In order to gain a clear understanding of the processes and principles involved in the early Grecian form of government, it first becomes necessary briefly to review the various steps in the growth of the governmental functions through two ethnical periods.
The tribe is a community of related individuals possessed of equal rights and privileges, and bound by equal duties and responsibilities. It has been shown that in the Lower Status of barbarism the government consisted of only one power—a council of chiefs elected by the people. During the Middle Status of barbarism two powers appear,—the civil and military functions have become separated, the duties of a military commander being co-ordinated with those of a council of chiefs. The military commander, however, has not succeeded in drawing to himself the powers of a ruler or king. In the Second Status of barbarism tribes have not begun to confederate. A single tribe, its members bound together by the tie of kinship and united by common rights and responsibilities, owning their lands in common, and each contributing his share toward the common defence, so long as it was able to maintain its independence, had little need for an elaborate form of government. As yet no strifes engendered by envy and extreme selfishness had arisen to disturb the simplicity of their lives, or to check the development of those early principles of liberty and fraternity which were the natural inheritance of the gens. A council of chiefs elected by the gentes and receiving all its powers from the people had thus far performed all the duties of government.
After the Upper Status of barbarism is reached we find confederated tribes dwelling together in walled cities surrounded by embankments, and a state of affairs existing which called for a further differentiation of the functions of government, and a redistribution of the powers and responsibilities of the people. In process of time, with the accumulation of property in masses in the hands of the few, and the consequent rise of an aristocracy, a government founded on wealth, or on a territorial basis, rather than on the personal relations of an individual to his gens, was demanded; and, finally, those principles, rights, and privileges which constitute a pure democracy, and which had always formed the basis of gentile institutions were gradually ignored; that personal influence which was originally exercised by each and every gentilis being transferred to a privileged class—a class which controlled the wealth, and at the head of which was the military commander or _basileus_. Such was the condition of Grecian society as it first appears in history.