Ephors of Lacedaemon

Lysander meanwhile sent Aristoteles, an Athenian exile, in company with some Lacedaemonians, to report to the ephors that the answer he had made to Theramenes was that they only had authority in the matter of peace and war.

Now when Theramenes and the other ambassadors were at Sellasia and, on being asked with what proposals they had come, replied that they had full power to treat for peace, the ephors thereupon gave orders to summon them to Lacedaemon.

But when they were at Sellasia, near Laconia, and the ephors learned from them what proposals they were bringing,—the same, namely, as those which they had presented to Agis,—they directed them to go back again without coming a step farther and, if they really had any desire for peace, to take better counsel before they returned.

And the Greeks know the dispatch-staves of the ephors in Lacedaemon, on which the law was inscribed on wood;