d at least three great functions, and
possibly four.[119] He was, primarily, chief commander, secondly, chief
priest, thirdly, chief judge; whether he had reached the fourth stage
and added the functions of chief civil executive, is matter of dispute.
Kingship in Rome and in most Greek cities was overthrown at so early a
date that some questions of this sort are difficult to settle. But in
all probability the office grew up through the successive acquisition of
ritual, judicial, and civil functions by the military commander. The
paramount necessity of consulting the tutelar deities before fighting
resulted in making the general a priest competent to perform sacrifices
and interpret omens;[120] he thus naturally became the most important
among priests; an increased sanctity invested his person and office; and
by and by he acquired control over the dispensation of justice, and
finally over the whole civil administration. One step more was needed to
develop the _basileus_ into a despot, like the king of Persia, and that
was to let him get into his hands the law-making power, involving
complete control over taxation. When the Greeks and Romans became
dissatisfied with the increasing powers of their kings, they destroyed
the office. The Romans did not materially diminish its functions, but
put them into commission, by entrusting them to two consuls of equal
authority elected annually. The Greeks, on the other hand, divided the
royal functions among different officers, as e. g. at Athens among the
nine archons.[121]

[Footnote 118: This title seems precisely equivalent to [Greek:
anax andron], commonly applied to Agamemnon, and sometimes to
other chieftains, in the Iliad.]

[Footnote 119: Ramsay's _Roman Antiquities_, p. 64; Hermann's
_Political Antiquities of Greece_, p. 105; Morgan, _Anc. Soc._,
p. 248.]

[Footnote 120: Such would naturally result from the
desirableness of securing unity of command. If Demosthenes had
been in sole command of the Athenian armament in the harbour of
Syracuse, and had been a _basileus_, with priestly authority,
who can doubt that some such theory of the eclipse as that
suggested by Philochorus would have been adopted, and thus one
of the world's great tragedies averted? See Grote, _Hist.
Greece_, vol. vii. chap. lx. M. Fustel de Coulanges, in his
admirable b