Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/238

 232 THE ClTiT. BOOK 111. It may be worth while tooflfer proof that the ancient kings of Greece and Italy were priests. In Aristotle we read, "The care of the public sacrifices of the city belongs, according to religions custom, not to special priests, but to those men who derive their dignity from the hearth, and who in one place are called kings, in another prytanes, and in a third archons."' Thus wiitea Aristotle, the man who best understood the con- stitution of the Greek cities. This passage, so precise, shows, in the first place, that the three words king^ prytane, and archon were a long time synonymous. So true is this, that an ancient historian, Charon of Lampsacus, writing a book about the kings of Lace- daemon, entitled '%Archons and Prytanes of the Lace- dcerrtonians? It shows also that the personage to whom was applied indifferently one of these three names — perhaps all of them at the same time — waa the priest of the city, and that the worship of the public hearth was the source of his dignity and power. Tins sacerdotal character of primitive royalty ia clearly indicated by the ancient writers. In ./Eschylus the daughters of Danaus address the king of Argos in these terms: "Thou art the supreme prytane, and watchest over the hearth of this country."^ In Eurip- ides, Orestes, the murderer of his mother, says ta Menelaus, "It is just that I, the son of Agamemnon, should reign at Argos." And Menelaus replies, " Art thou, then, fit, — thou, a murderer, — to touch the ves- sels of lustral water for the sacrifices? Art thou fit to slay the victims?" * The principal office of a king was» II. C5.
 * Aristotle, Polit., Vll, 5, 11 (VI. 8). Comp. Dionysiu.%
 * Suidas, V. XJowr. '^ iEsch., Supy., 3G1 (357).
 * Euripides, Orestes, IGOo.