THE GRECIAN PHRATRY, TRIBE AND NATION.
THE ATHENIAN PHRATRY.—HOW FORMED.—DEFINITION OF
DIKÆARCHUS.—OBJECTS CHIEFLY RELIGIOUS.—THE PHRATRIARCH.—THE
TRIBE.—COMPOSED OF THREE PHRATRIES.—THE PHYLO-BASILEUS.—THE
NATION.—COMPOSED OF FOUR TRIBES.—BOULE, OR COUNCIL OF
CHIEFS.—AGORA, OR ASSEMBLY OF THE PEOPLE.—THE BASILEUS.—TENURE
OF THE OFFICE.—MILITARY AND PRIESTLY FUNCTIONS.—CIVIL
FUNCTIONS NOT SHOWN.—GOVERNMENTS OF THE HEROIC AGE, MILITARY
DEMOCRACIES.—ARISTOTLE’S DEFINITION OF A BASILEUS.—LATER
ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY.—INHERITED FROM THE GENTES.—ITS POWERFUL
INFLUENCE UPON ATHENIAN DEVELOPMENT.
The phratry, as we have seen, was the second stage of organization in
the Grecian social system. It consisted of several gentes united for
objects, especially religious, which were common to them all. It had
a natural foundation in the bond of kin, as the gentes in a phratry
were probably subdivisions of an original gens, a knowledge of the
fact having been preserved by tradition. “All the contemporary members
of the phratry of Hekatæus,” Mr. Grote remarks, “had a common god for
their ancestor at the sixteenth degree,”[250] which could not have
been asserted unless the several gentes comprised in the phratry of
Hekatæus, were supposed to be derived by segmentation from an original
gens. This genealogy, although in part fabulous, would be traced
according to gentile usages. Dikæarchus supposed that the practice of
certain gentes in supplying each other with wives, led to the phratric
organization for the performance of common religious rites.
This is a plausible explanation, because such marriages would
intermingle the blood of the gentes. On the contrary, gentes formed,
in the course of time, by the division of a gens and by subsequent
subdivisions, would give to all a common lineage, and form a natural
basis for their re-integration in a phratry. As such the phratry would
be a natural growth, and as such only can it be explained as a gentile
institution. The gentes thus united were brother gentes, and the
association itself was a brotherhood as the term imports.
Stephanus of Byzantium has preserved a fragment of Dikæarchus, in
which an explanation of the origin of the gens, phratry and tribe is
suggested. It is not full enough, with respect to either, to amount
to a definition; but it is valuable as a recognition of the three
stages of organization in ancient Grecian society. He uses patry (πάτρα)
in the place of gens (γένος), as Pindar did in a number of instances,
and Homer occasionally. The passage may be rendered: “Patry is one of
three forms of social union among the Greeks, according to Dikæarchus,
which we call respectively, patry, phratry, and tribe. The patry comes
into being when relationship, originally solitary, passes over into the
second stage [the relationship of parents with children and children
with parents], and derives its eponym from the oldest and chief member
of the patry, as Aicidas, Pelopidas.”
“But it came to be called phatria and phratria when certain ones gave
their daughters to be married into another patry. For the woman who was
given in marriage participated no longer in her paternal sacred rites,
but was enrolled in the patry of her husband; so that for the union,
formerly subsisting by affection between sisters and brothers, there
was established another union based on community of religious rites,
which they denominated a phratry; and so that again, while the patry
took its rise in the way we have previously mentioned, from the blood
relation between parents and children and children and parents, the
phratry took its rise from the relationship between brothers.”
“But tribe and tribesmen were so called from the coalescence into
communities and nations so called, for each of the coalescing bodies
was called a tribe.”[251]
It will be noticed that marriage out of the gens is here recognized
as a custom, and that the wife was enrolled in the gens, rather
than the phratry, of her husband. Dikæarchus, who was a pupil of
Aristotle, lived at a time when the gens existed chiefly as a pedigree
of individuals, its powers having been transferred to new political
bodies. He derived the origin of the gens from primitive times;
but his statement that the phratry originated in the matrimonial
practices of the gentes, while true doubtless as to the practice, is
but an opinion as to the origin of the organization. Intermarriages,
with common religious rites, would cement the phratric union; but
a more satisfactory foundation of the phratry may be found in the
common lineage of the gentes of which it was composed. It must be
remembered that the gentes have a history running back through the
three sub-periods of barbarism into the previous period of savagery,
antedating the existence even of the Aryan and Semitic families. The
phratry has been shown to have appeared among the American aborigines
in the Lower Status of barbarism; while the Greeks were familiar with
so much only of their former history as pertained to the Upper Status
of barbarism.
