§ 1. The Cosmi of Crete. § 2. Changes in their powers. § 3. The
Prytanes of Corinth and Rhodes. § 4. The Prytanes of ancient
Athens. § 5. The Artynæ of Argos; the Demiurgi in several states
of Peloponnesus.
1. The cosmi of Crete are compared by Aristotle, Ephorus and Cicero, with
the ephors of Lacedæmon.(568) We are first led to suspect the correctness
of this comparison by the fact, that the larger part of the extensive
power of the ephoralty did not exist in the ancient constitution of
Sparta, and consequently there could not have been any thing corresponding
with it in the sister constitution of Crete. This conjecture is still
further confirmed when we remember that the cosmi were chosen from
particular families, rather according to their rank than their personal
merits.(569) For to take away from the office of ephors their election
from among the people would be to give up its most essential
characteristic. If then we abandon this comparison, it will be necessary,
on account of the great similarity between the two constitutions, to find
some other analogous office, and it will then appear that the parallel
magistrates to the cosmi in the Spartan government were the kings; whom
indeed the cosmi appear to have succeeded, like the prytanes, artynæ, &c.,
in other states, the expiring monarchical dignity having been replaced by
an aristocratical magistrate.
This assertion is confirmed by whatever knowledge we have of the powers of
the cosmi, which indeed chiefly regards their influence in foreign
affairs. They were commanders in war, like the kings of Sparta.(570) They
conducted the negotiations with foreign ambassadors (although these last
sometimes spoke before the public assembly); and they affixed their
official name to the treaties, as well as to all decrees of the
state.(571) They provided for the ambassadors during their residence,(572)
and prepared for them the necessary documents.(573) They appear to have
themselves gone as ambassadors to neighbouring and friendly states.(574)
For the internal government and administration of the state they shared
the power of the senate, with which body they consulted on important
affairs.(575) The decrees passed in this council were then laid before the
public assembly for its decision, according to the manner above
stated.(576) On an occasion of the connexion of two Cretan cities by
ἱσοπολιτεία, the cosmi of the one state, who were resident in the other
city, went together into the house of meeting of the cosmi and of the
senate (as it appears) and sat among them in the public assembly.(577)
The common routine of business they appear to have conducted with a large
executive power;(578) they must, for example, have had a compulsive
authority, in order to force a person who had kidnapped citizens of a
foreign state, against the right of asylum, to restore them.(579) In
judicial matters they performed, in the times at least subsequent to
Alexander, certain duties which had a resemblance to the introduction of
the lawsuits by the Athenian magistrates.(580) They themselves, however,
were not only subject to certain punishments for omission of their duties,
but they could also be impeached, apparently during the continuance of
their office.(581) Upon the whole, without having equal dignity, they had
more power and more extensive duties than the Spartan kings; yet both were
limited by the large number of the college of cosmi, for it contained ten
members. The college had power to degrade individuals, although the office
was limited to a year, each individual being also permitted to tender his
resignation within that period.(582) The first of them gave his name to
the year; he was called protocosmus,(583) although he had probably no
distinct privileges. The senate was chosen from persons who had filled the
office of cosmus; it was not, however, so arranged that each cosmus, on
the cessation of his office, became a senator (as at Athens, after the
time of Solon, every archon, if no complaint was made against him, became
a member of the Areopagus), but the senators were selected from among the
former cosmi, after a fresh examination. For the number of the senators
was, doubtless, limited, and was not sufficiently great to comprehend all
the cosmi.
