakleid Gens, by election from their number, might be a change better or worse; it was a startling novelty (just as it would have been to propose, that any of the various priesthoods, which were hereditary in particular families, should be made elective), because of the extreme attachment of the Spartans to old and sanctified customs; but it cannot