These two meetings, more or less frequently convoked, and interwoven with the earliest habits of the primitive Grecian communities, are exhibited in the monuments of the legendary age as opportunities for advising the king, and media for promulgating his intentions to the people, rather than as restraints upon his authority. Unquestionably, they must have conduced in practice to the latter result as well as to the former; but this is not the light in which the Homeric poems describe them. The chiefs, kings, princes, or gerontes—for the same word in Greek designates both an old man and a man of conspicuous rank and position—compose the council,[94] in which, according to the representations in the Iliad, the resolutions of Agamemnôn on the one side, and of Hectôr on the other, appear uniformly to prevail. The harshness and even contempt with which Hectôr treats respectful opposition from his ancient companion Polydamas,—the desponding tone and conscious inferiority of the latter, and the unanimous assent which the former obtains, even when quite in the wrong—all this is clearly set forth in the poem:[95] while in the Grecian camp we see Nestôr tendering his advice in the most submissive and delicate manner to Agamemnôn, to be adopted or rejected, as “the king of men” might determine.[96] The council is a purely consultative body, assembled, not with any power of peremptorily arresting mischievous resolves of the king, but solely for his information and guidance. He himself is the presiding (boulephŏrus, or) member[97] of council; the rest, collectively as well as individually, are his subordinates. [94] Βουλὴν δὲ πρῶτον μεγαθύμων ἷζε γερόντων (Iliad, ii. 53): compare x. 195-415. Ἴλου, παλαιοῦ ~δημογέροντος~ (xi. 371). [95] Iliad, xviii. 313.— Ἕκτορι μὲν γὰρ ἐπῄνησαν κακὰ μητιόωντι, Πουλυδάμαντι δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ οὔτις, ὃς ἐσθλὴν φράζετο βουλήν. Also, xii. 213, where Polydamas says to Hectôr,— ... ἐπεὶ οὐδὲ μὲν οὐδὲ ἔοικε Δῆμον ἐόντα παρὲξ ἀγορεύεμεν, οὔτ᾽ ἐνὶ βουλῇ, Οὔτε ποτ᾽ ἐν πολέμῳ, σὸν δὲ κράτος αἰὲν ἀέξειν. [96] Iliad, ix. 95-101. [97] Iliad, vii. 126, Πηλεὺς—Ἐσθλὸς Μυρμιδόνων βουληφόρος ἠδ᾽ ἀγορήτης.