We saw how the law of heredity was applied to the offices of sachems and chiefs among the Iroquois and other Indians. All offices were subject to the vote of the gentiles and for this reason hereditary in the gens. A vacancy was filled preferably by the next gentile relative—the brother or the sister's son—unless good reasons existed for passing him. That in Greece, under paternal law, the office of basileus was generally transmitted to the son or one of the sons, indicates only that the probability of succession by public election was in favor of the sons. It implies by no means a legal succession without a vote of the people. We here perceive simply the first rudiments of segregated families of aristocrats among Iroquois and Greeks, which led to a hereditary leadership or monarchy in Greece. Hence the facts are in favor of the opinion that among Greeks the basileus was either elected by the people or at last was subject to the indorsement of their appointed organs, the council or agora, as was the case with the Roman king (rex).
In the Iliad the ruler of men, Agamemnon, does not appear as the supreme king of the Greeks, but as general in chief of a federal army besieging a city. And when dissensions had broken out among the Greeks, it is this quality which Odysseus points out in a famous passage: "Evil is the rule of the many; let one be the ruler, one the chief" (to which the popular verse about the scepter was added later on). Odysseus does not lecture on the form of government, but demands obedience to the general in chief.
Considering that the Greeks before Troy appear only in the character of an army, the proceedings of the agora are sufficiently democratic. In referring to presents, that is the division of the spoils, Achilles always leaves the division, not to Agamemnon or some other basileus, but to the "sons of the Achaeans," the people. The attributes, descendant of Zeus,