Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/21

EARLIEST GOVERNMENTS IN GREECE. 5 partially counteracted, but never wholly subdued, by Aral us, and the Acluean league of the third century B. c. It would have been instructive if we had possessed a faithful record of these changes of government in some of the more con- siderable of the Grecian towns; but in the absence of such evi- dence we can do little more than collect the brief sentences of Aristotle and others respecting the causes which produced them. For as the like change of government was common, near about the same time, to cities very different in locality, in race of in- habitants, in tastes and habits, and in wealth, it must partly have depended upon certain general causes which admit of being assigned and explained. In the preceding volume, I tried to elucidate the heroic govern- ment of Greece, so far as it could be known from the epic poems, a government founded (if we may employ modern phraseolo- gy) upon divine right as opposed to the sovereignty of the people, but requiring, as an essential condition, that the king shall pos- sess force, both of body and mind, not unworthy of the exalted breed to which he belongs. 1 In this government, the authority which pervades the whole society, all resides in the king ; but on important occasions it is exercised through the forms of publi- city ; he consults, and even discusses, with the council of chiefs or elders, he communicates after such consultation with the as- sembled agora, who hear and approve, perhaps hear and mur- mur, but are not understood to exercise an option or to reject. In giving an account of the Lykurgean system, I remarked that the old primitive Rhetrn?, or charters of compact, indicated the existence of these same elements ; a king of superhuman lineage (in this particular case two coordinate kings), a senate of twen- ty-eight old men, besides the kings who sat in it, and an ekkle- sia, or public assembly of citizens, convened for the purpose of approving or rejecting propositions submitted to them, with little or no liberty of discussion. The elements of the heroic govern- ment of Greece are thus found to be substantially the same as those existing in the primitive Lykurgean constitution : in both cases the predominant force residing in the kings, and the func- 1 See a striking passage in Plutarch. Przeccnt Rcipubl. Gerend. c. 5 p. 801.