No notion seems to have been more universal among the Greeks than that it was for the community that all power was to be exercised.
In Homer's time popular assemblies existed, and claimed the right of conferring privileges on rank.

The nobles were ever jealous of the prerogative of the prince, and ever encroaching on his accidental weakness.

In his sickness, his age, or his absence, the power of the state seems to have been wrested from his hands--the prey of the chiefs, or the dispute of contending factions.

Nor was there in Greece that chivalric fealty to a person which characterizes the North.

From the earliest times it was not the MONARCH, that called forth the virtue of devotion, and inspired the enthusiasm of loyalty.
Thus, in the limited prerogative of royalty, in the jealousy of the chiefs, in the right of popular assemblies, and, above all, in the silent and unconscious spirit of political theory, we may recognise in the early monarchies of Greece the germes of their inevitable dissolution.