Mr. Grote does not attempt to define the functions of the phratry,
except generally. They were doubtless of a religious character chiefly;
but they probably manifested themselves, as among the Iroquois, at
the burial of the dead, at public games, at religious festivals, at
councils, and at the agoras of the people, where the grouping of chiefs
and people would be by phratries rather than by gentes. It would
also naturally show itself in the array of the military forces, of
which a memorable example is given by Homer in the address of Nestor
to Agamemnon.[252] “Separate the troops by tribes and by phratries,
Agamemnon, so that phratry may support phratry, and tribes, tribes
(κρῖν' ἄνδρας κατὰ φῦλα, κατὰ φρήτρας, Ἀγάμεμνον, ὡς φρήτρη φρήτρηφιν
ἀρήγῃ, φῦλα δὲ φύλοις). If thou wilt thus act, and the Greeks obey,
thou wilt then ascertain which of the commanders and which of the
soldiers is a coward, and which of them may be brave, for they will
fight their best.” The number from the same gens in a military force
would be too small to be made a basis in the organization of an army;
but the larger aggregations of the phratries and tribes would be
sufficient. Two things may be inferred from the advice of Nestor:
first, that the organization of armies by phratries and tribes had then
ceased to be common; and secondly, that in ancient times it had been
the usual plan of army organization, a knowledge of which had not then
disappeared. We have seen that the Tlascalans and Aztecs, who were in
the Middle Status of barbarism, organized and sent out their military
bands by phratries which, in their condition, was probably the only
method in which a military force could be organized. The ancient German
tribes organized their armies for battle on a similar principle.[253]
It is interesting to notice how closely shut in the tribes of mankind
have been to the theory of their social system.
The obligation of blood revenge, which was turned at a later day into
a duty of prosecuting the murderer before the legal tribunals, rested
primarily upon the gens of the slain person; but it was also shared in
by the phratry, and became a phratric obligation.[254] In the Eumenides
of Aeschylus, the Erinnys, after speaking of the slaying of his mother
by Orestes, put the question: “What lustral water of his phrators shall
await him?”[255] which seems to imply that if the criminal escaped
punishment final purification was performed by his phratry instead of
his gens. Moreover, the extension of the obligation from the gens to
the phratry implies a common lineage of all the gentes in a phratry.
Since the phratry was intermediate between the gens and the tribe,
and not invested with governmental functions, it was less fundamental
and less important than either of the others; but it was a common,
natural and perhaps necessary stage of re-integration between the
two. Could an intimate knowledge of the social life of the Greeks in
that early period be recovered, the phenomena would centre probably
in the phratric organization far more conspicuously than our scanty
records lead us to infer. It probably possessed more power and
influence than is usually ascribed to it as an organization. Among
the Athenians it survived the overthrow of the gentes as the basis of
a system, and retained, under the new political system, some control
over the registration of citizens, the enrollment of marriages and the
prosecution of the murderer of a phrator before the courts.
It is customary to speak of the four Athenian tribes as divided each
into three phratries, and of each phratry as divided into thirty
gentes; but this is merely for convenience in description. A people
under gentile institutions do not divide themselves into symmetrical
divisions and subdivisions. The natural process of their formation
was the exact reverse of this method; the gentes fell into phratries,
and ultimately into tribes, which reunited in a society or a people.
Each was a natural growth. That the number of gentes in each Athenian
phratry was thirty is a remarkable fact incapable of explanation by
natural causes. A motive sufficiently powerful, such as a desire for
a symmetrical organization of the phratries and tribes, might lead
to a subdivision of gentes by consent until the number was raised to
thirty in each of these phratries; and when the number in a tribe was
in excess, by the consolidation of kindred gentes until the number was
reduced to thirty. A more probable way would be by the admission of
alien gentes into phratries needing an increase of number. Having a
certain number of tribes, phratries and gentes by natural growth, the
reduction of the last two to uniformity in the four tribes could thus
have been secured. Once cast in this numerical scale of thirty gentes
to a phratry and three phratries to a tribe, the proportion might
easily have been maintained for centuries, except perhaps as to the
number of gentes in each phratry.
