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The Gerousia (γερουσία) was the Spartan council of elders, sometimes called Spartan senate in the literature, which was made up of 28 men over the age of sixty, plus the two kings. It was created by the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus in the seventh century BC, in his Great Rhetra ("Great Pronouncement"). According to Lycurgus' biographer Plutarch, the creation of the Gerousia was the first significant constitutional innovation instituted by Lycurgus. This old Spartan tradition continued in the Deep or Mesa Mani known as the "Gerontikoi" until recent times.[1]
The name Gerousia was preserved in the Parliament of modern Greece, as the name of the upper house of a bicameral parliament in 1844–1864 and 1927–1935
Membership
The Gerousia consisted of thirty members in total, of whom twenty-eight had to be over the age of sixty,[2] and the remaining two members were the two Spartan kings, regardless of their age. Other than the kings, the members of the Gerousia (known as gerontes), served for life.[2] Gerontes were elected by voice vote of the people, with the winner determined by a group of men in a separate building who would judge which shouts had been the loudest without knowing which candidate received that shout.[3] These elected members included a number of members of the two Spartan royal 43 houses, and membership was probably restricted to aristocrats.[4]
The gerontes were likely drawn from a limited aristocracy composed of only a few families, often called the kaloi kagatoi. Modern scholars have debated since the 19th century on whether these families had a legal privilege on Gerousia membership,[5] or just a de facto monopoly.[6][7] Of the latter opinion, G. E. M. de Ste. Croix compared the situation in Sparta with that of Roman Republic, where a few gentes monopolised senior magistracies, notably thanks to their patronage network—a practice probably used in Spartan politics.[8]
Paul Cartledge notes that when a king was absent, his nearest relative could cast a vote for him in the Gerousia, which means that at least two gerontes besides the kings were of royal stock (one for each dynasty).[9]
Function
The Gerousia had two major roles. It debated motions which were to be put before the citizen assembly, with the power to prevent any motion from being passed on,[10] and functioned as a Supreme Court, with the right to try any Spartan, up to and including the kings.[4] The Great Rhetra suggests that it had the power to overturn decisions made by the Spartan assembly.[11]
See also
Notes
- ^ Cartledge 2003, p. 60
- ^ a b Tod 1911, p. 903.
- ^ Plutarch
- ^ a b Cartledge 2003, p. 61
- ^ Forrest, History of Sparta, pp. 46, 63, 113.
- ^ Hicks, "Supposed Qualification", p. 23.
- ^ Cartledge, Agesilaos, pp. 18, 22 ("so it is probably safest to assert only that in practice, de facto rather than de iure, the Gerontes were drawn from a restricted social group").
- ^ Ste. Croix, Origins of the Peloponnesian War, pp. 353, 354.
- ^ Cartledge, Agesilaos, pp. 109, 122.
- ^ Holland 2009, p. 81
- ^ Cartledge 2003, p. 62
References
- Cartledge, Paul (2003), The Spartans: An Epic History, London: Pan Books, ISBN 978-1-4472-3720-4
- Paul Cartledge, Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. ISBN 978-0715630327
- G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, London, Duckworth, 1972. ISBN 0715606409
- W. G. Forrest, A History of Sparta, New York, Norton, 1986. SBN 393004813
- R. D. Hicks, "A Supposed Qualification for Election to the Spartan Senate", The Classical Review, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Feb., 1906), pp. 23-27.
- Holland, Tom (2009), Persian Fire, London: Abacus, ISBN 978-0-349-11717-1
- Plutarch, Lucius Mestrius (75), Lycurgus
- Schulz, Fabian (2011), Die homerischen Räte und die spartanische Gerusie, Düsseldorf: Wellem Verlag
- Tod, Marcus Niebuhr (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 903. . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.).