ALVMNVS BOOK FYND 
 

THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS 
 OF THE ANCIENT GBEEKS. 
 
Sonfcon: C. J. CLAY AND SONS, 
 
 CAMBEIDGE UNIVEKSITY PEESS WAKEHOUSE, 
 
 AVE MAKIA LANE. 
 
 263, ARGYLE STREET. 
 
 lorfe : 
 
 F. A. BROCKHAUS. 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
THE -POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS 
 OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS' 
 
 BY 
 
 BASIL EDWARD HAMMOND 
 
 FELLOW AND LECTUKER, TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 UNIVERSITY LECTURER IN HISTORY. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 C. J. CLAY AND SONS, 
 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, 
 AVE MARIA LANE. 
 
 1895 
 [All Rights reserved.] 
 
CT--SE 
 
 Camfcrfoge : 
 
 PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 rpHESE 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 Compara- 
 tive 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 defini- 
 tions 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 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 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 govern- 
 ments, 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 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 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 con- 
 structed 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 govern- 
 ments 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 OP 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 ACHAEAN LEAGUE 114 
 
 EEEATUM. 
 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 import- 
 ant domestic animals and had a name for each of them : for the 
 words cow, German Kuk, Sanskrit gdus, Greek /3o^9, 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 ofc, Latin ovis ; of goose, German Gans, Sanskrit 
 hansas, Greek %ijv, Latin anser ; of sow, German Sau, Sanskrit 
 s?i, Greek o-vs or #9, Latin sus; of hound, German Hund, 
 
 - 
 
2 THE ARYAN RACES. 
 
 Sanskrit $van, Greek KVWV, Latin canis; and of Sanskrit 
 apvas, Greek ITTTTOS, Latin equus, Saxon eoh or ehu. 
 
 In like manner the words door, German Thure, Sanskrit 
 dvaras, Greek Ovpa, 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 fyyov, Latin jugum, prove 
 that they employed cattle for draught; agayv, Latin aais, 
 Sanskrit akshas (axle and cart), Old High German ahsa (axle) 
 indicate the use of carts; the Sanskrit ndus, Greek vavs, 
 Latin navis, German Nachen, show that they could make 
 boats : the Sanskrit aritram (an oar or paddle 1 ), Greek e/oer/to?, 
 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 . 
 
 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 fe*a (spelt, a 
 kind of grain) and Java 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 
 
 1 See Curtius, Grundziige der Griechischen Etymologic, under the word d/>6w. 
 
 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 Miiller, Chips from a 
 German Workshop, vol. n. pp. 22, 44. Curtius, Grundziige der Griechischen 
 Etymologic, has been used for verification. 
 
 3 Mommsen, Hist. Rome, vol. i. p. 16. Kendall, The Cradle of the Aryans, 
 p. 11. 
 
THE ARYAN RACES. 3 
 
 the absence of traces of other original Aryan words for 
 agricultural products or instruments shows clearly that agri- 
 culture 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. 
 
 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 multi- 
 tude 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 
 iversal. 
 
 uni 
 
 12 
 
4 THE ARYAN RACES. 
 
 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 isola- 
 tion 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 inhabi- 
 tants 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 
 
THE ARYAN RACES. 5 
 
 great number of savage peoples seems to have been ob- 
 served 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 govern- 
 ments. 
 
 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 pre- 
 vailed to the exclusion of the rest 1 . 
 
 1 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 
 encyclopaedia 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 ; 
 
6 THE ARYAN RACES. 
 
 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 apoew, 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 1 . 
 
 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 geo- 
 graphical distribution of their descendants and the relationships 
 between their languages. 
 
 The invention of the art of ploughing opened new possibili- 
 ties 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 
 
 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. 
 
 1 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 apbeiv 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 ARYAN RACES. 7 
 
 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 1 . 
 
 1 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. 
 
A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 9 
 
 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 Caesar 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 
 
10 A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 
 
 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 1 . 
 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. 
 
 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 Achseans) 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 recon- 
 stitute it : and the Greek cities, when they began, about 251 B.C., 
 to see their need of mutual defence, had the Achaean League 
 ready at hand, and were able to gain what they needed by 
 
 1 Marquardt, Romische 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. n., especially the Military Map of Italy at the beginning 
 of the volume. 
 
A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 11 
 
 enrolling themselves among its members. The Achaean 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 1 . 
 
 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 northerly 
 Africa, and the Roman dominions presented an example of i, 
 mere political aggregate, or heterogeneous empire or numbers/of 
 peoples having no natural attraction for one another and neld 
 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 com- 
 munities 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 
 
 1 For details see Chapter vn. 
 
12 A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 
 
 engaged in a process of amalgamation. About 150A.D. Ptolemy 
 enumerated more than fifty of them 1 : 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. 
 
 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 
 
 1 Smith's Atlas of Ancient Geography, Map 13, contains a map of Germania 
 Magna according to Ptolemy. 
 
A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 13 
 
 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 1 . 
 
 During the five centuries which followed the Moorish con- 
 quest 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 
 
 1 Spruner-Menke, Historischer Hand- Atlas, Maps 14 and 15. 
 
14 A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 
 
 Arragon 1 . 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 2 , 
 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 Na- 
 poleon. 
 
 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 empire^ 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 
 
 1 Hallam, Middle Ages, Chapter iv. 
 
 2 Stanhope, Reign of Queen Anne, Vol. i. p. 264. 
 
A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 15 
 
 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 1 . 
 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 XL and the later kings of France. 
 
 In Germany events followed much the same course as in 
 
 1 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. 
 
16 A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 
 
 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 im- 
 portant towns which had been founded by the Komans : 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, re- 
 sembling 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 1 . 
 
 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 
 
 1 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. 
 
A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 17 
 
 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 seven- 
 teenth ; 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 
 H. 2 
 
18 A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 
 
 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 govern- 
 ment : 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 conse- 
 quently 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 
 
A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 19 
 
 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 hetero- 
 geneous 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 defec- 
 tive 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 collec- 
 tions 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 govern- 
 ments 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 
 
 22 
 
20 A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 
 
 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 
 
A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 21 
 
 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 repre- 
 sentatives 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 disrup- 
 tion 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 
 
22 A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 
 
 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 des- 
 potism : 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 govern- 
 ments 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 govern- 
 ment 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 1 . It is inter- 
 sected 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 Bedford- 
 shire, Attica contains seven hundred and twenty, and just equals 
 Berkshire, and Laconia, with about nine hundred, is of the same 
 size as Warwickshire 2 . 
 
 1 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. 
 
 2 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. 
 
24 GREEK POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 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 Tvpavvos 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 govern- 
 ment, 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, 
 
i nt r 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 ^4L2E^^ 
 
 THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS. 25 
 
 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 Achaeans, the Dorians and the lonians are historically the 
 most important. The Achaean 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 Achaean 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 Achseans from 
 their homes, and formed themselves into the four peoples of 
 
26 THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 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 Achseans and then with the Dorians and lonians. 
 
 1. The Achaean tribes in the heroic age. 
 
 When the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed the 
 Achseans 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 Mycenaeans, the Spartans, and the Achseans of Phthiotis. 
 All the Achaean tribes were much alike in their political 
 institutions : for the same political terms ({Savikevs, dyoptf, 
 yepovres, \aoi) 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 Achaean tribe was conducted, in time 
 of peace, in assemblies (ayopai). The purposes for which they 
 met included the announcement of any important news 1 , dis- 
 cussion of any public business or question of policy 2 or the 
 settlement of a litigation 3 . 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 4 . 
 
 Whenever the king desired that an assembly should be held 
 he gave the heralds orders to require the immediate attendance 
 
 1 Odyssey n. 30 dyye\trit> ffrparov epxo^voio (news of the host returning). 
 
 2 Odyssey n. 32 ^ TL Srj/uov a\Xo Tri^auavcercu ^5' dyopetei; (or has he any 
 other public business to discuss?) 
 
 3 Iliad xvin. 497 vet/cos (a dispute). 
 
 4 Odyssey n. 1-259, Iliad xvm. 497-508. 
 
THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS. 27 
 
 of the elders and the people 1 . 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 2 , and one 
 of the seats belonged specially to the king 3 : outside were the 
 people, all of whom were compelled by the heralds to seat 
 themselves on the ground 4 and to be silent 5 . 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 
 yepovres, if taken literally, denotes) men of age and experience : 
 but younger men of good family, such as the wooers of Penelope 6 , 
 were also sometimes present among them and shared their 
 privileges. 
 
 The assembly at Ithaca was irregularly summoned. The 
 words of the first speaker, the aged ^Egyptius, 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 ^Egyptius says, " Since the 
 godlike Odysseus departed in his hollow ships our assembly and 
 
 1 Odyssey n. 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. 
 
 2 Iliad xviii. 503 i 
 
 ol 5t ytyovres 
 
 efor' eiri eoT<K<ri \ldois iep$ Ivi KIJK\(J). 
 
