The city-state of the Greeks and Romans; a survey introductory to the study of ancient history

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THE CITY-STATE

OF THE

GEEEKS AND EOMAN^

A SURVEY

INTRODUCTORY TO THE STUDY OF
ANCIENT HISTORY

BY

W. WARDE FOWLER, M.A.

FELLOW OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD

(jl-?

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1913

tti.

r?

Copyright

First Edition 1893
Reprinted \Sgs> 1902, 1904, 1907, 1908, 1910, 1911, 1913

TO

S. T. IRWIN

" Hie muUum valuit cum vetus amicitia, turn humanitas ejus
et liber alitas, et litter is et officiis perspecta nobis et cognita."
Cicero, Ad Familiares, i. 9.

NOTE TO REPEINT OF 1913

Since this little book was written just twenty years
ago, ancient history, and more especially that of
Hellas, has been opened up in every direction.
The discoveries of Sir Arthur Evans in Crete, and
many other excavations on Greek soil : the new
researches into the " Homeric Age," e.g. (among many
other works) Professor Ridgeway's Early Aye of
Greece, and Professor Gilbert Murray's Rise of the
Greek Epic : fresh investigation of the historical age
of Greece, especially from an economic point of
view, as in Dr. Grundy's recent book on the
Peloponnesian war, and in parts of Mr. Zimmern's
Greek Commomvealtli : the great advance in our
knowledge of the Hellenistic age, to which Mr.
Bevan's Nottse of Seleiwiis makes a good introduction
for a British student : all these, without counting
the volume of work done on the Continent and in
America, if they have not revolutionised Greek
history, have at least greatly enlarged its boundaries
and enlightened its votaries. Yet the political
history of Greece remains substantially the same
as it was twenty years ago, and the same may be

VI THE CITY-STATE

said of that of Eome. Though our knowledge of
the administration of the Empire is constantly
increasing, Mr. Heitland's three careful and scholarly
volumes on the Eoman Kepublic show that in the
main our ideas of the development of the Roman
political system have not been revolutionised. Thus
the political biography of the City-State, as sketched
in these chapters, is not, I think, misleading in its
general features, though here and there statements
may be found which are now open to question.

As the book is still called for, 'both in the
British Empire and in the United States, the
question has arisen whether it should now be
thoroughly revised. On consideration I have
decided to leave it as it is, i.e. complete in itself
and free from the patchwork of addition and
correction. I think that the teachers who use it
will be better able to make their own comments
on it if I abstain from attempting to anticipate
them. But I hope that some day an entirely new
" survey " of classical history may be written for the
use of students ; for I still believe, as I did when I
was giving the lectures on which this book was based,
that the true aim of the scholar should be to bring
a knowledge of the, whole of classical antiquity to
bear on the interpretation of any part of it.

W. W. F.

KiNGHAM, OxoN., Uh February 1913.

PREFACE TO REPRINT OF 1895

A REPRINT of' this little book having been called
for unexpectedly, I am only able to correct a few
errors which have been pointed out to me by
the kindness of friends and critics. If the w^ork
should survive, some parts of it may eventually have
to be more thoroughly revised. Among these is
the second chapter, in which my use of the term
** village community " has been called in question
by an able writer in the Classical Review. Readers
of the recently published works of Mr. Seebohm and
his son, Mr. Hugh Seebohm, on the tribal system in
Wales and in Greece, will understand the bearing of
this criticism. But until it can be clearly shown
that the Kcofjcac which in so many cases immediately
preceded the TroXi? were tribal communities like
the Welsh, and not a species of village community
developed out of a primitive and universal tribal
system, I am content to retain the older term in
the broad sense which I was careful to give it. I

vill THE CITY-STATE

find with satisfaction that Mr. Jevons, in the
Manual of Greek Antiquities just published by
Messrs. Charles Griffin and Co., has adopted the
same course, though he was the first scholar, if I
am not mistaken, to point out the true significance
of some of those survivals of the tribal system in
Greece which are the subject of Mr. Hugh Seebohm's
researches.

/ W. W. P.

29th October 1895. '

PEEFAOE

The object of this book is, I hope, sufficiently
explained in the introductory chapter. It may,
however, be as well to add here that it is an
expansion of a short series of lectures given for
several successive years to men just beginning the
study of ancient history in the school of Literce
Humaniores at Oxford. Few of these men were
likely to become specialists, and as the object of my
course was therefore purely educational, I saw an
opportunity of stimulating their interest, and of
widening their historical horizon, by treating the
subject as a whole, instead of plunging at once into
the examination of a particular period or author.
It occurred to me that I might construct in outline
a biography, as it were, of that form of State in
which both Greeks and Eomans lived and made
their most valuable contributions to our modern
civilisation, tracing it from its birth in prehistoric
times to its dissolution under the Koman Empira

X THE CITY-STATE

Such a biography had indeed already been written,
and by a man of genius, the late Fustel de
Coulanges ; but La CiU Antique, brilliant as it is,
is a book of one idea, and did not exactly answer
the purpose I proposed to myself. I wished simply
to sketch the history of the City-State, without
reference to any particular view of the origin oi
its institutions.

In writing out these lectures from the notes I
used I have expanded them considerably, especially
the last two. They will probably, however, betray
their origin as lectures, but I hope they may not
be found less readable on that account. In adding
notes and references it has been my aim to acquaint
the beginner with the names of a few books of the
best repute, both English and foreign, as well as
with the most important original authorities for the
events touched upon. It will probably be found
that there are more citations of the Politics of
Aristotle than of any one other work ; for it was
one of my chief objects to connect the history
of the City-State as closely as possible with the
reasonings of its best philosophical exponent. In
order to make sure that every reader, whether he
understands Greek or not, shall be able to find the
passage to which I am referring without any real
difficulty, I have quoted the Politics by the paging
of the Berlin edition, which will be found on the

PBEFACE XI

margin in all important editions of later date, and
also in Professor Jowett's translation. Only in
quoting the first three books, which in all editions
stand in the same order, I have given the number
of the book as well as the page. In no case have
I given the number of any particular lino in the
page quoted, for my references are in almost all
cases to chapters rather than to sentences, and
indeed, if a passage be sought out at all, it is far
better that it should be read and weighed in con-
nection with its whole context.

I have to thank several friends for much valu-
able help in the revision of the proofs. To my
colleague, Mr. J. A. R. Munro, I am greatly
indebted for the correction of several serious errors,
and for many other useful suggestions in the chap-
ters dealing with Athenian history. Professor
Gardner has given me most valuable help in the
tenth chapter, and Mr. Peters of University
College and Mr. Matheson of New College have
been kind enough to read other parts of the proofs,
and have enabled me to correct many minor short-
comings. In spite of all this friendly aid, however,
the book is by no means what I could have wished
it to be, and no one is more fully aware of its
defects than its author. There is absolutely
nothing new in it, and its only justification . is
that it is an attempt to supply a defect in our

Xll THE CITY-STATE

educational literature. As an introduction to
Greek and Eoman history it may, I hope, be of
some use ; but it can only be so if it is used
as an introduction, and not as a means of saving
time and trouble in more elaborate studies. The
views, for example, which I have expressed as to
the tone of the Athenian Demos and the capacity
of the Eoman oligarchs must be criticised and cor-
rected as the student's knowledge of those periods
increases ; but the purpose of the book will have
been fulfilled if in all such detailed studies he
brings to bear upon his work not only a special
acquaintance with the facts of one period, but a
conviction of the bearing of the whole history of
classical antiquity on the interpretation of any one
portion of it. I owe this conviction myself chiefly
to the late Eector of my college, Mark Pattison.
Earely as his advice was given, it was always of
unique value ; and I only wish that I had been
ready and able to act upon it with greater profit to
myself and others.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
Inteoductory

Greek and Roman history usually studied separately, p. 1. Close
relation between Greek and Roman civilisation, 2. Ethnical
affinity of the two peoples, ibid. Affinity in religion, 3.
Difference of character a cause of mutual attraction, 4. The
Greek and Italian form of State specifically the same, 5. The
word 7r6Xts ; Latin equivalents, 5, 6. Differmce between the
ancient and the modern State ; the ancient State a city with
an adjunct of territory, 7, o. The ancient State a simpler
form of association than the modern ; more perfect, yet
easier to study, 9. Tests of excellence and strength
in a State ; naturaj, and artificial ties, 10. Examples of
modern States, 12. The City-State stronger than these in
all the ties, 13 J^and therefore more instructive as a study, 14.
Other advantages ; completeness of its life-history, in spite of
gaps in our knowledge, 15. Literary value of its records, 17.
Its philosophy, 18, New material for its history ; inscrip-
tions, 19. Object of the book : to suggest a wider treatment
of classical history in an age of specialisation, 20.

XIV THE CITY-STATE

CHAPTER II

The Genesis of the Oity-State

*^

JThe city as a State : strength of the conception, 22, The ancient

and the modern State different in originj'^S. Methods to be
followed in studying the origin of the ancient State, 26.
I. Social organisation of peoples who have not yet developed
a true State, 27. The village community of kinsmen, 29.
Characteristics of the village community : kinship, 30 ;
government by headman and council, 31 ; common cultiva-
tion of land, 32 ; common religious worship,"^3. II. Evidence
for the existence of the village community in Greece and
Italy, 34. ^III. Evidence of the survival of the village
community in the later City-State : gentes and y^ur} at Rome
and Athens, 3o foil. IV. Causes which brought about unions
of village communities in a City-State, 42. Influence of the
land taking the place of kinship, 42. Necessity of self-de-
fence, 44. Fame of religious centres, 45.

sProbable era of the birth of the City-State in Greece, 46.
Unknown in the case of Ita^^ 47. Examples of the genesis of
a City-State: Athens, ^S. Other Greek States.' 51. >Rome.
52. Greek colonies children of the oldest City-States, 56,

CHAPTER III

Nature of the City-State and its First Form of
Government

How the City-State differed from earlier forms of association, 57.
Aristotle's dictum on this point, 59. His xW.-Qf the State as

I a natural growth, 61. His conviction that no higher form of
union was possible, 62. Aristotle true to the facts of Greek
life, which tended to exclude both federations and empires, 63.

CONTENTS XV

Earliest known fact in the history of the City -State, —
government by kings, 64. The Homeric king ; one of many
chieftains, not a constitutional monarch, 64-68. (Question as
to the existence of the State in the Homeric age, 65-67.) /
The Homeric king as ^acCrificer, 69 ; "^ commander of the ^
hpst, 71 ; as judge, 72^^ Undefined character of his power, 73.
The Roman Rex ; a magistrate with clearly defined _powers,
expressed in technical terms, 75. Impcrium, 76. Customary /
limits to his power ; the Senate as advising body, 76 ; provo/
catio, 77 y The Spartan monarchy in historical times ; a
survival of the earliest form, 78-80. Herodotus' account of it,
80. Degenerate character of this kingship ; the form sur-
vives, while the power has almost disappeared, 81-83.

CHAPTER IV

The Rise of Aristocratic Government

King, aristocracy, and people the earliest factors in the City-State,
85. Kings give way to aristocracies, 87. Aristotle's explana-
tion of this, 87. Example in the Odyssey of a monarchy in
danger, 88. Grote's explanation ; the small size of City-
States made the bad rule of kings obvious, 90. A further
consideration : kingship, which is the political expression of
an aristocratic society, becomes inadequate as aristocracies
narrov^, 91, 92. What the Greeks meant by dpLffTOKpaHa ; its
ethical meaning and character in early times, 93. Narrowing
tendencies seen in (1) degeneracy of the idea of high birth,
^98^; (2) deterioration in the use of wealth, 100.

Examples of change from monarchy to aristocracy-; Athens,
103 ; Rome, 105. Imperium in the hands of the Romafiv
aristocracy ; limitations placed upon it, 108. Imperium \
militice and impcrium dmni, 110. Political order and system/
due to the intelligence of the aristocracies, 111. y^ /

XVI THE CITY-STATE

CHAPTER V
Transition from Aristocracy to Democracy (Greece)

Greek history begins in the seventh century B.C., and reveals the
aristocracies narrowing into oligarchies, 114. Oligarchies in
collision with the people, in respect of religious, military, and
legal government, 116, Discontent among the people, 120.
The people in Homer and at Athens, 122. Discontent takes
the form of a recurrence to the strong government of an
individual, 123. The arbiter and the tyrant, 124.

Discontent at Athens at end of seventh century B.C., 125.
Legislation of Draco, 126. Cylon's attempt at tyranny, 127.
Epimenides' mission, 128. Material cause of discontent, 129.
Solon as arbiter, 131. His reasonableness, 132. His Seisac-
theia, 134. His political reforms, 136. Estimate of his
work, 139.

Tyranny : Herodotus' view of it, 1 40. Aristotle's view,
141. These views considered in the light of the facts, 143.
Tyranny brought forward the people, and developed art and
literature, 143 ; widened the horizon of Greek thought and
action, 145. Polycrates as a typical example of the tyrant
147.

CHAPTER VI

The Realisation of Democracy : Atheni^

Athens the City-State which most nearly realised Aristotle's t6 e3
^Tjv, 150. Pericles' description of the Athenian democracy,
151. Later opinion adverse to the democracy, 153. Pericles'
view tested by the facts, 153 foil. Solonian and Periclean
Athens compared, 154. Development of the democracy
since Solon, 158 foil. Pisistratus, 159. Cleisthenes, 160.
Final changes, 161. What the completed democracy meant
at Athens, 162 foil. The people did the actual work of

CONTENTS XVll

government in legislative and judicial matters, 163 ; in
general administration, 164. Election by lot, 167. Respect
for the laws, 168. Safeguards of the constitution, 170. Scope
for individual talent, 172. Use of public wealth for artistic
and educational purposes, 173. Genius finds a home at
Athens, 175.

DraAvbacks to the democracy : Athens a slave-owning State,
177. Condition of slaves at Athens, 179. Athens an im-
perial and tyrannic State, 180. Pericles' justification of this,
181. Reaction against Athens and Peloponnesian war,
183.

CHAPTER VII

Thk Period of Transition at Rome

Incredibility of the early history of the Republic, 184. But
certain laws may be taken as facts, and serve as landmarks,
185. Rise of the plebs under Etruscan kings, 186. Changes
attributed to Servius TuUius, 188. Patricians and plebs
under the monarchy ; origin and position of the plebs, 188-9.
The plebs in the new military organisation of centuries, and
in the four local tribes, 190 foil. Patricians and plebs after
the abolition of the monarchy, 198.

Landmarks in the history of the equalisation of the two
orders: 1. Political assembly of centuries, 194. 2. Tribunate
of the plebs, 196. 3. Decemvirate and first legal code, 200.
4. Plebeian assembly becomes a legislative body, 202.
6. Marriage between patricians and plebeians made legal, 203.
6. Military tribunate with consular imperium open to
plebeians, 204. 7. Consulship opened to plebeians, 205.
Legislation of Licinius and Sextius compared with that of
Solon, 206.

Beginnings of Roman law, 209. The Twelve Tables ; /u?
civile, 210. Stability of Roman legal ideas, 211. .

Xviii THE CITY-STATE

CHAPTER VIII

The Perfection of Oligarchy: Rome

Influence of war on Roman constitutional history, 213. Rome
tending towards democracy after equalisation of the orders,
214-216. Aristotle's moderate democracy compared with the
Roman constitution of this period, 216.

Authorities for the period which followed, 218. Constitu-
tion democratic in form, really oligarchical, 219. Proofs of
this : executive in the hands of a few families, 221. Novi
homines the exception ; examples, 223. Magistrates in
subordination to the Senate, 224. How the Senate was filled
up, 225 ; fed by the hereditary nobility, 227. Procedure in
Senate favours the hereditary principle, 228.

Explanation of this oligarchical tendency : 1. Moral force
of an assembly of ex-magistrates, 230 foil. 2. Character of
senatorial business growing with the growing State, 232 foil.
3. Character of the Roman people, 236 foil. '

Development of Roman law by the oligarchy, 239. The
jus civile insufficient for the new Roman dominion, 240.
Edict of praetor peregrinus based on the imperium, 241. Jus
gentium, 242. Influence of Roman conservative spirit on the
new system of law, 243. /

CHAPTER IX
Decay of the City-State — Internal Causes-

Spirit of moderation at Athens and Rome during the de-
velopment of their institutions, 245. Absence of this
spirit in many States, 246. Hostility of the Few and the
Many in Greece during the fifth century B.C., 247. Examples :
Naxos in 507 B.O., 248 ; Corey ra in 432 b.c, 249 ; Athena in

CONTENTS XIX

411 B.C. (negative instance), 251. Universality of the disease
during Peloponnesian war, 252 ; called by the Greeks stasis, 254.
Thucydides' reflections on it, 255 ; its weakening effect on the
City-State, 257. Aristotle's treatment of the subject, 258.
His remedies for the disease ; an even distribution of wealth,
261 ; education in subordination to the character of the
State, 262.

Aristotle's reasonings applied to the case of Rome ; stasis at
Rome in 133 B.C., 264. Enlarged scope of the issues in this
instance, 265. Distribution of wealth at Rome ; destruction of
middle class, 267. Education at Rome inadequate to her
needs as an imperial State, 269. Cato's education of his son,
272.

CHAPTER X

External Causes of Decay — Imperial and Federative
States .

The City - State must have a limit of increase in size, 275.
Aristotle's doctrine on this point, 277 ; based on the normal
phenomena of Greek States, ibid. His view excludes both
imperial and federative States, 279. Yet States of this kind
appear in Greek history, 280 ; they increase in number and
strength, and may be traced in three periods, 281. 1. Down
to the Persian wars ; earliest forms of alliance, 282 ; Spartan
supremacy and Peloponnesian League, 282 ; naval power of
Polycrates, 284. 2. From Persian wars to rise of Macedon ;
confederacy of Delos, 286 ; becomes an Athenian empire, 288 ;
Spartan empire, 290 ; second Athenian League, 291 ;
Boeotian League and Theban supremacy, 292. 3. Growth of
Macedon, 294. Demosthenes' antagonism to it, 296.
Phocion's attitude towards it explained, 297. Failure of
Demosthenes and Macedonian assumption of leadership of

XX THE CITY-STATE

Greece, 300. Consequent loss of vitality in the iriXeis, 301.
Last attempt at independence now taking the form of a real
federal union ; Achaean League, 302 foil.

CHAPTER XI

Dissolution of the City-State: The Roman Empire

In Alexander's conquests Greece came near to realising a new
political system, 306. Alexander representative of Greek
ideas ; Plutarch's evidence on this point, 307. Alexander's
project of a Greek empire, 309 ; what might have been the
result for the City-State, 310. Failure of his plans, 311.

(Rome takes the place of Alexander, 312. Rome becomes an
imperial State, 313 ; yet continues in form a City-State, 314.
Government of the Roman Empire by Roman City-magistrates,
315. Retention of the form of the City-State in the provinces,
317. Failure of the jmperial government of the Romar
Republic ; causes of this, 320JolL _The City-State^gaaeajc
existexceptjn form in the lastcentur^^:Ci.,_S22-

Necessity of a new political system, 323. Julius Caesai
creates one for the moment, 45 B.C., 324. Augustus builds
on Caesar's foundation ; completion of the work, 325.
Suggestions for the study of this new system ; the imperial
constitution, 326. Local government, 328. Extension ol
the sphere of Roman law, 329. Other lines of research, 330,
The Roman Empire at last breaks up, but has lasted long
enough to preserve for us the treasures of the City-State, 330.

CHAPTEK I

INTRODUCTORY

As a subject of study, whether in schools or univer-
sities, ancient history is almost always separated
from modern history ; and it cannot very well be
otherwise. It takes the learning of a lifetime fully
to appreciate what is meant by that unity of history,
of which Professor Preeman was never tired of re-
minding us. No one can really grasp the inter-con-
nection of a long series of events, or see how states
and empires crumble and fall, only to rise again
in new forms, unless his mind is sufficiently well
stored with the detail which must be the material
for his thinking powers to work on. Most of us
must take it on trust that there is no region of
utter desolation lying between ancient and modern
civilisation, and dividing them from each other ;
most of us must be content to choose the one or
the other as the field of our investigation.

But we do not only separate modern history
from that of the Greeks and Eomans : we also
^ B

2 THE CITY-STATE chap.

separate the histories of these two peoples. Or
rather, even where they are studied at the same
time, little effort is made to look at them as one
great whole. Here, again, want of time to master
the necessary detail is the cause, and the legitimate
excuse. Yet so close is the connection between
these two civilisations, that they may be in some
respects considered as one and the same ; and at
the outset of a detailed study of either, it is as well
to see whether they cannot be brought together in
some way which will make it impossible for an
intelligent learner ever to think of them again as
wholly distinct.

Let us consider for a moment the nature of this
close relation between Greek and Eoman civilisation.
It is indeed no great matter that the two races were
not far distant from each other in ethnological
descent. They were perhaps not so near of kin
as we once thought, and it seems to be now made
probable that the Eomans were more closely allied
to the Celtic race than they were to the Greek.
But they were at least near enough to each other
to feel a certain mutual attraction even early in
their history. There is no trace of any such re-
pulsion between them, as Greek and Phoenician
seem always to have felt for each other, in spite
of constant intercourse ; their languages were both
really and' obviously related, while the Semitic
speech of the Phoenician and Carthaginian was
a sealed book to both. The veneration shown in
the earliest Eoman traditions for the superior gifts
of the Hellenic race finds its counterpart in the

I INTRODUCTORY 3

admiring curiosity with which Hellenes of a later
age — a Polybius or a Posidonius — could study the
manners and institutions of the Eomans.

In their religious ideas, too, or at least in the
religious practices on which our knowledge of
those ideas is chiefly based, there is a close re-
semblance between the two races. It was easy to
identify Greek and Italian deities, when anything
was to be gained by doing so ; it was by an easy
though a gradual process that Eoman ritual was so
far superseded by Greek, that it is now a hard
task to excavate the genuine Italian practice by
removing the foreign strata beneath which it lies
buried. It is indeed true enough that most races
have been much readier than we should at first
suppose to adopt the religious customs of their
neighbours, or even of peoples far removed from
them in kinship or geographical position. But
there is hardly a case to be found in which this
adoption is so complete as it was at Eome. The
Eomans believed the Greek forms to have superior
efficacy, and they took them over, except on rare
occasions, without misgiving. They found nothing
in them essentially antagonistic to their own
notions of their relations to the gods. In spite
of much diversity there was a basis both of con-
ception and practice which was common to both
peoples. There were at least two special points of
agreement : each believed in certain great deities I
whom they associated with their history and their I
fortunes ; and each looked on these deities as
localised in their cities, as belonging to none but

4 THE CITY-STATE chap.

themselves, and as incapable of deserting them
except as a consequence of their own short-
comings.
f In regard to character, it was just the very
L unlikeness of the two peoples that served to attract
I them to each other. What the Eoman lacked the
', Greek could supply, — poetry and the plastic arts,
and the mythological fancy in which these were so
deeply rooted ; the power of thinking, too, and the
precious gift of curiosity which spurs men to ask
questions and to seek for answers to them. Thus
the Eomans borrowed the finer elements in their
civilisation from the Greeks ; but they were not
without something to give in exchange. They pos-
sessed what Matthew Arnold called " the power of
conduct " in a far higher degree than the Greeks —
the self-restraint, the discipline, the " courage never
to submit or yield," which at last placed the
dominion of the world in their hands. These
qualities were regarded almost with awe by the
Greek thinkers who came to know the Eomans as
conquerors. These, too, and the rare power of
governing which the Eomans developed out of
them, made it possible for Greek culture to sur-
vive long after the Greeks had lost their freedom.
tThe Eoman dominion became a legal framework on
which Greek intelligence could be fitted. And
though Greek and Eoman never became wholly
amalgamated, and East and West always remained
in many ways distinct, yet the two great currents
poured into a single channel, and ran side by side,
like Ehone and Saone after their junction, distin-

I INTKODUCTORY 5

guishable from each other at a glance, yet forming
one great stream.

But what is of the greatest moment for our pur-
pose at present is that these two peoples developed
the same kind of polity. They carried it out with
different aims and with very different results ; but
the form of political union in which they lived was ,
essentially one and the same, and passed through |
the same stages of growth. Living as they did in i
adjacent peninsulas, in the same latitude and in v
much the same climate, within easy reach of the '
sea, and in fertile valleys or plains surrounded by '
mountainous tracts, it was natural that they should j
develop socially and politically on much the same
lines. Like conditions produce Jike_ growths, modi- '
fied only by the inherent differences ^f stock, and
by ^ the_ forwar^ding^ or retarding influences which
may be bjiought^to bear on .them as they grow.
The Greek and Latin States experienced very dif-
ferent fortunes, and their differing characteristics
caused them to float in different directions, some
going straight onward in a natural order of pro-
gress, some being swept into backwaters, and
retarded for many generations ; but their State
was in all cases of the same species, and this species
was almost peculiar to themselves among the peoples"
of antiquity.' •■/ .V. ', '\

This unique form of State was what the Greeks
called the TroXc^i ; a word which, like the Latin
urhs, may probably have originally meant no more
than a fortified position on a hill, to which the
inhabitants of the surrounding country could fly for

9 THE CITY-STATE chap.

refuge on the approach of an enemy. " But the
Greek of a more civilised age came to give this
word a much wider and deeper meaning, which
it is the object of the following chapters to explain
/and trace out. By this word and its derivatives he
sought to express the whole life, and the whole
duty, of man ; that union of human beings for a
common end, which could alone produce and exer-
cise all the best instincts and abilities of every free
individual. The Latin race had no word which was
an exact equivalent to this ; for " urhs " never
attained to a meaning so profound, and " civitas"
which comes nearest to it, is less explicit. The
Latin race, indeed, never realised the Greek concep-
tion of a 7roA,t9 in quite the same degree ; but this
was rather owing to their less vivid mental powers
than to the absence of the phenomenon among them.
Their form of State was of the same kind, their idea
of their relation to it was not less definite ; but they
had not the instinct to reflect on it or inquire into
its nature, and had eventually to fall back on the
Greeks themselves for their philosophy of it.

What, then, was this TroXt?, this form of political
union in which both these races developed their best
faculties, and made their lasting contributions to
European civilisation ? Our modern notions of a
State hamper us much in our efforts to realise what
the TToXt? was ; nor is it possible to do so completely
until we have gained some knowledge of the con-
ditions under which it arose, of its constituent
elements, of its life in its best days, and of the
causes which sapped its vitality and finally let it be

I INTPvODUCTOEY 7

swallowed up in a vast political union of a totally
different kind. In subsequent chapters some at-
tempt will be made to sketch its history, and to
show where this necessary knowledge may be looked
for. At present we must be content to point out
the most obvious difference between the modern
State and that of the Greeks and Latins, and the
one which will best serve to show the reader that
the study of Greek and Eoman history is a very
different task from the study of the growth of
modern European States — a task, too, which, in
some respects at least, is more fruitful and more
suggestive.

By a modern State we mean a country or territory
with a central government and a capital town ; or
a group of such territories, each with its government
and its capital, bound together in a federal league,
like the United States or the cantons of the Sv/iss
Republic. In this form of State the capital city is
a convenient place for carrying on the central
government, but does not in and by itself constitute
the heart and life of the State. The history of
modern States shows that, while the State is grow-
ing, the question is an open one as to where the acts
of government may best be performed. In England
this in the middle ages was just where the king
happened to be, at Winchester, at Marlborough, at
the now obscure Clarendon, as well as in London or
at Wmdsor. Even in much later times, after the
complete consolidation of a State, it has been found
perfectly possible to transfer the government to
other centres besides the capital city ; as the King's

8 THE CITY-STATE CHAP,

' government in the Civil War was carried on at
Oxford, and the French government at Bordeaux in
1870-71. It is plain, then, that in a modern State
the so-called capital city is not an essential part of
the State's life, and has . only grown in course of
time, and from reasons of convenience or tradition,
to occupy the first place in the minds of the people
among all the other towns, as the seat of their
central government. It is plain, for example, that
by the State called France we mean the whole
French people living on French territory, and having
their political existence, not as Parisians but as
Frenchmen, with a convenient centre, Paris.

But the Greeks and Eomans conceived of their
State as something very different from this. Athens,
Sparta, Miletus, Syracuse, Eome, were themselves
cities, with a greater or less amount of territory from
which they drew their means of subsistence. This
territory was indeed an essential, but it was not the

; heart and life of the State. It was in the city that
.] I the heart and life were centred, and the territory

iwas only an adjunct. The Athenian State com-
iprised all the free people living in Athens, and also
those who lived in the Attic territory ; but these
last had their political existence, not as inhabitants
of Attica, but as Athenians, as citizens of the TroXt?
of Athens. , So, too, the Eoman State, even when it
had extended its territory over the whole Italian
peninsula, was still conceived of as having its heart
and life in the city of Eome, with a tenacity which
led to much trouble and disaster, and ultimately to
the destruction of this peculiar form of State. It

I INTR@DUeTORY 9

is, then, a City-State that we have to deal with in
Greek and Eoman history ; a State in which the
whole life and energy of the people, political, intel-
lectual, religious, is focussed at one point, and that
point a city. To understand the life and work of
these two peoples, it is indispensable to get a firm
grasp of this fact ; for their development from first
to last was profoundly affected by it, and almost
all their contributions to civilisation may be traced
to it directly or indirectly.^

Now it will not need much reflection to see
that a form of State whose most striking feature is
city life, where the social, political, and intellectual
forces at work in it are concentrated at a single
point, will be a simpler problem to handle historic-
ally than a State in which these forces are spread
over a wide area, and over populations differing
from each other in many ways. The TroXt? was in
fact, in most respects though not in all, a more
perfect form of social union than the modern State,
and its history, if we were more exactly informed
about it, would be relatively easier to understand.
The difficulties of Greek and Eoman history do not
lie in the nature of the Greek and Eoman form of
State, but in the fragmentary character of our
knowledge, and in the consequent need of a pecu-
liarly skilful interpretation. And even as it is, it
may be doubted whether the study of a compara-
tively simple organism, even with such drawbacks
as these, is not a better introduction to the science

^ Blnntschli, Thcorij of the State (Eng. trans.), p. 34 foil. ;
Sidgwick, Elements of Politics, p. 211 foil.

10 THE CITY-STATE chap.

of political history than the study of an organism
which is highly complex. We need but call to
mind the most striking institutions which the modern
State has developed, such as Eepresentative Govern-
ment, Federation, or Local SelF-government, to show
how complicated a problem political science has
become. Or if we look at the earlier history of the
modern State, we again find its difficulties increased
not only by the imperfect cohesion of the States
themselves, but by the presence of two influences
outside them which cannot be left out of account,
viz. the Papacy and the Holy Eoman Empire.
The life-history of any one Greek State, or of the
Eoman State in its earlier stages, would be, if we
had it complete, a much more exact and instructive
study. y

Let us look fnto this a little more closely ; for
at a time when classical study is in some danger of
losing its prestige and of being left stranded for the
learned few to deal with as wreckage, it is as well
to be sure of our ground in claiming an educational
superiority for it, even on the historical side only.
If it can be shown that the history of the most
perfect State is the best history, and that the TroXt?
was a more perfect State than the modern one,
something at least will have been done to prove the
point in question.

