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Title: The Political Institutions of the Ancient Greeks

Author: Basil Edward Hammond

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Language: English

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  THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
  OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS.




  London: C. J. CLAY AND SONS,

  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,

  AVE MARIA LANE.

  Glasgow: 263, ARGYLE STREET.

  [Illustration: Coat of arms]

  Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS.

  New York: MACMILLAN AND CO.




  THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
  OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS

  BY

  BASIL EDWARD HAMMOND

  FELLOW AND LECTURER, TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE:
  UNIVERSITY LECTURER IN HISTORY.


  LONDON:

  C. J. CLAY AND SONS,

  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,

  AVE MARIA LANE.

  1895

  [_All Rights reserved._]




  Cambridge:

  PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY,

  AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.




PREFACE.


These chapters are not intended to form a whole by themselves. They
are merely an enlarged version of a course of lectures in which
European Political Institutions in general were treated historically
and comparatively: and as I wish hereafter to make similar enlarged
versions of the other parts of the course and to append them to what I
have here written, I hope that these chapters on the Greek Institutions
may prove to be only a first instalment of a book on Comparative
Politics. The following pages contain what their title indicates, a
description and examination of Greek governments: but in view of the
additions which may probably be made to them, they also contain a small
amount of matter which is necessary as a preliminary to an examination
of European governments in general.

The attention which I have paid to method and definitions of terms
might lead my readers to suppose that I conceive Comparative Politics
to be a science. It is only fair to them to express the opinions
that I have formed on the matter. I do think that the part of the
comparative study of Politics, which deals with barbaric and more
particularly with non-European peoples and their governments, has been
placed on a scientific footing by Mr Herbert Spencer in his _Political
Institutions_, though he has attained this great result by a method
which is not purely comparative, and which, as it takes no heed of
historical sequence of events, has not stood him in good stead where
he treats of historical European communities and their constitutions.
The part--the most interesting and important part--of the study, that
which is concerned with civilised peoples and governments, seems to me
not yet to be science. It does indeed enable us to lay down empirical
rules, or rules founded solely on observation, about peoples and
governments, just as the study of a language enables a grammarian to
lay down empirical rules about words and sentences. And further, among
the rules which have been laid down, there are some, (their number is,
I believe, very small,) which seem to be distinguished from the rest
in two respects, firstly because they are not subject to any known
exception, and secondly because some of the causes which lie at the
root of them have been discovered: and these rules have something of
the character of scientific laws, or rules which are true, not only in
all known instances, but universally. But, on the other hand, most of
the rules which have as yet been laid down are of a different sort,
and, either because they are vague and indefinite, or because they are
subject to many exceptions, or for other like reasons, nothing of the
nature of a scientific law has been founded on them.

It is however common to all studies to be imperfect and only half
conclusive while they are in their infancy: many studies, especially
among those which are based on comparisons, have before now progressed
within the lapse of a few generations from a very lowly condition to
the status of complete inductive sciences: and it is hard to see why
the same good fortune should not at some future time fall to the lot of
Comparative Politics.

The classification of European political bodies, which is given in my
second chapter, was suggested to me in its main outlines by a lecture
which I heard delivered in Cambridge many years ago by my friend Sir
John Seeley: the usefulness of some such classification was made clear
to me some years later but yet long ago by a course of lectures which
was given by another friend Professor Henry Sidgwick: and I have
constructed the classification as it stands in the second chapter with
the intention of making it serve as a framework both for what I have
here written about the Greeks and their governments and for what I
hope to write hereafter about other European peoples and governments.
To both the gentlemen whom I have named I desire to express my hearty
thanks for the help and guidance that their lectures have given me in
my attempts to study Politics methodically.

  B. E. HAMMOND.

  TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
  _December 12, 1894._




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER                                               PAGE

  I. THE ARYAN RACES                                      1

  II. A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES       8

  III. GREEK POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. HEROIC MONARCHIES   23

  IV. SPARTA                                             37

  V. THE GREEK CITIES                                    57

  VI. ARISTOTLE'S CLASSIFICATION OF POLITIES             99

  VII. THE ACHÆAN LEAGUE                                114


ERRATUM.

Page 14, line 21, _for_ empires _read_ empire.




CHAPTER I.

THE ARYAN RACES.


It is proved by similarities in the languages of the European peoples
and the Hindus and the Persians that they had in some sense a common
origin. It is not indeed probable that they are sprung from the same
parents: but their ancestors once formed a group of closely associated
peoples who lived beside one another as neighbours and used either
the same language or dialects of the same language. The peoples which
had in this sense a common origin comprise all those that belong to
the stocks of the Hindus, the Persians, the Celts, the Greeks, the
Italians, the Teutons and the Slavs, and are known collectively as the
Aryans or as the Indo-European peoples.

The evidence of language not only proves that the Aryans lived together
as neighbours, but also tells us something about their pursuits and
habits. From the languages of the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans and
the ancient Hindus we learn that the forefathers of these peoples
before they left their common dwelling-place were acquainted with the
most important domestic animals and had a name for each of them: for
the words _cow_, German _Kuh_, Sanskrit _gâus_, Greek βοῦς, Latin
_bos_, are mere variations from an Aryan word whose meaning they
retain unaltered: the same is true of the word _ewe_, Sanskrit _avis_,
Greek ὄϊς, Latin _ovis_; of _goose_, German _Gans_, Sanskrit _hansas_,
Greek χήν, Latin _anser_; of _sow_, German _Sau_, Sanskrit _sû_, Greek
σύς or ὕς, Latin _sus_; of _hound_, German _Hund_, Sanskrit _çvan_,
Greek κύων, Latin _canis_; and of Sanskrit _açvas_, Greek ἵππος, Latin
_equus_, Saxon _eoh_ or _ehu_.

In like manner the words _door_, German _Thüre_, Sanskrit _dvaras_,
Greek θύρα, Latin _fores_, prove that the Aryans used a word bearing
the same meaning and therefore their dwellings were something more
than mere tents or moveable huts. _Yoke_, German _Joch_, Sanskrit
_jugam_, Greek ξυγόν, Latin _jugum_, prove that they employed cattle
for draught; ἄξων, Latin _axis_, Sanskrit _akshas_ (axle and cart),
Old High German _ahsa_ (axle) indicate the use of carts; the Sanskrit
_nâus_, Greek ναῦς, Latin _navis_, German _Nachen_, show that they
could make boats: the Sanskrit _aritram_ (an oar or paddle[1]), Greek
ἐρετμός, Latin _remus_ (_resmus_), prove that they propelled them by
rowing or paddling. The absence however of common words for a mast, a
sail, the sea, indicate that the waters that they knew were rivers or
small lakes and that they did not possess the art of getting propulsion
from the wind[2].

  [1] See Curtius, _Grundzüge der Griechischen Etymologie_, under the
  word ἀρόω.

  [2] The evidence derived from comparison of the Greek, Latin
  and Sanskrit is taken from Mommsen, _History of Rome_, English
  translation, vol. I. p. 15: the additional evidence from German
  languages from Max Müller, _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. II.
  pp. 22, 44. Curtius, _Grundzüge der Griechischen Etymologie_, has been
  used for verification.

The Aryans were not entirely ignorant of plants that produce corn: for
there was an Aryan word from which are descended the Sanskrit _yavas_
(barley), the Greek ζειά (spelt, a kind of grain) and _jáva_ in Zend
(or Old Persian), Slavic and Lithuanian. Mommsen, noticing only the
Sanskrit and the Greek, and observing the difference of meaning, thinks
that the Aryans while they were all together merely gathered and ate
the grains of barley and spelt that grew wild. A recent English writer
points out the wide diffusion of the words descended from the Aryan
word, and thinks it could not have left traces of its existence in
so many languages unless corn had been cultivated by the Aryans and
had thus become well known to them[3]. This inference seems to be
fair: but the absence of traces of other original Aryan words for
agricultural products or instruments shows clearly that agriculture
played only a subordinate part in their economy. It is probable that
they sowed some kind of grain in little plots of ground that scarcely
needed tillage.

  [3] Mommsen, _Hist. Rome_, vol. I. p. 16. Rendall, _The Cradle of the
  Aryans_, p. 11.

The results of the evidence which has been adduced may be summed up by
saying that the forefathers of the Greeks, Romans, Germans and Hindus,
while they still occupied their common Aryan home, lived not in tents
but in houses with doors, and were therefore not mere wanderers but had
more or less permanent abodes: they were not savages dependent on wild
animals and wild fruits for subsistence, but had sheep and cattle to
supply them with flesh and milk: they had carts on wheels and knew how
to yoke their oxen and horses: they made boats and propelled them on
their rivers or lakes with oars or paddles: and they were acquainted
with some kinds of grain, but were either ignorant of agriculture or
cared little for it.

From the condition in which the Aryans lived we may safely infer that
they were not totally devoid of political institutions. All men live
under government except a few to whom government is either impossible
or useless. The multitude of uncivilised races who inhabit or have
inhabited the earth may be divided into two great classes; the first
and lower class consisting of those who depend for subsistence solely
on wild plants and wild animals, the second and upper class comprising
all those who, in addition to the wild fruits that they may gather and
the wild animals that they may kill, also have tame cattle to supply
them with flesh and milk or cultivated plants that produce grain. The
lower class are known either as savages or as hunting peoples: the
upper, for want of a better name, may be designated as barbarians. In
the lower class, the savages and hunting peoples, a very small number
of peoples are found who have been prevented by specially adverse
circumstances from having any governments: but in the rest of the lower
class and in all the upper class of uncivilised peoples the existence
of some kind of government is universal.

In illustration and proof of these statements some facts may be cited.
The Bushmen of South Africa were at the beginning of the present
century a race of savages who wandered over an arid sloping plain that
lies to the South of the Orange River. They just contrived to maintain
a miserable existence on the roots that they could grub up and on the
flesh of animals that they shot with poisoned arrows or entrapped in
pitfalls: but, as every family was compelled to keep itself isolated
from all neighbours in order to have enough to eat, government was
impossible. Other races resembling the Bushmen in the isolation of
their families and in having no government are the Rock Veddahs in
Ceylon and the Digger Indians in California. A slightly different case
occurs in the regions near the North Pole. The Esquimaux, who live
by catching seals and other marine animals, are not precluded from
grouping their huts in small clusters: but nature offers so little
reward to any combined effort of a large number of men that they have
never cared to form political communities: and they afford perhaps
the only example of human beings living as neighbours but without
government. Leaving these very exceptional cases, we next observe a
group of hunting peoples with whom nature dealt less unkindly. Some
forty years ago, almost the only inhabitants of the western part of
British North America, now known as Manitoba, were a number of Red
Indian tribes who supported themselves entirely by the chase, killing
buffalo for food and other animals for their furs, which they passed on
to traders in return for such commodities as the traders brought them.
During the greater part of the year each Red Indian family wandered
almost as much apart from communication with mankind as did the
Bushmen, for so the wild animals could most advantageously be pursued:
and of course while they remained in dispersion had no government.
But at certain seasons in every year a whole tribe came together for
a great buffalo hunt: at other times they assembled to organize a war
against some neighbouring tribe: and whenever they met for either
purpose they subjected themselves to an efficient government, which
included even a system of police. Apart from the groups of peoples whom
I have mentioned, no great number of savage peoples seems to have been
observed in recent times: the New Zealanders when first the Europeans
went among them were savages and cannibals, and yet they lived under
well established kingly governments.

With regard to the upper class of uncivilised peoples, the barbarians,
who either keep cattle or grow corn or do both, it will suffice to
say that observation of all of them (and they are extremely numerous)
proves that all of them have governments. Nor is the fact hard to
understand: for in their case it is never necessary for single families
to live in isolation: they do as a matter of fact live collected
together in groups of families, and each group gains numberless
advantages by living together and acting together: and, where men live
together and act together, government naturally comes into existence.
Those of the barbarian peoples who, like the Aryans, have more or less
fixed abodes, always group themselves in small independent tribes
and adopt such simple forms of government as are suited to their
circumstances. There are many different kinds of tribal governments.
In nearly all of them a small number of men distinguished for prowess
daring or intelligence have some authority over the rest: sometimes
above these chiefs there is a higher chief or king: and sometimes the
whole body of warriors may be called together to hear what the chiefs
have to say to them. Among the ancient Aryans all the governments were
no doubt tribal governments: but it is impossible to say that any one
of the various kinds of tribal governments prevailed to the exclusion
of the rest[4].

  [4] The classification of uncivilised peoples as hunting peoples
  and peoples with cattle forms part of the classification used by
  John Stuart Mill at the beginning of his _Political Economy_: and it
  is adopted and fully worked out by Mr Lewis Morgan in his _Ancient
  Society_.

  All the statements of a general kind which I have made about
  uncivilised peoples have been verified by reference to _Descriptive
  Sociology, Division I._, an encyclopædia of facts relating to such
  peoples, which was designed by Mr Herbert Spencer and compiled by
  Professor Duncan. The advantages which uncivilised men gain from
  living and acting together and from having a government are explained
  by Mr Herbert Spencer in his _Political Institutions_, §§ 440-442.

  My authorities for the individual peoples which have been noticed are
  these: for the Bushmen, Burchell, _Travels_ (1822), and Thompson,
  _Travels_ (1827): for the Esquimaux, C. F. Hall, _Life with the
  Esquimaux_ (1864): for the Red Indians, H. Y. Hind, _The Canadian
  Red River Exploring Expedition_ (1860). All these books are cited in
  _Descriptive Sociology_.

When the Aryans had made such progress as I have described they divided
into two groups: one group contained the forefathers of the Europeans,
the other the forefathers of the Hindus and Persians. Whether the
separation arose through a migration of only the Europeans or of only
the Asiatics or from migrations of both Europeans and Asiatics cannot
be determined. It is certain however that after the division of the
stocks took place the Europeans still remained together long enough
to acquire in common the art of ploughing. The English word to _ear_,
Anglo-Saxon _erian_, Gothic _erjan_, Old High German _eren_, Latin
_arare_, Greek ἀρόειν, Irish _araim_ (I plough) are mere variations
of a single word and show that when ploughing was introduced the
European stocks were still in close neighbourhood with one another and
all adopted dialectic varieties of the same sound to indicate the new
method of breaking up the soil[5].

  [5] It may be objected that the Goths from about 250 A.D. were living
  close to the Greeks, and the Old Germans from about 50 B.C. had the
  Romans as their neighbours, and possibly learned the art of ploughing
  from these neighbours and borrowed a name for it. It seems enough,
  however, to answer that if the Goths had taken a word from ἀρόειν they
  would have chosen something more like the pattern word than _erjan_:
  in like manner if the Germans had borrowed from _arare_ they would
  hardly have formed _eren_.

The region in which the forefathers of the Europeans lived together
cannot be precisely ascertained: the hypothesis that it was in central
Europe seems to fit in best with the geographical distribution of their
descendants and the relationships between their languages.

The invention of the art of ploughing opened new possibilities for the
European peoples: for an agricultural people has far better chances
than a people of herdsmen of accumulating wealth and making progress
in the useful arts. But not all of them cared to make use of the new
art and to become tillers of the soil. Those who took their homes amid
the forests of central Europe still continued the life of hunters and
herdsmen which had once been common to all the Aryans. Others devoted
themselves to agricultural pursuits with delight and success: and among
them were those who settled in the peninsulas of Greece and Italy,
where, favoured by many circumstances, they made comparatively rapid
progress in arts, knowledge and political development.




CHAPTER II.

A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES.


The subject matter of the study of politics consists firstly of the
groups or collections of men who have lived under governments, and
secondly of the governments under which they have lived. In the present
chapter I wish to speak of the groups, to describe in outline the
various forms which they have taken, and to define the names by which
their forms are severally known. I must premise that I shall call some
of the groups political communities, meaning by a political community
a number of persons living under one government and also having much
else in common besides government: the rest I shall call political
aggregates, meaning by a political aggregate a number of persons or
bodies of persons living under one government and having nothing
else or very little else in common. Having said this, I can proceed
to notice the forms of individual communities or aggregates, with a
view to classifying them according to their forms. In my survey the
earliest forms will be taken first, and the others afterwards, as far
as possible in chronological order[6].

  [6] I have thought it needless in most cases to give authorities for
  statements of historical facts made in this chapter, because the
  statements are generally such that it is very easy to settle whether
  they are true or false. In cases where verification might be in the
  least degree difficult I have given references.

The two European races into whose past we can grope our way farthest
back are the Germans and the Greeks. Each of these races, when first
we have any knowledge of them, had formed a large number of tribes or
small primitive political communities. The German tribes in the times
of Cæsar and of Tacitus and the Greek tribes in the time of Homer were
alike in being of small size and in being primitive in their habits and
government: but in a German tribe the whole population lived scattered
over the open country and there was no walled city, while in a Greek
tribe, though most of the people lived in the open country, there was
a walled city as a centre for the community and a dwelling place for a
few of the most important tribesmen. It is desirable to give the word
_tribe_ such a definition as will emphasize the distinction between a
tribe and a city, and I shall therefore define it as meaning a small
primitive political community, living in the open country without any
walled city. From this definition it follows that I must regard the
German tribes alone as being perfect specimens of the genus tribe or as
being tribes pure and simple: the early Greek communities, though for
brevity I shall speak of them as tribes, ought in strict accuracy to be
regarded as tribes which were on the way to become cities and which had
already acquired some small portion of the qualities by which cities
are characterized.

In Greece tribes were succeeded by cities, that is to say small
communities in which a walled city is everything, and the country
districts are of little importance: and similar communities arose also
in Italy. The cities of ancient Greece and Italy are often further
designated as city-states, and the name is rightly applied to them: for
they were not only cities in the sense which I have given to the word,
but were also states because each of them was an independent community
with a government of its own.

But the cities of ancient Greece and Italy were not all alike: the
Greek cities were inexpansive: in Italy one city expanded itself by
conquering a host of other cities and absorbing their populations into
its own body politic. The contrast between the inexpansive cities of
Greece and the expansive city of Rome is a matter of which I hope some
time to speak at length: for the present it will suffice to notice
that the Athenians, the largest political community known to Greek
history in the age of the city states (that is to say before 338 B.C.),
inhabited a territory of less area than an average English county:
while in Italy before the beginning of the second Punic war (218 B.C.)
towns or fortresses peopled by fully qualified citizens of the Roman
Republic were to be found scattered over all the central region from
Sena Gallica in Umbria to Sinuessa in Campania, and other towns or
fortresses whose inhabitants possessed the private but not the public
rights of Roman citizens existed in all parts of the peninsula[7]. It
must however be observed that Rome did not by its expansion lose the
distinguishing characteristics of a city state: it still continued
after its expansion over all Italy to be a community in which a single
city was of supreme importance and the population remote from the city
was, politically at least, of little moment: but as it was incomparably
larger than any ordinary city state, we must call it not simply a city
state but an enlarged or expanded city state.

  [7] Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, Vol. I. pages 22-57, in
  the edition of 1873, comprising the section headed _Italien vor der
  lex Julia_. Mommsen, _History of Rome_, Vol. II., especially the
  _Military Map of Italy_ at the beginning of the volume.

The small size of the Greek cities and their incapacity for acting in
concert led to their subjugation by Macedonia in 338 B.C. About sixty
or eighty years later many of them had recovered their independence,
and some of them, in order to guard against a second conquest by
Macedonia, joined together in a league or federation. The union of
many communities in a federation was not a new thing in Greek history:
during several centuries that preceded the year 338 B.C. some obscure
tribes of mountaineers (the Achæans) had lived in such a union; their
league had been broken up by the Macedonian conquerors, but they had
been able, about 281 B.C., to reconstitute it: and the Greek cities,
when they began, about 251 B.C., to see their need of mutual defence,
had the Achæan League ready at hand, and were able to gain what they
needed by enrolling themselves among its members. The Achæan League,
enlarged by the admission of many important cities, was a federal
state: that is to say, it was a community in which each city or canton
had a government of its own for most purposes, but the federation or
union of cities and cantons had also a common government for those
matters which most nearly concerned the safety of them all. The League
was perfectly successful till 221 B.C. in attaining the ends for which
it had been established, and is remarkable as furnishing the first
example in history of a well organized federal state[8].

  [8] For details see Chapter VII.

The Romans employed the strength, which they had acquired through their
conquest of Italy and their success in the second Punic war, in getting
possession of many distant territories inhabited by alien races. Before
146 B.C. they were masters of Macedonia, part of Asia Minor, Spain and
northern Africa, and the Roman dominions presented an example of a
mere political aggregate, or heterogeneous empire or number of peoples
having no natural attraction for one another and held together only by
force. For the rule of a heterogeneous empire the institutions of a
city and even of an expanded city proved utterly unsuitable: and it was
necessary that both the conquering city and the dominions which it had
conquered should submit to be ruled under a centralised and despotic
system of government adapted to the needs of a heterogeneous empire.
The right system was only gradually made, but it had been completed by
the death of the Emperor Constantine the Great in 337 A.D.

But it is time to return to the Germans: for the Germans were the
successors of the Romans as masters of Western Europe. The Germans in
their primitive tribal condition possessed a great aptitude for forming
large political communities by the union of many small communities:--an
aptitude which is probably common to all peoples in a tribal
condition:--and they inhabited a flat country which put no obstacles
in the way of the amalgamation of their tribes. At any rate the German
tribes between 150 A.D. and 400 A.D. were engaged in a process of
amalgamation. About 150 A.D. Ptolemy enumerated more than fifty of
them[9]: by the year 400 all or nearly all of these had gathered
themselves into a few great hordes or associations of tribes, (which
may themselves be called overgrown tribes,) bearing severally the names
of the Saxons, the Salian Franks, the Ripuarian Franks, the Angli, the
Alamanni, the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Lombards.
After 400 A.D. came the great migrations of the German peoples: some
of them invaded the provinces of the Western Roman Empire, still full
of wealth and of such civilisation as the Romans had planted there:
others, in the second half of the fifth century, betook themselves to
Britain, from whence the Romans had departed in the year 407.

  [9] Smith's _Atlas of Ancient Geography_, Map 13, contains a map of
  Germania Magna according to Ptolemy.

During the eleven centuries which intervened between the migrations of
the Germans and the year 1500, the Germans who went to Britain, Spain
and Gaul succeeded in forming certain large political communities which
are usually known as the nations of medieval Europe. These political
communities as they existed about the year 1480 or 1500 possessed three
of the distinguishing features of nations: for each of them was of
large size, lived under a single government, and was composed of men
well suited for living together and under one government: but all of
them lacked one quality which is essential for the making of a perfect
nation: and that lacking quality was a strong cohesion between the
inhabitants of the different parts of their territories. But it will
be necessary to observe in detail the processes by which the large
political communities were built up.

The Saxons, Angles, and Jutes who went to Britain established
themselves at first in a number of small settlements on its southern
and eastern coasts. From these settlements they gradually pushed their
way inland, and by 577 A.D. they had conquered nearly all the richest
and most fertile regions in Britain. The many political communities
formed by settlement and conquest were soon afterwards engaged in
strife with one another: in the beginning of the ninth century the
West Saxons overpowered all their opponents and the West Saxon king
received the submission of all the German settlers in the island. The
conquering West Saxons and the conquered Angles and Jutes showed the
same genius for amalgamation as had been shown by their forefathers in
Germany long before: and by the middle of the ninth century all the
Germans in Britain (we may now call them the English) had combined
into a single large political community. Three times over, in 867-878,
988-1016, and 1066-1070, the English were disturbed by invasions of
fresh immigrants from the continent of Europe: but on each occasion the
new comers were successfully united in a single political community
with the older settlers, and by the year 1174 or at any rate by 1215
the English people had been for the last time fashioned into one
kindred under one government.

The German peoples who invaded Spain were the Vandals, the Alans, the
Suevi and the Visigoths. The Visigoths proved to be the strongest of
the four, and by the early years of the sixth century they had occupied
nearly all the peninsula except the north east corner, which they
left to the Suevi. In the enjoyment of the luxuries afforded by Roman
civilisation, and in the fancied security of their position, they
neglected the arts of war in which they had once so greatly excelled.
In 710 A.D. their country was invaded and in the three following years
was conquered by Moors from Africa, so that none of it was left to the
Goths, the Suevi and some other tribes who were neither Germans nor
Moors, except some valleys among the Pyrenees and a narrow strip of
land about twenty miles broad and two hundred miles long between the
shore of the Bay of Biscay and the mountain range of Cantabria and
Asturias[10].

  [10] Spruner-Menke, _Historischer Hand-Atlas_, _Maps_ 14 _and_ 15.

During the five centuries which followed the Moorish conquest of
Spain the Goths who lived on the shores of the Bay of Biscay and the
inhabitants of the southern valleys of the Pyrenees gradually expanded
by reconquering territory from the Moors, and before the middle of
the twelfth century had formed the two large political communities of
Castile and Arragon[11]. Each of these communities during its long
contest with the Moors had acquired habits, thoughts and institutions
of its own, and they were but little inclined to join themselves
together into a single nation. The marriage of Ferdinand of Arragon
with Isabella of Castile in 1469 produced as its result some time later
that both Castile and Arragon were ruled by the same government: but
differences and jealousies between the two peoples continued to exist
long afterwards, even so late as the War of the Spanish Succession in
the eighteenth century[12], and it may well be doubted whether the two
were ever welded together into a single Spanish nation until after the
terrible misfortunes which they endured and the great efforts which
they made in a common cause during their war against Napoleon.

  [11] Hallam, _Middle Ages_, Chapter IV.

  [12] Stanhope, _Reign of Queen Anne_, Vol. I. p. 264.

In Gaul the formation of a large political community was delayed till
late in the middle ages; in Germany, the original home of the Germans,
no large political community of great importance was established till
late in the seventeenth century. In both countries the same hindrances
stood in the way of the making of great communities. The two countries
were included in the heterogeneous empires founded between 687 A.D. and
800 A.D. by the house of Pepin, especially by Charlemagne, the greatest
man of the house of Pepin: in that empire, as in all heterogeneous
empires, it was found necessary that the central ruler should delegate
very great powers to the officials who governed provinces or districts:
and under the circumstances of the time it was also found convenient
for him to grant large estates of land to men who had been useful to
him and could be trusted to serve him well in the future. In 843 Gaul
(or the land of the West Franks) was severed from the empire, and
set up a king of its own, who pretended to have the same powers as
Charlemagne had exercised. But the kings of the West Franks could not
control the local officials and landowners: by the eleventh century
the local officials and the landowners had converted themselves into
independent sovereigns, each ruling his own lands and the men who
lived on his lands: that particular landowner who still enjoyed the
title of king had no authority (or at any rate no authority which he
could habitually exercise) except within the lands which specially
belonged to him: and even within his own lands he, like the other
landowners in Gaul, found that his authority was often disputed in arms
by his tenants.

In the early years of the twelfth century Louis VI., owning or claiming
to own an estate or demesne of land which had Paris as its centre and
measured about 140 miles from north to south and about 50 miles from
east to west, set himself to establish order and government within
his demesne by force of arms. The inhabitants of the demesne valued
the good government and the order that was maintained among them by
Louis VI. and his grandson Philip II., and when the twelfth century
ended they may be counted as forming a small political community or a
body of men, possessing not only a common government, but also common
interests habits and wishes[13]. In the thirteenth century the king's
demesne was increased by the acquisition of Normandy, Anjou, Maine,
Touraine, Poitou, Champagne in the north of Gaul, and by the distant
region of Languedoc in the south. The new parts of the demesne were
placed under the same government with the old, and no doubt those of
them which lay together in the north of Gaul constantly tended to
unite themselves into a single political community. But the work of
unification was greatly impeded by causes all closely connected with
the independence which the different parts of Gaul had possessed in the
tenth and eleventh centuries, and it had not made very great progress
in 1415 when France was invaded by the armies of the English. After the
expulsion of the invaders the work was taken up again and carried on
with better success by Charles VII., Louis XI. and the later kings of
France.