The religious life of the Grecian tribes had its centre and source in
the gentes and phratries. It must be supposed that in and through
these organizations, was perfected that marvelous polytheistic system,
with its hierarchy of gods, its symbols and forms of worship, which
impressed so powerfully the mind of the classical world. In no small
degree this mythology inspired the great achievements of the legendary
and historical periods, and created that enthusiasm which produced the
temple and ornamental architecture in which the modern world has taken
so much delight. Some of the religious rites, which originated in these
social aggregates, were nationalized from the superior sanctity they
were supposed to possess; thus showing to what extent the gentes and
phratries were nurseries of religion. The events of this extraordinary
period, the most eventful in many respects in the history of the Aryan
family, are lost, in the main, to history. Legendary genealogies
and narratives, myths and fragments of poetry, concluding with the
Homeric and Hesiodic poems, make up its literary remains. But their
institutions, arts, inventions, mythological system, in a word the
substance of civilization which they wrought out and brought with them,
were the legacy they contributed to the new society they were destined
to found. The history of the period may yet be reconstructed from these
various sources of knowledge, reproducing the main features of gentile
society as they appeared shortly before the institution of political
society.
As the gens had its archon, who officiated as its priest in the
religious observances of the gens, so each phratry had its phratriarch
(φρατριάρχος), who presided at its meetings, and officiated in
the solemnization of its religious rites. “The phratry,” observes
M. De Coulanges, “had its assemblies and its tribunals, and could
pass decrees. In it, as well as in the family, there was a god, a
priesthood, a legal tribunal and a government.”[256] The religious
rites of the phratries were an expansion of those of the gentes of
which it was composed. It is in these directions that attention should
be turned in order to understand the religious life of the Greeks.
Next in the ascending scale of organization was the tribe, consisting
of a number of phratries, each composed of gentes. The persons in
each phratry were of the same common lineage, and spoke the same
dialect. Among the Athenians as before stated each tribe contained
three phratries, which gave to each a similar organization. The tribe
corresponds with the Latin tribe, and also with those of the American
aborigines, an independent dialect for each tribe being necessary to
render the analogy with the latter complete. The concentration of
such Grecian tribes as had coalesced into a people, in a small area,
tended to repress dialectical variation, which a subsequent written
language and literature tended still further to arrest each tribe from
antecedent habits, however, was more or less localized in a fixed
area, through the requirements of a social system resting on personal
relations. It seems probable that each tribe had its council of chiefs,
supreme in all matters relating to the tribe exclusively. But since the
functions and powers of the general council of chiefs, who administered
the general affairs of the united tribes, were allowed to fall into
obscurity, it would not be expected that those of an inferior and
subordinate council would be preserved. If such a council existed,
which was doubtless the fact from its necessity under their social
system, it would have consisted of the chiefs of the gentes.
When the several phratries of a tribe united in the commemoration of
their religious observances it was in their higher organic constitution
as a tribe. As such, they were under the presidency, as we find it
expressed, of a phylo-basileus, who was the principal chief of the
tribe. Whether he acted as their commander in the military service I am
unable to state. He possessed priestly functions, always inherent in
the office of basileus, and exercised a criminal jurisdiction in cases
of murder; whether to try or to prosecute a murderer, I am unable to
state. The priestly and judicial functions attached to the office of
basileus tend to explain the dignity it acquired in the legendary and
heroic periods. But the absence of civil functions, in the strict sense
of the term, of the presence of which we have no satisfactory evidence,
is sufficient to render the term king, so constantly employed in
history as the equivalent of basileus, a misnomer. Among the Athenians
we have the tribe-basileus, where the term is used by the Greeks
themselves as legitimately as when applied to the general military
commander of the four united tribes. When each is described as a king
it makes the solecism of four tribes each under a king separately,
and the four tribes together under another king. There is a larger
amount of fictitious royalty here than the occasion requires. Moreover,
when we know that the institutions of the Athenians at the time were
essentially democratical it becomes a caricature of Grecian society.
It shows the propriety of returning to simple and original language,
using the term basileus where the Greeks used it, and rejecting king
as a false equivalent. Monarchy is incompatible with gentilism, for
the reason that gentile institutions are essentially democratical.