What is a State, and what constitutes its excel-
lence as such ? A State is an aggregation Df free
human beings, bound together by common ties, some
of which may be called natural ties, some artificial.
The chief natural ties are community of race, of

I mTRODUCTORY 1 1

language, of religion, of sentiment or historical asso-
ciation, and lastly of land, i.e. of the territory which
the State occupies. The most important artificial
ties are law, custom, executive go^rernment ; these
are common bonds which the people have gradu-
ally developed for themselves, and are not, in the
same degree as the natural ties, original factors in
their cohesion. There are also other ties which do
not fall exactly under either of these divisions, such
as the common interests of commerce and of self-
defence.

Now it is obvious that a State, in order to
deserve the name, need not be held together by all
these ties at once. Very few, if any, States have
realised them all. But every State must have what
we call the artificial ties, in some" tolerably obvious
form ; that is, every State must have at least some
laws which bind the whole community, and a com-
mon government to enforce obedience to those laws.
Without these the word State cannot be applied to
it, but only some such vague expression as " nation,"
or " race," or " people," words which in our language
do not usually connote governmental cohesion. We
speak, for example, of the Celtic race, of the Irish,
or even of the Welsh, nation, of the people of the
Jews ; and we never use the word " State " of these,
because they have no constitution or secular govern-
ment of their own. Nor can any community be
"properly called a State which is not wholly inde-
pendent of every other community. India, for ex-
amj)le, is not a State, though it has a government and
a law of its own, because that law and government

12 THE CITY-STATE chap

depend for their ultimate sanction on the will of the
Government of Great Britain and Ireland. So, too,
the United States of America are only States by
courtesy, as it were, while the whole Federation is
a State in the true sense of the word.

While, then, every State must be held together
by the artificial ties, it may, so long as it is inde-
pendent, exist as a true State without any of the
natural ties, except perhaps that of the land on
which its members are settled. But it will be seen
at once that it will be a stronger and more securely
united State if it be bound together not only by
the artificial ties, but also by those which we call
natural, or at least by some of them. The greater the
number of ties operating to hold a State together,
the stronger will that State be. To see this we have
only to compare modern France with modern Austria.
Of modern States, France has long been the happiest
instance of an almost complete union of ties both
natural and artificial ; hence in great measure her
marvellous vitality and power of cohesion, which in
this century alone has enabled her to survive two
conquests, and to maintain her influence as a great
power after disasters which would have utterly
crushed a people less fiiTuly knit together. Austria,
on the other hand, is weak in all the ties, and
especially in those of race, language, religion, and
sentiment ; and it is a commonplace with politicians
that the Austrian empire may easily break up under
severe pressure, or only survive by the help of allies
whose interests it at present serves. The law which
this example illustrates will be found to hold good

I INTRODUCTOKY 13

of States in general, and to serve as a rough, though
useful, test of their power of resistance, as well as
of their power of cohesion.

It may be doubted, however, whether any modern
State has realised the force of these various ties in
the same degree as did the City- States of ancient
Greece and Italy. The city, in which was their
heart and life, could exert over the citizens a more
powerful influence than a modern country, for it
was capable of being taken in at a glance both by
eye and mind, like Eome from the Janiculan Hill :

" Unde totam licet sestimare Eomam."

The delight of the Greek poets in the cities they
celebrate, whether they are their own homes, or
those of their patrons, arises from this feeling of
civic patriotism much more than from the enjoy-
ment of natural beauty in and for itself. In regard
to the tie of race, the citizens, though not always
the whole number of inhabitants, were homogeneous
and spoke the same language ; and this meant more
than it does now. It meant not only a binding
connection by descent, but one by religion also ; for
to" "Relieve that you and your fellow-citizens were
descended from the same stock implied necessarily
that you shared the same worship. The unifying
power of religion too, as has often been shown, was
itself so strong and irresistible as to be almost
beyond the comprehension of a modern unfamiliar
with the life of the ancient world. The gods of the
city were not only its patrons and protectors ; they
Were looked on as actually inhabitants of it, who

14 THE CITY-STATE chap

could not, and would not, desert it except under
conditions too terrible to be contemplated, and who
were indissolubly connected with all its history and
fortunes. No wonder, then, that besides race, lan-
guage, and religion, that other tie of common sen-
timent, or, as the Greeks called it, ^^o?, which in
modern times is a powerful factor in nationality,
should have been doubly strong in the ancient
world. It was far less vague, far more distinctly
conceivable, then than now; for as the city was
itself the State, and all the citizens were brought
up on the same plan, and for a common end within
a limited space, it was natural that they should
look on themselves and their city, on their duties
and delights as citizens, with a common pride and
exclusiveness which we of the modern world can
hardly realise. And if we add to all this the
unifying power of the artificial ties, of law and
custom and government, which in the TroXt? were
at least as strong as in the modern State, and in
some cases even stronger, we get a picture of a
Statehood — if the term may be used — as perfect, it
would seem, as man can ever expect to live in.
That there were indeed weak points in this form of
State is true enough, as we shall see later on ;
every organism is liable to its own special diseases
or parasites. The very intensity of the State-life
within the TroXt? led in many cases to intense
bitterness of faction when faction had once broken
out, and to a corresponding weakness in the rela-
tions of the State to other States, or to the less
civilised peoples beyond the Graeco- Italian world

I INTEODUCTOllY 1 5

Yet on the whole it must be allowed that the idea
of the State, with all its fruitful fjvilising rf'^ultfi
has never again been so fully realised since the
TToXi? was swallowed up in the Eoman Empire ;
the ties that hold a State together have never
been seen working together with such strength and
vitality. >

Does it not follow, then, that the life-history of
this small but highly-organised form of State must
be in some respects peculiarly valuable ? If the
history of Erance is a more instructive study than
that of less perfect modern States, the history of a
TToXt? must be more instructive still ; as the bio-
graphy of a man of strong character and original
genius, even if his life be passed in a comparatively
limited sphere of activity, has often more to teach
us than the life of a man of coarser fibre, whose
interests and influence reach over a much wider
area. If the best history — history in the truest
sense of a word of wide meaning — is that of the
life of the State which most fully expresses the
needs and aspirations of men bound together in
social union, then the history of the TroXt? is so far
more valuable than that of any modern State.

It may indeed be argued, in criticism of this
view, that we have no adequate and complete
account of the life of any one TroXt? from its birth ;
and that even in tracing the history of Athens and
of Eome, we continually find ourselves beset with
doubts and difficulties which arise from the scanti-
ness of our information. Here and there a sudden
light is flashed on the scene we are exploring, and

16 THE CITY-STATE chap.

the next moment all is again in darkness. The
ancient historians are often blind guides, and did
not regard truth and fact with the same reverence
which science has taught our own generation. The
monuments and inscriptions which have come down
to us, invaluable as they often are, are mostly frag-
mentary or isolated, and themselves need skilful
interpretation before they can be brought to bear
on the interpretation of history. Again, the avidity
with which every newly discovered scrap of an
ancient author is seized upon and made the most
of, — often, indeed, made more of than it will bear,
— is itself a melancholy proof of the hunger for
facts from which all students of antiquity must
suffer. The recent discovery of the Aristotelian
treatise on the Athenian constitution has, it may
be said, only reminded us of our own ignorance of
the subject. And in Eoman history what would
we not give to recover the lost books of Livy,
or the Histories of Sallust, or the original works
from which Plutarch drew his Roman Lives, or
— better in some ways than all these — the com-
plete texts of any dozen of the great laws passed
during the last century of the Eepublic ? As it is,
we are cUmbing after knowledge in a misty region
where endless tracks cross each other, which often
come to an end suddenly, or lead us out of our true
direction.

All this is indeed unfortunately true. But let
us remember certain facts, which may too easily be
forgotten.

First, we have an outline knowledge of the whole

I INTRODUCTOKY 17

history of the ancient City-State, from its birth to
its death. We know something of the way in which
^ came into existence, something of its earlier
stages. We know a great deal about its life when
it had grown to its full size and strength, and we
can trace its gradual decay, until it lost its true
nature and became material for a wholly new
political system. This is not so with the history
of the modern State, which is still comparatively
young. We can follow its growth up to a certain
point; but there we pass into the region of con-
jecture, for that growth is in many cases hardly yet
finished, and even in the most highly -developed
States there is fortunately no sure sign that decay
is as yet setting in.

Secondly, we have large portions of the history
of the two most famous City-States conveyed to us
in the form of priceless literature. Thucydides and
Demosthenes, and in a less degree Livy and Cicero,
are among the most valuable treasures the world
possesses. Even if we consider Livy alone, — the
one among these four about whom it is most diffi-
cult to be enthusiastic, — apart from a perfection
of style which is apt perhaps to become too
monotonously perfect, it is impossible not to be
sincerely grateful for the preservation of every
one of the thirty-five books which remain to us.
Now that history has become scientific, Livy does
indeed appear to us full of sad shortcomings ; yet
through him we possess not only a sufficient know-
ledge of the working of the Eoman constitution in
its best days, but also a wealth of information about
c

18 THE CITY-STATE chap.

the ideas of the earlier Eomans in relation to their
state and their religion. No such literary record
exists of the growth and life of any modern State.
Of Greek literature there is no need to speak here.
From Homer to Herodotus, from Herodotus to
Aristotle, and from Aristotle to Plutarch, we have
the life of the Greeks, both in their TroXt? and
in their external relations, mirrored in the most
exquisite of languages, or made the subject of
profound thought.

And this brings us to a third point. We have
not only the history of the 7roXt9, but also its
philosophy. Its small and compact form, and the
very close relation in which the individual stood to
it, prompted the inquisitive Greek mind to inquire
into its nature. Plato and Aristotle saw that it
was impossible to search out and analyse the
nature of man, without reference to the form of
community in which he lived, and from which he
could not free himself. The State was the chief
agent in making man's life worth living, and he
could not therefore be philosophically treated apart
from the State. The study of the TroXt? thus holds
out for us an inducement which the modern State
can hardly be said to offer. We have in the
Republic and Laws of Plato, and in the Politics of
Aristotle, the thoughts of two of the profoundest of
all thinkers on the nature of the State they lived
in ; and we have also at least something of the
same kind, though of far less value, in Polybius
and Cicero, on the nature and government of the
Roman State.

I INTRODUCTORY 19

Lastly, we live in an age in which great store of
material has heen added to the treasures we already
possess. For three centuries after the revival of
learning scholars were phiefly busied in recovering
the literature of . antiquity, and in purifying it from
the corruption with which the ignorance or care-
lessness of fifteen centuries had overlaid it. The
process is still going on ; but the work of the nine-
teenth century has been mainly of another kind.
It has lain partly in the interpretation of this liter-
ature, with the object of getting at the real life and
thought of the Greeks and Komans ; partly in the
collection of thousands upon thousands of inscrip-
tions, whether already published or newly found,
and in the ordering of them in such a way as to
make them easily available for use. And though
in the following chapters it will not often be neces-
sary to refer to these vast collections, it may be
here pointed out that of all material for the details
of the history of the TroXt? inscriptions are the
most valuable. They are the work of the very men
whose customs, laws, or virtues they commemorate,
a,nd they have not passed through the perilous pro-
cess of being worked up into book-history. And if
to all this be added the results of the excavation of
the buildings and monuments of antiquity, and the
light thrown on much that was once obscure by
bhe modern sciences of Comparative Philology and
A^nthropology, we must allow that never, since the
revival of learning, has such a fair field been open
bo the student of Greek and Eoman life.

The vast amount of detail is, in fact, apt to over-

20 THE CITY-STATE chap.

whelm us. The division of labour has become sc
complex that it is rare to find any scholar who has
a wide knowledge of antiquity, or can gather it up
in his mind and reason on it as a whole. We live
in an age of specialisation, and it is inevitable that
it should be so. But for that very reason an out-
line of the history of that peculiar form of State
which was developed both by Greeks and Eomans
may possibly be neither unwelcome nor unprofitable,
If those who are beginning to read Greek and
Eoman history with some serious purpose can have
their attention once directed to the unity of the
whole story, it is possible that they may nevei
altogether lose themselves in detail, or forget the
true relation of the whole to its various parts,
And there is perhaps no better way of thus widen-
ing their powers of vision, and saving them from
that short-sightedness which is the bane of al]
workers in minute detail, than by selecting one
thread, and that the strongest and most easy to
follow, and tracing it steadily throughout what we cal]
ancient history. For as we follow the fortunes oi
the TToXt?, we shall be following also the development
and the decay of the thought and the social life oi
the peoples whose political instincts it expressed.
We shall be following the safest clue, because in
the life of the iroXt^ was gathered up all that was best
and most fruitful in the civilisation of two wonder-
ful peoples. As it grew to perfection, their social
instincts and their power of thought grew with it ;
as it slowly decayed, their literature, art, and philo-
sophy decayed too.

I INTRODUCTORY 21

T shall attempt, then, on these grounds, educa-
tional and other, to give some account, however
meagre, of each phase of the history of this form of
State, from its first appearance to its absorption in
the Eoman Empire, passing in view the several
forms it assumed, pointing out the chief causes of
its disintegration, and finally touching on the vast
new political system which was built not only on
its ruins, but out of them, and was thus the agent
in preserving for modern civilisation a great part, at
least, of the fruits of ancient experience.

CHAPTER 11

THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE

We saw in the last chapter what is the essential
difference between the City -State of Greek and
Roman antiquity, and the territorial State of modern
times. Neither Greek nor Roman could think of
his State as having an existence apart from the
city in which its business was carried on ; while we
moderns can perfectly well picture to ourselves a
France of which Paris should be no longer the
capital, or an Italy where the centre of government
should be once more shifted from Rome to Florence
or Milan. Once, indeed, in the history of Athens
the Athenian people were forced to leave their city,
and to take refuge in their ships and in the island
of Salamis ; yet their State continued to exist, and
to exist at Athens. Never at any moment of their
history did they show more clearly their conviction
of the identity of State and city. The sacred olive-
tree in the Erechtheum put forth a fresh sprout,
as they believed, but two days after the Persians
had burnt the temple. The solemn procession of

CHAP. II THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 23

celebrants passed from the city to Eleusis as usual,
and the dust it raised was seen from Salamis, though
no living Athenian trod the sacred road that day.-^
Though the citizens could not fulfil their duties to
the State and its gods, those duties were mysteriously
performed for them, in the proper place and at the
proper time. Of all the beautiful myths to which
Greek fancy gave birth, none was ever more deeply
rooted than this in a solid conviction, — the con-^
viction that the city, with its population, divine and
human, was the one essential fact in the life of
civilised men.^

Now it is plain that the City- State and the
modern State, differing in this essential point,
must have come into existence in different
ways ; that the conditions, the primary factors, out
of which they grew, must have been different.
And in order to understand the nature and the
history of either form of State, it is necessary to
begin at the beginning, and find out what those
conditions were, and how the State grew out of
them. To understand English political history, it
is little use beginning with the Great Charter, or
even at the Norman Conquest ; we must go back to
the first fashioning of English institutions out of
elements present before any real State was there.^
TMs is no new doctrine or method ; it is as old as

^ Herodotus, viii. 65.

2 Cf. the patlietic speech of Camillus, at the end of Livy's fifth
book, in opposition to the proposal to transfer the city of Rome to
Veii, where the claims of the divine population as well as of the
human are brought out with all Livy's rhetorical skill.

3 Freeman, Growth of the English Constitution, ch. i. Those

24 THE CITY-STATE chap

Aristotle. He began his treatise on the State by
investigating the elements out of which he believed
it to have grown ; and he was right in his method
and his facts. The search for origins is now so
favourite an occupation of the learned as to be
occasionally laughed at ; but it only shows that we
live, like Aristotle, in a scientific age, which is not
content with getting to know facts, but seeks to
obtain a better knowledge of them by accounting
for them. The student of the life of plants or
animals must in- these days also learn their mor-
fhology, i.e. the beginning and growth of the various
forms which they have taken as species. And the
principle is the same in all sciences, including the
science of the State. The reason for this is very
simple. The conditions present at the beginning
and during the early stages of a State, as of any
species of plant or animal, have deeply influenced
the whole life and nature of the organism. " Back
to Aristotle " has to be said in these days in many
departments of knowledge ;^ for it was he who first
taught that the object of your study is better un-
derstood if you can discover how it was born and
how it grows.

The origin of the modern State is a complicated
study, and of course each individual State has had
its own peculiar experiences in its early days, and

who start at a later date are either lawyers like Professor Dicey
{Law of theConstitntion, p. 14), or historians who ))ost-(late the origin
of modern States, like M. Boutmy, who considers that in the seven-
teenth century "the French nation was still in embryo " {English
Constitution, p. 19).

^ Sir F. Pollock, History of the Science of rolUics, p. 124.

II THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 25

has gradually developed in its own way. This is
more particularly the case with England, which has
in many ways been kept as much apart from others
in historical experience as in geographical position.
But the conditions out of which modern States
have arisen have been, in the main, alike in West-
ern Europe, though the various factors have had
very different force . and weight in different in-
stances. Apart from geographical influences, and
the inherent peculiarities of race, they have been
chiefly three. First, the raw material, i.e. the bar-
barian people w^ho overran Europe under the later
Eoman Empire, and dissolved that great political
fabric : these peoples had their, own primitive insti-
tutions,— germs from some of which, in England
at least, there has been an abundant growth and
excellent fruit. Secondly, the fabric of the Roman
Empire, on which, these germs were engrafted, the
idea of which continued' ta exist as an object of
reverence long after the reality had vanished, and
was brought before men's minds once more in
visible form by the Holy Eoman Empire of Charles
the Great and his successors. Thirdly, we have to
take into account the ci\dlising power of Chris-
tianity in two ways : first, as a moral force, better-
ing rude institutions ; and secondly, as a great
spiritual organism, not indeed directly aiding the
development of States, — on the contrary, rather
retarding it, yet acting from time to time as a
salutary unifying influence for civilisation, in ages
when States were struggling into existence amid
great perplexities and perils.

26 THE CITY-STATE chap

This may be just sufficient to show how, in
hivestigating the history of a modern State, the
conditions out of which it grew must be ascertained
to begin with. But how are we to discover the
conditions out of which the ancient City-State was
formed ? How can we know anything of Athens
and Eome before Athens or Eome came into exist-
ence ? We have here no Gildas, no Anglo-Saxon
chronicle, nothing to answer to the monkish records
of mediaeval Europe. We have no contemporary
literature, no inscriptions, hardly anything but tra-
ditions and survivals, as will be seen in the course
of this chapter. What we can make out is meagre
enough, and is arrived at by no direct road of
inquiry. But this unknown country has been
explored in the course of the last thirty years or
so by three distinct routes, and if we follow these
we shall find that the efforts of the explorers have
not been altogether fruitless. Taking the route
of the comparative method, as it is called, we can

/. first compare the institutions of various peoples who
have not yet developed a true State, and so gain
some general idea of the way in which such peoples
live, and of the conditions out of which a State
may grow. ^ Then we may go on to compare our
results with/what little we actually know about the
Greeks arm Italians before they reached the State ;

^.and thirdly, we may verify these results, by seeing
whether the elements out of which we suppose the
City-State to have originated continued to survive
in any shape after the State was formed. Then
we shall be in a position to discover how the

II THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 27

formation of the State was actually brought
about.

In each of these three steps we are dealing with
questions of extreme difficulty, which are still but
partially investigated. But only the leading results
of the comparative method can be indicated here
in outline, so far as we have them at present ;
and on these we can depend with some confidence,
leaving details to be corrected as our knowledge
advances.

Peoples who have not yet reached the stage
of civilisation at which the State begins are never
found to be without some kind of organisation.'
For example, they have a leader or chief, and
they reckon their descent, and their relationship
to each other, on some sort of principle. We are
not here concerned with the various stages through
which man has passed before reaching the State,
nor with the changes in the idea of relationship
which he gradually developed in the course of ages.
That is the work of the anthropologist, not of the
historian. All we need to ascertain is the nature
of the organisation which, in most cases at least,
immediately preceded that of the State, and served
therefore as a basis for it to grow from.

No true State can come into existence except
when the people composing it have been for some
time settled down on a definite territory. No
wandering or nomad people can make a State in
our sense of the word ; they must have reached a
stage in which they can live comfortably by certain
fixed occupations, of which the most important, for

28 THE CITY-STATE chap.

the supply of daily food, is agriculture. At some
time or other, then, the people, tribe, or stock will
have taken possession of a district, either driving
out an older population, or amalgamating with
them in some way after conquest ; and having thus
settled down, will cease for a while to undergo
further important changes, tending rather to fix
and solidify the organisation, which was as it were
only in solution, so long as they were constantly
changing the conditions under which they lived.
The Greek and Latin stocks, for example, when
they wandered into the peninsulas which we know
them as inhabiting, must have settled down on the
land in some form of organisation, which grew
more and more fixed and definite the longer they
remained without further migration. We wish to
know what this form was.

A vast amount of research has of late years
been made and published on this subject; and the
chief result of it which concerns us here has been
to show (1) that before the final settlement on
the land takes place, the main stock is always
found to consist of groups or cells, held together
by the tie of Kinship ; (2) that after the settle-
ment has taken place, these groups or cells are still
found, but now fixed upon the land in forms which
may roughly be described as village communities,
consisting of a number of families united together.^

1 The family, as Aristotle saw, was tlie ultimate basis of civilised
society. But as tlie subject of this chapter is the Genesis of the
ancient State, any inquiry into the origin of the family in pre-
existing social forms, or its subsequent development into the

II THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 29

It is true that they were not always villages, in
our sense of that word. The ancient Celts of
Britain, for example, did not live in village groups,
— a fact which any one may prove for himself hy
travelling in Wales at the present day. Various
forms of the group are in fact found, and the
variation may be due to inherent characteristics of
race, or to the stage which civilisation has reached
in each case, or to other circumstances, such as
the influence of a pre-existing civilisation on the
invading people. But the most perfect form of the
group seems to be that of the village of kinsmen,
and for want of a more comprehensive term we
may speak of the group in general as the Village
Community.^

An excellent picture of the way in which these
local groups may be supposed to have come into
existence is supplied by Sir Henry Maine in one
of his most valuable lectures on these subjects.
He quotes the words of an Indian poetess, describ-
ing the immigration of a people called the Vellalee
into that part of India which was once famous as
Arcot. " The poetess compares the invasion to the
flowing of the juice of the sugar-cane over a flat
surface. The juice crystallises, and the crystals are
the various village communities. In the middle is
one lump of particularly fine sugar, the place where
is the temple of the god. Homely as the image is,
it seems in one respect peculiarly felicitous. It

group which became the village community, is not here directly
called for.

^ See Maine, Early History of Institutions, p. 78 foil.

30 THE CITY-STATE chap.

represents the tribe, though moving in a fused mass
of men, as containing within itself a principle of
coalescence which began to work as soon as the
movement was over." ^ We cannot, of course, be sure
that such an image as this would exactly represent
the way in which Greeks and Latins, or Celts and
Teutons, settled down on the land which they con-
quered ; for the history of man, as of plants and
animals, presents local variation everywhere. But
I know of no better way of getting a general idea
of what we suppose to have happened at this
momentous era in the progress of a people, than
by laying to heart this singularly happy illus-
tration.

What, then, were the characteristics of the
Village Community, using the word in the general
sense given above ? We may recognise four, each
of which is of importance in its bearing on the
development of institutions in later stages of civil-
isation. They are gathered from examples of these
groups which have been studied in the life in India,
Eussia, and Slavonia; and also from survivals,
in which some' one at least of the original features
can be traced, in England, Ireland, Switzerland,
Germany, and other countries.

First, as is implied in what has been said above, j
the families of which the community consisted were
originally all akin to one another. Kinship was
the foundation-stone of the society. That this
was so in England can still be proved, as is well
known, from the names of many of our villages,

^ Maine, op. cit. p. 71

[ THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 31

uch as Wellington (the settlement of the Wellings),
Vatlington, Wallingford, etc. It was probably
he same in India.^ And though this leading idea
f kinship tends ever to become fainter the longer
he group remains fixed on the land, and thus
Dses much of its original binding force, it still
aay survive as a fiction firmly believed in, or at
east as a bond of 'brotherhood, creating a sense of
autual obligation between the members of the
Toup. Even if it passes, as it has passed in
Russia and India, from a sense of common descent
0 a sense of common interest only, it has left a y^
egacy of feeling behind it which could never have ^'
leen gained, so far as we can see. from any other
aode of union.

Secondly, the government of the group was in the ^
lands of a council consisting of the heads of the
amilies constituting the group^ sometimes with a
leadman to preside over it» The evidence does
lot seem to show clearly at present whether the
ouncil or the headman is the original form of
government, or whether they both worked together
rom the beginning. Sir H. Maine tells' us ^ that in
he most perfect village communities in India, i.e.
n those which have preserved best their original
orm, it is the council which rules ; and in these
lases the other institution is either not to be found,
)r only survives in some form which easily escapes
■ecognition. But it is difficult to imagine a

^ Green, Making of England, p. 183 ; Maine, Village Communi-
ies, p. 175.

2 lb. p. 123. Cf. Goniinc, The Village Community, p, 26,

32 THE CITY-STATE OHAr

council without some one to call it together ; aii(
we may perhaps assume that the headman wa
an original institution of the group, which in somi
cases grew steadily more important as time went or
or even came to supersede the council altogether
This simple government doubtless exercised a cus
tomary judicial power, as it does in Eussia at th(
present day, and regulated the property of thi
community.^

Thirdly, the land from which the group drew iti
subsistence, and the cultivation of which was thi
chief employment of its members, was held in com
mon by all the families of which the group consisted
The correspondence in this particular between villagi
communities in various parts of the world is mos
striking. It might be indeed, and in all probability
was most often the case, that the land thus hek
by the community was held under a lord, i.e. fron
a large owner of land, and that some kind of ren:
was paid to him. The occupiers may even hav(
been in a condition for which we can find no othei
word but serfdom, though it was perhaps in reality
much more favourable than any to which that wore
can now be applied.^ But whether they held il
from another or not, their tenure of it was a commor
tenure, and they used it for the advantage, not o:
individuals, but of the community. In most existing
village communities the land, apart from that or
which the village stands, is divided into two parts —

^ Wallace, Russia, vol. i. p. 198.

^ Fustel de Coulaiiges, Origin of Property in Land (trans
lated by Mrs. Ashley), passim.

I THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 33

,he waste land, or pasturage, which is entirely
common to the families, each having the right of
eeding so many head of cattle on it ; and the arable
and, which is divided up into parcels or strips, and
s either redistributed to the various families at
•egular intervals of time, or has become by degrees
ipportioned to them permanently. Traces of this
;ystem of common pasturage and divided arable
and may still be seen in the records and maps of a
^ery large number of English parishes.^

Fourthly, the ancient village community had, we
nay be quite sure, a common worship. Where
Christianity has supervened, as in existing European ,
dllage communities, of course very few traces of
;his can be found. But the Indian poetess quoted
)y Sir H. Maine was no doubt representing a general
act when she spoke of the larger crystal in the
uiddle of the group which represented the temple
)f the god. Whether that god was in all cases the
livine ancestor from whom the whole group believed
tself to be descended, it is not possible to determine ;
Dut the universal prevalence in early society of the
vorship of ancestors by groups of kin- — a feature
vhich must be passed over here — makes it probable
;hat this was so. Whatever the worship was, we may
)e certain that, as an essential part of the life of the
jommunity, it was shared by all its members.^

The four chief characteristics of the early village
iommunity are thus — kinship of all the members ;

^ Seebohm, English Village C(y)nmunity, chaps, i. and iv.
?or other examples see Laveleye, Primitive Property (Eng.
.rans.), passim.

^ Fustel de Coulanges, La Ci(4 antique, bk. i.
D

34 THE CITY-STATE CHAP.

government by a council and a headman ; com-
munity of land ; and common worship. It is ob-
vious that a stage of social life which could realise
these characteristics must be considerably advanced ;
we seem already to see the possibility of a further
advance into a higher level of association. But
what evidence have we, in the next place, that the
Greek and Latin races had attained to this stage
before the City-State arose among them ?

There can be no doubt that the Greeks believed
themselves to have lived in villages before they
advanced to city life ; and it is equally certain that
in the less highly civilised parts of Greece, village
life predominated even in historical times.

For the first of these facts we have the evidence
both of Thucydides and Aristotle, representing the
highest point, in two successive centuries, at which
Greek political thought had arrived. At the outset
of his history, Thucydides gives us a picture of life
in Greece as he believed it to have been " in early
times " (Thucydides, i. 2, 5 and 6) ; it is no doubt
a fancy picture, but contains some elements of truth,
and is at least a record of what the inquiring Greek
thought. He conceived of the Greeks as living
without union or unifying influences, without enter-
prise in commerce or agriculture, without any object
in life beyond that of obtaining the means of sub-
sistence. Had he told us nothing more, we might
fairly have guessed that this was a description of
the life of men living in some kind of village com-
munities ; for it accords precisely with what we
read of those which are still in existence, save that

THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 35

these agriculture has in most cases become the
-absorbing occupation.^ But Thucydides has told

more than this. Speaking of the prevalence of
:acy in those early times, and the comparative
spect in which it was held, as an adventurous and
nourable trade, he says that the pirates' victims
ed in communities which were unfortified, and
nsisted of one or more villages. And this is
me out by Aristotle, who, reasoning as usual not

fancy but on facts, describes the village as a
lion of families, and the city as a union of villages ;
us placing the village midway between family and
;y in the growth of society.^

For the second fact, that village life was preval-
t in the less forward parts of Greece in historical
nes, we have abundant and explicit evidence,
mcydides describes it as existing in ^tolia in his
m day ; the skilful Athenian general Demosthenes
mded his hopes of conquering ^tolia on the
iakness and disunion of a people still living Kara
)fia<; arecx^lo-Tovf;.^ The same is implied of the
lolian Locrians, a few chapters farther on ; and
)m a later authority* we learn that the Acar-
nians lived in villages, until at the end of the
iirth century B.C. they began to develop something

the nature of a town. In the Peloponnese the
rcadians had not grown beyond this stage of social
e when Epaminondas concentrated a number of

^ Maine, Village Communities, p. 175 ; Mackenzie Wallace,
'^sia, vol. i. ch. viii. For these characteristics of the village
,ge of society see also below, ch. iii. p. 60.

2 Politics, i. 2 ; 1252 B. ' Thuc. iii. 94, 97 ; cf. 101.

* Diodorus, 19, 67.

36 THE CITY-STATE chap.

villages into his new Great City (Megalopolis), des-
tined to overawe Sparta. And lastly, Sparta itself
was a city made up of villages, and so were Elis,
Mantinea, Tegea, and many others ; in the case of
Sparta, owing to the distance from the sea, and the
military strength of the situation, the constituent
villages were never even fortified by an enclosing
ring-wall.

Turning to Italy, we find village settlements
there also, and we have little doubt that they formed,
in some cases at least, among which that of Eome
must be reckoned, the constituent elements of towns.
The Latin words for this kind of community are vicus
and pagus ; and though we do not know precisely
what their original meaning was, the words were
always used to denote a smaller social unit than a
civitas or state. The word pagus fell out of use iu
Italy, but was used by Caesar for the subdivisions
of Gallic civitates, i.e. the Celtic sept ; vicus con-
tinued to be used for a hamlet in the country,
together with other words (fora, concilidbula) which
probably denote growths of a later time.

