Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/92

 7 HISTORY OF GREECE. nities presented, worked upon preexisting materials, develop- ing and exalting elements which had been at first subordinate, and suppressing, or remodelling on a totally new principle, that which had been originally predominant. When we approach historical Greece, we find that (with the exception of Sparta) the primitive hereditary, unresponsible monarch, uniting in him- self all the functions of government, has ceased to reign, whiltf the feeling of legitimacy, which originally induced his people ta obey him willingly, has been exchanged for one of aversion towards the character and title generally. The multifarious functions which he once exercised, have been parcelled out among temporary nominees. On the other hand, the council, or senate, and the agora, originally simple media through which the king acted, are elevated into standing and independent sources of au- thority, controlling and holding in responsibility the various spe- cial officers to whom executive duties of one kind or another are confided. The general principle here indicated is common both to the oligarchies and the democracies which grew up in his- torical Greece : much as these two governments differed from each other, and many as were the varieties even between one oligarchy or democracy and another, they all stood in equal contrast with the principle of the heroic government. Even in Sparta, where the hereditary kingship lasted, it was preserved with lustre and influence exceedingly diminished, 1 and such timely diminution of its power seems to have been one of the essential conditions of its preservation. 2 Though the Spartan kings had the hereditary command of the military forces, yet, 1 Nevertheless, the question put by Leotychides to the deposed Spartan king Demaratus, dicoiov TI fir) rb up%eiv fteru rti fiaciheveiv ( Herodot. vi. 65), and the poignant insult which those words conveyed, afford one among many other evidences of the lofty estimate current in Sparta respecting the regal dignity, of which Aristotle, in the Politicn, seems hardly to take suffi- cient account. features of the royalty were maintained in the Doriau states, and obliterated only in the Ionian and democratical. In this point, he has been followed by various other authors (see Ilelbig, Die Sittlich. Zustande des Heldenal- ters, p. 73). but his position appears to me substantially incorrect, even ai regards Sparta-, and strikingly incorrect, in regard to the other Doriat states.
 * O. Miiller ( Hist. Dorians, book iii. i. 3) affirms that the fundamental