The earliest attested constitution of a Greek state is the so-called Great Rhetra from Sparta. Although terse, often obscure, and textually difficult, it warrants quotation and brief discussion:
Found a Temple of Zeus Syllanius and Athena Syllania;
Phyle phyles and obe obes;
Set thirty with Kings as a Gerousia [i. e., a Council of Elders];
At intervals (?) assemble betwixt Babyca and Cnacium;
Thus bring in (i. e., proposals) and dismiss (i. e., assembly [?]);
Let People have final authority (??).
(Plut. Lyc. 6)
According to Plutarch sometime later a “rider” was added to the Rhetra under the kings Polydorus and Theopompus (king during the First Messenian War):
But if the People should speak crookedly, then let the Elders and Kings dismiss (them).
Tyrtaeus, in the late seventh century, gives a verse paraphrase of the Rhetra together with the rider:
They listened to Apollo and brought home from Delphi
The god’s prophecies and words that came true:
To lead the Council are the god-honored Kings
Who care for the lovely city of Sparta -
They and the ancient Elders. But then the men of the people,
Obedient to straight arguments,
Are both to say fair things and to do everything justly, nor are they to advise the city crookedly.
Let victory and power lie with the majority of the people for thus did Apollo speak to the city in these matters.
(Tyrtaeus, Fr. 4 West)
A few points require brief comment. The Lacedaemonians are to institute two cults (otherwise unknown) as they introduce this new constitution; presumably the deities involved are to watch over the process and to guarantee the proper working of the new order. A phyle is a tribe; meant are the three Dorian tribes of the Hylleis, Dymanes, and Pamphyli (Tyrtaeus, Fr. 19 West). An obe - unlike a phyle - is a geographically based subdivision of the Lacedaemonians, that is to say, people of all three phylai lived in a given geographically defined obe. What the process of “phyling phyles” and “obing obes” involved defies certainty, but Greek states did on occasion carry out tribal reforms whereby the population was redistributed among (new) tribes or the like (Hdt. V 66 and 68; [Arist.], Ath. Pol. 21); and something of the sort - perhaps a redistribution among existing tribes - may have happened in Sparta as well. The Gerousia at Sparta did in later times have a fixed membership of thirty and included within the thirty stood the two kings (Hdt. VI 57; Thuc. I 20; Plut. Lyc. 5). The two landmarks, Babyca and Cnacium, presumably marked off the field where the assembly took place. The text of the final line of the Rhetra is hopelessly corrupt; translation here is based on a combination of ascertainable general sense and hopeful guesswork.
The translation of the final word of the Rhetra’s penultimate line likewise causes difficulty. The “rider” uses the same word (“dismiss”) and indisputably refers to a dismissal of the assembly. On the view that one should interpret the obscure in the light of the clear, the above translation of the Rhetra posits that the same thing is meant as in the “rider” - a dismissal of the assembly.
In explanation of this, Plutarch states that initially the assembly could vote only “yes” or “no” to proposals placed in front of it (presumably by the Gerousia collectively or possibly just the kings). Under these circumstances the “rider” seems superfluous. But if, as Plutarch states happened later on, someone within the assembly could “move an amendment” to a proposal, then the “rider” begins to make sense. If such an amendment were transparently a better idea than the original proposal, then well and good. If, however, the Gerousia disliked it and it were defeated in a “procedural” vote, then as far as the Gerousia was concerned, it was a matter of so far, so good. But if such an amendment succeeded, then the Gerousia risked losing control of the assembly as well as the passage of a proposal of which it disapproved. In this case the “rider” empowered it to dismiss the assembly forthwith so as to prevent the passage of any proposal. As debate proceeded in the assembly, the members of the Ger-ousia at some point had to decide if in their opinion no decision were better than any decision.
The Great Rhetra makes no mention of one important Lacedaemonian institution well known from the fifth century. Although kings continued to reign in Sparta, by then they had lost most of their political power, and a college of five officials called ephors had become the genuine executive government of the Lacedaemonians. The ephors were elected (Arist. Pol. 1270b-1271b) annually, and one was eponymous - i. e., the Lacedaemonians indicated a year by naming the eponymous ephor for that year (for an example from a Lacedaemonian treaty, see Box 14.1). As emerges not only from the passage in Aristotle, but also from various historical texts (e. g., Thuc. I 132-134), the ephors wielded great power even over the kings. All the same, the kings retained considerable powers when on campaign, and they enjoyed much prestige at home even in peacetime (Xen. Const. Lac. 13). Moreover, the kings sat in the Gerousia. The Gerousia, amongst other things, in the third century still set the agenda for the Assembly (Plut. Agis, 11), though the ephors presided over its meetings (Thuc. I 87). The Assembly, which consisted of all adult male Spartiates, elected the ephors and the members of the Gerousia by acclamation and also passed decrees in the same fashion (Arist. Pol. 1270b-1271a with Plut. Lyc. 26; Thuc. l. c).
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