There is yet another set of facts to be mentioned,
which will go some way towards strengthening our
argument that the City-State was formed out of an
association of village communities. It is as well,
however, to point out that we shall here be using a
method to which we are frequently driven in ancient
history for want of a better — the method, as we may
caU it, of survivals, by which we argue back from
the nature of institutions in later times, of which wt
know something, to their probable originals or early

THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 37

itory, of which we know nothing directly. Foi
imple, if we can discover survivals of the life of
lage communities in the completed City-State of
er times, we may argue back from what we know
these to the features of the original village life
fore the city arose. From this method we cannot
pect more than an approximation to the truth,
d it needs skilful handling ; but the same may be
d, with even greater force, of reasoning based
ly on the statements of ancient authors.
It would be indeed strange, on the supposition
which we have already obtained some proof —
it cities were formed in most cases out of village /
tlements — if those settlements did not continue
exist in some form after the city was full-grown ;\
it as the constituent parts of the caterpillar con-
ue in other forms in the chrysalis and even in
J fully developed insect. And, in fact, the early
:y-State, wherever we have anything like a full
owledge of it, invariably appears as subdivided
0 smaller groups, which look as if they had some
torical relation to the original settlements out of
dch the city was formed. These are the yevrj
Athens, the gentes of Kome ; all of them being,
e the village community, groups consisting of a
•tain number of families. We have strong a
iori reasons for believing these to be the lineal
scendants of the original village communities, just
our English parishes of to-day are directly de-
luded from the " hams " and " tuns " (ix. village
itlements) of our immigrant forefathers. We
ve also reason to believe that Aristotle thought '

1

38 THE CITY-STATE chap.

these subdivisions of the city to be the same in
origin with the village community ; for he speaks of
the inhabitants of a kco/jltj as being ofioyakaKTe^;,^
a word which we know was later applied to the
members proper of an Athenian yivo^ ; and in
another passage he uses the words in almost the
same sense, or with a distinction which is not ob-
vious to us. " A city," he says, " is a union of yevr)
and KcofiaL for a perfect and sufficient life." ^

What was the nature of these gentes and yevr)
as subdivisions of the population of a city ? How
far do they show any of those characteristics which
we find in the village community ? Let us notice
to begin with that they were not political divisions,
either at Athens or Eome ; and if we knew anything
of them as they existed in other States, we should
probably find the same to hold good everywhere.
And this means, that they were not associations
which had been created after the City-State came
into existence, with the object of helping it to per-
form its work as a political corporation, in matters
of taxation or administration ; they were strictly
private associations within the State, and we can
conceive of no reason why they should have grown
up after the beginning of the State, nor have we any
historical trace of such an origin for them.^ With

^ Pol. i. 2, 6 ; 1252 B. The meaning of this word is ojjen to
doubt. It may be taken as "suckled with the same milk," or
"offering a common libation." Mr. Newman does not notice the
latter interpretation.

2 Politics, iii. 10, 14 ; cf. sec. 12 ; 1280 B and 1281 A.

3 Both Greeks and Romans attributed them to a legislator,
after the birth of the State ; but this was simply because thej
could not account for them in any other way.

ri THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 39

the true political divisions of the State, the Trittyes
and Naukraries of Athens (and later the Demes),
and the local tribes and centurice of Eome, the
Rentes and yevr) stand in most marked contrast.
We can have_iittlfi_doubt that they were survivals
from the forms of social life which preceded the
State ; ^ and we find in them traces of the same
characteristics, which we found in the village com-
munity. On these we can only touch very briefly.
Nothing can be more certain than that the
members of both yevr] and gentes believed themselves
to be descended from a common ancestor, and there-
fore to be of one blood. The very names make this
at once obvious, for both are derived from a root, sig-
nifying birth, and are related to our own word Kin.
In Eome all members of a gens bore the same name
(Claudii, Cornelii, etc.) ; and both at Eome and
Athens they had their common religious worship,
and also in many cases the exclusive right to fill
the priesthood of some important deity. Thus at
Athens the gens of the Butadse held the two great
priesthoods of Athene Polias and of Poseidon
Erectheus ; and we may remember the Eoman
story of Fabius Cunctator, who left his command
— with great peril, as it turned out, to the army —
in the hands of his Master of the Horse, in order
to return to Eome and celebrate the rites of his

* See Schol. on Hesiod, Works and Days, v. 495 (quoted by
Kuhn, Entstehung, p. 163), where 360 X^o-xat are spoken of in
Athens, which may have been the original form of the later 360
V^r;. Such conjectures are, however, quite uncertain, and add
little or nothing to the argument.

40 THE CITY-STATE on\P.

gens. At Athens, again, we may see a trace of
the government of the village community surviving
in the apx'"^'^ '^^^ y6vov<;, or head of the gens, who
was at the same time its chief priest. And as re-
gards the common tenure of land, though we have
no evidence from Athens, we have some reason to
believe that even this characteristic of the village
community survived for a considerable time in the
Koman gens ; but the evidence for this view,
whicK has been brought together by Mommsen, is
too complicated to be inserted here.^

We see then that the two leading ideas of the
village community, those of kinship by blood (real
or assumed) and of a common worship, are also
found in the gentes of Eome and Athens ; and
further, that there is some ground for believing
that the form of government and the method of
land-tenure were originally the same both in gens
and village. And as we can discover no other
origin for the gentes and jevrj, we are justified in
concluding that they are really survivals of associa-
tions which existed before the State came into
existence, i.e. of some form of village community.
They survived into the life of the State, and even
to the very end of it, because the ties of kinship
and religion could not be dissolved among them,
and were strong enough to hold them firmly

1 For the fi/ixw toO yhovi see the new edition of Smith's Dic-
tionary of Antiquities, i. 906 ; and for the common cultivation of
land by Roman gentes, Mommsen, Hist, of Home, i. 193 ; Lave-
leye, Primitive Property, p. 164 foil., criticised by F. de Cou-
langes, op. cit. p. 100 foil.

II THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 41

together under the new order of things ; and
they remain, as we shall see, as a powerful con-
servative influence, holding back the State from a
too rapid development as a new organism, and, as it
were, keeping it continually in mind of the rock
from which it had been hewn.^

We have been following three lines of reasoning,
and have arrived at the results of three kinds of
evidence, — the nature of village communities in
general; the existence of village communities in
Greece and Italy, both in the earliest times and
after the State arose ; and the apparent remains of
such communities, surviving in the State itself long /
after it had reached maturity ; and- the conclusion is
irresistible that the State itself was formed out of ~-
material the original units of which were communi-
ties of this kind. The rest of this chapter must be
occupied with some attempt to answer the other
question proposed at the outset, how the State
came to be built up out of this material. How
could these little groups, so sharply separated from
each other in all the interests of human life, cbme
to be united into one corporation, owning, as we
saw that a State must, one government, one law,
one worship, capable of united action, and suscept-
ible to the impulses of a common patriotic feel-
ing ? The problem was a more difficult one than

* In the above account of the gentes and ylv-ri, nothing has been
said of the larger groups in which these were distributed — the
Phratries and tribes of Athens, and the Curise arid original tribes
of Rome. The origin of these is far more obscure, and bears less
directly on the subject of this chapter.

42 THE CITY-STATE chai-.

we can well realise, and the process was doubtless
a much longer one than historians have represented
it. "We can only see a bare outline of the truth ;
in no single case of real antiquity can the details
be recovered.

Let us first consider what motives or circum-
stances may have suggested such a union of these
small groups into larger ones.

I have said that before a wandering people
settles down on a particular territory, it already
contains a number of cells held together by the tie
of kinship. After the settlement, this tie continues
to act as a bond; but from that time onwards a
new binding principle begins to make itself felt,
and by slow degrees takes the place of kinship.
This new tie is the influence of the land on which
the community is settled. Kinship is a bond which
must sooner or later be relaxed and fail; it can
only be kept up by ingenious fictions, and in most
existing village communities it has long ago dis-
appeared. But when once a permanent settlement
has been made on a tract of land, the land becomes
,a home ; it is taken to the heart of the people who
live on it and by it, and they hold together for love
of it, long after the idea of actual kinship has grown
weak or utterly vanished. History teems with
examples of this change. We can see it in many
of our own English villages, which once were the
hams or tuns of invading Teutonic kinsfolk, and
now, though still bearing their kin name, have
entirely lost the binding power of kinship, yet
exercise over their inhabitants a certain unifying

i/

II THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 43

spell, as the places where they and their forefathers
have lived and toiled.^

But this influence of the land is never so power-
ful as that of kinship, and it acts in -a different way.
The tie of blood is strong in small groups, but it
cannot create large ones or hold them together ; the
larger the group of kin becomes, the fainter and
more fictitious will be the bond of relationship.
But here comes in the influence of the land, and
carries on the work which the other had begun.
There are not likely to be natural geographical
boundaries between the lands of adjacent villages,
— no such stern natural limits as between the kin
by blood of one set of villagers and another. When
once the blood-tie has grown fainter, there is no
serious obstacle to the union of villages and their
lands in a larger whole, if there be obvious advan-
tage to be gained by it, or if a strong hand urges or
forces on the process. And this process may go on,
gradually or by leaps, until some natural boundary
is reached, such as the sea and the mountain barriers
which enclose Attica or Latium, or the Ehine and
the Alps, beyond which the Swiss have hardly, and
at their peril, succeeded in extending their confedera-
tion. Then the land may eventually become o, father-
land, and acquire a marvellous binding force over
men's minds, as it has in Ireland and Switzerland,
and more or less in all modern States.

If the union of villages was thus made more
possible, as the idea of the land took the place of
the idea of kinship, what may we suppose were the
1 See Maine, Early Institutions, p. 72 foil.

44 THE CITY-STATE chap.

motives which actually prompted union, or what
circumstances suggested it ? We may discern
two, with which we must be here content —
(1) the necessities of self-defence ; (2) the renown
of some prominent centre of religious worship.
The two might act together in many instances,
but we must deal with each separately and very
briefly.

It is an almost self-evident proposition that
village communities would stand in need of defence
from enemies, whether neighbours or pirates. Thu-
cydides, in the passages already quoted, has pictured
their weakness as he conceived it ; and with his
account it is interesting to compare those of modern
travellers, e.g. that of Mr. A. R Wallace, who, in
his Malay Archipelago, has described the dangers
to which the unprotected villagers are liable in the
islands of that group.^ At a very early period, we
may suppose, these little units felt the first influ-
ences of a purpose which began to agglutinate them
together. Several would unite for the possession of
a hill or vantage-ground of refuge, which they would
fortify, and to which they could retreat from danger.
Such fortified hills are found in every country, in-
cluding our own. In Italy the stronghold was
known as urhs, or oppidum, or arx; and in Greece
as tttoXl^, or ttoXv^.^ Here, then, we come upon

^ Malay Archipelago, p. 341, ed. 1886.

2 Schomann, Antiquities of Greece (Eng, trans.), pp. 121, 123.
At p. 66, speaking of the Homeric 7r6Xts, Schomann points out
that the 7r6Xts of Homer was not always a fortified place. Probably
the word was acquiring its later sense when the Homeric poems
were composed.

n THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 45

the first meaning of the word which has become so
famous in the world's history. The citadel, as a
centre-point of union, gradually gathers round it a
city. A few famous examples are the Acropolis
of Athens, the Cadmea of Thebes, the strongholds
of Alba and Tusculum, and the Capitoline hill at
Kome. But any traveller with an observant eye
may verify the process for himself in England,
France, Italy, or Greece.

Together with this motive, the preservation of
themselves and their property, the primitive vil-
lagers doubtless felt the influence of another, which
they perhaps hardly realised as distinct from the
first. Every community had its worship, as we
have seen ; every tribe or State had its deities,
brought with it in its wanderings from its original
home. The gods of the race were its guardians,
for the essence of the idea of a deity lies in the
fact that man looks to an invisible Power for aid
in adversity, as he also expects punishment for
neglect and sin. The desire to protect the pro-
tector, to keep the guardian from passing over to
the enemy as a consequence of neglect, to prevent
his holy place from falling into strange hands, was
beyond doubt in part what led our forefathers so
often to fix the site of their worships on hills and
isolated rocks. They would gain protection for
their gods in this way, and would also gain a double
advantage for themselves — the aid of the gods who
were necessary to their welfare, and the aid of the
"rock-built refuge" behind which they would be
secure. And thus it would come about that the

46 THE CITY-STATE chap.

fame of some holy place, where a deity was wor-
shipped whose protecting power was notorious,
would assist in the union of village communities.
" The forming," says Duncker,^ " of the agricultural
communities around the Cecropia {i.e. the later
Acropolis) under the protection of Athena, around
Eleusis under the protection of Demeter, and the
community of shepherds in the South under the
protection of Pallas, is the oldest known fact in
Attic history." And indeed, wherever we turn in
Greek or Italian history, we find that all unions of
communities, small and great, are invariably held
together by the bond of a common worship, a special
devotion to some protecting deity, or combination of
deities. For, as De Coulanges has well said, it is
only a belief which could overcome the immense
difficulty which men felt in giving up old habits
and small liberties for the restrictions and discipline
of a more highly-organised life ; a belief, we may
add, not destitute of reason, but based on the actual
necessities of life, which themselves suggested union,
while religion made it practicable.

Before we turn to examine one or two examples
of this process of union, one question seems to call
for such an answer as we may be able to find for it.
Have we any evidence which will enable us to fix
with any kind of certainty the period during which
the City-State came into existence ? As regards
Italy, it may be said at once that we have no such
evidence. The traditional date of the foundation

1 History of Greece, Eng. trans, i. 113. Cf. De Coxilangea,
La Cit6 antique, ed. ii. p. 145.

II THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 47

of Kome (753 B.C.) has no historical value; we
know on archaeological evidence that there must
have been settlements on the site of Eome long
before that date, but when Eome began its Ufe as a
City-State we can hardly even guess. With regard
to Greece we are in a somewhat better position.
There archaeological evidence, though it is still sub
judice, has accumulated with astonishing rapidity of
late years ; and the fruitful discoveries of Dr. Schlie-
mann can be compared with the pictures of social
and political life preserved in the Homeric poems.
The result of this comparison, in spite of endless
differences of learned opinion, both as to the archaeo-
logical evidence itself and as to the relative age and
value of various parts of the poems, can now be /
presented in a tolerably certain form. We now
feel comparatively sure that there was a civilisation
in Greece before that of the TroXt?, and out of the
ruins of which the TroXt? probably grew ; and that
this civilisation, which may be called Achaean, and
which is represented in Homer by the great kings
of Myconae and Sparta, came to an end somewhere
about the year 1000 B.C., and perhaps under stress
of a Dorian invasion from the north. It is after
that date that we may discern the beginnings of
that later civilisation with which we are solely con- .
cerned. " There is a broad line dividing mythical
from political Hellas, which seems to coincide with /
the great break made in the continuity of Hellas
by the Dorian invasion. ... On the more recent
side of that line we see vigorous communities,
choosing their own governments, carrying on trade

48 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

with all parts of the Mediterranean and Euxine.
... On the older side we see the castles of mag-
nificent princes standing among the huts of their
dependants."^

With this older civilisation we have here nothing
to do. It is not the civilisation of the true City-
State, which, so far as we can guess, only came into
existence after the race of Agamemnon had dis-
appeared from Greece. Great indeed is the dark-
ness that lies around the origin of this later wonder-
ful civilisation, which made Greece all that it is for
us. But one City-State, and that the most famous
of all, preserved a tradition of its origin so lively
and so reasonable, that we can rely upon it as re-
presenting in outline at least what actually took
place in that instance. ^

About the Synoikismos or political union of
Attica a great deal has of late years been written,
but our ideas of it are still based chiefly on the
account of Thucydides, which we may conveniently
quote in full. It represents the traditional ideas
of the Athenian, divested of much mythical setting,
and attested by what we should call scientific
reasoning. He says (ii. 15): —

" In the days of Cecrops and the first kings, down to the
reign of Theseus, Athens was divided into communes, having
their own town-halls and magistrates. Except in case ol
alarm the whole people did not assemble in council under
the king, but administered their own affairs, and advised

^ Gardner, New Cluxpters in Greek History, p. 97.
'^ For prehistoric Athens, references to modern researches will
be found quoted in Holm's Geschichte Griechenlatids, i. 477.

II THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 49

together in their several townships. Some of them at times
even went to war with him, as the Eleusinians under
Eumolpus with Erechtheus. But when Theseus came to
the throne, he, being a powerful as well as a wise ruler,
among other improvements in the administration of the
country, dissolved the councils and separate governments,
and united all the inhabitants of Attica in the present city,
establishing one council and town hall. They continued to
live on their own lands, but he compelled them to resort to
Athens as their metropolis, and henceforward they were all^
inscribed on the roll of her citizens. A great city thus arose
which was handed down by Theseus to his descendants, and
from his day to this the Athenians have regularly celebrated
the national festival of the Synoikia, or union of the com-
munes, in honour of the Goddess Athene." ^ ^

The net historical result of this passage, and of
the corresponding one of Plutarch, is that at an
early date the village communities of Attica, already
perhaps grouped together here and there for mutual
aid or worship,^ and looking to the kings of the
Acropolis for aid in serious danger, were induced to
give up their local self-government, and the worships
with which it was connected, and to own one govern-
ment only, of which the seat was Athens. They
did not migrate thither in a body — that would have
been to leave their lands untilled. Many indeed of
the noble families may have removed to the new
centre, glad of the prospect of concentrating aristo-

1 Jowett, Thxccydides, vol. i. 104. Cf. Plutarch, Theseus, 24, 32.

- Thucydides uses the word 7r6Xis ; perhaps indicating a stage

of union midway between the /cw/xt; and the true City-State. We

know of at least one previous agglutination, that of the tetrapolis

f .tiarathon, and we have traces of others. See Kuhn, Entstehung

Stddte der Alien, p. 48 foil. See also Beloch, Storia Greca,

11, 114.

E

50 THE CITY-STATE chap

cratic strength ;^ but Attica, which is about the
size of Kent, was too large for a general change of
such a kind ; and the consequence was that an
entirely new kind of community was formed, the
heart and life of which was in the TroXi? par ex-
cellence— the city on and around the Cecropian
rock, — while all the smaller units counted this
centre as their own, and gradually came to consider
it as the visible expression of their united life and
strength. Who was the real author of this great
work we do not know ; and it is no more than
conjecture if we interpret the legend of Theseus as
indicating an invasion from the Peloponnese which
brought it about by force. ^ It seems more likely
to have been due to the hand of a strong master
than to a common agreement of communities. But
however it came about, it laid the foundation-stone
of Athenian greatness, and changed Attica into the
City-State of Athens, the first and the most perfect
in Hellas — a destiny to which her fortunate geo-
graphical conditions seem naturally to point. ^

This, then, is the most famous example of the
birth of a Greek City-State, and of all prehistoric
foundations it is the best attested. It would be a
mistake, however, to suppose that many other Greek
cities owed their origin to circumstances of exactly
the same kind. There was beyond doubt local
variation everywhere — variation arising from the

^ Plutarch, I.e. ; Kiihn, Entstchung der Stddte dcr Alien, p. 16
foil.

* Abbott, History of Greece, \. 281 and note ; Gilbert, i. 107.
' Holm, op. cit. i. 455.

I

II THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 51

disposition of the people, the nature of their land,
the force brought to bear on them, or the objects
to be gained by union. In one or two cases such
as that of Elis, where the " synoikismos " did not
take place till after the Persian wars, we have
traces of a form of union closely resembling that
of Attica.^ But in many others, where the ter-
ritory was smaller, the inhabitants of the pre-exist-
ing villages or groups of villages seem to have beien
actually transferred to the new city. For example,
the two Arcadian towns of Tegea and Mantinea,
which lay at the southern and northern ends of a
single long, flat plain among the hills, were made
up of communities which probably ceased to exist
when once the city had been formed ; for the
territory on which the two towns subsisted was all
of it within easy reach of the walls, and could be
cultivated by the inhabitants without residing in
the country.^ It is possible that the City-State of
Argos came into existence as such in the same way,
though her territory was much larger. But the
most famous instance of this kind of union — the
one of which we know by far the most — is that of
Megalopolis, the great city built in B.C. 370 under
the auspices of Epaminondas, to overawe Sparta.
It is true that it was rather an artificial than a
natural union, born as it were out of due time ;
ibut it shows plainly the way in which the Greeks
Avould naturally go to work when a city had to be
created out of disconnected units which were in no
rne sense of the word a State. Forty-one town-
» Strabo, pp. 336, 340. ^ lb. -g. 337

52 THE CITY-STATE CHAP.

ships, or, as we may imagine them, village com-
munities of various sizes and growth,^ had their
population transferred to that imposing stronghold
which has lately been in part excavated by members
of the British school at Athens. The foundation
answered its purpose, and Megalopolis was destined
to play a great part in the last struggles of the
Greeks for liberty ; but the forcible method used
was perhaps hardly well suited to the conditions
of the considerable territory which was laid under
contribution, for we know that the land became
eventually depopulated, and thereby deprived of its
natural strength. ^ In a Greek City-State, city and
land must be one whole, admitting of no dispro-
portion or division of natural interest.

If we turn to Italy we find our knowledge of the
genesis of the City-State even more scanty ; and of
the beginnings of any other Italian city than Home
we may be said to know_Jiothing at all. It has
been already said that the earliest inhabitants lived
in smaU communities {vici and pagi) within reach
of a fortified place of vantage and refuge, which
probably also served as a centre both for worship
and traffic. Each ring-wall, or citadel {arx, urhs,
oppidum), was common, so far as we can discover, to
several village communities, and was the object of
special religious observance and care, both in its
foundation and its maintenance, — a" fact which be-

^ Kuhn, op. cit. 229. The words used to describe them are irdXeis
and TToX/x"'* ; but they were small and weak. Paus. vi. 12, 3 ;
Xen. Hist. vii. 5, 5 ; cf. Grote, vii. 196.

2 Strabo, p. 358. •-' ^

11 THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 53

came the nucleus of the legend of the foundation of
Kome by Komulus and Eemus. Thus we seem to
see from the beginning, as we might have expected,
a difference between the character of the Latin
village community and that of Greece. ^ The latter
seems to have been comparatively isolated, and to
have found the process of union slow and difficult ;
and the same dislike of amalgamation was inherited
by the City-State of the Greeks from the com-
munities which had generated it, and acted as a
centrifugal force, as we shall see, throughout Greek
history. But in Latium, if not elsewhere in Italy,
we can trace from the beginning a tendency in
the villages to gather in groups,^ a tendency in-
herent in the race, and destined to give them a
very different future from that of the Greek peoples.
They were at all times a practical people, who
saw their own advantage and acted upon it ; and in
their early relations with each other, whether public
or private, they showed a power of accommodation
which eventually became the natural basis of Eoman
law — their greatest contribution to civilisation.

There can be little doubt that at a very early
period the Latin people were grouped in " cantons,"
as they have been called, i.e. in clusters of village
communities, each owning a citadel of refuge and
worship ; and further, that the whole race had a
common worship and a common political centre on
the conspicuous Alban hill (Monte Cavo), whence
Jupiter Latiaris, the divine father, looked down upon
his people. One of the communities which shared
' Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, i. 2

54 THE CITY-STATE . ohap

his worship had occupied as their citadel a square
hill, some 160 feet above the sea, whose steep and
rocky sides fell sharply to the southern banks of
the Tiber, and to the marshy ground which the
river sometimes overflowed. Three communities
seem to have had their residence as well as their
refuge on this hill, while their farms (pagi) lay
around it; these three oldest settlements of the
oldest Eome were the Cermalus, the Velia, and
the Palatium. The whole hill came to be called
the Palatine ; its natural strength was increased by
massive masonry, fragments of which we may see
still on its northern and western sides; and its
position as commanding the Tiber, and as the out-
post of Latium on the borders of Etruria, marked it
out for a great future.

This triple community would probably have been
called by the Greeks a ttoXi'^viov or TroXt? in the
earlier sense, as we saw it used of the Arcadian
communities which went to form the city of Mega-
lopolis. It could hardly have been deemed a real
7ro\t9 ; nor can we name a time at which the City-
State of Eome began its true existence. But we
can trace two stages of its growth, in each of which
the genius of the Latins for cohesion was the guiding
spirit of its advance. There were other hills around
the Palatine which invited settlement. Pour com-
munities on the Esquiline formed a union with the
three on the Palatine, and this union was kept up
in the memory of the Eomans for centuries by the
festival of the Septimontium on 11th December,
which had not become quite forgotten even in the

[I THE GENESIS OF THE CITY-STATE 55

days of the Empire.^ On the Quirinal hill, to the
north-east, there settled yet another community, or
group of communities, with its own worships and
its Qw^n citadel, and in due time a fusion took place
between this and its neighbours on the seven mounts.
The whole area occupied by all these settlements,
together with the Coelian and Aventine hills, was
eventually encircled by one great wall and foss, as-
cribed to Servius TuUius, of which fragments are still
to be seen ; a single arx or citadel was fortified on
the small and steep Capitoline hill, which had perhaps
been hitherto unoccupied ; the worships were fused
together, though always retaining traces of a distinct
origin, and in the end there arose on the Capitoline
*a new and splendid temple to mark the completed
union of the component parts of a great city. But
long before that temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva
had been erected by Etruscan conquerors, Kome
had grown into a City-State, with its king's house,
its sacred hearth or temple of Vesta, and its open
market-place, placed together in a central position
between the Palatine, Esquiline, and Quirinal.^

Such then, in briefest outline, were the beginnings
of the TToXfc?, — of the City- State of Greece and Italy.
From the cities thus formed there were born in-
numerable others, which had not to go through the
same slow processes of growth, but sprang at once,

^ Plutarch, Qucest. Rom. 69 ; Suetonius, Vita Domitiani, 4.

- The position of the Regia and Vesta -temple between the
Palatine and Esquiline hills seem to suggest that they also
formed the centre -point of the united communities of the Sep-
tem montes, before the final union with the settlement on the
Quirinal.

56 THE CITY-STATE chap, ii

like Athene from the head of Zeus, complete organ-
isms and fully armed. By far the greater number
of Greek cities were colonies from States already
formed and often even over-populated ; but as these
ultimately owed their existence to the conditions of
growth which we have already been examining, the
story of their origin does not fall within the scope
of this chapter. Far less does that of the military
colonies of Eome, which were never independent
political units, but at all times a part, strange as
it may seem, of the ever-growing City-State which
founded them. We may safely leave these, and
turn for a while to consider the nature of the
State we have seen generated, and of the earliest
form of its government.

i

CHAPTER III

NATURE OF THE STATE, AND ITS FIRST
FORM OF GOVERNMENT

The City-State once realised, at the moment when
the smaller units gave up their separate existence
to become one powerful whole, a new era was
entered on in which the possibilities of advance
were boundless. A new species of community had
been developed, with the germs lying hidden within
it of such bloom and fruit as man had never yet
dreamed of The first members of the new com-
munity can hardly have realised this ; but we, look-
ing back into the ages, can see it, and the Greek
philosophers, when they came to turn their thoughts
upon the nature of the State they lived in, recog-
nised it as a leading fact in the history of mankind.
It may be as well, before we go further, to consider
it for a moment in the light of their reflections, and
to ask the fundamental question with which Aristotle
enters on his discussion of the State, — In what w^y
did this new kind of community essentially differ
from those which preceded it ?

58 THE CITY-STATE chap

We can ourselves realise, without much effort,
in the light of the highest ends of human life, how
great is the difference between a highly organised
State and all less perfect forms of association.
We can compare the possibilities of progress in a
well-knit State, and in an imperfectly civilised
society, and see how art and literature, morality
and material comfort, find a much more favourable
soil in the one than in the other. We know, for
example, how the conscience and the genius of Eng-
lishmen began at last to find utterance when the
nation was strongly knit together under Henry
yill., and again under Elizabeth, after being choked
by disunion for many generations. We can see
how even the modern Socialist, who is apt to hanker
after an economy like that of the Middle Ages, or
even after the simplicity of savage life, is forced to
assume an even more fully developed State-power
than we have as yet attained to, for the realisation
of the social perfection of his fancy. In spite of
all its shortcomings, our modern State is all in all
to us ; it must seem capable of bringing about such
human perfection as we can aspire to, for we can
imagine nothing beyond it, except in the vaguest
dreams of a far distant future.

Yet it may be doubted whether we can see into
these things with a vision so clear and comprehen-
sive as that of the Greek philosophers. Our State,
as I said in the first chapter, is not so easily reasoned
on ; its life is not so visibly focussed for us as
theirs. Plato and Aristotle, like Herodotus before
them, seeing the peoples around them living in

Ill ITS FIRST FORM OF GOVERNMENT 59

village communities like the ^tolians or Mace-
donians, or in very imperfect States like those of the
Oriental nations, and themselves enjoying the ripe
culture, the liberty, the leisure, and the comfort
which the City-State had brought them, easily came
to believe that there was something almost divine
in the vroXt?, enabling it to outstrip all other forms
of association in the power of developing man's best
instincts. With that mysterious power of the Greek
to beautify and idealise everything he touched, Plato
immortalised the ttoXl^ by the very perfection of his
ideal picture of it ; and if all Greek history were
lost, and the Eepublic alone remained, we should
still be able to understand the depth of Greek con-
viction which connected political forms with the
moral and intellectual perfectibility of human
nature. But in Aristotle this idealisation was
tempered both with the critical spirit and with a
strict adherence to the essential facts of Greek life,
and in seeking for the real distinction between the
City-State and all earlier and less perfect associa-
tions, we cannot do better than follow in his
footsteps.

There are only two or three points in Aristotle's
theory of the State to which we need at present
advert, but these are essentially axioms, which con-
dition all his political thinking.

Let us place first his famous dictum, that while
the end of all earlier forms of society is simply life,
the end of the State is good life} What a world of

^ Politics, i. 2, 8 ; 1252 B ; yivofievri /xh rov ^^v eveKcv, oiVa 5e roO
ev ^i]v ; that is, the ttoKls is the earliest association of which the

60 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

thought is suggested by this little sentence, and how
true it is to the facts ! Thucydides describes the
Greeks before the era of the TroXt? as scraping to-
gether just sufficient subsistence to live upon, and
he was probably thinking of the conditions of life
known to him in parts of Greece where the State
had not yet been generated. Almost exactly the
same language is used by Sir H. Maine of the vil-
lage community in India, and the picture drawn by
Mr. Wallace of life in the Eussian mir suggests
precisely the same limit to the field of human
enterprise.^ But in rising out of the life of the
village into that of the State, man rises, or at least
may rise, from the idea of material supply to that
of moral and intellectual advance. Aristotle is
careful to make us understand what he means by
" good life " ; it is the life which best realises the
best instincts of man. The law and the education
of the State will make the citizens good and just men,
enjoying " a perfect and self-sufficing life," develop-
ing the unimpeded activity of their moral and intel-
lectual excellence.^ Art, literature, law, philosophy,
could not ripen in the family or the village; the
narrow limits, the insecurity, the constant toil of
that earlier life, impeded all activity in such direc-
tions, though the instincts might strive to assert
themselves. And so too with justice — the perfectly

"end" is good life. Cf. i. 9, 16; 1258 A. Cf. also Professor
Bradley's Essay in Hellenica, p. 192 foil. The " end " of a thing,
m Aristotle's view, is the perfect form in which nature strives tc
realise it.

