Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/129

IV for at this time the tenure of all three offices is said to have become annual in duration, and six more Archons were added to help in performing the growing business of the State. These came to be known as Thesmothetæ. All nine magistrates must now have been chosen from the whole body of the aristocracy, and at the end of their period of office have passed into the aristocratic council for life.

Here, then, is aristocratic government complete and organised. There are two leading features in it as we see it at Athens. First, we have a close corporation of privileged noble families who call themselves Eupatridæ — a word which shows that it was high descent which they conceived as constituting their chief claim to predominance. They were privileged, because they alone could hold office in the State, and they alone could select the officers; they only, in fact, were in the true sense of the word, citizens. The political organ which represented this corporation was almost without doubt the council of the Areopagus. Secondly, we find a distribution of the functions of executive government, including, of course, religious duties, among a certain small number of officials, elected by the whole body of the privileged. These two features were probably common to the Greek aristocracies of this period, and they are indeed of the essence of all aristocratic or oligarchic government. We shall find them also at Rome, though naturally varying in some points from the Athenian type.

At Rome the power of the king had been stronger than at Athens, stronger perhaps than in any Greek