 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. 
 
 3 Odyssey n. 14 ?fero 6' Iv Trarpbs tfw/cy (T^X^axos), fei^av 5 ytpovres (and 
 Telemachus sat down in his father's seat, and the elders made way for him). 
 
 4 See Grote's note in his History, Part i. ch. xx. His instances (Iliad n. 96 
 and Iliad xvm. 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. 
 
 5 Iliad n. 96 
 
 tvvta. 5^ o-0eas 
 K-/ipVKs /3o6uH/res tprirvov, et TTOT 
 
 (and nine heralds were calling them to order, to stop clamouring and hearken to 
 the heaven-born kings). 
 
 6 At the Ithacan assembly the suitors Antinous, Eurymachus, and Leiocritus 
 were among the speakers. Odyssey n. 84-254. 
 
28 THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 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 J 1 " 
 
 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 2 : " 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 3 ." 
 
 In this assembly, as in the other, power belonged solely to 
 
 1 Odyssey n. 25-34. 2 Iliad xvm. 497-508. 
 
 3 Or perhaps, to him who best proved his case. 
 
THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS. 29 
 
 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 counsellor 1 ." 
 
 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 2 . 
 
 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 3 . 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 4 . 
 
 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 
 
 1 Iliad ix. 96-99. 2 Odyssey xxi. 16-21. 
 
 3 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." 
 
 4 Iliad ii. 53, ix. 9-17, 89-95. 
 
30 THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 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 1 . 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 2 . The 
 kings and rich men themselves lived, not scattered over the 
 open country after the fashion of the Germans described by 
 Tacitus 3 , 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 4 " and 
 on the morrow at the dawn of day at the summons of the 
 heralds they "came very quickly to the assembly 5 ": Pylos, 
 where Nestor lived, is called the gathering place and the abodes 
 of the Pylians 6 : and, not to multiply instances, words denoting 
 cities are regularly applied in the Homeric poems to the 
 dwelling-places of the heroes. 
 
 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 ; Mycenae and Athens had 
 
 1 Odyssey xi. 489 6r)Tevt/j.ev. 
 
 2 Grote's Greece, octavo edition vol. i. p. 487, cabinet edition vol. n. p. 98. 
 
 3 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. 
 
 4 Odyssey I. 424 KaKKelovres tftav foiK6vde /?/ca<rros. 
 
 5 Odyssey n. 8 rot 8' -fjyeipovro /id\' w/ca. 
 
 6 Odyssey in. 31 Iiv\luv Avdp&v Ayvplv re KCU Zdpas. 
 
THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS. 31 
 
 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 1 . 
 
 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 2 . 
 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 3 . 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 4 . 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 Phoenicians who in that age were more active in 
 trade than any other people 5 . 
 
 1 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. 
 
 2 Odyssey iv. 68-75. 3 Odyssey n. 337-343. 
 
 4 The evidence concerning the use of the metals is collected by Grote, octavo 
 edition vol. i. p. 493, cabinet edition vol. n. pp. 104, 105. 
 
 5 For the dealings of the Phoenicians see the story in which EumaBus the 
 swineherd narrates how he was kidnapped as a child by Phoenician traders. 
 Odyssey xv. 403-484. 
 
32 THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 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 1 . 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. 
 
 2. The Dorians and the lonians in the heroic age. 
 
 Before the beginning of Greek History, properly so called, 
 the Achaean 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 lonians. The 
 original abode of the Dorians was a small mountainous country 
 called Doris not far from Thermopylae 2 . From hence bands of 
 adventurers had gone forth and, invading Peloponnesus, had 
 expelled the Achaeans from Sparta, Messenia, Argos and Corinth, 
 had occupied their territories and had copied their institutions. 
 The lonians 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. 
 
 Of the Dorian kingly government at Corinth we know 
 nothing but its existence 3 : 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 
 
 1 Grote, Greece, octavo edition vol. i. p. 486, cabinet edition vol. n. p. 97. 
 For the worker in gold see Odyssey in. 425. 
 
 2 Herodotus vm. 31 in speaking of the position of Doris remarks, "This 
 country is the mother country of the Dorians in Peloponnesus." 
 
 3 Diodorus Siculus vu. fragment 9. Diodorus wrote about 20-10 B.C. 
 
THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS. 33 
 
 about King Arthur, I thought that for complete untrustworthi- 
 ness there was nothing to choose between the two authors 1 : 
 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. 
 
 Argos, with its two neighbours Mycenae 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 
 Achaean 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 2 , and Agamemnon 
 king of Mycenae 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. 
 
 After the Dorian conquest the three cities still continued to 
 exist: Argos was the strongest of them, but Mycenae acted 
 independently of Argos so late as the year 480 B.C. in sending a 
 contingent to fight against the Persians at Thermopylae 3 . 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 
 
 1 Myron wrote about 220 B.C. His stories about the early Messenian kings 
 are preserved by Pausanias in his fourth book. 
 
 2 Professor Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, pp. 96-101. 
 
 3 Pausanias u. 16. 5. 
 
 H. 3 
 
34 THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 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 1 . 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 Temenus which had been broken 
 up into many parts 2 ." Temenus, 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 Cleonse, Phlius, Sicyon, 
 Epidaurus, Troezen, and ^Egina. 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 Tvpawoi*. But it seems 
 that he ought not, strictly speaking, to be reckoned among 
 them, being unlike to the rest of them in two important par- 
 ticulars: 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 
 
 1 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. 
 
 2 Ephorus, who wrote about 350 B.C., records this. His words are quoted 
 by Grote, octavo edition vol. n. p. 90, cabinet edition vol. n. p. 316, from 
 Strabo. 
 
 3 Aristotle, Politics v. 10. 6, in Bekker's edition (Oxford, 1837). Welldon, 
 p. 381. Pausanias vi. 22. 2, 
 
THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS. 35 
 
 late as 480 B.C. when Greece was invaded by the Persians 
 under Xerxes 1 . 
 
 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 2 . 
 
 The Spartans, instead of having one king, had two kings 
 and two royal families 8 , 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. 
 
 Of the other tribes in the pre-historic age we have no 
 traditions : but Thucydides 4 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. 
 
 1 The king of Argos in 480 B.C. is noticed by Herodotus (vn. 149). 
 
 2 Thucydides n. 15. The original independence of the small communities is 
 most fully vouched for by the festival, called TO. <rwolKta t or the union of dwellings : 
 and it furnishes a reason for the policy adopted by Cleisthenes of establishing 
 popular local governments in the denies, or villages and townships, of Attica ; 
 see Chapter V. 
 
 3 Herodotus vi. 52. 
 
 4 Thucydides I. 13 tirl p-rrrols ytpavt. trarpiKal jSa(rt\e?at. 
 
 32 
 
36 THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 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 monarchical ly 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 consti- 
 tution : 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 Spartiatae 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 Perioeci 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 Thermopylae, Xerxes asked Demaratus, who had 
 once been king of Sparta but had been deposed, to tell him 
 how many warriors remained to the Lacedaemonians and how 
 many of them were as brave as the three hundred ; Demaratus 
 replied : " O king, the number of the Lacedaemonians is great 
 and their cities are many : thou shalt know what thou desirest 
 to learn. There is in Lacedaemon a city Sparta, of about eight 
 
38 SPARTA. 
 
 thousand fighting men, and all these are like to those that 
 fought at Thermopylae : the other Lacedaemonians are not 
 indeed equal to these, but yet they are brave 1 ." 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 fami- 
 lies and formed the Spartan nation. 
 
 The Perioeci were " the other Lacedaemonians, not indeed 
 equal to the Spartiatae, but yet brave men," and by them the 
 cities of Lacedaemon except Sparta were inhabited. It seems 
 that the Perioeci were decidedly more numerous than the 
 Spartiatae : 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 Plataea, 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 Perioeci 2 . As these 
 Perioeci were picked men, there were more to pick from : of the 
 force of Spartiatae 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 3 ." 
 
 It is not certain whether the Perioeci were Achaeans or 
 Dorians in origin. Whichever they were, our view of the 
 Spartans and their government will be much the same. The 
 Perioeci 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 them- 
 selves 4 : but they had no voice whatever in the politics of 
 Sparta, which were controlled exclusively by the Spartans. 
 
 1 Herodotus vn. 234. 
 
 2 Herodotus ix. 10, ix. 28, and ix. 11. 
 
 3 Grote, Greece, octavo edition vol. in. p. 494, cabinet edition vol. v. p. 11. 
 
 4 If they had not possessed the management of their local affairs, their 
 communities would scarcely have been called ?r6Xets by Herodotus in the 
 conversation between Xerxes and Demaratus. Herodotus vn. 234 ; Smith's 
 Diet. Antiq. article Perioaci. 
 
