Κοινοὶ, κρατεῖ δ᾽ εἷς, τὸν νόμον κεκτημένος
Αὐτὸς παρ᾽ αὑτῷ.
Compare Soph. Antigon. 737. See, also, the discussion in Aristot. Polit. iii, sect. 10 and 11, in which the rule of the king is discussed in comparison with the government of laws; compare also iv, 8, 2-3. The person called “a king according to law” is, in his judgment, no king at all: Ὁ μὲν γὰρ κατὰ νόμον λεγόμενος βασιλεὺς οὔκ ἐστιν εἶδος καθάπερ εἴπομεν βασιλείας (iii, 11, 1).
Respecting ἰσονομίη, ἰσηγορίη, παῤῥησία,—equal laws and equal speech,—as opposed to monarchy, see Herodot. iii, 142, v. 78-92; Thucyd. iii, 62; Demosthen. ad Leptin. c. 6, p. 461; Eurip. Ion. 671.
Of Timoleon it was stated, as a part of the grateful vote passed after his death by the Syracusan assembly,—ὅτι τοὺς τυράννους καταλύσας,—ἀπέδωκε τοὺς νόμους τοῖς Σικελιώταις (Plutarch. Timoleon. c. 39).
See Karl Fried. Hermann, Griech. Staatsalterthümer, sect. 61-65.
[16] See the account of Deiokês, the first Median king, in Herodotus, i, 98, evidently an outline drawn by Grecian imagination: also, the Cyropædia of Xenophon, viii, 1, 40; viii, 3, 1-14; vii, 5, 37 ... οὐ τούτῳ μόνῳ ἐνόμιζε (Κῦρος) χρῆναι τοὺς ἄρχοντας τῶν ἀρχομένων διαφέρειν τῷ βελτίονας αὐτῶν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ καὶ καταγοητεύειν ᾤετο χρῆναι αὐτοὺς, etc.
[17] David Hume, Essay xvii, On the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences, p. 198, ed. 1760. The effects of the greater or less extent of territory, upon the nature of the government, are also well discussed in Destutt Tracy, Commentaire sur l’Esprit des Loix de Montesquieu, ch. viii.
[18] Aristot. Polit. iii, 9, 7; iii, 10, 7-8.
M. Augustin Thierry remarks, in a similar spirit, that the great political change, common to so large a portion of mediæval Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whereby the many different communes or city constitutions were formed, was accomplished under great varieties of manner and circumstance; sometimes by violence, sometimes by harmonious accord.