^ Maine, Village Communities, p. 175 ; Wallace, Biissia, ch. viii,

2 Hellenica, p. 193 foil.

Ill ITS FIRST FORM OF GOVERNMENT 61

harmonious relation of man to man in society — •
" the State develops virtues unknown, or imperfectly
known, to the family and the village ; justice, in the
true sense, first appears in the State." ^

The same idea of the State is further enforced
by the doctrine that the State is a natural growth,
i.e. that it is not the artificial result of a convention
or compact between individuals. It is the natural
and inevitable result of man's desire to use his
faculties to the best purpose, to force his way on-
wards to his appointed end. The family and the
village could not realise that end for him ; they
limited and hampered his activity at every point,
excepting so far as they enabled him to procure a
bare subsistence. Not content with this he pushes
upward with an unconscious growth like that of a
plant, and at last produces a form of social existence
in which all his needs can be satisfied. He is by
nature meant to be a member of a State, and with-
out the State he cannot fully realise his true nature-
Here, as Mr. Newman admirably expresses it, " he
breathes at last his native air, reaches his full
stature, and attains the end of his, being. Society
is no longer a warping and disturbing, but an ele-
vating and ennobling influence." ^ He only needs
to perfect the State itself, — a process which neither
Plato nor Aristotle believed to be complete in their
day, if indeed it ever could be completed, — in order
to raise human nature to the highest possible degree
of perfection. It has been truly said that the Greeks

^ Newman, Politics of Aristotle, i. 38 ; cf. p. 69.
• Op. cit. i. 557 ; Aristotle, Politics, i. 2, 9 ; 1253 A.

62 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

were essentially seekers ;^ and if in some paths ol
search they sought and never found, in the problems
of social life at least they laid hold on a great prize,
and did not underrate its value.

Nothing can be clearer to the reader of the
Politics than Aristotle's conviction that no higher
form of social union was possible than that of the
City -State. Of Empire — of the subordination of
several States to one ruling State — he has almost
nothing to tell us ; he must have looked on such a form;
of union as artificial and unnatural, and therefore as
beyond the scope of his inquiry. Nor does he treat
of Federation, or the union of several States under a
common government for the common good ; to his
mind the City-State should need no help from other
States, and in combining with them would only be
surrendering a part of its own essential vitality. The
ideal State must be whoUy independent of others,
wholly self-sufficing ; it must be able to maintain its
own character as a State, by itself and for itself,
without aid or stimulus from without.^ Its beauty
and its order are the result of its own natural
growth, and must be secured and enhanced by
purely natural means.

And here Aristotle does but reflect the inborn
tendency of the Greeks to dislike all larger political
unions ; a tendency which, as we saw, was less
strong, or at least less permanent, in the sister
peninsula. To the Greek thinker, as to the ordin-
ary Greek citizen, all federations were a step down-

^ See the preface to Holm's Griechische Geschichte, p. xi-
'^ Aristotle, PolUics, 132S.B.

Ill ITS FIRST FORM OF GOVERNMENT 63

ward, and all empires were destructive of man's
best chances. The City-State could not join with
others in any such union, whether by consent or by
compulsion, without giving up some of those precious
characteristics which Aristotle postulated as necessary
to a perfect State, and therefore as equally essential
to the production of perfect man. And in this
instinct of his, which Aristotle thus reflected, it can
hardly be denied that the Greek was right. So far
as he could attain perfection at all, he could attain
it only in his peculiar form of State. As that form
of State decays, the value of Greek life diminishes
with it. There came a time in later Greek history
when the cities were forced to unite together in
self-defence, and again a time when, falling under
the dominion of Macedon and Eome, they were
absorbed into a wider and grander system of political
union than any they had themselves developed ;
but the Greek life of those later days was not the
life to which we look back with most reverence; it was
not the spring-time of the rarest gifts of humanity.
It was the Hellas of the true TroXt? which produced
Sappho and Sophocles, Herodotus and Pheidias, and
Plato. And in another way the same thing is true
also of Eome ; as a City-State she developed the
germs of all that was most fruitful in her civilisation,
and produced the noblest types of Koman character.
In ceasing to be a City-State she lost her own in-
dividual genius, her stately morale, her inflexible
courage. Assuredly it was in this form of union
that the gifts and the virtues of both races found
their best expression.

64 THE CITY-STATE CHAP.

We have now to trace the steps by which the
City-State reached such perfection as it was capable
of attaining. In all cases it passed through many
vicissitudes of fortune, and was forced to learn by
the experience of failure and disaster. Its progress
was attended by the drawbacks that seem to dog
all human effort; for example, it could not exist
without slavery, and it never wholly freed itself
from the distinction of privileged and unprivileged.
The citizen who really reached his full stature, and
attained, in Aristotelian phrase, the true end of his
being, was one of comparatively few : the great
majority of those who lived around him either
toiled for his enjoyment, or looked enviously on
his advantages. We cannot call any City -State
perfect ; but as we turn from the philosophers to
the reality, we can see humanity slowly struggling
towards perfection in this form of social union, in
spite of many obstacles never wholly overcome.

The first unquestionable fact which meets us in
the life of this new kind of community is that it
was originally governed by kings. The thing was
expressed by various words — Basileus, Archon,
Prytanis, Eex, Dictator — but, so far as we know, it
was always there in the childhood of the ancient
State.^ Tradition, both in Greece and Italy, always
told of a time when the essential acts of govern-

^ "The king represents the national as distinguished from the
tribal form of political development." — Freeman, Comparative
Politics, p. 165. The lecture from which this passage is quoted is
full of useful material for the study of kingship in general.

i

Ill ITS FIRST FORM OF GOVERNMENT 65

ment were performed either by or under the
authority of a single man ; and in this case we
can be sure that tradition was right. Both Thucy-
dides and Aristotle accepted it ; ^ at conservative
Sparta the king himself survived throughout her
history ; and at Athens and Eome kingship left
traces behind it when it had vanished, which the
"method of survivals" has co-ordinated with a
definite result.

We can best study kingship by comparing three
different forms of it, which seem roughly to repre-
sent three successive stages in its history. We
can see it in the Homeric poems, where on the
whole it appears as an undefined and therefore
early form ; next in the earliest constitution of
Eome, which represents a later stage, and shows
it defined with tolerable exactness by custom and
tradition ; and lastly, as a survival at Sparta, re-
taining its old characteristics of form, but much
modified in actual practice.

I. We no sooner touch the Homeric poems than
we are met by the question, Was the City -State
already in existence when they took their present
shape ? In any case, are we justified in using
Homer as evidence for the earliest form of State
government ? On the whole we are so justified,
in spite of the fact that the first of these questions
must be answered in the negative. It has already
been pointed out (see p. 47) that recent archaeo-
logical discovery seems to indicate a clear line of
distinction between the civilisation of the age repre-

* Thucyd. i. 13, 1 ; Aristotle, Politics^ i. 2, 6, and elsevvhere.
F

66 THE CITY-STATE chap.

sented in Homer and the civilisation of the TroXt?.
But it may now be assumed as certain, that the
Homeric poems as we have them were put together
on the later side of this line, and that they do not
all represent the same age, or exactly the same
state of society. The Iliad, or the oldest portions
of it, seems to contain reminiscences of an older
type of polity, in which great chiefs ruled over
wide and loosely united territories, as the early
kings of France or Scotland ruled over lesser
chieftains whom they could only attempt to con-
trol.-^ The Odyssey, and especially those parts of
it which are believed to be of the latest origin,
gives us the idea of a society altered in some im-
portant features, and tending towards the develop-
ment of that kind of polity which is the object of
our study.

It is true, indeed, that there is little or no sign
even in the Odyssey of the life of the fully formed
State. The town is there, and it is frequently called
TToA-t? ; the king and the chief men seem to reside
in it, and their dwellings show a comfort and afflu-
ence which mark an advanced civilisation ; yet the
life is essentially rural, the wealth is reckoned by
flocks and herds, and we find few traces of that
publip interest and concentrated population which
mark the true City- State. Perhaps we may pro-

^ In the description of the shield of Achilles we do, however,
see pictured something very like the life of the City-State {II. xviii.
490 foil. ) ; and this is by common consent allowed to be one of the
oldest parts of the Iliad. On the subject of the Homeric polity,
Fanta's little work, Der Stoat in der Ilias und Odyssee (Innsbruck,
1882), will be found useful.

Ill ITS FIRST FORM OF GOVERNMEN^I \67 /

visionally conclude that the State appears in the
Odyssey as ripe indeed for formation, but not yet
really formed ; all the materials are there, but the
building is not as yet complete. And if this view
be the right one, we may surely use Homer as
picturing for us, in outline at least, the features of
the kingship of the new-born State; for not only
have we abundant evidence that those same features
were retained long after the State had been formed,
but nothing is more intrinsically probable than that
an institution, which certainly existed long before
the State arose, should have been accepted as an
heirloom by the earliest " statesmen."

What strikes us at once about the Basileus in
Homer is, that he is one among many ; there are
kings of all degrees, from Agamemnon, who in the
poet's fancy rules over wide territories, and appears
sometimes almost as master of an empire, down to
the most insignificant chieftain who bears the title
of Basileus.^ At once, therefore, we get a warning
against the mistake of supposing that there is any-
thing of the nature of a fixed constitution to be
discovered in Homer. The king has no clearly
defined limits to his power of government; king-
ship is not an office, a magistracy, as we think of
it, with a certain sphere of duty and limit of action.
It is rather a social position, like that of the " eorl "

^ Cf. the Homeric forms /Sao-tXei^repos and /SatriXeirraros {II. ix.
69, X. 239). A single instauce may here suffice of the mxiltiplica-
tion of Basileis ; in Scheria there were thirteen [Od. viii, 390),
with Alcinous apparently chief among them. Cf. Gilbert, Griech.
Alterthiimer, ii. p. 272, note 2, where the many Basileis of the
are contrasted with the great kings of the Iliad.

68 THE CITY-STATE CHAP

of our early history, with various grades depending
on varying wealth, and expecting rather than de-
manding reverence, obedience, and tribute from all
men of lower station.^ It is an ancient and a
hallowed institution, for all Basilets are believed to
be of divine ancestry, and all carry the sceptre, or
rod of ofi&ce ; no one questions their authority; they
are the best men, and it is by the inspiration of the
gods that they give judgment. Their sons succeed
to their wealth and influence, and are watched with
loving care in their youth as the future leaders of
the people. It is clear, then, that if we use the
word king of the Homeric Basileus, we must bear
in mind that he is rather a hereditary chieftain
than a constitutional king, and that his power
at home and in -peace rests simply on aristocratic
sentiment. It is, indeed, quite true to say that
this kingship was merely the formal expression of
an aristocracy, and rested on no independent basis
of its own.^

We must be careful to remember this in ex-
amining the nature of the powers exercised by the
/ Homeric Basileus. These powers are generally
/ represented as being threefold — religious, mihtary,
/ and judicial, — and this is in the main true ; but they
I are very far from being distinctly outlined, and do

I not answer to our notions of a clear-cut constitu-

V,___^ - ^ The word rifi-f} has been thought (by Fanta, p. 49) to express,
as a definite political term, the position and power of the Basileus ;
but this is not borne out by the passages quoted, e.g. II. i. 278,
vi. 193. The word seems really rather to indicate the non-political
nature of the power.

2 Henkel, Stvdien, p. 57, quoted by Newman, Politics, i. 283.

Ill ITS FIRST FORM OF GOVERNMENT 69

tional law. The king is indeed the representative
of the community in all its most important relations
with gods and with men. He knows how to pro-
pitiate the gods worshipped by the community, who
have given him the rifirj by which he rules. He
knows how to make war and to make peace, how
to receive the guest and the fugitive according to
the customs of the people and the will of Zeus.
JBut his duties are neither constant nor defined ; and
this must be borne in mind if, for convenience' sake,
we examine them briefly in the triple form in which
they are usually presented.^

The King as Sacrificer. — When we find Aga-
memnon sacrificing for the whole host,^ we are
naturally inclined to ask, Where is the priest ? And
here we have to learn, once and for all, that there
was no such distinction in antiquity between magis-
trate and priest as our modern ideas would lead us
to imagine. As every father of a family was the
sacrificer for his own household, so was every king
a sacrificer on behalf of his people. Sacrifice was
the most universal and efficacious act of early
religion ; it was matter of daily performance, and
nothing could be undertaken without it.^ Who-
ever was in authority must be able to perform it

^ Perhaps the best general account of Homeric kingship is still
to be found in Schomann's Political Antiquities of Greece, p. 22
foil. (Eng. trans.) See also Jebb's Homer, p. 46 ; Gladstone's
Hovier and the Homeric Age, vol. i. p. 440. But it is not a
laborious task to gather the material together from the poems
themselves.

2 II ii. 402 foil. Cf. Od. xiii. 281 foil,

^ See articles "Sacrificium," "Sacerdos," and "Rex," in Smith's

70 THE CITY-STATE chap

rightly, i.e. according to traditional ritual, for to
him all looked for the due maintenance of salutary
relations with the gods. Every chieftain, great or
small, must have exercised this duty at home in his
own community, though in time of war it might
fall to the greatest only. To him and to his family
alone were known the secrets of the office ; it might
happen that even if he ceased to be king in the
Homeric sense, — if his kingship were merged in a
larger one, or if his family became only one among
other noble ones in a newly-formed City-State, it
still retained the sacrificial knowledge and the sole
right to minister to the deity of the community.
Hence arose the hereditary local priesthood of early
Greece ; it begins with the chieftain, and descends
as an heirloom in his family long after his secular
authority has passed away. Aristotle tells us that
the Homeric Basileus controlled all sacrifices except
those which specially belonged to priests / by which
I understand him to mean, not so much that there
was a distinction between the kingly and the
priestly offices, but that already some noble (or
kingly) families had lost the one while they re-
tained the other. It will be important to bear this

Diet, of Classical Antiquities (new edition). It was on this side of
tlie king's power that Fustel de Coulanges laid so much stress in
his brilliant book La Citd antique. He found the origin of early
monarchies almost entirely in the religious importance of the chiefs
of family, gens, and city. But this is not borne out by what we
know of the early history of the king, or by the etymology of the
names by which he was called. Sacrificial knowledge was a neces-
sary condition, but not the only one, of his power.
1 FoUtics, 1285 B.

Ill ITS FIRST FORM OF GOVERNMENT 71

in mind when we come in the next chapter to the
period of aristocratic government.

The King as Commander of the Host. — All that
needs to be remarked on this point is, that not even
in war does the Homeric king appear to be absolute.
Aristotle indeed says that he had the power of life
and death in the field, and quotes Homer to prove
it; but the words {irap yap ifiol ddvaro^) of his
quotation are not to be found in the poems as we
have them.^ Such power would seem to postulate
a much more clearly defined polity than that which
Homer depicts. We find the king in the Iliad
deliberating with other chiefsj — with his council of
elderly men^ and wise, the Witenagemot of that
day ; and we find even the people present at these
deliberations as listeners who may express their
approval or disapproval. Thus, though there is no
constitution here, even in time of war, there are, in
solution as it were, the elements of a constitution ;
the nobility is there to advise, and the people have
a right to express their feelings. And that these
elements of a constitution, as we see them in time
of war, also represent in the main the relations of
king, council, and commons in time of peace can
admit of no doubt. We should, however, remember

1 Politics, 1285 A. Cf., however, 11. xv. 348.

^ Tlie -yipovTes in Homer are not necessarily elderly men. But
the word itself, like Senatus, is proof of the idea on which the
institution is based, i.e. chieftaincy of some degree, for which the
son has had to wait till his father has died or stepped aside, and
he himself is growing old. At Sparta the fact as well as the word
survived ; no one under sixty years of age could be a member of
the Gerousia. Plutarch, Lycurgus, 26.

72 THE CITY-STATE CHAP.

that in war the outlines of authority are likely to
be more sharply defined than in peace, and that a
long period of war would have a tendency to in-
crease the king's authority, so long as he survived.
His normal power at home was probably of a very
gentle kind, as might be expected in a society that
was so entirely aristocratic.

The King as Judge. — In a full-grown State, such
as Athens, Kome, or any modern State, the executive,
as we call it, has a large amount of varied business
to perform. But in an early state of society, exe-
cutive government consists almost entirely of the
decision of disputes ; and even this sphere of judi-
cial action was a limited one, for thieves and
adulterers taken in the act could be put to death
without ceremony, and the revenge of murder was
the duty of the family or clan of the victim,
unless a proper indemnity {iroivr)) was offered by
the murderer.^ Still disputes would arise, per-
haps more often between families than individuals,
which could only be settled by bringing the force of
the community to bear on them : and wherein was
this force to be found concentrated but in the
Basileus ? It is just here that we see the value of
the idea of kingship — of a sanctity arising from
noble descent, in the discipline of peoples who are
preparing for life in a State. The kings of all
degrees, in virtue of their divine ancestry and nurture,
are provided with judgments or dooms by Zeus,
which are unquestioningly accepted by the people.
These judgments {Oefnare^) do not rest upon any-
' II. ix. 632 ; Od. viii. 347.

Ill ITS FIRST FORM OF GOVERNMENT 73

thing which we can call law, for Homer knew no
law, and has no word for it. " They are separate,
isolated judgments not connected by any thread of
principle." ^ Only a. firm belief in the divine -source
from which they proceed could give them a binding
force in men's eyes.

It is true that the greatest Basileis do not appear
in Homer as themselves dispensing justice. It is the
sages of the council who sit in judgment, as in the
famous picture on the shield of Achilles. But the
sanction of their decision was no doubt the same ;
they too were chiefs of less degree, and enjoyed the
confidence of the people by virtue of a divine descent.
There is no trace in Homer of any decay of this
confidence, nor of the growth of that mistrust which
issues eventually in a demand for written law.
And if we are right in assuming that the later
Homeric society is close upon the beginning of the
State, we shall also be right in concluding that the
State sets out on its career not with questioning
but with trust ; and that it has been made possible
simply because men have shown themselves capable
of discipline, ready to accept a divine ordering of
society, and to obey those whom they believe to be
better than themselves.

^ Maine, Ancient Law, ch. i. p. 4. Maine perhaps puts this a
little too strongly ; for there is a Homeric word {Sikt]) which seems
to indicate an idea of visage, — the course which the gods pointed
out and which the people would accept ; while the Oi/xLares are
dooms which at once create this usage and conform to it. See
Jebb, Homer, p. 48, and passages there quoted, to which may be
added II. xvi. 387 foil. ; Od. xiv. 83 ; Hesiod, Thcogonia, 85, and
Works and Days, 9 and 215 foil.

74 THE CITY-STATE chap.

The strength of the earliest monarchies then, so
far as we can gather from Homer, lay in no clearly
defined powers or prerogatives, for definition implies
limitation, and the Homeric monarchy knows no
such thing, either as securing the king's power or
confining it within certain bounds. It lay rather
in the belief that the good relation of men and gods
could be successfully cared for by those only with
whose families the knowledge of divine things was
deposited; in the belief that men of noble birth,
and therefore as a rule of bodily beauty and prowess,
could be the only leaders in war ; and in the belief
that obedience was owing to these in all questions
between man and man in time of peace, because it
was only through their judgments that the will of
Zeus could be known. These three aspects of a
single deeply-rooted conception lie at the base of
all ancient aristocratic government ; and this earliest
monarchy, as we said just now, was but the outward
expression of a truly aristocratic society. If we now
turn for a moment to the earliest Eoman constitution of
which we have any knowledge, we shall find a marked
change in the direction of definition and solidity.

II. Of the kings of Eome we have no direct
contemporary evidence ; we know them only from
tradition, and from the traces they left behind them
in the Republican constitution which followed. But
the " method of survivals " has here been applied by a
master-hand ; and we can be fairly sure, not only of
the fact that monarchy actually existed at Eome, but
even of some at least of its leading characteristics.^

* See Mommsen, Staatsrecht, ii. pt. i. p. 3 foil., and Roman

in ITS FIKST FORM OF GOVERNMENT 74

Here we have kingship no longer denoting, as in
Homer, a social position of chieftaincy which bears
with it certain vaguely-conceived prerogatives, but
a clearly defined magistracy within the fully real-
ised State. The rights and duties of the Eex
are indeed defined by no documents, and the spirit
of the age still seems to be obedience and trust ;
but we also find the marks of a formal customary
procedure, which is already hardening into consti-
tutional practice, and will in time further harden
into constitutional law. The monarchy has ceased
to be hereditary, if it ever was so ; and the method
of appointment, though we are uncertain as to its
exact nature, is beyond doubt regulated with pre-
cision, and expressed in technical terms. Let us
fix our attention for a moment on one of these
terms, — the most famous of them all, and the one
which best exemplifies that stage in the govern-
ment of the City-State which the Eoman monarchy
seems to represent.

The functions of the Eex show the same three sides
as those of the Homeric Basileus. He was priest for
the whole people, he commanded the army in war,
and he dispensed justice at home. But the Eomans
have learnt to sum up the whole of this power in
one technical term of wonderful force and meaning.
This word, imperium, introduces us at once to a
new range of ideas, which we may call political, and
which belong to the newly realised life of the City-
State. Imperium is a technical term, the first we

History, vol. i. p. 66. Cf. Prof. Pelham's article "Roman His-
tory" in the last edition of the Encydopccdia BrUannica.

76 THE CITY-STATE chap.

meet with ; for there is no Homeric word which can
be regarded as such politically. It marks the power
of the king as distinguished from the power of
the head of a family or a village community ; it
expresses the supreme power of the chief magis-
trate in an organised State. The imjoerium of
the Eex was technically unlimited, both in peace
and war; the idea of State authority is fully
expressed in the word, and had therefore been
fully realised. All power exercised by any indi-
vidual beside the Kex is delegated to its holder
by the Eex, and emanates directly from his im-
perium. To him alone belonged the regal insignia,
and above all the rods and axes carried before him,
symbol of a power which could punish the dis-
obedient with instant death. And this power, we
must notice, was not his by hereditary right, but
was given him by a formal vote of the citizens;
whatever might be the mode of his appointment or
election, it is certain that he only became supreme
after this vote had been passed. Here, then, we
plainly have a fixed constitution, expressed in
formal procedure and in technical terms ; and the
leading feature of it is the concentration of political
power in the king, and the remarkable clearness
with which that power is conceived.

But all this was by no means incompatible with
a customary limitation to the absolutism of * the
Eoman king. In the Eoman mind there was an
instinct, which was never lost, to define, and at
the same time to check authority ; to make the
clearness of legal definition itself assist the in-

I

ITS FIRST FORM OF GOVERNMENT 77

uence of moral limitation. This moral limitation
can be traced very plainly as acting even on the
Rex. He is expected to ask advice, and probably
also to take it. His advising body was the Senate,
the equivalent of the Homeric yepovala, of which
we shall have more to say presently ; and the prin-
ciple which in form, if not always in fact, governed
the Eoman magistrate for ever afterwards, that he
should not act without the advice of this council,
became so much a necessary law of the Roman
mind that we may be certain that it had its origin
in the monarchy. Again, we have reason to believe
that in the trial of accused persons of importance
the king was expected, though by no means legally
bound, to submit the question of life and death to
the people for their decision ;' if this be so, another
great principle which became the charter of re-
publican liberty as the jus provocationis, a right of
appeal against the decision of the magistrate, also
had its origin in the moral obligations of the Rex.^

In the Roman monarchy, then, we see the earliest
form of State government completely and judiciously
developed. Order and discipline, so necessary to
man in his political childhood, are there represented
by the technically unlimited power of the Rex ;
while in the salutary moral obligations which the
good sense of the people has imposed on this
magistrate, we find customary rules of conduct

^ Both these principles may have grown out of germs of great
antiquity, and were not the peculiar invention of the Romans.
But it is not given to every people to fertilise such germs, and con-
vert them into plain and formal principles of constitutional action.)

78 THE CITY-STATE chap.

which are capable of growing into invaluable
constitutional principles. Two things seem neces-
sary to a young State which is to have a great
future, — the full realisation of authority and of the
obedience due to it, and a sense of the moral limits
which reason sets both on obedience and authority.
Both these were present in early Eome, as in early
England.

III. The third form of monarchy which we are to
consider in this chapter is that of Sparta. Of the
early history of the Spartan kingship we know
hardly anything; but as a late and most curious
survival into historical times it well repays study.
As in the Homeric Basileus we have the undefined
stage of early magisterial authority, and in the
Eoman Eex its complete and defined realisation, so
in* the history of Spartan kingship in the sixth and
fifth centuries we have a picture of the way in which
life might slowly leave an old and valuable institu-
tion, while its venerable framework remained, as
much respected and cherished as ever.

The Spartan resembled the Eoman in many
ways, and one of them was the tenacity with which
he clung to old ideas and institutions. When the
Eomans got rid of their kings they retained not
only many of the outward signs of kingship, but
also the imperium itself — the very essence of the
king's magisterial power. The Spartans, on the
other hand, kept the kingship throughout their
history, but alloY»d it by slow degree* to moulder
away into a picturesque ruin. The explanation of
this is to be found not only in the' dual form of

HI ITS FIKST FORM OF GOVERNMENT 79

Spartan kingship, which probably weakened it from
the first, but in the radical difference between the
Greek and Italian conception of monarchy. At
Sparta, as in the Homeric age, the kings were of
divine descent, and the position and power passed
from father to son ; to break the sacred line of the
children of Herakles would be simply to make light
of the divine ordering of things. Just as the Greek
conceived of his gods as bodily presences rather
than as spiritual essences, so it was the personality
of his kings, their ancestry and breeding, rather than
their constitutional powers, which filled his mind
with reverence.^ There is little trace of this feel-
ing among the more prosaic Eomans. They did
not think of their gods as beings in human form ;
nor was it the glory of the person or the family
which overawed them. As it was the power of
the gods and their use of it which conditioned their
religious thoughts and acts, so it was the king's
power and his use of it on which they fixed their
eyes as citizens. Thus, as will be seen in the next
chapter, they could abolish the king, yet retain
his imperium; while at Sparta the powers were
suffered to decay, the king himself remaining.

At Sparta there were two kingly families, and
two kings with equal authority ; and however this
is to be explained, it will not surprise any one who

^ This is curiously illustrated by Herodotus's account of the
funeral ceremonies of the Spartan kings (vi. 58). No absolute
monarch could be the subject of more unive-sal lamentation, how-
ever formal it might be ; yet this was no homage rendered to
power.

80 THE CITY-STATE ciiAf.

recalls the multiplicity of the Homeric kingship.^
The division of sovereignty probably led to that
period of distress and anarchy which is the one
almost certain fact of the earliest Spartan history ;
and the result was a reconstruction, attributed to
Lycurgus, at a date which may be assumed to be
not later than 800 B.C. This must have been the
era when the Spartan institutions were fixed on a
system compatible with the life of an organised
State, and is at the same time the point from which
the decay of the kingly power may be traced.

When Herodotus, who had himself been at
Sparta, described the duties and privileges of the
Spartan kings as they existed in the latter half of
the fifth century, the monarchy still retained the
triple powers which we have seen outlined in the
Homeric poems, and gathered into a single concep-
tion in the Eoman kings. It will be as well to
quote the very words of Herodotus, for they give
us a life-like picture of an ancient moss-grown
monarchy. 2

" The prerogatives which the Spartans have allowed their
kings are the following. In the first place, two priesthoods,
those of Zeus of Lakedaimon and celestial Zeus ; also the right
of making war on whatsoever country they please, without
hindrance from any of the other Spartans on pain of exile ;
in the field the privilege of marching first in the advance ami
last in the retreat, and of having a hundred picked men for t£eir

^ For different explanations see Abbott, Hist, of Greece, i. 206 ;
and for further detail G. Gilbert, Griech. AUerthiimer, i. p
4 foil.

- Hdt. vi. 56, Rawlinson's translation.

Ill ITS FIRST FORM OF GOVERNMENT 81

bodyguard while with the army ; likewise the liberty of sacri-
ficing as many cattle in their expeditions as seems to them
good, and the right of having the skins and chines of the
slaughtered animals for their own use.

" Such are their privileges in war ; in peace their rights
are as follows. When a citizen makes a public sacrifice, the
kings are given the first seat at the banquet ; they are served
before any of the other guests, and haveji double pnrtimi of
everything^ They lead the libations, and the hides of the
sacrificed beasts are their perquisite. Every month on the
first day, and again on the seventh of the first decade, each
king receives a beast without blemish at the public cost,
which he offers up to Apollo ; likewise a medimnus of meal,
and of wine a Laconian quart. In the athletic contests they
have always the seat of honour ; they appoint the citizens
who have to entertain foreigners. . . . They have the whole
decision of certain causes, which are these, and these only ; —
When a maiden is left the heiress of her father's estate,
and has not been betrothed by him to any one, they decide
who is to marry her ; in all matters concerning the public
highways, they are judges ; and if a person wants to adopt
a child, he must do it before the kings. They likewise
have the right of sitting in council with the twenty-eight
senators ; and if they are not present, then the senators
nearest of kin to them have their privileges, and give two
votes as representing the kings, beside their own as coun-
cillors."

In this picture we see, as it were, an ancient
and hallowed building, with all the graceful details
of its architecture still preserved ; a building which
was once the central point of the common life of the
State, but is now comparatively little used except
for religious purposes.

The king is here still high-priest for the com-
munity ; but his priesthood is limited to two special
worships. The religious system has been organised
G

82 THE CITY-STATE chap

SO as to suit the needs of a City-State, and the
various worships have their appointed priests. And
those which the kings hold, they hold, not like the
Homeric Basileus, as part of an undefined rifir), but
as fyepa, i.e. privileges specially reserved to them.
So it is also with the administration of justice. In
jurisdiction Herodotus mentions but two kinds of
suits which came to them for decision, and both are
of a special and limited character — the one relating
to certain contingencies in the devolution of pro-
perty, and the other to the maintenance of the
public roads. In cases of bloodshed the kings
shared jurisdiction with the Gerousia, and all ordi-
nary disputes seem to have been decided by the
Ephors, i.e. by magistrates of later origin than the
City-State itself^ Only in war, i.e. outside of the
ordinary range of State-life, does the Spartan king
still seem to be supreme, and even here he is
beginning to be mistrusted. As early as the end
of the sixth century B.C. Cleomenes I., the most
original and remarkable of all the Spartan kings,
was brought to trial for alleged misconduct; and
several other instances, both of trial and punish-
ment, are recorded in the two following centuries.^
Being thus made responsible for their conduct in
war, they gradually lost the essential part of those
military prerogatives which Herodotus describes. In
the fourth century B.C. they were little more than
nominal kings, while the Ephors, an elected board

» Aristotle, Politics, iii. 1, 10 ; 1275 B.
* Thucyd. v. 63 ; Hdt. vi. 72 and 82.

ITS FIRST FORM OF GOVERNMENT 83

of five, whose powers were not defined by ancient
and hallowed custom, and could therefore be easily
extended as convenience or necessity suggested,
raised their authority to such a pitch that Plato
could describe it as " exceedingly like that of a
tyrant." ^

We need not here enter into the question how
all this change was brought about, nor does it
belong to the scope of this chapter. Spartan
history is extremely obscure, and we know neither
details nor dates of the rise and progress of the
Ephorate ; nor can we certainly discover how far
the other elements in the constitution, the Gerousia
and the Assembly of the people (apella), also had a
share in trenching on the original prerogatives of
the kings. Enough has been said to show that a
monarchy might survive in a State of conservative
tendencies long after kingship had disappeared both
from Greece and Italy, but that it survived in out-
ward form rather than in reality, still bearing
unmistakably the signs of its origin in the heroic
age, yet ceasing gradually to do the work of an
effective State -magistracy.