2. In the time of Aristotle the power of the cosmi had acquired a despotic
character. The number of the families from which they were chosen had
become less numerous; individual families had acquired an immediate
influence upon the government, and their disputes had created parties, in
which the whole nation took a share. The constitution had been thus
converted into a narrow oligarchy; the democratic element, the public
assembly, being too feeble to put an end to these dissensions. To this was
added, at a time when men had ceased to venerate ancient customs, a want
of written laws. When powerful families feared for the issue of a lawsuit,
they prevented the election of the cosmi, and an ἀκοσμία, as it was
called, arose,(584) in which the chief families and their dependents were
opposed to one another as enemies. This state of things had at that time
been introduced in several of the chief cities of Crete: at the time,
however, when the alliance between the Priansii and Hierapytnii (which is
still extant) was agreed to, the government appears to have been better
regulated, and the powers of the aristocracy to have been considerably
diminished. But before the time of Polybius a complete revolution had
taken place, by which the power of the aristocracy was abolished, and the
election of all magistrates founded on democratic principles;(585) a
revolution which gradually overthrew all the ancient institutions; so that
the writer just mentioned cannot discover the least resemblance between
the Spartan and Cretan governments, the original similarity of which
cannot be doubted. It is worthy of remark that cosmi, as far as we know,
were the chief magistrates in all the cities of Crete; and their
constitutions were in all essential points the same: a proof that these
cities, although originally founded by different tribes, were in their
political institutions determined by the governing, that is, the Doric
race.(586) In the time of Plato, Cnosus was still, as in the time of
Minos, considered the chief seat of ancient Cretan institutions; Ephorus,
on the other hand, observes that they had been less preserved in this town
than among the Lyctians, Gortynians, and other small cities.(587)
3. With the Cretan cosmi may be compared the magistrates named prytanes,
who in Corinth, as well as in other states, succeeded in the place of the
kings. The numerous house of the Bacchiadæ were not content that certain
individuals of their number should exercise the government as an
hereditary right for life, but wished to obtain a larger share in it, and
to give the enjoyment of the supreme power to a greater number. The only
difference, however, which existed between a prytanis and a king was, that
the former was elected, and only held his office for a year, by which he
was compelled to administer it according to the will of his house, into
the body of which he was soon to return. In this state, doubtless, there
was also a gerusia, but perhaps only consisting of Bacchiadæ. As the
Bacchiadæ only intermarried with persons of their own house, they formed
an aristocratic caste, whose government, which lasted for ninety years,
must have been exceedingly oppressive.(588) As Corcyra was founded from
Corinth before the commencement of the tyranny of the Cypselidæ, we find
that in the latter state annual prytanes, chosen apparently from among the
aristocracy, remained the supreme magistrates even in a democratic
age.(589)
The power of the prytanis, as has been already mentioned, came next in
order in that of king, and hence the ancient Charon of Lampsacus called
the Spartan kings _prytanes_;(590) which was also the proper name of one
of them. The early kings of Delphi were also, at least about 360 B.C.,
called prytanes;(591) in which state there was for a long time an
aristocratic government, similar to that which prevailed in the Homeric
age.(592) The number of the prytanes was in general only one or two.(593)
At Rhodes there were two in a year, each of whom had the precedence for
six months;(594) so that sometimes one, sometimes two prytanes are
mentioned: they managed the public affairs with great power in the
Prytaneum, in which building the archives of the city were preserved, and
foreign ambassadors received.(595) Yet their powers cannot have been
excessive in the free constitution, which Rhodes, at its most flourishing
period, enjoyed. For the senate, which was chosen on purely democratic
principles, as we shall see below, shared the management of all public
affairs with the prytanes; the people, however, exercised the supreme
power in the general assembly, voted by cheirotonia,(596) and does not
appear to have been even led in its deliberations by the magistrates
alone.(597) Yet the government of Rhodes was never, up to the time of the
Roman dominion, a complete democracy;(598) perhaps it approximated at the
period of the greatest power of these islanders to the _politeia_ of
Aristotle.(599) But the power of the prytanes, who were also the chief
magistrates in Ionian, and especially Æolian(600) states, was not
everywhere so wisely restrained; in Miletus their authority was nearly
despotic.(601) In all places the prytanes inherited from the kings the
celebration of public sacrifices, which they generally performed in
particular buildings in the market-place, on the common hearth of the
state. So the prytanis of Tenedos, to whom Pindar has composed an ode for
the sacrifice upon entrance into his office (εἰσιτήριον). In Cos a
divination from fire was probably connected with the sacrifices of the
prytanis.(602) These sacrifices, the public banquets, together with the
reception of foreign ambassadors, belonged at Athens to the fifty
prytanes, as was the case at Rhodes and Cos. But the political
signification of the name had, under the democratic government of Athens,
become entirely different from that which it bore in other more
aristocratic constitutions.
4. The striking dissimilarity in the duties of the prytanes in the
Athenian and in the early constitutions of Greece, and a conviction that
the democracy of Athens, although relatively modern, had so completely
brought into oblivion the former institutions, that they can be only
recognised in insulated traces and names which had lost their ancient
meaning, encourage me to offer some conjectures on the original nature of
the office held by the prytanes of Athens. There was at Athens a court of
justice in the prytaneum (ἐπὶ πρυτανείῳ), which, in the times of which we
have an historical account, only possessed the remnants of a formerly
extensive criminal jurisdiction.(603) Now that this had once been the
chief court in Athens is proved by the name _prytanea_, which were fees
deposited by the parties before each lawsuit, according to the amount of
value in question, and which served for the maintenance of the
judges.(604) The name proves that these monies had at one time been the
pay of the prytanes, in their judicial capacity, like the gifts in Homer
and Hesiod. Furthermore we know that the ancient financial office of the
colacretæ at one time, as their name testifies, collected their share of
the animals sacrificed (which exactly resembles the perquisites of the
kings at Sparta), and that they always continued to manage the banquets in
the Prytaneum, and at a later time collected the justice-fees, for
example, these very prytanea.(605) From the connexion between these
functions, which has not been entirely obliterated, it is manifest that
the ancient judicial prytanes formed a company or _syssition_, dined in
public, were fed at the public expense, and, with regard to their
revenues, had stept into the rights of the kings, whose share in the
sacrifices and justice-fees had formerly been collected by the colacretæ.
