ease of the Cyclôpes.[1] Accordingly, he must possess qualities fit to act with effect upon these two assemblies: wise reason for the council, unctuous eloquence for the agora.[2] Such is the idéal of the heroic government: a king, not merely full of valor and resource as a soldier, but also sufficiently superior to those around him to insure both the deliberate concurrence of the chiefs, and the hearty adhesion of the masses.[3] That this picture is not, in all individual cases, realized, is unquestionable; but the endowments so often predicated of good kings show it to have been the type present to the mind of the describer.[4] Xenophôn, in his Cyropædia, depicts Cyrus as an improved edition of the Homeric Agamemnon,—"a good king and a powerful soldier," thus idealizing the perfection of personal government.
It is important to point out these fundamental conceptions of government, discernible even before the dawn of Grecian history, and identified with the social life of the people. It shows us that the Greeks, in their subsequent revolutions, and in the political experiments which their countless autonomous commit
- ↑ Odyss. ix. 114.—These lines illustrate the meaning of θέμις.
Τοῖσιν δ' (the Cyclôpes) οὔτ' ἀγοραὶ βουλήφοροι, οὔτε θέμιστες
Ἀλλ' οἵγ' ὑψηλῶν ὀρέων ναίουσι κάρηνα
Ἐν σπέσσι γλαφυροῖσι· θεμιστεύει δὲ ἕκαστος
Παίδων ἡδ' ἀλόχων· οὐδ' ἀλλήλων ἀλέγουσι.
- ↑ See this point set forth in the prolix discourse of Aristeides, Περὶ Ῥητορικῆς (Or. xlv. vol. ii. p. 99): Ἡσίοδος . . . . . . ταὐτὰ ἀντικρὺς Ὁμήρῳ λέγων . . . . . . ὅτι τε ἡ ῥητορικὴ σύνεδρος τῆς βασιλικῆς, etc.
- ↑ Pêleus, king of the Myrmidons, is called (Iliad, vii. 126) Ἐσθλὸς Μυρμιδόνων βουλήφορος ἠδ' ἀγορητὴς—Diomedes', ἀγορῇ δέ τ' ἀμείνω (iv. 400) Nestôr, λιγὺς Πυλίων ἀγορητὴς—Sarpêdôn, Λυκίων βουληφόρε (v. 633); and Idomeneus, Κρητῶν βουληφόρε (xiii. 219).
Hesiod (Theogon. 80-96) illustrates still more amply the idéal of the king governing by persuasion and inspired by the Muses. - ↑ See the striking picture in Thucydidês (ii. 65). Xenophôn, in the Cyropædia, puts into the mouth of his hero the Homeric comparison between the good king and the good shepherd, implying as it does immense superiority of organization, morality, and intelligence (Cyropæd. viii. p. 450, Hutchinson).
Volney observes, respecting the emirs of the Druses in Syria: "Everything depends on circumstances: if the governor be a man of ability, he is absolute; if weak, he is a cipher. This proceeds from the want of fixed laws; a want common to all Asia." (Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. ii. p 66.) Such was pretty much the condition of the king in primitive Greece
