The union of a royal title with priestly duties was common in ancient Italy and Greece. At Rome and in other Italian cities there was a priest called the Sacrificial King or King of the Sacred Rites (_Rex Sacrificulus_ or _Rex Sacrorum_), and his wife bore the title of Queen of the Sacred Rites.(17) In republican Athens the second magistrate of the state was called the King, and his wife the Queen; the functions of both were religious.(18) Many other Greek democracies had titular kings, whose duties, so far as they are known, seem to have been priestly.(19) At Rome the tradition was that the Sacrificial King had been appointed after the expulsion of the kings in order to offer the sacrifices which had been previously offered by the kings.(20) In Greece a similar view appears to have prevailed as to the origin of the priestly kings.(21) In itself the view is not improbable, and it is borne out by the example of Sparta, the only purely Greek state which retained the kingly form of government in historical times. For in Sparta all state sacrifices were offered by the kings as descendants of the god.(22) This combination of priestly functions with royal authority is familiar to every one. Asia Minor, for example, was the seat of various great religious capitals peopled by thousands of “sacred slaves,” and ruled by pontiffs who wielded at once temporal and spiritual authority, like the popes of mediaeval Rome. Such priest-ridden cities were Zela and Pessinus.(23) Teutonic kings, again, in the old heathen days seem to have stood in the position, and exercised the powers of high priests.(24) The Emperors of China offer public sacrifices, the details of which are regulated by the ritual books.(25) It is needless, however, to multiply examples of what is the rule rather than the exception in the early history of the kingship.