  [13] My statements about Frankish and early French history down to the
  reign of Philip II. are all based on original authorities: but see
  Kitchin, _History of France_, Vol. I., and some excellent maps (No.
  57) in Droysen, _Historischer Hand-Atlas_.

In Germany events followed much the same course as in Gaul; but they
occurred later. The extinction of the Emperor's authority and the rise
of the local governors and landowners to independence did not come to
pass in Germany till the middle of the thirteenth century; and none of
the princes who then gained their independence succeeded during the
middle ages in rising to preeminence above the rest.

In order to complete our survey of the chief political communities
of the middle ages we must glance at northern Italy and Switzerland.
Northern Italy contained many important towns which had been founded
by the Romans: during the early part of the middle ages it became the
commercial centre of Europe: the towns grew in wealth and influence,
and before the year 1200 they succeeded in making themselves
independent, and constituted themselves as city states, resembling
the city states of ancient Greece. In Switzerland three tribes of
mountaineers in Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, in 1291, agreed to form a
league or permanent alliance, which was afterwards joined by many of
their neighbours, though no steps towards forming a federal state were
taken till about the year 1500[14].

  [14] Oechsli, _Quellenbuch zur Schweizergeschichte_, pages 49,
  199-202, 261-266. The second of these passages, especially page 200,
  proves that so late as 1481 no Swiss Federation had been made, but
  each canton was an independent state, managing its foreign relations
  for itself: the third shows that by 1512 a central body had been
  established which received ambassadors sent by foreign powers to the
  Swiss, and settled what answers the Swiss League should give them.

It has been remarked already that the large political communities of
the middle ages were not thoroughly coherent or consolidated. A want of
coherence was exhibited both in France and in England by the frequent
recurrence of rebellions or civil strife, in France under John II.
and Charles VI., in England under Edward II., Richard II. and Henry
VI.; still more clearly was it made visible in France in 1356-1360 and
1415-1422 by the inability of the French to act unitedly in resistance
to an invading enemy, and by the ease with which portions of French
territory were detached from the dominions of the French king and
transferred to the victorious invaders. The danger of civil discord
was great enough in the fifteenth century when it arose mainly from
the armies of retainers kept by ambitious noblemen: but it became
still greater in the sixteenth, when differences of creed divided
each people into two hostile camps. The disruptive forces at length
became so strong that both France and England seemed to be in danger
of losing the character of political communities and of lapsing into
masses of heterogeneous elements; and accordingly each country adopted
that kind of government which is best suited to hold heterogeneous
elements together, namely, a monarchy with almost unlimited power.
The subsequent histories of the two countries, though dissimilar in
general character, were in one respect alike: in both countries civil
war actually occurred, in France in the sixteenth century, in England
in the seventeenth; and in each country experience of the miseries of
war brought a love for the blessings of peace, with the result that
France from 1700 to 1789 and England from 1745 to this day present very
perfect examples of united nations.

Besides the nations of France, England, Spain, Scotland, Sweden, Norway
and Denmark which grew up directly from the large political communities
of the middle ages, others have been founded in more recent times,
some of them having only a single government, and being therefore
called unitary states, and others having one government for some
purposes and many governments for other purposes, and being known as
federal states. Among the unitary or non-federal nations we must notice
Brandenburg-Prussia 1700-1866, Italy since 1859, Belgium, Holland,
Greece, and the Balkan States: among the federal nations the United
States of America and modern Switzerland stand out conspicuously. The
German Empire founded in 1871 is a federal nation, though it differs
from other federal nations because Prussia, one of its component
states, is larger than all the other component states put together:
Austria Hungary was for centuries a mere heterogeneous empire, but in
recent times its parts have been held together by the possession of
common interests and not by force, so that it has acquired some of the
characters of a federation, though it cannot be said that it has grown
together into a single nation.

But the making and consolidation of nations is not the only kind of
state-building that has gone on since the end of the middle ages:
for other sorts of construction have also been actively carried on,
and they have resulted in the making of a number of states that are
larger than nations. In some cases two European nations or a European
nation and some other European population have been brought under a
single government: in other cases a European nation has expanded by the
foundation of colonies far away from its original abode: and yet again
in some cases a European state has conquered a host of non-European
peoples and formed them into a heterogeneous empire dependent on itself.

The most conspicuous instances of the union of a nation with another
nation or people occurred in 1683 when Alsace was acquired by France,
in 1707 when England and Scotland placed themselves under one
government, in 1771, 1793 and 1795 when parts of Poland were annexed
to Prussia, and in 1801 when the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland was formed. The enlarged states which result from such unions
can never be strictly called single nations immediately after the union
has taken place, and for a time at least after the union they must be
denoted merely as unitary states: but usually they have not for most
purposes differed very greatly from nations: for in all cases one of
the two peoples united together has been a large and well consolidated
nation and the other has been much smaller and far less perfectly
organized: and consequently the larger partner in the union has had a
predominant share in the government, and has gradually succeeded in
communicating its own national characteristics and feelings to some
part at least of the population of the lesser partner in the union.

A state formed by colonial expansion presents difficulties to any one
who tries to define its nature. It is like a family of plants all
sprung from one stock; the stock has sent out offshoots, which have
themselves struck root, but are still connected with the parent stock
from which they sprang. In one sense such an expanded state is still a
single political community: in another sense each of the colonies which
belongs to it is also a political community, though it never possesses
complete independence, and therefore is not to be counted as a state.

The greatest conquerors of distant lands outside Europe have been
the Spaniards, the English and the Russians. Their conquests formed
three great political aggregates or heterogeneous empires, the Spanish
Empire in southern and central America, the Indian Empire, and the
Russian Empire. The Indian and the Russian Empires are administered by
methods more or less resembling those used in the old heterogeneous
Empire of the Romans by Constantine the Great and his successors: the
administration of the Spaniards was very defective from the outset, and
at the beginning of the nineteenth century their empire broke up into a
number of independent states.

And now I may attempt a classification of all the more important forms
that have been assumed by groups or collections of men living under
governments. First of all, some of these groups are mere political
aggregates, having little in common save the fact of living under one
government, and the rest are political communities whose members have
much else beside government in common. The mere aggregates will not
need to be further divided; they are all heterogeneous empires held
together by force. The political communities must be divided into three
classes, tribes, cities, and the larger political communities. The
class tribes needs no subdivision: cities must be divided according as
they are inexpansive or expansive: the larger political communities (a
class identical with the nations and those communities which possess
many of the qualities of nations) need be subdivided only into unitary
states or large political communities each with a single government
only, and federal states or large political communities in which there
is one government for some purposes and many governments for other
purposes.

The essentials of a perfect classification are four in number. Firstly,
it ought to be exhaustive or to comprehend all individual specimens, so
that no individual shall be without a place in it. Secondly, the marks
which distinguish the classes should be easily recognisable. Thirdly,
the marks of one class should never be present in a single individual
together with the marks of another: for, if they are, the individual is
in two classes at once. Fourthly (and this is most essential of all),
the classes should be such that many important general propositions are
true of all the individuals which compose any given class.

It will be well to try to ascertain in what measure these essentials
are found in a classification of European bodies politic under the five
heads of tribes, cities, nations unitary and federal, and heterogeneous
empires. Firstly, the classification is, I believe, so far exhaustive
that it includes all those bodies which most clearly deserve to be
called both political and European: it does not however provide a
place for mere feudal principalities which never grew into nations,
nor is it intended to include the Asiatic Empire of the Turks in
Europe. Secondly, the marks which distinguish the classes are easily
recognisable. Thirdly, the classification is decidedly imperfect
because it does not make it impossible for a political body to be in
two classes at once. But the possibility that a political body may be
in two classes at once does not occur except during those periods when
a community is gradually growing out of one form and into another. Such
periods of transition have occurred in the history of many peoples:
there was one in Greek history when the tribes were growing into
cities: one in Roman history when the Republic was ceasing to be a mere
enlarged city and was growing into a heterogeneous empire: and one in
English history when the English were losing the character of a tribe
and acquiring the qualities of a nation. But such periods of transition
do not occur in the life of all peoples, and where they do occur,
they are not usually of long duration when compared with the whole
of the people's history. Fourthly, there are many important general
propositions which are true of all or of nearly all the individuals in
any given class. To establish such general propositions by historical
evidence will be my task in the present chapters and in any future
additions which I may be able to make to them. Some of these general
propositions may be at once indicated in an imperfect form, though the
proofs of them must be postponed.

The most important of these propositions are those which assert that
there is an intimate connexion between the form of a political body
and the form of government by which it is ruled: and that each of the
forms that a political body can assume has a certain type or certain
types of government commonly and almost uniformly associated with it.
The propositions may be set down in the following way. Firstly, all
the tribes of which we have any good records have had governments not
differing from one another in any important particular. Secondly,
cities pure and simple or inexpansive cities have usually three kinds
of government only, pure oligarchy, or pure despotism, or direct and
almost unmixed democracy: and Republican Rome, the single example
of an expanded city, had a government peculiar to itself. Thirdly,
in the large unitary states or nations, it is, roughly speaking,
true that three kinds of government have succeeded one another in
regular sequence: at first, during the middle ages, they were under
governments in which power belonged partly to a king and partly to an
assembly of estates, the assembly consisting usually of the nobles,
the prelates of the church, and representatives from rural districts
and towns: afterwards, when they were in danger of disruption, they
placed themselves under monarchies of unlimited or almost unlimited
power, and these monarchies usually continued to exist after all
danger of disruption had been removed: and now, in modern times, all
unitary states are ruled by cabinets under the control or supervision
of popular representative assemblies. Turning to federal states,
which form the fourth class of political communities, we find that
all of them are alike in having a central government both legislative
and executive, whose sphere of action is strictly limited by the
constitution to certain portions of the work of governing, and in
permitting each of the states, which are joined together in the
federation, also to have a government of its own, which controls all
business except that portion which is allotted by the constitution to
the central government of the federation. And, lastly, heterogeneous
empires must, unless they are to break in pieces, have governments
whose chief object is centralisation. Supreme power may belong to a
despotic monarch or to a small body of men appointed by a foreign
state which rules the empire: but in all cases the one thing necessary
is that there shall be a central supreme power and that the commands of
that supreme power shall be implicitly obeyed by everyone within the
empire.

It will be observed that most of the propositions which I have
enumerated are qualified with a saving word or saving clause to admit
the existence of exceptions. The exceptions however are not, so far as
I can judge, very numerous. Among the governments of city states the
Cleisthenean constitution at Athens was exceptional, since, though it
was more like a democracy than anything else, it was not by any means
an unmixed democracy: and some similar exceptions occur, I believe, in
the earliest part of the history of some medieval cities in Lombardy.
During the middle ages, it was only in those peoples which best
deserved the name of large political communities or incipient nations
that an effective division of power between a king and an assembly of
estates was to be found, and even in them it was not maintained without
occasional interruptions: in England for example there were three
periods (1258-1259, 1310-1322, and 1388-1389) of pure oligarchy, and
two (1200-1215, and 1397-1399) of pure despotism: among the French and
in some other peoples which had not truly acquired the character of
political communities, we find a semblance of a division of power, but
not the reality. The assertion that the nations during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries were ruled by strong monarchical governments
scarcely needs any qualification: there is however a short exceptional
period in English history, 1649-1653, when the government was an
oligarchy; and Poland never acquired a strong monarchical government,
but was punished for the absence of such a government by ceasing to
exist. In the course of the French Revolution 1789-1795 there occur
some seeming exceptions to the propositions about forms of government
which have been enumerated: but I believe they will be found not to be
exceptions, if we observe that during those years Paris was practically
an independent city state.




CHAPTER III.

GREEK POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. HEROIC MONARCHIES.


The political institutions of the Greeks will be examined first,
because the Greeks are known to us at an earlier period than any other
European people.

Hellas, the land of the Greeks, is about equal in size to half of
Scotland or Ireland or to a third of England[15]. It is intersected
by a network of continuous mountain ranges, which cannot be crossed
without difficulty, and these ranges are almost everywhere so near
together that it is impossible to travel more than twenty miles in
any direction without crossing one of them. There are therefore no
plains of any considerable extent, and the country is cut up into very
numerous small areas, each enclosed, except towards the sea, within
natural barriers which make egress and entrance alike difficult. These
areas are of varying minuteness: by far the greater number of them
measure only ten miles by ten, or twenty by five, but a few are of
larger dimensions, and, in particular, Argolis contains about four
hundred and fifty square miles, and is as large as Bedfordshire,
Attica contains seven hundred and twenty, and just equals Berkshire,
and Laconia, with about nine hundred, is of the same size as
Warwickshire[16].

  [15] In making this statement I have regarded Thessaly as not forming
  part of Hellas. Thessaly was completely cut off from the rest by two
  great ranges of mountains and was conquered before the beginning of
  Greek history by a people who were not truly Hellenic.

  [16] These areas of Argolis, Attica, Laconia are calculated from
  the maps in Smith's _Atlas_: the other areas referred to are taken
  from the _Statesman's Yearbook_, or the article _Graecia_ in Smith's
  _Dictionary of Geography_.

If communication by land is difficult, by sea it is easy, and was
easy even in the earliest times. Greece and its islands have as much
sea-board as any equal area in Europe; most of the natural divisions of
the country have their share of coast with sheltered beaches where the
boats or small ships of ancient times could be drawn up in safety: the
Mediterranean, though it is sometimes as dangerous as any sea, is often
calm: and by the age of Homer it had come to be a great highway for
war, piracy and commerce.

The career of all the Greek communities, except Sparta, divides itself
readily into periods. The first period, lasting till perhaps 700
B.C. or 650 B.C., was the period of tribes and tribal governments:
the second, lasting to 338 B.C., was the period of cities and city
governments. The period of the cities must however be divided into
three lesser periods, each characterised by the prevalence of a
certain kind of city government: the first of these lesser periods
lasted from about 700 B.C. to 600 B.C., the second from 600 B.C. to
500 B.C., and the third from 500 B.C. to 338 B.C. Between 700 B.C.
and 600 B.C. Athens, Corinth and Megara were under the domination of
groups of privileged families, and many Greek cities in Sicily were
also governed by small groups of citizens distinguished either by birth
or by wealth: and, since the rule of a few is known as an aristocracy
if the few rulers are the men best qualified to rule and if they use
their power for the good of the whole community, but as an oligarchy
if the few rulers govern for their own selfish interest, the century
may be called the period of the early aristocracies and oligarchies.
Between 600 B.C. and 500 B.C. nearly every Greek city, both in Greece
proper and elsewhere, came under the rule of a τύραννος or usurper
of absolute power, so that the century may be called the age of the
tyrants or usurpers. And lastly, between 500 B.C. and 338 B.C. in many
of the Greek cities a system of government was set up under which the
whole body of the citizens acting collectively conducted the work of
government, or at least all parts of it which can in the nature of
things be conducted by a numerous assembly, while in other cities
a small body of the richest citizens ruled selfishly for their own
advantage and the advantage of their class; and, since any system
in which the whole body of citizens directly conduct the work of
government or the greater part of the work of government is known as a
democracy, while the selfish rule of a few is, as we have seen, called
an oligarchy, the period may best be called the age of the democracies
and of the later oligarchies.

The Spartans were unlike, in their history their institutions and the
aims of their policy, not only to all other Greek communities but
perhaps to every other community that has ever existed: they never
completely grew out of their tribal condition, never entirely abandoned
their tribal government, and never formed themselves into a city like
the other Greek cities: and besides all this they were in so many ways
unlike to the rest of mankind that it will be necessary for me to speak
of them by themselves and apart from the rest of the Greeks.

The Greek communities and their political systems from the earliest
times to the first overthrow of Greek independence in 338 B.C. will
be treated in the present and the next two chapters in the following
order: firstly, we shall examine the tribes and the tribal governments,
secondly, the institutions and government of the Spartans, and thirdly,
the cities and the city-governments.


THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS.

The numerous tribes which composed the Greek race ranged themselves in
several groups, distinguished from one another in name, characteristics
and fortunes. Among these groups the Achæans, the Dorians and the
Ionians are historically the most important. The Achæan group includes
all the tribes that are conspicuous in the Iliad and Odyssey: and from
this circumstance it may safely be inferred that, when those poems
were composed, the Achæan tribes had made more progress than any other
Greeks in knowledge and political organisation. The Dorians in the
days of Homer were an obscure tribe living in a little mountain valley
of Northern Greece: in the next age they invaded the Peloponnesus,
expelled the Achæans from their homes, and formed themselves into the
four peoples of the Spartans, the Messenians, the Corinthians and
the Argives. The Ionian tribes, the Athenians and twelve of the Greek
cities of Asia Minor, including Miletus and Ephesus, were even later
than the Dorian peoples in rising to importance. I shall deal first
with the Achæans and then with the Dorians and Ionians.


1. _The Achæan tribes in the heroic age._

When the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed the Achæans had formed a
great number of small independent communities, some inhabiting islands,
and others living in valleys surrounded by chains of mountains. The
only tribe whose methods of government are depicted in some detail was
one of the least of the Greek peoples, and had its home in Ithaca, a
rocky island of the Ionian sea about seventeen miles long and three or
four miles broad. The larger tribes were the Mycenæans, the Spartans,
and the Achæans of Phthiotis. All the Achæan tribes were much alike in
their political institutions: for the same political terms βασιλεύς,
ἀγορή, γέροντες, λαοί are used in reference to the various tribes
without distinction. Their governments were tribal in character, and we
may call them either by the generic name of tribal governments, or by
the name, which they more usually bear, of heroic monarchies.

The government of an Achæan tribe was conducted, in time of peace,
in assemblies (ἀγορα). The purposes for which they met included
the announcement of any important news[17], discussion of any
public business or question of policy[18] or the settlement of a
litigation[19]. Our knowledge of their character and proceedings is
derived from a full description in the second book of the Odyssey of an
assembly held at Ithaca, and a shorter description in the Iliad[20].

  [17] _Odyssey_ II. 30 ἀγγελίην στρατοῦ ἐρχομένοιο (news of the host
  returning).

  [18] _Odyssey_ II. 32 ἦέ τι ζημιον ἄλλο πιφαύσκεται ἠδ' ἀγορεύει; (or
  has he any other public business to discuss?)

  [19] _Iliad_ XVIII. 497 νεῖκος (a dispute).

  [20] _Odyssey_ II. 1-259, _Iliad_ XVIII. 497-508.

Whenever the king desired that an assembly should be held he gave the
heralds orders to require the immediate attendance of the elders and
the people[21]. The place of meeting was an open space in the city set
apart for the purpose. In the midst was a circle of stone seats for the
king and the elders[22], and one of the seats belonged specially to the
king[23]: outside were the people, all of whom were compelled by the
heralds to seat themselves on the ground[24] and to be silent[25]. When
this had been done, the work of the assembly began; the speakers were
the king and the elders, and the people either kept silence or perhaps
indicated their approval by shouting or their dissent by murmurs. The
councillors who sat with the king and had the right of speaking were
for the most part (as the name γέροντες, if taken literally, denotes)
men of age and experience: but younger men of good family, such as the
wooers of Penelope[26], were also sometimes present among them and
shared their privileges.

  [21] _Odyssey_ II. 6. The Ithacan assembly was summoned by the king's
  son in his father's absence: but the summons was irregular, as is
  shown in the next paragraph.

  [22] _Iliad_ XVIII. 503

                     οἱ δὲ γέροντες
     εἵατ' ἐπὶ ξεστοῖσι λίθοις ἱερῷ ἐνὶ κύκλῳ.

  The stone seats are mentioned only in the description of a judicial
  assembly: but all assemblies met, there is no doubt, in the same place.

  [23] _Odyssey_ II. 14 ἕζετο δ' ἐν ἕζετο δ' ἐν (Τηλέμαχος), ϝεῖξαν
  δὲ γέροντες (and Telemachus sat down in his father's seat, and the
  elders made way for him).

  [24] See Grote's note in his _History_, Part I. ch. XX. His instances
  (_Iliad_ II. 96 and _Iliad_ XVIII. 246) are both taken from time of
  war: but it is not in the least likely that this detail was peculiar
  to assemblies held at such times.

  [25] _Iliad_ II. 96

                   ἐννέας δά σφεας
     κήρυκες βοόωντες ἐρήτυον, εἴ ποτ' ἀϋτῆς
     σχοίατ' ἀκούσειαν δὲ διοτρεφέων βασιλήων

  (and nine heralds were calling them to order, to stop clamouring and
  hearken to the heaven-born kings).

  [26] At the Ithacan assembly the suitors Antinous, Eurymachus, and
  Leiocritus were among the speakers. _Odyssey_ II. 84-254.

The assembly at Ithaca was irregularly summoned. The words of the first
speaker, the aged Ægyptius, show that according to custom the king
alone had the prerogative of issuing a summons by the voice of the
heralds. Odysseus had been absent for twenty years: and Ægyptius says,
"Since the godlike Odysseus departed in his hollow ships our assembly
and session has never been held. And now who is he that summoned us?
who was compelled by so great necessity? has he heard news of our
warriors coming back, and hastens to tell us? or has he aught else of
our country's weal to speak about? I say he is a good man, God bless
him! and may Zeus perform for him whatever his heart desires![27]"

  [27] _Odyssey_ II. 25-34.

The business of the assembly at Ithaca was not exactly judicial and
can scarcely be described as deliberation on policy. Telemachus
summoned the elders and the people in order to declare to them that the
proceedings of the suitors were intolerable to him, that he bade them
leave his house, that he would resist them by force, if he could, and
that if they were slain in his house no price for their lives would be
due from him to their kindred.

The assembly came to no formal resolution: the practical result of it
was settled by the speeches of the elders without any intervention of
the common folk, and was expressed by the last speaker Leiocritus, who
declared that the suitors were not afraid of Telemachus nor of Odysseus
himself, and bade all those who were present to go away each about his
own business.

An assembly occupied in administering justice was depicted in
a compartment of the shield of Achilles, which the poet thus
describes[28]: "A people too was there, gathered in assembly: and in
their midst a dispute had arisen, and two men were disputing about the
price (wergild) of a man that had been slain. The one was declaring
aloud to the multitude that he had paid the whole, the other that he
had received none of it. And both were ready to go before a judge to
get a decision: and the people on this side and on that were cheering
them on, but were restrained by the heralds. And there sat the
elders on seats of wrought stone in a circle protected by the gods,
holding staves given them by the loud-voiced heralds; and then the
elders were arising in turn to give judgement. And in the midst were
lying two talents of gold to be given to him whose judgement was the
straightest[29]."

  [28] _Iliad_ XVIII. 497-508.

  [29] _Or perhaps_, to him who best proved his case.

In this assembly, as in the other, power belonged solely to those
who formed the inner circle. The presence of the king in the judicial
assembly is not mentioned, but kings did sometimes take part in giving
dooms, for Nestor says to Agamemnon: "O most famous son of Atreus,
Agamemnon, king of men, thou shalt be my ending and thou my beginning,
because thou art king of many people and Zeus has given thee the
sceptre _and judgements_ that thou mayst be their counselor[30]."

  [30] _Iliad_ IX. 96-99.

There is a story in the Odyssey which indicates more clearly than
the descriptions of the assemblies that, in time of peace, supreme
power belonged to the king and the elders jointly and not to the king
alone or to the elders alone. While Laertes was reigning in Ithaca
three hundred sheep belonging to Ithacans were stolen by robbers from
Messenia. Odysseus, the king's son, was sent to ask satisfaction for
the wrong: and it is expressly stated that it was the king and the
other elders who empowered him to act as ambassador[31].

 [31] _Odyssey_ XXI. 16-21.

In time of war the king had supreme and exclusive command over his
tribe. Thus when Achilles king of the Phthiotians was angry with
Agamemnon, he was able without consultation with any one to withdraw
the whole Phthiotian contingent from aiding in the war against the
Trojans: and, when he began to relent, nothing was needed but a word
from him to place his forces in the field again under the orders of his
friend Patroclus[32]. Agamemnon on the other hand, being the commander
of a host composed of contingents from many tribes, found it necessary,
before issuing any orders to the whole army, to consult the kings who
were taking part with him in his enterprise[33].

 [32] _Iliad_ XVI. 38-39. Patroclus says to him, "If thou art deterred
 by some divine command from fighting thyself, yet let me go and give
 me thy people, the Myrmidons (i.e. the Phthiotians)": and Achilles
 (lines 49-65) replies, "I have been wronged and therefore will not
 fight: thou shalt wear my armour and command the Myrmidons."

 [33] _Iliad_ II. 53, IX. 9-17, 89-95.

Our conclusions about the political system which prevailed in the Greek
tribes of the heroic age can be shortly summed up. In time of peace all
public business was conducted in assemblies: in these assemblies the
king and the elders alone had the right of speaking, and the king was
expected to act according to the advice of the elders. In time of war
the king was commander-in-chief, and could act without control from any
one.

Besides the political institutions of the ancient Greeks, some of the
general conditions of their life may be noticed. They depended for
their subsistence partly on their cattle and partly on the produce of
the ground, and most of the poorer free men, not possessing slaves,
lived in the country to tend their herds and till their lands. Some,
who had no herds and no lands of their own, worked as labourers for
hire[34]. The estates and the cattle of the kings and rich men were
committed to the charge of slaves captured in war or in freebooting
expeditions[35]. The kings and rich men themselves lived, not scattered
over the open country after the fashion of the Germans described by
Tacitus[36], but collected in cities. Thus at Ithaca the house of the
king and the houses of the wooers of Penelope were all close together:
for at the end of the first day in the story of the Odyssey the wooers
"went each to his house to sleep[37]" and on the morrow at the dawn
of day at the summons of the heralds they "came very quickly to the
assembly[38]": Pylos, where Nestor lived, is called the gathering place
and the abodes of the Pylians[39]: and, not to multiply instances,
words denoting cities are regularly applied in the Homeric poems to the
dwelling-places of the heroes.

  [34] _Odyssey_ XI. 489 θητευέμεν.

  [35] Grote's _Greece_, octavo edition vol. I. p. 487, cabinet edition
  vol. II. p. 98.

  [36] Tac. _Germ._ 16. Nullas Germanorum populis urbes habitari satis
  notum est, ne pati quidem inter se junctas sedes. Colunt discreti ac
  diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit.

  [37] _Odyssey_ I. 424 κακκείοντες ἔβαν ϝοικόνδε ϝέκαστος.

  [38] _Odyssey_ II. 8 τοὶ δ' ἠγείροντο μάλ' ὦκα.

  [39] _Odyssey_ III. 31 Πυλίων ἀνδρῶν ἄγυρίν τε καὶ ἕδρας.

The cities of the heroic age had, for their defence, in all cases a
fortress or strong place of refuge close at hand, and some of them at
least were entirely encircled with a wall. Argos lay at the foot of the
steep isolated mountain of the Larissa which rose about a thousand feet
above it: Corinth was under the still loftier Acrocorinthus; Mycenæ
and Athens had each its Acropolis, a strong fortress built on a rock
rising abruptly but to no great height above the town. That in some
cases the lower city, as distinct from the Acropolis, had also its own
outer wall is proved by the whole story of the siege of Troy, which
shows that cities entirely enclosed in fortifications were well known
to Homer[40].

  [40] Especially the scene of the death of Hector in the twenty-second
  book of the Iliad. Achilles having driven all the Trojans except
  Hector within their walls, pursued Hector thrice round the city, in
  the sight of the Trojans on the walls and of the host of the Greeks
  assembled on the plain outside the city. If any part of the city had
  been outside the wall, it must have been mentioned as impeding or
  aiding the flight of Hector, or as having been captured by the Greeks.
  As it is, the poet has no landmark outside the city to show how far
  the chase had extended except a fountain where the two springs, one
  hot and one cold, of the Scamander, had been built round with stone
  platforms on which clothing was washed by the Trojan women.

