No doubt the oldest heroes were kings.
They engaged in their contests and adventures alone, without any followers to support them; as a rule, they would have found troops superfluous in the kind of battles they fought.
Finally, there dawn those kingdoms the rulers of which the earlier and later Greeks could envisage with clarity.
Athens of Theseus, Thebes of the Labdakides, and Argos-Lacedaemon of the Atrides.
The royal dynasties are in part foreigners; the myth cycles reveal that foreigners, sometimes even fugitives, with great ease became kings, as for instance the Heraclidan kings of the Dorians, who with their ancestor Heracles, were Achaeans.
But the history of Greece is not unique in recounting such occurrences.
It was generally assumed that in primeval times sovereignty was exclusively in the hands of kings.
That was the only kind of rule conceivable among the tribes as long as they were moving about and migrating.
But even when a tribe settled down, the royal sway might well have continued for quite a while.
Sovereignty, as shown by Homer, was woven together of peculiar strands: out of genuine primeval memories, lofty epics, and some traditional features, of royal rule deriving from the post-Dorian age of Homer but in his day falling into desuetude already.
The typical old, resplendent personal attributes of the epic kings were thoroughly clear and familiar to the Greeks.
These kings stemmed from Zeus and were invested by him with the scepter and the privilege of command, judging, and sacrificing at the head of the tribe.
Now surrounded by a festive court and a council of the eldest, then accompanied by charioteers, heralds and rhapsodists, they are unforgettable personages.
Having matured in their political development, the Greeks, to be sure, came to be a little more critical with regard to the existence of those heroic personages.
Thucydides tried to ascertain the taxes and income to which these lords were entitled.
Aristotle ventured to reconstruct precisely the origins of these kingdoms, but, in doing so, betrayed his inability to conceive of a state as arising except as a result of reflection and volition of a group, that is, by a definite founding.
He supposed that those men were elevated to kingship who benefited the people in war, united them into a state, enlarged the territory of the state, or otherwise promoted the means of their livelihood; or such men as were elevated to kingship by a powerful minority or aristocratic caste to protect them against the demos.
Men invested with such kingship had power of life and death over individuals on campaigns only and, in contrast to tyrants, who ruled over unwilling subjects, they held office for as long as their constituents were content.
In Greek mythology, heroes acquire dominion by doing away with horrid individuals and monsters.
In Minos, however, in addition to the king of Crete and other islands, there is the Minotaur demanding his toll of human flesh.
Perhaps there is also an Asiatic moon god, to say nothing of the judge in the underworld, the conqueror extending his exploits to Sicily, and the jealous master of Daedalus.
It is quite possible that for a time unity obtained among islands of the sea, while sheer plurality marked the mainland.
The dominant position of Crete in the whole Aegean Sea, and also its size and population perhaps fitted Crete to bring about this unity.
The Heraclidae symbolized the formation of new migrant kingships, originating out of leadership in war among the wandering Dorians.
In the next few centuries, occasionally even in decades, these kingships were reduced to only a few, while the long extant aristocracy took over the reins of power, forming the earliest stage of the real polis.
It would be wasted effort to try to ascertain precisely the course of events in Greece; still, we get a few clues from Homer who witnessed ancient heroic as well as post-Dorian kingdoms dissolve.
The Achaean army encamped before Ilion had the appearance of a somewhat stormy democratic agora.
This agora was just as man-ennobling as the battles were; i.
e.
, the individual had found a stage where he could assert himself.
Later, when the confused turmoil occurs at the ships Odysseus threatens the rabble-rousers with his scepter and cries out to them his famous words about the worthlessness of the rule of the many, until order is restored in the assembly.
Kings desiring to make an impression get along best by using meekness and tact.
The just ruler so brilliantly portrayed by Hesiod had achieved his ends with gentle words; for this purpose his eloquence, the gift of the Muses, serves him especially well.
Finally the dynasties declined and fell outright.
Disunity in the family, incompetence and arrogance of the royal sons, if there were any, generally provided the occasion.
Priam said of his own sons, after the best of them had perished: These the war has swallowed; the scapegraces only are left me, Liars are they all and cadgers and delicate dancers, Robbing the people they revel in the fat of the lambs and the kids.
There is something atavistic and legendary about a people killing their king to placate the wrath of the gods.
Even if they had wanted to spare the rest of the dynasty, doing so would have gone against the grain of a well known proverb: A fool is he who kills the father, leaving the son alive.
The Arcadians ceased to have kings after stoning two, both named Aristocrates -the grandfather for the rape of a priestess of Diana, the grandson for treason causing the defeat of his Messenian allies.
However, no one lightly decided to kill a king, for as Homer's Amphinomous, the most thoroughly decent of all the suitors, says, "It is dreadful to slay a royal race" (Odyssey).
The kingship sometimes ceased because of some other atrocious deed.
The Messenians had no more kings after Aristodemus committed suicide; only a general [strategos], with unlimited power in wartime.
On the other hand, the ancient Athenians exploited the sacrificial death of Codrus to make it appear unseemly for another to succeed so worthy a king.
The eupatrids degraded his son Medon to a mere lifetime archon, while his other sons and bastards led settlers to Ionia.
Aristotle sums up the course of events as follows: The kings had become despicable and guilty of hybris, committing some outrage possible only for a tyrant but not for a king with his powers limited.
Thereupon dissolution readily followed, for when men no longer want them, kings simply cease to exist; but the tyrant rules over unwilling subjects.
In addition, mutiny may well help to topple royal rule.
New officials took over the several functions hitherto in the hands of the king.
In Athens and elsewhere, the person in charge of the solemn state sacrifices retained the title basileus (king).
Now and then the chief judge was also called a basileus.
In his Panathenaikos, Isocrates supposes that under their ancient kings, unencumbered by the abominable deeds of other dynasties, the Athenians attained to the virtues of justice and sobriety and that, consequently the republic, the introduction of which he ascribes to Theseus, could assume its most pre-eminent forms.
At the time when kingships were being abolished, a new royal dynasty was founded: the Temenids in Macedonia, of which Herodotus gave such a poetic account.
At that time, no one had any premonition of the events Greece would have to endure under the descendants of this new dynasty.
The rule of the aristocrats which succeeded the kingships was relatively weak, proving to be merely a transitional stage.
Its prospects were best in areas where a migrating Dorian tribe of close-knit solidarity was able to subdue an alien people and, as a peer group, maintain hegemony over them.
The most important state of this nature will now engage our attention.