Although there appears to be nothing inconsistent in this account, it is
nevertheless singular that a whole court of justice bore the name of
prytanes, whereas in other states the number of these magistrates was
always very small; and hence we are led to conjecture that the prytanes,
as in other places, were merely the leaders and presidents of this supreme
court. It is, however, certain that in later times the phylobasileis
presided in the Prytaneum, four eupatridæ, who were at the head of the
four ancient tribes; and doubtless performed other duties than the sacred
functions which are ascribed to them;(606) like the phylarchs of
Epidamnus, whose extensive duties were in later times transferred to a
senate.(607) We must therefore suppose that these phylobasileis, who, in
consequence of political changes, had at an early period fallen into
oblivion, were once, under the name of prytanes, one of the highest
offices of the state. Now these four prytanes, or phylobasileis, were
assisted in their court by the ephetæ, who, as I have already
remarked,(608) were before the time of Solon identical with the court of
the Areopagus, when they had the management of the criminal jurisdiction,
and a superintendence over the manners of the citizens in an extended
sense of the word. Both these were also duties of the Doric gerusia, to
which the kings stood in nearly the same relation as the prytanes of
Athens to the areopagites or ephetæ. Their number was fifty-one, which
probably includes the basileus: there could not, however, have been fifty
previously to the new division of the tribes by Cleisthenes, before which
change their number was forty-eight, according to the four tribes, either
with or without the phylobasileis.
If this view of the subject is correct, there is a remarkable
correspondence, both in their respective numbers and constitutions,
between the criminal court and the first administrative office in the
ancient state of Athens. These latter were the naucrari. The naucrari, who
were also anciently forty-eight in number, and fifty after the new
division of the tribes, in early times managed the public revenue, and
therefore fitted out armies and fleets.(609) Now Herodotus also mentions
prytanes of the naucrari, who in early times directed the government of
Athens.(610) Unless we suppose the existence of two kinds of prytanes
(which does not appear suitable to the simplicity of ancient
institutions), the same persons must have presided over both colleges, and
have had an equal share in the jurisdiction and government. The regularity
of these institutions would appear surprising, if we were not certain that
the same order existed in all the ancient political establishments; at the
same time we must leave the relative powers of many officers, such, for
example, as those of the archons and prytanes, without any attempt at
elucidation.
5. More obscure even than the condition of the cosmi and prytanes are the
origin and powers of the ARTYNÆ at Argos.(611) They cannot have arisen at
a late period, for example, after the abolition of the royalty, since the
same office existed in their ancient colony, Epidaurus, whose constitution
resembled that of Argos only in the more ancient period. Since it did not
originate from the downfall of the royalty, its origin may, perhaps, have
been owing to a division of the regal authority, perhaps of the civil and
military functions. In Epidaurus the artynæ were presidents of a large
council of one hundred and eighty members:(612) in Argos they are
mentioned in connexion with a body of eighty persons, and a (democratic)
senate, of whose respective powers we are entirely ignorant.(613)
The present is a convenient occasion for mentioning the DEMIURGI, as
several grammarians state that they were in particular a Doric
magistracy,(614) perhaps, however, only judging from the form δαμιουργός.
These magistrates were, it is true, not uncommon in Peloponnesus,(615) but
they do not occur often in the Doric states. They existed among the Eleans
and Mantineans,(616) the Hermioneans,(617) in the Achæan league,(618) at
Argos also,(619) as well as in Thessaly;(620) officers named _epidemiurgi_
were sent by the Corinthians to manage the government of their colony
Potidæa.(621) The statements and interpretations of the grammarians afford
little instruction: among the Achæans at least, their chief duty was to
transact business with the people; which renders it probable, that at
Argos they were identical with the _leaders of the people_;(622) of whom,
as well as of some other public officers, whose functions admit of further
explanation, we will speak in the following chapter.