Every gens, phratry and tribe was a completely organized self-governing
body; and where several tribes coalesced into a nation the resulting
government would be constituted in harmony with the principles
animating its constituent parts.
The fourth and ultimate stage of organization was the nation united
in a gentile society. Where several tribes, as those of the Athenians
and the Spartans, coalesced into one people, it enlarged the society,
but the aggregate was simply a more complex duplicate of a tribe. The
tribes took the same place in the nation which the phratries held in
the tribe, and the gentes in the phratry. There was no name for the
organism[257] which was simply a society (_societas_), but in its place
a name sprang up for the people or nation. In Homer’s description of
the forces gathered against Troy, specific names are given to these
nations, where such existed, as Athenians, Ætolians, Locrians; but in
other cases they are described by the name of the city or country from
which they came. The ultimate fact is thus reached, that the Greeks,
prior to the times of Lycurgus and Solon, had but the four stages of
social organization (gens, phratry, tribe and nation), which was so
nearly universal in ancient society, and which has been shown to exist,
in part, in the Status of savagery, and complete in the Lower, in the
Middle and in the Upper Status of barbarism, and still subsisting after
civilization had commenced. This organic series expresses the extent
of the growth of the idea of government among mankind down to the
institution of political society. Such was the Grecian social system.
It gave a society, made up of a series of aggregates of persons, with
whom the government dealt through their personal relations to a gens,
phratry or tribe. It was also a gentile society as distinguished from a
political society, from which it was fundamentally different and easily
distinguishable.
The Athenian nation of the heroic age presents in its government three
distinct, and in some sense co-ordinate, departments or powers, namely:
first, the council of chiefs (βουλή); second, the agora (ἀγορά), or
assembly of the people; and third, the basileus (βασιλεύς), or general
military commander. Although municipal and subordinate military offices
in large numbers had been created, from the increasing necessities
of their condition, the principal powers of the government were held
by the three instrumentalities named. I am unable to discuss in an
adequate manner the functions and powers of the council, the agora
or the basileus, but will content myself with a few suggestions upon
subjects grave enough to deserve reinvestigation at the hands of
professed Hellenists.
I. _The Council of Chiefs._ The office of basileus in the Grecian
tribes has attracted far more attention than either the council or
the agora. As a consequence it has been unduly magnified while the
council and the agora have either been depreciated or ignored. We
know, however, that the council of chiefs was a constant phenomenon
in every Grecian nation from the earliest period to which our
knowledge extends down to the institution of political society. Its
permanence as a feature of their social system is conclusive evidence
that its functions were substantial, and that its powers, at least
presumptively, were ultimate and supreme. This presumption arises
from what is known of the archaic character and functions of the
council of chiefs under gentile institutions, and from its vocation.
How it was constituted in the heroic age, and under what tenure the
office of chief was held, we are not clearly informed; but it is a
reasonable inference that the council was composed of the chiefs of
the gentes. Since the number who formed the council was usually less
than the number of gentes, a selection must have been made in some
way from the body of chiefs. In what manner the selection was made
we are not informed. The vocation of the council as a legislative
body representing the principal gentes, and its natural growth
under the gentile organization, rendered it supreme in the first
instance, and makes it probable that it remained so to the end of its
existence. The increasing importance of the office of basileus, and
the new offices created in their military and municipal affairs with
their increase in numbers and in wealth, would change somewhat the
relations of the council to public affairs, and perhaps diminish its
importance; but it could not be overthrown without a radical change
of institutions. It seems probable, therefore, that every office of
the government, from the highest to the lowest, remained accountable
to the council for their official acts. The council was fundamental
in their social system;[258] and the Greeks of the period were free
self-governing peoples, under institutions essentially democratical. A
single illustration of the existence of the council may be given from
Aeschylus, simply to show that in the Greek conception it was always
present and ready to act. In _The Seven against Thebes_, Eteocles is
represented in command of the city, and his brother Polynices as one of
the seven chiefs who had invested the place. The assault was repelled,
but the brothers fell in a personal combat at one of the gates. After
this occurrence a herald says: “It is necessary for me to announce the
decree and good pleasure of the councilors of the people of this city
of Cadmus. It is resolved,”[259] etc. A council which can make and
promulgate a decree at any moment, which the people are expected to
obey, possesses the supreme powers of government. Aeschylus, although
dealing in this case with events in the legendary period, recognizes
the council of chiefs as a necessary part of the system of government
of every Grecian people. The boulê of ancient Grecian society was the
prototype and pattern of the senate under the subsequent political
system of the state.
