Note 422 — Chapter LXXIII · AGESILAUS KING OF SPARTA. — THE CORINTHIAN WAR.

Aristotle (Polit. v, 1, 5) represents justly the schemes of Lysander as going πρὸς τὸ μέρος τι κινῆσαι τῆς πολιτείας· οἷον ἀρχήν τινα καταστῆσαι ἢ ἀνελεῖν. The Spartan kingship is here regarded as ἀρχή τις—one office of state, among others. But Aristotle regards Lysander as having intended to destroy the kingship—καταλῦσαι τὴν βασιλείαν—which does not appear to have been the fact. The plan of Lysander was to retain the kingship, but to render it elective instead of hereditary. He wished to place the Spartan kingship substantially on the same footing, as that on which the office of the kings or suffetes of Carthage stood; who were not hereditary, nor confined to members of the same family or Gens, but chosen out of the principal families or Gentes. Aristotle, while comparing the βασιλεῖς at Sparta with those at Carthage, as being generally analogous, pronounces in favor of the Carthaginian election as better than the Spartan hereditary transmission. (Arist. Polit. ii, 8, 2.)