There are numberless passages in the Iliad and Odyssey which prove
that the houses of the heroes were well stored with wealth. The
suitors who intruded as guests at the house of Telemachus always
found plenty of cattle, bread, wine and oil ready at hand for their
riotous feasts, and yet Telemachus was but a poor man among the Greek
princes. When Telemachus paid a visit to Menelaus and Helen at Sparta
he was astonished to find that their palace glittered with gold and
silver, with electrum (a mixture of two metals) and with ivory[41].
The chamber of Odysseus at Ithaca contained abundance of gold and
bronze, and clothing in chests and sweet smelling oil and wine in jars
against his return[42]. The metal used for weapons was brass or bronze:
agricultural implements were chiefly made of iron: of the precious
metals gold was more commonly used than silver[43]. We do not hear that
any of these metals were obtained in the heroic age from the soil of
Greece itself, and may fairly conjecture that they were brought to the
Greeks by the Phœnicians who in that age were more active in trade than
any other people[44].

  [41] _Odyssey_ IV. 68-75.

  [42] _Odyssey_ II. 337-343.

  [43] The evidence concerning the use of the metals is collected by
  Grote, octavo edition vol. I. p. 493, cabinet edition vol. II. pp.
  104, 105.

  [44] For the dealings of the Phœnicians see the story in which Eumæus
  the swineherd narrates how he was kidnapped as a child by Phœnician
  traders. _Odyssey_ XV. 403-484.

The population of a city must have consisted of the wealthy families
who had slaves to till their lands and tend their flocks and of those
few artificers or professional men whose business brought them to
live near the houses of the rich. Among the handicraftsmen were the
carpenter, the copper-smith, the leather-dresser, the worker in gold:
the professions were those of the leech, the prophet and the bard[45].
Thus it may be that in an assembly the people outside the sacred circle
did not greatly surpass in number the elders who sat within it: for
there were no classes to constitute a people except the younger members
of the families of the elders and the few men who were induced to live
in the city to find employment for their knowledge or skill.

  [45] Grote, _Greece_, octavo edition vol. I. p. 486, cabinet edition
  vol. II. p. 97. For the worker in gold see _Odyssey_ III. 425.


2. _The Dorians and the Ionians in the heroic age._

Before the beginning of Greek History, properly so called, the
Achæan peoples, so important in the eyes of Homer, had sunk into
comparative insignificance, and the first places in the Hellenic
world had been filled by Dorians and Ionians. The original abode of
the Dorians was a small mountainous country called Doris not far from
Thermopylæ[46]. From hence bands of adventurers had gone forth and,
invading Peloponnesus, had expelled the Achæans from Sparta, Messenia,
Argos and Corinth, had occupied their territories and had copied their
institutions. The Ionians in Attica had grown in prosperity and power,
and, like the Dorian tribes, had adopted that form of government which
I have called heroic monarchy.

  [46] Herodotus VIII. 31 in speaking of the position of Doris remarks,
  "This country is the mother country of the Dorians in Peloponnesus."

Of the Dorian kingly government at Corinth we know nothing but its
existence[47]: of the Messenian kings we have many stories told by
Myron of Priene, but, on reading them side by side with the stories
told by Geoffrey of Monmouth about King Arthur, I thought that for
complete untrustworthiness there was nothing to choose between the two
authors[48]: concerning the early kings of Argos Athens and Sparta,
a few facts are established on good authority, and these I shall now
proceed to state.

  [47] Diodorus Siculus VII. fragment 9. Diodorus wrote about 20-10 B.C.

  [48] Myron wrote about 220 B.C. His stories about the early Messenian
  kings are preserved by Pausanias in his fourth book.

Argos, with its two neighbours Mycenæ and Tiryns, was in some respects
unlike the other Greek communities. Elsewhere in Greece during the
heroic age each community occupied the whole of a natural division of
the country, and had its territory fenced round with natural barriers.
In the Argolic plain three Achæan communities had found room to settle,
exactly as in Italy many communities found room to settle in and around
the plain of Latium: and thus the Argolic communities rather resembled
the Latin cities than the Greek tribes. Their city walls were of
exceptional strength, as the remains of them testify: their kings were
richer and were exalted to a greater eminence above their subjects than
the other Greek kings, for the palace of the king at Tiryns occupies
nearly the whole of the upper citadel and is such as to demand a most
prodigal expenditure of labour for its construction[49], and Agamemnon
king of Mycenæ is represented by the poet of the Iliad as a powerful
monarch. It cannot be doubted that the three cities had the same
reasons for making their walls strong and their kings powerful as the
Romans had in the days of Servius Tullius: they feared that they might
be conquered by their neighbours, and hoped that they might themselves
be the conquerors.

  [49] Professor Gardner, _New Chapters in Greek History_, pp. 96-101.

After the Dorian conquest the three cities still continued to exist:
Argos was the strongest of them, but Mycenæ acted independently of
Argos so late as the year 480 B.C. in sending a contingent to fight
against the Persians at Thermopylæ[50]. The great power of the
Dorian monarchy was conspicuous in the reign of Pheidon, who at some
time between 750 B.C. and 600 B.C. became so powerful that he was
able to conduct an expedition from his own city in the east of the
Peloponnesus to Olympia in the west and to deprive the Eleians by force
of their prerogative of presiding over the Olympic festival[51]. He
also established a hegemony or lordship over a number of Greek peoples
in the neighbourhood of Argos, which had long been independent. The
tradition of his conquest says simply that he "recovered the whole lot
of Têmenus which had been broken up into many parts[52]." Têmenus,
according to the legends of the Heracleids, was one of the leaders of
the Dorians in their invasion of the Peloponnesus: and it seems that
his "lot" must have included the tribes that lived at Cleonæ, Phlius,
Sicyon, Epidaurus, Trœzen, and Ægina. Pheidon's conquest of these
tribes was a remarkable achievement, since all of them were protected
against Argos by mountain ranges or by sea: and it gave him such
despotic authority over his own subjects at Argos that he is counted
among the τύραννοι[53]. But it seems that he ought not, strictly
speaking, to be reckoned among them, being unlike to the rest of them
in two important particulars: first, that his despotic authority at
Argos was no doubt necessary in order to enable Argos to keep control
over the dependent peoples, and second, that it is not likely that he
ever incurred the hatred of the people of Argos: for, if he had been
hated by his own subjects, his power outside Argos must have promptly
come to an end. After his time the power of the king at Argos ceased to
be despotic, the neighbouring tribes recovered their independence, and
the monarchy sank into obscurity, though it continued to exist so late
as 480 B.C. when Greece was invaded by the Persians under Xerxes[54].

  [50] Pausanias II. 16. 5.

  [51] Pausanias (VI. 22. 2) in speaking of this expedition assigns it
  to the eighth Olympiad or the year 748 B.C. I have not ventured to
  regard his date as trustworthy, because Professor Mahaffy (_Problems
  in Greek History_, Chapter III.) has shown reasons for doubting
  whether the order of the early Olympiads was correctly given in
  the lists which were current among the Greeks. His date however
  cannot well be earlier than 750 B.C., since it was after the Olympic
  festivals had become important: and it cannot be later than 600 B.C.,
  because in that case clearer traditions about him would have been
  preserved.

  [52] Ephorus, who wrote about 350 B.C., records this. His words are
  quoted by Grote, octavo edition vol. II. p. 90, cabinet edition vol.
  II. p. 316, from Strabo.

  [53] Aristotle, _Politics_, V. 10. 6, in Bekker's edition (Oxford,
  1837). Welldon, p. 381. Pausanias VI. 22. 2.

  [54] The king of Argos in 480 B.C. is noticed by Herodotus (VII. 149).

In Attica we can carry back our view not only to the age of the heroic
monarchy but to the age which preceded it. The country, though it is,
as we have seen, of small extent, and though it is not traversed by
any continuous ranges of mountains, was originally peopled by a number
of independent communities, each contained within a single village
or small township: and it is probable that these little communities
retained their independence till after the time of Homer; for Athens,
which rose to greatness by subjugating them, is rarely mentioned in the
Homeric poems, and never, I believe, in any passage which belongs to
the poems as they were originally composed. In course of time however
a powerful king arose at Athens, who succeeded in bringing the whole
country under a single monarchy of the heroic type: and Thucydides
tells us that in his own days the union of Attica under Athens was
regularly celebrated at a public festival[55].

  [55] Thucydides II. 15. The original independence of the small
  communities is most fully vouched for by the festival, called τὰ
  συνοίκια, or the union of dwellings: and it furnishes a reason for
  the policy adopted by Cleisthenes of establishing popular local
  governments in the demes, or villages and townships, of Attica: see
  Chapter V.

The Spartans, instead of having one king, had two kings and two royal
families[56], so that their system of government may best be described
as a dual heroic kingship. Of this government, and of the conquests
made by the Spartans while they lived under it, I shall have more to
say in the next chapter.

  [56] Herodotus VI. 52.

Of the other tribes in the prehistoric age we have no traditions: but
Thucydides[57] says without hesitation concerning the early Greeks in
general that their governments were "hereditary kingly governments
with limited prerogatives": and the same view, which was shared by all
the later Greeks, falls in with the little that is known of the Greek
peoples in the first two or three centuries of their history.

  [57] Thucydides I. 13 ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς γέρασι πατρικαὶ βασιλεῖαι.

It is clear from many indications that the monarchical part of
the old tribal constitutions was necessary or especially useful
to the primitive Greek peoples so long as they were employed in
making conquests or settlements of new territory, and no longer. In
the prehistoric age the Athenians and all the Dorian peoples were
conquering peoples: and all of them made their conquests under the
leadership of kings. In the next age, which came between the heroic
period and the beginning of Greek history in the proper sense of the
word, the great majority of the Greek peoples had ceased to acquire
new territory within Greece and had also ceased or were ceasing to be
monarchically governed: two peoples, the Spartans and the Argives, were
exceptional both in continuing to make territorial conquests and in
still living under kingly rule.




CHAPTER IV.

SPARTA.


The Spartans present so many peculiarities and are so unlike to any
other people that I must divide what I have to say about them under
separate heads. In regard to the Spartans before the Peloponnesian war
I shall describe (I) their political surroundings, (II) their customs,
(III) their constitution: for the period of the war and that which
followed it, I shall give (IV) a general view of their commonwealth as
it then stood.

I. The Spartans or Spartiatæ were the strongest and most warlike of
those Dorian tribes who at some time after the time of Homer and
yet long before the beginning of history migrated from the rocky
valley of Doris in northern Greece and invaded the Peloponnesus. They
subsequently lived in the unwalled city of Sparta as a small nation of
conquerors surrounded by the two subject populations of the Periœci
and the Helots, who peopled the country of Laconia. In 480 B.C., when
the Spartans were at the height of their power, just after their
king Leonidas and his three hundred had made their heroic defence at
Thermopylæ, Xerxes asked Demaratus, who had once been king of Sparta
but had been deposed, to tell him how many warriors remained to the
Lacedæmonians and how many of them were as brave as the three hundred;
Demaratus replied: "O king, the number of the Lacedæmonians is great
and their cities are many: thou shalt know what thou desirest to learn.
There is in Lacedæmon a city Sparta, of about eight thousand fighting
men, and all these are like to those that fought at Thermopylæ: the
other Lacedæmonians are not indeed equal to these, but yet they are
brave[58]." As the Spartans of military age numbered eight thousand
we may reckon that forty thousand was about the number of persons,
including women and children, who belonged to Spartan families and
formed the Spartan nation.

  [58] Herodotus VII. 234.

The Periœci were "the other Lacedæmonians, not indeed equal to the
Spartiatæ, but yet brave men," and by them the cities of Lacedæmon
except Sparta were inhabited. It seems that the Periœci were decidedly
more numerous than the Spartiatæ: in the year after the conversation
between Xerxes and Demaratus the force, which was sent out to fight the
Persian general Mardonius and which took part in the great battle of
Platæa, consisted of five thousand Spartans, of thirty-five thousand
light armed Helots, seven Helots being allotted as attendants to each
Spartan, and of five thousand picked hoplites or heavy armed warriors
from the Periœci[59]. As these Periœci were picked men, there were more
to pick from: of the force of Spartiatæ Grote remarks that "throughout
the whole course of Grecian history we never hear of any number of
Spartan citizens at all approaching to five thousand being put on
foreign service at the same time[60]."

  [59] Herodotus IX. 10, IX. 28, and IX. 11.

  [60] Grote, _Greece_, octavo edition vol. III. p. 494, cabinet edition
  vol. V. p. 11.

It is not certain whether the Periœci were Achæans or Dorians in
origin. Whichever they were, our view of the Spartans and their
government will be much the same. The Periœci were not treated with
distrust or systematic cruelty: they retained their personal freedom
under the Spartan rule, they continued to inhabit the towns or cities
of Laconia, and in each of their towns to manage their local affairs
for themselves[61]: but they had no voice whatever in the politics
of Sparta, which were controlled exclusively by the Spartans.
Occasionally a man of ability from among the Periœci was promoted to
a position of trust: thus in the year 412 B.C. a man named Deiniadas,
a Periœcus, commanded a squadron of ships in the war on the coasts of
Asia Minor and of Lesbos[62].

  [61] If they had not possessed the management of their local affairs,
  their communities would scarcely have been called πόλεις by Herodotus
  in the conversation between Xerxes and Demaratus. Herodotus VII. 234;
  Smith's _Dict. Antiq._ article Periœci.

  [62] Thucydides VIII. 22 ἦρχε τῶν νεῶ ν Δεινιάδας περίοικος (Deiniadas
  a Periœcus was in command of the ships).

The Helots formed in the fifth century B.C. a large population of serfs
who tilled the soil: they were the property of the Spartan state, which
however placed the services of Helots at the disposal of the Spartans
and Periœci for the cultivation of their estates. The Helots, who were
bound to the soil on any given estate were compelled every year to
render a fixed quantity of produce to the owner: on the residue they
and their families subsisted[63].

  [63] These statements about the condition of the Helots are not
  given by either Herodotus or Thucydides, but are found in Plutarch
  and Pausanias. Plutarch wrote about 60-70 A.D., and Pausanias about
  170-180 A.D.: but both copied authors probably of the fourth century
  B.C. Pausanias (III. 20. 6) speaks of the Helots as slaves belonging
  to the state (δοῦλοι τοῦ κοινοῦ): the rest comes from Plutarch,
  _Lycurgus_, ch. 8.

The name εἵλωτες denotes captives taken in war[64]. It was believed by
the Greeks that the Spartans, when first they made their conquest of
Laconia, reduced some of those whom they conquered to the condition
of Helots as above described: and the account given by them of the
institutions of Lycurgus implies that the lawgiver foresaw some danger
such as would arise from a large servile population. But if the Helots
were dangerous in the age of Lycurgus, they became far more dangerous
after the Spartans had conquered the Messenian country that lay to
the west of Laconia and of the range of Taygetus. The Messenians
were Dorians like the Spartans, and like them had conquered a large
district of the Peloponnesus. Against these neighbours and kinsmen
the Spartans waged two long wars, one probably in the eighth century
B.C. and the other probably in the seventh[65]. In the second war
they were completely successful, and at the end of it they reduced
the Messenians, who had for some two or three centuries been a free
and independent Dorian people, to the condition of Helots[66]. But
to hold the territory was almost as hard as to win it: and to keep
the Messenians enslaved was almost as hard as to enslave them. The
territory is separated from Laconia by a chain of mountains, and the
new serfs were more dangerous than the original Helots because they
remembered their freedom. From the time of the conquest of Messenia
the little Spartan nation stood in perpetual danger of a great servile
revolt. When, in 464 B.C., a rebellion of the Helots actually occurred,
it imperilled the existence of the state. The Spartans at one time
despaired of putting it down without external aid, and, when the
Athenians offered them the services of an armed force, accepted the
offer. Subsequently, when their jealousy of Athens revived and they
resolved to rely on their own unaided efforts, they had to spend all
their strength for nine years before they compelled the Helots in their
stronghold on Mount Ithomê to capitulate on condition that they should
depart from the Peloponnesus and never return[67]. Even after these
brave men had gone into exile, there were plenty of Helots left to keep
the Spartans in anxiety: and Thucydides in telling of the treacherous
murder of the two thousand Helots in 424 B.C. remarks incidentally that
"at all times most of the institutions of the Lacedæmonians were framed
with a view to the Helots, to guard against their insurrections[68]."

  [64] See Smith's _Dict. Antiq._, third edition, article Helotes.

  [65] The dates of the Messenian wars cannot be determined with
  certainty. See the note at the end of this chapter.

  [66] Pausanias (III. 20. 6) expressly says that those serfs who were
  acquired by the Spartans not in their original conquest of Laconia
  but subsequently (that is to say at the conquest of Messenia) were
  Messenian Dorians.

  [67] The account of the revolt and its duration are taken from
  Thucydides I. 101-103. The date of its beginning is given by Pausanias
  IV. 24. 2 as being the seventy-ninth olympiad: i.e. seventy-eight
  times four years after 776 B.C.: i.e. 464 B.C.

  [68] Thucydides IV. 80.

II. The singular regulations under which the Spartans lived were
designed to discipline all the males among their scanty numbers into
a formidable military brotherhood. Possibly some of these regulations
had already been established before they left their original abodes in
Doris to migrate to the Peloponnesus: they were attributed to Lycurgus,
a wise lawgiver, who is placed by the legends after the migration
and some generations before the first Spartans of whom we have any
historical knowledge: but the extreme strictness of their enforcement
may have dated from the end of the second Messenian war, which reduced
a whole people to servitude.

The earliest detailed account of the customs of the Spartans is given
in a treatise on the Commonwealth of the Lacedæmonians, which has been
attributed to Xenophon. Whoever the author may have been, it speaks of
the Spartans as if they were almost irresistible in warfare: and hence
it must be inferred that it was written before 371 B.C., when they
suffered a severe and humiliating defeat at Leuctra in Bœotia. It gives
a picture of Spartan customs whose chief outlines I shall try to reduce
within the dimensions of a sketch.

The aim of the Spartan discipline was to ensure the greatest possible
efficiency in the little band of warriors who formed the Spartan army.
To this end it was first necessary that the race should be healthy: and
as strong parents were likely to have strong offspring, the women no
less than the men were trained in gymnastic exercises and contests[69].
The boys ceased at an early age to be under the sole authority of their
own parents and were placed under the command of an officer of state
whose title was παιδονόμος or warden of the boys[70], and were also
compelled to obey any Spartan who had children of his own[71]. The
training of the boys under their warden is not described in detail:
but there is no doubt it consisted in gymnastics and in marching and
dancing to music. The moral qualities which were insisted on were
firstly personal courage and endurance, and secondly a modest demeanour
in the young. The boys had to go barefoot, were allowed only one
garment to wear throughout the year in heat and cold alike, and were
kept on short rations of food: they were encouraged to steal food,
but, if they were caught, were severely beaten for not having stolen
cleverly[72]; and, if one of them complained to his father that another
boy had beaten him, the father was thought to have disgraced himself
if he did not give him a sound thrashing in addition[73]. The young
men always walked silent with their eyes modestly fixed on the ground
before them; and from this behaviour you could no more seduce them
than you could a statue[74]. The great deference paid to age is merely
hinted at in this treatise[75] but it is well known from other sources.

  [69] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 1. § 4.

  [70] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 2. § 2.

  [71] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 6. § 1, § 2.

  [72] All these details from [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 2.

  [73] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 6. § 2.

  [74] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 3.

  [75] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 9. § 5.

When the youths grew up to be men they were compelled to dine at the
common meal provided for them: and unless they paid their contributions
to its cost they lost the rights of citizenship. Their military
training no doubt still continued: for the operations of warfare
which the author describes were such as to require every man in the
army to be always familiar with them from recent recollection[76].
Every Spartan was not only compelled to concentrate his attention on
military excellence, but was completely cut off from all commercial
pursuits and even from agriculture[77]. Commerce and all useful arts
were left to the Periœci: the Spartan could practise none of them
without degradation. His expenditure consisted in his contribution to
the common meals and in the cost of maintaining a house for his wife
and daughters and his sons till they were placed under the care of
the warden of the boys. His income was derived from his lands which
were tilled by Helots assigned to him by the State. The accumulation
of wealth was severely discouraged: the possession of gold or silver
was criminal and was punished with a fine: the currency was made of
iron and was so cumbrous that no one could have much of it without the
knowledge of all, since a quantity worth ten minæ (£40 sterling) would
demand large storage-room and a waggon to remove it[78].

  [76] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 11.

  [77] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 7. § 1.

  [78] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 7. § 5.

As every Spartan was a soldier all his life long from attaining
manhood till he was too old for service, the organisation of the army
must be counted among the important parts of the Spartan institutions.
At a great battle fought and won by the Spartans in the year 418
B.C. the number of Spartiatæ on service was about three thousand one
hundred. The force was divided into six regiments of five or six
hundred men, each containing four smaller divisions, and sixteen
smallest divisions or companies, which last bore the name of ἐνωμοτίαι,
or bands of sworn soldiers. Each regiment had its commander and so
had all its compartments down to the smallest: the commander gave his
orders to the officers next below him, and they to the commanders of
companies: and it was only from these last that the orders reached the
soldiers[79]. The success of the whole system thus depended on the
obedience of the lesser officers to their commander, and above all on
the efficiency and good discipline of the companies or Enomoties.

  [79] All this is from Thucydides V. 66 and V. 68.

The drill of each company was carried to the highest pitch of
perfection: this at least is clear from the description of their
evolutions given in the treatise from which I have so often quoted[80].
The number of men in a company seems to have been normally twenty-five,
since two companies were sometimes called a fifty[81]: on some
occasions it might be thirty-two or thirty-six. As it was usual at
the beginning of a war to call out all the Spartans who were below
a certain age[82], it is probable that none but men of the same age
were placed together in a company, since in the absence of such an
arrangement the proclamation of war might have divided each company
into two parts, one part going to fight and the other staying at home.
And if each company consisted of equals in age we may conjecture that
when a Spartan attained the age of manhood he was immediately sworn in
as a member of a company, and with that company he remained throughout
his life unless he had to be drafted into another company to fill a
vacancy.

  [80] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 11. The description takes up the second
  half of the chapter.

  [81] Thus in [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 11 a commander of two companies
  is called πεντηκοστήρ or πεντηκοντήρ a captain of fifty.

  [82] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 11: at the beginning of the chapter.

On the march one company led the way and the others followed in order.
When an enemy came in sight, each regiment was able by means of
evolutions of companies to form itself for battle in the dense array of
the phalanx; and further by varying the evolutions the phalanx was made
to face in any direction that was desired, and it was ensured that the
front rank was composed entirely of the very best of the warriors[83].

  [83] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 11. The description of the evolutions
  there given is well explained in Smith, _Dictionary of Antiquities_,
  third edition, vol. I. p. 770, under the word Exercitus.

The Spartan soldiers seem to have had no defensive armour except a
large brazen shield: their dress was of a bright red[84] colour, and
probably consisted of a single large plaid which could be fastened with
a brooch at the shoulder[85]: for offensive weapons they had a long
spear and short sword[86]. A regiment arranged in phalanx had a front
rank of about sixty-four men as in the great battle in 418 B.C.: each
of the ranks behind contained the same number, and there were in some
cases as many as eight ranks[87]. For a body thus arranged the long
spear for thrusting was obviously the best weapon: but the short sword
was also needed whenever there was a close combat between man and man.

  [84] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 11: at the beginning of the chapter,
  στολὴν φοινικίδα.

  [85] Smith, _Dict. Ant._ third edition, article Tribon.

  [86] Smith, _Dict. Ant._ third edition, vol. I. p. 773.

  [87] Thucydides V. 68.

III. We have already seen[88] that the Spartans in prehistoric times
lived under a system of government which I have called dual heroic
kingship: their political institutions were in most respects the same
as those of the other Greeks in the heroic age, but they regularly had
two kings reigning at the same time, each being head by descent of one
of the two royal houses. After the establishment of the dual heroic
kingship but still in the prehistoric age the Spartans introduced
further modifications in their system of government: and since their
descendants, whether rightly or wrongly, believed that the wise
lawgiver Lycurgus had been the author of these changes, the modified
system of government is known as the constitution of Lycurgus. This
celebrated constitution is defined in a ῥήτρα or solemn compact said to
have been dictated to Lycurgus by the Delphic priestess and accepted
by the Spartans: Plutarch has preserved a document which professes to
be the original text: and, though the pretensions of this document to
extreme antiquity are probably unfounded, there is no doubt that it
gives a truthful account of the government[89]. It orders Lycurgus "to
found a temple of Zeus Syllanius and Athena Syllania, to divide the
people into tribes (φυλαί) and obes (ὠβαί), to establish a senate of
elders, thirty in number with the commanders (i.e. the kings), to hold
assemblies at fixed times between Babyca and Knakion, and so to propose
measures and take decisions on them: and that the commons (δᾶμος,
δῆμος, the whole of the Spartiatæ) should have (? the decision?)[90]
and authority." Thus the constitution of Lycurgus retained all the
three component parts of the system to which I have given the name of
dual kingship, the two kings, the council of elders, and the assembly
of the people: but it prescribed that the meetings of the king and
elders and people were to be held no longer according to the caprice of
the kings but at fixed times and between two places which were both in
the town of Sparta or close to it: the council of elders was to consist
of exactly thirty members, the two kings being included in that number:
and the assembly of the people was to possess authority (κράτος).

  [88] See p. 35.

  [89] Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 6. The document, being in prose and not
  ambiguous, bears no resemblance to the genuine utterances of the
  Delphic priestess; and therefore I think not only that it is not
  an oracle really delivered to Lycurgus but also that it was not
  composed while the oracle of Delphi was active and the character of
  its utterances well known: that is to say, before 450 B.C. or 400
  B.C. I imagine it to be the work of some antiquarian, who knew the
  Doric dialect extremely well: such a man might no doubt be found at
  Alexandria during or after the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus B.C.
  285-247: for Alexandria was then the home of all sorts of learning,
  and was the place in which, about the year 270 B.C., Theocritus the
  greatest of the Doric poets wrote the best of his Idylls.

  [90] The text is uncertain here.

The powers that belonged severally to the kings to the elders and to
the assembly are not defined. But the constitution was made in the age
of the heroic monarchies and was derived from a dual heroic kingship
by the introduction of slight alterations. We may accordingly assume
that in the system of Lycurgus, as in the government that preceded
it, the important right of initiating measures was intended to belong
exclusively to the kings and elders, and that the "authority" reserved
to the popular assembly was no more than a right of voting Aye or No on
proposals which the kings and elders submitted to it. In making this
assumption we shall moreover be in agreement with Plutarch[91], who,
either from such merely probable reasoning as we can use or on the
authority of some writer who preceded him, states that the kings and
elders alone had the initiative. In course of time however the assembly
attempted to amend what was put before it or to initiate proposals of
its own, and a second enactment (ῥήτρα) was made to put a stop to its
usurpations. From the stories of the wars with Messenia we learn that
the command in war was one of the prerogatives of the kings.

  [91] Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 6.

The first historical Spartan is Theopompus, who was one of the two
kings at some time between 750 B.C. and 650 B.C. In his reign three
great events took place: (1) the Spartans waged war against their
neighbours the Messenians, defeated them, and made either a partial
or a complete conquest of their country, (2) the general assembly of
Spartan people was explicitly declared subordinate to the council of
elders, and (3) the office of the Ephors or Overseers was created.