II. _The Agora._ Although an assembly of the people became established
in the legendary period, with a recognized power to adopt or reject
public measures submitted by the council, it is not as ancient as the
council. The latter came in at the institution of the gentes; but
it is doubtful whether the agora existed, with the functions named,
back of the Upper Status of barbarism. It has been shown that among
the Iroquois, in the Lower Status, the people presented their wishes
to the council of chiefs through orators of their own selection, and
that a popular influence was felt in the affairs of the confederacy;
but an assembly of the people, with the right to adopt or reject
public measures, would evince an amount of progress in intelligence
and knowledge beyond the Iroquois. When the agora first appears, as
represented in Homer, and in the Greek Tragedies, it had the same
characteristics which it afterwards maintained in the ecclesia of
the Athenians, and in the _comitia curiata_ of the Romans. It was
the prerogative of the council of chiefs to mature public measures,
and then submit them to the assembly of the people for acceptance or
rejection, and their decision was final. The functions of the agora
were limited to this single act. It could neither originate measures,
nor interfere in the administration of affairs; but nevertheless
it was a substantial power, eminently adapted to the protection of
their liberties. In the heroic age certainly, and far back in the
legendary period, the agora is a constant phenomenon among the Grecian
tribes, and, in connection with the council, is conclusive evidence
of the democratical constitution of gentile society throughout these
periods. A public sentiment, as we have reason to suppose, was created
among the people on all important questions, through the exercise of
their intelligence, which the council of chiefs found it desirable
as well as necessary to consult, both for the public good and for
the maintenance of their own authority. After hearing the submitted
question discussed, the assembly of the people, which was free to all
who desired to speak,[260] made their decision in ancient times usually
by a show of hands.[261] Through participation in public affairs, which
affected the interests of all, the people were constantly learning the
art of self-government, and a portion of them, as the Athenians, were
preparing themselves for the full democracy subsequently established
by the constitutions of Cleisthenes. The assembly of the people to
deliberate upon public questions, not unfrequently derided as a mob by
writers who were unable to understand or appreciate the principle of
democracy, was the germ of the ecclesia (ἐκκλησία) of the Athenians,
and of the lower house of modern legislative bodies.
III. _The Basileus._ This officer became a conspicuous character in
the Grecian society of the heroic age, and was equally prominent in
the legendary period. He has been placed by historians in the centre
of the system. The name of the office (βασιλεύς) was used by the best
Grecian writers to characterize the government, which was styled
a basileia (βασιλεία). Modern writers, almost without exception,
translate basileus by the term _king_, and basileia by the term
_kingdom_, without qualification, and as exact equivalents. I wish to
call attention to this office of basileus, as it existed in the Grecian
tribes, and to question the correctness of this interpretation. There
is no similarity whatever between the basileia of the ancient Athenians
and the modern kingdom or monarchy; certainly not enough to justify the
use of the same term to describe both. Our idea of a kingly government
is essentially of a type in which a king, surrounded by a privileged
and titled class in the ownership and possession of the lands, rules
according to his own will and pleasure by edicts and decrees; claiming
an hereditary right to rule, because he cannot allege the consent
of the governed. Such governments have been self-imposed through the
principle of hereditary right, to which the priesthood have sought to
superadd a divine right. The Tudor kings of England and the Bourbon
kings of France are illustrations. Constitutional monarchy is a modern
development, and essentially different from the basileia of the Greeks.
The basileia was neither an absolute nor a constitutional monarchy;
neither was it a tyranny or a despotism. The question then is, what was
it.
Mr. Grote claims that “the primitive Grecian government is essentially
monarchical, reposing on personal feeling and divine right;”[262] and
to confirm this view he remarks further, that “the memorable dictum
in the Iliad is borne out by all that we hear in actual practice:
‘the rule of many is not a good thing; let us have one ruler only—one
king—him to whom Zeus has given the sceptre, with the tutelary
sanctions.’”[263] This opinion is not peculiar to Mr. Grote, whose
eminence as a historian all delight to recognize; but it has been
steadily and generally affirmed by historical writers on Grecian
themes, until it has come to be accepted as historical truth. Our
views upon Grecian and Roman questions have been moulded by writers
accustomed to monarchical government and privileged classes, who were
perhaps glad to appeal to the earliest known governments of the Grecian
tribes for a sanction of this form of government, as at once natural,
essential and primitive.
