Great! I don't mind disagreement...
...I just hate it when it's for the wrong reasons (e.g. poor interpretation) :D
Both applications you pointed out were very appropriate, btw. And yes, God (or gods) were usually at the top of those social hierarchies.
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A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas;...despair and time eat away the bonds of iron and steel, but they are powerless against the habitual union of ideas, they can only tighten it still more; and on the soft fibres of the brain is founded the unshakable base of the soundest of Empires."
Jacques Servan, 1767