titude, which was
distributed among the lots and had leaders assigned to them according to
their districts and villages. The leader was required to furnish for the
war the sixth portion of a war-chariot, so as to make up a total of ten
thousand chariots; also two horses and riders for them, and a pair of
chariot-horses without a seat, accompanied by a horseman who could
fight on foot carrying a small shield, and having a charioteer who stood
behind the man-at-arms to guide the two horses; also, he was bound
to furnish two heavy-armed soldiers, two archers, two slingers, three
stone-shooters and three javelin-men, who were light-armed, and four
sailors to make up the complement of twelve hundred ships. Such was
the military order of the royal city--the order of the other nine
governments varied, and it would be wearisome to recount their several
differences.

As to offices and honours, the following was the arrangement from the
first. Each of the ten kings in his own division and in his own city had
the absolute control of the citizens, and, in most cases, of the laws,
punishing and slaying whomsoever he would. Now the order of precedence
among them and their mutual relations were regulated by the commands
of Poseidon which the law had handed down. These were inscribed by the
first kings on a pillar of orichalcum, which was situated in the
middle of the island, at the temple of Poseidon, whither the kings were
gathered together every fifth and every sixth year alternately, thus
giving equal honour to the odd and to the even number. And when they
were gathered together they consulted about their common interests, and
enquired if any one had transgressed in anything, and passed judgment,
and before they passed judgment they gave their pledges to one another
on this wise:--There were bulls who had the range of the temple of
Poseidon; and the ten kings, being left alone in the temple, after they
had offered prayers to the god that they might capture the victim which
was acceptable to him, hunted the bulls, without weapons, but with
staves and nooses; and the bull which they caught they led up to the
pillar and cut its throat over the top of it so that the blood fell upon
the sacred inscription. Now on the pillar, besides the laws, there
was inscribed an oath invoking mighty curses on the disobedient. When
therefore, after slaying the bull in the accustomed manner, they had
burnt its limbs, they filled a bowl of wine and cast