Extract

Putative Spartan *ephor. According to Plutarch, Agis 5, he introduced, some time after the *Peloponnesian War, a law authorizing the gift or bequest of property, thereby undermining Sparta's ‘single-heir’ inheritance system and her equality of landholding. Its context and historicity are controversial. Some scholars identify Epitadeus with the lawgiver to whom *Aristotle (Pol. 2. 1270^a) ascribes the rules concerning all forms of alienation, or (rather implausibly) with an officer (Epitadas) killed in 425 bce. Others argue that Epitadeus and his law were invented, perhaps following a Platonic model (see plato (1)), by supporters of the late 3rd-cent. reforming kings to ‘explain’ the corruption of the fictional ‘Lycurgan equality’ (see lycurgus (2)) they claimed to be restoring. The ‘single-heir’ system is implausible; and gift and bequest were probably longstanding rights. Bequest is attested historically c.400 bce, before Plutarch's dating for Epitadeus.