Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/322

 31G THE REVOLUTIONS. BOOK IV Others it was taken by force, and nothing was left to these kings but the care of the sacrifices." Phxtarcl) gives a similar account : "As the kings displayed pride and rigor in their commands, the greater part of the Greeks took away their power, and left them only the care of religion." ' Herodotus, speaking of the city of Cyrene, says, "They left to Battus, a descendant of the kings, the care of the worship and the possession of the sacred lands, but they took away all the power which his fathers had enjoyed." This royalty, thus reduced to a priesthood, con- tinued, in most cases, to be hereditary in the sacred family that had long before established the hearth and commenced the national worship. In the time of the Roman empire — that is to say, seven or eight centuries after tliis revolution, — there were yet at Ephcsus, at Marseilles, and at Thespiae, families who preserved the title and insignia of ancient royalty, and who still presided over religious ceremonies." In the other cities the sacred families were extinct, and the kingly office had become elective, and generally annual. 2. History of this Revolution at Sparta. Sparta always had kings, and still the revolution of which we speak was accomplished here as well as in the other cities. It appeal's that the first Dorian kings reigned as absolute masters. But in the third generation the struggle commenced between the kings and the aris- tocracy. During two centuries there was a series of struggles, which made Sparta one of the most un-
 * Aristotle, Politics, III. 9, 8. Plutarch, Rom. Quest., G3.
 * Strabo, IV. ; IX. Diodorus, IV. 21).