The true statement, as it seems to an American, is precisely the
reverse of Mr. Grote’s; namely, that the primitive Grecian government
was essentially democratical, reposing on gentes, phratries and
tribes, organized as self-governing bodies, and on the principles of
liberty, equality and fraternity. This is borne out by all we know of
the gentile organization, which has been shown to rest on principles
essentially democratical. The question then is, whether the office of
basileus passed in reality from father to son by hereditary right;
which, if true, would tend to show a subversion of these principles.
We have seen that in the Lower Status of barbarism the office of
chief was hereditary in a gens, by which is meant that the vacancy
was filled from the members of the gens as often as it occurred.
Where descent was in the female line, as among the Iroquois, an own
brother was usually selected to succeed the deceased chief, and where
descent was in the male line, as among the Ojibwas and Omahas, the
oldest son. In the absence of objections to the person such became the
rule; but the elective principle remained, which was the essence of
self-government. It cannot be claimed, on satisfactory proof, that
the oldest son of the basileus took the office, upon the demise of his
father, by absolute hereditary right. This is the essential fact; and
it requires conclusive proof for its establishment. The fact that the
oldest, or one of the sons, usually succeeded, which is admitted, does
not establish the fact in question; because by usage he was in the
probable line of succession by a free election from a constituency. The
presumption, on the face of Grecian institutions, is against succession
to the office of basileus by hereditary right; and in favor either of a
free election, or of a confirmation of the office by the people through
their recognized organizations, as in the case of the Roman rex.[264]
With the office of basileus transmitted in the manner last named, the
government would remain in the hands of the people. Because without an
election or confirmation he could not assume the office; and because
further, the power to elect or confirm implies the reserved right to
depose.
The illustration of Mr. Grote, drawn from the Iliad, is without
significance on the question made. Ulysses, from whose address the
quotation is taken, was speaking of the command of an army before
a besieged city. He might well say: “All the Greeks cannot by any
means rule here. The rule of many is not a good thing. Let us have
one koiranos, one basileus, to whom Zeus has given the sceptre, and
the divine sanctions in order that he may command us.”[265] Koiranos
and basileus are used as equivalents, because both alike signified
a general military commander. There was no occasion for Ulysses to
discuss or endorse any plan of government; but he had sufficient
reasons for advocating obedience to a single commander of the army
before a besieged city.
Basileia may be defined as a military democracy, the people being free,
and the spirit of the government, which is the essential thing, being
democratical. The basileus was their general, holding the highest, the
most influential and the most important office known to their social
system. For the want of a better term to describe the government,
basileia was adopted by Grecian writers, because it carried the idea
of a generalship which had then become a conspicuous feature in the
government. With the council and the agora both existing with the
basileus, if a more special definition of this form of government is
required, military democracy expresses it with at least reasonable
correctness; while the use of the term kingdom, with the meaning it
necessarily conveys, would be a misnomer.
In the heroic age the Grecian tribes were living in walled cities,
and were becoming numerous and wealthy through field agriculture,
manufacturing industries, and flocks and herds. New offices were
required, as well as some degree of separation of their functions;
and a new municipal system was growing up apace with their increasing
intelligence and necessities. It was also a period of incessant
military strife for the possession of the most desirable areas. Along
with the increase of property the aristocratic element in society
undoubtedly increased, and was the chief cause of those disturbances
which prevailed in Athenian society from the time of Theseus to the
times of Solon and Cleisthenes. During this period, and until the final
abolition of the office some time before the first Olympiad, (776 B.