(1) Somewhere about 650 B.C. the poet Tyrtæus was living at Sparta and
wrote the lines:

    Ἡμετέρῳ βασιλῆι, θεοῖσι φίλῳ Θεοπόμπῳ,
      ὃν διὰ Μεσσήνην εἵλομεν εὐρύχορον.

i.e. "To our king Theopompus beloved of the gods, to whom we owed our
conquest of the broad plains of Messenia[92]." The subjugation of
Messenia must have been a very difficult task: the country like the
other natural divisions of Greece is protected by mountains and it was
defended by a brave and numerous race of Dorians. Tyrtæus tells us
that one of the wars against Messenia was carried on continuously for
nineteen years[93].

  [92] Quoted by Pausanias (IV. 6).

  [93] Tyrtæus, Fragment 4. As the conquest of Messenia is a rare if
  not a unique example in Greece after the purely legendary age of a
  permanent conquest effected in spite of the obstacles interposed by
  a mountain range, it is worth while to take notice of the geography.
  The Spartans certainly did not cross Taygetus, whose lowest pass, now
  known as the Langada Pass, is about five thousand feet above the sea
  (Neuman und Partsch, _Physikalische Geographie von Griechenland_,
  p. 181 note): to the north of Taygetus they could cross without any
  trouble from the valley of the Eurotas to the valley of the Alpheius
  (see the page just referred to): but before they could reach Messenia
  they still had to march three or four miles up a valley with mountains
  on either side of it and then to cross a barren sparsely wooded ridge
  which unites Taygetus with Mount Lycæus. The ascent of the ridge takes
  an ordinary traveller half an hour, so that the height of it will be
  about five or six hundred feet. See Bædeker's _Greece_, p. 283.

(2) We are informed by Plutarch[94] that, long after the establishment
of the Lycurgean constitution, the assembly of the Spartiatæ took to
a practice of distorting and perverting the resolutions laid before
them by omitting or inserting clauses, and therefore the reigning
kings Polydorus and Theopompus added to the constitution a new rule
which enacted that "if the people chose crookedly, the elders and the
kings should have the final decision[95]." Thus the general assembly
was rendered incapable of insisting on measures of its own initiation:
though it probably retained a right of veto on all measures which the
council might propose and was consulted whenever the state had to
decide whether it should undertake a great and important war[96].

  [94] Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 6.

  [95] Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 6.

  [96] For example in 432 B.C. it was the assembly that decided on war
  against Athens (Thucydides I. 67 and 87). The kings however, until
  about 500 B.C., still had the right to engage in a foreign war, if
  they chose, simply on their own responsibility (Herodotus VI. 56).

(3) Plato (quoted by Plutarch) says that though Lycurgus had
established a constitution of mixed elements, yet the Spartans after
his time finding that their oligarchy (the kings and the elders) was
nevertheless too strong and was swelled and puffed up with power and
pride, set up the office of the Ephors to be a bit in its mouth: and
Aristotle says of Theopompus that he reduced the extent of the kingly
power by the creation of the magistracy of the Ephors and adds "They
say that his wife asked him whether he was not ashamed to transmit to
his sons less kingly power than he had inherited, and he replied: 'Not
in the least: for the power will be the more lasting[97].'"

  [97] The passages are from Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 7 and Aristotle,
  _Politics_ V. 11. 2, 3. Bekker, Oxf. 1837. Welldon's translation, p.
  392.

But I must pause for a moment: for there is a passage in Herodotus
which in giving a rapid enumeration of the Lycurgean institutions
counts the Ephors among them and is therefore in conflict with the
statements of Plato and Aristotle. Herodotus was writing about
430 B.C., Plato 400-347 B.C., and Aristotle about 330 B.C.: so
that Herodotus is the oldest of the three writers and, if other
circumstances were equal, ought to be preferred to the others. But in
this case other circumstances are not equal: for Plato and Aristotle
make their statements deliberately and emphatically: Herodotus does
not, but throws in his list of institutions as a sort of parenthesis,
while he is thinking about many other things, and paying less attention
to his parenthetic remark. These facts lead me to the opinion that
Plato and Aristotle give us the true version of the oldest tradition
and Herodotus does not: the opinion moreover is strengthened by the
fact that Aristotle appeals to a story which must have been current
long before his time and was probably older than the days of Herodotus;
and it is further supported by the negative evidence of the ῥήτρα,
which in defining the Lycurgean constitution says not a word about
Ephors.

It is impossible to determine what was the original character of the
magistracy of the Ephors: we do not know what were their functions, how
they were appointed or elected, nor for what term they held office:
but, from the passages which have just been referred to, it is certain
that Plato and Aristotle believed that the power acquired by the Ephors
diminished the power of the kings and the elders. The name Ephors or
Overseers implies that they exercised some kind of supervision over the
government or some part of it.

It cannot be doubted that the three important events of the reign of
Theopompus were in some way connected with one another. In the midst
of a great war for the conquest of Messenia, it might be especially
inconvenient that the assembly of the Spartiatæ should initiate
proposals of its own: for the men who made up the assembly were the
very same who formed the whole of the Spartan army. And again in
the settlement of the affairs of Messenia it was not desirable that
the kings and the council should be entirely uncontrolled, as they
would have been after the assembly had been deprived of the power of
initiating measures, if no Ephors had been appointed.

It is stated by Plutarch that the twenty-eight elders who with the
kings formed the council were elected by the general assembly of
the Spartans[98]: and the method of election which he describes is
so extremely primitive that it probably belongs to the original
constitution or dates from the times of Theopompus. When a councillor
died the best man among those over sixty years of age was to be chosen
to take his place. The people came together in assembly: certain
selected men were shut up in a neighbouring building whence they
could see nothing: the candidates were brought one by one before the
assembly, but in an order which was unknown to the men in the building,
and each as he entered was greeted with shouting: the men in the
building decided that the cheering had been loudest for the man who
came first, or the man who came second, or some other in the order:
and the man, unknown to themselves, for whom they thus pronounced, was
proclaimed as the new member of the council.

 [98] Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 26.

The parts then of the Spartan government from the time of Theopompus
onwards were the kings, the council of elders, the Ephors, and the
assembly of warriors. Until about 500 B.C. the chief power belonged to
the kings or to the kings and the council of elders: the kings had the
active management and direction of foreign affairs[99].

  [99] Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_, third edition, article
  Ephori, where proofs are given.

About that time and soon afterwards we meet with several reigns that
might account for a diminution of the kingly power. In one of the regal
houses there were Cleomenes I. (519-491 B.C.) and Pleistarchus (480-458
B.C.): in the other Leotychidas (491-461 B.C.). Cleomenes contrived
the unfair deposition of Demaratus, was half insane for some time
before his death, and slew himself in a fit of madness. Pleistarchus
was a little child at the death of his father Leonidas the hero of
Thermopylæ: his guardian was Pausanias, who tried to betray Sparta
into the power of the Persian king. Leotychidas was brought into royal
power, without any sound title, by the intrigues of Cleomenes. Whatever
may have been the causes of the decline of the kingly prerogative,
it is certain that between 500 B.C. and 467 B.C. the Ephors rose to
supreme power at Sparta: they sat in judgement on king Cleomenes I. on
an accusation of bribery, they imprisoned the regent Pausanias (about
467 B.C.) on suspicion of treason, and above all, in the year 479 B.C.,
it was on their own sole responsibility that they despatched the great
armament to resist Mardonius in Bœotia[100]. The power which they then
possessed they never lost till the decline of Sparta in the third
century B.C., except perhaps during the reign of an unusually able king
such as Agesilaus (398-361 B.C.).

  [100] For Cleomenes, see Herodotus VI. 73-82: for Pausanias,
  Thucydides I. 131. 3: for the sending of the great armament, Herodotus
  IX. chapters 10, 11, 28: and above, page 38.

It has already been remarked that in the period from Theopompus to
about 500 B.C. we do not know how the Ephors were appointed or elected:
in the time of Aristotle (about 330 B.C.) they were elected from the
whole body of Spartan citizens, and no doubt by the whole body of
Spartan citizens[101]. They must have been thus elected as early as
the time of Cleomenes I.: for if they had been appointed by the kings
or the council of elders they could not have gained that independence
which they then displayed.

  [101] Aristotle, _Politics_ II. 9. 19 γίγνονται ἐκ τοῦ δήμου πάντες
  (they are all created from the people). _Ibid._ II. 9. 23 (αἱρετὴν τὴν
  ἀρχὴν ἐξ ἁπάντων), (the office is filled by election from the whole
  body).

During the period of their greatness (beginning about 480 B.C.) the
Ephors were a board of five[102] magistrates elected annually. One
of them gave his name to the year[103]: they received ambassadors and
sometimes at least gave them an answer[104]: they could, as we have
seen, send out an armament to a foreign war and fix what troops should
go, and whenever it chanced that the assembly of the Spartiatæ was
called together an Ephor presided over it and took the votes[105].

  [102] Aristotle, _Politics_ II. 10. 6.

  [103] Xenophon, _Hellenica_ II. 3. §§ 9 and 10.

  [104] The ambassadors sent by the Athenians in their extreme distress
  during the occupation of Athens by Mardonius were received by the
  Ephors and were kept waiting ten days for an answer. Herodotus IX.
  7-11.

  [105] For example in 432 B.C. Thucydides I. 85-87.

The kings in time of peace were dignitaries without power: at
sacrificial feasts and athletic contests they took the seats of honour
and after a sacrifice the skins of the victims were their perquisite:
the state provided them with regular monthly allowances of food: they
superintended religious matters, and settled what Spartan citizens
should be the πρόξενοι or befrienders of visitors to Sparta from
the various Greek states: and they had jurisdiction about marriages
of heiresses, public ways, and adoption of children: but with these
exceptions all control of home affairs had passed from the kings to the
Ephors[106]. In time of war the kings were commanders of the Spartan
armies, and the history of Agesilaus shows that in this capacity they
might gain high distinction and influence: but the expeditions of the
Spartans were usually accompanied by some of the Ephors[107], who could
afterwards report to their colleagues any action of the commander which
displeased them.

  [106] For the powers of the kings in time of peace see Herodotus VI.
  57.

  [107] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 13. § 5.

Until the beginning of the Peloponnesian war in 432 B.C., it seems that
the government, whether it was controlled by the kings, the council,
or the Ephors, was faithfully conducted for the interests of the
whole of the little community of the Spartiatæ. We do not hear of the
rulers living in luxury, nor of inequalities or discontents among the
Spartiatæ, nor of emancipations of Helots. Twice only in the course
of several centuries we read that the Spartans made a new law[108]:
in foreign policy they were unenterprising: and they seem to have
devoted themselves to the cultivation of the military virtues enjoined
by their traditions, and to looking after their interests at home,
which consisted largely in keeping down, degrading and humiliating the
Messenians and the other Helots.

  [108] Smith, _Dict. Ant._, third edition, vol. I. p. 915.

IV. While the Spartans were waging their great war against the
Athenians (432-404 B.C.) and afterwards when they were enjoying the
advantages which their success procured for them, many alterations
were gradually introduced in their customs and government. Helots
were emancipated for service as soldiers: inequalities arose among
the Spartiatæ, some of them acquiring great fortunes as regulators
(harmosts) in foreign cities, others sinking to poverty and losing
their civic rights: and the Ephors used their time of office for the
getting of wealth and enjoyment of luxury.

Helots had been employed as light-armed soldiers attending on the
heavy-armed Spartiatæ as early as the battle of Platæa in 479 B.C.: in
the first years of the Peloponnesian war some of them had distinguished
themselves in the field, and in the eighth year of the war (in the
beginning of 424 B.C.) the Spartans, fearing they might be dangerous,
thought of sending them on foreign service. This plan of removing
them was not carried into effect: but a proclamation was put out that
those Helots who were conscious of having done good service in the war
might apply for their freedom: two thousand were selected and were
emancipated with striking solemnities: but within a short time most
of them disappeared, no one knew how, by secret assassination[109].
This first liberation of Helots ended in treachery and murder: but
afterwards emancipations were frequently made in good faith. The men
who were raised from serfdom did not become Periœci but were known as
νεοδαμώδεις, or "men resembling new commoners."

  [109] Thucydides IV. 80.

Bodies of Neodamodês are mentioned by Thucydides as existing in the
years 421, 418, 413, 412 B.C.[110]: and in one of the occasions where
he speaks of Neodamodês and Helots as serving together he explains the
difference between the two by remarking that "the word Neodamodês
signifies that freedom has been already acquired," thus proving for
certain that a Neodamodês was an emancipated Helot[111]. After the end
of the war the Neodamodês became more numerous: in the year 399 B.C.
the Spartans sent out a thousand under Thimbron to Asia Minor at the
request of the Asiatic Greek cities[112].

  [110] Thucydides V. 34, V. 67, VII. 19, VII. 58, VIII. 5.

  [111] Thucydides VII. 58 δύναται δὲ τὸ Νεοδαμῶδες ἐλευθερον ἤδη εἶναι.

  [112] Xenophon, _Hellenica_ III. 1. 4.

In 398 or 397 B.C., before Agesilaus had reigned a whole year, a
conspiracy against the Spartan government was set on foot by a man
named Cinadon. Xenophon in his account of its detection says that
Cinadon was a young man and vigorous in body and mind but was not one
of the Equals (οὐ μέντοι τῶν ὁμοίων). When the informer was questioned
by the Ephors, he said Cinadon had expressed confidence that many of
the Helots, the Neodamodês, the Inferiors (οἱ ὑπομείονες), and the
Periœci were in sympathy with his aims: for whenever men of these
classes talked about the Spartiatæ, they could not conceal that they
would like to eat them raw[113]. The story shows that the Equals were
the highest of all the classes at Sparta, and that the Inferiors, being
distinct from the Helots, the Neodamodês and the Periœci, were men who
had been Spartiatæ but had lost their position. The difference between
the Equals and the Inferiors is but imperfectly known. Aristotle tells
us that any Spartan who was unable to pay his share of the cost of the
public mess-table was deprived of his rights as a citizen, and many
had thus been disfranchised[114]. From this we may infer that anyone
who sank into the ranks of the Inferiors lost not only his vote in
the assembly, which was of little value, as the assemblies were not
influential, but also his right of being trained as a Spartan: hence he
would have but a poor chance of rising to military distinction or of
obtaining any position of importance.

  [113] Xenophon, _Hellenica_ III. 3. 5 and 6.

  [114] Aristotle, _Politics_ II. 9. 31 and 32. Welldon, _Translation_,
  p. 83.

When the Peloponnesian war ended in 404 B.C., the cities of Asia and
the Ægean sea came under the power of Sparta. To each city a harmost or
regulator was sent to establish an oligarchical government consisting
usually of a decarchy or board of ten citizens distinguished for
servility towards the Spartans and readiness to punish any sign of
patriotic spirit with death or banishment and confiscation. Besides the
harmosts, military detachments were sent to enforce the wishes of the
Spartans in their new possessions: both the harmosts and the military
commanders were harsh governors, and some of them amassed large
fortunes by extortion[115]. They took home the wealth that they had
acquired and thus introduced the inequalities among the Spartiatæ which
were so conspicuous and so invidious in the time of Cinadon.

  [115] For the harmosts see Xenophon, _Hellenica_ III. 5. § 13.

The supremacy which the Spartans acquired in 404 B.C. was lost again
in 371 B.C. In that year an army with which they invaded Bœotia was
severely defeated by the Thebans under Epaminondas; the victorious
general marched into the Peloponnesus, deprived the Spartans of
Messenia, and, summoning from all parts the descendants of Messenians
who had gone into exile, established them as an independent people in
the new city of Messenê on the site of the old stronghold of Ithomê.
At the same time he founded the Arcadian city of Megalê Polis (in
Latin Megalopolis) to bar the way between the Spartans and their old
allies the Eleians: and in the year 369 B.C. he ensured the permanence
of his work by winning the decisive battle of Mantineia. The Spartans
were reduced lower than they had been for two centuries: but adversity
did not restore them to what they had been before the days of their
prosperity. The number of men possessed of wealth, small already,
steadily became smaller, so that in the reign of Agis IV. (about 243
B.C.) the whole number of the Spartiatæ did not exceed seven hundred;
of these only about a hundred were landowners, and the rest were
reduced to poverty and distress[116].

  [116] Plutarch, _Agis_ 5.

The office of the Ephors shared in the general deterioration of the
Spartan commonwealth, and Aristotle (writing about 330 B.C.) speaks of
it with some severity. We can indeed see from his remarks that access
to the office was not obtained by bribery, for very poor citizens
were frequently chosen: the election was conducted under a system
which seemed to him very puerile, but which did not close the door
to poverty. On the other hand the Ephors when in office frequently
accepted bribes: and he says that on one occasion they did all that in
them lay towards the ruin of the state. They often spent the wealth
that they got by such dishonest means in leading a life of extreme
self-indulgence, in strong contrast with the hardships which the poorer
citizens endured[117].

  [117] Aristotle, _Politics_ II. 9. 19-24. Welldon, pp. 80, 81.

We may now sum up the results of our observations of the Spartans and
their institutions. From the earliest times they devoted themselves to
acquiring and cultivating those qualities which would enable them to
excel as a people of conquerors and of slave-owners: but in doing this
they lost most of the other virtues, and especially the qualities which
make intelligent citizens. There were few political questions in which
the Spartans took any interest: they did not make new laws; they had no
commerce, no gold or silver except in the treasury of the state: the
only subjects debated in their assemblies were questions of war, peace,
alliances, disputed successions to the throne, and the like: so that
the assembly did not meet save when such questions arose, or when one
of the annual elections of Ephors came round. They did not even care
what men were set over them as rulers: their method of electing Ephors
was childish, and the elections are generally if not always passed over
in silence by the historians. Nor is their indifference surprising:
for their real ruler was, not the Ephors nor any living men, but
their rigid system of custom and discipline: and under that system it
mattered little which of them was in command and which had to obey,
since nearly every Spartan was competent to issue such orders as custom
and usage dictated, and every other Spartan was prepared to obey them.

If this estimate is a just one, it follows that the really important
part of the Spartan institutions was not the political part but the
disciplinary: that their discipline destroyed their capacity for
political activity: that the Spartans from the age of Theopompus till
the Peloponnesian war were rather a military order than a political
body: and that they and their institutions cannot be very interesting
or instructive to students of Politics, except as showing how a
community, which was originally political, may lose the characteristics
by which political communities are distinguished.

After the Peloponnesian war the Spartans got access to rich spoil at a
distance from their own country and began to think less of their common
interests as slave-owners at home, than of their individual hopes of
plundering the inhabitants of the cities of Asia Minor. In consequence
many of the Helots were emancipated to serve as soldiers in foreign
war, and the intensity of the oppression of the rest was probably
diminished: while on the other hand each individual Spartan acted no
longer for the common good of the Spartiatæ but for the sole good of
himself, and the government was conducted in the interest not of the
whole ruling caste but of that smaller number among them who had been
successful in enriching themselves.

 _Note._ I do not venture to follow Fynes Clinton (_Fasti Hellenici_
 vol. I. Appendix, chapter 6, page 337) in giving precise dates for
 the important reign of Theopompus and Polydorus and for the Messenian
 wars, because the passages which he quotes are taken from authors who
 lived after Myron of Prienê and who may have relied on his romances.
 There are however two genealogies of Spartan kings (Herodotus VII. 204
 and VIII. 131) which compel us, unless we assume either that in one
 royal house the generations were extravagantly long or that in the
 other they were abnormally short, to place the beginning of the joint
 reign of the two kings not earlier than 730 B.C., and its end not
 later than 650 B.C. We shall probably be right in placing the first
 Messenian war somewhere before 700 B.C. and in the reign of Theopompus
 and Polydorus: the second war may be placed somewhere between 680 B.C.
 and 650 B.C.: but further precision seems to be unattainable.




CHAPTER V.

THE GREEK CITIES.


I have already stated that between 650 B.C. and 338 B.C. the Greek
communities with the exception of Sparta are to be classed as city
states, or communities in which a walled city is of supreme importance
and the rural districts count for very little. It seems right to place
the beginning of the city states so early as 650 B.C., because at that
time three out of the four communities of which we have records were
ruled oppressively by bodies of magnates who lived in the cities or
close to them, and who owed their power to the protection of the city
walls and to the facilities for concerted action which they gained from
living close to a common centre. It must however be admitted that the
evidence of the great importance of the cities is not so clear at the
early date which I have named as it is a century later, in the age of
the tyrants.

The examination of the political institutions of the Greek cities will
be divided into four parts: I. The early aristocracies and oligarchies;
II. The tyrannies; III. The democracies and the later oligarchies; IV.
The conquest of Greece by Macedonia.


I. _The early aristocracies and oligarchies._

Before the year 650 B.C. the heroic monarchies had ceased to exist
in all the more important Greek peoples and other governments had
taken their place. Of the process of the change from the old tribal
system to other systems we have no contemporary records in any case:
and traditions even of a later date are absent except in regard to
Corinth, Megara, Athens and Argos.

At Corinth it is said that in 745 B.C. the members of the royal family,
two hundred in number, deposed the king Aristomenes, and took the
control of the state into their own possession, electing one of their
own number every year to act as president and discharge the functions
of king. They were distinguished by their descent from king Bacchis,
were known as the Bacchiadæ, and in order to keep themselves a distinct
caste they forbade all members of their family to marry any one but a
descendant of Bacchis. In 655 B.C., after they had ruled for ninety
years, their government was selfish and oppressive[118].

  [118] Herodotus V. 92. Diodorus Siculus VII. fragment 9. Diodorus
  wrote about 20-10 B.C.

At Megara we know only that the government was in the hands of certain
rich families, and that eventually their oppressive rule provoked the
common folk under the leadership of a man named Theagenes to rise
against them and overthrow them[119].

  [119] Aristotle, _Politics_ V. 5. 9, Bekker. Welldon, _Translation_,
  p. 357.

At Athens the nobles gradually deprived the king of his power and
prerogatives: and from a date somewhere between 700 B.C. and 650 B.C.
the government was controlled by a permanent council of nobles, and
its details were managed by nine archons or administrators, who were
selected yearly by the council[120]. The council consisted of those
who were serving or had served the office of archons[121], so that
the council in selecting new archons also filled up vacancies in its
own numbers: among the nine magistrates the first in rank was The
Archon, who gave his name to his year of office: the second was the
Archon Basileus, who performed the religious rites: the third was the
Polemarch, who commanded in war: the other six were called Thesmothetæ,
and probably attended to judicial business[122]. The nobles then from
650 B.C. or earlier were in exclusive possession of power: how they
used it when first they got it, is not recorded: by 600 B.C. they were
employing it selfishly for the interests of their class.

  [120] Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, ch. 8.

  [121] Plutarch, _Solon_, ch. 19, Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_,
  ch. 3.

  [122] Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, ch. 3, calls them recorders
  of laws or customs for judgement. The chapter may be spurious, but the
  assertion is probable.

The first truly historical Athenian is Draco, who, about 620 B.C.,
collected the customary law of Athens and formed it, together with some
provisions of his own, into a written code of legal regulations. The
newly recovered Aristotelian treatise on the constitution of Athens
contains a passage which also attributes to him some very important
changes in the structure of the government[123]: but, as this passage
was certainly either not known or not accepted as genuine by Plutarch
in the first century A.D. and Pollux in the second century, though they
were well acquainted with Aristotle's treatise, it seems impossible to
regard it as an original part of the work[124].

  [123] Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 4.

  [124] Mr R. Macan in _Journ. of Hellenic Studies_, April 1891, p. 27
  notices the silence of Plutarch.

Whether Draco did or did not attempt to reform the government, he
did not put an end to the oppressive practices of the nobles and the
wealthy. They took advantage of the harsh laws relating to debt, to
deprive the poorer freemen of their lands or to reduce them to slavery:
but the poor showed so much inclination for fighting that their
oppressors were alarmed. In the year 594 B.C. it was agreed by both the
contending classes that Solon should be elected archon and entrusted
with power to deal with the existing discontents and to make a new form
of government. He cancelled all existing debts, restored to liberty
those who had been enslaved, altered the law in regard to security for
debt, and then attempted to remedy the defects of the political system.

Solon devised a moderate system of popular government of the kind to
which Aristotle afterwards gave the name of Polity. It was popular,
since the mass of the citizens had a controlling power: but it was
moderate, because no class had opportunities for governing in its
own interest. His new institutions were the δικαστήρια or popular
law-courts, the ἐκκλησία or assembly of citizens, the βουλή or council
of four hundred, and certain regulations which made eligibility to
office depend on wealth. The archons kept their titles and functions:
the permanent council of ex-archons, henceforth known as the council
of the Arêus Pagus (in Latin Areopagus), survived with diminished
authority.

The δικαστήρια were courts in which large bodies of citizens sat as
judges or jurymen: and Athenian citizens of all classes, including the
Thetes or labourers for hire, were qualified to serve in them. The
extent of their jurisdiction is not precisely known: but as they were
empowered to hear appeals from the decisions of all magistrates, they
had the final judgement in questions of the greatest importance: and
as the laws were imperfect or uncertain, they could often be a law to
themselves. Under the oligarchy there had been no general assembly of
citizens or it had been as powerless as the common folk in an ἀγορή of
the Homeric age: Solon ordered all citizens to come together yearly in
assembly for the election of archons. The choice however of the archons
was conducted by a process that was not purely elective: each of the
four ancient tribes, into which the Athenian families were divided,
elected from among the richest class of citizens ten candidates for the
office, and, from the forty thus chosen, nine were taken by drawing
lots. As Solon ordered that the laws which he had made should continue
in force for a hundred years, we may infer that he intended that the
assembly should for the present do little or nothing in the way of law
making: but, in case it should be inclined towards unwise innovations,
he established as a check upon it his βουλή or council of four hundred.
To make up this council he selected a hundred men from each of the
four tribes; and, to give it a restraining power, he ordered that no
proposal should be brought before the assembly till the council had
approved it. His rules for eligibility to office depended on a division
of the citizens into four classes according to their wealth. The
richest class were the Pentacosiomedimni, whose lands yielded in the
year not less than five hundred medimni (about seven hundred bushels)
in aggregate produce of corn, oil and wine: next came the Hippeis,
who had three hundred medimni yearly and could equip and maintain a
horseman for warfare: then the Zeugitæ, who had two hundred medimni
and kept a yoke of oxen: and lastly the Thetes, who were the poorest
class and worked for hire. The richest class were alone eligible to the
archonship and the treasurership: the second and third class could hold
lesser offices suitable to their condition: and the Thetes alone were
incapable of holding places in the administration[125].

  [125] The description of Solon's constitution is taken from
  Aristotle's _Constitution of Athens_, ch. 5-13: except the statement
  that the members of the council of four hundred were selected by
  Solon. This is from Plutarch, _Solon_, ch. 19.

The constitution of Solon remained in full working order for only three
or four years: then there arose violent contests about the appointment
of archons, which show that the immediate effect of his changes had
been to transfer the chief power to the nine magistrates[126]. The
turbulence of factions made it impossible to enforce some parts of
his constitution: but other parts of it were probably observed, and
the whole served as a foundation for Cleisthenes to build upon. It
is probable that the strife of classes which spoiled the working of
Solon's institutions led to the restoration of some kind of oligarchy:
for if it was not so, it is hard to account for the readiness of the
poor citizens to accede to the wishes of the demagogue Pisistratus.

  [126] Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 13.

The prevalence of oligarchical governments in the Greek cities of
Sicily at an early stage of their career is noticed by Aristotle[127]:
the existence of similar governments in the Greek cities generally
in the same stage of their progress may fairly be inferred from the
silence of historians.

  [127] Aristotle, _Politics_ V. 12. 13. Welldon, p. 405.

