Note 53 — THE WORKS AND DAYS.

Now unto kings.] Βασιλευς, which we render king, was properly, in the early times of Greece, a magistrate. The kings against whom Hesiod inveighs, are therefore simply a kind of nobles, who exercised the judicial office in Bœotia; like the twelve of Phœacia mentioned in the Odyssey. See Mitford’s History of Greece, vol. i. ch. 3.