Question II. Whence [came there] so many Kings?

I have already said elsewhere, in [my commentary on] Tobit (ch. 2, q. 3), [that] Kings of this kind were not of that power, majesty, and amplitude of cities and lands as ours are today; but [that] the Lords of nearly single, somewhat larger cities — especially if certain townships had been joined [to them] — were called “Kings”; most of them, indeed, not so great as certain “Counts and Barons” are today, or certainly not much greater. And [that] this manner of “Kings” existed among certain [peoples] of old, Aristotle shows (Politics 3); Strabo (bk. 16): “Aradus,” he says, “[was ruled] as each of the Phoenician cities had a King”; Pliny (bk. 6, ch. 9): “the strategiae or prefectures were once kingdoms,” he says; and (ch. 15): “even today 45 Kings of the Ethiopians are reported.” Whence Postellus, in his Cosmography: “in that infantile, or childish, age, all coveted the name of King.” And his disciple Genebrardus (on Ps. 134, n. 10): “those first ages called ‘Kings’ as many as held the supreme rule in their [own] regions, even though narrowly circumscribed.” But why does the same Genebrardus say, in that place, [that] thirty-one “Kings” are recorded [as] finished off by Joshua in one day? Where is this recorded in the Bible? Here indeed we hear of 31 Kings finished off by him — but “not in one day”; nay rather, over a long time, as ch. 11, v. 18 expressly hands down, concerning which [in] the following question. Certainly, that I may return to the name of “King”: in the compendium of Josephus Gorionides [Josippon], Judas Maccabaeus is called “King”; and in the same history (ch. 27), the Roman Consuls are called “Kings.” Aemilius Probus [Nepos] calls the Ephors of the Carthaginians — who by the Punic word were called “Suffetes,” as I shall say in [the book of] Judges — “two Kings.” And this nomenclature of “Kings” is now so changed, that Lipsius (Centuria 2, epistle 57) takes it ill [that] one is called by Bembo “King of Urbino, of Mantua,” and of similar places, who ought to be called “Duke” or “Petty-king [Regulus].”