SPARTA. 39 
 
 Occasionally a man of ability from among the Periceci was 
 promoted to a position of trust: thus in the year 412 B.C. a 
 man named Deiniadas, a Pericecus, commanded a squadron of 
 ships in the war on the coasts of Asia Minor and of Lesbos \ 
 
 The Helots formed in the fifth century B.C. a large popu- 
 lation 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 Periceci 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 2 . 
 
 The name eiXwres denotes captives taken in war 3 . 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 Pelopon- 
 nesus. 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 4 . In the second war 
 they were completely successful, and at the end of it they 
 
 1 Thucydides vm. 22 ypxe T&V vewv Aead5as ireploiKos (Deiniadas a Pericecus 
 was in command of the ships). 
 
 2 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 (in. 20. 6) speaks of the 
 Helots as slaves belonging to the state (SovXoi TOV KOIVOV) : the rest comes from 
 Plutarch, Lycurgus, ch. 8. 
 
 3 See Smith's Diet. Antiq., third edition, article Helotes. 
 
 4 The dates of the Messenian wars cannot be determined with certainty. 
 See the note at the end of this chapter. 
 
40 SPARTA. 
 
 reduced the Messenians, who had for some two or three cen- 
 turies been a free and independent Dorian people, to the 
 condition of Helots 1 . 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 con- 
 quest 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. Sub- 
 sequently, 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 Ithome to capitulate on 
 condition that they should depart from the Peloponnesus and 
 never return 2 . 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 Lacedae- 
 monians were framed with a view to the Helots, to guard 
 against their insurrections 8 ." 
 
 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. Possi- 
 bly some of these regulations had already been established 
 
 1 Pausanias (in. 20. 6) expressly says that those serfs who were acquired by 
 the Spartans uot in their original conquest of Laconia but subsequently (that is 
 to say at the conquest of Messenia) were Messenian Dorians. 
 
 2 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. 
 
 3 Thucydides iv. 80. 
 
SPARTA. 41 
 
 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 Lacedae- 
 monians, 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 Boeotia. 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 b^althy: and as strong parents were likely to have 
 strong offsprmg^the women no less than the men were trained 
 in gymnastic exercises and contests 1 . The boys ceased at an 
 early age to be unaer the sole authority of their own parents 
 and were placed under the command of an officer of state 
 whose title was 7rai,Sov6^o<; or warden of the boys 2 , and were 
 also compelled to obey any Spartan who had children of his 
 own 3 . 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 
 
 1 [Xenophon] De Rep. Lac. 1. 4. 
 
 2 [Xenophon] De Rep. Lac. 2. 2. 
 
 3 [Xenophon] De Rep. Lac. 6. 1, 2. 
 
42 SPARTA. 
 
 food, but, if they were caught, were severely beaten for not 
 having stolen cleverly 1 ; 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 2 . 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 3 . The great deference paid to age 
 is merely hinted at in this treatise 4 but it is well known from 
 other sources. 
 
 When the youths grew up to be men they were compelled 
 to dine at the common meal provided for them : arid 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 5 . Every Spartan was not 
 only compelled to concentrate his attention on military excel- 
 lence, but was completely cut off from all commercial pursuits 
 and even from agriculture 6 . Commerce and all useful arts 
 were left to the Perioaci : the Spartan could practise none of 
 them without degradation. His expenditure consisted in his 
 contribution to the common meals and in the cost of main- 
 taining 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 mina3 (40 sterling) would demand large storage- 
 room and a waggon to remove it 7 . 
 
 As every Spartan was a soldier all his life long from attain- 
 
 1 All these details from [Xenophon] De Eep. Lac. 2. 
 
 2 [Xenophon] De Eep. Lac. 6. 2. 3 [Xenophon] De Eep. Lac. '6. 
 
 4 [Xenophon] De Eep. Lac. 9. 5. 5 [Xenophon] De Eep. Lac. 11. 
 
 6 [Xenophon] De Eep. Lac. 7. 1. 7 [Xenophon] De Eep. Lac. 7. 5. 
 
SPARTA. 43 
 
 ing 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 Spartiatse 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 ev&fioTuu, 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 1 . 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. 
 
 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 2 . The number of men in a company seems to have 
 been normally twenty-five, since two companies were sometimes 
 called a fifty 3 : 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 4 , it is 
 probable that none but men of the same age were placed 
 together in a company, since in the absence of such an arrange- 
 ment 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. 
 
 1 All this is from Thucydides v. 66 and v. 68. 
 
 2 [Xenophon] DC Rep. Lac. 11. The description takes up the second half 
 of the chapter. 
 
 3 Thus in [Xenophon] De Rep. Lac. 11 a commander of two companies is 
 called irevTT}Ko<TTrip or irevT-rjKovT-^p a captain of fifty. 
 
 4 [Xenophon] De Rep. Lac. 11 : at the beginning of the chapter. 
 
44 SPARTA, 
 
 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 1 . 
 
 The Spartan soldiers seem to have had no defensive armour 
 except a large brazen shield : their dress was of a bright red 2 
 colour, and probably consisted of a single large plaid which 
 could be fastened with a brooch at the shoulder 3 : for offensive 
 weapons they had a long spear and short sword 4 . 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 5 . 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. 
 
 III. We have already seen 6 that the Spartans in pre- 
 historic 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 
 
 1 [Xenophon] De Eep. Lac. 11. The description of the evolutions there 
 given is well explained in Smith, Dictionanj of Antiquities, third edition, vol. i. 
 p. 770, under the word Exercitus. 
 
 2 [Xenophon] De Eep. Lac. 11 : at the beginning of the chapter, 
 
 3 Smith, Diet. Ant. third edition, article Triboii. 
 
 4 Smith, Diet. Ant. third edition, vol. i. p. 773. 
 
 6 Thucydides v. 68. 6 See p. 35. 
 
SPARTA. 45 
 
 Lycurgus. This celebrated constitution is defined in a ptjrpa 
 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 1 . It orders Lycurgus 
 " to found a temple of Zeus Syllanius and Athena Syllania, to 
 divide the people into tribes ((f>v\ai) and obes (o)/3at), to estab- 
 lish 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 (oa/io?, 877/^09, the 
 whole of the Spartiatae) should have (? the decision ?) 2 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 (tcpdro^). 
 
 The powers that belonged severally to the kings to the 
 elders and to the assembly are not defined. But the constitu- 
 tion was made in the age of the heroic monarchies and was 
 derived from a dual heroic kingship by the introduction of 
 
 1 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. 
 
 2 The text is uncertain here. 
 
46 SPARTA. 
 
 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 1 , 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 (prfrpa) 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. 
 
 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 ex- 
 plicitly 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 Tyrtaeus was living 
 at Sparta and wrote the lines : 
 
 bv 8ia M.dcr7Jp7jv etKo/juev evpv^opov 
 
 i.e. " To our king Theopompus beloved of the gods, to whom we 
 owed our conquest of the broad plains of Messenia 2 ." The 
 subjugation of Messenia must have been a very difficult task: 
 the country like the other natural divisions of Greece is pro- 
 tected by mountains and it was defended by a brave and 
 numerous race of Dorians. Tyrtaeus tells us that one of the 
 
 1 Plutarch, Lycvrgns, 6. 2 Quoted by Pausanias (iv. 6). 
 
SPARTA. 47 
 
 wars against Messenia was carried on continuously for nineteen 
 years 1 . 
 
 (2) We are informed by Plutarch 2 that, long after the 
 establishment of the Lycurgean constitution, the assembly of 
 the Spartiatse 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 3 ." 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 im- 
 portant war*. 
 
 (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 Theo- 
 pompus that he reduced the extent of the kingly power by the 
 
 1 Tyrtaeus, 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 Geographic 
 von Griechenland, p. 181 note) : to the north of Taygetus they could cross with- 
 out 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 Lycaeus. 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 
 Baedeker's Greece, p. 283. 
 
 - Plutarch, Lycurgus, 6. 3 Plutarch, Lycurgus, 6. 
 
 4 For example in 432 p.. 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). 
 
48 SPARTA. 
 
 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 1 .'" 
 
 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 prjrpa, 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 
 
 1 The passages are from Plutarch, Lycurgus, 7 and Aristotle, Politics v. 11. 
 2, 3. Bekker, Oxf. 1837- Welldon's translation, p. 392. 
 
SPARTA. 49 
 
 another. In the midst of a great war for the conquest of 
 Messenia, it might be especially inconvenient that the assembly 
 of the Spartiatse 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 1 : 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 Theo- 
 pompus. 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 wheace 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. 
 
