What it was
Five ephors were elected annually from the whole citizen body. They presided over the Gerousia and the assembly, controlled the agenda, supervised the kings and directed much of the day-to-day running of the state.
Unlike the Gerousia, the office was open to any Spartiate and held for a single year without re-election. It is the democratic element in a constitution that is otherwise not one.
How it worked
Each month the ephors and the kings exchanged oaths: the kings to rule according to the laws, the ephors to uphold the kingship while the kings kept theirs. That formula states the relationship exactly.
Two ephors accompanied a king on campaign. Ephors could arrest a king, bring him to trial before the Gerousia, and did so more than once.
They also declared war on the helots each year on entering office — a formality with a real function, since it meant a helot could be killed without ritual pollution.
Powers and limits
The office's power came from the combination of annual tenure with very wide competence, and from its collegiality: five men acting together, none able to entrench.
Aristotle's criticism is specific. The ephors were chosen from the whole body including the poor, which he says made them open to bribery, and their power was very great — a combination he regarded as dangerous.
How it changed
The tradition attributes the ephorate variously to Lycurgus and to a later king, which means its origin is not established.
The office was abolished by the reforming king Cleomenes III in the third century BCE and later restored, which indicates how central it had become.
What the evidence supports
The ephors could prosecute a king.
Attested in narrative accounts of specific cases, which makes it a reported practice rather than only a constitutional theory.
The annual declaration of war on the helots is reported by Aristotle through Plutarch.
The provision is transmitted at one remove. Its function — removing ritual pollution from killing helots — is the standard reading.
Aristotle's account is a critique, not a description.
The relevant passages of the Politics survive intact, and in them he is arguing that Sparta's constitution is defectively mixed. The facts he reports are marshalled for that case and should be read accordingly.
Primary sources
Aristotle, Politics 1270b-1271b
The ephorate analysed and criticised, including the objection to its method of selection.
Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 8, 15
The oath exchanged monthly between kings and ephors, by a contemporary admirer.
Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 7
The institution of the ephorate in the tradition.
Covered elsewhere
- Military discipline and its penalties is treated in the warfare encyclopedia: Military discipline. Punishments, decorations and the military oath are covered there.
How to read the evidence labels
- Evidence level: Documented
- Supported by a named primary text or by excavated material evidence.
- Evidence level: Probable
- Supported by strong inference that most specialists accept.
- Evidence level: Disputed
- Substantial specialist disagreement exists; competing readings are stated.
- Evidence level: Literary
- Belongs to poetic or mythological construction rather than to history.
- Evidence level: Mythological
- Belongs to shared religious or mythic tradition rather than to any single text.
- Evidence level: Unknown
- The available evidence is insufficient to decide.
These labels describe the status of the evidence, not our confidence in a conclusion. A claim marked Literary is not a claim we doubt; it is a claim about what kind of thing a poem is.