Note 985 — Chapter IX · THE COMITIA CURIATA
Reading edition
The German mode of electing a king or war-leader is well known; cf. Brunner, ibid. i. 129. The assembly also elected the chiefs of the pagi (Gaue) and of the villages; Tac. Germ. 12. 3. The Celts who were not ruled by hereditary kings elected their chiefs annually (Caesar, B. G. i. 16) or for a migration; ibid. 3. The Irish kings were generally elected from particular families; Ginnell, Brehon Laws, 66. The Slavs elected their king and other officials; Kovalevsky, ibid. 124 f., 127, 129, 138 f. In Homeric Greece the kingship was generally hereditary, but the people might elect a war-leader to take command by the side of the king; Od. xiv. 237; cf. xiii. 266. There are traces of elective kingship, lasting at least a few generations, in the great majority of early European states; Jenks, History of Politics, 87; cf. 35 f.