It cannot be doubted that the three important events of the reign of Theopompus were in some way connected with one another. In the midst of a great war for the conquest of Messenia, it might be especially inconvenient that the assembly of the Spartiatæ should initiate proposals of its own: for the men who made up the assembly were the very same who formed the whole of the Spartan army. And again in the settlement of the affairs of Messenia it was not desirable that the kings and the council should be entirely uncontrolled, as they would have been after the assembly had been deprived of the power of initiating measures, if no Ephors had been appointed. It is stated by Plutarch that the twenty-eight elders who with the kings formed the council were elected by the general assembly of the Spartans[98]: and the method of election which he describes is so extremely primitive that it probably belongs to the original constitution or dates from the times of Theopompus. When a councillor died the best man among those over sixty years of age was to be chosen to take his place. The people came together in assembly: certain selected men were shut up in a neighbouring building whence they could see nothing: the candidates were brought one by one before the assembly, but in an order which was unknown to the men in the building, and each as he entered was greeted with shouting: the men in the building decided that the cheering had been loudest for the man who came first, or the man who came second, or some other in the order: and the man, unknown to themselves, for whom they thus pronounced, was proclaimed as the new member of the council. [98] Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 26. The parts then of the Spartan government from the time of Theopompus onwards were the kings, the council of elders, the Ephors, and the assembly of warriors. Until about 500 B.C. the chief power belonged to the kings or to the kings and the council of elders: the kings had the active management and direction of foreign affairs[99]. [99] Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_, third edition, article Ephori, where proofs are given.