noun
definition
One of the five annually-elected senior magistrates in various Dorian states, especially in ancient Sparta, where they oversaw the actions of Spartan kings.
definition
(in modern Greece) A superintendent or curator.
Examples of ephor in a Sentence
Greenidge, and the works cited under Apella; Ephor; Gerousia and Lycurgus.
Political ambition was restricted to the tenure of the municipal magistracies, culminating in the offices of nomophylax, ephor and patronomus.
Lysander as ephor proposed on behalf of Agis that all debts sbould be cancelled and that Laconia should be divided into 19,500 lots, of which 4500 should be given to Spartiates, whose number was to be recruited from the best of the perioeci and foreigners, and the remaining 15,000 to perioeci who could bear arms. The Agiad king Leonidas having prevailed on the council to reject this measure, though by a majority of only one, was deposed in favour of his son-in-law Cleombrotus, who assisted Agis in bearing down opposition by the threat of force.
The revolt of the Ionian allies was due in part to Alcibiades also, whose prompt action in co-operation with his friend the ephor Endius finally confirmed the Chian oligarchs in their purpose.
Thessaly has been consistently studied by Arbanitopoullos in his capacity as Ephor of Antiquities and as a soldier in the Balkan wars (1912-3).