But Sparta in this, as in many other ways,
stands alone in the history of the City - State.
She never was a pioneer in political develop-
ment. Shut away in her " hollow " valley among
the mountains, she did not feel the influences
which, from the eighth century onwards, began in
the rest of Greece to change the simple form of

^ Plato, Laivs, iv. 712 D.

84 THE CITY-STATE CUAP. in

society which made kingship possible and salutary ;
or if she felt them, she took her own way in
responding to them. Those influences, and the
changes they brought about, are now to be cou-
sidered in the next chapter.

CHAPTEE lY

THE RISE OF AEISTOCEATIC GOVERNMENT

In the earliest form of the City-State there were
three prominent factors. First, the king, with
his. three functions, religious, military, and judicial ;
his powers resting not on written law, but on cus-
tom, and constituting no real absolutism, but being
apt to gain in strength as custom hardened, provided
that the kings themselves and their families were
equal to the task of maintaining their prestige.
Secondly, the lesser chieftains, who in their own
domain were probably quite independent of the
king, like the feudal lords of the middle ages.
These acted as the advising council of the king,
whose influence became stronger or weaker accord-
ing as he was of a character to need help or to
dispense with it. J'hirdly, the people, i.e. all those
who did not belong to the families of any of these
powerful chiefs, and could boast of no divine descent,
nor of any large estates, but in time of peace went
about their daily work as husbandmen or artisans,
and served on foot in time of war. Of the people

86 THE CITY-STATE chap

we shall speak more fully later on. But we may
pause for a moment here to point out that in these
three factors of the earliest State we see, in embryo,
all possible forms of constitution. In all govern-
ments the sovereignty must be either in the hands
of one, or of few, or of the many ; it must be either
monarchical, or aristocratic, or democratic. • Each of
these three forms of constitution may indeed take a
different colouring, as, according to Aristotle's doc-
trine,^ monarchy may become tyranny, aristocracy
may, and indeed always did, pass into oligarchy,
and democracy in the best sense may become
democracy in the worst sense, or, as Polybius styles
it, government by the mob. Or there may be
transitional forms, such as are often called " mixed "
constitutions, in which, for example, as at Athens
after Solon, the political privileges of the few were
being gradually extended to the many; or as at
Sparta, where we saw that during a long period the
monarchy continued to survive alongside both of
oligarchic and democratic elements. But in all
cases, whether the constitution be natural, or
debased, or transitional, it can always be traced
back to one or other of these social facts which
meet us at the very outset of our study of the City-
State. Even tyranny, which will at first sight
appear to have no direct connection with early
forms of monarchy, was really only a reaction
towards a traditional concentration of authority,
brought about by the many, as suiting them better
than the rule of the few. The social predominance
^ Pol. iii. 6^71. and 7 ; 1279 A. Cf. Polybius, vi. 4, 6.

IV RISE OF AEISTOCKATIC. GOVERNMENT 87

of one family, or of a few, or of many, — such is the
simplest way of expressing the long series of changes
in constitutional form which we have to trace ; and
looking forward from the age of monarchy we can
guess without much difficulty how such changes
would be likely to run.

We might naturally suppose that if the monarchies
gave way at all, they would give way, not to the
people, who had neither knowledge, experience, pro-
perty, renown, or high descent, but to those noble
families who surrounded the king, supplied him
with advisers, and were on the same social level
as his own family. And so it was. Universal
tradition, both in Greece and Italy, told of the
displacement of the kings by these noble families,
and of a long period of aristocratic government
which followed. When history really begins in
Greece and Italy, hardly a single kingship of the
old type is to be found.^

Of the immediate causes of this universal change
we have scarcely any positive knowledge, and we
may be fairly sure that ancient writers had no
more than we have. Aristotle, in mentioning
it, writes in quite general terms, and does not, as
his habit is, quote examples to support what he
tells us.2 The causes that he suggests are disagree-
ment among the members of the kingly house, and
a tendency to arbitrary government by the kings

^ In other Italian towns besides Rome we know nothing of tlie
change ; but that it took place is almost certain. See Mommscn,
Hist, of Rome, i. 255.

'■^ Politics, 1313 A.

88 THE CITY-STATE CHAP,

themselves, such as would be likely to break into
the traditional and willing acceptance of monarchy
as a natural and inevitable institution. This is
no more than we might have guessed for our-
selves. Weakness arising from whatever cause —
disunion or other, — and on the other hand ambition
and arbitrary use of power, are the causes which
have throughout all history been apt to destroy not
only monarchies, but all governments. And when
the monarch is but the chief among a number of
lesser potentates, it is easy enough to guess not
only at the causes but at the results of revolutions
which have at least much apparent resemblance to
those of the early modern State.

Perhaps it may be said that we have at least one
glimpse of a monarchy on the point of falling to
pieces, — though even that glimpse is one into a
region that is mythical and misty. Odysseus was
king in Ithaca ; and during his twenty years' absence
his kingship barely survives the attacks made upon
it by the aristocracy of the island, the lesser ^aaCkel^.
There seems to be indeed no idea of abolishing
monarchy as an institution. Telemachus assumes
that some one will be king, even if it be not one of
the true kingly family.-^ " There are many other
chiefs of the Achaeans in sea-girt Ithaca — kings
young and old ; some one of them shall surely
have this kingship since goodly Odysseus is dead."
But if the kingship be removed from the family
which has so far held it, the first step is taken
towards its destruction ; and Antinous says angrily

* Od. i. 394 ; Butclier and Lang's translation.

IV RISE OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 89

to young Telemachus, " Never may Cronion make
thee king in sea-girt Ithaca, which thing is of
inheritance thy right 1 " ^ And Eurymachus, in
kinder tone, tells him that though it is unjust for
the lords to devour the substance of Odysseus, yet
"it lies on the knees of the gods what man is to
be king over the Achseans in sea-girt Ithaca." And
in the assembly which follows in book ii., where
Telemachus seems to appeal to the " folk " for help
against the lords who are living on his substance
and wooing his mother, he shows weakness himself,
and can get no support from the people.^ Ithaca
is in confusion ; there seems to be no hope for the
house of Odysseus ; the heir can hardly procure the
ship to carry him to Pylos to seek for news of his
father.

The Odyssey is in great part ancient myth and
folk-tale ; but these first two books contain no such
element. They are clearly a picture, — a fancy
picture it may be, — of such confusion as might
have arisen in any monarchy about the time when
the Odyssey took its present shape. War might
strengthen a king's hands if he returned successful,
but it might also shake his house to its foundations
if he never returned at all. The plot of the Odyssey
brings the king home at last to wreak vengeance on
the traitor lords, and we can imagine his power
thereby greatly increased and handed down intact
to his son.^ But in many a case the king may never

» Od. i. 386. 2 75^ II 1.320.

^ It is to be noticed that when Odysseus finally recovers the
kingship, it is confirmed to him by a "covenant with sacrifice"

90 THE CITY-STATE chap,

have returned, or from some other cause his family
may have given way before the aspiring chiefs, and
the kingship, if not yet destroyed, must have passed
out of the house which had long held it, and so have
lost its oldest traditional claim to loyalty.

But the Homeric poems, as we saw in the last
chapter, seem to point to a time when the City-
State was not yet fully formed, but rather in pro-
cess of formation. The picture of Telemachus and
the suitors hardly helps us to understand why a
monarchy which had become hardened by usage, as
at Rome, into something resembling a constitution,
should have easily given way to aristocracy, and
why this revolution should have been so universal.
Historians, in default of positive knowledge, are
at pains to bring forward explanations a priori.
Grote, for example, and Montesquieu before him,
observed that monarchies are apt to last longer in
large territorial States, while small States, like the
Greek and the later Italian republics, seem naturally
to develop an aristocratic or democratic constitu-
tion.^ The observation is a just one, and the reasons
given in support of it are also worth attention. The
smaller the State, and the more distinctly its life
is centred in a city, the more obvious will the
king's shortcomings be to the eye of his rivals and
of the people. The monarchy of a mediaeval State
was hardly an object of criticism, even to the great
lords who surrounded it, except when it impinged

{Od. xxiv. 483. 546), an artificial prop which can hardly have
existed in the earliest and most natural form of kingship.
* Grote, Hist, of Greece, vol. ii. ch. ix.

RISE OF ARISTOCEATIC GOVERNMENT 91

too closely on their traditional rights ; and even then
concerted action against it was not easy to organise.
The mass of the people had very little knowledge of it,
and accepted it, as they for the most part accept it
still, without a hostile thought. Only in great
capital cities, such as London or Paris, where the
misdeeds of a monarch are obvious, and where dis-
content can easily gather and grow to a head, have
violent anti-monarchical outbreaks found place in
modern times. The inference seems to be a safe
one that when a State is practically a city, and not
a large territory, the traditional institution of king-
ship, with which political history seems everywhere
to begin, is almost sure to be comparatively short-
lived. The weakness or cruelty of a king, or a
kingly family, would in a City-State be known and
felt by all, and would be inevitably brought to an
end, whether by sudden revolution or by gradual
process. Thus the small size of the Greek State,
which has been so often called in as an explanation
of the phenomena of its history, or more truly indeed
its peculiar nature as a City-State, is almost the
only certain fact to which we can have recourse in
order to account for this universal change from
monarchy to aristocracy.

But there is another consideration which calls
for attention before we gp farther. It has already
been said that monarchy was in one sense only a
form of aristocracy ; and the meaning of this dictum
would seem to be that monarchy, though found
everywhere in the world, does not everywhere of
itself serve as an adequate political expression for

92 THE CITY-STATE chap.

a certain social condition. It is, in fact, in one
sense a less natural form of constitution than either
aristocracy or democracy. Each of these is the
direct and natural political expression of a state oj
society. If the rich or the well-born exercise a pre-
dominant influence in a State, the resulting political
form is aristocracy or oligarchy ; if the poor or
the low-born carry the full weight which their
numbers would naturally bring them, the resulting
political form is democracy. But of what is
monarchy the political expression ? Neither in an
aristocratic nor in a democratic state of society is
monarchy entirely secure, because it cannot fully
represent the needs, the feelings, or the prejudices
of that society. When, as we shall see in the next
chapter, it was called in to lead the first popular
impulse in the cities of the Greek world, it was
speedily rejected as soon as that work of leadership
was accomplished — the Greek tyrannies were pro-
verbially of short duration. And in the age of
which we are now speaking, where it existed in
an aristocratic society, though much longer lived,
it could not be permanent, simply because it re-
presented that society ever more and more in-
adequately.

All history teaches us that aristocracies have a
strong tendency to grow steadily narrower ; that
their sentiment and privilege alike increase in
strength with time. Now a monarchy may serve
fairly well as the political expression of an aristo-
cratic society, but the narrower and more prejudiced
that society grows, the less chance will the monarchy

IV RISE OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 93

have of surviving. The king may even be forced
out of sympathy with the class to which he naturally
belongs, and into more intimate relation with the
poorer and unprivileged classes. If then we can
show that the Greek aristocracies had a tendency
to grow narrower, and that the facts and ideas on
which their predominance rested were such as might
easily increase this tendency, we shall at once have
an explanation of the decay of monarchy, even if
we cannot trace the causes of decadence within the
monarchy itself. And at the same time we shall
be providing ourselves with some account, imperfect
though it be, of the characteristics of the aristo-
cracies we are concerned with. Then we may pass
on to consider the few known facts as to the method
by which the destruction of monarchy was brought
about.

Aristocracy literally means the rule of the best.
But in what sense of the word " best " did the
Greeks use their word apidTOKparla, and by what
standard did they estimate the class which dis-
placed the early kings ? Aristotle, whose know-
ledge of the early aristocracies was certainly not
large, writes as if he thought that the rule of the
" best " were an ideal which had never been attained
to in Greece, and warns his pupils not to fall into
the popular error of confusing it with the oligarch-
ical forms of government prevalent in his own
day.^ He thus attaches a distinctly ethical meaning

^ Politics, 1293 B. He is ready, however, to use the word
apiffTOKparia in a modified sense for a very few mixed constitu-
tions, such as that of Carthage. See Newman, i. 497. Tu the

94 THE CITY-STATE CH.vp.

to the word " best," and seems to contrast the virtue
of the true aristocratic ruler with the wealth of the
oligarch. But was he right in his belief that the
government of the hest had never been realised ?

Undoubtedly the Greek aristocracies, like all
modern ones, did not owe their political power
simply to superior moral qualities. They obtained
it as the result of certain advantages which they
possessed, of which the chief were wealth and high
descent. But we can hardly be wrong in believing
that the excellence {aperrj) which they claimed for
themselves — a claim which survived into much later
times in the expressions koXoI KayaOol, eirLeiKel^,
yvwpnioi, etc., applied to oligarchs who did not
merit them — had at one time had a real existence.
We must indeed, in order to understand what it
was that they claimed, get rid for the moment of
much of our modern notions of virtue or goodness ;
but there will still remain an element of ethical
superiority which we may predicate of this nobility
without misgiving. With them, so far as we can
see, began the idea, so fruitful afterwards for Greek
civilisation, that the mind and the body alike of
each individual should be cultivated to the utmost
for the benefit of the State. Here, if anywhere,
we must look for the origin in Greece of the culti-
vation of the beautiful, in the human body, in the
products of art, and, to some extent at least, in
conduct too ; and at Kome for the beginning of the

word ^Xiyapxia Aristotle attaches the meaning, usual in Greece,
of government by a few families, distinguished not by excellence
but by wealth.

IV RISE OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 95

idea of duty, as extending beyond the family to the
State. Naturally, application of this idea was limited
to the members of their own class, from a deeply-
rooted conviction that all others were not worth
the cultivation, and could not repay it by any valu-
able results ; these were in no true sense a part of
the State, but only, as it were, the natural append-
ages of it, whose destiny was to do the necessary
and inferior work without which it could not exist.
But they themselves, the nobles, were the real men
of the State ; on them devolved all its higher duties ;
and if in the early life of the City-State these nobles
really worked out an idea of public duty which first
made the position of the citizen an honourable and
arduous one, they made a discovery for which the
later Greeks and Eomans might well have been
more thankful than they were.

And we may reasonably believe that this dis-
covery was really theirs, though we have little
positive evidence of it. When history opens, the
aristocracies were indeed a thing of the past, but
the idea of the good citizen was there, and can
only be due to their influence. The passionate
lamentations of Theognis over the overthrow of the
"good men" in his own city carry us back in
imagination to a time when Megara was not yet
governed by a narrow oligarchy, but by a nobility
which was really excellent, as well as rich and
high-born, and was bent on developing all its
best powers, bodily and mental, for the good of
the whole community. Even as late as the fifth
century the same idea is seen in the Odes of Pindar,

96 THE CITY-STATE chap.

commemorating the deeds as well as the high de-
scent of men who had brought renown to their
cities. And a century later still, the reflection of
it may be caught in the writings of Plato and
Aristotle, the central feature of whose political
teaching is that a man's duty to his State can only
be performed at the best when he has fully and
rationally developed all his mental and bodily
capacities. Such an ideal could never have been
formulated by the philosophers, if it had not been
already existent in the spirit of the best Greek life.
And we may be fairly sure that it originated, not
with oligarchy, or tyranny, or democracy, but in an
age preceding them all ; in an age when it was
possible, to use the language of Prof. Duncker,^ for
the ideal of life and conduct to be realised in the
man " capable in body and mind, strong and agile
in limb, brave in fight, free from personal greed,
zealous for the general good." It was the Greek
nobles, then, who first recognised the true nature
of the State, and of its infinite capacity for en-
nobling man ; they realised " the good life " (to ev
^r]v) of the citizen in contrast to the mere life (to
^7]v) of the village community. With them begins
the development of art and poetry, of education
and discipline, of law and public order, in im-
mediate and healthy relation to the State and its
needs. And in a different way the Eoman aristo-
cracy too, though narrower and less gifted than the
Greek, had its own unconscious ideal, and its own
peculiar " virtus " ; to them and them alone were

1 ITist. of Greece, ii. 307 (Eng. trans.) ; cf. p. 214 foil.

[V RISE OF AKISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 97

due the habits of discipline and self-sacrifice for the
good of the State, and the ideas of self-respect and
of duty correlated with wealth and station, which
forced on all Eomans such a vivid conception of
the nature of citizenship, and enabled them to sur-
vive so many fierce struggles for existence.

An aristocratic class of this kind, in whose
bringing up the self-regarding instincts were only
so far encouraged as they might contribute to the
common good of the youthful State, might co-exist
with a monarchy, and probably did so for many
generations. There was no natural antagonism be-
tween their interests and those of a kingly family
which was only the first among many. But their
aperrj, that combination of self-respect with devo-
tion to the State which we have been describing,
was the indirect result of two advantages which in
themselves constituted no virtue — the pride of a
noble descent, and the possession of wealth, especi-
ally in land. Birth and wealth alike may call for
self-respect, for courage, and for public spirit, in
those who possess them, and the call may be re-
sponded to ; the noble may be and should be worthy
of his ancestry, and the rich man worthy of his
wealth ; but in each of these advantages there is
always a certain poison hidden, which is apt to
deaden the force of its claim for virtue. An honest
family pride may degenerate into mere exclusive-
ness, and wealth may too easily become 'an object
for its own sake. Some such subtle process must
have been at work in the aristocracies of the young
City-State, gradually narrowing their ideas and in-

H

98 THE CITY-STATE chap,

terests, and bringing them into antagonism, perhaps
almost at the same time, with the kingly family as
well as with the unprivileged masses. Let us see
how it might have acted.

1. We saw that the Homeric chieftains believed
themselves to be BLoyevet^ — of divine descent ; and
this idea was kept up for centuries by the great
families in most Greek States. Even in democratic
Athens Alcibiades could boast to his teacher Socrates
that he was descended from Zeus, and in other States
examples are abundant.^ At Eome too the same
boast could be made ; the Julii, e.g., were descended
from Venus and Anchises. Thus the claim of high
birth was a much more powerful one than it has
ever been in England, or even in France. But
there was another and yet stronger reason why in
the City-State these families should tend to become
peculiarly exclusive. Let us recall the fact that
the State had grown out of smaller communities,
which survived within it as gentes or yevrj, each a
close corporation, with its own religious rites, its
own government within the State, its own traditions
and prejudices. Whether these corporations consisted
entirely, as at Rome, of patrician families, or included
others belonging to the lower population, as was prob-
ably the case at Athens, they were always strongholds
of an exclusive nobility. To marry outside the circle
ot this nobility was a desecration of the sacred
rites and traditions of the noble family or gens, and
continued to be thought so long after those outside

^ See Schomann, Political Antiquities of Greece (Eng, trans.)
p. 124.

IV RISE OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 99

it had begun to force their way within the pale,^
Thus it is easy to see how the honourable pride of
a noble descent, which for . a while might help to
engender the first feelings of duty to self and state,
might also in course of time, under the continued
influence of these groups of kin, serve to cherish
and increase a spirit of exclusiveness. If a family
grew weak or threatened to die out, there was no
possibility of recruiting it from the class below, —
a process which has always been the safeguard of
our English nobility ;2 it might be kept alive by
intermarriage within the class to which it belonged,
but by no fresh blood imported from the lower
orders. At the very time when the noblest qualities
of mind and body were being cultivated for the
good of the State and the service of its king, these
same qualities were beginning to be regarded more
distinctly as the exclusive property of the members
of the groups of ancient kin ; while as the outside
population increased in numbers, or the king in-
creased his power, these groups were more and
more brought into mutual alliance in opposition
both to monarch and to people. This is the first
illustration we meet with of the surviving power of
the kinship groups in the city of which they were
the original constituent elements ; and it is most

^ Schomann, p. 125, notes that in Greece such intermarriage
was not strictly illegal ; but in early times it must have been
practically so. At Rome it had eventually to be sanctioned by
law, which is proof that custom had previously rigidly forbidden
it. See Livy, iv. 1-6.

^ See e.g. Boutmy English Constitution (Eng. trans.), p 108
foil.

100 THE CITY-STATE chap.

important to bear it in mind as we pursue the
history of the City-State.

2. Besides noble descent, the chief characteristic
of these aristocracies was wealth, and chiefly wealth
in land. The Homeric chieftains are all land-
holders ; so were the patricians of Kome, and so
also the aristocracy of Athens when first we catch
a glimpse of it. Land was almost the sole source
of wealth in the economy of the early State, and
wealth was reckoned by the flocks and herds which
the land supported. The Greek aristocracy, and
perhaps originally the Eoman too, were distin-
guished in war from the lower population by the
fact that they were able to supply themselves with
horses, like the chivalry of the middle ages, while
the "people," if they served at all, served only on
foot.-^ This was the result of the possession of large
estates, which would enable them to indulge in the
rich man's occupation of horse-breeding. Another
result no doubt was that they were able to let or
to give land to their inferiors, and to supply them
with stock for it — a practice common to aristocracies
at all times. 2 Their wealth might thus be used
entirely for the benefit of the community, and in a
generous spirit worthy of its noble holders ; but it
has never so been used for long by any aristocracy.
When, later on, we get any positive knowledge of
the economy of any City -State, we find troubles

^ Arist. Pol. 1297 B. But tliis was not tlie case in all
aristocracies ; only where the land was suitable for horses.
Holm, i. 309.

- See Maine, Early History of Institutions, oh. vi. esp. p. 168
Mommsen, Hist, of Rome, i. 199 (Eng. trans.)

[V RISE OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 101

arising from the narrow and selfish spirit in which
the noble families used this source of wealth. There
was a secret poison in the possession of it, which
would sooner or later begin to act. So long as
wealth was not an end in itself, and did not cause
friction with their dependants, this poison did not
work ; but there must have come a time when it
began to narrow their views of life and its ends,
and brought them into collision both with the king
and with the people. The earliest glimpses we get
of ancient law show us that the disputes to be
decided were disputes about property ; and the
earliest political revolutions of which we have any
knowledge arose out of unequal distribution of
wealth. It is not too much, then, to conjecture that
at a very early period these noble families found it
convenient to take into their own hands the control
of the unwritten law, and that one reason at least
why the monarchies had to disappear was because
they stood in the way of this. The king, as we
saw, was the fountain of justice ; and if his decisions
interfered with the interests of the nobility in their
dealings with their inferiors, his power must be
limited or got rid of entirely. The assembly of
nobles which had acted as his advising body must
also be able to control him, or the executive power
he possessed must pass directly into the hands of
the members of it.

Thus narrowed and strengthened both in ^he
pride of birth and in the power of wealth, the aris-
tocracies both in Greece and at Rome set their hands
to modify the form of government so as to bring it

102 THE CITY-STATE chap

more into harmony with their own particular in-
terests ; and we must now turn to examine briefly
the way in which this change was accomplished.
We know something of it at Athens, and have
recently learnt more ; we have also some knowledge
of it at Eome, and in one or two other States.

The revolutions at Athens and Eome may be
described, so far as we can understand them, as
generically the same but specifically different. They
seem to offer a contrast in more than one important
point. At Eome there is every sign that the
monarchy came to an end suddenly, and that this
was the result of attempts on the part of a power-
ful monarch to override the aristocracy. But at
Athens we may guess that the king's power fell to
pieces gradually, and that what brought it to an
end was not increasing strength, but increasing
weakness. As we saw (p. 49), the noble families
had, in part at least, migrated from the country to
Athens, and thus found their opportunity of slowly
closing in upon the king, whose power might have
grown much more conspicuous had not his councillors
been constantly around him. He seems never to have
struggled against them with any serious effort or
success. There is no Attic tradition of misdoing or
tyranny on the part of the king. The word Basileus
was never held in execration by the Athenians.
We do not hear that any attempt was made by the
king to " take the people into partnership," and
play them off against the nobility. There is no
trace in later Athenian feeling of any memory of hot
blood or evil doing in this revolution ; the develop-

iV tllSE OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT lO^

meut of the constitution must have proceeded gradu-
ally and rationally, as it also continued to do in
later stages of its growth, until complete democracy
was reached. There are few surprises in Athenian
political history : the constitution grows with the
growing intelligence of the people, whose love of
order and sterling good sense is obvious throughout.
With the aid of the recently discovered Aris-
totelian tract on the Athenian constitution,^ we may
now believe the change from monarchy to aristo-
cracy to have been in outline as follows. Codrus, the/'
last king in the full sense of the word, was succeeded/
by a line of Basileis who held the kingship fori
life, hut not hy simple hereditary right. This line,
the Medontidae, or family of Medon, son of Codrus,
remained the kingly family ; but any member of it
might be selected to fill the kingly office, and this ;
selection was in the hands of the aristocracy. How 1
this selection was managed, whether by lot or by
voting in the council of nobles meeting on the hill
of Ares, we do not at present know. But it is plain
that we have here, in the new expedient of selection,
the first appearance of something like a constitu-
tional magistracy, as distinguished from the tradi-
tional and hereditary power of the king. And this
is seen still more plainly in the fact — if such it be
— which we have but just discovered, that the king
has now to share his powers with other authorities,
to whom we can give no other name but that of
magistrate. A Polemarch was appointed to help i
the king in war ; and later on an Archon, who

^ 'A.67]paiwv TToXtreia, 1-3

104 THE CITY-STATE chap

probably relieved him of some of the judicial work
which must have been his chief civil duty.

Then came a time when the Basileus had so far
sunk in reputation in comparison with these two
magistracies that it was possible and advisable to
deprive him entirely of his military functions, and
also to leave him only a part of his judicial power.
There remained to him only the sacrificial duties
which were traditionally associated with the title of
Basileus, and the cognisance of certain crimes of a
religious character. To take these from him would
be a violation of divine law ; but no such scruple
need be felt in passing his other prerogatives into
alien hands. As the most important of these were
no doubt the judicial, it is the Archon who now
rises to the first place in consideration, with the
Polemarch below him as General, while the Basileus
occupies a place midway between the two. The
Archon, however, is not to step into the place
which the kingly family held ; he henceforward
holds his position not for life, hut for a period of
ten years. At first it seems that both he and the
Basileus, if not the Polemarch too, were selected
from the family of the Medontidse ; for it was not
easy to get rid of the idea that the " ruler " must
be a person qualified by the divine right of descent,
as well as by ability or prowess. But at a date
which is usually fixed as 752 B.C., the Archonship
at least came to be thrown open to all the noble
families. And in the seventh century (682 B.C.)
we find the constitution passing without further
difficulty into a real republican form of government ;

IV RISE OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 105

for at this time the tenure of all three offices is
said to have become annual in duration, and six
more Archons were added to help in performing the
growing business of the State. These came to be
known as Thesmothetse. All nine magistrates must
now have been chosen from the whole body of the
aristocracy, and at the end of their period of office
have passed into the aristocratic council for life.

Here, then, is aristocratic government complete
and organised. There are two leading features in
it as we see it at Athens. First, we have a close
corporation of privileged noble families who call
themselves Eupatridse — a word which shows that it
was high descent which they conceived as con-
stituting their chief claim to predominance. They
were privileged, because they alone could hold office
in the State, and they alone could select the officers ;
they only, in fact, were in the true sense of the
word iroXlrai, citizens. The political organ which
represented this corporation was almost without
doubt the council of the Areopagus. Secondly, we
find a distribution of the functions of executive
government, including, of course, religious duties,
among a certain small number of officials, elected
by the whole body of the privileged. These two
features were probably common to the Greek aris-
tocracies of this period, and they are indeed of the
essence of all aristocratic or oligarchic government.
We shall find them also at Eome, though naturally
varying in some points from the Athenian type.

At Eome the power of the king had been stronger
than at Athens, stronger perhaps than in any Greek

106 THE CITY-STATE chap.

State. The Koman aristocracy consisted of farmers
on a large scale, who probably spent much of their
time in the country; thus, unlike the Athenian
nobility, they may have failed to act as a timely
obstacle to the free exercise of the monarch's per-
sonal power. However this may have been, that
power was in itself vividly realised at Eome, and
capable of being used with a high hand. Two
unmistakable facts show this distinctly. First,
as we have already seen, the Koman genius for
politics had by this time produced a technical word,
imperium, for plenary magisterial and military power,
and this proves that they had a more definite con-
ception of what such power meant than the Athen
ians, who had no such word. Secondly, there can
be no doubt that the last of the Roman kings tried
to carry the exercise of this imperium beyond the
limits which a reverential custom had set upon it
— to turn it, in fact, into a tyranny. Tarquinius
Superbus is no mythical figure in Eoman history.
Though we need not believe the stories told of him,
some of which can be traced to non-Eoman sources,
we may take it for granted that there was really
such a king, that he was an Etruscan by birth, and
that he used the imperium in a way which was
foreign to Eoman custom.^ Had there been no such
king, it would doubtless have been found necessary
sooner or later to modify the practical working of
the imperium in the hands of a single man ; but
the conduct of Tarquinius hastened the critical
moment.

^ Moramsen, Hist, of Eome, vol, i. p. 255.

IV RISE OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 107

Here, then, the executive power had to he in some
degree restricted; and the vray in which the Eoman
aristocracy contrived this is most curious and in-
teresting. They could not part with the imperium
they had created. Like the patria potestas of their
home life, it had come to be a part of their mental
furniture as social beings ; and more than this, to
abolish anything was all but impossible to the
Eoman mind. Institutions might grow, change,
decay, fall into desuetude, or become mere forms ;
but as descended from the fathers of the State/
they could not be wholly done away with. They/
had once been useful, and might in some way be(
useful again. To those familiar with Eoman his-|
tory many examples will occur of this peculiar
tenacity of conservatism ; but the change from
monarchy to aristocracy in 509 B.C. is the first
and perhaps the most striking.

The imiierium of the Eex was not abolished.*^
His title only, and some of his insignia, disappeared
from the political system. From religious observ-
ance, however, it was not possible wholly to sever
the title of the priest-king, or the relations of the
State to the gods might be compromised. A Eex,
who resided in the king's house (regia), continued
to perform the kingly sacrifices, and held the first
place on certain formal occasions among all the
Eoman priests, but he had no imperium, and was
disqualified from holding any civil office.^ The
imperium, however, remained, but it was now

* For the survival of the title also in the form interrex, see the
last edition of Smith's Diet, of Antiquities, s.v.

108 THE CITY-STATE chap.

entrusted to two magistrates instead of one, and
not for their lifetime, but for one year only, at the
end of which they were morally, though not legally,
bound to resign it. So long as they held it they
could use it undiminished in war, and with hardly
a single direct limitation in the city itself. They
were nominally quite independent of each other;
and if the action of the one crossed that of the
other, the result was simply that imperium was
hampered by imperium, not by any new factor in
the constitution. These two yearly kings could
imprison, scourge, and put to death, could issue
edicts and command armies, and could appoint their
successors, just as the king for life had done. In
the eye of the law the imperium was undiminished ;
it only changed hands once every year.

Yet while keeping this precious political con-
ception to all appearance intact, the aristocracy
contrived to prevent its being so used as again to
override the custom of the State, or indeed to inter-
fere with their own interests. We saw that the
king had been expected to consult his Senate — a
custom said to have been neglected by the second
Tarquinius. No law was passed, now or at any
time, which compelled the magistrate to ask or take
adyice, but the altered conditions under which the
imperium was now held made it practically neces-
sary for him to do so. He would be himself an
adviser after his year of office was over, and more-
( over he would be, as a private individual, liable to
* criticism in the Senate, and to accusation before
the people. He would wish to strengthen himself

rv RISE OF AKISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 109

against such chances by following the general voice
of the aristocracy assembled in the Senate. And
it was not long before habit had made this practice
into a definite constitutional principle, affecting all
the magistrates of the Eepublic, with results of the
greatest importance ; for it eventually raised the
Senate from the position of an advising council to
that of a supreme administrative body^ whose advice
became the utterance of an authority which even the
holder of the imperium was morally bound to obey.

