370 CONCLUSION
on because there were still men steeped in an old and great
tradition.
In proclaiming justice as the true goal of the State, Greek
philosophy at the same time defeated the attempts of both
democrats and oligarchs to proclaim the 'Right of the Stronger'
The comedians, as we have seen, did not deal with this idea/
but Thucydides, in the dialogue between the Athenians and
the Melians, shows how m external politics the democratic
State followed the idea of £ Might is Right', and thus became
a perilous threat and danger to the other Greek States 2 The
oligarch Kritias, on the other hand, who was a clever sophist
and an unscrupulous politician, applied the same principle to
domestic politics and established the savage rule of the Thirty
In a sense, Thrasyboulos was the predecessor of Plato, for
when he led democracy to victory, the statesman overthrew
the government of those who later, on the intellectual battle-
field, were finally exterminated by the philosopher Both
worked m the service of the Pohs when they defeated the
practice and doctrine of the 'Superman' Though even the
sophists never believed that fhysts as opposed to nomos, nature
as against convention and tradition, meant the innate superior-
ity of one people or one race over another, their belief in the
right of power, m the case of both the State and the individual,
challenged the right of man. Victory was due not to democracy
or aristocracy, but to the true spirit of State and people, and it
will always be the same whenever the same challenge is made
In recognizing the close connection between the political
philosophers and the Pohs (and no understanding of them is
possible without this recognition), we indicate by the abstract
conception of the State something which at the same time was
a lively group of human beings, who suffered from many faults
and shortcomings and who, it is true, became more and more
alienated from the State The people of Aristophanes had once
been the people of Perikles, and would soon be the people of
Demosthenes By the same development an upper class, dis-
tinguished partly by tradition and partly by education and
wealth, was being destroyed, while its individual members
were led to the sophists, to Sokrates, to philosophy and politi-
cal theorizing, and finally to the ethical or eudaemomstic indi-
vidualism of the Stoics and Epicureans, while the bulk of the
1 See above, p 358 * Thuc V,