It is to be noticed that none of the traditions about the governments
of the nobles in the Greek cities of the seventh century B.C. tell us
anything about their behaviour or character when first they rose to
power. From the probabilities of the case however we may conjecture
that at first they were good governments and used their power well:
they supplanted the long-established heroic monarchies, and could not
have succeeded in such an achievement unless they had had merits of
their own. It seems then that during the first part of their existence
they ought to be called aristocracies rather than oligarchies: for
an aristocracy is a government conducted by the few best men in a
community for the best interests of the whole community, while an
oligarchy is a government conducted by a few for their own selfish
interests. From what has been already stated about the governments of
the nobles in the later part of their careers, it will be seen that
oligarchy is a name which suits them precisely.

At the beginning of the chapter it was remarked that the nobles lived
in the cities or close beside them, and owed their power to the
protection of the city walls and to the facilities for concerted action
which they gained from living close to a common centre: and it is now
necessary to give authorities for the statement. Aristotle[128] speaks
of the oligarchy at Athens as οἱ πεδιακοί, or inhabitants of τὸ πεδίον,
a little tract of level ground near Athens, Plutarch[129] calls them
πεδιεῖς in exactly the same sense, and the Etymologicum Magnum[130] a
much later authority says the Eupatridæ lived in the city of Athens
itself. The oligarchy at Megara were overthrown by Theagenes: and he
succeeded in overthrowing them by catching them while they were taking
their horses and cattle to graze beside the river[131]:--a fact which
shows that when they went out into the open country they were caught at
a disadvantage, and implies that they habitually lived behind defences.
As to the Bacchiadæ at Corinth there is not any statement that they
lived in the city, but Herodotus in a story which will be told
presently explains carefully that a certain Corinthian who was not one
of the ruling caste did not live in the city but in a δῆμος or place
in the open country. The evidence for my proposition that at Athens,
Megara and Corinth the cities as distinct from the open country were of
great importance is not, I confess, very conclusive: but I have thought
it sufficient to justify me in regarding the communities which lived at
those places as city states and not as tribes.

  [128] _Politics_ V. 5. 9.

  [129] _Solon_, ch. 13.

  [130] Etymol. Mag., under the word εὐπατρίδαι.

  [131] Aristotle, _Pol._ V. 5. 9. Welldon, p. 357.

At Argos the course of events was not the same as in those cities of
which I have spoken. The Argive monarchy, as we have seen[132], was not
abolished but continued to exist so late as 480 B.C.: the king however
was not a great power in the state: for we do not hear of any doings
of any of the kings. On the other hand, the fact that the monarchy
was permitted to survive shows clearly that there was no oligarchy at
Argos so violent and exclusive as the rule of the Bacchiadæ at Corinth
or the Eupatridæ at Athens. Since then supreme power did not belong
either to the king or to the nobles, power must have been in some way
divided, so that Argos had a mixed or balanced form of government: and
this fact is of some interest, since it adds something to the slight
resemblance between Argos and Rome which has been already noticed, by
showing that in these two cities forms of government succeeded one
another in the same order. In each there was first a strong monarchy:
next an excessively strong monarchy or tyranny: and afterwards a mixed
or balanced form of government. At Rome the three stages are marked by
Servius Tullius, by Tarquin the Proud, and by the division of power
between patricians and plebeians: at Argos by the early Doric kings,
by Pheidon, and by the mixed form of government which was established
after the decline of his power.

  [132] Above, pages 34, 35.


II. _The Tyrannies._

The way in which the oligarchic governments were destroyed is
illustrated by the successful enterprise of Pisistratus at Athens: the
character of the despotisms which succeeded them by the history of
Cypselus and Periander, tyrants of Corinth from 655 B.C. to 585 B.C.,
and by the reigns of Pisistratus and his son.

The story of the origin of the Corinthian tyranny, as told by
Herodotus[133], begins when Corinth was ruled by the oligarchy of the
Bacchiadæ. It was, as we have already seen, the custom of this family
to forbid their children to marry any but a Bacchiad. But one of them
had a lame daughter named Labda, and, as none of the Bacchiad princes
would marry her, she was given to Eetion who was below the caste.
Eetion had also another wife: Labda had a child, but the other wife
had none, and Eetion, being discontented, sent to consult the Delphic
oracle. The priestess took no notice of what he asked but declared that
Labda should bear another son who should be an important person. The
Bacchiadæ heard of the oracle, held counsel what they should do, and
appointed ten men of their own number to go to the village where Eetion
lived and to destroy the child. The ten men came to the house, went
into the court and asked for the new-born infant: Labda thinking they
had come out of kindness to congratulate Eetion, brought out her child
and put it in the hands of one of the visitors. They had arranged that
the first of them that got hold of it should dash it on the ground: but
it chanced, by luck sent from the gods, that the child smiled on the
man who had received it: he took notice of this, and could not perform
the murder, but passed on the child to the second man, and the second
to the third, and so the child was passed round all ten and none had
the heart to slay it. They gave it back to the mother and went outside
the house, reproached one another for soft-heartedness, and resolved
to go back and carry out their commission. But it was fated that from
the seed of Eetion mischief should grow up for Corinth: Labda standing
by the door heard their words, and hid the child in a κυψέλη or chest:
his life was saved, he received the name of Cypselus (Κύψελος), and
when he was a man overpowered the Bacchiadæ, and established himself
as tyrant. He drove many of the Corinthians into exile, reduced many
to penury, and put to death many more. After a reign of thirty years
he was succeeded by his son. Periander, the new tyrant, at first
governed gently: but after he had sent an envoy to Thrasybulus, tyrant
of Miletus, to ask how he could best secure his power, and had learned
from the envoy on his return that Thrasybulus had replied only by going
into a plot of standing corn and lopping off the tallest ears, he began
to destroy the most distinguished citizens and became a more murderous
oppressor than Cypselus had been.

  [133] Herodotus V. 92 and III. 48-53.

The character of Periander's government is exemplified in the stories
of the spoiling of the Corinthian women and the seizure of the
Corcyræan boys.

Among those whom Periander killed was his wife Melissa: a treasure had
been committed to her keeping by a friend, and Periander after he had
killed her regretted that he had not first learned from her where it
was concealed. To repair his error he sent to the necromantic oracle
at Acheron to question her ghost. Melissa appeared, but refused to say
where the treasure was, complaining of being cold and naked, since the
clothing buried in her tomb was no good to her because it had not been
burned. Periander issued a proclamation inviting all the Corinthian
women to a great festival at the Heræum: and when they came in their
best attire, the spearmen surrounded them and stripped them of their
clothes and jewels, which Periander heaped together in a pit and burned
as an offering, accompanied by his prayers, to Melissa. Her ghost was
propitiated, and, appearing a second time, revealed the place where she
had hid the treasure.

The father of Melissa was Procles tyrant of Epidaurus. The two sons of
Periander and Melissa had no suspicion how their mother's death had
occurred, till at the ages of eighteen and seventeen they visited their
grandfather at Epidaurus. When the visit was at an end, and Procles
was bidding them farewell, he remarked "I suppose you know, boys, who
killed your mother?" The elder son gave no heed to this: the younger,
Lycophron, after his return to his home at Corinth, would not speak
to Periander, and was accordingly driven out of his house and went
to stay with friends in the city. Periander forbade them to show him
hospitality; and at last, to force his son to return home, proclaimed
that any one who spoke to him must pay a fine to Apollo. Lycophron,
driven from the houses of his friends, did not go home but went to
sleep in the open air under the porticoes. After this had gone on three
nights, Periander went himself and tried to talk his son over: but got
no answer except "You have incurred the fine to Apollo by speaking to
me." Periander, seeing no other way of getting Lycophron out of his
sight, sent him to rule over Corcyra, which was a colony of Corinth
and, contrary to the usual practice among the Greeks, remained under
the government of the mother city. When Lycophron had lived long in
Corcyra, Periander grew old and unequal to the task of ruling the
Corinthians, and besought Lycophron to come and be tyrant at Corinth,
promising that he himself would go to Corcyra. Lycophron, after much
persuasion, was brought to consent, but the Corcyræans did not like
the prospect of the change and to make it impossible put Lycophron to
death. The vengeance of Periander was worthy of a tyrant: he seized
three hundred boys of the best families in Corcyra and shipped them off
for Sardis to be made slaves and eunuchs to Asiatics and barbarians:
the commanders however of the ships which carried them were obliged
to touch at Samos, and the boys were enabled to take sanctuary and
were afterwards through the kindness of the Samians restored to their
parents in Corcyra.

At Athens, in the year 560 B.C., the chief contending parties were
the rich men of the plain, the men of the sea-shore, and the poor men
of the hill country. Pisistratus, a young Athenian who had twice won
military distinction, having formed a body of partisans and declared
himself to be the leader of the men of the hill country, obtained
tyrannical power over Attica by means of a trick. He drove into
Athens in a chariot drawn by a pair of mules, both he and his mules
bleeding from many wounds, which had been inflicted with his own hands.
The people were already assembled or came together to meet him. He
addressed them and said he had been driving into the country and had
been attacked by his political opponents: and went on to request them
that he might have some men to protect him. A resolution granting his
request was proposed by Aristion and accepted by the assembly: before
long he and his guard of club men seized the Acropolis and he became
tyrant. Twice Pisistratus was expelled from Attica in consequence of
rebellions stirred up by Megacles, the head of the noble house of the
Alcmæonidæ, and twice he recovered his despotic power. After his first
expulsion, he bade a certain woman named Phyê of tall stature and
graceful figure to array herself in a splendid suit of complete armour
and drive in a chariot into the Acropolis: he sent heralds before her
to make proclamation "O Athenians, give good welcome to Pisistratus:
ye see that the goddess Athenê has honoured him above all men, and is
herself leading him home into her own Acropolis." The people in the
city were thus persuaded that Phyê was the goddess Athenê, and were
induced to give good welcome to Pisistratus: he became master of the
Acropolis, and his despotic power was re-established. After his second
expulsion, he spent ten years in exile: at the end of that time he had
contrived to amass large sums of money, and had gained the adherence
of a strong force of mercenary troops and soldiers of fortune. At the
head of his army he landed in Attica and began reducing the country:
the Athenians marched out to oppose him but showed no vigour in their
resistance: and before long he was admitted within the city. Then for
the first time his tyranny rooted itself firmly in the soil. Hitherto
his government had been mild and orderly: he had never tried to meddle
with the habits and home life of his subjects: and, as neither of his
attempts to recover his power had been vigorously resisted, his rule
must have been regarded with favour by a large part of the Athenians.
Now he began to rely on force and fear alone for the maintenance of
his authority. He surrounded himself with a strong body of foreign
mercenaries: many of the citizens from fear of him went into exile: and
those who remained in Attica, in case they fell under any suspicion,
were compelled to deliver their children into his charge as hostages
for their good behaviour. And yet, even in this period when his
government was most oppressive, he never put a stop to the election
by the citizens of the nine yearly archons according to the ancient
constitution, though he took care that one of the archons should always
be a member of his own family[134]. At his death in 527 B.C. he was
succeeded by his son Hippias, who for some years imitated the policy
of his father by tolerating the maintenance of some of the popular
institutions while he kept the substance of power in his own hands.
After the unsuccessful conspiracy of Harmodius and Aristogeiton in 514
B.C. his rule became harsh and repressive[135].

  [134] Thucydides VI. 54.

  [135] Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, ch. 19.

The fall of the Athenian tyranny was brought about through a foreign
intervention. The wealthy family of the Alcmæonidæ had been forced at
the last restoration of Pisistratus to leave Athens and go into exile.
It chanced that the great temple of Apollo at Delphi had been destroyed
by fire, and the Amphictyonic council, composed of delegates from the
Hellenic races, making great efforts had obtained money enough to
rebuild it. The Alcmæonidæ contracted with the Amphictyonic council
that they would for a certain sum restore the temple: and to acquire
influence with the Delphic priestess they performed the task with
splendour far exceeding what was required of them. After this, whenever
the oracle was consulted by the Spartan state or by any Spartan, the
answer was always the same "Set Athens free." In 510 B.C. the Spartans
resolved to obey the commands of the god: the king Cleomenes was
sent to Athens in command of a Spartan army, Hippias was expelled,
the exiles restored, and the Athenians were free to establish any
constitution that they might desire[136].

  [136] The stories of Pisistratus and Hippias are told by Herodotus (I.
  59-64 and V. 62): see also Aristotle, _Const. Ath._ 14, and Plutarch,
  _Solon_ 30. The temple of Delphi was burnt in 548 B.C. Pausanias X. 5.
  5, 'Ερξικλείδου ἄρχοντος.

It was probably impossible for a Greek city, in the period when
democracy was unthought of, to overthrow an oligarchy without setting
up a tyranny in its stead. Tyrannies are found in all parts of the
Hellenic world in or about the sixth century B.C.: at Sicyon, Megara,
Epidaurus, in the island of Samos, at Mitylenê in Lesbos, in all the
cities of Asia Minor, in Italy at Rhegium, and in Sicily at Agrigentum,
Zanclê, Himera, Selinus, Gela and Leontini[137]. Most of the tyrants
began their ambitious careers, as Pisistratus began his, by flattering
the poor and oppressed classes and professing to be champions of
liberty[138]: some of them however started with being hereditary
kings possessing limited prerogatives[139], others were high officers
of state[139], or were members of an oligarchy[139]: but all alike
were usurpers of absolute power and found it necessary eventually
to maintain themselves in power by employing a body guard of foreign
mercenaries[140]. Pheidon of Argos, as I have already remarked,
cannot properly be counted among the τύραννοι: the same may be said
of Pittacus of Mitylenê with still greater confidence: for Pittacus
was in no sense a usurper, but was deliberately chosen as Æsymnetes or
permanent dictator and endowed with absolute power by a vote of the
people[141]. If Pittacus were counted as a tyrant, Solon would have to
be counted as a tyrant also: for the powers conferred on the two men
were the same, and were bestowed on them for the same purposes and by
the same authority and procedure.

  [137] Grote, Part II. ch. XLIII.

  [138] Aristotle, _Politics_ V. 10. 4; and V. 6. 1. Bekker. Welldon,
  pp. 381, 382, 358.

  [139] Ibid. V. 10. 6. Bekker. Welldon, pp. 381, 382.

  [140] Aristotle, _Politics_ III. 14. 7. Welldon, p. 145.

  [141] For Pittacus see Aristotle, _Politics_ III. 14. 9. Welldon, p.
  146.

The establishment of tyrants, or usurpers of absolute power, was
necessary to the development of most of the Greek states, because
nothing else would have sufficed to destroy the oppressive power of
the nobles: and many of the new rulers for a time governed well and
were respected by their subjects. All however in time became selfish
and cruel, and being detested by their countrymen were forced to hire
foreign mercenaries to protect them. But no precaution on the part
of the tyrants could avail them for long in the face of the general
abhorrence with which they were regarded. Their dynasties usually
lasted only for one or two generations: the most long-lived of all was
that of the Orthagoridæ at Sicyon which lasted a hundred years[142].

  [142] Aristotle, _Politics_ V. 12. 1. Welldon, p. 402.

The feelings with which the memory of the tyrants was regarded in the
latter part of the fifth century B.C. when Herodotus wrote his history
are shown by a speech which he puts in the mouth of a Corinthian
named Sosicles. The Spartans at some time between 510 B.C. and 490
B.C. conceived a project of reinstating at Athens the tyrant Hippias
whom they had helped to dethrone, and requested their allies to send
ambassadors to discuss the matter. The envoys of all the states
disliked the proposal: it was Sosicles who expressed the feelings of
all. "Surely" he said "the heaven shall be set below the earth, and the
earth raised above the heaven, and men shall have their habitation
in the sea and the fishes live on dry land, if ye, O Lacedæmonians,
are preparing to destroy equal governments and to bring the cities
of Greece under the rule of tyrannies, which of all things in the
world are the wickedest and bloodiest. If indeed ye think it good
for cities to be ruled by tyrants, ye should first set a tyrant over
yourselves, and then seek to do the like for your neighbours: for
if ye had experienced, as we have, what a tyrant is, ye would bring
before us sounder opinions on the subject than those that ye have now
declared[143]." He enforced his opinions by telling a large part of
the story of Cypselus and Periander: and the effect of his words was
such that the envoys at the congress declared their agreement with them
and the Spartans had to abandon all thought of the restoration of the
Athenian tyranny.

 [143] Herodotus V. 92.

There can be no doubt that in the age of the tyrants the Greek
communities were city states, or communities in which a walled city
is of supreme importance and the rural districts are of comparatively
little moment. In the case of Athens, the story of Pisistratus affords
conclusive evidence: for in it we can observe three times over that,
so long as his influence or authority extended only to the rural
districts, he was but an aspirant to sovereignty: but, as soon as he
was master of the city, he was established as tyrant. And in the other
Greek communities tyrannies were upheld by body guards of foreign
mercenaries: and this could hardly have taken place if there had not
been in each community a single fortified city of such importance that
a body guard by occupying it could dominate the whole country.

Between the tyrants of the Greek cities and the tyrants of the
Italian cities of the middle ages there is a close resemblance: but
the tyrants, both Greek and Italian, differ in one most important
particular from all monarchs who have ruled over empires, tribes or
nations. In an empire, a tribe or a nation the power of a monarch
always has some visible utility: in an empire he holds the whole
structure together: in a tribe or nation he repels foreign attack
or leads his subjects to assail their neighbours: and above all,
if his tribe or nation is successful and annexes new territory, he
is supremely useful in amalgamating the people of the new territory
with his old subjects. To a tyrant all these kinds of usefulness were
impossible: the community that he ruled was too small to need holding
together: it was too well protected by its mountain bulwarks and city
walls to fear much hurt from hostile invasion: it could not hope to
conquer neighbours whose defences were as strong as its own: and it did
not acquire new subjects. There was, as we have seen, one momentous
service which the tyrants could and did perform for their cities, and
that was to put down the oligarchies and to ensure that they did not
rise again: but, when once this task was performed, there was little
else that they could do, and their power became a mere political
survival, or an institution which exists not because it is useful but
because it has existed and has not yet been removed.


III. _The Democracies and the Later Oligarchies._

By the year 500 B.C. the tyrannies had disappeared from Greece proper
from Asia Minor and from the Ægean sea: and from about that time
democracies and oligarchies--the rule of the many poor and the rule of
the few rich--succeeded one another alternately in most of the cities
till the battle of Chæroneia in 338 B.C. put an end to the independence
of the Greeks. My examples both of democracy and of oligarchy will all
be taken from the history of Athens: for the march of events at Athens
has been illuminated for us by Thucydides, Aristophanes, Xenophon,
Aristotle, Demosthenes and other great writers and orators, while of
the other Greek cities we have no knowledge beyond what can be derived
from a few fragmentary notices. At Athens the period which we are
considering was most unequally divided between democracy and oligarchy:
the government was oligarchic only for four months in 411 B.C. and for
eight months in 404 B.C.; throughout the rest of the time, a duration
of nearly two centuries, it was steadily democratic.

My sketch of democracy and oligarchy as exemplified in Athenian history
will be divided into five parts: (1) Moderate popular government
508 B.C.-480 B.C. (2) The changes between 480 B.C. and 432 B.C. (3)
Democracy during the Peloponnesian war 432 B.C.-404 B.C. (4) Democracy
after the Peloponnesian war 404 B.C.-338 B.C. (5) Oligarchies in 411
B.C. and in 404 B.C.


1. _Moderate popular government under the Cleisthenean constitution_
508 B.C.-480 B.C.

After the expulsion of Hippias a contest for power arose between
Isagoras and Cleisthenes. Isagoras was a friend of the expelled tyrant:
Cleisthenes, finding that he was getting worsted, made an alliance with
the poorer classes and within three years after the exile of Hippias
he was victorious. Cleisthenes, like Solon, devised a new system of
government: and his system, like Solon's, was popular but moderate,
and formed an instance of what Aristotle called Polity. He desired
to grant the rights of citizenship to certain classes which did not
possess them: and to this end he deprived the four old Ionic tribes of
all political significance: for, as a tribe contained three φρατρίαι
or brotherhoods, and each φρατρία--at least theoretically--contained
thirty kindreds, each tribe was a close corporation consisting of a
fourth part of the families of the Athenian citizens and would resist
the intrusion of new members[144]. He divided the people, for political
purposes, into ten tribes constructed on a new principle and defined
not as containing certain families but as dwelling in certain demes or
villages: and he enrolled in these tribes, and thereby in the list of
citizens, a large number of men who resided in Attica, but were not
of pure Attic descent[145]. It may be that each of the old tribes had
formed a rallying point for one of those factions which had produced
the dissensions between localities and classes in the time before
Pisistratus: for Cleisthenes took care in his new division of the
citizens that the demes which formed a tribe should not lie all in one
district but some of them should be urban or suburban, some situated in
the inland parts, and others along the shore[146].

  [144] The composition of the four Ionic tribes is from Pollux, 8. 111
  (in Dindorf's or Bekker's edition). Pollux delivered his work in the
  form of lectures at Athens in the reign of Marcus Aurelius who died
  180 A.D.

  [145] Aristotle, _Politics_ III. 2. 3, πολλοὺς ἐφυλέτευσε ξένους καὶ
  δούλους μετοίκους. Probably the text is not quite correct, but the
  general meaning is clear.

  [146] For the geographical scattering of each tribe see Aristotle,
  _Constitution of Athens_, ch. 21.

The whole body of Athenian citizens, greatly enlarged by the inclusion
of the new citizens, formed the ἐκκλησία, or general assembly in the
constitution of Cleisthenes. The importance of the meetings of the
assembly in the time before Marathon (490 B.C.) is proved by a passage
in Herodotus in which he attributes the military successes of the
Athenians in their wars with the Bœotians and Chalcidæans between 500
B.C. and 490 B.C. to their newly acquired right of free and equal
speech[147]: for the right of free speech could not have produced such
effects unless it were used in a general assembly.

  [147] Herodotus V. 78. ισηγορίη.

The other parts of the Cleisthenean constitution have to do with the
organisation of the army and of the council, with a strange and novel
process known as ostracism, and with local government within the demes.

The military force under Pisistratus and his son had consisted of
foreign mercenaries: Cleisthenes established an army of citizens. Each
tribe furnished a brigade serving under the general whom the tribe had
elected: at Marathon in 490 B.C. the right wing was formed by a body of
troops under the Polemarch and then from right to left the ten tribal
brigades were marshalled in order each under its own general[148].

  [148] Herodotus VI. 111, whence the words are taken. Ar. _Const. Ath._
  ch. 22.

The number of the council, which Solon had fixed at four hundred, was
raised by Cleisthenes to five hundred, fifty councillors being taken
from each tribe[149]. In the time of the Peloponnesian war, (as will
be shown further on,) the council of five hundred was a committee of
citizens entrusted with the duty of controlling the proceedings of the
general assembly: it considered resolutions and projects of law before
they were submitted to the assembled people: the fifty councillors
of each tribe enjoyed for a tenth part of the year the dignity of
πρυτάνεις or presiding officers, both in the council and in the general
assembly, and the name πρυτανεία was applied both to their right of
presidency and to the thirty-five or thirty-six days for which they
possessed it: and, as the assembly met often and had much business to
attend to, such a committee was obviously necessary. The records of the
age of Cleisthenes give no details about the doings of the assembly and
the council: but the activity of the assembly, as we have already seen,
began in that age, and it is natural to suppose that some of the later
functions and organisation of the council may be referred back to this
time. The opinion is confirmed by a piece of evidence from Plutarch who
states incidentally that in 490 B.C. the tribe Æantis was the presiding
tribe in the assembly which resolved that the Athenians should march
out to resist the invader Darius[150]. It is probable that under the
Cleisthenean constitution the assembly met once in each prytany.

  [149] Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, ch. 2.

  [150] Plutarch, Συμποσιακὰ προβλήματα I. 10.

The process of ostracism was devised to guard the state against any
future demagogue who might, like Pisistratus, aspire to make himself
a tyrant, and perhaps also against the recurrence of such a contest
for the chief power as had arisen between Cleisthenes and Isagoras.
The public assembly could, without naming any person, order that on a
fixed date a vote should be taken in which each citizen might write on
a potsherd the name of any man who ought in his opinion to be banished.
In case the name of any citizen was found to be written on six thousand
of the potsherds, he went into exile for a term of years but did not
suffer any further hurt[151].

  [151] For the process of Ostracism see Grote, octavo edition, vol.
  III. p. 133, cabinet edition, vol. IV. p. 83.

Local divisions and local governors had existed in Attica even before
the time of Cleisthenes: the divisions were called naucrariæ and
their governors naucrari. We know nothing about them except that each
naucraria contributed two horsemen to the army and a ship to the
navy, and that the naucrari assessed the taxation needed for these
purposes and had something to do in the expenditure of it. Cleisthenes
established his demes as local divisions in lieu of the naucrariæ,
in each deme he set up a demarchus or president of the deme, and the
demarchi took over the functions which the naucrari had hitherto
discharged[152]. Beyond what I have stated we know nothing from direct
testimony about the demes in the days of Cleisthenes: but there can be
no doubt that even in his time the inhabitants of every deme used to
meet in assembly and the assembly regulated the affairs of the deme.
There had been a time when Attica was the home not of one state but
of many independent commonwealths each having its own government[153]
and its own divinities: and the people in the days of Cleisthenes had
not forgotten the fact, for their descendants eighty years later in
the time of Pericles still cherished its memory[154]. Moreover the
Athenians even so late as the time of Pericles delighted in country
life for its own enjoyments[155], and even then a majority of the
citizens of Athens lived not in the city but in the country[156]: and
if the attractions of life in the city did not draw men to desert their
demes and live in Athens in the time of Pericles it is certain that
nothing that the city could offer in the time of Cleisthenes would
entice them from rural to urban life. From all these considerations
it is clear that the rural demes in the days of Cleisthenes were well
filled with a resident population: the resident inhabitants of the
rural demes were citizens of Athens, and, as citizens, took part in
settling great matters of state: and it cannot be supposed that they
did not take part in regulating the comparatively trivial affairs of
their own localities. In the time of Demosthenes about a century and
a half after Cleisthenes the assemblies of the demes were fully
organised bodies and had plenty of business to employ them[157].

  [152] See Smith, _Dictionary of Antiquities_, third edition, 1891,
  article Naucraria. Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, ch. 20
  κατέστησε δὲ καὶ δημάρχους τὴν αὐτὴν ἔχοντας ἐπιμέλειαν τοῖς πρότερον
  ναυκράροις· καὶ γὰρ τοὺς δήμους ἀντὶ τῶν ναυκραριῶν ἐποίησεν.

  [153] See p. 35.

  [154] Thucydides II. 14, 16.

  [155] Aristophanes, _Acharnians_, the whole play.

  [156] Thucydides II. 14, διὰ τὸ εἰωθέναι =τοὺς πολλοὺς= ἐν τοῖς
  ἀγροῖς διαιτᾶσθαι.

  [157] Smith, _Dictionary of Antiquities_, third edition, article Demus.

One more change made by Cleisthenes is worth a passing notice. He
ordered the archons to be directly elected, and abolished all drawing
of lots in their appointment. Twenty years later, in 487 B.C., the
Athenians made the appointment more a matter of chance than it had ever
been: they selected five hundred, and out of this large number the nine
archons were taken by drawing lots[158].

  [158] Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 22.

I may now give a brief summary of the political condition of Attica
in the days of Cleisthenes. In Attica at that time, as in all parts
of ancient Greece at all times, the population consisted partly of
free men (i.e. the citizens) and their families, and partly of slaves.
In matters of government the decision of great matters rested with
the assembly of all the free men: but, as most of the free men lived
habitually in the country and the assembly met only about once in a
month, the management of current business was left to the Archons
for the year and the permanent council of the Areopagus composed of
Archons and ex-Archons. The government therefore was a mixture of
different elements: for dealing with ordinary matters the governors
were a small number of the ablest men, while for dealing with matters
of special importance the rulers were the whole body of free men. In
such a government there was no likelihood that either the rich citizens
could oppress the poor or the poor could oppress the rich: it was in
short what Aristotle afterwards called a Polity, or the rule of all the
citizens conducted for the good of the whole community. There is every
reason to believe that no government with precisely the same qualities
existed elsewhere in Greece: for, if there had been one, Aristotle, who
admired such governments beyond all others, would have mentioned it in
his Politics.

