by thousands of “sacred slaves,” and ruled by pontiffs who wielded at once temporal and spiritual authority, like the popes of mediaeval Rome, Such priest-ridden cities were Zela and Pessinus.[1] Teutonic kings, again, in the old heathen days seem to have stood in the position, and exercised the powers of high priests.[2] The Emperors of China offer public sacrifices, the details of which are regulated by the ritual books.[3] It is needless, however, to multiply examples of what is the rule rather than the exception in the early history of the kingship.
But when we have said that the ancient kings were commonly priests also, we are far from having exhausted the religious aspect of their office. In those days the divinity that hedges a king was no empty form of speech but the expression of a sober belief. Kings were revered, in many cases not merely as priests, that is, as intercessors between man and god, but as themselves gods, able to bestow upon their subjects and worshippers those blessings which are commonly supposed to be beyond the reach of man, and are sought, if at all, only by prayer and sacrifice offered to superhuman and invisible beings. Thus kings are often expected to give rain and sunshine in due season, to make the crops grow, and so on. Strange as this expectation appears to us, it is quite of a piece with early modes of thought. A savage hardly conceives the distinction commonly drawn by more advanced peoples between the natural and the supernatural. To him the world is mostly worked by supernatural agents, that is, by personal beings
