The Historians' History of the World 03

In Elis the monarchical form of government continued for some generations in the line of Oxylus, but appears to have ceased there earlier than at Pisa, which, at the time when it was conquered and destroyed by the Eleans, was ruled by chiefs, who were probably legitimate kings. Immediately after the conquest, in the fiftieth Olympiad, the dignity of hellanodicæ, which had been held by the kings of Elis, or shared by them with those of Pisa, was assigned to two Elean officers by lot, a proof that royalty was then extinct. The constitution by which it was replaced seems to have been rigidly aristocratical, perhaps no other than the narrow oligarchy described by Aristotle,—who observes that the whole number of citizens exercising any political functions was small—confined, perhaps to the six hundred mentioned by Thucydides; and that the senate, originally composed of ninety members, who held their office for life, and filled up vacancies at their pleasure, had been gradually reduced to a very few. Elis, the capital, remained in a condition like that of the above-mentioned Arcadian towns until the Persian War, when the inhabitants of many villages were collected in its precincts. This was probably attended by other changes of a democratical nature—perhaps by the limitation which one Phormis is said to have effected in the power of the senate—and henceforth the number of the hellanodicæ corresponded to that of the tribes or regions into which the Elean territory was divided; so that, whenever any of these regions was lost by the chance of war, the number of the hellanodicæ was proportionately reduced. So too the matrons who presided at the games in honour of Hera, in which the Elean virgins contended at Olympia, were chosen in equal number from each of the tribes.

In Achaia, the royal dignity was transmitted in the line of Tisamenus down to Ogyges, whose sons, affecting despotic power, were deposed, and the government was changed to a democracy, which is said to have possessed a high reputation. From Pausanias it would rather seem as if the title of king had been held by a number of petty chiefs at once. If so, the revolution must have had its origin in causes more general than those assigned to it by Polybius. It was probably accelerated by the number of Achæan emigrants who sought refuge in Achaia from other parts of the Peloponnesus, and who soon crowded the country, till it was relieved by its Italian colonies. What Polybius and Strabo term a democracy may however have been a polity, or a very liberal and well-tempered form of oligarchy. Of its details we know nothing; nor are we informed in what relation the twelve principal Achaian towns—a division adopted from the Ionians—stood to the hamlets, of which each had seven or eight in its territory, like those of Tegea and Mantinea. As little are we able to describe the constitution of the confederacy in which the twelve states were now united.

ARGOS, ÆGINA, AND EPIDAURUS