MŎNARCHĬA

( μοναρχία ), a general name for any form of government in which the supreme functions of political administration are in the hands of a single person. The term μοναρχία is applied to such governments, whether they are hereditary or elective, legal or usurped. In its commonest application, it is equivalent to βασιλεία , whether absolute or limited. But the rule of an aesymnetes or a tyrant would equally be called a μοναρχία . Hence Plutarch uses it to expre the Latin dictatura . It is by a somewhat rhetorical use of the word that it is applied now and then to the δῆμος .