2. In the time of Aristotle the power of the cosmi had acquired a despotic character. The number of the families from which they were chosen had become less numerous; individual families had acquired an immediate influence upon the government, and their disputes had created parties, in which the whole nation took a share. The constitution had been thus converted into a narrow oligarchy; the democratic element, the public assembly, being too feeble to put an end to these dissensions. To this was added, at a time when men had ceased to venerate ancient customs, a want of written laws. When powerful families feared for the issue of a lawsuit, they prevented the election of the cosmi, and an ἀκοσμία, as it was called, arose,(584) in which the chief families and their dependents were opposed to one another as enemies. This state of things had at that time been introduced in several of the chief cities of Crete: at the time, however, when the alliance between the Priansii and Hierapytnii (which is still extant) was agreed to, the government appears to have been better regulated, and the powers of the aristocracy to have been considerably diminished. But before the time of Polybius a complete revolution had taken place, by which the power of the aristocracy was abolished, and the election of all magistrates founded on democratic principles;(585) a revolution which gradually overthrew all the ancient institutions; so that the writer just mentioned cannot discover the least resemblance between the Spartan and Cretan governments, the original similarity of which cannot be doubted. It is worthy of remark that cosmi, as far as we know, were the chief magistrates in all the cities of Crete; and their constitutions were in all essential points the same: a proof that these cities, although originally founded by different tribes, were in their political institutions determined by the governing, that is, the Doric race.(586) In the time of Plato, Cnosus was still, as in the time of Minos, considered the chief seat of ancient Cretan institutions; Ephorus, on the other hand, observes that they had been less preserved in this town than among the Lyctians, Gortynians, and other small cities.(587)