2. _The changes between_ 480 B.C. _and_ 432 B.C.

The invasion of Greece by the Persians under Xerxes and the subsequent
maritime supremacy of Athens produced great changes in the character
of the Athenian government. When the Persians had passed over the
mountains near Thermopylæ, Attica lay at their mercy, and the ten
generals proclaimed that every Athenian must save himself as best he
could. The council of the Areopagus however contrived to provide a sum
of money as an instalment of pay for men who were willing to serve on
shipboard; a hundred and eighty ships were manned, and the men who
served, probably about thirty-six thousand in number, received a sum
of eight drachmas apiece. The Athenian fleet, which was thus provided,
formed more than half of the whole Greek force that won the marvellous
battle of Salamis: and the Areopagus was allowed by the Athenians in
recognition of the service it had rendered to have the chief influence
in the government of Athens for twenty years[159]. But the whole body
of the citizens who risked their lives in winning the great battle
had contributed more effectually to the result than the council that
found the money. Moreover within a few years after the defeat of Xerxes
the Greek cities in the islands of the Ægean sea requested Athens to
be their defender against Persian attack: from being protector of
the islands Athens soon became their suzerain, receiving from them
contingents of ships or payments of tribute, and possessing a maritime
supremacy and abundant revenue such as no Greek city had ever enjoyed:
and all these brilliant achievements were due to the exertions of the
poorer citizens who served as common sailors on board the galleys[160].
Athens, Piræus and Phalerum were fortified and joined together by the
building of the long walls and were formed into a single city capable
of containing a very large population. The result of these events was
a rapid progress towards democracy: the council of the Areopagus was
deprived in 462 B.C. of most of its powers[161], the rules which had
hitherto excluded citizens of the poorer classes from holding the
archonship were repealed or disregarded[162], pay was provided for the
citizens whilst serving as judges or jurymen in the law courts[163],
and in various ways, twenty thousand--probably a majority--of the
citizens were in the employ of the state and received from it salaries
or wages sufficient to maintain them[164].

  [159] Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 23. The drachma contained
  the same weight of silver as a modern franc.

  [160] For the effects of Salamis see Aristotle, _Politics_ V. 4. 8.
  Welldon, p. 353.

  [161] The Areopagus was deprived of power in the archonship of Conon,
  i.e. 463-2 B.C. Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 25.

  [162] Plutarch (_Aristides_, 22) says that Aristides proposed to the
  assembly a resolution that the archonship should be thrown open to
  all Athenian citizens: and he seems to imply that the resolution was
  passed, and that thenceforth any Athenian citizen, whether he was a
  Pentacosiomedimnus, a Hippeus, a Zeugites, or a Thês, was legally
  qualified to hold the office. It is however certain that no such
  extensive change in the constitution was made in the lifetime of
  Aristides: for Aristides died about 468 B.C. (see Clinton, _Fasti
  Hellenici_ under the years 469, 468, 429), and Aristotle, in his
  _Constitution of Athens_, chapter 26, tells us that it was not till
  457 B.C. that the Zeugitæ were admitted to the archonship. If then
  Aristides carried any resolution that altered the law, it did not go
  beyond throwing open the office to the Hippeis or Horsemen. The Thêtes
  or Labourers were never formally declared eligible: but in Aristotle's
  time there was nothing to prevent a Thês from becoming an archon,
  provided that on announcing his candidature he did not declare that he
  belonged to the class of Thêtes. Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_,
  chapter 7.

  [163] Pericles proposed and passed the payment of dicasts, during the
  lifetime of Cimon, probably about 450 B.C. Aristotle, _Constitution of
  Athens_, 27.

  [164] Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 24.


3. _Democracy during the Peloponnesian War_ 432 B.C.-404 B.C.

The changes which have been mentioned, together with others which
have been passed over, produced the constitution under which the
Athenians lived during their contest with Sparta. In the description
of it we must notice (1) the general assembly and the council of five
hundred, (2) the executive officers, (3) the judicature, (4) instances
illustrative of the working of the constitution.

(1) The ἐκκλησία or general assembly had supreme power in all the
most important matters: it consisted of all Athenian citizens who had
attained the age of manhood: its meetings were held on the Pnyx, a
hillside in the open air: four ordinary meetings were held on fixed
days in each prytany, and other meetings for special business could
at any time be summoned by proclamation[165]. Though the assembly had
supreme power to make laws and pass resolutions determining the policy
of the city, it submitted to certain restraining formalities. No law
could be proposed in the assembly till it had been considered and
sanctioned by the council of five hundred[166]: and any resolution or
any new law passed by the assembly might afterwards be indicted before
a popular law-court on the ground that it violated or contradicted
some existing law or was contrary to the Athenian constitution. If the
law or resolution was condemned by the law-court it was _ipso facto_
cancelled. Moreover, if proceedings were taken within a year after the
vote of the assembly, the proposer as well as the proposition might
be indicted, and if the court decided against him he was subject to
a heavy fine. The Greek name for the indictment was Graphê Paranomôn
which may be translated literally Indictment for Illegality[167].
The Graphê Paranomôn was, beyond all doubt, the best bulwark of the
Athenian constitution: though there were occasions, as we shall see,
when it did not save the constitution from being violated.

  [165] The place of meeting is proved by Aristophanes, _Acharnians_,
  line 20, ἡ πνὺξ αὑτηί, _Knights_, line 42, Δῆμος πυκνίτης and
  many other passages: the number of ordinary meetings by Aristotle,
  _Constitution of Athens_, 43.

  [166] I do not know any evidence which proves directly that this
  rule was in force at the time of the Peloponnesian war. But we have
  already seen (page 60) that the rule was made by Solon, and it was
  certainly in force in the time of Demosthenes (366 B.C.-322 B.C.): see
  Demosthenes, _contra Androtionem_, p. 594, and _contra Timocratem_,
  p. 715, especially the words πρῶτον μὲν ... πρὸς τὴν βουλήν, εἶτα τῷ
  δήμῳ. Smith, _Dictionary of Antiquities_, article Boulê.

  [167] The events of 411 B.C. prove clearly that the procedure by
  Graphê Paranomôn was then an established part of the Athenian
  constitution: see Thucydides VIII. 67, Aristotle, _Constitution of
  Athens_, 29: and further on in the present chapter, p. 93.

The council consisted of five hundred citizens taken by lot. It was a
committee to manage the details of the business of the assembly. It met
on every day in the year except the religious festivals or holidays
and it drew up the list of business for the assembly, determining
what business ought and what ought not to be brought forward. All
business intended for the assembly passed through the hands of the
council; and sometimes, in cases that demanded immediate action, (as
in the accusation brought against the commanders at Arginusæ which
will be described further on,) it had to come to important provisional
decisions. The fifty councillors belonging to a tribe were presidents
during a tenth part of the year: and if, during their presidency, a
special meeting of the assembly was required, it was their business to
summon it[168].

  [168] The details about the five hundred are from Aristotle,
  _Constitution of Athens_, 43. An inscription of the date 410-409 B.C.
  printed in Clinton, _Fasti Hellenici_ (vol. II. p. 345), shows how
  important the prytaneis then were.

(2) The chief servants of the sovereign assembly were the ten generals
and the nine archons. The generals were elected and not like the rest
of the officers of the state taken by lot: this might be inferred
from the constant occurrence among the generals of the names of
distinguished men, but it is completely proved by the fact that in the
year 430 B.C. the Athenians though they were many of them angry with
Pericles yet re-elected him general because his services could not
be dispensed with[169]. The ten generals levied troops, managed the
revenue allotted to military purposes, and named trierarchs to command
the ships[170]. In the battle of Marathon and in an expedition to Samos
in 440 B.C. all ten generals acted as commanders: in most cases the
assembly appointed a convenient number, usually three, of the generals
to conduct an enterprise abroad, while the rest remained at home to
manage the ordinary business of their office.

  [169] Thucydides II. 65.

  [170] Smith, _Dictionary of Antiquities_, article Strategus.

The nine archons, taken yearly by lot from among a number of men
who had declared themselves to be candidates, and had submitted the
respectability of their characters to a public examination, had duties
of a ceremonial character and attended to the routine of some business
of state, but had no political influence[171]. There were also some
other functionaries for the supervision of markets and of the supply of
corn, and for the preservation of order, of whom it is not necessary
to speak further.

  [171] Smith, _Dictionary of Antiquities_, article Archon.

(3) The judicial bodies alone at Athens were independent of the
political assembly. Jurisdiction, except in those few cases which
were still brought before the semi-religious court of the Areopagus
or before the first Archon, belonged to the popular law-courts which
had been first founded by Solon. A large number of citizens were taken
every year to serve as jurymen: they were divided into bodies varying
in number from two hundred to a thousand[172], and each of these bodies
sat collectively as judges to decide such cases as might be submitted
to them. They sat without any professional judge to inform them about
the condition of the law or the relevance of arguments: the advocate
on either side cited such laws as favoured his contentions, and could
use any reasoning which he thought likely to influence the court. The
citizens were not only willing but eager to render their services
as dicasts, partly because they received as daily pay three obols,
a sum equal to half a modern franc, and partly because they enjoyed
the business of the court and the importance which it conferred on
them[173].

  [172] Demosthenes, _Meidias_ p. 585, asks: "What is it that gives
  power and authority to any body of jurors sitting in judgement,
  whether they be two hundred or a thousand or any number you will?"

  [173] The eagerness of the citizens to act as dicasts is ridiculed all
  through the play of the _Wasps_, brought out in 422 B.C.

(4) The records of some of the meetings of the assembly of citizens
will serve to illustrate the nature of their business. Just before the
Peloponnesian war the Corcyræans requested the Athenians to protect
them with armed force: the body to whom the Corcyræan envoys made
their request was the assembly of citizens; on the first day the
Athenians heard the arguments of the Corcyræans and of their enemies
the Corinthians: on the second day they debated what answer they should
give; on the third they resolved to grant what the Corcyræans desired
and thereby made the great war inevitable[174]. Again in 415 B.C. the
ambassadors from Egeste in Sicily, sent to ask aid from Athens, were
heard in the assembly, and it was agreed on the same day to send an
expedition of sixty ships[175]. In the case of the Peace of Nicias in
423 B.C. the negotiations were carried on by the ten generals, but
the Treaty became binding on Athens only when it was ratified by the
assembly of the people[176].

  [174] Thucydides I. 31 and 44.

  [175] Thucydides VI. 8.

  [176] Thucydides IV. 118.

In 428 B.C. Mitylenê in Lesbos, a city allied to Athens under
compulsion, broke loose from the alliance. This revolt was the work of
the oligarchy, which ruled supreme in Mitylenê. In the summer of the
next year Mitylenê had difficulty in withstanding the forces of the
Athenians, and the rulers of the city found it desirable to give arms
to the common folk. With arms went power. The common folk preferred to
be ruled by Athens rather than by those among their fellow-citizens who
happened to be wealthy, and declared they would surrender to Paches the
Athenian commander. The surrender was effected, and the fate of the
city was to be settled by the Athenians. The Athenian citizens were
very angry that a city which had been in compulsory alliance with them
had revolted, and, making no distinction between the oligarchical party
who had led the revolt and the democrats who had restored the city to
Athens, voted that every man in Mitylenê of military age should be put
to death, and all the women and children sold into slavery; and they
despatched a galley bearing their orders to Paches. After the vote they
went home and repented of their cruelty: next day they met again, and
after hearing Cleon on the side of severity and Diodotus for mercy they
rescinded the order of the day before and despatched a second galley
to carry the new orders. The crew of the first galley made no haste in
rowing, because they disliked the work of conveying a cruel and unjust
sentence: and the second galley arrived with the new orders before the
first had taken any effect[177].

  [177] Thucydides III. 2 and 36-49.

Judicial work at Athens belonged to the dicasteries and not to the
general assembly: but the assembly also if it wished to inflict a
punishment on an offender against the state could do so by a special
legislative act which might be called in Latin a privilegium, and
in English an attainder or bill of pains and penalties. Miltiades,
after he had won the great victory of Marathon, was entrusted with the
command of an expedition of which he did not disclose the object: he
used it wrongfully and unsuccessfully against the Parians, and on his
return Xanthippus proposed to the assembly that he should be put to
death for having deceived the Athenians. The assembly showed mercy to
him in gratitude for his services at Marathon, and let him off with a
very heavy fine of fifty talents[178].

  [178] Herodotus VI. 133 and 136.

In the year 406 B.C. an Athenian fleet under the command of nine
στρατηγοί or admirals won a great victory over a Spartan fleet at
Arginusæ: several Athenian ships which had been disabled in the action
were lost in a storm which came on afterwards, and it was suspected
that the admirals had made no efforts to save them. The Athenians
superseded all the admirals and summoned them to Athens. Six of the
number obeyed the summons. One of them was first accused in a law-court
of peculation and misconduct in his command, and the court ordered him
to be kept in custody, with a view probably to any further proceedings
which the general assembly might choose to take. The other five
appeared before the council of five hundred, which acted as a sort of
business committee to the assembly, and were committed to custody.

In a general assembly, held soon afterwards, a citizen who had himself
held a subordinate command in the fleet complained of the conduct
of the admirals and desired that they should be punished. They were
allowed to speak briefly in their defence; and the assembly did not on
that day pass any resolution except that the council of five hundred
should consider what course the proceedings should take, and report
their opinion at the next meeting. During the interval a festival
occurred at which many citizens appeared ostentatiously in mourning
for relatives who had been drowned in the neglected vessels. When the
assembly met, the desire to punish the admirals had risen high: the
council, bringing in its report, proposed that, as the accusation and
the answers had been already heard, the assembly should proceed to
an immediate vote whether or not the accused should be put to death.
An objection was raised that the established practice required that a
separate vote should be taken about each accused person: but it was met
with a clamour that the people ought to be allowed to do what it likes.
The objection based on established practice convinced some of the
prytaneis or presiding councillors, but eventually all of them gave way
to the clamour, except Socrates the philosopher. A formal proposal was
then made by a citizen, who shared the views of Socrates, that a vote
should be taken about each man separately. A division was taken on this
proposal, and at first it was declared to be carried: but on a second
scrutiny the proposal originally made by the council of five hundred
was accepted. A vote was then taken on the proposal that the commanders
should suffer death: the proposal was carried and the sentence executed
on the six men who were in custody[179].

  [179] Xenophon, _Hellenica_ I. 6 and 7. He names only eight admirals
  recalled. Grote makes the number nine.

The constitution, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, was arranged,
in nearly all respects, according to the principles which the Greeks
regarded as distinctive of ideal or extreme democracy, and tended to
ensure firstly that all citizens should be equally treated in the
distribution of offices, and secondly that the general assembly should
be free to do as it liked. The exceptions to the prevailing tendency
are to be found in the appointment of the ten generals by election, in
the right of the five hundred to exclude a proposal from discussion,
and in the provision that a resolution or new law might be indicted
as unconstitutional before a law court. But the five hundred were not
men of greater wisdom or experience than the other Athenians, being
merely so many citizens taken at random by drawing lots: it does not
appear from the descriptions which Thucydides gives of debates in the
assembly that the generals or the five hundred exercised any commanding
influence: and the illegal resolution against the admirals who
commanded at Arginusæ took effect, just as if there had been no such
thing as a regulation that it might be judicially indicted.

But it must be observed that what was an ideal democracy in the eyes
of the Greeks was not an ideal democracy according to the views of our
own time. When we speak of a democracy we generally mean a system of
government in which the whole adult male population have some sort of
control over public affairs. At Athens, a large part, it may have been
half, or three-quarters or five-sixths, of the adult male population
were slaves; and slaves, having lost their personal freedom, are of
course incapable of political rights. If then we wish in speaking of
the Athenian constitution to use terms in their modern sense and not
in their Greek sense, we must say that the rulers of Athens were not a
democracy but an aristocracy: it is true that they constituted a far
larger part of the population than most aristocracies, but as compared
with the whole they were but few. And further we may observe that
without slavery there could never have been such a government as that
which ruled Athens. The Athenian citizens gave a large part of their
time to public business and attendance at public festivals: and they
could not have done this unless there had been plenty of slaves to
perform the industrial and menial work that the community required[180].

  [180] The observations contained in this paragraph were suggested to
  me firstly by Professor Mahaffy, _Problems in Greek History_ § 38,
  and secondly by Mr W. Warde Fowler, _The City State of the Greeks and
  Romans_, chapter VI.

Although Athens ought, according to the modern use of terms, to
be called rather an aristocracy than a democracy, it seems to be
certain that the men actually and habitually employed in the daily
work of government bore numerically a larger proportion to the whole
population in ancient Athens than they have done in any other state
known to history. The whole population of Attica may have been a
quarter of a million or it may have been nearly half-a-million: the
citizens numbered about thirty thousand, and it is probable that at
least ten thousand of them were habitually employed in the business
of government: and these ten thousand may have been a twenty-fifth
part and were not less than a fiftieth part of the whole population.
In modern England those who are habitually employed in governing
would include members of Parliament, of town councils, of county
councils, and of school-boards, magistrates, judges, and the staff
of all Government offices, except those persons who are mere clerks
or servants: I cannot say how many they would muster, all told: but,
judging from those parts of England that I know best, I should estimate
them at something between a two-hundredth and a five-hundredth part of
the inhabitants of the country.


4. _Democracy after the Peloponnesian War_, 404-338 B.C.

In the period which followed the Peloponnesian war the poorer citizens
who predominated in the assembly passed several votes to promote the
pleasure and the pecuniary interests of their class. Pay was provided
for every citizen who attended a meeting of the assembly or was a
spectator at a religious festival and its dramatic performances. The
pay was at first fixed at a low rate: before 392 B.C. it had been
raised to three obols, the same sum as was paid to a dicast for a
day's attendance[181]. The pay for the law courts, the assemblies,
the festivals and the council came to nearly two hundred talents
yearly[182]. The whole revenue of the Athenian state in the fourth
century is not known: but it can scarcely have exceeded eleven or
twelve hundred talents[183]: and thus it seems that about one-sixth
part of it was spent in providing citizens with religious spectacles or
comfortable employment.

  [181] The decrees granting pay for attendance at ecclesia are
  enumerated in Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 41. In the
  _Ecclesiazusæ_, first acted in 392 B.C., Chremes (at lines 381-2)
  says he had lost his three obols by being late for the assembly.
  For the allowance to citizens at religious festivals see Aristotle,
  _Constitution of Athens_, 28.

  [182] See Boeckh, _Public Economy of Athens_, book II. ch. 13-14.

  [183] See Boeckh, _Public Economy_, book III. ch. 19.
  Supposing half a drachma was paid to 18000 spectators at 30 festivals,
  to 8000 citizens at 50 assemblies and to 4000 dicasts for 300 days,
  and a whole drachma to 400 councillors for 300 days, we get a sum of
  1,190,000 drachmæ, and, as there were 6000 drachmæ in a talent, this
  was equal to 198⅓ talents.

After the three obols had been decreed, a majority more overwhelming
than ever was ensured in the assembly to the poorer class. The
professional orators began to devote their skill to the purpose of
persuading the ecclesia, and thus obtained a control over Athenian
policy. It was fortunate for the state that in Demosthenes it found
not only an orator but a patriot and a statesman: and it says much
for the good sense of the assembly that it followed his counsels,
unless they interfered too much with the comfort of the individual
citizens. The assembly governed on the whole with moderation, and no
harsh measures against the property of the rich were ever passed in
it: but it insisted that the poor citizens should have their three
obols for the religious spectacles, even when the money was wanted for
a most necessary war to defend Olynthus against Macedonia[184]. The
very frequent assemblies of the whole body of citizens gave the poorer
classes a decisive voice in all questions of policy and legislation:
but they also ensured that all the citizens had some knowledge of what
was being proposed, and gave them the habit of listening to arguments,
and of deciding questions by voting and not by force. During the period
from 404 B.C. to 338 B.C. Athens was never troubled with conspiracies
or seditious violence.

  [184] Grote, octavo edition, vol. VIII. pp. 81-98, cabinet edition,
  vol. XI. pp. 138-157.

The fall of Athens occurred at the end of the period of which I have
been speaking, and no doubt the defects of the constitution and the
unwillingness of the citizens to make any sacrifices were contributory
causes. But it is not certain that, even if Athens had been as well
governed and patriotic as ever, it would have been able so to unite the
jealous Greek cities as to ensure their independence against the new
and formidable power of Macedonia.

Our materials for forming an estimate of the nature of democracy in the
Greek cities other than Athens are, as I have said, very scanty. But
it seems clear that most of the democracies ruled with less moderation
and self-control than the Athenian democracy, and had less stability.
Revolutions from democracy to oligarchy or from oligarchy to democracy
recurred at shorter intervals in many Greek cities than at Athens:
and sometimes, as at Corcyra in 427 B.C., and at Argos in 371 B.C.
or 370 B.C., an unsuccessful attempt at revolution was punished with
wholesale massacre[185]. It is to be observed that the Greek writers,
in speaking of democracy, generally seem to regard it with distrust
and even dislike: and this could hardly have been the case, if all
democratic governments had been as well conducted as the Athenian
government. We know that at Athens the whole mass of the citizens were
able at any moment to do whatever they liked, subject to no restraint
except from the Graphê Paranomôn and from their own characters and
inclinations: and it seems certain that in every Greek city mentioned
by the Greek writers as democratically governed the citizens were
still more free from restraint: for many of the best and most careful
writers were great admirers of artificial restraints on democracy, and
if any city had provided itself with such restraints the fact would
have been recorded. It is clear that a government which allows the mass
of the citizens to do whatever they choose must be beset with dangers,
unless the citizens have learned habits of self-restraint and mutual
forbearance from a long and gradual political education. The Athenians
had learned such habits, but the other Greeks probably had not: for the
Athenians alone among the Greeks had had the good fortune to live under
the wise constitutions of a Solon and a Cleisthenes, which, by granting
to the mass of the citizens at first a very small share and afterwards
a larger share in the control of public affairs, provided them with
such political training that eventually they were able with safety to
expose themselves to the perils of complete self-government.

  [185] Thucydides III. 70-84. Grote, Part II. chapter LXXVIII.


5. _Oligarchy at Athens_, 411 B.C. _and_ 404 B.C.

In the year 415 B.C., the seventeenth year of the Peloponnesian
war, the Athenians despatched a great naval and military expedition
to the distant island of Sicily. The expedition encountered many
difficulties: the Athenians sent strong reinforcements: but in the year
412 B.C. their fleet suffered a crushing defeat in the Great Harbour
of Syracuse, and their army was afterwards completely destroyed.
Athens itself was without any adequate defence of ships or sailors or
soldiers[186]: the Athenians did their best to supply the deficiency,
but there was grave reason to fear that their unaided efforts would not
avail to save them, and they greatly desired to get support by making
some new alliance. It was certain that no new allies could be found
among the Greeks[187], and they could look for no help unless it were
from the king of Persia[188].

  [186] Thucydides VIII. 1.

  [187] Thucydides VIII. 2.

  [188] Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 29, and Thucydides VIII. 47.

Alcibiades, the ablest but the most unpatriotic and unscrupulous of
the Athenians of that time, was in 412 B.C. an exile from his native
city under sentence of death[189]. He had in 415 B.C. been appointed
one of the three commanders of the great expedition to Sicily: but,
when it was on the eve of starting from Attica, he fell under suspicion
of having committed a great crime by wilfully offending one of the
gods who protected Athens and of designing to overthrow the Athenian
constitution[190]. As however there was no proof of his guilt, legal
proceedings could not be immediately instituted, and he was allowed
to sail as one of the commanders of the fleet: but when he reached
Sicily, he found awaiting him the Salaminia, the swift galley which
carried despatches, and on board of her some officers sent by the
Athenian assembly to summon him home to stand his trial[191]. These
officers had been instructed not to arrest him but merely to bid
him come to Athens for trial: accordingly he sailed homeward in his
own ship, under escort of the Salaminia. On the way the two ships
touched at a port in southern Italy, and Alcibiades went ashore and
escaped from his custodians: soon afterwards, getting a passage to
the Peloponnesus[192], he went to Sparta and advised the Spartans how
they might best defeat the Athenian forces in Sicily[193]. The charges
against him were produced before one of the popular law courts at
Athens: and, as he did not appear, he was found guilty and condemned to
death[194].

  [189] Thucydides VI. 61.

  [190] Thucydides VI. 26-28.

  [191] Thucydides VI. 53.

  [192] Thucydides VI. 61.

  [193] Thucydides VI. 89.

  [194] Thucydides VI. 61.

With the Spartans Alcibiades gained great influence, partly through
his intimacy with a powerful man among their Ephors, and partly by the
sound advice which he gave them as to the best way to injure Athens.
In the year 412 B.C., at his own earnest desire, he was sent to act
on behalf of Sparta in some of the cities of Asia Minor which were
in alliance with Athens, and to induce them to change sides in the
war[195]. Before long however the Spartans had reason to suspect that
he was betraying their interests, and sent an order to the commander of
their fleet off the coast of Asia to put him to death[196]. Alcibiades
was warned, and, fleeing to the court of Tissaphernes, a powerful
satrap of the king of Persia in the south-western part of Asia Minor,
became no less zealous and efficient in opposing the interests of the
Spartans than he had been in promoting them: and, after winning in some
degree the confidence of Tissaphernes, he induced him to withhold a
large part of the money which he had been in the habit of furnishing
for the pay of the sailors in the Lacedæmonian fleet[197]. Having
thus completely destroyed his credit with the Spartans, he desired
nothing so much as to obtain pardon for his offences from his own
countrymen[198]: for he hoped that, if once the sentence which had been
passed on him were cancelled, he might return to Athens and recover
some of his former popularity and influence.

  [195] Thucydides VIII. 11, 12.

  [196] Thucydides VIII. 45.

  [197] Thucydides VIII. 45, 46.

  [198] Thucydides VIII. 47.

Alcibiades knew that the Athenians were in a sore strait, and were
longing for an alliance with the king of Persia: and in this desire
of theirs and his own friendly relations with Tissaphernes he thought
he saw the means of effecting his return: for, if the Athenians could
only be persuaded that he was able and willing through influence with
Tissaphernes to bring about the desired alliance, they would not only
let him return but would welcome him as a valuable friend in their
distress[199]. He believed however that his restoration could more
easily be brought about if the present quiet and orderly government
of Athens were to come to an end, and the city were thrown into
the turmoil of a revolution[200]. The surest way to cause political
disturbance was to try to substitute an oligarchy for the existing
democracy: and this accordingly was what Alcibiades did, not that he
liked oligarchy better than democracy, but because he thought that any
political troubles at Athens might conduce to his restoration[201]. He
sought for fit agents to bring about the desired revolution, and found
them among the officers of an Athenian fleet stationed at the island of
Samos near the coast of Asia Minor[202].

  [199] Thucydides VIII. 47.

  [200] Thucydides VIII. 48, 3, ἐκ τοῦ παρόντος =κόσμου= τὴν πόλιν
  μεταστήσας.

  [201] Thucydides VIII. 48, 3, ὁ 'Αλκιβιάδης, =ὅπερ καὶ ἦν=, οὐδὲν
  μᾶλλον ὀλιγαρχίας ἢ δημοκρατίας δεῖσθαι ἐδόκει αὐτῷ.

  [202] Thucydides VIII. 47.

