Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/81

 KF.PUBLICAN FEELING ftt HISTORICAL GREECE. 65 position, that the earliest sources of obedience and authority among mankind are personal, exhibiting themselves most perfectly in the type of paternal supremacy ; and that therefore the kingly government, as most conformable to this stage of social sentiment, became probably the first established everywhere. And in fact it still continued in his time to be generally prevalent among the non-Hellenic nations, immediately around ; though the Phosni- cian cities and Carthage, the most civilized of all non-Hellenic states, were republics. Nevertheless, so completely were the feelings about kingship reversed among his contemporary Greeks, that he finds it difficult to enter into the voluntary obedience paid by his ancestors to their early heroic chiefs. He cannot explain to his own satisfaction how any one man should have been so much superior to the companions around him as to maintain such immense personal ascendency : he suspects that in such small communities great merit was very rare, so that the chief had few competitors. 1 Such remarks illustrate strongly the revolution which the Greek mind had undergone during the preceding cen- turies, in regard to the internal grounds of political submission But the connecting link, between the Homeric and the republi can schemes of government, is to be found in two adjuncts of the Homeric royalty, which are now to be mentioned, the boule, or council of chiefs, and the agora, or general assembly of freemen. These two meetings, more or less frequently convoked, and interwoven with the earliest habits of the primitive Grecian com- munities, are exhibited in the monuments of the legendary age 1 Kal 610. TOVT' lauf IfiacriTievovTO TrpoTspov, on OTTUVIOV fyv evpelv uvdpaf diaQfpovTdf /car' upirr/v, d/l/lwf TE KOI rare fiLKpu^ o'tKovvrae iroheif (Polit. iii. 10, 7) ; also the same treatise, v. 8, 5, and v. 8, 22. Ou YIVOVTO.L d' en j3a- orf.fiai vvv, etc. Aristotle handles monarchy far less copiously than either oligarchy or democracy : the tenth and eleventh chapters of his third book, in which ho discusses it, are nevertheless very interesting to peruse. In the conception of Plato, also, the kingly government, if it is to work well, implies a breed superior to humanity to hold the sceptre (Legg. iv. 6. p. 713). The Athenian dramatic poets (especially Euripides) often put into the mouths of their heroic characters popular sentiments adapted to the demo- cratical atmosphere of Athens. very different from what we find in Homm VOL. II. OOC