The Hello and welcome back to the history of ancient Greece. Episode 23, this is Sparta.

As we saw last episode, the Spartans propagandized that their constitution had existed from very ancient times.

Set down at once by a mysterious semi-mythical man named Likurgis.

We also laid out reasons why this probably was not the case. There can be little doubt

that the Spartan state developed up to the end of the 7th century BC, on the same general lines as the other Greek Polish, though with some remarkable

peculiarities, and like most other Polish, it passed through similar cycles of monarchy and oligarchy, and that the final form of the Constitution

was the result of a struggle between the nobles and the people.

The remarkable thing was that throughout these changes

hereditary kingship survived. The Spartan government,

when it was fully developed, had four parts. The kings,

the council, the assemblies,, and the E4s.

The first three were common institutions among all Greek police, but the latter, the E4Force, was peculiar only to Sparta and states derived from Sparta.

For this, the Spartan government was admired by its contemporaries, since its constitution had elements of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy,

political theorists, like Aristotle, called it a mixed constitution.

As with later on in the Roman Republic,

the various organs of government and shared offices

were designed to serve as checks and balances to one another,

minimizing the danger that the government would take too rapid and radical action.

Spartan conservatism made for a reluctance to abandon traditional institutions, like the monarchy.

Thus, even after the rest of Greece had abolished their Homeric-style kings.

Sparta had two hereditary basilets, each descending from a different royal family, the Agyidai and the Erie Pontidae, called a Diarchy.

The kingship was hereditary, but it was not necessarily the first born, but instead the first born while the father was king.

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