Spartan constitution

The Spartan constitution refers to the unwritten system of government and social organization that governed the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta. The Spartans kept no written law code, so modern understanding of it rests mainly on later accounts, especially Xenophon's treatise the Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, and on tradition crediting the framework to the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus, said to have received the Great Rhetra, an oracle from Delphi, around the ninth century BC. The system mixed monarchical, oligarchic and democratic elements: two hereditary kings, drawn from the Agiad and Eurypontid dynasties, ruled jointly; five ephors were elected annually with substantial executive power; a Gerousia of twenty eight elders over sixty years old, elected for life, sat alongside the kings; and an Ekklesia, or citizen assembly, voted only on proposals the Gerousia put before it. Spartan society was divided into full citizens called Spartiates, who underwent the agoge military training, free non-citizens called perioeci who handled trade and commerce, and helots, state-owned serfs conquered from Messenia who made up roughly nine tenths of the population. The constitution barred coined money in favor of iron currency and gave Spartan women unusually independent property rights for the ancient Greek world.