was a very different and a far more serious power in debate than
the misshapen buffoon of the Iliad. But the king who had been
thwarted and exposed by him in the day would, over his cups in
the evening, enjoy the poet's travesty, and long for the good old
times when he could put down all impertinent criticism by the
stroke of his knotty sceptre. The Homeric Agora could hardly have
existed had it been so idle a form as the poets represent. But as
the lower classes were carefully marshaled on the battle-field,
from a full sense of the importance which the poet denies them, so
they were marshaled in the public assembly, where we may be sure
their weight told with equal effect, though the poet neglected it
for the greater glory of the counseling chiefs." [Footnote: "Social
Life in Greece, from Homer to Menander," by Rev. J. P. Mahaffy.]
Notwithstanding all this, as HEEREN says, "Homer is the best source
of information that we possess respecting the Heroic Age."

The form of government that prevailed among the early Greeks,
especially after the Pelasgic race had yielded to the more
warlike and adventurous Hellenes, was evidently that of the
kingly order, on a democratic basis, although it is difficult
to ascertain the precise extent of the royal prerogatives. In
all the Grecian states there appears to have been an hereditary
class of chiefs or nobles, distinguished from the common freemen
or people by titles of honor, superior wealth, dignity, valor,
and noble birth; which latter implied no less than a descent from
the gods themselves, to whom every princely house seems to have
traced its origin.

But the kings, although generally hereditary, were not always so,
nor were they absolute monarchs; they were rather the most eminent