The Sexes in Science and History / An inquiry into the dogma of woman's inferiority to man

by Eliza Burt Gamble

Modern writers, almost without exception, translate basileus by the term king, and basileia by the term kingdom, without qualification, and as exact equivalents. I wish to call attention to this office of basileus, as it existed in the Grecian tribes, and to question the correctness of this interpretation. There is no similarity whatever between the basileia of the ancient Athenians and the modern kingdom or monarchy.... Constitutional monarchy is a modern development, and essentially different from the basileia of the Greeks. The basileia was neither an absolute nor a constitutional monarchy; neither was it a tyranny nor a despotism. The question then is, what was it?

Mr. Morgan’s answer to the question is as follows:

The primitive Grecian government was essentially democratical, reposing on gentes, phratries, and tribes organized as self-governing bodies, and on the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

This writer says further:

Our views upon Grecian and Roman questions have been moulded by writers accustomed to monarchical government and privileged classes, who were perhaps glad to appeal to the earliest known governments of the Grecian tribes for a sanction of this form of government, as at once natural, essential, and primitive.[159]

We have noted the precautions which during the second and latter periods of barbarism were necessary to keep in check the increasing thirst for power, and it may not be doubted that through the growth of the aristocratic tendency during the latter ages of the existence of the gens, the office of basileus gave to its incumbent a degree of distinction closely allied to that of king.

In the eleventh century B. C., upon the death of Codrus, so necessary had it become to check the continually increasing power of the military chieftains that the office was abolished and the archonship established in its place; but as an election or confirmation was necessary before the duties of either office could be entered upon, it is plain that at the period referred to a democratic form of government still prevailed.

Now archon is the term which had been applied to the chief of the early gentes at a time when fraternity, liberty, and equality were the cardinal virtues of society; and the abolition of the office of basileus, to which had become attached a considerable degree of power, was doubtless an attempt on the part of the people to return to the simpler and purer methods of government which had formerly prevailed; but the institution known as the Agora, Ecclesia, or Appella, which had proved the great bulwark of safety to early democratic institutions, had, through the strengthening of the aristocratic element, become gradually weakened, hence the nobles were in a position to draw to themselves not only much of the power originally exercised by the military commander, but that also which had formerly belonged to the assembly of the people. We have observed that not only among the Greeks of the heroic age, but among the tribes and nations which preceded them, as far back in the history of the past as the close of the second stage of barbarism, there had always been an assembly of the people whose duty it was to guard the rights of the tribe, to protect it against usurpation, and to keep down the rising tendency toward imperialism. Of this institution, Mr. Rawlinson says: “Thus at Athens, as elsewhere, in the heroic times, there was undoubtedly the idea of a public assembly consisting of all freemen.”[160]

Theseus, basileus, or military chieftain of the Athenian tribes, a personage who belongs to the legendary period, was the first to perceive the insufficiency of gentile institutions to meet the needs of the people. Although the primary idea involved in the establishment of political society was the transference of the original governmental functions from the gens to a territorial limit, so deeply had the instincts, ideas, and associations connected with the personal government of the gens taken root that several centuries were required to accomplish the change. To establish the deme or township, in which, irrespective of kinship or personal ties, all its inhabitants (except slaves) should be enrolled as citizens, with rights, privileges, and duties adjusted according to the amount of property owned by each, and which should be a unit of the larger and more important institution—the State,—was an undertaking the mastery of which although seemingly simple, nevertheless involved intricacies and obstacles of such magnitude as to baffle all attempts of the Greeks from the time of Theseus to that of Clisthenes, at which time political society was established, and the gens, shorn of its utility and power, remained only as the embodiment of certain social ideas, or survived as a religious centre, over which their eponymous ancestor, as hero or god, still presided.

The age of Theseus could not have been later than 1050 B.C., and the final overthrow of gentile government did not, as we have seen, occur until the age of Clisthenes, five hundred years later. Throughout the intervening time between Theseus and Clisthenes little real advancement is noted among the Greeks; none, perhaps, except that connected with the growth of the idea of government as indicated by the change from gentile to political institutions, and even this growth, when we observe that nearly five centuries and a half were required to establish it, or to substitute the deme or township in the place of the gens as the unit in the governmental series, can scarcely be regarded as evidence of remarkable genius, or as indicating a notable degree of ingenuity. In the transference of society, however, from gentile to political institutions may be observed a progressive principle, inasmuch as by it the limits of the gens and tribe were gradually broken down or obliterated, and the enlarged conception of the state established in their stead. After the age of Clisthenes an isolated community bound together by kinship, and with interests extending no further than the tribe of which it was a part, no longer constituted the fundamental basis upon which the superstructure of society was to rest; but, on the contrary, the deme or township, with all its free inhabitants, of whatsoever tribe or gens, was to become the recognized unit in organized society.