340	THE     PEOPLE    AND     THE     STATE	XIII
whose mind works on the old traditional lines and who is
entirely at a loss in *an unexpected situation.1
The impression, however, that comedy attacks democracy
is misleading as it would be misleading in the case of Thucy-
dides. He puts into the mouth of the democratic demagogue
Kleon what may be called his sharpest criticism of Penkles'
ideal picture of the working of democracy.2 With Penkles,
at least between 446 and 431, success had succeeded; after-
wards things were very different It is only natural that many
Athenians, after they had lost Penkles' leadership, realized
that democracy was lacking in efficiency, particularly during
the war.3 Neither Euripides who was a loyal democrat as far
as he at all adhered to any party views, nor Thucydides who
admired Perikles and hated Kleon, but equally despised the
revolutionaries of 411, were oligarchs. It was, as we have
emphasized before, in the very nature of political comedy to
be 'against the government', but not one of the comic poets,
as far as we know, was a mere party man, not one of them
belonged to the 'oligarchs' as did, for instance, the author of
that frequently mentioned pamphlet known as the Pseudo-
Xenophon.* Kratmos attacked even the 'tyranny' of Perikles
Cf.Thuc VIII, r, 3   Arist Ath.fol 29, 2, 5
2 Thuc III, 37	3 Cf Eur Andr.
4 Are we justified in speaking of political parties at Athens ? Certainly not in
the modern sense of organizations which demand membership and the like
Since Themistokles, by the creation of the fleet, had introduced the lower classes
into politics, the division had grown between those who favoured a gradual
restriction of political rights, and those who pleaded for complete equality and
thus for the rule of the many There were, after all, 'oligarchs' and what we call
'democrats', both of them 'parties' in the political, though not in any legal, sense
A surprising example of what seems to be the outcome of organized party politics
has been provided by the discovery of 'prefabricated* ostraka which were pro-
bably to be distributed among the voters (O Broneer, Hespena, VII, 1938,
228£F). They all bear the name of Thenustokles, and the device must be therefore
due to his opponents The date, of course, is not certain, but the 'seventies are a
likely guess It seems that these ostraka were never actually used, thus they were
probably left over from an ostracism which may have been the one by which Thenn-
stokles was banned, or even an earlier one (Prof Gomme has convinced me that
I was too definite on this in AJP LXIX, 162 ) It is a puzzling story which we
cannot fully disentangle; but behind it, there must have been some form of organi-
zation, if not a party, at least a hetatna The concentration of the ecclesiasts
by Thoukydides, son of Melesias, however, was clearly the result of organized
party-politics, and Plut Per i r dates from that event — very late indeed — the
full division into political parties Cf also Wade-Gery, JHB LII (1932), 208