Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/90

 74 HISTORY OF GREECE. the crying evil of his day, and predicting as well as invoking the vengeance of Zeus to repress it. And Homer ascribes the tre- mendous violence of the autumnal storms to the wrath of Zeus against those judges who disgrace the agora with their wicked verdicts. 1 Though it is certain that, in every state of society, the feelings of men when assembled in multitude will command a certain measure of attention, yet we thus find the agora, in judicial mat- ters still more than in political, serving merely the purpose of publicity. It is the king who is the grand personal mover of Grecian heroic society. 2 He is on earth, the equivalent of Zeus in the agora of the gods : the supreme god of Olympus is in the habit of carrying on his government with frequent publicity, of hearing some dissentient opinions, and of allowing himself occa- sionally to be wheedled by Aphrodite, or worried into compliance by Here : but his determination is at last conclusive, subject only to the overruling interference of the Moeras, or Fates. 3 Both the society of gods, and the various societies of men, are, according to the conceptions of Grecian legend, carried on by the personal rule of a legitimate sovereign, who does not derive his title from the special appointment of his subjects, though he governs with their full consent. In fact, Grecian legend presents to us hardly anything else, except these great individual personalities. The race, or nation, is as it were absorbed into the prince : eponymous persons, especially, are not merely princes, but fathers and rep- resentative unities, each the equivalent of that greater or less aggregate to which he gives name. But though, in the primitive Grecian government, the king ia the legitimate as well as the real sovereign, he is always con- ceived as acting through the council and agora. Both the one and the other are established and essential media through which his ascendency is brought to bear upon the society : the absence of such assemblies is the test and mark of savage men, as in the 1 Hesiod, Opp. Di. 250-263 ; Homer, Iliad, xvi. 387. 3 Tittmann (Darstcllung der Griechischcn Staatsverfassungen, book ii. p. 63) gives too lofty an idea, in my judgment, of the condition and functions of the Homeric agora. 5 Iliid, i. 520-527 ; iv. 14-56 ; especially the agora of the gods (xx. 10).