5. Incidentally it is pleasing to find that, though Solomon put Adonijah to death, he stood in close and kindly relations with his other brothers, and gave high promotions to the sons of the brothers who stood nearest to him in age, in one of whom we see the destined ancestor of the future Messiah.[212] 6. The growth of imposing officialism, and its accompanying gulf between the king and his people, is marked by the first appearance of "the chamberlain" as a new functionary. On him fell the arrangement of court pageants and court etiquette. The chamberlain in despotic Eastern courts becomes a personage of immense importance, because he controls the right of admission into the royal presence. Such officers, even when chosen from the lowest rank of slaves--like Eutropius the eunuch-minister of Arcadius,[213] or Olivier le Daim, the barber-minister of Louis XI.--often absorb no mean part of the influence of the sovereign with whom they are brought into daily connexion. In the court of Solomon the chamberlain stands only ninth in order; but three centuries later, in the days of Hezekiah, he has become the greatest of the officials, and "Eliakim who was over the household" is placed before Shebna, the influential scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph the recorder.[214] 7. Last on the list stands the minister who has the ominous title of _al-ham-Mas_, or "over the tribute." The Mas means the "levy," corvée, or forced labour. In other words, Adoram was overseer of the soccagers. Saul had required an overseer of the flocks, and David a guardian of the treasury, but Adoram is not mentioned till late in his reign.[215] The _gravamen_ of David's numbering of the people seems to have lain in the intention to subject them to a poll tax, or to personal service, such as had become necessary to maintain the expenses of the court. It is obvious that, as royalty developed from the conception of the theocratic king to that of the Oriental despot, the stern warning of Samuel to the people of Israel was more and more fulfilled. They had said, "Nay, but we will have a king to reign over us, when Jehovah was their king"; and Samuel had told them how much less blessed was bondage with ease than their strenuous liberty. He had warned them that their king would take their sons for his runners and charioteers and reapers and soldiers and armourers, and their daughters for his perfumers and confectioners; and that he would seize their fields and vineyards for his courtiers, and claim the tithes of their possession, and use their asses, and put their oxen to his work. The word "_Mas_" representing soccage, serfdom, forced labour (corvée; Germ., _Frohndienst_), first became odiously familiar in the days of Solomon.