ety, in which every man,
living during the greater part of his life under the patriarchal
despotism, was practically controlled in all his actions by a regimen
not of law but of caprice. I may add that an Englishman should be
better able than a foreigner to appreciate the historical fact that
the "Themistes" preceded any conception of law, because, amid the many
inconsistent theories which prevail concerning the character of
English jurisprudence, the most popular, or at all events the one
which most affects practice, is certainly a theory which assumes that
adjudged cases and precedents exist antecedently to rules, principles,
and distinctions. The "Themistes" have too, it should be remarked, the
characteristic which, in the view of Bentham and Austin, distinguishes
single or mere commands from laws. A true law enjoins on all the
citizens indifferently a number of acts similar in class or kind; and
this is exactly the feature of a law which has most deeply impressed
itself on the popular mind, causing the term "law" to be applied to
mere uniformities, successions, and similitudes. A _command_
prescribes only a single act, and it is to commands, therefore, that
"Themistes" are more akin than to laws. They are simply adjudications
on insulated states of fact, and do not necessarily follow each other
in any orderly sequence.

The literature of the heroic age discloses to us law in the germ under
the "Themistes" and a little more developed in the conception of
"Dike." The next stage which we reach in the history of jurisprudence
is strongly marked and surrounded by the utmost interest. Mr. Grote,
in the second part and second chapter of his History, has fully
described the mode in which society gradually clothed itself with a
different character from that delineated by Homer. Heroic kingship
depended partly on divinely given prerogative, and partly on the
possession of supereminent strength, courage, and wisdom. Gradually,
as the impression of the monarch's sacredness became weakened, and
feeble members occurred in the series of hereditary kings, the royal
power decayed, and at last gave way to the dominion of aristocracies.
If language so precise can be used of the revolution, we might say
that the office of the king was usurped by that council of chiefs
which Homer repeatedly alludes to and depicts. At all events from an
epoch of kingly rule we come everywhere in Europe to an era of
oligarchies; and even where the name