2. The Greeks had the institution of a βουλὴ, which preceded and prepared matter for their Assemblies. The Trojans had not.
3. The Greeks, as we have seen, employed oratory as a main instrument of government; the Trojans did not.
4. The aged members of the Trojan royal family rendered their aid to the state, not as counsellors of Priam in private meetings, but only in the Assembly of the people.
A few words on each of these heads.
The greater weight of Age in Troy.
1. The old men who appear on the wall with Priam, in the Third Book, are really old, and not merely titular or official γέροντες; they are[507],
γήραϊ δὴ πολέμοιο πεπαυμένοι.
There are no less than seven of them, besides Priam. Three are his brothers, Lampus, Clytius, Hiketaon; the others probably relatives, we know not in what precise degree: Panthous, Thymœtes, Ucalegon, Antenor. They are called collectively the Τρώων ἡγήτορες, as well as the ἀγορηταὶ ἐσθλοί; and they were manifestly habitual speakers in the Assembly.
There is nothing in the Greek life of the Homeric poems that comes near this aggregation of aged men. Now we have no evidence, that their being thus collected was in any degree owing to the war. Theano, wife of Antenor, was priestess of Minerva in Troy; which makes it most probable that he resided there habitually, and not only on account of the war.
The only group at all approaching this is, where we see Menœtius and Phœnix at the Court of Peleus; but we cannot say whether this was a permanent arrangement. Phœnix, as we know, was lord of the Dolopians, and if so, could not have been a standing assistant at the court of Peleus; we do not know that the Trojan elders held any such local position apart from Troy, even in any single case; and on the other hand, we have no knowledge whether Phœnix and Menœtius, even when at the court of Peleus, took any share in the government of his immediate dominions. The name γέροντες, as usually employed among the Greeks to describe a class, had no necessary relation to age whatever.