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 book _La Cite antique_, pp. 205-210, makes the priestly function of the king primitive, and the military function secondary; which is entirely inconsistent with what we know of barbarous races.] [Footnote 121: It is worthy of note that the archon who retained the priestly function was called _basileus_, showing perhaps that at that time this had come to be most prominent among the royal functions, or more likely that it was the one with which reformers had some religious scruples about interfering. The Romans, too, retained part of the king's priestly function in an officer called _rex sacrorum_, whose duty was at times to offer a sacrifice in the forum, and then run away as fast as legs could carry him,--[Greek: hen thysas ho basileus, kata tachos apeisi pheugon ex agoras] (!) Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 63.] [Sidenote: Mediaeval kingship.]