Again, it was now laid down by law, according
to the universal tradition of the Eomans, that the
imperium should not be used to put to death any
Roman citizen without allowing him that right of
appealing from the magistrate to the people, which
the king had usually perhaps been willing to allow,
but might certainly refuse if he chose. For this
purpose, as well as for others to be mentioned
hereafter, the convention of the whole number of
citizens in their military array (comitia centuriata)
was now made to serve as a political assembly,
answering yes or no to the question (rogatio) of the
presiding magistrate. The consul was now boun(^
by law to allow this appeal, and this was perhaps"
the only direct legal limitation placed on his im-{
permm. It was a necessary one, if the aristocracy
were really to control their executive, or even to
secure themselves against it; and as they had a
majority of votes in this new fonm of assembly
(to which we shall return later on), their security
was practically complete.

The imperium, then, though in theory it remained

110 THE CITY-STATE chap

as free and absolute as ever, was practically
restricted in civil matters — (1) in respect of the
time for which it was held, and the relation to each
other of the two magistrates who held it; (2) in
respect of the relations of these magistrates to the
other parts of the nascent constitution, the Senate
and the centuriate assembly. But in the sense of
a military command it was still free from all limi-
tations save that of the duration of a campaign.
The good sense of the Eomans retained for their
consuls in the field a temporary absolutism as com-
plete as that of the king. They were free from the
necessity of consulting the Senate, and they held
the power of life and death unhampered by the
right of the accused to appeal to the people.
Hence arose a distinction between the imperium
in the city (domi) and the same imperium in the
field (militice), which was maintained throughout
the life of the Eepublic, and which must be
clearly grasped before the Eoman system of
government can be understood adequately. It was
only when that government passed once more into
the hands of a single man that this distinction
vanished, and Caesar and his successors held a
single undivided and unrestricted imperium}

Our knowledge of this revolution at Kome rests
on no contemporary records, only on the traditions
of the Romans and on scraps of learning collected
by their antiquaries, sifted and supplemented by the
modern " method of survivals." Yet it is the most

^ Mommsen, Staatsrecht, i. 59 foil. ; article " Imperium " in
Did. of Antiquities (new edition).

iv RISE OF AlilSTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 111

consistent account we have of any such revolution,
and the mutilated beginning of the lately discovered
" Constitution of Athens " has not placed the corre-
sponding change at Athens equally beyond doubt
in its leading features. At Eome we can see quite
plainly how an aristocracy with a strong political and
legal instinct went about the difficult task of getting
the executive into its own hands, neither diminishing
its efficiency on the one hand, nor yet leaving it so
uncontrolled as to be capable of further misusa

But from Athenian, as from Eoman, history we
may learn at this point a most valuable lesson.
Our complicated modern constitutions make it hard
for us to realise the fact that the earliest form of
government was simply an executive power, and
nothing more. It consisted of a single man's power
to command, unrestricted save by moral checks.
Such a power, such a discipline, were necessary to
the infant State, as they had been also to the family.
There might be a council of high-born advisers, and
there might be assemblies of the people held from
time to time, but neither of these had any direct
share in the government of the State, which was
the task of the king alone.

Now it must be placed to the credit of the aris-
tocracies that just as they first developed the idea
of duty to the State, so they transformed this
executive government from a primitive contrivance
into a part of a real constitutional system. Had
they destroyed the executive power, they would
probably have destroyed the State too ; had they
attempted to pass it over to their council, and so to

112 THE CITY-STATE chap, iy

share it amongst their whole number, they would
have weakened it irretrievably. As it was, they
kept the power intact, but they made it a duty as
well as an honour — a duty to be shared by the
holder with one or two others, and for a set time
only ; a duty for the good performance of which
the holders would be made responsible as soon as
they returned to the life of private citizens.

This, then, is the point at which the constitu-
tional history of the ancient State really begins. It
is a great epoch, for now begins also the idea of
political order; not of order only in the sense of
traditional and trustful obedience to a hereditary
monarchy, but order in the sense of conscious
organisation by an intelligent body of privileged
individuals. From our better knowledge of later
history we are apt to see both Greek and Koman
aristocracies in a bad light ; we do not easily
recognise the value of their contribution to political
history, because we find them acting as a purely
conservative social force, and acting usually from
self-regarding motives in the later series of political
changes. But it was really to them that even the
democracies themselves owed those traditions of
solid government which enabled them to govern
at all ; and it will hardly be going too far to say
that all the three constitutional germs which we
find in the infant State — the king, the council, and
the people, or the executive, the deliberative and
the legislative elements in the later constitutions —
owed both their survival and their development to
the political intelligence of the aristocracies.

CHAPTEE V

TRANSITION FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY
(GREECE)

The picture given in the last chapter of the rule of
the aristocracies was necessarily a somewhat ideal
one. We were dealing with a period of which
we have no direct historical evidence ; we had to
interpret the work of the aristocracies by attri-
buting to them a certain stage of development in
the life of the City-State, which cannot, so far as
we can see, be accounted for in any other way.^
That work must have been partly destructive,
partly constructive. The loose fabric of ancient
monarchy was pulled down ; but a new fabric
slowly arose, more compact, and better suited to

* From what is now called the Mycenaean age, i.e. the age of
the art treasures found at Mycenae and elsewhere, to the seventh
century, there is a gap in Greek history, generally supposed to he
occupied by a Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese, by a series of
colonising movements, by the settlement of the constitution at
Sparta, and the abolition of kingship elsewhere. All these events
belong to the age of aristocracy, or (what is the same thing) to the
age of declining kingship.

I

114 THE CITY-STATE CHAP.

the society which was to shelter under it. In the
council of nobles men must have begun to learn
what government means — how to deliberate with
due regard for order, for the opinions of others, and
for the good of the State. Here were learnt, if we
are right, those necessary lessons in the grammar of
politics, which are so much a part of our own mental
furniture that we can hardly conceive of a time
when they had still to be slowly and painfully
acquired.

But the very learning of this lesson was a process
which must in time have narrowed the interests
and prejudices of the learners. Where we first meet
with aristocracies in records which may be called
historical, we can see that while much progress has
been made in the art of government, the governors
have become a class whose sympathies are limited,
and whose motives are self-regarding. Government
has in fact become a science known only to the few,
and as the few were also the rich, their political
education has taught them not only how to govern,
but how to make government protect and advance
their own interests. Some indication was given in
the last chapter of the way in which this might
come about, when we endeavoured to explain how
the nobility found it expedient to put an end to
kingship. We must now look at the same ten-
dency from a different point of view, and show how,
perhaps at the same time, the few began to slide
into a sharper opposition to the many than had as
yet been felt since the beginning of the City-State.

Greek history proper may be said to begin in the

V FKOM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 115

seventh century B.C., and to increase in value greatly
in the sixth. Here we begin to find our footing
firmer, meeting as we do with the earliest lyric
poetry, with archaic works of art, with an inscrip-
tion here and there, and with historical traditions
preserved in later writers such as Herodotus, Thu-
cydides, Aristotle, and Plutarch.^ Koman history
proper begins later, in the fifth century, and is less
certain, depending entirely on tradition, or on records
of a doubtful character used by Livy and Dionysius
as late as the age of Augustus. But both in Greece
and Italy, as soon as the mist begins to lift, what
we dimly see is much the same. We see aristo-
cracies narrowed in interests, and brought into
sharp opposition with the class below them ; in
some cases they triumph, as at Sparta, and prolong
the age of aristocracy into a hard and barren period
of oligarchic rule; in others they are gradually
forced to give way, and to learn another and yet
more difficult lesson than that of the art of govern-
ment by a class. When this new lesson is learnt,
new prospects of prosperity, both material and
moral, are opened to the State which has had
sufficient patience and good sense to learn it.

But how has this sharp opposition arisen be-
tween the few and the many ? In the age of king-
ship, as we saw, the functions of government were
religious, judicial, and military. These functions

^ To these should be added the poems of Hesiod, and especially
the Woi'ks and Days, which gives us a picture of the conditions of
life in Bceotia at a very early period ; but we do not know the
exact date of these poems.

116 THE CITY-STATE CUAP

have now passed out of the hands of the king,
and belong to the magistrates and council of the
aristocracy. Let us see how they might be used so
as to favour the interests of the few as against
those of the many.

The secrets of religion consisted of a knowledge
of the ritual proper to each occasion ; the know-
ledge, that is, of the art of keeping the human
inhabitants of the city on good terms with its divine
members. Every public act was accompanied by a
sacrifice, and all sacrifices must be performed in
exactly the right way. The sacrificial hymns must
be rightly sung ; the omens must be taken, the
purificatory processions conducted, exactly in the
received manner, or the gods would not answer and
bless.^ The whole life and happiness of the State
depended on the proper performance of these
necessary duties.

Now in a State made up, as we have seen, by
the union of lesser communities, each of which
had its own peculiar worship conducted by its own
noble family or families, it is plain that all these
worships, now embodied in the State, must have
remained in the hands of the aristocracy. The
whole organisation of the State's religious life was
theirs also. The regulation of festivals, of marriages,
of funerals, of holy places and land belonging to the

^ No better example of this principle can be found than in the
great inscription from Iguvium in Italy, which gives at great
length the ritual of a purificatory procession round the city. A
single slip necessitated the" returning of the procession tc the point
last started from. — Biicheler, Umbrica, p. 21, etc.

V FROM ARISTOCEACY TO DEMOCRACY 117

gods, — all that the Eomans understood by the words
jus sacrum, — was theirs and theirs only. For a
person to meddle with such things, who was not
qualified by birth or education or tradition, nor
expressly invited by the State as a reformer, was
not only to interfere with the rights of a class,
but positively to disturb the good relations of the
city with its gods, and thus to imperil its very
life.^ Of these relations, and of this life, the noble
families were in a way trustees ; what wonder,
then, if their trusteeship increased their pride
and narrowed their sympathies, raising in them a
growing contempt for men who knew nothing of
the will or the needs of the divine inhabitants of
the city ?

So it was also in the region of profane law, as
it slowly disentangled itself from the law of religi-
ous usage. Here, too, the rule held good that all
solemn acts must be performed according to pre-
scribed order, if they were to have any binding
force. Eules governing the tenure of land, rules
governing the transference of all property by suc-
cession or sale, rules governing the treatment of
evil-doers and the adjustment of all disputes, so
far as they came under the cognisance of the State
at all, were known and administered by the aris-
tocracy only. They were as much matter of technical
and traditional knowledge as the religious law, and
could not be administered save by those to whom
a divine order had entrusted that knowledge. The
executive of the State, in fact, was in the hands of

^ See e.g. Livy, iv. chaps. 2 and 6.

118 THE CITY-STATE chap.

the only true statesmen {iroXiTai)} What wonder
then, once more, if these men and their families
believed themselves to be the only lawful possessors
of secrets of government, as well as of religion,
which they might turn to their own particular
advantage ?

Even in military matters — the third depart-
ment of government — the same tendency is seen ;
for the aristocracy took the greater risk in actual
warfare, and were at greater expense than the
commons in providing themselves with horses and
superior arms.^ They, like the chivalry of the
middle ages, were the flower of the State's army;
they had a greater stake in the State and they bore
the greater burden. What wonder, then, if they,
like their mediaeval counterparts, came to look down
on the people as louts who could not or would not
fight, unworthy alike of honour on the battlefield,
and of power in the constitution ? ^

Thus we may be sure that in course of time
there came to be a greater distinctness of outline in

* In Homer the ttoXlttjs is literally the dweller in the 7r6Xts as
opposed to the dweller in the dypos : 11. ii. 806 ; Od. vii. 131,
xvii. 206. The latter two passages may indicate a time when the
word was beginning to be used in its later sense ; for it is the
nobility that dwells in the ir&Xis, as in the Mycenaean age it was,
perhaps, only the ^aaCkevTaros.

2 Aristotle, Pol. 1297 B ; Gilbert, ii. 274.

' This contempt is visible even in Homer, where, however, it
may be rather a reflex from the age of the compilers (ninth to
seventh century) than a feature of the " Mycenaean " age : Od. i.
411, iv. 64, vi. 187 ; and even in II. xiv. 126, xvi. 570. Fanta,
Der Siaat, etc. p. 14. The next point at which we meet it is in
the poems of Theognis.

V FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 119

the position of the class to whom all these secrets
and advantages belonged. While the State was not
yet fully realised, while its elements were still in
solution, this distinctness was less strong. But
when the various elements of population came to
face each other in the well-knit State, the idea of
'privilege began to make itself felt. The holders of
the secrets which we have been describing, so soon
as they began to use them for their own advantage
as a class, would cease to be thought of as heaven-
appointed trustees, and would come to be considered
as privileged.

And as such we find them when history opens.
Their right to exclusive advantages is already ques-
tioned, and they are themselves responsible for this.
They have initiated a period in which the estab-
lished order is called in question. They claim to be
the only true men of the State, and thus suggest the
question of what citizenship is, and who is a citizen.
They absorb the land, by lending money or stock
on the security of estate or person, and thus they
raise questions about the justice of the unwritten
law, and the power of the executive which enforces
it. In manners and bearing they show an increas-
ing contempt for all who are not born and educated
like themselves, and for all employments which are
not after their own kind ; and here again they
unconsciously invite questioning as to the order of
things in the world — the difference between free-
man and slave, rich and poor, noble and ignoble.
It is this questioning that is the chief characteristic
of the age we now have to deal with — an age in

120 THE CITY-STATE chap,

which the old order of things ceases to be thought
of as divinely dispensed, the old worships are to be
no longer the only ones which claim the attention
of the State, and membership in the old groups of
noble clans no longer the sole test of real citizen-
ship. Aristocracy, in fact, has ceased in any
real sense to be the rule of the best, and has be-
come the rule of the few and rich. It has lost its
essential character, and men begin to ask questions
about it, — to call in question its claim for reverence;
it is known now asoli^archv, the rule of the wealthy
few, and continues so to be known, wherever it is
found, throughout Greek history.^

As yet we have said little or nothing about the
population from which the aristocracy thus came to
be more and more vividly distinguished, and on whose
interests it now began seriously to encroach. But
it is the rise of this population into prominence
which has made both Greek and Eoman history
really valuable for us ; and before we exemplify that
rise in any single State, we must form some idea
of who they were. The aristocracies did their
part, as we have seen ; but the essential fibre of a
people is not to be found in an upper class only,
and any class, however gifted, must sooner or later
dwindle and decay. The questioning, the ferment-
ation, which appears in Greece in or about the
seventh century, indicates the growth in intelli-
gence and aspiration of this lower population ; it
shows that the lessons of public duty and of the
art of government, which the nobles have been

» Aristotle, Politics, 1290 B ; cf. 1293 B.

V FROM ARISTOCEACY TO DEMOCRACY 121

learning, have had an influence beyond their own
ranks.

Those free persons who are not dwellers in the
city, i.e. the fortress, like the king or the leading
nobles, appear in Homer as either aypoicorai, i.e.
tillers of the soil, shepherds, and herdsmen, or,
on the other hand, as TeKTov6<; avhpe<;, or STj/bULoepyoL,
namely, craftsmen, tradesmen, and what we should
call professional men.^ All these clearly formed
part of the community (Srjfio^),^ as distinguished
from the slaves ; they served in war Kara ^vXa
Kara (j)pijTpa<; (II. ii. 362), i.e. according to the
groups of kinship in which they lived at home.^ On
the whole, the "people" of the Homeric age must
be thought of as numerous, industrious, and content
with their position as labourers on the land or
artisans in the city."^

We do not know for certain what part of Greece
the Homeric descriptions represent ; but in historical
times the lower populations of many States do not
accord with them, owing to changes caused by
migrations and conquests, of which the greatest was

^ Fanta, Der Staat in der Ilias u. Odyssee, j). 42 foil.

2 This is the word in Homer for the city and its land taken
together, e.g. IL. ii. 547. Fanta, p. 12.

^ This population may have been gradually increased in certain
ways, e.g. by liberation of slaves, and by reception of foreigners
skilled in some craft ; as e.g. in Od. xvii. 383, "craftsmen of the
people, a prophet or a healer of ills, a shipwTight, or a godlike
minstrel " ; but whether such persons were admitted into the (pvXa
and (ppriTpai must be very doubtful.

* These last would live, as seems to have been the ease at
Mycense and the Acropolis of Athens, not in the citadel, but in
the suburb below.

122 THE CITY-STATE CHAf

the invasion of the Peloponnese by the Dorians. The
" people " in most Peloponnesian States were not
really a part of the State at all, but had been
reduced to subjection by conquest, and so remained.
But in Attica, which had never been completely
overrun by invaders, we get glimpses of a popula-
tion which strongly reminds us of Homer. In
contrast to the Eupatridse or nobles was a class
sometimes called Georgi^ (husbandmen), sometimes
Demiurgi (artisans) ; and we may think of these as
partly small landowners, together with shepherds
and herdsmen on the high lands, partly as artisans
and labourers for hire, living at the foot of the
Acropolis, and fishermen on the sea coast. Per-
haps we may generalise so far as to conclude that
in most Greek States, ere yet the slaves had become
very numerous, such a class existed, whose occupa-
tions enabled the great to live in affluence ; in some
cases, as at Sparta, these were almost in the position
of serfs, and in no sense citizens, while in others, as
at Athens, they were all included in the groups of
Attic kin, 2 and formed a part of the State proper,
though they had no share in the government except
in so far as they might be occasionally summoned
to an assembly.^ And as the aristocracies grew

' OrGeomori, Pollux, 8, 111. There is much confusion about these
names : cf. Gilbert, i. Ill note. In the Ath. Pol. ch. 13, the Georgi
appear as Agroiki, and the classes are three.

2 See Gilbert, i. Ill ; Holm, i. 457.

3 In the colonies, or at least the western ones, the conditions
were again different ; the first settlers constituting an aristocracy
80 soon as new settlers arrived, and the latter becoming a body of
" outsiders " desirous of sharing in land and government. See

V FROM ARISTOCKACY TO DEMOCRACY 123

narrower, the occasions of meeting became natur-
ally fewer.

It was among this lower population that the
questioning we have spoken of was first heard.
Some of them may have advanced in position and
wealth in an age which developed a great com-
mercial system,^ and in some States numbers left
their homes and settled in the colonies which the
same commercial enterprise was now forming. But
in Attica, which shared but little in this colonising
movement, the mass of the people became steadily
depressed, as we shall see, by the aristocracy, or, as
we may now call it, the oligarchy ; and social dis-
content and economical difficulties began to have
their natural result upon politics. The age of
fermentation sets in. In the rest of this chapter
we can only trace the leading characteristics of this
fermentation in Greece, and especially at Athens,
where alone we get any comprehensive view of it ;
later on we shall deal with the parallel movement
at Eome.

Let us note in the first place that in Greece the
disturbance almost everywhere took the form of a
tendency to set up an executive power stronger
than that of the existing oligarchy. The few had
formerly suited their own interests by appropriat-
ing the executive power of the kings, which was
not usually a difficult process, as they belonged to
the same class as the king. It was now becoming

Freeman, Hist, of Sicily, ii. 11 foil., and cf. the early history of
Gyrene in Herodotus, iv. 159 foil.
» Thucyd. i. 13.

124 THE CITY-STATE chap

the instiuct of the many to consult their advantage
also by appropriating the executive of the few;
but this was a much harder task, and the many
were almost always compelled to begin, not by
abolishing or directly attacking it, but simply by
setting it aside and creating a new and still stronger
government in its place. This was a rude ex-
pedient, though perhaps the only possible one. It
was in some instances so violent a remedy as to
become in itself a formidable disease. It weakened
the ideas of law and order, — the very ideas which
the long ages of aristocratic government had created
or confirmed; it set class against class; it roused
dangerous ambitions in the minds of men who loved
power and wealth ; it broke roughly ^nto the natural
and tranquil course of political advance. Yet it was
so universal in Greece in this age that we must
believe it to have been a necessity ; one which
arose from the over-long acquiescence by the people
in the aristocratic monopoly of wealth, education,
and power.

To this strong executive, which practically meant
absolutism, the Greeks gave two different names
answering to the two ways in which it might be
constituted. If it were set up by the general
assent of the community, or by the action of an
oligarchy more reasonable than usual, with the
temporary object of adjusting the constitution to
the needs of the age, its holder was called Aisym-
netes, or arbiter. If on the other hand an in-
dividual citizen, either with good or evil intent,
pushed himself into the position of an autocrat, oi

V FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 125

rose to it by the action of the unprivileged class
only, he was called tyrant.-^ In either case the
immediate result was the same ; the oligarchic exe-
cutive disappeared, and in most cases could never
be re-established on the old basis of social prestige.
But the indirect results were often different ; for
the tyrant was apt to leave behind him a legacj*
of revolutionary tendency, the natural fruit of his
own violence and self-seeking ; while the arbiter
had at least the chance of leaving a well-ordered
State as the result of his labours, which in spite of
subsequent difficulties and dangers might never
wholly forget the lesson it had received. The
government of the arbiter was a government of
reason, based on law and begetting law ; ^ the
government of the tyrant was often one of passion,
begetting a spirit of lawlessness utterly alien to the
true Greek nature.

The position and work of the arbiter may best
be studied in the history of Athens. The tyrant
is also to be found there, and, strange to say, im-
mediately following on the arbiter; but the rule
of the latter had here preserved the instinct of
order, and the tyranny is for the most part of so
mild a nature as hardly to be characteristic. I
shall therefore postpone the consideration of the
real tyrant to the end of this chapter, and keep for
the present to Athens, where, in spite of the un-

^ Freeman, Sicily, ii. 49 foil. Aristotle defines the position ot
the Aisymnetes as alperrj rvpavvls {Pol. 1285 B), the rvpavvis as
iiovapx^o. Trpbs rb a^ficpepov t6 tov fiovapxovvTOS {Pol. 1279 B).

2 Cf. Butcher, Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, p. 57 foil.

126 THE CITY-STATE chap.

certainty of historic details, we shall be able to
detect the fermentation which called for the en-
trusting of abnormal power to an individual
arbiter, and to see something of the use he made
of it, as well as of the excellent results he left
behind him.

• The period of fermentation begins at Athens
towards the close of the seventh century. Three
successive events illustrate its progress.

The first of these (though their order is indeed
somewhat uncertain) is the appearance for the first
time of a code of written law, attributed to the
aristocrat Draco, in the year 621^B.c.^ The recent
discovery of the Aristotelian treatise on the Athenian
constitution has so far only added confusion to our
ignorance of this man and his work ; for the new
account is so strange, and so much in contradiction
with what little we knew before, that grave sus-
picions have been aroused as to the real origin and
application of the chapter which contains it. But
for us at present it will suflSce to note the simple
fact that law is now for the first time in Athenian
history set down in writing, and the task entrusted
to a leading individual with full powers. About
the same time, or later, we find the same pheno-
menon in other parts of Hellas. The lawgivers of
the age, such as Zaleucus of Locri in Italy, and
Charondas of Catana in Sicily, do not indeed offer
an exact analogy to Draco ; they correspond rather
with Draco's great successor. But the lesson for us
is the same in all these cases, and also in the legisla-

» Aristotle, Pol. ii. 12, 1274 B ; Ath. Pol. ch. iv.

FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 127

tion of the Decemvirate at Rome, which we shall
notice in a later chapter. Whether the customary
law was substantially changed or simply com-
mitted to writing, it is plain that it is to be no
longer the private possession of a class. The secrets
of aristocratic rule are being revealed to the whole
community ; questioning has begun — questioning as
to the rules which the oligarchic executive ad-
ministers. And the first signs of distrust in the
executive and its administration are perhaps to be
seen in the fact that the task of writing down the
law is entrusted to a single individual, and not to
that executive as a whole.

The next event is a deliberate attempt at tyranny
on the part of an Athenian who had married the
daughter of Theagenes, tyrant of Megara. This is
none the less significant because it was a failure.
Like Theagenes in the neighbouring State, Cylon
probably represented a popular feeling; but the
State was not^et ripe for tyranny. The oligarchic
executive was too strong~for him, and according to
the story, he made the mistake of using Megarian
troops to seize on the Acropolis. This brought the
oligarchy and the people for the moment into sym-
pathy, and the Cylonians were besieged in the
stronghold. Cylon himself escaped, but Megacles
the archon, of the great family of the Alcmaeonidae,
put the rest to death after promising to spare their
lives ; some were even slain at the altar where they
had taken refuge. The story is most striking, aa
pointing to an unwholesome and surprising dis-
regard of honour and sanctuary in the oligarchic

128 THE CITY-STATE chap.

executive, which looks as though they felt they
were living on a volcano ready at any time to
break out in eruption, and must at all risks en-
deavour to check the popular tendency.^

The third event which shows disturbance in
Attica is the most singular of all. Plutarch, in
describing it, uses language which implies that the
Athenian State was suffering from a malignant
disease in religion and morals, and that the happy
relations between the human and divine inhabitants
of Attica were seriously deranged. As in the case
of bodily disease, this cannot be ascribed to a single
event only, such as the Cylonian sacrilege ; it in-
dicates an unhealthy condition. Fear, pestilence,
disaster, are only symptoms of a general demoralis-
ation, caused in part perhaps by the rise of new ideas
and the introduction of new and strange 'worships
among the lower classes. The remedy was curious ;
they sent for a wise man, as a minister of religion,
to set them right. The mission of Epimenides the
Cretan to Athens is a singular example of that
readiness to submit their troubles to a master-mind
which is characteristic of the earlier Greeks ; it is in
fact no more than the tendency towards absolutism
taking an unusual form. It may be that we should
see in it the first public recognition of certain new
worships which had crept into Attica, and which
were afterwards embodied in the calendar of public
feasts by Pisistratus, on behalf of the lower popula-
tion whose interests he represented.^ Ej)_im.eiiides,

» Thucyd. i. 126 ; Plut. Solon, 12. Cf. Ath. Pol. i.

^ Dyer, Gods in Gh-eece, p. 125 foil. For Epimenides, read

p

FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 129

according to tradition, ordered the public religion
anew, puriMjhe„coimtrj, and tranquillised its in-
habitants for a time.

These three events, showing stir in the Athenian
population, prepare us for the approach of demo-
cracy, and through democracy for the ripening of the
choicest fruit that the wonderful Greek people ever
produced. But democracy could not even approach
without still greater pain and trouble than we have
yet met with in Attica. It is always social dis-
content and economical distress which causes friction
between a people and its rulers to become a positive
danger and to lead to revolution and anarchy;^
while an unprivileged class is still materially com-
fortable, it does not feel keenly its want of privilege.
The unprivileged at Athens, according to our ac-
counts, had been long growing more and more
uncomfortable, and the oligarchs were probably well
aware that revolution was at hand. Neither the
laws of Draco nor the purification by Epimenides
had sufficed. At the root of all the troubles lay
an economical distress, which is thus briefly de-
scribed by the author of the treatise on the
Athenian constitution : —

" Not only was the constitution at this time oligarchical
in every respect, but the poorer classes, men, women, and
children, were in absolute slavery to the rich. They were
known as Pelatce and also as Hektemori, because they culti-

Plut. Solon, 12, aud of. tlie mission of Demonax to Cyrene in
Herodotus, iv. 162. In later times Timoleou affords a parallel ou
the political side : see Plutarch's Life of Timoleon.
^ Aristotle was aware of this : Politics, 1297 B.
K

130 THE CITY-STATE chap.

vated the lands of the rich for a sixth part of the produce.
The whole country was in the hands of a few persons, and
if the tenants failed to pay their rent, they were liable to be
haled into slavery, and their children with them. Their
persons were mortgaged to their creditors . . . ; but the
hardest and bitterest part of the condition of the masses was
the fact that they had no share in the offices then existing
under the constitution. ... To speak generally, they had
no part or share in anything." i

This is nothing but the familiar story of the
accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, with
the usual ethical results : the deterioration of aristo-
cratic character into plutocratic, and the shifting of
the sense of duty from the State as its object to
individual interests. It is entirely confirmed by
the poems of Solon, the only contemporary evidence
we possess, which formed no doubt the basis of later
accounts, such as that just quoted. The author of
the treatise himself quotes most appositely four lines
which exactly express the new spirit of questioning
as well as its chief cause —

" But ye who have store of good, who are sated and overflow,
Kestrain your swelling soul, and still it and keep it low ;
Let the heart that is great within you be trained a lowlier

way;
Ye shall not have all at your will, and we will not for

ever obey." ^

1 Ath. Pol oh. 5. Cf. the words of Plutarch, Solon, ch. 13 at
end.

' v/xeh 5' Tjavxdffavres ivl (ppeffl KOLprepov ijrop,
ot iroWQv arfaOdv is Kbpov [riK\6.ffaT€,
iv /xerpioicn T[/)^0ea"&]e fxiyav voov oiire yhp rjixets
irei(r6fied\ oijd' vfuv Apria Ta[vT'] ecrerai.

I have borrowed Mr. Kenyon's spirited translation. These lines
were new to us when the treatise was discovered.

? FIIOM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 131

In the last few generations it is plain that the
privileged of Attica have become richer, and the
unprivileged poorer. This was a disease to which
the City -State was always peculiarly liable, as
Aristotle well knew,^ and we shall have to recur to
it later on ; it was indeed one of the leading causes
of the ultimate decay of this form of State. And
in Attica wars, bad harvests, increasing commerce,
pestilence, and the harsh law of debt, all had their
share in magnifying the disproportion between
wealth and poverty, and between the political
power of the rich and the political helplessness of
the poor.2 Yet it was the peculiar good fortune of
Athens that, severely attacked as she was by troubles
of this kind, she found a physician so single-minded
and so self-restrained that she had good reason to
be for ever grateful to him. Solon, the friend of
Epimenides, was Archon in 594 (the traditional
date) ; and in due accordance with the tendency
we have been pointing out, he was also then or
shortly afterwards entrusted with an abnormal
power which placed him in the position of arbiter,
and was even pressed in some quarters to become
tyrant — a temptation he steadily refused.

Solon and his work form a most important land-
mark in the history of the City-State. He made
it possible for one such State at least to reach the
highest point of development of which this form of
social union was capable. He was at once the
prophet and the lawgiver of Athens, whose memory

1 e.g. FoUHcs, 1301 B.
2 Read Plut. Solon, 8, 12, 13.

132 THE CITY-STATE .chap

was cherished by his people with profound rever-
ence. Whether his laws gave satisfaction at the
moment, whether they were retained in the next
generation, whether they were wholly the issue of
his own reasoning or based in part on the work
of a predecessor,^ — these are questions of minor
moment compared with the undoubted fact that the
spirit of Solon's life and character never wholly
vanished from Athens. And if we are to explain
this immortality of a great man's life, we can do so
by applying to it a commonplace epithet, with a
tinge of special meaning in this instance : it was
eminently reasonable. In a famous passage Aris-
totle defines law as reason without passion ;^ of this
principle Solon was the personification. And his
importance to us in following out the history, of the
City-State lies in the fact that with him, in the
development of the most perfect state of antiquity,
begins the age of reason as applied to politics.
Long ages of acquiescence had been followed by an
age of discontent and questioning ; under the guid-
ance of the wise spirit of Solon's life, passion is
eventually stilled, and reason takes its place. -This
benevolent influence is visible, not only in the
gratitude of the Athenians, but in the true ring
of Solon's own poems, in every story that is
told of him by Herodotus, and in the life which,
seven centuries later, the last of the true Greek

^ The Solonian division of the people is ascribed by the author
of the "Atlienian Constitution" to Draco in the first place; sec
chapters iv. and vii.

