Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/329

 CHAP. III. FIRST REVOLUTION. 323 About iorty years passed thus. But one clay the! royal family was stained with a crime, and men thought it could no longer fill the priestly office; ' that thence- forth the archons should be chosen outside this family, and that this dignity should be accessible to all the Eupatrids. Forty years later, in order to enfeeble this royalty, or to distribute it into more hands, they made it annual, and divided it into two distinct magistracies. Up to that time the archon was at the same time king; but thenceforth these two titles were separated, A mag- istrate called an archon, and another magistrate called a king, shared the attributes of the ancient religious royalty. The duty of watching over the perpetuation of families, of authorizing or forbidding adoption, of receiving wills, of deciding questions relating to real property — everything in which religion was interest- ed — devolved upon the archon. The duty of offering the solemn sacrifices, and that of judging cases of impiety, were reserved to the kings. Thus the title of king — a sacred title, which was necessary to religion — was perpetuated in the city with the sacrifices and the national worship. The king and the archon, to- gether with the polemarch and the six thesmothetre, who had perhaps existed for a long time, completed the number of nine annual magistrates, whom it wa& the custom to call the nine archons, from the name of the first among them. The revolution that took from royalty its political power, was carried through under different forms in nil the cities. At Argos, from the second generation of Dorian kings, royalty was so weakened "that there wa» ' Heracleides of Pontus, I. 3. Kicholas of Damascus, Fragm. 51.