 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 2 . 
 
 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 
 
 1 Plutarch, Lycurgus, 26. 
 
 2 Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities, third edition, article Ephori, where 
 proofs are given. 
 
 H. 4 
 
50 SPARTA. 
 
 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 Thermopylae: 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 Bceotia 1 . 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 (398361 B.C.). 
 
 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 2 . 
 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 independ- 
 ence which they then displayed. 
 
 During the period of their greatness (beginning about 
 480 B.C.) the Ephors were a board of five 3 magistrates elected 
 
 1 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. 
 
 2 Aristotle, Politics n. 9. 19 ylyvovrat K TOV S^/xou Travres (they are all created 
 from the people). Ibid. n. 9. 23 (aiper^v rty dpxV ^ airdvTwv), (the office is 
 filled by election from the whole body). 
 
 3 Aristotle, Politics n. 10. 6. 
 
SPARTA. 51 
 
 annually. One of them gave his name to the year 1 : they 
 received ambassadors and sometimes at least gave them an 
 answer 2 : 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 Spartiatse was called together 
 an Ephor presided over it and took the votes 3 . 
 
 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 irpb^evoi or be- 
 frienders 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 4 . 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 5 , who could afterwards report to their colleagues any 
 action of the commander which displeased them. 
 
 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 
 Spartiatae. We do not hear of the rulers living in luxury, nor 
 of inequalities or discontents among the Spartiatse, nor of 
 emancipations of Helots. Twice only in the course of several 
 centuries we read that the Spartans made a new law 6 : in 
 
 1 Xenophon, Hellenica n. 3. 9 and 10. 
 
 2 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. 
 
 3 For example in 432 B. c. Thucydides i. 85-87. 
 
 4 For the powers of the kings in time of peace see Herodotus vi. 57. 
 
 5 [Xenophon] De Rep. Lac. 13. 5. 
 
 6 Smith, Diet. Ant., third edition, vol. i. p. 915. 
 
 42 
 
52 SPARTA. 
 
 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. 
 
 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 pro- 
 cured for them, many alterations were gradually introduced in 
 their customs and government. Helots were emancipated for 
 service as soldiers: inequalities arose among the Spartiatse, 
 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 Spartiatse as early as the battle of Platsea 
 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 1 . 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 Perkeci but were known as 
 vfo&afjLwSeis, or " men resembling new commoners." 
 
 Bodies of Neodamodes are mentioned by Thucydides as 
 existing in the years 421, 418, 413, 412 B.C. 2 : and in one 
 of the occasions where he speaks of Neodamodes and Helots 
 as serving together he explains the difference between the 
 
 1 Thucydides iv. 80. 
 
 a Thucydides v. 34, v. 67, vn. 19, vn. 58, vin. 5. 
 
SPARTA. 53 
 
 two by remarking that "the word Neodamodes signifies that 
 freedom has been already acquired," thus proving for certain 
 that a Neodamodes was an emancipated Helot 1 . After the end 
 of the war the Neodamodes 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 2 . 
 
 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 (ou pevroi TWV 
 ofjboiwv). When the informer was questioned by the Ephors, 
 he said Cinadon had expressed confidence that many of the 
 Helots, the Neodamodes, the Inferiors (ol vTro/jueioves), and the 
 Periceci were in sympathy with his aims : for whenever men of 
 these classes talked about the Spartiatse, they could not conceal 
 that they would like to eat them raw 3 . 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 Neoda- 
 modes and the Periceci, were men who had been Spartiatae 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 4 . 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. 
 
 When the Peloponnesian war ended in 404 B.C., the cities 
 of Asia and the ^Egean sea came under the power of Sparta. 
 To each city a harmost or regulator was sent to establish an 
 
 1 Thucydides vn. 58 Svvarai 8t TO Neo5a/Aw5es e\e66epov ydr] elvcu. 
 
 2 Xenophon, Hellenica in. 1. 4. 
 
 3 Xenophon, Hellenica in. 3. 5 and 6. 
 
 4 Aristotle, Politics n. 9. 31 and 32. Welldon, Translation, p. 83. 
 
54 SPARTA. 
 
 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 har- 
 mosts, 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 1 . They took home the 
 wealth that they had acquired and thus introduced the in- 
 equalities among the Spartiatse which were so conspicuous and 
 so invidious in the time of Cinadon. 
 
 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 Boeotia was severely defeated by the Thebans under 
 Epaminondas ; the victorious general marched into the Pelopon- 
 nesus, 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 
 Messene on the site of the old stronghold of Ithome. At the 
 same time he founded the Arcadian city of Megale 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 Spartiatae did not exceed seven 
 hundred ; of these only about a hundred were land-owners, and 
 the rest were reduced to poverty and distress 2 . 
 
 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 
 
 1 For the harmosts see Xenophon, Hellenica in. 5. 13. 
 
 2 Plutarch, Agis 5. 
 
SPARTA. 55 
 
 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 ac- 
 cepted 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 1 . 
 
 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 elec- 
 tions 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 
 
 1 Aristotle, Politics n. 9. 19-24. Welldon, pp. 80, 81. 
 
56 SPARTA. 
 
 of Theopompus till the Peloponnesian war were rather a mili- 
 tary 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 politi- 
 cal 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 in- 
 tensity 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 Spartiatae 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 Priene and who may have relied on his romances. There are 
 however two genealogies of Spartan kings (Herodotus vn. 204 and viu. 
 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 com- 
 munities 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. Tlie 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 
 
58 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 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 Bacchiadae, 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 1 . 
 
 At Megara we know only that the government was in the 
 hands of certain rich families, and that eventually their oppres- 
 sive rule provoked the common folk under the leadership of a 
 man named Theagenes to rise against them and overthrow 
 them 2 . 
 
 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 archoris or administrators, who were selected yearly by the 
 council 3 . The council consisted of those who were serving or 
 had served the office of archons 4 , 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 
 Thesmothetse, and probably attended to judicial business 5 . The 
 nobles then from 650 B.C. or earlier were in exclusive possession 
 
 1 Herodotus v. 92. Diodorus Siculus vn. fragment 9. Diodorus wrote about 
 20-10 B.C. 
 
 2 Aristotle, Politics v. 5. 9, Bekker. Welldon, Translation, p. 357. 
 
 3 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, ch. 8. 
 
 4 Plutarch, Solon, ch. 19, Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, ch. 3. 
 
 5 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. 
 
EARLY ARISTOCRACIES AND OLIGARCHIES. 59 
 
 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. 
 
 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 1 : 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 im- 
 possible to regard it as an original part of the work 2 . 
 
 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 SiKaa-Trfpia or popular law-courts, the e/c/cXrjo-La or assembly 
 of citizens, the (3ov\r) or council of four hundred, and certain 
 regulations which made eligibility to office depend on wealth. 
 
 1 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 4. 
 
 2 Mr R. Macan in Journ. of Hellenic Studies, April 1891, p. 27 notices the 
 silence of Plutarch. 
 
60 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 The archons kept their titles and functions: the permanent 
 council of ex-archons, henceforth known as the council of the 
 Areus Pagus (in Latin Areopagus), survived with diminished 
 authority. 
 
 The SiKaa-rrjpta 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 
 wyopr) 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 POV\TI 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 Zeugit*, who had two hundred medimni and 
 
EARLY ARISTOCRACIES AND OLIGARCHIES. 61 
 
 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 con- 
 dition : and the Thetes alone were incapable of holding places 
 in the administration 1 . 
 
 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 im- 
 mediate effect of his changes had been to transfer the chief 
 power to the nine magistrates 2 . 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. 
 
 The prevalence of oligarchical governments in the Greek 
 cities of Sicily at an early stage of their career is noticed by 
 Aristotle 3 : 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. 
 
 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 suc- 
 ceeded in such an achievement unless they had had merits of 
 their own. It seems then that during the first part of their 
 
 1 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. 
 
 2 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 13. 
 
 3 Aristotle, Politics v. 12. 13. Welldon, p. 405. 
 
62 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 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 1 speaks of the oligarchy at Athens as 
 ol TreSia/coi, or inhabitants of TO TreSiov, a little tract of level 
 ground near Athens, Plutarch 2 calls them TreStefc in exactly the 
 same sense, and the Etymologicum Magnum 3 a much later 
 authority says the Eupatridse 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 4 : 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 Bacchiadae 
 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 77/109 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. 
 
 At Argos the course of events was not the same as in those 
 
 1 Politics v. 5. 9. 2 Solon, ch. 13. 
 
 3 Etymol. Mag., under the word evirarpldai. 
 
 4 Aristotle, Pol. v. 5. 9. Welldon, p. 357. 
 
TYRANNIES. 63 
 
 cities of which I have spoken. The Argive monarchy, as we have 
 seen 1 , 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 ex- 
 clusive as the rule of the Bacchiadse at Corinth or the Eupatridae 
 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 govern- 
 ment : 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. 
 