3 Politics, iii. 16, 5, 1287 A.

FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 133

iiiGii of letters compiled with evident delight and
reverence.

Without going unnecessarily into the details
of an oft- told story, let us briefly see in what
the reasonableness of Solon's work consisted. All
political progress of which the conscious or un-
conscious aim is to develop the resources, material
and intellectual, of a whole people, ought to be
accompanied by social and economic reform. We
ill England, after 1832, were slow to realise this
principle. Our political leaders did not at first
perceive that a new population had arisen among
us, suggesting many new problems which could not
be solved by political legislation alone.^ It is partly
owing to this that our proletariat is still in ferment-
ation, i.e. socially and economically uncomfortable,
though, owing to political changes, it has a powerful
hold on the executive which governs it. Now
the reasonableness of Solon is seen in the fact that
he combined social, economic, and political reform.
The problems before the Greek statesman were
always simpler and on a smaller scale than those
of the modern State ; and Solon was able to take
in at "a glance the whole of his field of work, and
to deal with it step by step. He did not give the
" people " political weight without also, giving them
the material means of maintaining it ; nor, " con-
versely, did he aid them economically without

Mt is worth noting that the man of that generation who saw
this fact, and gave utterance to it, was a Tory man of letters. See
the list of Southey's j)roposals for social and economic reform, in
Dowden's Life of him (English Men of Letters Series), p. 154.

134 THE CITY-STATE CHAP

giving them a political status by means of which
they might care for themselves in future. His
work is therefore complete ; and if we would speak
of him in terms appropriate to Hellenic life, we
might call him the perfect Greek artist in the
region of politics, who breathed a new spirit into
what was conventional, and whose sense of pro-
portion, order, and beauty were all kept in due
subjection to the needs of everyday life.-^

The intent and the general character of Solon's
first measures have an objective reality for us which
is rare in ancient history, owing to the preservation
of large fragments of his poems. It is plain from his
own words that he meant not only to relieve imme-
diate distress, but to prevent the poor of Attica from
ever falling into servitude a second time. In other
words, he wished to see a vigorous and industrious
class in Attica, which should stand midway between
the rich on the one hand, and the increasing slave
population on the other. All outstanding debts
incurred on the security of land or person were
absolutely cancelled ; the families who had been in
a condition of serfdom were thereby freed ; those
who had preferred exile to bondage could return

^ The admirable words used by Professor Butcher of the Greek
artist might almost equally well be applied to Solon: "We are
always, conscious of a reserve of power, a temperate strength which
knows its own resources and employs them without effort and with-
out ostentation. ... He is bent on seeing truly, on seeing har-
moniously, and on expressing what he sees. The materials on
which his imagination works are fused and combined according to
,the laws of what is possible, reasonable, natural." — Some Aspects
2tc., p. 332.

V FKOM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 135

home ; and the marks of hopeless mortgaging dis-
appeared from the land. Men who had lost
their land entirely could not indeed recover it ;
but Solon seems to have tried to give these a
new start in life by turning their attention to
art and trade. To cheapen the ordinary products
of the country he forbade their exportation, except
in the case of olive oil, of which there was the
greatest abundance. To bring Athens into closer
connection with the great trading and colonising
cities of Chalcis and Corinth he introduced the
Euboic coinage, which was in use there, in place of
the older system of Athens' natural enemies, ^gina
and Megara. Many other measures are mentioned,
of which the general purpose seems to have been
the same — to revive native industry, to keep the
population employed, and so to enable all to acquire
a certain amount of wealth? Eqiiality in the dis-
tribution of wealth has never yet been realised, but
absence of startling inequality was the safeguard of
the City- State. Aristotle long afterwards pointed
out this law in an admirable chapter, which is as
true now as on the day on which he wrote it.^ It
is destruction, he teaches, for a city to be made up
of masters and slaves, and not of men who are
really, as well as technically, free. The State is a
social union of friends, and would be, if it could,

^ For the Seisactheia, read especially Plut. Solon, 14-17, Ath. Pol.
6, and Solon's Foems, fragments 4 and 36. Useful summaries of
other evidence will be found in Busolt, Gr. Gesck. i. 624, and
Gilbert, i. 130.

2 Pol. 1295 A and B, on the advantages of t6 fx^ffov. Cf
N^ewTiian, vol. i. 502, note 1.

136 THE CITY-STATE chaF

composed of men who are equal in wealth and influ-
ence. With a strong intermediate class of moderate
wealth it may most nearly realise its aim, and avoid
the supreme danger of all small States — the bitter-
ness of party strife. Aristotle reasoned thus from
the facts of Hellenic life as they had been for a
century and more before his time. He knew that
the mischief for which he was prescribing a remedy
had already half ruined Greece, and that the instinct
of the best Greek statesmen, such as the ideal
Lycurgus, Solon, Charondas, had led them to fore-
see and attempt to avert it. His chapter is a
protest, on behalf of the State, against the greed of
the individual, and strikes the keynote of all truly
Greek political reasoning.

But if Solon had contented himself with simply
shaking off the burdens from the shoulders of the
poor, his work would have been left but half done.
They must also be secured against the binding of
these burdens afresh on their backs by an oligarchy
of wealth which also held the reins of government.
As we saw at the end of the last chapter, the strength
of the executive power is the chief characteristic
both of the early monarchies and aristocracies ; and
in this chapter we have already seen how a degener-
ate aristocracy could use that strength for their own
advantage, rather than for the benefit of the State
as a whole. Somehow the ruled must be protected
permanently against their rulers. If they were not
yet ripe to rule themselves, — and Solon's reasonable
mind fully recognised the fact that they were wholly
ignorant of the art which it had been the task of

V FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 137

the aristocracies to discover, — tliey were at least
qualified, by sad experience, to judge of the use of
sucli power, and to name the persons whom they
would wish to see exercising it.^

Whatever doubt may exist as to some parts of
Solon's constitutional changes, we may treat it as
a fact that he gave the ordinary Athenian citizen
exactly that share of power for which he was
naturally fitted ; and here again he stands out as
representing a great epoch in the development of
the City-State. His object was gained chiefly by two
simple and efficacious changes. First, the body of
Athenian citizens, comprised in the ancient tribes,
phratries, and fyevri^ was classified afresh on the basis
of the yearly return from the land owned by each
individual, without any regard to his descent, whether
noble or ignoble. The first class must have a mini-
mum return of 500 medimni, or roughly a capital
of one talent (£244) ; in the fourth and lowest
(Thetes) were all who had a less return from land
than 150 medimni, or derived their income, not
from land, but from trade. Secondly, on this
economic basis, in place of the old social one of
Eupatridse, Georgi, and Demiurgi, was fitted what
was practically a new constitution. The Archonship
was reserved for the first class, or Pentakosio-
medimni ; the other offices were open to the three
highest classes, to those, that is, who liad the neces-

^ Cf. Aristotle, Politics, iii. 11, 1281 B ; a valuable cliapter,
which may at this point be studied with great advantage. Aris-
totle is here discussing the question in the abstract, " What
share may the many justly have in a constitution ? "

138 THE CITY-STATE chap

sary education, and a considerable stake in the
welfare of the State. But Solon's great stroke
was the elevation of the lowest class, not indeed
to the executive itself, but to a position in the
constitution whence it could, as it were, survey
and control that executive. They were to share in
the elections of the magistrates, and all over thirty
years of age were to have the right of sitting in an
assembly which should judge of the conduct of the
magistrates after their year of office was over. If
these constitutional changes were maintained, no
magistrate, whatever his birth or wealth, could ever
with impunity use his power to trample on the
rights of the poorest Athenian. It is possible that
he also guaranteed to the whole people in their
ancient assembly {eKKKrjaia) the right, which must
have in theory been tlieirs always, of deciding on
questions of war and peace. ^

Tliese changes did not constitute Democracy, — a
form of government then unknown, and for which
there was as yet no word in the Greek language.
But they initiated the democratic spirit, and were
indeed changes vital enough to alarm men who did
not know the reasonableness of the Athenian people
and its lawgiver. As if aware that he was bring-
ing into political prominence a new stratum of

^ Busolt, Gr. Gesch. i. 536, note 1. For Solon's constitution,
read Plut. Solon, 18 foil. ; Solon, fragment 5 ; Aristotle, Fol ii.
12 ; Ath. Pol. 7. Cf. Busolt and Gilbert, ll.cc. The reader, per-
haps, needs to be reminded that in any independent study of
Solon's work, he must weigh the value of the ancient authorities
both in regard to their intrinsic excellence and to the sources to
ivhich they may be traced.

FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 139

population whose temper was uncertain, and who
could not be held responsible for their public con-
duct, Solon himself endeavoured to guard against any
misuse of their power. To the old Council of the
Areopagus, consisting of ex-Archons, he entrusted the
task, — probably no new one, — of superintending the
working of the constitution, and of guarding the
interests of public and private morality. To him
also is ascribed the establishment of another Council
of 400, of which we shall hear more, constituting a
committee of the whole people, but chosen yearly
from the first three classes. And lastly, it is
probable, though we cannot indeed be sure of
our details here, that Solon endeavoured by other
laws to educate the people in morality and self-
respect, to curb luxury as he discouraged idleness,

md as he had freed them from the hard bondage of
[custom and convention, so also to direct them on
[the road towards intellectual as well as political

iberty.^

Solon's work did but aid the natural development

>f germs already in existence. It was simply the

turning of the light of a rare and sympathetic
jwisdom on the opening bud at a critical moment.

[n spite of cloud and storm, the bud expanded
fslowly and naturally into bloom, and ripened at
;t into the choicest fruit. Athens, thus fairly

jtarted on her way, — emancipated from the discip-

^line of aristocratic schoolmasters, and growing into

an age of manly liberty and self-restraint, — came

1 Abbott, Hist, of Greece, vol. i. 419 foil ; Holm, i. 472 ;
Plutarch, Solon, 21-23.

140 THE CITY-STATE ChAf.

eventually nearer to the ideal of "the good life"
(see p. 59) than any other State in Hellas. But
we must now leave Athens for a while, and turn to
see how, in other parts of Greece, this natural
development of the City -State was for a while
retarded, and in many cases permanently checked.

The tendency towards absolutism, or, if we like
so to call it, the reaction to monarchy, which was
so characteristic of this age, might, and did, show
itself even more often in the shape of what the
Greeks called tyranny, than in the milder form of
the philosophic arbiter. What, then, precisely did
a Greek understand by a tyrant, — a word probably
borrowed by him from some Oriental tongue ?
Herodotus, writing some century and a half later
than Solon, but with all the traditions of that period
fresh in his mind, describes the tyrant in memorable
words put dramatically into the mouth of a Per-
sian.^ " How can a monarchy be a convenient thing,
wielding power as it does without responsibility ?
Tlie hest man in the world, in such a position, will
find himself outside the pale of the ideas in which
he has been trained. A reckless pride is bred in
him of his present good fortune, while envy is
natural to him as to every man. In these two

^ Herod, iii. 80, Here Herodotus, as more or less throughout
his work, does not exactly distinguish monarchy and tyranny, as
A.ristotle did later. It should in fact be noted that a legitimate
Basileus might become a tyrant {e.g. Pheidon of Argos), though a
tyrant of the genuine kind could never become a Basileus. See
Freeman, Hist, of Sicily, ii. 53, and 431 foil. Cf. Herod, v. 92,
sec. 20, where Cypselus in the oracle is styled Basileus, as being s
tyrant descended from a royal family. Cf. v. 44.

7 FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 141

flaws he possesses every vice ; lilled full with pride,
he commits many reckless acts, and the envy in
him has the same result. ... He is jealous of the
best men, his contemporaries, while they survive,
and rejoices in the worst of the citizens.-^ He
hears • slander with the utmost delight. He is of
all men the most inconsistent; for if you praise
him but moderately, he is angry with you for not
making more of him, while if you adore him to the
utmost he hates you as a fawner. And now I
shall sum up with the worst of all his wickednesses :
he disturbs the traditions of his State, he violates
women, and slays men without triah" To this
graphic picture we may add the concise definition
of Aristotle : " Tyranny is monarchy used for the
advantage of the monarch." ^

These two passages may suffice to show us what

the thinking Greek understood by the word, and

how he regarded the thing. The typical Tyrant

lid not represent the State and its needs ; he repre-

[sented his own interests only.^ Tyranny in this
ispect was therefore a thing utterly alien to that

[true and fruitful Greek life which was inseparable

from the State both in thought and fact. Even the

ist of tyrants, as Herodotus puts it in his own

limitable \yay, must leave the circle of ideas in

rhich he has hitherto lived. He lives no longer

1 Herodotus is here intentionally using the language of the Greek
oligarch. See p. 119. It is not clear that he is here stating his
own view of tyranny ; but his description represents one view
which was current in Greece in his day.

2 Pol. iii. 7, 5. More fully in vi. (iv.) 10 (1295 A).
» Thuc. i. 17.

142 THE CITY-STATE CHAP

in the air which every true Greek must breathe,
the air of the free ttoXl^, invigorating both to body
and mind. When Self takes the place of State, as
the pivot on which social life works, that life ceases
to be natural, loses its sap and its principle oi
growth, develops abnormal tendencies and strange
monstrosities of character. And we cannot be far
wrong in concluding that as, in Aristotelian lan-
guage (see p. 60), the end (reXo^;) of tyranny is
not " the good life," but the good of an individual,
it must be considered as marking a backward
current in the stream of social development. It
is a disease, not a natural growth ; a return to
monarchy, but to monarchy in a debased form.

Yet it is possible to criticise the trite definition
of Aristotle, and to correct, even from his own
history, the view of Herodotus which has just
been quoted. It does not follow that the interests
of an individual autocrat need be irreconcilable
with those of his State, nor that every such
autocrat should be drawn into weak and wicked
conduct such as Herodotus describes. However
true it may be in the main that tyranny was a
backward movement, it is quite possible that the
hatred of the high-born men to whose rule the
tyrants put an end,-' and the inborn dislike of the
average Greek for all individualism, may have
handed down the memory of many tyrants in an
unjustly evil light. Let us note two or three
points in which the interest of the tyrant might,

^ These are the men, it should be noted, in whose hands was
the literature of that age.

Kr FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 143

md in many cases actually did, coincide with the
nterest of the State.

If an oligarchy were particularly narrow and
oppressive, and affairs were rapidly drawing towards
an epoch of party violence, a tyrant might for a time
disarm both combatants, and by weakening the
stronger might relatively strengthen the weaker.
Most of the great tyrants of Greece rose to power
by the help of the people, and all set themselves
in self-defence to weaken the oligarchies.^ In a
certain sense, as in our own history with the
absolutism of the Tudors, the disease of tyranny
had eventually in many States a healing effect ; it
brought out latent possibilities in the State by
bringing forward a new population with new ideas
and new worships, and in some cases, as in the
Peloponnese, one of a different race from the
oligarchies which had so long ruled it.^

t Again, the tyrant, if he were a man of educa-
ion (and he frequently belonged to the cultured
iligarchy itself), would naturally use his power to
,dorn his city with works of art. He wished his
ame to spread through Hellas, and he knew the
:ind of glory that would appeal to the Hellenic
mind. He would try to make his city, as it were,
a university of literature and art ; and in fact we
find that Simonides, Pindar, ^schylus, and other

1 Ar. Pol. viii. (v.), p. 1305 A; cf. Herod, iii. 80, 8, aa
quoted above, and the memorable advice given by Periander to
Thrasybulus, or, as Herod, has it (v. 92, 26), by Thras. to Per.
Busolt, Gr. Gesch. i. note.

2 Of this our best example is Cleisthenes of Sicyon ; cf. Herod,
V. 67, vi. 126.

Hi THE CITY-STATE

CHAP

poets could make long journeys to visit a large-hearted
and open-handed tyrant, and were not ashamed to
enjoy his patronage or to sing his praises. It is
beyond doubt that both poetry and the plastic arts
owed much to the wealth and to the honourable
pride of these despots. Here and there, at least,
a tyrant's self-regarding aims, so far from hindering
the education of the Greek mind, positively did
much to advance it.^

And once more, the tyrant, in the very fact that
he was out of harmony with the true Greek social
life, was of some use in widening its boundaries, —
always apt to be somewhat confining. He stepped
for the moment beyond the limits of the TroXt?, and
as he rose to fame might venture on alliance or
friendship with the despots of distant cities, or even
with the great monarchies that lay beyond Hellas.
Such startling steps could hardly be taken by the
City-State in its ordinary and natural life, which, as
we saw, must be as independent as possible of aid
from other States.^ But the great tyrant rose alto-
gether beyond these limits, and modelled himself
rather on Eastern than on Greek ideas ; he dreamt
perhaps of empire, he built a navy, he stimulated

^ Hiero of Syracuse, in the fifth century, is the most splendid
example of this tendency of the tyrants. See especially Freeman,
JfisL of Sicily, vol. ii. 256-289. Polycrates, Periander, and the
Pisistratidse can all be studied in Herodotus from the same
point of view.

2 The contrast between the far-reaching plans of the tyrant
and the strict conventionalism of the typical 7r6\is is expressed
with all Herodotus's consummate skill in the interview between
4ristagora8 of Miletus and Cleomenes of Sparta (v. 49).

FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 145

commerce, he allied himself with the lower or trading
classes. And in such ways, even while seeking his own
glory, and violating the most vital principles of the
older Greek life, he opened the eyes of the Greeks to
things that lay beyond their narrow bounds, and
had never been dreamed of in their philosophy
since the age of Mycenae, before the true State had
come into being. Even in plotting with the Per-
sians against Greece, his very selfishness revealed to
the Greeks the dangers which surrounded them,
and the want of union of which their system of
City- States was the chief cause.

It is not possible, within the scope of this
chapter, to illustrate these and other characteristics
of tyranny from recorded facts. But the reader has
only to take up his Herodotus, and to read the
stories of men like Cleisthenes of Sicyon, Periander
of Corinth, Gelo of Syracuse, Polycratjes of Samos,
Aristagoras of Miletus, and Pisistratus at Athens,
in order to realise for himself how in various ways,
both for good and for evil, the tyrant overstepped
the limits of " the ideas in which he (and all
Greeks) had been trained." Only let him remem-
ber that every word and every phrase of Herodotus
are worth close attention, and that he is not to be
read like a modern book in which words and phrases
are often of little more account than the paper on
which they are printed. To use the felicitous lan-
guage of a true Greek scholar, Herodotus' finished
art " preserved unimpaired the primitive energy of
words ;"^ and in the fresh light of those words we

* Professor Butcher, Some Aspects, etc., p. 16,
L

146 THE CITY-StATE CJiAf.

can still see in clearest outline, if not always the
actual facts themselves, at least the impression they
had left on the mind of the open-eyed Greek of an
age when knowledge was not derived from books,
but from memory and the spoken word.

But let me conclude this chapter by a rapid
glance at a single mighty tyrant, as he lives for
ever in the pages of Herodotus. The City- State
of Samos, with its territory of the island of the
same name, had been ruled by an oligarchy till
about the year 537 B.c.^ " Then Polycrates, son of
^aces, rose up and laid his hand on Samos. At
first he shared his power with his two brothers ;
but soon he slew one and drove out the other.
Then he sent gifts to Amasis, king of Egypt, and
receiving others in return, became his friend and
ally ; and to such a pitch of prosperity did he attain
that his fame was spread abroad throughout Ionia
and the whole of Hellas. Wherever he set out
with fleet or army, good luck followed him ; he
owned a hundred ships of war, and had a thousand
archers for a bodyguard. He went about capturing
and plundering without respect of persons, for he
used to say that he could oblige a friend more by
returning what he had taken from him, than by
leaving his property wholly untouched. His power
extended over many of the islands and over many
towns on the coast ; and when the Lesbians came
to help Miletus in warding off his attack, he beat
and captured them with his fleet, and those Les-

' Herod, iii. 39, 120 ; Polyaenus, i. 23, 2. The passage in the
t«xt is paraphrased from Herodotus.

V FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 147

biaus had to dig in fetters the whole circle of the
foss around his city-wall at Sainos."

Nothing can show more clearly than these graphic
sentences that Polycrates had passed the boundary
of " the ideas in which he had been trained." He
is not only the master of a TroXt?, but the founder
of a naval empire in the ^gean.^ He knows no
law, civil or moral; he respects neitlier property
nor person, but appropriates the one and binds the
other in chains. And yet, while the end of all his
actions was his own glory, he made his city famous
in Greece ; for even if the three wonders of
Samos, — the gi-eat tunnel,^ the mole in the harbour,
and the magnificent temple, — were not all of them
projected or even completed by him, J|^lalt behind
him a name as a great employer of ifliprf and as a
munificent patron of artists. Theodorus, the en-
graver of the tyrant's famous ring, and Rho^cus,
the architect of the temple, were natives of Samos
in his age. "We know, too, that poets wg& welcome
at his court, and that Ibycus and AiBHcreon lived
and sang there ; and the greatest physician of that
age, Democedes of Croton, was glad to obtain his
patronage.^

In two other points Polycrates is typical as a
tyrant. First, he held out a friendly hand to the
empires beyond Hellas. Wlien Amasis repudiated
his alliance, he offered help to Cambyses in his attack

1 Herod, iii. 122. He stands half-way between the legendary
empire of Minos and the later Athenian empire.

2 Herod, iii. 41, 60. The tunnel, or aqueduct, has recently
been discovered. Busolt, Gr. Gesch. i. 603.

3 Herod, iii. 121, 131 ; cf. 125.

148 THE CITY-STATE chap.

on Egypt, doing a black deed in despatching to the
Persian's aid a fleet of forty triremes, manned by all
the high-born Samians whom he most feared and
hated, in order to bring them to an evil end. And
secondly, his power is short - lived ; for while
negotiating with a Persian satrap for the acqui-
sition of wealth which would have made him
master of Hellas, he fell into a trap, little recking
that he was in the way of the Persian power, and
died a cruel and disgraceful death.^ Nemesis, so
the Greeks thought, must assuredly lay her aveng-
ing hand on all who overstepped those limits of
power and fortune within which the State, and not
the Individual, was the true end of life.

One more word before we leave the tyrants.
The love of gain, of power and position above the
laws and conventionalities of the State, was a
common phenomenon in Greek history, and is seen
not only in tyrants like Polycrates, but in kings
and even ordinary citizens of the best ordered
TToXet?, such as Cleomenes and Pausanias of Sparta,
and Themistocles and Alcibiades of Athens. And
the explanation is surely to be found in the very
nature of the City-State itself. Injts nornjal type
it was too small, too narrow, too much bound down
by fixed traditions, and by a single rule of life, to
give the individual free play, or even always fair
play. To its model he must conform, or overstep
the limits of " the ideas in which he has grown up."
Human nature is everywhere such that there will
always be found rebels against the drill of a social-
' Ilerod. iii. 43, 44, 120-126.

FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY

149

istic system ; and the stricter that drill, and the
smaller the State, the more lawless will be the
rebellion of the individual. Athens alone among
Greek States, and that not without risk both for
herself and Greece, solved for a time the problem of
developing the best fruits of individual genius and
ambition through, and together with, the full glory
of the City-state.

CHAPTER VI

THE REALISATION OF DEMOCRACY: ATHENS

I SAID at the end of the last chapter that Athena
alone, of all the City-States of antiquity, solved for
a time the problem of freely developing the talent,
of the individual, while maintaining fully that
identification of the individual with the State which
was the very essence of Greek social life. This
proposition I wish to prove and explain in the
present chapter. By keeping steadily to it, we
shall obtain, I believe, the best idea of such " good
life " as it was possible for the City-State to realise ;
and we shall learn to identify that " good life " with
the form and spirit of Democracy, the last phase
taken by this kind of social union in the course of
its natural development, before decay set in. I say
the form and spirit of Democracy ; for though
Democracy is often treated as a form of government
only,^ we surely may not be content so to treat it,
if we are really bent on understanding what the
TToXfc? in its perfection could do for the education
of mankind.

* E.g. by Sir H. Maine iu Poplar Oovemment, oh. i.

CHAP. VI THE REALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 151

Let US start by taking as a text some memor-
able words of the statesman who above all other
Athenians, in the golden days of Athens, perceived
what the State might do for the individual, and the
individual for the State, towards the realisation of
" the good life." When Athens at last became
involved in war with Sparta, at the funeral of the
first victims of battle Pericles was chosen to deliver
an oration over them, of which Thucydides the
historian, himself doubtless among the audience,
has preserved for us the spirit and the thoughts in
his own weighty and subtle phraseology. One
passage in this immortal speech seems to embody
in living words the statesman's idea of what life in
democratic Athens ought to be, expressed as though
it actually were so ; as in moments of deep emotion
we are apt to speak of one whom we profoundly
admire and love with an enthusiasm suggested and
justified by his character, even if it fall short in
truth of the perfection with which our strong
feeling invests it. But Pericles must have known
well the shortcomings of the Athenians, as well as
their wonderful capacities ; and if at this moment
of supreme feeling he expressed not only the bare
truth about them, but also his own hop*es for them,
and his ideal of a perfect civic life, we need not
shrink on that account to take these words of his
as the best possible text from which to set about
learning what Athens actually was in his day. I
Bhall quote the passage in fuU.^

* Thucydides, ii. 37. I quote from Jowett's translation , but

162 THE CITY-STATE chap

"Our form of government does not enter into rivalry
with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neigh-
bours, but are an example to them. It is true that we are
called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of
the many and not the few. But while the law secures equal
justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of
excellence is also recognised ; and where a citizen is in any-
way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not
as a matter of privilege, but as a reward of merit. Neither
is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country what-
ever be the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclu-
siveness in our public life, and in our private intercourse
we are not auspicious of each other, nor angry with our
neighbour if he does what he likes ; we do not put on sour
looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant.
While we are thus unconstrained in our private intercourse,
a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts ; we are
prevented from doing wrong by respect for authority and
for the laws, having an especial regard for those which are
ordained for the protection of the injured, as well as for
those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of
them the reprobation of the general sentiment. '^

Now what Pericles here wished to impress on
the ' Athenians, as the ideal at which their social
life should be aimed, may be expressed mainly in
two propositions. First, the whole Athenian people
were identified with, actually were, the State, in a
higher and fuller sense than had so far been realised
by any Greek city ; all shared equally in its govern-
ment, in its education, and in its pleasures.
Secondly, this equality of right and advantage, so
far from reducing all to a dead level of intellect,
actually gave freer play to individual talent than

it is only from the Greek, and from the laying to heart of everj
phrase of it, that Pericles' meaning can fully be apprehended.

THE KEALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 153

I it could be sure of obtaining in other Statee ; for at
I Athens alone poverty was no hindrance to the
) development of genius. If these two propositions
Were in any real sense true of the Athenians of
Ithat day, then surely we may find here the " good
/life " which Aristotle claims as the true end of the
City-State — the full and free culture of the individual
aiming at the advantage of the community.

We have now to see how far these two proposi-
tions hold good of Athens in the time of Pericles.
Very different views, it must be said at once, were
taken by later writers and orators of the Athenians
and their democracy. Plato, for instance, makes
Socrates say in the Gorgias} " I hear that Pericles
made the Athenians a lazy, cowardly, talkative, and
money-loving people, by accustoming them to
receive wages." Isocrates describes democracy at
Athens as passing into disorder, freedom into law-
lessness, equality into reckless impudence.^ Aris-
totle, too, never shows enthusiasm for Athenian
institutions, nor does he connect Pericles with any
attempt to realise his own ideal of rb ev ^rjv.^ But
Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle knew Athens only
when her best days were past, and when the gifted
and animated population of the golden age had been
thinned down sadly by war and pestilence. It is
not scientific to judge of the working of Athenian
institutions in the fifth century B.C. by the opinions

^ P. 515. 2 j^gop^ 20.

^ To these unfavourable verdicts must be added that of the

treatise on the Athenian constitution formerly attributed to
Xenoiihon.

154 THE CITY-STATE chap

of men who knew them only as worked by a
degenerate population in the fourth. Let us keep
for the present to Pericles himself as a guide.
Following his lead, we may try and form some idea
of Athenian democracy first as a political whole, and
secondly, in respect of the education and capacity
of the individuals composing that whole.

I. Let us recall, to begin with, the position in
which Solon's legislation had left the Athenian
people. Having freed them from the bondage of
debt, and cleared the way for their progress towards
social independence, he gave to the whole people,
including the poorest class, a powerful hold'on' the
executive which governed them. All had'a share in
electing the magistrates, and all had a share in the
right of judging of the conduct of these magistrates
at the end of their year of office. He added to the
constitution a new Council of 400, also elected by
the whole body of citizens, but retained the old
Council of the Areopagus to watch over the general
interests of the State, both material and moral.
And by a re-division of the existing citizens on the
basis of property instead of descent, and by restricting
the right of holding magistracies to the richer
citizens, he destroyed the purely aristocratic char-
acter of the executive, while securing that this
executive should not pass into the hands of persons
ill-educated or poverty-stricken.

The general result of Solon's work was therefore
to identify every individual Athenian very closely
with the State, but to keep the reins of government
in the hands of men who were qualified to wield

v-l THE REALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 155

them. Under the oligarchical regime the ordinary
Athenian had little benefit from the government,
little interest in the State ; he was a part of the
State only in a very doubtful sense, and politically
was not on a much higher level than the Attic
slave. After Solon he could feel that the govern-
ment was of advantage to him, that he himself had
a distinct share in it, and a very lively interest in
its good management. He is raised a whole stage
higher in the social system, and removed far above
the level of the slave. But this identification of
the interests of individual and State might be made
still more complete and fruitful.

If we could in imagination transport ourselves
to the Athens of a century and a half later, and
mingle in the city and the port of Pira3us with the
busy crowd of citizens, we should find a very differ-
ent state of things from that left by Solon. Not only
has the city greatly increased in size, population,
and magnificence, as well as in fame and influence ;
not only has a new port arisen, in which a splendid
navy is sheltered, and whose streets are thronged
by strangers from all parts of Hellas and the sur-
rounding countries ; but by questioning and observ-
ing we should discover as a fact beyond all doubt,
that every Athenian citizen is now a citizen in the
fullest sense of which the word is capable. The
words TToXt? and ttoX/tt;? have here a closer rela-
tion than they have ever yet reached in Greek
history, and express the fact that the full identifi-
cation of the State and the individual is here at
last achieved.

156 THE CITY-STATE cuap

Every citizen lias now not only a right to hold
office,^ atiid to serve on the Council, but also a very
good chance of exercising that right in his turn.
Every citizen can take part in the meetings of the
general Assembly (iKKXijala), which takes place
regularly forty times every year, and on many other
occasions when special business was to be trans-
acted ; 2 and in these assemblies final decisions are
taken on every matter which concerned the interest
of the State as a whole. Every citizen over thirty
years of age can further sit as a judge in one of the
large panels of 500 into which those thus quali-
fied by age are now distributed ; and before one of
thes^ panels almost every case of importance must
come, for the judicial functions of even the highest
magistrates are now limited to the mere direction
of business in the courts, or to the settlement of
suits of a petty nature. Lastly, the council of the
Areopagus, which Solon retained as a body of expe-
rienced men occupying their seats in it for life, in
order to place the working of the whole State under
a wise and efficient control, has wholly lost this
undefined power of supervision ; the Athenians are
now quite emancipated from any such paternal
authority, and commit their interests to no trustees
save their yearly elected magistrates, — and to these
only in a very limited sense. The people, like the

1 "Whether the Archonship was open to the loAvest class in 450,
either legally or practically, is doubtful. At the end of the follow-
ing century it was practically open to all. See 4lh. Pol. ch. vii.
fin.

