Clearly an allusion to the "Great Rhetra", an archaic Spartan constitutional document quoted in Plutarch, Lykourgos 6, which includes the phrase ὠβὰς ὠβάξαντα , "having obed the obes". (On the obes - villages - of Sparta see N.F. Jones, Public Organisation in Ancient Greece (Philadelphia 1987) 118-123.) But is unclear whether this transmitted headword ὠβάξ is a mis-spelling of the noun or a truncation of the participle.