Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/320

 SI 4 THE REVOLUTIONS. BOOK IV. CHAPTER III. First Revolution. 1. Political Authority taken from the Kings. We have said that, originally, the king was the religious chief of the city, the high-priest of the public hearth, and that he had added political authority to ihe priestly, because it appeared natural that the man who represented the religion of the city should at the same time be the president of the assembly, the judge, tind the head of the array. By virtue of this principle, it happened that all the powers of the state became united in the hands of the king. But the heads of families, the joa^res, and above them the cliiefs of the phratries and tribes, formed, by the side of this king, a very powerful aristocracy. The king was not the only king; every /Jaier was king in his own gens: even at Rome it was an ancient custom to call each one of these powerful patrons by the name of king. At Athens every phratry and every tribe had its chief, and by the side of the king of the city there were the kings of the tribes, qivloSaadel;. It was a hierarchy of chiefs, all having, in a more or less extended domain, the same attributes and the same inviolability. The king of the city did not exercise his authority over the entire jJopulation ; the interior of families and all the clients escaped his action. Like the feudal king who had as subjects only a few powerful vassals, this king of the ancient city commanded only the chiefs of the tribes and the gentes, each one of whom might be in-