The ephori (a Greek word signifying inspectors or overseers) were five in number, and elected annually by the people out of their own body. The exact time of the origin of this institution and of the authority annexed to their office, is quite uncertain. Herodotus ascribes it to Lycurgus; Xenophon to Lycurgus jointly with the principal citizens of Sparta. Aristotle and Plutarch fix it under the reign of Theopompus and Polydorus, and attribute the institution expressly to the former of those princes about one hundred and thirty years after the death of Lycurgus. I cannot but subscribe to this opinion as the most probable, because the first political contest we meet with at Sparta happened under the reign of those princes, when the people endeavoured to extend their privileges beyond the limits prescribed by Lycurgus. But as the joint opposition of the kings and senate was equally warm, the creation of this magistracy out of the body of the people, seems to have been the step taken at that time to compromise the affair, and restore the publick tranquility: a measure which the Roman senate copied afterwards, in the erection of the tribuneship, when their people mutinied, and made that memorable secession to the _mons sacer_. I am confirmed in this opinion by the relation which Aristotle gives us of a remarkable dispute between Theopompus and his wife upon that occasion.[12] The queen much dissatisfied with the institution of the ephori, reproached her husband greatly for submitting to such a diminution of the regal authority, and asked him if he was not ashamed to transmit the crown to his posterity so much weaker and worse circumstanced, than he received it from his father. His answer, which is recorded amongst the laconick _bons mots_, was, “no, for I transmit it more lasting.”[13] But the event showed that the lady was a better politician, as well as truer prophet, than her husband. Indeed the nature of their office, the circumstances of their election, and the authority they assumed, are convincing proofs that their office was first extorted, and their power afterwards gradually extended, by the violence of the people, irritated too probably by the oppressive behaviour of the kings and senate. For whether their power extended no farther than to decide, when the two kings differed in opinion, and to overrule in favour of him whose sentiments should be most conducive to the publick interest, as we are told by Plutarch in the life of Agis; or whether they were at first only select friends, whom the kings appointed as deputies in their absence, when they were both compelled to take the field together in their long wars with the Messenians, as the same author tells us by the mouth of his hero Cleomenes, is a point, which history does not afford us light enough to determine. This however is certain, from the concurrent voice of all the ancient historians, that at last they not only seized upon every branch