nt of the object he abdicated his power. But the
appointment of Aesymnetes can hardly be called a regular form of
government. They soon became obsolete--the mere creatures of
occasion. While they lasted, they bore a strong resemblance to the
Roman dictators--a resemblance remarked by Dionysius, who quotes
Theophrastus as agreeing with Aristotle in his account of the
Aesymnetes.

[158] For, as the great Florentine has well observed, "To found well
a government, one man is the best--once established, the care and
execution of the laws should be transferred to many."--(Machiavel.
Discor., lib. i., c. 9.) And thus a tyranny builds the edifice, which
the republic hastens to inhabit.

[159] That of Orthagoras and his sons in Sicyon. "Of all
governments," says Aristotle, "that of an oligarchy, or of a tyrant,
is the least permanent." A quotation that cannot be too often pressed
on the memory of those reasoners who insist so much on the brief
duration of the ancient republics.

[160] Besides the representation necessary to confederacies--such as
the Amphictyonic League, etc., a representative system was adopted at
Mantinea, where the officers were named by deputies chosen by the
people. "This form of democracy," says Aristotle, "existed among the
shepherds and husbandmen of Arcadia;" and was probably not uncommon
with the ancient Pelasgians. But the myrioi of Arcadia had not the
legislative power.

[161] "Then to the lute's soft voice prolong the night,
Music, the banquet's most refined delight."
Pope's Odyssey, book xxi., 473.

It is stronger in the original--

Moltae kai phormingi tu gar t'anathaemata daitos.

[162] Iliad, book ix., Pope's translation, line 250.

[163] Heyne, F. Clinton, etc.

[164] Pope's translation, b. iv., line 75, etc.

[165] At least this passage is sufficient to refute the arguments of
Mr. Mitford, and men more learned than that historian, who, in taking
for their premises as an indisputable fact the extraordinary
assumption, that Homer never once has alluded to the return of the
Heraclidae, arrive at a conclusion very illogical, even if the
premises were true, viz., that therefore Homer preceded the date of
that great revolution.

[166] I own that this seems to me the most probable way of accounting
for the singular and otherwise disproportioned importance attached by
the ancient poets to that episode in the Trojan war, which re