Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/44

 32 EARLY PEOPLES AND EMPIRES can see the kingship in the making. When the Roman observers studied them, many of the tribes had no kings, but only chose a war-leader for a campaign or series of campaigns. Then the war-leader became war-leader for life, and civil head of the state as well, and the office became fixed in one family. The probabilities are that kingship arose among the Greeks in just the same way. But the kingship did not last. In the days of the Homeric Poems there were kings everywhere. But the rule was almost universal, that the council of chiefs gradually deprived the king of his power, till the royal family came to be of no more account than that of other chiefs ; or else they got rid of the royal family altogether. When this had happened the state was controlled by . a hereditary aristocracy or oligarchy, the govern- ment of the few. Then came contests between the aristocracy and the general body of citizens who claimed a larger share in the government. Sometimes the aristocracy kept its power, though usually when this happened it was because it admitted the more powerful of the other citizens to its ranks. But nearly always the time came when some one, pretending to act as a leader of the people, succeeded in making himself a despot ; or, as the Greeks call such men, tyrannos, from which we take the word tyrant. These ' tyrants ' or Tyrants. » ' .., J usurpers were often very able men ; but except m very rare cases, where they had really been placed in power by the will of the people, they could only maintain themselves by means of a hired soldiery, and became generally detested. No dynasty of Tyrants endured for many generations ; and when they were expelled it was sometimes to make way for a restoration of the aristocracy, and sometimes for a popular government or democracy. During the seventh century B.C. there was another movement among the Hellenic peoples. When we have spoken before of migrations, we have meant by that the movement Colonisation. ° r. /., . of great groups of clans or tribes which were con- stantly moving onwards, partly because there were more tribes pressing on behind them, until they conquered for themselves cities or districts from which they could not be driven out, and