The trait which is truly most worthy of note in the polities of Homeric Greece, is also that which is so peculiar to them; namely, the substantive weight and influence which belonged to speech as an instrument of government; and of this power by much the most remarkable development is in its less confined and more popular application to the Assembly. This power of speech was essentially a power to be exercised over numbers, and with the safeguards of publicity, by man among his fellow-men. It was also essentially an instrument addressing itself to reason and free will, and acknowledging their authority. No government which sought its power in force, as opposed to reason, has at any time used this form of deception. The world has seen absolutism deck itself with the titles and mere forms of freedom, or seek shelter under its naked abstractions: but from the exercise of free speech as an instrument of state, it has always shrunk with an instinctive horror. One mode of proving the power of speech in the heroic age is, by showing what place it occupied in the thoughts of men, as they are to be gathered from their language. Another mode is, by pointing to its connection, in practical examples, with this or that course of action, adopted or shunned. A third is, by giving evidence of the earnestness with which the art was prosecuted, and the depth and comprehensiveness of the conceptions from which it derived its form. We shall presently trace the course of public affairs, as they were managed by the Greeks of the heroic age in their public assemblies. For the present, let us endeavour to collect the true sense of Homer respecting oratory from his language concerning it, from the characters with whom he has particularly connected it, and from the knowledge which he may be found to have possessed of its resources. Although it is common to regard the Iliad as a poem having battle for its theme, yet it is in truth not less a monument of policy than of war; and in this respect it is even more broadly distinguished, than in most others, from later epics. The adjectives in Homer are in very many cases the key to his inner mind: and among them all there is none of which this is more true, than the grand epithet κυδιάνειρα. He confines it strictly to two subjects, battle and debate, the clash of swords and the wrestling of minds. Of Achilles, he says in the First Book[211], (490) [211] He uses the epithet for battle in Il. iv. 225, 6. 124, 7. 113, 8. 448, 12. 325, 13. 270, 14. 155, and 24. 391. οὔτε ποτ’ εἰς ἀγορὴν πωλέσκετο κυδιάνειραν, οὔτε ποτ’ ἐς πόλεμον. In every other passage where he employs the word, it is attached to the substantive μάχη. Thus with him it was in two fields, that man was to seek for glory; partly in the fight, and partly in the Assembly.