§ 1. Origin of the office of Ephor in the Spartan state. § 2. Period of its creation. § 3. Civil jurisdiction of the Ephors. § 4. Increase in the powers of the Ephors. § 5. Their transaction of business with the assembly of citizens, and with foreign powers. § 6. The power of the Ephors, owing to their ascendency over the assembly of citizens. § 7. Miscellaneous facts concerning the office of Ephor. § 8. Titles and duties of other magistrates at Sparta. 1. Before we treat of the powers of the cosmi, it will be necessary to inquire into an office, which is of the greatest importance in the history of the Lacedæmonian constitution; for while the king, the council, and the people, preserved upon the whole the same political power and the same executive authority, the office of the ephors was the moving principle by which, in process of time, this most perfect constitution was assailed, and gradually overthrown. From this remark three questions arise: first, what was the original nature of the office of ephor? secondly, what changes did it experience in the lapse of time? and, thirdly, from what causes did these changes originate? There is an account frequently repeated by ancient writers, that Theopompus, the grandson of Charilaus the Proclid, founded this office in order to limit the authority of the Kings. “He handed down the royal power to his descendants more durable, because he had diminished it.”(463) If, however, the ephoralty was an institution of Theopompus, it is difficult to account for the existence of the same office in other Doric states. In Cyrene the ephors punished litigious people and impostors with infamy:(464) the same office existed in the mother-city Thera,(465) which island had been colonised from Laconia long before the time of Theopompus. The Messenians also would hardly, upon the re-establishment of their state, have received the ephoralty into their government,(466) if they had thought it only an institution of some Spartan king. The ephors of the Tarentine colony Heraclea may be more easily derived from Sparta and the time of Theopompus.(467) It is however plain that Herodotus(468) and Xenophon(469) placed the ephoralty among the institutions of Lycurgus, with as much reason as other writers attributed it to Theopompus; and it will probably be sufficient to state that the ephors were ancient Doric magistrates.