Note 103 — Chapter XX · STATE OF SOCIETY AND MANNERS AS EXHIBITED IN GRECIAN LEGEND.
Reading edition
A similar character is given of the public assemblies of the early Franks and Lombards (Pfeffel, Histoire du Droit Public en Allemagne, t. i. p. 18; Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, t. i. c. 2, p. 71).
Dionysius of Halikarnassus (ii. 12) pays rather too high a compliment to the moderation of the Grecian heroic kings.
The kings at Rome, like the Grecian heroic kings, began with an ἀρχὴ ἀνυπεύθυνος: the words of Pomponius (De Origine Juris, i. 2,) would be perhaps more exactly applicable to the latter than to the former: “Initio civitatis nostræ Populus sine certâ lege, sine jure certo, primum agere instituit: omniaque manu a Regibus gubernabantur.” Tacitus says (Ann. iii. 26), “Nobis Romulus, ut libitum, imperitaverat: dein Numa religionibus et divino jure populum devinxit, repertaque quædam a Tullo et Anco: sed præcipuus Servius Tullius sanctor legum fuit, quis etiam Reges obtemperarent.” The appointment of a Dictator under the Republic was a reproduction, for a short and definite interval, of this old unbounded authority (Cicero, De Repub. ii. 32; Zonaras, Ann. vii. 13; Dionys. Hal. v. 75).
See Rubino, Untersuchungen über Römische Verfassung und Geschichte, Cassel, 1839, buch i. abschnitt 2, pp. 112-132; and Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, i. sect. 18, pp. 81-91.