The part of Alcibiades in the revolution consisted only in giving it a
start by raising false expectations of a Persian alliance. His agents
went to Athens, and there Pisander, who took the leading part among
them, addressing the assembly of the citizens, urged that the only hope
of salvation for Athens lay in an alliance with Persia, and declared
that that alliance would be made if they would invite Alcibiades to
return, abolish their democracy, which was not to the liking of the
king of Persia, and set up in its stead an oligarchy which the king
could trust[203]. The assembly was grieved at the prospect of losing
its democratic constitution, but under the stress of circumstances
gave some kind of provisional approval of the proposed change; for the
present however it took no definite step beyond appointing Pisander and
ten other men as envoys to negotiate with Alcibiades and Tissaphernes.
Pisander remained for a while in Athens for the purpose of visiting
all the oligarchical clubs which already existed there and preparing
them to be ready to strike a blow against the democratic constitution:
this done, he departed on his mission[204]. It soon became evident
that Alcibiades was powerless to obtain help for Athens from the king
of Persia or even from Tissaphernes: a breach occurred between him and
the oligarchical conspirators, and he took no further part in their
proceedings[205].

  [203] Thucydides VIII. 53.

  [204] Thucydides VIII. 54.

  [205] Thucydides VIII. 56.

During the absence of Pisander the oligarchical clubs at Athens
prepared the way for the success of his designs by skilfully
organising a series of assassinations. The persons selected to
be murdered were the most faithful upholders of the democratic
constitution: the assassins were never brought to justice: and such
general terror prevailed that men did not dare to mourn for the
victims lest their own turn should come next[206]. Meanwhile the
chief politicians in the oligarchic party, wishing to disguise their
real designs, gave out that the changes in the constitution which
they would advocate were moderate in character: they would limit the
number of citizens who formed the ecclesia to a number not exceeding
five thousand, consisting of those who were best able to aid the
state by paying taxes or by serving in the war, and would propose
that henceforth wages from the treasury should be paid to none but
the soldiers and sailors: but in other respects they would wish the
constitution to remain unaltered[207].

  [206] Thucydides VIII. 65, 66.

  [207] Thucydides VIII. 65, the last sentence. My small addition to the
  words of this sentence seems to be justified by ἐυπρεπὲς πρὸς τοὺς
  πλείους which occurs in the next.

Pisander, on his return to Athens about April 411 B.C.[208], was
eager for the establishment of an oligarchy, with himself as one
of its leading members: and, even if he had wished to pause in his
measures, it was now dangerous for him to do so, because, if the
citizens recovered from their terror, he would be prosecuted under
a Graphê Paranomôn for the proposals which he had made and carried
last year, and would undergo severe punishment. One of his adherents
named Pythodorus at once proposed to the assembly that it should
appoint a small committee of citizens to make a draft scheme for a new
constitution: Cleitophon, who was probably an opponent of Pisander,
moved that it should be an instruction to the committee that they
should examine the ancient constitution of Cleisthenes to see whether
any of its provisions ought to be revived. The proposal of Pythodorus
was carried: whether Cleitophon's instruction was accepted or rejected
we do not know[209].

  [208] The oligarchical government lasted four months and ended two
  months after new archons took office, that is to say, two months after
  midsummer. Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 33. Clinton, _Fasti
  Hellenici_, vol. II. pp. XV. XVI.

  [209] Thucydides VIII. 67. Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 29.

Within a short time the committee had prepared its proposals. An
assembly of the citizens was summoned to meet, not as usual at the
Pnyx within the city, but at the hill of Colonus, more than a mile
outside the walls. At this assembly the proposals of the committee were
announced; and they were to the following effect. (1) Any Athenian
citizen may propose whatever he thinks fit; and no proposal shall make
him liable to a Graphê Paranomôn. (2) The government (that is to say,
the right of speaking and voting in the ecclesia) shall be entrusted,
during the continuance of the war, to a body of citizens numbering not
less than Five Thousand, and consisting of those best qualified by
bodily vigour for serving in the war or by wealth for contributing to
the public treasury. (3) During the continuance of the war no wages
shall be paid from the treasury except to the army and navy, and the
nine archons and the presidents of the assembly and council[210].

  [210] Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 29. Thucydides VIII. 67.

The proposals bore a specious aspect of moderation, and seemed to
promise that the new constitution should be something like the old
constitution of Cleisthenes. The assembly gave its assent to these
proposals: but, as soon as that assent had been given, it found
that further and more radical changes awaited it. A motion was made
and carried that a second committee of a hundred citizens should be
appointed to give more precise shape to the new constitution. The
report of this second committee, an elaborate document, disclosed the
real intentions of Pisander and his party. It set forth a complicated
scheme of government which was to come into force at some future
time: but it also did what was more important by proposing that for
the present a council of Four Hundred should be elected, that the
Four Hundred should appoint ten generals and a secretary to the
generals, and that the eleven men thus appointed should have power to
do everything except alter the laws[211]. The proposals were ratified
by the assembly; the council of Four Hundred, being elected during
the reign of terror which had been established, was no doubt entirely
filled with the adherents of Pisander, and the ten generals and their
secretary no doubt included Pisander himself and his most ardent
partisans. No steps were taken to call the assembly of Five Thousand
into existence, and thus all political rights had been taken away from
the mass of the citizens, and unrestrained power was conferred upon
Pisander and his fellow-conspirators[212].

  [211] Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 31.

  [212] Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 31, 32.

The proceedings of the oligarchy which had thus been founded are not
narrated in detail by our authorities: but we are told that the new
rulers governed violently, and made many changes in the administration:
that they "put to death some few men who seemed convenient to be got
rid of, imprisoned others, and removed others from Attica[213]," that
they fell to quarrelling with one another[214], and that at last they
were suspected of a design to introduce a garrison of Spartans into the
Piræus, the port of Athens. As soon as this suspicion gained credence
the days of the oligarchy were numbered. A battalion of Athenian
hoplites, employed by Pisander to build a fortress at the mouth of the
Piræus for the reception of a Lacedæmonian garrison, rose in mutiny
against their officers, held a meeting in Munychia, which adjoins the
Piræus, to decide on their course of action, and after due deliberation
marched into Athens and piled arms at the foot of the Acropolis. Many
specious offers of ineffectual reforms were made to them by envoys
from the Four Hundred: but they insisted on the one thing which the
oligarchy most dreaded, a free assembly of the citizens to be held
within the city. The citizens met in assembly at the Pnyx, and their
first resolution declared that the power of the Four Hundred was at an
end[215].

  [213] Thucydides VIII. 70.

  [214] Thucydides VIII. 89.

  [215] Thucydides VIII. 90-97.

After the deposition of the Four Hundred, which occurred late in August
411 B.C., the Athenians had to decide what their government should be.
Two courses lay open to them: they might rescind all the enactments
which they had made four months earlier, and so return at once to an
unmixed democracy: or they might allow those enactments, except such
as were obviously mischievous, to remain in force. The second of the
two alternatives was that which they adopted. They reaffirmed in
substance the regulations which had been recommended by the small
committee elected under the resolution of Pythodorus, and enacted: (1)
That the government should be entrusted to the body of not less than
Five Thousand, which they had already ordered to be created. (2) That
every citizen, who furnished the equipment of a heavy armed soldier,
either for himself or for any one else, should of right be a member of
this body. (3) That no citizen should receive pay for any political
function, on pain of being solemnly accursed or excommunicated[216].
The constitution thus established was partly democratic and partly
oligarchical: it contained a preponderant element of democracy because
it gave supreme power to a numerous body, who, though they were
called the Five Thousand, were in reality about nine thousand[217]:
but it also contained some small oligarchical ingredients, since it
excluded the poorest citizens from the ecclesia, and by withholding
payment for the discharge of political functions made it likely that
few citizens would be able to serve on the council of five hundred
and in the popular law-courts except those who had money and leisure.
Concerning the motives which induced the Athenians to adopt this mixed
form of government we have no information, and can only observe that
the new constitution would certainly commend itself to the body of
hoplites who had delivered the Athenians from their oppressors, since
it gave supreme power to the class to which they belonged; and that,
from what we know of the political opinions of Socrates[218], we may
be sure that it met with his hearty approval and was supported by his
powerful advocacy. In regard to the merits of the new government we
have an emphatic testimony from Thucydides, who says that of all the
governments that ruled Athens within the space of his lifetime this
was the best[219]. But the mixed form of government was not suited
to the needs and the condition of the Athenians: for within a few
years--certainly before 406 B.C. when they condemned the commanders
at Arginusæ, and possibly as early as 410 B.C.--they abandoned it and
reverted to their well-tried system of unmixed democracy.

  [216] Thucydides VIII. 97. 1. The meaning of the words is admirably
  explained by Grote in a note to chapter LXII. of his _History of
  Greece_.

  [217] Arnold's Thucydides, note to VIII. 97. 1.

  [218] Grote, _History of Greece_, octavo edition, vol. VI. p. 152,
  cabinet edition, vol. VIII. p. 267.

  [219] Thucydides V. 26.

Within seven years after the fall of the Four Hundred, Athens was
again ruled by an oligarchy. The events which led to the establishment
of this second oligarchy were in one respect like those to which
the earlier oligarchy owed its origin, since they began with the
destruction of an Athenian fleet: but, as they were simpler and less
complicated, they can be more briefly narrated.

In the year 405 B.C. the Athenians sent nearly the whole of their
naval force to oppose the Lacedæmonian fleet in the eastern waters of
the Ægean sea, along the coast of Asia Minor. In number of ships the
Athenian and Lacedæmonian fleets were nearly equal: in all else they
were ill-matched antagonists. The Lacedæmonians were commanded by
Lysander, the ablest admiral ever produced by Sparta: the condition of
the Athenians was such as might be expected in the year immediately
following an undiscriminating execution of the commanders of the
fleet. Among the six[220] admirals Conon alone was a man of ability,
discipline was lax, and the operations were worse designed and worse
executed than any others in the whole course of the war. Lysander took
the city of Lampsacus on the eastern shore of the narrow channel of
the Hellespont which divides Europe from Asia. The Athenian commanders
took station directly opposite on the western shore of the Hellespont,
which at this point is only two miles wide, and there anchored their
ships close to the open beach of Ægospotami. The nearest place from
which they could get supplies was Sestos, two miles distant: and
all the commanders except Conon and the captain of the Paralus, the
despatch-boat, allowed their men to go ashore and wander far inland.
Lysander watched his opportunity, found the ships for the most part
deserted by their crews, and captured the whole of them (a hundred and
eighty in number), except the Paralus and a little squadron of eight
ships under the immediate command of Conon[221].

 [220] Xenophon, _Hellenica_ I. 7. § 1, and II. 1. § 16.

 [221] Xenophon, _Hellenica_ II. 1.

After the battle of Ægospotami Athens could make no effectual
resistance. Lysander blockaded the city by land and sea, and in
the spring of 404 B.C. the Athenians were compelled by starvation
to capitulate and admit the Spartans. Lysander occupied the city,
compelled the Athenians to pull down at least a great part of the
long walls which defended Athens and Piræus, to readmit the members
of the oligarchical party who had gone into exile, and to submit to
be governed by them[222]. Arbitrary power was assumed by a Board of
Thirty, who, being supported by Lysander, were able for eight months to
oppress their fellow citizens with violence and rapacity such as had
not been experienced in Athens even under the Four Hundred[223].

  [222] Xenophon, _Hellenica_ II. 2.

  [223] Xenophon, _Hellenica_ II. 3.

The governments both of the Four Hundred and of the Thirty were too
short-lived to furnish us with materials for forming any precise
estimate of Greek oligarchy in general. They never went beyond the
stage of being revolutionary or half-established governments: and,
being in constant terror of destruction, they were obliged to resort
to cruel measures which a settled oligarchy would not need. The mere
fact that Greek oligarchies were often long-lived governments suffices
to show that they were not, like the rule of the Four Hundred or the
Thirty, so sanguinary and oppressive as to provoke successful mutiny or
rebellion: and we are entitled to believe that, as Athenian democracy
was the best of Greek democracies, so Athenian oligarchy was the worst
of Greek oligarchies.


IV. _The conquest of the Greek cities by Macedonia._

The division of the Greek people into a large number of small
independent cities was a system which answered well enough as long as
the political horizon included no states other than Greek cities and
Asiatic Empires. The Macedonians were a European people inhabiting
a large territory to the north of Greece, and united under a strong
military monarchy. They had formerly lived under a tribal monarchy of
the heroic type: in the fourth century B.C. they may be compared with
the Goths under Alaric or the Salian Franks under Clovis. They were
devoted to military pursuits: they had some of the spirit of individual
independence which is usually found in a rude people of warriors, and
they showed it even under Alexander the Great, the strongest of all
their kings[224]: but their king was their commander, and in time of
war, so long as he commanded ably, he enjoyed supreme power. To resist
such a people as the Macedonians the Greeks would have had to do the
impossible: to unlearn in a moment all the maxims of jealous precaution
against rival cities by which they had regulated their conduct, to give
up the practice of politics in miniature and understand at once what
was needed in politics on a larger scale. As it was, the old jealousy
between Athens and Sparta continued to be as active as ever, only one
or two Greek states joined in resistance to the invader, and after the
battle of Chæroneia in 338 B.C. Greece lay at the mercy of Philip king
of Macedonia.

  [224] Especially on the famous occasion when Alexander did not dare to
  put his general Philotas to death till he had been condemned by the
  assembled chieftains and warriors. Grote, part II. chapter XCIV.




CHAPTER VI.

ARISTOTLE'S CLASSIFICATION OF POLITIES.


I have now described, in a roughly chronological order, the different
kinds of government which successively appeared in the Greek states
from their infancy to their overthrow by Macedonia. I proceed to give
clearer ideas both of the principles on which those governments were
constructed and of the full meaning of certain terms employed in the
foregoing descriptions of them, by stating the classification of
polities which Aristotle gives us in his treatise on Politics. The time
at which this work was written cannot be precisely determined, but part
of it was certainly composed after, and other parts probably before,
the battle of Chæroneia[225].

  [225] The latest event referred to in the treatise is the murder of
  king Philip in 336 B.C. Aristotle died in 322 B.C.

Aristotle observed all the governments that he knew, and as the
result of his observation divided polities (that is to say, forms of
government, or principles on which governments were constructed or
might be constructed) into two classes, the right or normal polities in
which government was carried on for the good of the whole community,
and the perverted or abnormal polities in which it was conducted by the
governors for their own private interest. Further, since he observed
that in all the polities power was lodged in the hands either of one
person, or of a few, or of the citizens in general, he subdivided each
of his two classes into three species according as power belonged to
one person, or to few, or to many. Among the normal polities the first
species was characterized by the rule of one man for the good of all,
and was known as βασιλεία or kingship: in the second the few best men
ruled for the good of all, and it was known as ἀριστοκρατία or the rule
of the best: the third, where a large number of citizens ruled for the
good of all, deserved in a special and honourable sense the name of
πολιτεία (Polity, or the rule of πολῖται--a Commonwealth), which was
more loosely applied to all constitutions. Among the perverted polities
the first species was tyranny, or the rule of one man for his private
interest; the second oligarchy, or the selfish rule of the few (who in
practice were always identical with the rich); and the third democracy,
the rule of the many (or rather of the poor, since the poor are always
the most numerous) for the selfish interest of their class[226].

  [226] The classification is set forth in the _Politics_ III. 6, 7.
  Welldon, pp. 116-120. In III. 6. 1 Aristotle defines a polity as "an
  ordering or arrangement of a state in respect of its offices generally
  and especially of the supreme office."

The character of the several species of polity is better understood
from the observation of concrete instances than from mere definition.

(1) Kingship, the rule of one for the good of all, is best exemplified
in the monarchies of the heroic age of Greece, in which the kings ruled
over willing subjects, came to the throne by inheritance and not by
violence, and governed within the limits imposed by custom[227]. Other
instances of kingship occurred in the early history of Lacedæmonia,
in Macedonia, and among the Molossians: for in all these cases the
kings owed their power to the gratitude of their subjects for good
services which they had rendered in founding the state or in acquiring
new territory[228]. Even the Persian monarchy of Cyrus and Darius,
although despotic, was an example of kingship and belonged to the
normal polities: for the power of the king was controlled by custom
and acquired not by violence but by inheritance, and its despotic
nature was merely an accident due to the slavish character of the
Asiatics[229]. Beside the heroic monarchies of the Greeks we may set
the governments of such kings as Cerdic of Wessex, Ethelbert of Kent,
Edwin of Northumbria, and Alfred the Great: with the conquering kings
of Macedonia we may compare Alaric the Visigoth or Clovis the Frank:
and for the monarchy of the Persians we may find a parallel in the
Ottoman sultanate of the fifteenth century.

  [227] Aristotle, _Politics_ III. 14. 2. Welldon, transl. p. 146.

  [228] Aristotle, _Politics_ V. 10. 8. Welldon, p. 382.

  [229] Aristotle, _Politics_ III. 14. 6. Welldon, p. 145.

(2) Aristocracy is constituted on the principle that power belongs
to those few best men who are best qualified to use it for the good
of the community[230]. The principle that power is based upon merit
belongs to the best kind of monarchy, as we have just seen, and the
only difference between aristocracy and this best kingship is that
aristocracy gives the power to more than one and kingship to one only.

  [230] Aristotle, _Politics_ V. 10. 7. Bekker. Welldon, transl. p. 382.
  "Kingship corresponds in principle to aristocracy as it is based upon
  merit."

There is no instance in Greek history of an aristocracy pure and
simple. The most aristocratic governments in Greece were those of the
tribes in the heroic age and the government of Sparta before 500 B.C.:
but all these were instances of aristocracy combined with kingship.
The elders who formed the Spartan council were selected for merit and
the councils were aristocratic: but the kingly power was important as
well as the power of the council, and the Spartan government is to be
classed as a monarchy with a large element of aristocracy.

The principle that power and merit should go together was very
sparingly applied in the other Greek states, and the usual method
of appointing to offices was by drawing lots among the candidates:
exceptional instances of the use of voting in elections are found at
Athens in the cases of the archons for a few years after 508 B.C.[231],
and of the ten generals throughout the period of the democracy.

  [231] See p. 76.

The constitution of Rome in the third century B.C. and especially
after the battle of Cannæ, when magistrates were selected for merit
without regard to their patrician or plebeian order, and the senate,
the supreme power in the government, was filled entirely with men who
had served as magistrates or been named senators for high character
and ability, is an example of almost unmixed aristocracy. The small
non-aristocratic elements in that constitution were democratic or
oligarchic.

It may be remarked that it is according to Aristotle an aristocratic
feature in a government if officers are appointed by election and not
by lot, because if officers are elected power and merit tend to go
together[232]. Hence it may be regarded as an aristocratic feature in
modern states that members of Parliament are elected, provided they are
elected for merit: if they are elected for their willingness to give
pledges, they are no longer elected for merit, and they will use their
power not for the good of all but to comply with the wishes of their
constituents, and the real rulers will be the constituents.

  [232] Aristotle, _Politics_ II. 11. 7, II. 12. 2. Welldon, pp. 91, 94.

The appointment of the Premier and the Cabinet must be made according
to merit and is aristocratic. The English method of selecting officers
for the army and for the civil service by competitive examination is in
principle aristocratic, being adopted because merit is shown by success
in examination.

(3) Of Polity, the rule of many for the good of all, there are many
species. Aristotle describes some of them in general terms, but does
not name a definite example of any.

The first species was a form of government adopted by some Greek
peoples after the fall of the heroic monarchies. In that age
distinctions of class depended on military efficiency, and military
efficiency on wealth. The only effective warriors were those who fought
on horseback or from a chariot (we do not know whether chariots were
still used in fighting, and Aristotle's words are ambiguous): those men
who possessed horses, whether they served in war themselves or placed
their horses at the disposal of other warriors, helped to furnish the
effective part of the army; and, because they rendered this service
to the community, they became the ruling class. In the Polity thus
constituted the ruling class was not a large one, though larger than
the ruling class in a mere oligarchy: and this species of Polity,
though it was not oligarchy, had a somewhat oligarchical character.
The second species of Polity was constructed on much the same lines as
the first, but in a later age, when the effective warriors included not
only the horsemen but also a much larger force of heavy armed infantry
or hoplites. In this case, as in the other, military efficiency was
dependent on property: the panoply, or complete suit of armour and set
of weapons which a hoplite required, had to be skilfully wrought, and
was a possession beyond the means of the poor, though it cost far less
than the breeding and keep of a horse. The ruling class included every
man who furnished, either for his own use or for use by another, either
a war-horse or the equipment of a hoplite: and the ruling class was so
large that the Polities of the second species were known in the times
when they existed, though not in Aristotle's time, as democracies[233].
There were also many other varieties of Polities. In all of them,
political power was shared by a class or classes which included a large
part of the free men, and therefore the classes that were neither very
rich nor very poor were of great political importance. The importance
of the upper and middle classes might be secured by various methods: by
conceding political rights only to those who had a certain amount of
property, the amount being so fixed that those who had political rights
were slightly more numerous than those who had them not; by giving
political rights to all free men but compelling those who had property
to be regular, under pain of a fine, in attendance at the assembly; or
by other like devices.

  [233] Aristotle, IV. 13. 10, 11. Bekker. Welldon, pages 291, 292.

The one feature common to all Polities was that they were made by a
fusion of oligarchy and democracy. They were in one way democratic
because they conceded political rights to a large body of free men: but
in another sense they had a trace of oligarchy in their composition,
because they gave more power to a man with property than to one who was
very poor[234].

  [234] The account here given of Polity is derived from Aristotle's
  discussion of it in the _Politics_, book IV. chapters 8-13 (in
  Bekker's edition): Welldon, pages 274-292. Nothing has been added
  except a few necessary explanations.

From what has been said it is clear that the second species of Polity
is well exemplified in the system of government which existed in most
of the German tribes in the time of Cæsar or Tacitus: a system in
which the assembly of the warriors, including both horsemen and foot
soldiers, determined the action of the community. The name Polity may
also be applied to the government established at Athens by Solon, in
which the power granted to the common people was only just so much as
to prevent them from being disaffected[235]: and to the constitution
of Cleisthenes, in which the assembly of the citizens was supreme,
but did not hold its meetings very frequently, and showed no undue
favour toward the poorer citizens. And, finally, all modern governments
with popular representative institutions, though they differ from
Aristotle's Polity in many important features, yet have more in common
with that kind of government than with any other that Aristotle
recognises.

  [235] Aristotle, _Politics_ II. 12. 5. Welldon, p. 95.

(4) We turn to the three perverted forms of government. Democracy, the
rule of the many (or rather of the poor, since the poor are always the
most numerous) for the selfish interest of their own class, will be
considered first, because it is the least strongly contrasted with the
right polities which have been already examined. The word democracy,
as has been noticed above, did not always denote an extreme democracy,
for there was a time when it was applied to those moderate governments
which Aristotle calls Polities: and Aristotle himself is not perfectly
constant in his use of the word, since there is a passage[236] in
which he makes it comprehend both moderate and extreme popular rule.
The democracy however which we now have to consider is the extreme or
thoroughgoing democracy.

  [236] _Politics_, IV. 6. 1-4. Welldon, pages 269, 270.

From many passages in the Politics we learn what Aristotle regarded as
the distinctive features and tendencies of complete democracy.

Democracy was a form of government which arose in cities with a large
population and a large revenue: the whole of the citizens not only
were theoretically admitted to a share in the work of governing, but
actively and habitually exercised their powers, and those citizens
who could not otherwise afford the time to attend assemblies were
enabled to do so by receiving remuneration out of the state treasury.
And indeed such a population had more leisure than any other for
attendance at the assemblies and for serving on juries: for, as their
private property was small, their time was not used up in attending
to the management of it. The consequence was that under this form of
government the ultimate authority in the state was not any established
constitution but the mass of the poor citizens[237].

  [237] Aristotle, _Politics_, Bekker IV. 6. 5, 6. Welldon, pages 270,
  271.

Again in another striking passage Aristotle says that there are
democracies in which the ultimate authority is not the established
constitution but the mass of the people and the resolutions which
the people chooses to make.... In these democracies the common folk
becomes a monarch, a monarch composed of many men, a multitude reigning
collectively.... The common folk, being a monarch, determines to rule
as a monarch owing no obedience to the constitution, so that, becoming
a despot, it esteems most highly those men who flatter it the most: and
this kind of democracy holds the same place among popular governments
as tyranny among kingly governments. The same temper and character
is found in this democracy as in tyranny: both of them are arbitrary
rulers of the better citizens, only the one rules by resolutions, the
other by decrees, and the one is influenced by demagogues, the other by
personal adulators[238].

  [238] Aristotle, _Politics_, Bekker IV. 4. 25-28. Welldon, pp.
  265-267. In translating, I have taken liberties with the words but I
  hope not with the sense of any sentence.

In yet other passages we are told that democratically governed cities
are beyond all others anxious to ensure equality among their citizens,
and that the use of ostracism for the expulsion of any man, who from
wealth or personal popularity or from any other cause has unusual
political influence, is a result of this anxiety[239]: and when we
find that the practice of appointing to offices by drawing lots is
democratic[240], we may observe (though Aristotle does not say so) that
this also is a striking exemplification of the same guiding principle.
When we read that the principle of democracy is freedom[241] we must,
considering the tenor of two passages which have been already quoted,
understand that the freedom that is meant is not the freedom of the
individual but the freedom of the assembly to do whatever it pleases.

  [239] Aristotle, _Politics_ III. 13. 15. Welldon, pages 140, 141.

  [240] Aristotle, _Politics_ II. 11. 5-8. Welldon, pages 90, 91.

  [241] _Ibid._ IV. 4. 23, IV. 8. 7. Bekker. Welldon, pages 265, 275.

The marks then of a pure democracy as conceived by Aristotle are these:
(1) All the citizens, and more especially the poor citizens, actively
and habitually control the business of government, and come together
in frequent general assemblies for that purpose: (2) The assembly of
citizens is free to do whatever it pleases, not being bound to conform
to any law, precedent, or established constitution: (3) Every citizen
has, as far as the nature of things permits, an equal share with every
other citizen of political power and the enjoyment of office.

It is certain that Aristotle regarded the Athenian constitution as an
example of the genuine or extreme species of democracy, since that
constitution cannot be brought under any of the other species which he
defines: moreover he says explicitly that it is only in the extreme
form of democracy that demagogues are to be found[242], and we know
from history that demagogues were plentiful and powerful at Athens.
But much of what he says about extreme democracy cannot be taken as
referring to Athenian democracy: at any rate it does not accurately
depict the democracy under which the Athenians lived. In support
of these statements, I may adduce two facts. Firstly, the Athenian
assembly was not in practice free to do whatever it liked, and was not
above the law and the constitution. It could indeed decide in favour
of an unconstitutional measure whenever it chose, and its decision
was carried into effect: but the proposer of the measure acted at his
peril. In case the people after accepting his proposal continued for
a whole year to think it good and useful, he was safe: but if within
the year his measure became unpopular, he was certain to be condemned
under a Graphê Paranomôn, and to suffer heavy penalties. And secondly,
the passage, in which Aristotle denounces extreme democracy for turning
the common folk into an arbitrary ruler who defies law and precedent
and oppresses the wealthier citizens, can only refer to cases in which
the poorer classes take pleasure in reckless changes and in robbery of
the rich: at Athens the assembly, though the poor citizens predominated
in it, disliked changes and was considerate towards the wealthy
citizens[243].

  [242] Aristotle, _Politics_ IV. 4. 24-26, Bekker. Welldon, pages 265,
  266.

  [243] For example, till 340 B.C., the richest citizens were allowed to
  contribute far less than their just share towards the trierarchies,
  which defrayed a large part of the cost of maintaining the navy; and
  the change to a fairer system was effected with difficulty: Grote,
  Part II. chapter XC.