C.) the basileus, from the character of his office and from the state
of the times, became more prominent and more powerful than any single
person in their previous experience. The functions of a priest and of a
judge were attached to or inherent in his office; and he seems to have
been _ex officio_ a member of the council of chiefs. It was a great as
well as a necessary office, with the powers of a general over the army
in the field, and over the garrison in the city, which gave him the
means of acquiring influence in civil affairs as well. But it does not
appear that he possessed civil functions. Prof. Mason remarks, that
“our information respecting the Grecian kings in the more historical
age is not ample or minute enough to enable us to draw out a detailed
scheme of their functions.”[266] The military and priestly functions of
the basileus are tolerably well understood, the judicial imperfectly,
and the civil functions cannot properly be said to have existed. The
powers of such an office under gentile institutions would gradually
become defined by the usage of experience, but with a constant tendency
in the basileus to assume new ones dangerous to society. Since the
council of chiefs remained as a constituent element of the government,
it may be said to have represented the democratic principles of their
social system, as well as the gentes, while the basileus soon came to
represent the aristocratic principle. It is probable that a perpetual
struggle was maintained between the council and the basileus, to hold
the latter within the limits of powers the people were willing to
concede to the office. Moreover, the abolition of the office by the
Athenians makes it probable that they found the office unmanageable,
and incompatible with gentile institutions, from the tendency to usurp
additional powers.
Among the Spartan tribes the ephoralty was instituted at a very early
period to limit the powers of the basileis in consequence of a similar
experience. Although the functions of the council in the Homeric
and the legendary periods are not accurately known, its constant
presence is evidence sufficient that its powers were real, essential
and permanent. With the simultaneous existence of the agora, and in
the absence of proof of a change of institutions, we are led to the
conclusion that the council, under established usages, was supreme
over gentes, phratries, tribes and nation, and that the basileus
was amenable to this council for his official acts. The freedom of
the gentes, of whom the members of the council were representatives,
presupposes the independence of the council, as well as its supremacy.
Thucydides refers incidentally to the governments of the traditionary
period, as follows: “Now when the Greeks were becoming more powerful,
and acquiring possession of property still more than before, many
tyrannies were established in the cities, from their revenues
becoming greater; whereas before there had been hereditary basileia
with specified powers.” (πρότερον δὲ ἦσαν ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς γέρασι πατρικαὶ
βασιλεῖαι)[267] The office was hereditary in the sense of perpetual
because it was filled as often as a vacancy occurred, but probably
hereditary in a gens, the choice being by a free election by his
gennêtes, or by nomination possibly by the council, and confirmation of
the gentes, as in the case of the rex of the Romans.
Aristotle has given the most satisfactory definition of the basileia
and of the basileus of the heroic period of any of the Grecian writers.
These then are the four kinds of basileia he remarks: the first is
that of the heroic times, which was a government over a free people,
with restricted rights in some particulars; for the basileus was their
general, their judge and their chief priest. The second, that of the
barbarians, which is an hereditary despotic government, regulated
by laws; the third is that which they call Aesymnetic, which is an
elective tyranny. The fourth is the Lacedaemonian, which is nothing
more than an hereditary generalship.[268] Whatever may be said of the
last three forms, the first does not answer to the idea of a kingdom
of the absolute type, nor to any recognizable form of monarchy.
Aristotle enumerates with striking clearness the principal functions
of the basileus, neither of which imply civil powers, and all of which
are consistent with an office for life, held by an elective tenure.
They are also consistent with his entire subordination to the council
of chiefs. The “restricted rights,” and the “specified powers” in
the definitions of these authors, tend to show that the government
had grown into this form in harmony with, as well as under, gentile
institutions. The essential element in the definition of Aristotle is
the freedom of the people, which in ancient society implies that the
people held the powers of the government under their control, that
the office of basileus was voluntarily bestowed, and that it could be
recalled for sufficient cause. Such a government as that described
by Aristotle can be understood as a military democracy, which, as a
form of government under free institutions, grew naturally out of the
gentile organization when the military spirit was dominant, when wealth
and numbers appeared, with habitual life in fortified cities, and
before experience had prepared the way for a pure democracy.
Under gentile institutions, with a people composed of gentes, phratries
and tribes, each organized as independent self-governing bodies, the
people would necessarily be free. The rule of a king by hereditary
right and without direct accountability in such a society was simply
impossible. The impossibility arises from the fact that gentile
institutions are incompatible with a king or with a kingly government.
It would require, what I think cannot be furnished, positive proof of
absolute hereditary right in the office of basileus, with the presence
of civil functions, to overcome the presumption which arises from the
structure and principles of ancient Grecian society. An Englishman,
under his constitutional monarchy, is as free as an American under the
republic, and his rights and liberties are as well protected; but he
owes that freedom and protection to a body of written laws, created
by legislation and enforced by courts of justice. In ancient Grecian
society, usages and customs supplied the place of written laws, and the
person depended for his freedom and protection upon the institutions of
his social system. His safeguard was pre-eminently in such institutions
as the elective tenure of office implies.