 II. The Tyrannies. 
 
 The way in which the oligarchic governments were de- 
 stroyed is illustrated by the successful enterprise of Pisi stratus 
 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 Pisis- 
 tratus and his son. 
 
 The story of the origin of the Corinthian tyranny, as told by 
 Herodotus 2 , begins when Corinth was ruled by the oligarchy of 
 the Bacchiadae. 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 
 
 1 Above, pages 34, 35. 2 Herodotus v. 92 and in. 48-53. 
 
D* THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 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 Bacchiadae 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 put 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 soffc-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 /cvtyeXr) or chest : his life was saved, he received the 
 name of Cypselus (Kirv/reXo?), and when he was a man over- 
 powered the BacchiadaB, 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. 
 
 The character of Periander's government is exemplified in 
 
TYRANNIES. 65 
 
 the stories of the spoiling of the Corinthian women and the 
 seizure of the Corcyrsean 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 Heraeum : 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 
 
 H. 5 
 
66 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 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 Corcyraeans 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 bar- 
 barians : 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 conse- 
 quence of rebellions stirred up by Megacles, the head of the 
 noble house of the Alcmseonidae, and twice he recovered his 
 despotic power. After his first expulsion, he bade a certain 
 woman named Phye 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 
 
TYRANNIES. 67 
 
 proclamation " Athenians, give good welcome to Pisistratus : 
 ye see that the goddess Athene 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 Phye was the 
 goddess Athene, 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 1 . 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 main- 
 tenance 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 2 . 
 
 1 Thucydides vi. 54. 
 
 2 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, ch. 19. 
 
 52 
 
68 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 The fall of the Athenian tyranny was brought about through 
 a foreign intervention. The wealthy family of the Alcmaeonidae 
 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 Alcmaeonidse 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 1 . 
 
 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 
 Mitylene in Lesbos, in all the cities of Asia Minor, in Italy at 
 Rhegium, and in Sicily at Agrigentum, Zancle, Himera, Selinus, 
 Gela and Leontini 2 . 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 3 : 
 some of them however started with being hereditary kings 
 possessing limited prerogatives 4 , others were high officers of 
 state 4 , or were members of an oligarchy 4 : but all alike were 
 usurpers of absolute power and found it necessary eventually 
 
 1 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, 'EpiK\d8ov apxovTos. 
 
 2 Grote, Part u. ch. XLIII. 
 
 3 Aristotle, Politics v. 10. 4 ; and v. 6. 1. Bekker. Welldon, pp. 381, 382, 
 358. 
 
 4 Ibid. v. 10. 6. Bekker. Welldon, pp. 381, 382. 
 
TYRANNIES. 69 
 
 to maintain themselves in power by employing a body guard of 
 foreign mercenaries 1 . Pheidon of Argos, as I have already 
 remarked, cannot properly be counted among the rvpavvoi : the 
 same may be said of Pittacus of Mitylene with still greater 
 confidence: for Pittacus was in no sense a usurper, but was 
 deliberately chosen as ^Esymnetes or permanent dictator and 
 endowed with absolute power by a vote of the people 2 . 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. 
 
 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 Orthagoridse at Sicyon 
 which lasted a hundred years 3 . 
 
 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 
 
 1 Aristotle, Politics in. 14. 7. Welldon, p. 145. 
 
 - For Pittacus see Aristotle, Politics in. 14. 9. Welldon, p. 146. 
 
 3 Aristotle, Politics v. 12. 1. Welldon, p. 402. 
 
70 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 have their habitation in the sea and the fishes live on dry land, 
 if ye, O Lacedaemonians, are preparing to destroy equal govern- 
 ments 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 ex- 
 perienced, as we have, what a tyrant is, ye would bring before 
 us sounder opinions on the subject than those that ye have now 
 declared 1 ." He enforced his opinions by telling a large part of 
 the story of Cypselus and Periander : and the etfect of his words 
 was such that the envoys at the congress declared their agree- 
 ment with them and the Spartans had to abandon all thought 
 of the restoration of the Athenian tyranny. 
 
 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 if 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 resem- 
 blance : 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 
 
 1 Herodotus v. 92. 
 
DEMOCRACIES. 71 
 
 their neighbours : and above all, if his tribe or nation is success- 
 ful 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 im- 
 possible : 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 ^Egean 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 
 Chaeroneia 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. 
 
72 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 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 be- 
 tween 480 B.C. and 432 B.C. (3) Democracy during the Pelopon- 
 nesian war 432 B.C.-404 B.C. (4) Democracy after the Pelo- 
 ponnesian 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. Clei- 
 sthenes, 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 fyparpiai 
 or brotherhoods, and each <f>parpia 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 1 . He 
 divided the people, for political purposes, into ten tribes con- 
 structed on a new principle and defined not as containing 
 certain families but as dwelling in certain denies 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' 2 . It may be that each of the old 
 tribes had formed a rallying point for one of those factions which 
 
 1 The composition of the four Ionic tribes is from Pollux, 8. Ill (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. 
 
 2 Aristotle, Politics in. 2. 3, iro\\ovs tyvXtrevo-e frov$ /ecu dov\ovs 
 Probably the text is not quite correct, but the general meaning is clear. 
 
CLEISTHENES. 73 
 
 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 denies 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 1 . 
 
 The whole body of Athenian citizens, greatly enlarged by 
 the inclusion of the new citizens, formed the e/c/cXrjo-ia 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 Boeotians and Chalcidaeans between 500 B.C. 
 and 490 B.C. to their newly acquired right of free and equal 
 speech 2 : for the right of free speech could not have produced 
 such effects unless it were used in a general assembly. 
 
 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 con- 
 sisted 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 3 . 
 
 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 4 . 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 
 
 1 For the geographical scattering of each tribe see Aristotle, Constitution of 
 Athens, ch. 21. 
 
 2 Herodotus v. 78. htjyopl^. 
 
 3 Herodotus vi. Ill, whence the words are taken. Ar. Const. Ath. ch. 22. 
 
 4 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, ch. 2. 
 
74 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 assembly: it considered resolutions and projects of law before 
 they were submitted to the assembled people : the fifty coun- 
 cillors of each tribe enjoyed for a tenth part of the year the 
 dignity of Trpvrdveis or presiding officers, both in the council 
 and in the general assembly, and the name TrpvraveLa 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 arid 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 Mantis was the presiding tribe in 
 the assembly which resolved that the Athenians should march 
 out to resist the invader Darius 1 . It is probable that under 
 the Cleisthenean constitution the assembly met once in each 
 prytany. 
 
 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 2 . 
 
 Local divisions and local governors had existed in Attica 
 even before the time of Cleisthenes : the divisions were called 
 naucrariae and their governors naucrari. We know nothing 
 about them except that each naucraria contributed two horse- 
 
 1 Plutarch, Zv/x7ro<riaKct irpo^X^/j-ara I. 10. 
 
 3 For the process of Ostracism see Grote, octavo edition, vol. in. p. 133, 
 cabinet edition, vol. iv. p. 83. 
 
CLEISTHENE8. 75 
 
 men to the army and a ship to the navy, and that the naucrari 
 assessed the taxation needed for these purposes and had some- 
 thing to do in the expenditure of it. Cleisthenes established 
 his denies as local divisions in lieu of the naucrariae, 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 1 . Beyond what I have stated we know 
 nothing from direct testimony about the denies 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 2 
 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 3 . More- 
 over the Athenians even so late as the time of Pericles delighted 
 in country life for its own enjoyments 4 , and even then a majority 
 of the citizens of Athens lived not in the city but in the 
 country 5 : 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 caunot 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 
 
 1 See Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities, third edition, 1891, article Naucraria. 
 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, ch. 20 Kar^rr^o-e 5e KCU drj/mpxovs rrjv avr^v 
 ^~X.ovTO.3 (Tri/AeXeta.v Tots Trporepov vavKpdpois ' Kal yap TOUS STJ/AOUS O.VTI T&V vavKpa~ 
 pi&v TroLr)(Tv. 
 
 2 See p. 35. 
 
 3 Thucydides n. 14, 16. 
 
 4 Aristophanes, Acharniam, the whole play. 
 
 6 Thucydides n. 14, dia rb duQevat TOVS iro\\obs ci> rots dypols 
 
76 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 half after Cleisthenes the assemblies of the denies were fully 
 organised bodies and had plenty of business to employ them 1 . 
 
 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 2 . 
 
 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. 
 
 1 Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities, third edition, article Demus. 
 
 2 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 22. 
 
ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 77 
 
 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 Thermopylae, 
 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 1 . 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 ^Egean 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 2 . Athens, Piraeus 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 
 
 1 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 23. The drachma contained the same 
 weight of silver as a modern franc. 
 
 2 For the effects of Salamis see Aristotle, Politics v. 4. 8. Welldon, p. 353. 
 
78 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 in 462 B.C. of most of its powers 1 , the rules which had hitherto 
 excluded citizens of the poorer classes from holding the archon- 
 ship were repealed or disregarded 2 , pay was provided for the 
 citizens whilst serving as judges or jurymen in the law courts 3 , 
 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 4 . 
 
 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 KK\ij(ria 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 
 
 1 The Areopagus was deprived of power in the archonship of Conon,' 
 i.e. 463-2 B.C. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 25. 
 
 2 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 Pentaeosiomedimnus, a Hippeus, a 
 Zeugites, or a Thes, 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 Zeugitae 
 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 ThStes or Labourers were never formally declared eligible : 
 but in Aristotle's time there was nothing to prevent a Thes from becoming 
 an archon, provided that on announcing his candidature he did not declare that 
 he belonged to the class of Theses. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, chapter 7. 
 
 3 Pericles proposed and passed the payment of dicasts, during the lifetime of 
 Cimon, probably about 450 B.C. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 27. 
 
 4 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens , 24, 
 
ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 79 
 
 meetings were held on fixed days in each prytany, and other 
 meetings for special business could at any time be summoned 
 by proclamation 1 . 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 2 : and any reso- 
 lution 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 con- 
 demned 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 Graphe 
 Paranomon which may be translated literally Indictment for 
 Illegality 3 . The Graphe Paranomon 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. 
 
 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 
 
 1 The place of meeting is proved by Aristophanes, Acharnians, line 20, 
 77 trvv avr-rjl, Knights, line 42, A^/xos irvKvlr^ and many other passages : the 
 number of ordinary meetings by Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 43. 
 
 2 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 Andro- 
 tionem, p. 594, and contra Timocratem, p. 715, especially the words irpurov 
 fjv...irp6s Trjv fiovX-fiv, clra ry drjfjLy. Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities, article 
 Boule. 
 
 3 The events of 411 B.C. prove clearly that the procedure by Graphs Para- 
 nom6n was then an established part of the Athenian constitution: see Thu- 
 cydides vm. 67, Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 29: and further on in the 
 present chapter, p. 93. 
 
80 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 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 Arginusse 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 1 . 
 
 (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 2 . The ten generals levied troops, managed 
 the revenue allotted to military purposes, and named trierarchs 
 to command the ships 3 . 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 con- 
 venient 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. 
 
 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 4 . There were also some other functionaries for the 
 supervision of markets and of the supply of corn, and for the 
 
 1 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. n. p. 345), shows how important the prytanies then were. 
 
 2 Thucydides n. 65. 
 
 3 Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities, article Strategus. 
 
 4 Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities, article Archon. 
 
ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 81 
 
 preservation of order, of whom it is not necessary to speak 
 further. 
 
 (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 1 , 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 con- 
 tentions, 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 2 . 
 
 (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 Corcyraaans requested 
 the Athenians to protect them with armed force: the body 
 to whom the Corcyraean envoys made their request was the 
 assembly of citizens; on the first day the Athenians heard 
 the arguments of the Corcyrseans 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 
 Corcyraeans desired and thereby made the great war inevitable 3 . 
 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 
 
 1 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?" 
 
 2 The eagerness of the citizens to act as dicasts is ridiculed all through the 
 play of the Wasps, brought out in 422 B.C. 
 
 3 Thucydides i. 31 and 44. 
 
 H. 6 
 
82 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 agreed on the same day to send an expedition of sixty ships 1 . 
 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 2 . 
 
 In 428 B.C. Mitylene 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 Mitylene. In 
 the summer of the next year Mitylene had difficulty in with- 
 standing 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 Mitylene 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 3 . 
 
 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 
 
 1 Thucydides vi. 8. 2 Thucydides iv. 118. 
 
 3 Thucydides in. 2 and 36-49. 
 
ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 83 
 
 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 1 . 
 
 In the year 406 B.C. an Athenian fleet under the command 
 of nine crrparrjfyol or admirals won a great victory over a 
 Spartan fleet at Arginusae: 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 com- 
 plained 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 con- 
 sider 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 
 
 1 Herodotus vi. 133 and 136. 
 
 62 
 
84 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 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 *. 
 
 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 
 Arginusse took effect, just as if there had been no such thing as 
 a regulation that it might be judicially indicted. 
 
 1 Xenophon, Hellenica i. 6 and 7. He names only eight admirals recalled. 
 Grote makes the number nine. 
 
ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 85 
 
 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 ia 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 1 . 
 
 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 
 
 1 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. 
 
86 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 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 arid 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 attend- 
 ance 1 . The pay for the law courts, the assemblies, the festivals 
 and the council came to nearly two hundred talents yearly 2 . 
 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 3 : and thus it seems that about one- 
 sixth part of it was spent in providing citizens with religious 
 spectacles or comfortable employment. 
 
 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 
 
 1 The decrees granting pay for attendance at ecclesia are enumerated in 
 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 41. In the Ecclesiazusce, 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. 
 
 2 See Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens, book n. ch. 13 14. 
 
 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 drachm, 
 and, as there were 6000 drachmae in a talent, this was equal to 198^ talents. 
 
 3 See Boeckh, Public Economy, book in. ch. 19. 
 
ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 87 
 
 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 1 . 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. 
 
 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 demo- 
 cracies 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 
 
 1 Grote, octavo edition, vol. vin. pp. 81-98, cabinet edition, vol. xi. pp. 
 138-157. 
 
88 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 370 B.C., an unsuccessful attempt at revolution was punished 
 with wholesale massacre 1 . 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 con- 
 ducted 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 
 Graphe Paranomdn and from their own characters and inclina- 
 tions : 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 
 citiaeris have learned habits of self-restraint and mutual forbear- 
 ance 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. 
 
 5. Oligarchy at Athens, 411 B.C. and 404 B.C. 
 
 In the year 415 B.C., the seventeenth year of the Pelopon- 
 nesian 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 rein- 
 forcements: but in the year 412 B.C. their fleet suffered a 
 crushing defeat in the Great Harbour of Syracuse, and their 
 
 1 Thucydides in. 70-84. Grote, Part n. chapter LXXVIII. 
 
OLIGARCHY AT ATHENS. 89 
 
 army was afterwards completely destroyed. Athens itself was 
 without any adequate defence of ships or sailors or soldiers 1 : 
 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 2 , and they could look for no help 
 unless it were from the king of Persia 3 . 
 
 Alcibiades, the ablest but the most unpatriotic and un- 
 scrupulous of the Athenians of that time, was in 41 2 B.C. an 
 exile from his native city under sentence of death 4 . 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 com- 
 mitted a great crime by wilfully offending one of the gods who 
 protected Athens and of designing to overthrow the Athenian 
 constitution 5 . 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 6 . 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 7 , he went to Sparta and advised the 
 Spartans how they might best defeat the Athenian forces in 
 Sicily 8 . 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 9 . 
 
 1 Thucydides vin. 1. 2 Thucydides vin. 2. 
 
 3 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 29, and Thucydides vin. 47. 
 
 4 Thucydides vi. 61, 5 Thucydides vi. 26-28. 
 6 Thucydides vi. 53. 7 Thucydides vi. 61. 
 
 8 Thucydides vi. 89. 9 Thucydides vi. 61. 
 
90 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 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 1 . Before long 
 however the Spartans had reason to suspect that he was be- 
 traying their interests, and sent an order to the commander of 
 their fleet off the coast of Asia to put him to death 2 . 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 Lacedemonian fleet 3 . 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 4 : 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. 
 
 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 5 . He believed however that his restoration could more 
 easily be brought about if the present quiet and orderly govern- 
 ment of Athens were to come to an end, and the city were 
 
 1 Thucydides vin. 11, 12. 2 Thucydides vm. 45. 
 
 3 Thucydides vm. 45, 46. 4 Thucydides vin. 47. 
 
 5 Thucydides vm. 47. 
 
OLIGARCHY AT ATHENS. 91 
 
 thrown into the turmoil of a revolution 1 . 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 de- 
 mocracy, but because he thought that any political troubles at 
 Athens might conduce to his restoration 2 . 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 3 . 
 
 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 4 . 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 oligar- 
 chical 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 5 . 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 6 . 
 
 During the absence of Pisander the oligarchical clubs at 
 Athens prepared the way for the success of his designs by 
 
 1 Thucydides vni. 48, 3, e/c rod irap&vTos Kbff /JLOV rr\v TTO\LV 
 
 2 Thucydides vni. 48, 3, 6 'A\/a/3id?7S, oirep Kal TJV, ovdtv 
 77 77/u,o/cpcm'as dfiffdcu e'56/cei aury. 
 
 3 Thucydides vin. 47. 4 Thucydides vni. 53. 
 5 Thucydides vni. 54. 6 Thucydides vni. 56. 
 
92 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 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 1 . 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 2 . 
 
