But  the  King  did  not  have  a  monopoly  either  of
Government   or  Justice.     It  happened  occasionally  that  his


1:52


own  tyranny  became  unendurable,   and  revolt  and  revolution,
perhaps  successful  through  the  wword  of  a  rebel  or  the
thrust  of  an  assassin,   opened  the  door   to  different  institu-
tions and  put  in  his  place  an  Aristocracy  governing  with  a
less  personal  despotism.      Such  an  Oligajchy  many  times  suc-
ceeded the  Greek  tyrants  and  brought  changes  in  the   judicial
functions.     The  new  rulers  could  not  rest  their  decisions
upon  a  Divine   inspiration  with  the   same  ease  and  certainty
of  belief  as  attended  the  judgment   of  the  king,  and  they
supplied  its  place  by  a  different  artifice.     They  posed
as  the   sole  possessors  and  guardians  of  the  law,  handed
down  to  them  from  ancestral  days,  committed  wholly  to  their
care,  and  to  be  kept  rigidly  secret  from  the  general  knowledge
e^ept  as  they  themselves  should  reveal  it   in  the  process
of  adjudication.     We   shall  ere  long  see  the  Roman  pontiffs
holding  that  attitude   to  the  people  asking  in  vain  for  a
revelation  of  their  law.     The  claim  of  these  officials  was
largely  a  pretence.     There  was  no  real  law  in  their  custody.
There  were  customs  of   a  partly  legal  character,  possibly
the  knowledge  of  a  few  imperfect  precedents,  and  the   control
and  construction  of  some  rigid  and  complicated  ceremonies,
but  wherever  such  an  Aristocracy  assumed  the   judicial  duty
its  decrees,  like  those  of  the  King,  were  merely  separate
and  arbitrary  decision  froming  no  rule  and  developing  no  law.