The reges of the Romans were, in like manner, military commanders, with
priestly functions attached to their office; and this so-called kingly
government falls into the same category of a military democracy. The
rex, as before stated, was nominated by the senate, and confirmed by
the _comitia curiata_; and the last of the number was deposed. With his
deposition the office was abolished, as incompatible with what remained
of the democratic principle, after the institution of Roman political
society.
The nearest analogues of kingdoms among the Grecian tribes were the
tyrannies, which sprang up here and there, in the early period, in
different parts of Greece. They were governments imposed by force,
and the power claimed was no greater than that of the feudal kings of
mediæval times. A transmission of the office from father to son through
a few generations in order to superadd hereditary right was needed
to complete the analogy. But such governments were so inconsistent
with Grecian ideas, and so alien to their democratic institutions,
that none of them obtained a permanent footing in Greece. Mr. Grote
remarks that “if any energetic man could by audacity or craft break
down the constitution and render himself permanent ruler according to
his own will and pleasure—even though he might rule well—he could never
inspire the people with any sentiment of duty towards him. His sceptre
was illegitimate from the beginning, and even the taking of his life,
far from being interdicted by that moral feeling which condemned the
shedder of blood in other cases, was considered meritorious.”[269] It
was not so much the illegitimate sceptre which aroused the hostility of
the Greeks, as the antagonism of democratical with monarchical ideas,
the former of which were inherited from the gentes.
When the Athenians established the new political system, founded upon
territory and upon property, the government was a pure democracy. It
was no new theory, or special invention of the Athenian mind, but
an old and familiar system, with an antiquity as great as that of
the gentes themselves. Democratic ideas had existed in the knowledge
and practice of their forefathers from time immemorial, and now
found expression in a more elaborate, and, in many respects, in an
improved government. The false element, that of aristocracy, which
had penetrated the system and created much of the strife in the
transitional period connected itself with the office of basileus,
and remained after this office was abolished; but the new system
accomplished its overthrow. More successfully than the remaining
Grecian tribes, the Athenians were able to carry forward their ideas of
government to their logical results. It is one reason why they became,
for their numbers, the most distinguished, the most intellectual and
the most accomplished race of men the entire human family has yet
produced. In purely intellectual achievements they are still the
astonishment of mankind. It was because the ideas which had been
germinating through the previous ethnical period, and which had become
interwoven with every fibre of their brains, had found a happy fruition
in a democratically constituted state. Under its life-giving impulses
their highest mental development occurred.
The plan of government instituted by Cleisthenes rejected the office of
a chief executive magistrate, while it retained the council of chiefs
in an elective senate, and the agora in the popular assembly. It is
evident that the council, the agora and the basileus of the gentes were
the germs of the senate, the popular assembly, and the chief executive
magistrate (king, emperor and president) of modern political society.
The latter office sprang from the military necessities of organized
society, and its development with the upward progress of mankind is
instructive. It can be traced from the common war-chief, first to the
Great War Soldier, as in the Iroquois Confederacy; secondly, to the
same military commander in a confederacy of tribes more advanced,
with the functions of a priest attached to the office, as the Teuctli
of the Aztec Confederacy; thirdly, to the same military commander in
a nation formed by a coalescence of tribes, with the functions of a
priest and of a judge attached to the office, as in the basileus of
the Greeks; and finally, to the chief magistrate in modern political
society. The elective archon of the Athenians, who succeeded the
basileus, and the president of modern republics, from the elective
tenure of the office, were the natural outcome of gentilism. We are
indebted to the experience of barbarians for instituting and developing
the three principal instrumentalities of government now so generally
incorporated in the plan of government in civilized states. The human
mind, specifically the same in all individuals in all the tribes and
nations of mankind, and limited in the range of its powers, works and
must work, in the same uniform channels, and within narrow limits of
variation. Its results in disconnected regions of space, and in widely
separated ages of time, articulate in a logically connected chain of
common experiences. In the grand aggregate may still be recognized the
few primary germs of thought, working upon primary human necessities,
which, through the natural process of development, have produced such
vast results.