 Pisander, on his return to Athens about April 411 B.C. 3 , 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 Graphe Paranomon for the proposals which he had 
 made and carried last year, and would undergo severe punish- 
 ment. One of his adherents named Pythodorus at once pro- 
 posed 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 4 . 
 
 1 Thucydides vm. 65, 66. 
 
 2 Thucydides vm. 65, the last sentence. My small addition to the words 
 of this sentence seems to be justified by evtrpeirts Trpbs TOI)S irXelovs which occurs 
 in the next. 
 
 3 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. n. pp, xv. xvi. 
 
 4 Thucydides vm. 67. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 29. 
 
OLIGARCHY AT ATHENS. 93 
 
 Within a short time the committee had prepared its pro- 
 posals. 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 Graphe Paranomon. (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 consist- 
 ing 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 1 . 
 
 The proposals bore a specious aspect of moderation, and 
 seemed to promise that the new constitution should be some- 
 thing 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 2 . 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 
 
 1 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 29. Thucydides vin. 67. 
 
 2 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 31. 
 
94 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 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 1 . 
 
 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 2 ," that they fell to 
 quarrelling with one another 3 , and that at last they were 
 suspected of a design to introduce a garrison of Spartans into 
 the Piraeus, 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 Piraeus for the reception of a 
 Lacedaemonian garrison, rose in mutiny against their officers, 
 held a meeting in Munychia, which adjoins the Piraeus, to 
 decide on their course of action, and after due deliberation 
 marched into Athens and piled arms at the foot of the Acro- 
 polis. 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 4 . 
 
 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 
 
 1 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 31, 32. 
 
 2 Thucydides vm. 70. 3 Thucydides vm. 89. 
 4 Thucydides vm. 90-97. 
 
OLIGARCHY AT ATHENS. 95 
 
 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 excommuni- 
 cated 1 . 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 2 : 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. Concern- 
 ing 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 3 , 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 4 . 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 con- 
 
 1 Thucydides vm. 97. 1. The meaning of the words is admirably explained 
 by Grote in a note to chapter LXII. of his History of Greece. 
 
 2 Arnold's Thucydides, note to vm. 97. 1. 
 
 3 Grote, History of Greece, octavo edition, vol. vi. p. 152, cabinet edition, 
 vol. vm. p. 267. 
 
 4 Thucydides v. 26. 
 
96 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 demned the commanders at Arginusae, and possibly as early as 
 410 B.C. they abandoned it and reverted to their well-tried 
 system of unmixed democracy. 
 
 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 Lacedaemonian fleet in the 
 eastern waters of the ^Egean sea, along the coast of Asia Minor. 
 In number of ships the Athenian and Lacedaemonian fleets were 
 nearly equal: in all else they were ill-matched antagonists. 
 The Lacedaemonians 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 follow- 
 ing an undiscriminating execution of the commanders of the 
 fleet. Among the six 1 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 ^Egospotami. 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 2 . 
 
 1 Xenophon, Hellenica i. 7. 1, and n. 1. 16. 
 
 2 Xenophon, Hellenica n. 1. 
 
OLIGARCHY AT ATHENS. 97 
 
 After the battle of ^Egospotami 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 
 Piraeus, to readmit the members of the oligarchical party who 
 had gone into exile, and to submit to be governed by them 1 . 
 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 2 . 
 
 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 
 
 1 Xenophon, Hellenica 11. 2. 
 
 2 Xenophon, Hellenica n. 3. 
 
 H. 7 
 
98 THE GREEK CITIES. 
 
 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 1 : 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 Chaeroneia 
 in 338 B.C. Greece lay at the mercy of Philip king of Macedonia. 
 
 1 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 n. 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 ChaBroneia 1 . 
 
 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 
 
 1 The latest event referred to in the treatise is the murder of king Philip in 
 336 B.C. Aristotle died in 322 B.C. 
 
 72 
 
100 ARISTOTLE'S POLITIES. 
 
 polities the first species was characterized by the rule of 
 one man for the good of all, and was known as ffao-tXela or 
 kingship : in the second the few best men ruled for the good of 
 all, and it was known as apia-TOKparla 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 
 7ro\iTeia (Polity, or the rule of TroXlrai 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 1 . 
 
 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 2 . Other instances of kingship occurred in 
 the early history of Lacedaemonia, 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 3 . 
 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 4 . Beside the heroic monarchies of the Greeks we 
 
 1 The classification is set forth in the Politics in. 6, 7. Welldon, pp. 116- 
 120. In in. 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." 
 
 2 Aristotle, Politics in. 14. 2. Welldon, transl. p. 146. 
 
 3 Aristotle, Politics v. 10. 8. Welldon, p. 382. 
 
 4 Aristotle, Politics in. 14. 6. Welldon, p. 145. 
 
ARISTOTLE'S POLITIES. 101 
 
 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. 
 
 (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 1 . 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. 
 
 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. 2 , and of the ten generals throughout 
 the period of the democracy. 
 
 The constitution of Rome in the third century B.C. and 
 especially after the battle of Cannae, 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 
 
 1 Aristotle, Politics v. 10. 7. Bekker. Welldon, transl. p. 382. " Kingship 
 corresponds in principle to aristocracy as it is based upon merit." 
 
 2 See p. 76. 
 
102 ARISTOTLE'S POLITIES. 
 
 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 1 . Hence it may be regarded as an 
 aristocratic feature in modern states that members of Parlia- 
 ment 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 con- 
 stituents, and the real rulers will be the constituents. 
 
 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 exami- 
 nation. 
 
 (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 Aris- 
 totle'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 
 
 1 Aristotle, Politics n. 11. 7, u. 12. 2. Welldon, pp. 91, 94. 
 
ARISTOTLE'S POLITIES. 103 
 
 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 demo- 
 cracies 1 . 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. 
 
 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 2 . 
 
 From what has been said it is clear that the second species 
 
 1 Aristotle, iv. 13. 10, 11. Bekker. Welldon, pages 291, 292. 
 
 2 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. 
 
104 ARISTOTLE'S POLITIES. 
 
 of Polity is well exemplified in the system of government which 
 existed in most of the German tribes in the time of Caesar 
 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 1 : 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. 
 
 (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 2 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 thorough- 
 going democracy. 
 
 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 
 
 1 Aristotle, Politics n. 12. 5. Welldon, p. 95. 
 
 2 Politics, iv. 6. 1-4. Welldon, pages 269, 270. 
 
ARISTOTLE'S POLITIES. 105 
 
 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 1 . 
 
 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 2 . 
 
 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 3 : and when we find that the practice 
 
 1 Aristotle, Politics, Bekker iv. 6. 5, 6. Welldon, pages 270, 271. 
 
 2 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. 
 
 3 Aristotle, Politics in. 13. 15. Welldon, pages 140, 141. 
 
106 ARISTOTLE'S POLITIES. 
 
 of appointing to offices by drawing lots is democratic 1 , 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 2 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 ii pleases. 
 
 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 3 , 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 
 
 1 Aristotle, Politics n. 11. 5-8. Welldon, pages 90, 91. 
 
 2 Ibid. iv. 4. 23, iv. 8. 7. Bekker. Welldon, pages 265, 275. 
 
 3 Aristotle, Politics iv. 4. 24-26. Bekker. Welldon, pages 265, 266. 
 
ARISTOTLE'S POLITIES. 107 
 
 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 Graphe Paranoinon, 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 pre- 
 dominated in it, disliked changes and was considerate towards 
 the wealthy citizens 1 . 
 
 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 ex- 
 emplified 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 
 
 1 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 n. 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). 
 
108 ARISTOTLE'S POLITIES. 
 
 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 1 . 
 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. 
 
 (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 quali- 
 fying 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 2 . 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 
 Bacchiadae 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 Eupatridse or hereditary nobles of 
 Athens, whose oppressive rule necessitated Solon's reforms. 
 
 1 Hallam, Middle Ages, chapter in. : in the cabinet edition, vol. i. pages 421- 
 423. 
 
 2 Aristotle, Politics. Bekker iv. 5. 1-2 and iv. 6. 7-11. Welldon, pages 
 266-267, pages 271-272. 
 
ARISTOTLE'S POLITIES. 109 
 
 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 
 Caesar. The most complete example of an oligarchy is found 
 at Venice between 1310 and the fall of the republic in 1797. 
 