  The strong conservative tendency, which prevailed among the Athenians
  under their democratic constitution, was, I believe, first noticed by
  Mr W. Warde Fowler. There is a striking passage on the matter in his
  _City-state of the Greeks and Romans_ (pages 170, 171).

The mischiefs which Aristotle regarded as attendant on democracies
have certainly been found in some governments which have borne that
name. Aristotle could not have denounced them as he does unless he had
seen them exemplified in some Greek democracies: in the governments
(nominally at least democratic), which ruled in Paris during the
French Revolution, all and more than all the evils that he describes
were to be found. Athens was practically exempt from them, and we may
seek causes for its immunity. One cause, the long training that the
Athenians went through under the constitution of Cleisthenes, has
been already noticed: the other was that at Athens the principles
on which Greek democracy was founded were actually followed out in
the daily life of the community, the citizens gave their time and
attention to the work of government, and the people was far more truly
a self-governing people than any other that has ever existed.

From what has just been said it will be seen that I regard Athens as
the sole historical example of a true democracy in the Greek sense of
the term. The Florentine Republic after 1324 A.D. is often compared
with the Athenian democracy: but, out of the three characteristics of
Greek democracy, the Florentine constitution had only the two least
important: the citizens had indeed, as far as possible, equal shares
in the enjoyment of office, and the assembly was free to do as it
liked: but the assembly was rarely convoked, and the true governors
were not the assembled citizens, but some fifty citizens selected
by drawing lots every two months or every four months to fill the
various magistracies and boards which ruled the city[244]. In modern
Switzerland some faint traces of actual self-government by the citizens
can be detected in the yearly assemblies held in four of the smaller
cantons, and in the cantonal and federal Referenda, or popular votes on
new laws: but they are no more than traces, and do not make the Swiss
government at all like the Athenian: and, beside this, Switzerland is
a federal state while Athens was a city, and for that reason the two
states are so unlike that it is useless to compare them.

  [244] Hallam, _Middle Ages_, chapter III.: in the cabinet edition,
  vol. I. pages 421-423.

(5) Oligarchy, or the rule of the few rich for the advantage of their
own class, admits of several degrees and varieties. There is something
of oligarchy wherever the enjoyment of public office is limited to
those who have a certain amount of property: there is a larger element
of oligarchy if the qualifying amount is fixed extremely high, or if
the body of rulers fill up vacancies in their own number, or if offices
descend from father to son: and the state is completely oligarchic if,
besides all this, the law does not control the rulers but the rulers
control the law[245]. We may detect a minute trace of oligarchy in
Solon's constitution which excluded the poorest citizens from the
archonship. Perfect oligarchies are exemplified in the Bacchiadæ of
Corinth whose power was hereditary and set them above the law, so that
they could order Labda's child to be killed, and in the Eupatridæ or
hereditary nobles of Athens, whose oppressive rule necessitated Solon's
reforms. Other instances of oligarchy are found in the exclusive
rule of the patricians at Rome from 510 B.C. to 367 B.C., and in the
monopoly of office which was enjoyed by the wealthiest class of the
Romans between 150 B.C. and the time of Julius Cæsar. The most complete
example of an oligarchy is found at Venice between 1310 and the fall of
the republic in 1797.

  [245] Aristotle, _Politics_. Bekker IV. 5. 1-2 and IV. 6. 7-11.
  Welldon, pages 266-267, pages 271-272.

(6) Tyranny, the rule of one man for his private interest, has been
exemplified in the stories of the despots of Corinth and Athens. For
other instances we must go to the great storehouse of illustrations of
tyranny, the mediæval history of Italy where, besides the well known
despots Eccelin da Romano, the Visconti, the Medici, and Cesar Borgia,
there is such a host of minor tyrants that pages might be filled with a
mere enumeration of their names.

We are now in a position to make some general remarks on Aristotle's
classification of polities--to see in some measure what it was, and
what it was not.

Aristotle defined a polity as "an ordering or arrangement of a state
in respect of its offices generally and especially of the supreme
office[246]": and from this definition, as well as from his use of
the word πολιτεία, it is clear that he regarded a polity as the form
on which a whole government and not merely a part of a government
was constructed. But nevertheless he recognised that a government
consisting wholly of kingship or wholly of aristocracy was, at least
among the Greeks, merely an ideal or perhaps an imaginary government,
and was not within the range of practical politics[247]. And herein
Greek history shows that he was right: for we never find in it a whole
government composed solely of kingship or wholly of aristocracy. On the
other hand we find that not only kingship and aristocracy, but also
oligarchy and democracy, constantly occur as forms or principles on
which a part of a government was constructed: for example the ancient
Spartan constitution was in one part kingly, in another aristocratic,
in another democratic; Solon's constitution contained elements both
of democracy and of oligarchy; and even the mature Athenian democracy
contained a trace of aristocracy in the selection of the ten generals
for merit and not by chance. Hence it is clear that, while kingship,
aristocracy, polity, democracy, oligarchy and tyranny were polities,
and each of them was a form on which a whole government either real or
ideal could be erected, four of them at least, kingship, aristocracy,
democracy and oligarchy, were also forms on which a part of a
government could be constructed, and which entered in very various
combinations into the making of actual governments.

  [246] _Politics_ III. 6. 1. Welldon, p. 116.

  [247] In the _Politics_ (IV. 2. Bekker. Welldon, pp. 253, 254)
  Aristotle says that "speculation about the ideally best polity is
  nothing else than a discussion of kingship and aristocracy": and
  that "kingship must be a mere name and not a reality, unless it
  is justified by a vast superiority of the reigning king over his
  subjects":--a condition that can rarely if ever be fulfilled. See also
  Sidgwick, _Elements of Politics_, p. 579.

From what has been said it will be seen that Aristotle's classification
of polities was based much more on philosophic theory than on history
and that, in some part at least of its extent, it is not a direct
classification of actual and concrete governments.

The only actual governments which it directly and straightforwardly
classifies are those which were constructed wholly on the lines of
any single one of the six polities, and these were tyrannies, pure
oligarchies and Polities. As to the rest of the governments which
Aristotle knew, it enabled him to describe them admirably, but did
not help him to assign to them brief, distinctive and convenient
class-names: for instance, it enabled him to describe the Spartan
government as containing elements of kingship, of aristocracy and of
democracy, and the constitution of the Phœnician city of Carthage as
containing elements of kingship, aristocracy, oligarchy and democracy;
but it did not furnish him with any class-name for either of those
governments other than the single word normal or the descriptions of
them which have just been mentioned[248].

  [248] The descriptions of the Spartan and the Carthaginian governments
  are given in the _Politics_ II. 9 and II. 11.

It has been necessary for me in speaking of the Greek governments to
employ some class-names, and the names that I have used are tribal
governments and city governments. The mere fact of using these names
implied an assumption that the governments of the Greek tribes and
the governments of the Greek cities formed in some way two distinct
classes. With the aid of the Aristotelian polities and our historical
examination of Greek governments we may now make some observations
which will help us to see whether the assumption was justified by facts.

Firstly, it may be noticed that all governments of Greek tribes were
mixed governments containing within them in combination both the rule
of the one and the rule of the few, or both the rule of the few and
the rule of the many: and all governments of Greek city states were
pure or unmixed governments, that is to say pure oligarchy, or pure
tyranny, or pure democracy (in so far as a pure democracy is in the
nature of things possible). In making this general statement about
the governments of city states I do not regard Argolis from the time
of Pheidon to 480 B.C., and Athens in the days of Cleisthenes as city
states in the strictest sense of the term: for in Argolis the central
city of Argos was by no means the sole place of importance, but was
counterbalanced by the two ancient cities of Tiryns and Mycenæ, and
in Attica in the time of Cleisthenes the rural districts were in some
respects as important as the city of Athens.

Secondly, all the governments of the tribes were limited and
constitutional, and all the governments of the city states with
one possible exception, were absolute or unconstitutional. These
propositions might almost be regarded as corollaries to those which
preceded them, since in a mixed government the various elements impose
limitations on the authority of one another, and ensure that each
of them shall be subject to a constitution or general understanding
about the exercise of power, while in an unmixed government the ruling
person or class is likely to be subject to no restrictions: but it is
more satisfactory to establish their truth from history. A moment's
consideration shows that the mixed governments which prevailed in the
tribes of the heroic age and at ancient Sparta, as well as those in
which the military class were the ruling class, were all limited and
constitutional. The unmixed governments of the cities were oligarchies,
or tyrannies, or democracies. It is obvious that oligarchies and
tyrannies were absolute governments, and in a democracy Aristotle
tells us that the ruling class, the whole body of citizens, was above
the law. The one possible exception occurs in the fully developed
Athenian democracy, which was in many respects exceptional among Greek
democracies. It is by no means clear that at Athens the mass of the
citizens was an absolute ruler. The truth seems to be that it was an
absolute ruler in so far that there were no limitations that it could
not throw off at pleasure, but in practice it was very much like a
constitutional ruler because it voluntarily submitted to formalities
which restrained its actions.

Thirdly, in the tribes, government was conducted for the good of the
whole community; in the city states, except perhaps Athens, it was
conducted for the good of the rulers. After all that has been said,
these propositions require no further proving.

We find then that in the tribes governments were mixed, constitutional
and, in Aristotle's sense, normal; in the city states they were
unmixed, and with one possible exception they were absolute and, in
Aristotle's sense, abnormal or perverted.

Now that we have discovered from observation of numerous instances that
the governments of the Greek tribes and the governments of the Greek
cities stood in strong contrast with one another, we may try to find
out the causes to which the contrast was due.

In the case of tribes it is impossible to make out completely why their
governments were mixed, constitutional, and normal, because we know but
little about the tribes and nothing of their history. But at any rate
we may observe that the tribes were militant communities engaged in a
constant struggle for existence with other similar communities, and
that in such communities it is essential to the safety of each and all
of their members that all the classes which contribute to the fighting
strength should be kept contented and zealous in the common cause, and
that therefore it is necessary that none of those classes should be
oppressed and that each should have its fair share in determining their
common action.

In the case of city states the reasons why the governments were
unmixed, absolute, and abnormal are best seen contrasting a city state
with a larger political community: for example, England in the middle
ages. In that large political community it was impossible, owing to the
size of the territory, the importance of the country districts, and
the diverse characters of different districts, for any single person
or class to engross all power and become the sole ruler. The size of
the territory necessitated the existence of local rulers or magnates,
the barons: and diversities of local character made each locality
inclined in case of need to act for itself under its own baron. The
result was that if any person or class attempted to become omnipotent
and oppressive, some of the local districts rose in revolt under their
barons and the attempt ended in failure. In a city state all the
circumstances were different: the country districts had no strength or
importance, the power, whether it was a person or a class, that ruled
in the city, met with no resistance from outside the city, and, owing
to the small size of the territory, had all its enemies within its
reach, and could easily destroy them unless they chose to go into exile.

In my second chapter it was stated tentatively and without proof that
there is an intimate connexion between the form of a political body and
the form of the government by which it is ruled. The connexion between
form of political body and form of government has now been traced in
the case of the Greek tribes and cities, and it has been shown that the
assumption which I made when I divided the Greek governments before the
battle of Chæroneia into tribal governments and city governments was
one for which history affords justification.




CHAPTER VII.

THE ACHÆAN LEAGUE[249].

  [249] The chief modern authorities for the history of the Achæan
  League are Bishop Thirlwall in the eighth volume of his _History of
  Greece_, and Professor Freeman in his _History of Federal Government
  in Greece and Italy_. I have compiled this chapter, after reading what
  those authors say on the subject, from the books by ancient writers
  which they cite.


The Achæan peoples of the heroic age, when they were driven by the
invading Dorians from Sparta, Messenia, Argos and Corinth, took refuge
in the northern part of the Peloponnesus and there founded the Achæan
people of the historical period. The district in which they settled
measures only about sixty-five English miles from east to west along
the coast of the Corinthian gulf, and from twelve to twenty miles
from north to south. It is cut off from the rest of the Peloponnesus
by a range of lofty mountains which cannot in any part be crossed
without difficulty. From this mountain range many ridges run northward,
dividing the country into narrow valleys[250]. The past history of the
Achæans and the character of their territory made them well suited
for a federal form of government; that is to say, for having a single
government for some purposes and many governments for other purposes.
They were impelled towards union by their common Achæan race, by common
experience of conquest by the Dorians, and by the certainty that, if an
independent state were formed in each little valley, none of them would
be large enough to be of any importance in Greece: but at the same
time some sort of separate government in each valley was natural in a
country where communications were so much interrupted by mountains. It
is said that they lived for a time under a single government only--the
kingly government of the descendants of their hero Orestes: but at some
very early period each of the valleys must have acquired some sort
of independence, since, on the abolition of the kingly government,
at a time too early to be known to history, the separate cantons or
cities acted for themselves and voluntarily joined together in a
confederation, adopting at the same time institutions of a popular
character. They acquired such a reputation for just government and good
faith in their dealings that after the battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C.
they were singled out from all the Greek states to act as arbitrators,
on some points which were disputed, between the victorious Thebans
and the defeated Spartans: and Polybius believed they had acted in
the same capacity at a much earlier date in the affairs of Croton
and Sybaris, two states which had been founded in southern Italy by
colonists from Achaia[251]. For centuries they lived on, somewhat
isolated from the rest of Greece and little noticed by Greek writers,
but maintaining their union and their system of government. Even in the
days of Philip of Macedonia and his son Alexander the Great they were
left unmolested: but, after Alexander's death, some of the ambitious
princes who contended for power in Greece and Macedonia contrived
to sow discord among their cities: they were consequently unable to
defend themselves, and some of the cities were occupied by Macedonian
garrisons, while others were put under the rule of tyrants. The gradual
destruction of the league which was thus brought about must, from what
Polybius says, have begun at some time after 315 B.C. when Cassander
came to the throne of Macedonia, and have been completed in thirty
years from that date. The earlier part of the mischief was done by
Cassander and Demetrius Poliorcetes, the rest by Antigonus Gonatas son
of Demetrius[252].

  [250] Smith's _Dictionary of Geography_, article Achaia: and Smith's
  _Atlas of Ancient Geography_.

  [251] For the early history of Achaia see Polybius II. 37-41:
  Shuckburgh, translation, pages 134-137. The story about Croton and
  Sybaris may be incorrect (Grote, Part II. end of chapter XXXVII.): but
  it shows that Polybius believed the good government of the Achæans had
  been established long before the battle of Leuctra.

  [252] Polybius II. 41.

About the year 283 B.C. it chanced that the attention of Antigonus
was called away from the affairs of Greece; and the Achæans, being
thus delivered from his interference, before long began to restore
their federal union. At first, about 280 B.C., the renewed league
consisted of only four of the cities: then it was joined by three
more, and probably before long it included all the rest:--the whole
number being now reduced to ten, for four had ceased to exist, and
only two new ones had grown up[253]. For about thirty years the league
did not include any cities outside Achaia: but in 251 B.C. Aratus of
Sicyon, when only twenty years of age, rescued his native city out of
the power of its tyrant by surprising the garrison, and, in order to
provide for its future safety, induced his fellow-citizens to enrol
their state as a member of the confederation. In the year 245 B.C.
he was elected to the office of strategus or chief magistrate of the
league: and that office he held, as a general rule, thenceforward in
alternate years till his death thirty-two years later. He was most
active and skilful in bringing cities into the league. In his second
term of office he surprised and overpowered the Macedonian garrison
which held Acrocorinthus, and thus set Corinth free. The liberated
Corinthians were glad to join the Achæans, and the league, gaining
possession of the Corinthian citadel which commanded the Isthmus, was
able thenceforth to protect not only its own cities but the whole of
the Peloponnesus against any enemy that came by land[254]. After this
many other cities gave in their adhesion: the most important of those
that joined before 227 B.C. were Megara, Trœzen, Epidaurus, Cleonæ,
Mantineia, Phlius, Megalopolis, and Argos[255].

  [253] Polybius II. 41. For the names of the cities see also Mr
  Shuckburgh's Introduction, pp. xlviii, xlix.

  [254] Polybius II. 43.

  [255] For a list of the cities in the league see Freeman, _Federal
  Government_, pp. 713-714.

The league, throughout the period of its reconstitution in Achaia and
its extension outside (that is to say from 280 B.C. to 227 B.C.), was
most successful in protecting a number of Greek states from Macedonian
interference. But it was never joined by Sparta nor by several other
Peloponnesian cities: and about the year 227 B.C. Cleomenes III., one
of the two kings of Sparta, wishing at whatever cost to regain for
the Spartans their old predominance in the Peloponnesus, found that
the Achæan league was an obstacle to his designs: and, having first
made an alliance with the Ætolians, who might have put impediments
in his way, he became engaged in a war with the Achæans, and, in the
course of it, defeated them in three important battles. Aratus and his
countrymen in their distress thought it necessary to ask the aid of
Antigonus Dôsôn, who was regent in Macedonia as guardian of his nephew
the young king: Antigonus readily granted their request, but required
them in return to allow him to place a Macedonian garrison in the
Acrocorinthus. He entered the Peloponnesus, and, in 222 or 221 B.C.
at Sellasia in the north-east corner of the Lacedæmonian territory,
the allied armies of Macedonia and Achaia won a great victory and
destroyed the power of Cleomenes[256]: but the Achæans found that,
by re-admitting the Macedonian power to the Peloponnesus, they had
forfeited their independence in regard to foreign policy, and must
conform to the wishes of their too powerful ally. The league continued
to exist "for another period of seventy-five years, retaining its
internal constitution, vastly increased in territorial extent, but,
in external affairs, with only a few short intervals, reduced almost
to the condition of a dependent ally, first of Macedonia and then of
Rome[257]." From the year 146 B.C. Achaia and Macedonia were both
included in the dominions of the Roman republic.

  [256] Polybius II. 45-53 and 64-69.

  [257] Freeman, _Federal Government_, p. 498.

We have now to examine the structure and constitution of the league
of cities or cantons[258], which, though it eventually succumbed to
Macedonia, had in happier days been distinguished for sixty years of
successful assertion of its independence. We will observe first the
relation of each component state to the central government, and then
proceed to inquire into the nature of the central government itself.

  [258] Most of the communities in Achaia and some of those in Arcadia
  were rather cantons than cities: Plutarch (_Aratus_, ch. 9) calls the
  Achæans μικροπολῖται, citizens of petty towns. Corinth, Argos and
  Megalopolis were great cities.

The component states were left free to manage their own internal
affairs, each holding its own assemblies, electing its own magistrates,
and making its own laws on all matters except the few that were
reserved to be settled by the central government[259]. It is probable
that they might even choose their own constitutions: but practically
a state under a tyranny or a close oligarchy or even a strong kingly
power like that of Cleomenes at Sparta, was excluded from membership
in the league because it could not allow its citizens to take part
in the general assemblies which I shall have to describe in speaking
of the central government. In course of time all the cities adopted
constitutions of a popular but moderate character, and in the second
century B.C., when the league included the whole Peloponnesus, Polybius
says that all the states employed the same laws, weights, measures,
and coinage, and were all alike in their administrative, deliberative
and judicial authorities, so that the whole peninsula differed from a
single city only in not having all its inhabitants enclosed within a
single wall[260].

  [259] The component states were called πόλεις, and this fact alone, in
  the absence of indications tending the other way, is enough to show
  that they managed their internal affairs. For further evidence see
  Freeman, _Federal Government_, p. 256.

  [260] Polybius II. 37.

The central government consisted of two deliberative bodies, the
assembly and the council, and of an executive officer, the strategus,
with several subordinates: its business comprised the conduct of all
foreign affairs, and the management of the armed forces.

The assembly or synod was attended by all citizens of any city in the
league who chose to present themselves[261]: its business was to
settle questions of foreign policy and to elect the executive officers
of the league. The regular place of meeting was Ægium, a small city on
the Corinthian gulf, and it seems that the assembly always met there
till 218 B.C.: afterwards it sometimes came together at other cities in
the territory of the league[262]. There were ordinary meetings every
spring and every autumn[263]: and special meetings could at any time be
summoned by the magistrates to settle important and urgent questions
of foreign policy, the duration of any special meeting being limited
to three days[264]. The votes on questions of policy were taken not by
heads but by states: that is to say, each state had one vote, and its
vote was given Aye or No, according as the majority of those of its
citizens who were present inclined to the one side or the other[265].

  [261] Polybius (II. 38) emphatically calls the Achæan system a
  democracy with free and equal speech.

  [262] Polybius (V. 1) says that in 218 B.C. the assembly met _in
  accordance with the law_ at Ægium: but king Philip afterwards
  persuaded the magistrates to transfer it to Sicyon. The important
  assembly which made the alliance with Rome in 198 B.C. was also held
  at Sicyon: Livy XXXII. 19.

  [263] For example, in 224 B.C. Antigonus Dôsôn presented himself at an
  assembly at Ægium in the spring and at another at the same place in
  the autumn (Polybius II. 54). The meeting in the spring had to elect
  the officers for the coming year: and the strategus entered on his
  duties in May, at the rising of the Pleiades (Polybius V. 1).

  [264] Livy (XXXII. 22) after recording the proceedings of two days in
  the special meeting of 198 B.C. says "Only one day was left in which
  the meeting could act: for the law ordered that on the third day its
  decision should be made."

  [265] Livy (XXXII. 22) says that in 198 B.C. when the magistrates were
  just going to take a vote, most of the _states_ openly showed which
  way they would vote (omnibus fere populis ... præ se ferentibus quid
  decreturi essent): then the citizens of Dymê and Megalopolis and some
  from the Argolid left the assembly: but (XXXII. 23) the rest of the
  _states_ of the league, when asked in turn how they voted (ceteri
  populi Achæorum, cum sententias perrogarentur), decided in a certain
  way.

Of the council almost nothing is known: its meetings were held not only
at the times of the federal assemblies, but at other times also: for
in the year 220 B.C. king Philip had an interview with the council at
Ægium about a question of foreign policy, which he would certainly have
laid before the assembly if it had been possible[266]. The number of
members in the council must have been at least a hundred and twenty,
and may have been larger[267]. From the little evidence that we have
we may perhaps gather that the council sat for a good part of the
year, and acted as a committee of the assembly to prepare the business
that had to be laid before it: and, at times when the assembly was
not sitting, decided any questions that were not so important as to
necessitate a special meeting of the assembly.

  [266] Polybius IV. 26 προσελθοντος τοῦ βασιλέως πρὸς τὴν βουλὴν ἐν
  Αἰγίῳ. The business related to a question of war against the Ætolians.

  [267] The evidence for this is referred to by Bishop Thirlwall
  (_History of Greece_, vol. VIII. p. 92). In 187 B.C. Eumenes king of
  Pergamum offered to give 120 talents, on condition that the money
  was invested and the interest used to pay the councillors (see
  Polybius XXIII. 7 in Dindorf's edition: XXII. 10 in Mr Shuckburgh's
  translation). The yearly interest of a talent would be about 720
  drachmæ:--a large salary for a councillor. The councillors at Athens
  were paid about 300 drachmæ yearly, see above, p. 51, note 1.

The executive officers were the strategus, and ten demiurgi or
ministers:--together with a hypo-strategus or under-general and perhaps
a secretary of state[268]. The strategus was elected each year in the
spring meeting of the assembly and entered on his duties a short time
after his election. His office was in its origin military, and he was
by right commander in the field and controller of the armed forces: but
his most important functions were to act as leader in the assembly--to
expound his foreign policy and obtain authority to carry it out--and
to manage negotiations with foreign powers: this last part of his work
was of such moment that the symbol of his office was a seal[269]. It
is shown by the case of Aratus that the Achæans were more anxious that
their strategus should be a good foreign minister than that he should
be a good commander-in-chief: for though Aratus was a very poor general
and lost many battles, his countrymen set such a value on his skill
in dealing with foreign affairs that they elected him over and over
again--not indeed in successive years, for the constitution forbade
it--but as often as the law allowed.

  [268] Polybius V. 94 ὐποστράτηγος. Strabo VIII. 7. 3 γραμματεύς: but
  this passage proves the existence of the office of secretary only for
  the very early days of the re-constituted league soon after 280 B.C.

  [269] Freeman, _Federal Government_, p. 299, from Polybius IV. 7.

The ten demiurgi were also elected by the assembly[270]. They acted
collectively as presiding officers in the assembly and determined what
questions should be put to the vote[271]: but they also acted as a
cabinet or council of ministers to the strategus; for on one occasion a
despatch was addressed by Flamininus the Roman general to the strategus
and the demiurgi, and the reply to it was written in the name of the
same authorities[272].

  [270] Livy XXXII. 22 Magistratus (damiurgos vocant: decem numero
  creantur). The words _magistratus_ and _creantur_ indicate that they
  were elected.

  [271] Livy XXXII. 22.

  [272] Polybius XXIV. 5 in Bekker's and Dindorf's editions: XXIII. 5 in
  Mr Shuckburgh's translation.

The federal government of the league, which has just been described, is
called by Polybius a democracy: but it was not a democracy according
to the definition which Aristotle gave in stating his classification
of polities; for he defined democracy as the rule of the many for the
interest of the poor[273]. In the Achæan league it can hardly be said
that the many were the rulers: for, though no citizen was excluded
by law from the assembly, the attendance was in practice limited to
those who had time and money to spend in travelling to the place of
meeting, and to those few who chanced to reside there. Moreover the
meetings were held so seldom and lasted for so short a time that the
assembly could not control the government in regard to details, and,
though of course it had the supreme power in great questions and in
the last resort, it practically left nearly everything in the hands
of the strategus. Finally the policy of the league was conducted in
the interest not of any governing class or governing person but of the
community at large.

  [273] Aristotle himself, as we have seen, in one passage uses the term
  democracy to denote any government in which a large number of citizens
  take part: but in doing so he departs from his original definition of
  it.

A Polity or Commonwealth was originally defined by Aristotle as the
rule of the mass of the citizens for the advantage of the whole
community: and he afterwards described it as a mixture of oligarchy and
democracy. Hence it is clear that, on the lines of his classification,
the Achæan league was a Polity. The supreme power in it belonged in
one sense to the whole of the citizens, because no citizen was legally
excluded from the assembly, and thus the constitution had one of the
characteristics of democracy: but in another sense power belonged
to those only of the citizens who possessed a fair income and could
actually attend the meetings, and in this respect the constitution
was oligarchic. Moreover, though oligarchy and democracy when unmixed
both belong to the perverted polities, because their governments rule
selfishly, the mixture of them in the Achæan league produced a normal
polity, viz., a Polity or Commonwealth, whose governors ruled for the
good of the whole people. But these were not the only elements in the
constitution: the aristocratic principle was conspicuously present,
and was seen in the great power and commanding influence which Aratus
possessed in consequence of his high qualifications as a ruler and
adviser.

The federal system of government combined many advantages. It enabled
the Greeks to continue to live as members of small self-governing
communities--a way of living to which the physical features of their
country naturally led them, and to which they were deeply attached:
it gave them, through their union, much greater security than they
could have enjoyed without it: and it formed a large part of them into
a community that more resembled a nation than anything else that had
yet arisen in Greece. The system was tried not only by the Achæans but
also by several other divisions of the Hellenic race: by the Phocians,
the Acarnanians, the Epirots, the Arcadians, and the Ætolians[274]:
and among the Ætolians and Acarnanians it attained such a measure of
success that in the later period of the Macedonian supremacy these two
peoples were, after the Achæans, the most important of the Hellenic
powers.

  [274] See Professor Freeman's _History of Federal Government_.

       *       *       *       *       *

 Transcriber's Notes

 Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

 Variations in hyphenation have been standardised, but other variations
 in spelling, accents and punctuation are as in the original.

 Italics are represented thus _italic_ and gesperrt thus =gesperrt=.

 The "ERRATUM.
 Page 14, line 21, _for_ empires _read_ empire."
 has been implemented.











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