ABSTRACT
It was certainly the case in Crete that the magistrates were elected according to qualifications of birth and wealth. There is no evidence that they at first governed for life, but the possibility should not be overlooked. It may be no more than a coincidence that the Athenian magistrates ubsequently governed for ten years, and that the earliest complete Cretan law from Dreros ordains that a man cannot be kosmos again for ten years-carrying with it the possible implication that another clan was to have the unrestricted right to tenure for a ten-year period.2 If there is any substance in the suggestion, the three-year prohibition in Gortyna of the early period 3 may have represented an even prior stage in a successive breaking down of a hereditary principle, whose final stage was marked by the system of annual magistracies, and which is perpetuated in the life-tenure by ex-kosmoi of membership of the Council, which we have seen playing its part in some cities as a guardian of the laws.4
