This absurd usage gave rise to many abuses. In Persia[42] it produced two officers, who were called the king’s eyes, and the king’s ear, and who had the dangerous employment, I mean dangerous for the subject, of seeing and hearing for their sovereign. In Abyssinia, as I have just said, it created an officer called the king’s mouth, or voice, for, being seen by nobody, he spoke of course in the third person, “_Hear what the king says to you_”, which is the usual form of all regal mandates in Abyssinia; and what follows has the force of law. In the same stile, Josephus thus begins an edict of Cyrus king of Persia, “Cyrus the king says[43],”--And speaking of Cambyses’s rescript, “Cambyses the _king says thus_,”--And Esdras also, “Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia[44],”--And Nebuchadnezzar says to Holofernes, “Thus saith the Great King, Lord of the whole earth[45];”--and this was probably the origin of _edicts_, when writing was little used by sovereigns, and little understood by the subject. Solemn hunting-matches were always in use both with the kings of Abyssinia and those of Persia[46]. In both kingdoms it was a crime for a subject to strike the game till such time as the king had thrown his lance at it. This absurd custom was repealed by Artaxerxes Longimanus in one kingdom[47], and by Yasous the Great in the other, so late as the beginning of the last century. The kings of Abyssinia are above all laws. They are supreme in all causes ecclesiastical and civil; the land and persons of their subjects are equally their property, and every inhabitant of their kingdom is born their slave; if he bears a higher rank it is by the king’s gift; for his nearest relations are accounted nothing better. The same obtained in Persia. Aristotle calls the Persian generals and nobles, slaves of the great king[48]. Xerxes, reproving Pytheus the Lydian when seeking to excuse one of his sons from going to war, says, “You that are my slave, and bound to follow me with your wife and all your family[49].”--And Gobryas[50] says to Cyrus, “I deliver myself to you, at once your companion and your slave.” There are several kinds of bread in Abyssinia, some of different sorts of teff, and some of tocusso, which also vary in quality. The king of Abyssinia eats of wheat bread, though not of every wheat, but of that only that grows in the province of Dembea, therefore called the king’s food. It was so with the kings of Persia, who ate wheat bread, Herodotus says, but only of a particular kind, as we learn from Strabo[51]. I have shewn, in the course of the foregoing history, that it always has been, and still is the custom of the kings of Abyssinia, to marry what number of wives they choose; that these were not, therefore, all queens; but that among them there was one who was considered particularly as queen, and upon her head was placed the crown, and she was called Iteghè.