Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/368

 S62 THE EEVOLUTIONS. BOOK IV. thrown, and the aristocracy had become supreme, the people did not content themselves with regretting the monarchy; they aspii'ed to restore it under a new form. In Greece, during the sixth century, they suc- ceeded generally in procuring leaders; not wishing to call them kings, because this title implied the idea of religious functions, and could only be borne by the sacerdotal families, they called them tyrants.' Whatever might have been the original sense of this word, it certainly was not borrowed from the language of religion. Men could not apply it to the gods, as they applied the word king; they did not pronounce it in their prayers. It designated, in fact, something quite new among men — an authority that was not de- rived from the worship, a power that religion had not established. The appearance of this word in the Greek langunge marks a principle which the preceding gener- ations had not known — the obedience of man to man. Up to that lime there had been no other chiefs of the state than those who had been chiefs of religion ; those only governed the city who offered the sacrifices and invoked the gods for it. In obeying them, men obeyed only the religious law, and made no act of submission except to the divinity. Obedience to a man, authority given to this man by other men, a power human in its origin and nature — this had been unknown to the an- cient Eiipatrids, and was never thought of till the day when the inferior orders threw off the yoke of the aris- tocracy and attempted a new government. Let us cite a few exami^les. At Corinth, " the peo- cHicfs wlicn thoy were descended from religious families. He* rodotus, V. 92.
 * The name of king was sometimes given to these popular