kingship
kingship(basileia) The Mycenaean political system (see Mycenaean civilization) was monarchic, with the king (wanax) at the head of a palace-centred economy; the 10th-cent. bc ‘hero's tomb’ at Lefkandi may imply some limited continuity into the Dark Age. Kingship appears to have been rare later: Homer borrows elements from Mycenae and the near east, but seems essentially to be describing an aristocratic world, in which the word basileus is often used in the plural of an office-holding nobility. The earliest true monarchies were the 7th–6th-cent. tyrannies, which were regarded as aberrations; the Spartan dual ‘kingship’ (see Sparta) is a form of hereditary but non-monarchic military leadership. The Classical period knew kingship only from myth and as a barbarian form of rule, found in...
[The entire page is 850 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