 (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 mediaeval 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 enume- 
 ration 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 1 ": and from this definition, as well as from his 
 use of the word TroXtreta, 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 2 . 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 aris- 
 tocracy. 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 
 
 1 Politics in. 6. 1. Welldon, p. 116. 
 
 2 In the Politics (TV. 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. 
 
110 AKISTOTLE'S POLITIES. 
 
 was constructed : for example the ancient Spartan constitution 
 was in one part kingly, in another aristocratic, in another demo- 
 cratic ; Solon's constitution contained elements both of demo- 
 cracy and of oligarchy ; and even the mature Athenian demo- 
 cracy 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. 
 
 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 straight- 
 forwardly 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 Phoenician 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 govern- 
 ments other than the single word normal or the descriptions 
 of them which have just been mentioned 1 . 
 
 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 
 
 1 The descriptions of the Spartan and the Carthaginian governments are 
 given in the Politics u. 9 and n. 11. 
 
GREEK TRIBES AND GREEK CITIES. Ill 
 
 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 Cleis- 
 thenes 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 Mycenae, and in Attica in the time of 
 Cleisthenes the rural districts were in some respects as im- 
 portant 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 
 
112 ARISTOTLE'S POLITIES. 
 
 obvious that oligarchies and tyrannies were absolute govern- 
 ments, 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 
 
GREEK TRIBES AND GREEK CITIES. 113 
 
 were unmixed, absolute, and abnormal are best seen by 
 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 as- 
 sumption which I made when I divided the Greek governments 
 before the battle of Chseroneia into tribal governments and 
 city governments was one for which history affords justification. 
 
 H. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE ACH.EAN LEAGUE 1 . 
 
 THE Achaean 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 Pelopon- 
 nesus and there founded the Achaean 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 2 . The 
 past history of the Achaeans 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 Achaean 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 
 
 1 The chief modern authorities for the history of the Achaean 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. 
 
 2 Smith's Dictionary of Geography, article Achaia: and Smith's Atlas of 
 Ancient Geography. 
 
THE ACH^AN LEAGUE. 115 
 
 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 1 . 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 conse- 
 quently 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 
 
 1 For the early history of Achaia see Polybius n. 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 Achseans had been established long before 
 the battle of Leuctra. 
 
116 THE ACH^JAN LEAGUE. 
 
 was done by Cassander and Demetrius Poliorcetes, the rest by 
 Antigonus Gonatas son of Demetrius 1 . 
 
 About the year 283 B.C. it chanced that the attention of 
 
 Antigonus was called away from the affairs of Greece ; and the 
 
 Achseans, 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 2 . 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 4eague. 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 Achseans, 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 3 . 
 
 After this many other cities gave in their adhesion : the most 
 
 important of those that joined before 227 B.C. were Megara, 
 
 Troezen, Epidaurus, Cleonse, Mantineia, Phlius, Megalopolis, and 
 
 Argos 4 . 
 
 The league, throughout the period of its reconstitution in 
 
 1 Polybius ii. 41. 
 
 2 Polybius n. 41. For the names of the cities see also Mr Shuckburgh's 
 Introduction, pp. xlviii, xlix. 
 
 3 Polybius n. 43. 
 
 4 For a list of the cities in the league see Freeman, Federal Government, 
 pp. 713-714. 
 
THE ACILEAN LEAGUE. 117 
 
 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 
 Achaean league was an obstacle to his designs: and, having first 
 made an alliance with the ^Etolians, who might have put 
 impediments in his way, he became engaged in a war with the 
 Achyeans, and, in the course of it, defeated them in three im- 
 portant battles. Aratus and his countrymen in their distress 
 thought it necessary to ask the aid of Antigonus Doson, 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 Lace- 
 daemonian territory, the allied armies of Macedonia and Achaia- 
 won a great victory and destroyed the power of Cleomenes 1 : 
 but the Achaeans found that, by re-admitting the Macedonian 
 power to the Peloponnesus, they had forfeited their indepen- 
 dence 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 2 ." From the year 146 B.C. Achaia and 
 Macedonia were both included in the dominions of the Roman 
 republic. 
 
 We have now to examine the structure and constitution of 
 the league of cities or cantons 3 , which, though it eventually 
 succumbed to Macedonia, had in happier days been distin- 
 guished for sixty years of successful assertion of its indepen- 
 
 1 Polybius ii. 45-53 and 64-69. 
 
 3 Freeman, Federal Government, p. 498. 
 
 3 Most of the communities in Achaia and some of those in Arcadia were 
 
118 THE ACH.EAN LEAGUE. 
 
 dence. 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. 
 
 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 1 . 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 authori- 
 ties, so that the whole peninsula differed from a single city 
 only in not having all its inhabitants enclosed within a single 
 wall 2 . 
 
 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 3 : its 
 
 rather cantons than cities : Plutarch (Aratus, ch. 9) calls the Achaeans juKpo- 
 TToXmu, citizens of petty towns. Corinth, Argos and Megalopolis were great 
 cities. 
 
 1 The component states were called TriXets, 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. 
 
 2 Polybius ii. 37. 
 
 3 Polybius (n. 38) emphatically calls the Achaean system a democracy with 
 free and equal speech. 
 
THE ACH^AN LEAGUE. 119 
 
 business was to settle questions of foreign policy and to elect 
 the executive officers of the league. The regular place of 
 meeting was ^Egium, 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 1 . There were ordinary meetings every 
 spring and every autumn 2 : 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 3 . 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 4 . 
 
 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 ^Egium about a question of 
 foreign policy, which he would certainly have laid before the 
 assembly if it had been possible 5 . The number of members 
 in the council must have been at least a hundred and twenty, 
 
 1 Polybius (v. 1) says that in 218 B.C. the assembly met in accordance with 
 the law at ^Egium: but king Philip afterwards persuaded the magistrates to 
 transfer it to Sicyon. The important assembly which made the alliance with 
 Kome in 198 B.C. was also held at Sicyon : Livy xxxn. 19. 
 
 2 For example, in 224 B.C. Antigonus D6s6n presented himself at an assembly 
 at 2Egium 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). 
 
 3 Livy (xxxn. 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." 
 
 4 Livy (xxxn. 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...prae se ferentibus quid decreturi essent): then the citizens 
 of Dyme and Megalopolis and some from the Argolid left the assembly: but 
 (xxxn. 23) the rest of the states of the league, when asked in turn how they 
 voted (ceteri populi Achaeorum, cum sententias perrogarentur), decided in a 
 certain way. 
 
 5 Polybius iv. 26 irpo<re\66vro^ rov /ScctriX^ws Trpds TTJV /Jov\V Iv Alyly. The 
 business related to a question of war against the ^tolians. 
 
120 THE ACHAEAN LEAGUE. 
 
 and may have been larger 1 . 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. 
 
 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 2 . 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 8 . It is shown by the case of Aratus that the Achseans 
 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. 
 
 The ten demiurgi were also elected by the assembly 4 . 
 
 1 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 xxm. 7 in Dindorf 's edition : xxn. 10 in 
 Mr Shuckburgh's translation). The yearly interest of a talent would be about 
 720 drachma : a large salary for a councillor. The councillors at Athens 
 were paid about 300 drachmae yearly, see above, p. 51, note 1. 
 
 2 Polybius v. 94 vTroffrpdrrryos. Strabo vni. 7. 3 ypawareijs : 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. 
 
 3 Freeman, Federal Government, p. 299, from Polybius iv. 7. 
 
 4 Livy xxxn. 22 Magistratus (damiurgos vocant : decem numero creantur). 
 The words magistratus and creantur indicate that they were elected. 
 
THE ACHAEAN LEAGUE. 121 
 
 They acted collectively as presiding officers in the assembly and 
 determined what questions should be put to the vote 1 : 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 2 . 
 
 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 3 . In the 
 Achaean 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. More- 
 over 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. 
 
 A Polity or Commonwealth was originally defined by Aris- 
 totle 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 Achaean 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 
 
 1 Livy xxxn. 22. 
 
 2 Polybius xxiv. 5 in Bekker's and Dindorf 's editions : xxin. 5 in Mr Shuck- 
 burgh's translation. 
 
 3 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 BO he departs from his original definition of it. 
 
 H. 9 
 
122 THE ACELEAN LEAGUE. 
 
 from the assembly, and thus the constitution had one of the 
 characteristics of democracy : but in another sense power be- 
 longed 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 Achaean 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 advan- 
 tages. 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 Achaeans but also by several other divisions of the 
 Hellenic race: by the Phocians, the Acarnanians, the Epirots, 
 the Arcadians, and the ^Etolians 1 : and among the ^Etolians and 
 Acarnanians it attained such a measure of success that in the 
 later period of the Macedonian supremacy these two peoples 
 were, after the Achseans, the most important of the Hellenic 
 powers. 
 
 v 
 
 1 See Professor Freeman's History of Federal Government. 
 
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