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Macdowell's (1986) Book Spartan Law Attempts To Give A Synopsis Of Spartan ...


MacDowell's (1986) book Spartan Law attempts to give a synopsis of Spartan Law, of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., based on the sparse contemporary documents pertaining to this topic, and avoiding constitutional and sacred law. Successive chapters discuss status, military service and the agoge (different age groups), woman and marriage and landholding and inheritance. Chapter two, for example, provides a good explanation of the different status groups active in Spartan society, and the relevant laws governing these different groups. Many academics have pointed out many errors in the text of MacDowell, and it is thus perhaps not the best source on which to base a discussion of Spartan decision-making, but it is clear from the work of MacDowell that the majority of laws in Sparta were directed towards the attainment, and maintenance, of military excellence.
Thus, in terms of the decision-making process in Sparta, as we have seen, Spartan governance moved from governance by a council of elders, in conjunction with dual kingship and Ephors, to governance by globally-elected Ephors. Andrewe's chapter in Whitby's book, entitled The Government of Classical Sparta (pp.49-68) looks at the political structure of Sparta. Essentially, as we have seen, and as in other works by Andrewes, Andrewes argues that in Sparta, we have the earliest known manifestations of the function of a council, preparing for business by reference to a sovereign assembly. As Andrewes makes clear in his summary of Rhetra, the Council is to introduce measures, and the people to have the power of decision. Andrewes, throughout his work, equates the sovereign assembly with the hoplite army of Sparta, and traces the development of the assembly from a probouleutic council to an assembly in which the powers are actually something less than government by assembly, with the Ephors created as a counterbalancing force.
This idea, of the Ephors as a counter-balancing force, is important, for, as we have seen, the council of elders that had governed in Sparta previously were open to bribes and, as such, this type of governance led to decisions being made which were not to the benefit of Sparta as a whole but which were, rather, to the benefit of whoever paid the highest bribe. The election of the Ephors was not popular with many contemporary writers, as we have seen, for example, Aristotle, who did not agree that governance by such people was likely to result in benefits for society as a whole, but modern writers have suggested that this type of governance gave some opportunity for ordinary Spartans to indicate their feelings, in terms of choosing their preferred Ephors. Thus, at this stage, when elected Ephors were in governance, the Spartan political system, whilst oligarchical, allowed for some interaction from the populace, and was thus not entirely autocratic.


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