Holding the country strictly as an army of occupation, the whole body of Spartans was formed internally into a close oligarchy, all the members of which had the same privileges and were subjected to the same discipline, with the exception of the kings and the ephors. But the two Heraclid kings, as representing the two rival sons of Aristodemus, generally held each the other in check, and thuβ added to the influence of the ephors. That the latter were originally subordinate is made plain by the statement of Xenophon {De Rep. Lac., 15), that there was still in his time a monthly interchange of oaths, by which the kings pledged themselves to govern according to the laws, while the ephors on this condition undertook to maintain their authority. The ceremony had in Xenophon’s days lost its meaning; but it pointed clearly to a time when the kings had been predominant. It further shows that from the first the ephors represented the whole body of the citizens; and the mode of electing them, which Aristotle ridicules as childish, attests their popular character. The general assembly might choose any one for the office, without any qualification of age or property, and without scrutiny. The restriction of their number to five had reference to the polis or city of Sparta, and the four hamlets which with it formed the stronghold of the Spartan oligarchy.

In their relations with the kings we find the ephors gradually acquiring greater weight, and exercising their power more decisively. Herodotus (vi. 56) speaks of the kings as still possessing the power of declaring war at their own will. But in the wars of which we have historical knowledge, not only is the decision given by the ephors, who may or may not have taken counsel with the senate and the assembly, but two of their number accompany the kings, who thus become simply leaders of the army, acting under the control of civil magistrates, until, after the unsuccessful expedition of King Agis against Argos in 417 b.c., a law was passed appointing teu commissioners to attend the kings in all their campaigns. The ephors were still further distinguished from all other citizens by the privilege of exemption from the public discipline. They also kept their seats on the approach of the kings, while custom required the latter to rise if the ephors passed by. In the relations of Sparta with foreign states generally we find the public business carried on not by the kings but by the ephors, who treat with ambassadors, determine the number of troops to be levied, decide on their destination, and conclude treaties.

Of the five ephors, the first in rank, probably as being the first elected, gave his name to the year, like the Archon Eponymus at Athens. The whole college met in the Archeion, which answered to the Athenian Prytaneion. They exercised jurisdiction in all important civil suits, criminal cases and capital offences being carried before the senate. With this jurisdiction they combined a large censorial power, which extended even to minute details in the life of the citizens. Their right of scrutiny into the conduct of magistrates they could exercise even during their term of office. Not only could they depose such as they found unworthy, but they might summon the kings before their tribunal, or bring a capital charge against them before the Spartan assembly. With the gradual slackening of the system of public discipline, and with the increasing licence which their position enabled them to assume, their power became an intolerable burden, at least to the kings; and Cleomenes cut the knot by massacring the whole college, and abolishing the office.

The chief work of Ephorus was a history of the wars between the Greeks and Persians, in which, like Herodotus, he introduced the description of foreign and barbarous nations in the form of episodes. Only a few disconnected fragments of it have come down to us. According to the scheme of Marx, the first book contained an account of the return of the Heraclidae into the Peloponnesus, and the change of affairs consequent upon that event; the second was occupied with the state of the rest of Greece; and the third narrated the departure of the Greek colonies to Asia. In these three books he thus brought the history of Greece and Asia down to that period when they began to assume a peaceful aspect, probably a few years before the commencement of the Median war. After this introduction be proceeded to describe separately each country which subsequently became the scene of important transactions,—in the fourth book Europe, in the fifth Asia and Africa; and in the sixth he probably gave an account of the nation of the Pelasgi. The seventh book contained the most ancient traditionary notices of Sicily, and probably all he could collect respecting the original inhabitants of Italy and the adjacent islands. The eighth book narrated the various changes of fortune to which those nations had been subject who in succession held the supreme command in Asia, namely, the Assyrians, Lydians, and Persians. The fragments which remain refer principally to the history of Croesus. In the ninth book he described the origin, changes, and migrations of the Amazons, Scythians, and other nations who inhabited the coasts of the Pontus and those northern countries, whence, through Thrace and Thessaly, he returned to Greece and its affairs. Then it was that Ephorus reached the period when, like every Greek historian, he imagined that the transactions of the whole world became centred in the causes and events of the Persian war; and then also he began to treat his subject with more copiousness, for we find that, while in his tenth book he had already brought down his history to the times of Miltiades, about 490 b.c., in his eighteenth book he had reached Dercyllidas, 399, and in his twentyfifth he had arrived at the battle of Mantinea, 362. The part of the thirtieth book which gave an account of the sacred war was composed, not by Ephorus himself, but by his son Demophilus. At the conclusion of the war Ephorus took up the thread of the history, and continued it to the siege of Perinthus, 340 b.c. According to Diodorus Siculus, the whole period treated of was 750 years.

For a more full description of the life of Ephorus, and a collection of the fragments of his history which have been preserved, the reader may consult Ephori Fragmenta, by Meier Marx, 1815; Creuzer, Symbolik und, Mythologie der alten Volker, besonders der Griechen, 1819; Vossius, De Historicis Graecis, 1651; and Ulrici, Charakteristik der antiken Historiographie, 1833.