Of old, perhaps, it was so. In ancient days a king was only a man who believed himself king and made others believe by the strength of it until the people took that strength on faith even after it was gone. It is said that no less than Alexander, considered by many the forefather of our Empire, once asked the scholiast Diogenes why it was he searched through a pile of bones. Diogenes rebuked the young Emperor, and sent him away saying that he sought the bones of Alexander’s father, but that they looked no different from those of a slave.
