ABSTRACT
The aristocratic states thus developed forms of public power primarily to consolidate the rule of a privileged citizenry over the non-citizen members of the community, and especially the peasant serfs. There was another purpose also in this promotion of officialdom. The authority of the elders of the clans, from whom higher officials were recruited, had to be supported, through the fabric of the growing state apparatus, by the armed citizen youth. This military body defended the state against external enemies. Internally it constituted a kind of permanent police force, personifying the power of the state.
