Ἀλλ᾽ οἵγ᾽ ὑψηλῶν ὀρέων ναίουσι κάρηνα
Ἐν σπέσσι γλαφυροῖσι· θεμιστεύει δὲ ἕκαστος
Παιδῶν ἠδ᾽ ἀλόχων· οὐδ᾽ ἀλλήλων ἀλέγουσι.
These lines illustrate the meaning of θέμις.
[122] 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.
[123] Pêleus, king of the Myrmidons, is called (Iliad, vii. 126) Ἐσθλὸς Μυρμιδόνων βουληφόρος 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.
[124] 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.
[125] Nevertheless, the question put by Leotychides to the deposed Spartan king Demaratus,—ὅκοιόν τι εἴη τὸ ἄρχειν μετὰ τὸ βασιλεύειν (Herodot. vi. 65), and the poignant insult which those words conveyed, afford one among many other evidences of the lofty estimate current in Sparta respecting the regal dignity, of which Aristotle, in the Politica, seems hardly to take sufficient account.