What_Was_The_Role_And_The_Authority_Of_The_Ephors_In_The_Spa

What Was The Role And The Authority Of The Ephors In The Spartiate Constitution' Ancient History Assignment What was the role and the authority of the ephors in the Spartiate Constitution' In ancient Sparta the office of ephor was both the most interesting and the most obscure of the offices under the Spartan constitution. It seems that the ephors became more important and gained more and more political power as the history of Sparta proceeded. According to tradition, the order was established at the time of the first Spartan war to help the kings of Sparta to carry out their main duties Messenia (736-716 BC), which necessitated the protracted absence from their country of the two reigning kings of Sparta, Alcamenes and Theopompus. But by the time first Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, the kings had lost much of their power, and it is certain that the ephorate had gained a great deal of what the kings had lost. At its peak of authority the board of ephors was the organ of citizen control over the dual kingship of Sparta. There were five ephors, elected each year by the full Assembly of Equals. This annually elected board functioned until it was destroyed in the 3rd century BC by the Spartan kings Agis IV (reigned 244-241 kings, ephors, spartan, power, sparta, ephorate, bc, war, two, authority, assembly, time, over, elected, conducting, voice, until, trials, state, spartiate, responsibility, reigned, political, permission, main, lost, important, great, gerousia, gained, full, first, ephor, duties, constitution, campaigns