To early royalty, as Homer describes it in Greece and as we may well imagine it elsewhere, there were always two adjuncts: one the “old men,” the men of weight, the council, the βουλή , of which the king asked advice, from the debates in which the king tried to learn what he could do and what he ought to do. Besides this there was the ἀγορά , the purely listening assembly, as some have called it, but the tentative assembly, as I think it might best be called. The king came down to his assembled people in form to announce his will, but in reality, speaking in very modern words, to “feel his way.” He was sacred, no doubt; and popular, very likely; still he was half like a popular Premier speaking to a high-spirited chamber; there were limits to his authority and power⁠—limits which he would discover by trying whether eager cheers received his mandate, or only hollow murmurs and a thinking silence.