11.11. 11. Of the Kings of the heroic Times of Greece.
In the heroic times of Greece, a kind of monarchy arose that was not of long duration.
[16]
Those who had been inventors of arts, who had fought in their country's
cause, who had established societies, or distributed lands among the
people, obtained the regal power, and transmitted it to their children.
They were kings, priests, and judges. This was one of the five species
of monarchy mentioned by Aristotle;
[17]
and the only one that can give us any idea of the monarchical constitution.
But the plan of this constitution is opposite to that of our modern monarchies.
The three powers were there distributed in such a manner that the
people were the legislature,
[18]
and the king had the executive together with the judiciary power; whereas
in modern monarchies the prince is invested with the executive and legislative
powers, or at least with part of the legislative, but does not act in a judiciary
capacity.
In the government of the kings of the heroic times, the three powers
were ill-distributed. Hence those monarchies could not long subsist. For
as soon as the people got the legislative power into their hands, they
might, as they everywhere did, upon the very least caprice, subvert the
regal authority.
Among a free people possessed of the legislative power, and enclosed
within walls, where everything tending towards oppression appears still
more odious, it is the masterpiece of legislation to know where to place
properly the judiciary power. But it could not be in worse hands than in
those of the person to whom the executive power had been already
committed. From that very instant the monarch became terrible. But at
the same time as he had no share in the legislature, he could make no
defence against it, thus his power was in one sense too great, in
another too little.
They had not as yet discovered that the true function of a prince
was to appoint judges, and not to sit as judge himself. The opposite
policy rendered the government of a single person insupportable. Hence
all these kings were banished. The Greeks had no notion of the proper
distribution of the three powers in the government of one person; they
could see it only in that of many; and this kind of constitution they
distinguished by the name of Polity.
[19]
Footnotes
[18]
See what Plutarch says in the "Life of Theseus." See likewise Thucydides,
Book i.
[19]
Aristotle, "Politics," Book iv, chap. 8.
