4. In early times every Doric state must have had a gerusia; but CRETE is the only place of whose council accounts have been preserved, and these represent it in precisely the same light as that of Sparta. It was, we are informed, armed with large political and legislative powers, and laid its decrees in a matured state before the general assembly, for its approval or rejection.(396) It decided, without appeal to written laws, upon its own judgment, and was responsible to no one.(397) The members were chosen from those persons who had before filled the supreme magistracy (the cosmi), not, however, until after a fresh examination of their fitness.(398) The office lasted for life, as at Sparta.(399) The _princeps senatus_ was styled βουλῆς πρείγιστος.(400) In ELIS, also, whose government resembled that of Sparta, a gerusia was a very important part of the constitution. It consisted of ninety members, who were chosen for their lifetime from oligarchical families;(401) but in other respects the election was the same as at Sparta, and therefore they were chosen by the whole people. Yet there was also a larger council of 600,(402) which may have been an aristocratical committee selected from the popular assembly. Thus much at least is clear, that the power of the people was very limited; and that, as Aristotle says, there was one oligarchy within another.(403) 5. To the consideration of the gerusia may be joined the inquiry concerning the kingly office in Sparta and other Doric states, as being a cognate element of the constitution. The Doric royalty was a continuation of the heroic or Homeric; and neither in the one nor in the other are we to look for that despotic power, with which the Greeks were not acquainted until they had seen it in foreign countries. In those early times the king, together with his council, was supreme ruler and judge, but not without it; he was also chief commander in war, and as such possessed a large executive authority, as circumstances required. On the whole, however, his station with regard to the nobles was that of an equal; and his office, although for the most part hereditary, could yet be transferred to another family of the aristocracy. He ruled over the common people either in an arbitrary manner, as the suitors in Ithaca, or as a mild father, like Ulysses.(404) His office on the whole bore an analogy to the power of Zeus; and it received a religious confirmation from the circumstance of his presiding at and performing the great public sacrifices with the assistance of soothsayers.