[168] This was the case at Elis (H. Roehl, Inscriptiones Graecae antiquissimae, No. 112; P. Cauer, op. cit. No. 253; E. S. Roberts, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, i. No. 292), in Cos (Dittenberger, op. cit. No. 616), in Chios (ib. No. 570), at Mytilene (Cauer, op. cit. Nos. 428, 431), at Cyme (Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. 2), and perhaps in Siphnos (Isocrates, Or. xix. 36). The Kings of Elis may have been the officials called Basilai who sacrificed on the top of Mount Cronius at Olympia at the spring equinox (Pausanias, vi. 20. 1).
[169] Livy, ii. 2. 1; Dionysius Halicarn., Antiquit. Rom. iv. 74. 4.
[170] Aristotle, Politics, iii. 14. 13, p. 1285 b 14 sqq.; Demosthenes, Contra Neaer. § 74 sqq. p. 1370; Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 63.
[171] Xenophon, Repub. Lacedaem. 15, compare id. 13; Aristotle, Politics, iii. 14. 3, p. 1285 a 3 sqq. Argos was governed, at least nominally, by a king as late as the time of the great Persian war (Herodotus, vii. 149); and at Orchomenus, in the secluded highlands of Northern Arcadia, the kingly form of government persisted till towards the end of the fifth century B.C. (Plutarch, Parallela, 32). As to the kings of Thessaly in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., see F. Hiller von Gaertringen in Aus der Anomia (Berlin, 1890), pp. 1–16.
[172] Herodotus, vi. 56.
[173] Strabo, xiv. 1. 3, pp. 632 sq. These Ephesian kings, who probably held office for life, are not to be confounded with the purely priestly functionaries called Essenes or King Bees, whose tenure of office was annual. See below, vol. ii. p. 135.
[174] Herodotus, iv. 162.
[175] Strabo, xii. 3. 37, 5. 3; compare xi. 4. 7, xii. 2. 3, 2. 6, 3. 31 sq., 3. 34, 8. 9, 8. 14. But see Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed. art. “Priest,” xix. 729.
[176] J. Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 243.
[177] See the Lî-Kî (Legge’s translation), passim (Sacred Books of the East, vols. xxvii., xxviii.).