"Here, then, is a plain departure from truth, and even from reasonable probability. It is indeed a mere omission which does not offend the reader; but such inaccuracies suggest serious reflections. If the epic poets ignore the importance of the masses on the battlefield, is it not likely that they underrate it in the public assemblies? Is it not possible that here too, to please their patrons, they describe the glorious ages of the past as the days when the assembled people would not question the superior wisdom of their betters, but merely assembled to be taught and to applaud? I cannot, therefore, as Mr. Grote does, accept the political condition of things in the Homeric poems, especially in the Iliad, as a safe guide to the political life of Greece in the poet's own day. "The figure of Thersites seems drawn with special spite and venom, as a satire upon the first critics that rose up among the assembled people to question the divine right of kings to do wrong. We may be sure the real Thersites, from whom the poet drew his picture, was a very different and a far more serious power in debate than the misshapen buffoon of the Iliad. But the king who had been thwarted and exposed by him in the day would, over his cups in the evening, enjoy the poet's travesty, and long for the good old times when he could put down all impertinent criticism by the stroke of his knotty sceptre. The Homeric Agora could hardly have existed had it been so idle a form as the poets represent. But as the lower classes were carefully marshaled on the battle-field, from a full sense of the importance which the poet denies them, so they were marshaled in the public assembly, where we may be sure their weight told with equal effect, though the poet neglected it for the greater glory of the counseling chiefs." [Footnote: "Social Life in Greece, from Homer to Menander," by Rev. J. P. Mahaffy.] Notwithstanding all this, as HEEREN says, "Homer is the best source of information that we possess respecting the Heroic Age." The form of government that prevailed among the early Greeks, especially after the Pelasgic race had yielded to the more warlike and adventurous Hellenes, was evidently that of the kingly order, on a democratic basis, although it is difficult to ascertain the precise extent of the royal prerogatives. In all the Grecian states there appears to have been an hereditary class of chiefs or nobles, distinguished from the common freemen or people by titles of honor, superior wealth, dignity, valor, and noble birth; which latter implied no less than a descent from the gods themselves, to whom every princely house seems to have traced its origin.