of the monarchical functions does
not absolutely disappear, the authority of the king is reduced to a
mere shadow. He becomes a mere hereditary general, as in Lacedaemon, a
mere functionary, as the King Archon at Athens, or a mere formal
hierophant, like the _Rex Sacrificulus_ at Rome. In Greece, Italy, and
Asia Minor, the dominant orders seem to have universally consisted of
a number of families united by an assumed relationship in blood, and,
though they all appear at first to have laid claim to a quasi-sacred
character, their strength does not seem to have resided in their
pretended sanctity. Unless they were prematurely overthrown by the
popular party, they all ultimately approached very closely to what we
should now understand by a political aristocracy. The changes which
society underwent in the communities of the further Asia occurred of
course at periods long anterior in point of time to these revolutions
of the Italian and Hellenic worlds; but their relative place in
civilisation appears to have been the same, and they seem to have been
exceedingly similar in general character. There is some evidence that
the races which were subsequently united under the Persian monarchy,
and those which peopled the peninsula of India, had all their heroic
age and their era of aristocracies; but a military and a religious
oligarchy appear to have grown up separately, nor was the authority of
the king generally superseded. Contrary, too, to the course of events
in the West, the religious element in the East tended to get the
better of the military and political. Military and civil aristocracies
disappear, annihilated or crushed into insignificance between the
kings and the sacerdotal order; and the ultimate result at which we
arrive is, a monarch enjoying great power, but circumscribed by the
privileges of a caste of priests. With these differences, however,
that in the East aristocracies became religious, in the West civil or
political, the proposition that a historical era of aristocracies
succeeded a historical era of heroic kings may be considered as true,
if not of all mankind, at all events of all branches of the
Indo-European family of nations.

The important point for the jurist is that these aristocracies were
universally the depositaries and administrators of law. They seem to
have succeeded to the prerogatives of the king, with the important
difference, however, that they do not appear to have pretended to
direct in