2 Gilbert, i. p. 255 and notes.

^rHE REALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 157

young sovereign who puts aside his father's too
insistent counsellors, has taken the condudfc of its"
affeirs entirely into its own hands, confident in
its own abilities and in its own reasonableness.
The State, not only as the shelter and home,
but as the property and occupation of the people,
truly is now the whole body of Athenians, and
not a part only,- as under the oligarchical rule.
The individual is identified to the full with the
State.

To explain how these great changes )iave come
about would be beyond the scope of this chapter.
Even after the discovery of the treatise on the
Athenian constitution, the political history of
Athens from Solon to Pericles is still a very diffi-
cult and complicated study, and there is hardly a
point or a date in it which is not still matter of
dispute. . I am more concerned just now to illus-
trate a little more fully the actual working of this
wonderful democracy ; but before attempting this I
must recall the history of Athens in broadest out-
line, in order that we may see, if not precisely by
what steps the democratic spirit went forward, at
least how it was possible that it should make such
rapid and effectual progress.

This progress, we may be sure, was not merely
the result of a series of fortunate circumstances, for
in the course of it Athens underwent such perils as
would have crushed any ordinary state of her size.
Four times at least, within a period of some thirty
years, Attica was invaded by enemies, and twice
her sacred Acropolis was desecrated by their forcible

158 THE OIIT-STATE chap

occupation ; ^ yet the progress continued, steady and
sure as ever. "We must rather look for an explan?
tion to that quality of her people which we sa^
exemplified so admirably in Solon, and which thj
student of her literature and art ever contemplat
with delight ; I mean the sanity, the reasonablenessJ
of the Athenians and their leading men. I have
pointed out how Solon's work was reasonable, because
it embraced in one series of laws, social and eco-
nomic, as well as political, reform ; in all his legisla-
tion he was animated by the same reasonable object
of developing the resources of the State in due
proportion and harmony. The same quality is to
be noted even in the tyranny which followed. Little
as we know of the government of Pisistratus, it is
quite enough to convince us that under this abso-
lutism Athens was not, like so many other States,
swept into a back-current, or left floating idle and
exhausted. Pisistratus did not abolish Solon's laws,
nor did he play false to the spirit which dictated
them. On this point Thucydides is emphatic ; let
me quote his exact words.^

" The general character of his administration was not
unpojDular or oppressive to the many ; in fact no tyrants
ever displayed greater merit or capacity than these. Though
the tax which they exacted amounted only to five per cent.,
they improved and adorned the city. . . . The city was
permitted to retain her ancient laws, the Pisistratidae only
taking care that one of themselves should always be in
office."

^ By Cleomenes of Sparta in 509 B.C. after expelling Cleistbenes
(Herod, v. 72) ; and by the Persians in 480 b.c.
2 Thucyd. vi. 54, 5 and 6,

THE REALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 159

It is plain from this passage, and from what
little else we know about him, that Pisistratus was
one of those tyrants whose personal interest coin-
cided with tliat of the State. He helped, rather
than retarded, the development of the people in
well-being, in commerce, in art, and in religion.^
The words in which Thucydides describes his
quality, aperri and ^vveau^, — a right spirit and an
intellectual sanity, — would prove this sufficiently
even if we had no other evidence at all.

Pisistratus died in 527 B.C. In the hands of
his sons the tyranny gradually degenerated into one
of the worst type ; and on the expulsion of Hippias,
in 510 B.C., the natural result followed — faction and
anarchy. The oligarchs lifted up their heads again,
and for a moment treachery and intrigue threatened
to ruin the growing State. But again Athens found
a reasonable man to help her. Cleisthenes, who
perhaps began with the idea of making himself
tyrant, ended by " taking the people into partner-
ship," and working out more fully the reasonable
policy of Solon and Pisistratus. Of the man him-
self we know little or nothing, but we know at least
in outline what was his chief contribution to the
development of democracy. When the leaders of the
French Eevolution wished to undermine the influence
of the ancient feudal nobility, they did away with
the old division of the country into provinces, in
which the local magnates and their privileges were

^ The evidence connecting Pisistratus with tlie popular Dionysus-
worship at Athens will be found stated in Mr. Dyer's Gods i*
Greece, p. 125, note 3.

160 THE CITY-STATE chap

paramount, and adopted a new division into a much
larger number of departments, on which the whole
political system was to be based without fear of
local aristocratic influence. Cleisthenes struck out
a plan of much the same kind. Attica had been
divided into four tribes, twelve phratries, and three
hundred and sixty clans (yevr]), each clan having as
its nucleus an aristocratic family. Cleisthenes was
too reasonable actually to abolish these ; but he saw
that if Athens was to enjoy repose, now that the
people were familiar with the idea that they had
a direct interest in the State, these old aristocratic
groups must practically cease to have political im-
portance. He re -divided the Athenians into ten
new tribes, each comprising, as administrative units,
ten demes or townships ; the demes in each tribe
not being contiguous, but situated in different parts
of Attica, so as to be wholly free from the old local
traditions and influences. In these new tribes and
demes he included every free Athenian, together
with many residents in Attica and enfranchised
slaves, who had never been inscribed on the
registers of the old divisions. On the basis of
this new local system the constitution was hence-
forward to be worked ; for example, the Council
was increased Jo_500,.so that fifty were elected
to it yearly from each of the^ten new tribes. If
this new system were adhered to, oligarchy could
never rear its head again, and tyranny would have
but a poor chance. And surely we may see, in the
loyal submission of the oligarchical party to this
sweeping change, one more proof of the reasonable-

VI THE REALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 161

ness of the Athenian people in all grades of social
life. For the change was perhaps the most far-
reaching in all Athenian history. The tissue out of
which the State had been created, — the clan village
with its religious aristocracy, — was no longer to be
essential to the State's vitality ; it might survive,
but its place was henceforth to be supplied by a
new organisation, in which there would be no aris-
tocratic centres to influence the people's will. ^

Thus finally delivered from oligarchic tutelage
and faction, " united and penetrated with a single
spirit," ^ Athens was ready to face her greatest trial.
The reasonableness of her leaders, and the strength
which unity had given her, enabled her to act as
the real champion of Hellas against the Persian in-
vader; and the heroism of her successful defence,
in which every citizen directly or indirectly took a
part, at once made the completion of democracy
certain, and spread throughout Greece the fame of
democratic institutions. In the generation succeed-
ing the Persian wars, the changes were brought
about which produced the constitution of which I
just now indicated the leading features. Aristides,
another leader of the true Solonian type ; Ephialtes,
a man " with a reputation for incorruptibility and
possessing a high public character " ; ^ and lastly
Pericles, whose character and abilities are immortalised
by the greatest of Greek historians, completed the
work, and brought Athens to such a pitch of greatness
that she roused the hatred and jealousy of the City-

^ Abbott, Hist, of Greece, i. 484.

2 Alh. Pol. 25.

M

162 THE CITY-STATE chap

States of Greece, and was forced to embark in a
struggle which ended in her own downfall. Of the
meaning of this jealousy and its fatal results, so far
as it concerns the history of the City-State, I shall
have a word to say later on ; at present, leaving
aside the question as to the precise steps by which
complete democracy was realised under the leaders
just mentioned, let us turn for a moment to consider
what democracy really meant at Athens in the short
period of its best days.

Just as the City-State differed as a species from
the modern State, so did its democratic form differ^
from what we now understand by Democracy. For
example, when we speak of our British constitu-
tion as having become a democracy, we mean that
we are governed by a ministry which has at its
back the majority of a democratically elected House
of Commons. We are not governed by. the__p.eople_;.
this is impossible, even witli the aid of represeAta-
tiveihstitutions, in the large territories of the modern
State. Some approach can be made to it, in the
way of local government, which may enable the
people in each district to understand and in some
degree to manage their own local affairs ; ^ but great
questions of national interest can only be presented
to the people at periodical elections, and it con-
stantly happens that on such questions the govern-
ment of the day is actually for a year or two at
variance with the feeling of the majority of the

^ This may perhaps be best seen in the working of the Swiss
dumocracy. See Adams and Cunningham's Swiss Constitution,
chapters on the Commune and Canton.

VI THE REALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 163

people. When at last an election takes place, that
feeling is expressed, and the new government is, for
a time at least, in accordance with it. But this is
very far from what the Greeks meant by hrjiMOKparla
— government by the people. We have borrowed
their word, and given it a new meaning, as far less
simple as our form of State is less simple than
theirs.

When the Athenians called their constitution a
S7]/jL0Kparia, they meant literally what the word
itself expressed, — that the people undertook itself
the work of government. I must now try to ex-
plain briefly how this could be in any sense true ; and
I can best do so by considering three several points,
viz. (1) the legislative and judicial power ; (2) the
magistrates and lesser officials, together with the
council; (3) the manner in which these were
elected.

1. I have already said that every Athenian citizen
could sit and vote in the Ecclesia, and that all over
thirty years of age could sit and vote in the law-
courts. This meant, no doubt, that practically the
dwellers in Athens and the Peirseus alone habitually
did so ; for not even in a City-State could demo-
cratic institutions be made absolutely perfect. They
met in the open air, listened to orators debating the
questions presented to them, and by their votes
finally decided them. Their assembly thus consti-
tuted the sovereign body of the State, from which
there was no further reference; their Dikasteria
were also courts of final reference, from which there
was likewise no appeal whatever. And to secure

164 THE CITY-STATE ohap.

that all alike, poor as well as rich, should not only
have the right, but also be able to exercise it, of
taking part in these assemblies, and thus bringing
their individuality to bear on the conduct of the
State, Pericles introduced a small payment for attend-
ance, sufficient to enable the poor to forgo their
usual occupations on the days of meeting.

Want of space forbids me here to enter into
detail on the subjects of discussion and decision
which wore brought before the sovereign assembly of
Athenians. It will be sufficient to point out that
they included every matter of vital interest to the
State as a whole ; decisions of war and peace, ne-
gotiations with other States, the management of the
military and naval forces, general questions of finance
and of religion, complaints against the public con-
duct of individuals, and lastly — though in the best
days of Athens, as we shall see, this was an unusual
subject of debate — the passing of new laws and the
amendment of existing ones. In all such matters
the voice of the Athenian people was supreme and
final.i

2. So far we have seen that the sovereignty, or
as Sir H. Maine defines that word, the supreme
social force, lay at Athens with the people themselves,'
and not with any set of delegates or officials elected
by them. But what share had they in the actual
administration, — in the conduct of all the compli-
cated business which abounds in an active and

^ On this subject read Schomann, Ant. p. 379 ; and for the
form of popular decrees see examples in Hicks, Greek Historical
Inscriptions, pp. 53, 62, 105.

VI THE REALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 165

prosperous State, and which cannot possibly be
transacted in a vast popular assembly ? In other
words, did the individual Athenian transact public
business himself, as well as direct or judge those to
whom it fell ? Was he in any degree familiar
with the details of the business which he ulti-
mately directed in his assembly, or was he, like
the vast majority of the members of our own so-
called democracy, wholly ignorant of them, utterly
inexperienced in the burdens and responsibilities of
office?

The answer to these questions is, that if the con-
stitution actually worked on the lines indicated by
the researches of modern scholars, almost every
Athenian must at one time or other in his life have
taken part in the conduct of public business. This
will not be fully apparent until we have explained
how Athenian officials were elected ; but for the
moment we will take a rapid glance at the two chief
classes of officials, — those wlio constituted the
Council of 500, and those who filled the long series
of administrative posts, from the Archons and Gene-
rals at the top of the ladder to the lowest kind of
overseers who looked after the police, the markets,
or the victims for the public sacrifices.

The Council was simply a large committee of
the whole people, elected afresh every year. Its
business was of very various kinds, and need not be
specified in detail here : two points will be sufficient
to provide us with an answer to our questions, so
far as this institution is concerned. First, it pre-
pared all business for the Ecclesia, and it had to

166 THE CITY-STATE chap,

see that the decisions of the Ecclesia were properly
carried out; in a word, the whole of the ordinary
business of the State passed through its hands. The
preparation of all such business, as well as the
execution of Acts of Parliament, is in our own
constitution the work of permanent officials, skilled
men whose lives are given up to it as a profession-
statesmen, permanent secretaries, judges, magistrate
and inspectors. At Athens all this work was done
by the ordinary Athenian elected to the Council,^
who brought only his native intelligence and reason-
ableness to bear upon it. Secondly, it was hardly
possible for any councillor to shirk this business;
for the Council did not usually sit as a whole, but
in successive sections of fifty relieving each other
during ten divisions of the year. A member's
absence might easily be unnoticed in a large
assembly, but he would be missed if he failed often
to be present in a committee of fifty only.^

To the 500 members of Council who thus
became familiar, for/ a time at least, with the most
important practical side of public business, we must
now add the whole number of officials who assisted
the Council in administrative work in its minutest
details. It would be tedious to enumerate these ;
but the point to notice is that the Athenians en-
trusted these details, not to single individuals, but
to hoards. There were nine Archons, ten Strategi or
Generals, and other boards for finance, education,

* Much interesting information on these points, and others that
follow, will be found brought together in Mr. J. W. Headlam's
Election by Lot at Athens (Cambridge Historical Essays, No. iv.).

THE KEALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 167

religion, dockyards, and every other department,
great and small, of public administration. One
important board, the Logistse or chief accountants,
were even thirty in number. The whole number
of individuals serving the State in this way in any
one year cannot be computed for the age I am
speaking of; but for the age of Aristide^ the author
of the " Athenian Constitution " reckoned them at
1400.^ If we take the same number for the age
of Pericles, and add to it the 500 councillors, we
get a total of 1900, out of an adult male popula-
tion of about 30,000.2

3. All these officials, with a very few excep-
tions, of which the Strategi are the most important,
were elected by lot, and to the best of our know-
ledge were rarely if ever re-elected.^ The exact
details of the method of election by lot are still
unknown to us; but there can be no reasonable
doubt that this method, which to us seems so
strange on account of our very different conception
of democracy, was meant to secure that every
Athenian should at some time in his life have the
right or bear the burden (in whichever way he

^ Ath. Pol. 24. Half of these were ^pBtjuoi, aud half virepbpioi. ;
but it is not clear who are meant by the latter, — the magistrates
"beyond the borders." If we were to exclude these, the 1900
would be reduced to 1200.

^ This number repi-esents the general impression of the Athenians
themselves in the fifth century : Beloch, Bevdlkericng, p. 59. The
same author, at p. 99, concludes that it was 35,000 at the opening
of the Peloponnesian war.

3 See Headlam, op. cit. p. 90, note 1. But the author of the
Ath. Pol. states that in his own day membership of the Council
could be held twice, aud military offices any number of times.

168 • THE CITY-STATE chap.

might consider it) of assisting in the performance
of some part of public business. Nineteen hundred
places of office, if the lot worked as we believe it
was meant to do, would circulate among the whole
body of citizens about once in sixteen years.^

Now if we take this in connection with the
universal right of citizens to take part in the
Ecclesia, and of those over thirty years of age^to sit
as jurors in the courts, it becomes at once plain
that the Athenian people did actually conduct its
own government, and that the State was a tru^
BrjfjLOKparia. Here is no privileged class, no class
of skilled politicians, no bureaucracy ; no body of
men, like the Eoman Senate, who alone understood
the secrets of State, and were looked up to and
trusted as the gathered wisdom of the whole com-
munity. At Athens there was no disposition, and
in fact no need, to trust the experience of any one ;
each man entered intelligently into the details of
his own temporary duties, and discharged them, as
far as we can tell, with industry and integrity.
Like the players in a well-trained orchestra, all
contrived to learn their parts and to be satisfied
with the share allotted to them.

Nor was there any serious chance that this
system of government by the people should lead to
want of respect for law and tradition. The Athenian
of the best days of Athens never dreamed of think-
ing loosely about the law. Much of his time, as

^ Read Aristotle's account of the general characteristics of
democracy, Pol. 1317 B ; noting especially those passages which
are evidently a reflection from the practice at Athens.

VI THE REALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 169

we have seen, was spent in carrying it out himself,
or seeing that others did so. It was inevitable
that this should be so, where the interests of State
and individual were so wholesomely identified as
they were at Athens. Assuredly the democratic
leaders would never have done away with the
supervising authority of the Areopagus, had they
not been filled with the conviction that the laws
(that is, the constitution) were now in complete
harmony with the feelings of the people, and that
the people was itself capable of acting as their
guardians. In fact, the true justification for this
bold transference of trusteeship from an irresponsible
body to the people themselves is to be found in the
speech of Pericles quoted at the beginning of this
chapter.^ "While we are thus unconstrained in
our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence per-
vades our public acts ; we are prevented from doing
wrong by respect for authority and for the laws "
(ra Brjfiocna Bca Seo? fiaXio-ra ov Trapavo/iovfiev,
rcov re ael ev ap'^fj ovrcov aKpodaet koX twv vojicov,

K.T.X.).

And these memorable words were indeed no
empty boast. All through his civic life it was the
work of the Athenian to watch over the laws and
their administration. When as a youth just enter-
ing manhood he was enrolled with solemn religious
ceremony in the ranks of the Ephebi,^ he swore not

^ Thuc. ii., last words of ch. 37.

^ I.e. the youths just ready to enter on their first military ser-
vice. For the oath see Lycurgus contra Leocr. 77. Telfy, Corpm
Juris AUici, p. 6.

170 THE CITY-STATE CHAP.

only to fight bravely for his city, but " to obey those
who bear rule, and the laws which are in force, and
all that the sovereign people shall decree." Wlien
he came to take his turn as an official, he had to
undergo a preliminary examination as to his quali-
fication,^ and when his term of office ended he had
to present his accounts to the Logistae, and other-
wise to show that his conduct had been in accord-
ance with the law. It probably fell to his lot, at
least once in his life, also to help in conducting
such scrutinies. And as a councillor his work was
done in public, and not in any secret session ; for
the Council worked under the eye of the people,
and from its very nature could never become a
body apt to warp the constitution from its true
intention, as the Areopagus might have done, and
the Senate of Eome actually did. And lastly, the
Athenian, if he should ever desire to propose a
change in the existing law, had to do so at a risk
serious enough to deter him from all hasty trifling
with legislation. He made himself liable to an
indictment "for informality, illegality, or uncon-
stitutionality " (Graphs Faranomdn) ; and if, when
threatened with this, he still persisted, he incurred
after conviction a very severe penalty. The law,
which in the theory of the City-State was one and
unchangeable, was at Athens in her best days as
nearly so as was practically possible. It is of the
essence of true democracy to be intensely conserva-

* For the true nature of this examination (doKifiaaia) see Head-
lam, op. cit. 96 foil. ; Schdmann, Ant. 403. For the eiidwai, ih
407 ; G. Gilbert, AUerthiimer, i. 214.

VI THE REALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 171

tive ; conservative, not necessarily of petty customs
which do not affect the vitality of the State, but of
all great principles, written or unwritten, on which
the constitution is based. ISTowhere, since the days
of Athens, has this conservative tendency asserted
itself more strongly than in the great democratic
State of the modern world.^

I hope I have now said enough to indicate the
line of study to be taken by any one who really
wishes to understand the nature of this most per-
fectly developed form of the ancient City-State,
He should set himself to discover in detail, first,
how it was possible for the Athenians to govern
themselves, or in other words, what they meant by
calling their constitution a hrifioKparla ; secondly,
how such a government could be carried on, and
must necessarily be carried on, in strict accordance
with the law. Following closely this plan of
inquiry, if I am not mistaken, he will come to
appreciate the truth of the proposition, that in the
golden age of Athens the interests of the State and
the individual were more perfectly identified than
in any other State of antiquity ; that we here reach
the highest development of which the 7ro\t? was
capable. That there were drawbacks even here,

^ See Bryce's American Constitution, vol. i. chaps. 31-34 ; or
Maine, Popular Government, Essay 4. For the seciuities for the
maintenance of the Athenian constitution, see especially Grote,
rol. iv. 116 foil. ; but the student cannot do better, if he would
see for himself how hard it was to effect a revolution when once
the democracy was complete, than examine carefully the difficulties
with which the oligarchical party had to contend in B.C. 411, in
Thucyd. viii. 47 foil.

172 THE CITY-STATE

OHAP

and weak points in the system, is indeed true
enough, and of these I shall have a word to say at
the end of this chapter ; but I must now turn for
a moment to the other claim which Pericles made
for Athens, that her political system, so far from
crushing the individual, gave him and his abilities
freer play than he could look for in any other
Greek State.

II. A people actually employed day by day in
the details of its own government must necessarily
be undergoing a process of education. If every
individual Athenian was expected, some time or
other in his life, to have to do such work as audit-
ing accounts, superintending public workmen, or
arranging contracts for the supply of sacrificial
victims (I select these simply as specimens of the
minor sort of duties which might fall to him), it is
obvious that a degree of intellectual alacrity would
also be expected from him which no one would look
for in the humbler classes of an oligarchically-
governed State. In such a State, as, for example,
at Kome in the best age of senatorial rule, the
intelligence of the governing class might be of a
high average, but there would be no call, no stimu-
lus, for the mental education of the people. Sparta
is an even stronger example of the same tendency ;
for there not only was the mass of the population
kept in a state of rude and rustic ignorance, but
the ruling class itself was educated on a system in
which intellectual ardour was rigidly discouraged.
But at Athens the individual had every inducement
to train his own intelligence for the benefit of the

VJ THE REALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 173

State ; and when he came to serve his State, the
very fact that he was associated with others on
official boards, on juries, and in the Ecclesia, must
have still further sharpened his wits, while at the
same time it taught him how to subordinate his
own judgment to that of his fellows, and to reserve
his own opinion till it was clearly called for. Even
if we stopped here in considering the reasonable
freedom of the individual at Athens, we should find
Pericles' proud boast in great measure justified, for
however low a man's birth or circumstances, he
would still be able to bring his individual intelli-
gence to bear upon public affairs, " e-^ov ri dyaOov
Spdaat Trjv ttoXlv."

But there was another aspect of Athenian life
which goes to confirm our impression that Pericles'
ideal was in some degree realised. At this I can
only glance very hurriedly. We may perhaps best
appreciate it by considering how the public wealth
was spent at Athens. At Sparta, owing to the
peculiar constitution and discipline of the State,
there was no surplus public wealth at all, — none,
that is, except the land and its products. At Eome
the resources of the State had a constant "tendency
to pass into the hands of individuals of the ruling
class, and were as constantly spent by them on their
own private and material advancement. At Athens
such a tendency was practically impossible. There
were moderately rich men at Athens, such as Nikias,
who had large property in Attica, or Thucydides
the historian, who owned mines on the coast of
Thrace ; but they had to contribute heavily to public

174 THE CITY-STATE

CHAr.

objects/ and there was no obvious opening for the
accumulation of a vast capital in the hands of an
individual. The spirit of moderation, the inherit-
ance of Solon's reasonableness, so far as we can see,
survived in Athens for at least two centuries.

The truth is that the surplus public wealth — I
leave aside for the moment the sources from which it
was drawn — was spent on the intellectual and
aesthetic education of the whole Athenian people.
It was n^t_^ent only on the powerful navy which
secured to Athens her commanding influence in
Greece, or even on the splendid religious festivals
which called on every Athenian at stated times to
come out and feast and enjoy himself, or on the
gymnasia which were to develop the bodily beauty
and strength of boy and man alike. It was spent
on the erection of those magnificent buildings on
the Acropolis, of which the ruins still stand ; on
those immi table sculptures which still serve to
educate the imperfect artistic feeling of our modern
world ; on the exhibition, open to every citizen,
however poor, of the_tragic and comic dramas, in
some of which the most perfect of languages lives
still in its most perfect form. To put it briefly, it
was spent in raising the whole level of the elcodora
vo7j/jLaTa of Athens, — of the ways of thinking and
feeling in which every citizen grew up. It may

^ Schomann, Jnt. 454 foil. ; Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens
(iiew German edition), vol. i. 533 foil,, 628 foil. I am com-
pelled to omit liere further reference to liturgies, trierarchies, and
the general incidence of taxation on the rich. But the matter is of
the greatest importance in forming an estimate of the influence of
democj-acy on the distribution of property at Atliens.

VI THE EEALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 175

be that the ordinary Athenian did not see the
policy in this light ; that he thought of it as
tending rather to increase his comfort than his
culture. But between comfort and culture Pericles
himself can have*" drawn no real distinction ; in his
view, if Thucydides reports him rightly, the well-
being of the citizen would naturally enable him to
develop his individual faculties for the good and the
glory of the State.

And we have sufficient evidence that he suc-
ceeded in great measure. In no other age or State
has so small a population produced so many men of
genius, whose rare taste and ability were not wasted
or misdirected, but stimulated and called into healthy
action by the very circumstances of the everyday
life they lived. I do need but mention such
names as ^^schylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristo-
phanes, Thucydides, Lysias, Pheidias, Socrates, and
Pericles himself, and others whose gifts enabled
them " to do some good to their city," to show
that individual genius found free play at Athens,
and was spent on gaining for her not only a
transient glory, but an immortal one. All these
poets, artists, and statesmen, and many others of
more ordinary fame, found Athens in need of them.
What their individual talents could supply was
exactly that which was called for by the daily life
as well as by the loftier aspirations of the people.
To use a modern phrase, they were in harmony
with their environment ; there was no friction in
this golden age between the man of genius and the
world he lived in. Truly it cannot be said that

176 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

the Athenians were jealous of those whose talents
raised them above the crowd. In some famous
insta-nces, indeed, they laid a heavy hand upon
their great men ; they fined Pericles, they punished
Pheidias, they drove out Anaxagoras, they put
Socrates to death. But they were never angry with
their men of genius because they were men of
genius ; they merely declined to place absolute con-
fidence in~Ehem as men who could do nowrong.
And, after all, it was a plague-stricken and hard-
pressed Athens that dealt unjustly with Pericles,
and an Athens conquered and ruined that gave
Socrates the hemlock. For years they had let
Pericles, not indeed rule them, but lead them, and
it was no more than the consciousness of a weak
point in the Greek character that persuaded them
that he or Pheidias could be guilty of peculation.
Por years they let Socrates go about the city teach-
ing strange doctrines, — doctrines that were incon-
sistent even with the high level of the elwOora
voijfiara of the average Athenian mind. In spite
of these mistakes, one of which at least has left a
stain for ever on their glorious record, the proposi-
tion holds good that here " the good life " was
realised more fully than in any other City-State,
and the interests of the State and the individual
more completely identified in the endeavour to
attain it.

I said some way back that I should have a word
to say about the weak points in this wonderful
political creation of the Athenians. Drawbacks

VI THE KEALISATION OF DEMOCEACY 177

there always have been, and always will be, bo
every social organisation which human nature can
devise and develop ; and at Athens these were so
serious and so far-reaching in their consequences
that the remainder of this chapter must be occupied
in a brief consideration of them.

In two ways, while thus realising " the good
life " to such extent as was practically possible in a -
City-State, Athens impinged upon what we may
be disposed to call the rights of other individuals
and States. She was, in the first place, a slave-owning 1)
State, a character which she had in common with > *
alFthe City-States of the ancient world. Secondly, ~p
in this golden age of hers she was an imperial State
whose so-called "allies," including"neafly~all the
most important cities in and around the ^gean
Sea, were obliged to follow her lead, to contribute
to her treasury, and generally to obey her orders, or
risk the chance of severe punishment. Had she
been neither a slave State nor an imperial State, it
is hardly possible to suppose that she could have
attained the high political and intellectual level
which I have been describing ; and this reflection,
a somewhat melancholy one, needs a word of expla-
nation.

I have been all along treating Athens as a
democracy, and such, in the view of every Greek,
she actually was. But we must not entirely forget
that, judged by the standard of the nineteenth
century, she was not really a democracy, but a
slave-holding aristocracy. It is true that she did
not thus violate any of the sentiments or traditions

N

178 THE CITY-STATE chap.

of the Hellenic world; other States had the same
advantage, and most of them used it in a much
narrower spirit than Athens. The number of
slaves in Attica is now estimated at 100,000 at
the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, as against
a free population of about 135,000.^ And this
means that all their menial work, and no doubt a
great part of the work which is now done by what
we call the industrial classes,^ was done for the
Athenians by persons who were in no sense mem-
bers of the State, who had neither will nor status
of their own, and whose one duty in life was to
obey the orders of their masters. The citizen at
Athens had leisure to attend to his public duties,
to educate himself for them, to enjoy himself at
festivals and at the theatre, chiefly because he had
at home and in his workshop a sufficient number of
slaves to carry on his affairs in his absence. It
need hardly be said that from all such education,
public business, and enjoyment, the slave was most
carefully excluded.

This is not the place to enter into a discussion
of slavery, either at Athens or in the ancient world
^^.^nerally.^ I shall be content with hazarding the
remark that, all things considered, it is hard to
grudge Athens her 100,000 slaves, if they really
were, as I think we must believe, essential to t'
realisation of that " good life " of the free minori

1 Beloch, Bevolkerung, p. 99. Former calculations placed t!
slave population at a much higher figure.

2 j^ead especially Aristotle, Pol. i. 3-7, 1253 B, and Mr. NeW'
man's valuable remarks (vol. i. 139 foil.).

i

VI THE REALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 179

which has left such an invaluable legacy to modern
civilisation. And indeed the generous and reason-
able spirit of Athenian democracy was itself not
without influence on the condition and prospects of
the slave population. In no ancient State were the
slaves so materially comfortable ; in none, perhaps,
were they so exclusively drawn, not from Greek,
but from foreign and semi-civilised peoples. Though
their disabilities would form a long list, their dis-
comforts were certainly few, and their prospects of
liberation by no means small. If liberated, they
would be in the same position as the resident
stranger, and might eventually arrive at citizenship ;
and when, in great stress of war, they had served
the State honourably as a citizen might do, they
were more than once received into the citizen body
by public vote of the Ecclesia.^

In Aristotle's view, the raison d'itre of slavery was
to make a noble life possible for the master ; ^ and
where the master actually lived such a life, and at
the same time did his duty by his slaves, the insti-
tution might be justified. Tried by this test, Athens
is not to be wholly condemned as a slave-holding
State ; she may, at least, claim far more indulgence
than Sparta or Eome.

Not so justifiable, at least from a Greek point of view,
was the other great advantage, without which Athens
could hardly have merited the patiegyric of Pericles.
I just now put aside for the moment the considera-

^ On slavery at Athens see Wallon, Histoire de I'Esdavage,
vol. i. ch. 9.

2 Newman, Politics, i. 144.

180 THE OITY-STATB

CHAP,

tion of the sources from which that surplus wealth
was drawn, which was spent on the intellectual and
aesthetic education of the Athenian people : let us
return to it now. That wealth, supplying the means
of paying the citizens for attendance in the law-courts,
and later in the Ecclesia, of providing them with
constant recreation in the theatre and at the festivals,
and of adorning the city with splendid temples
and other public buildings, was drawn, in part, in-
deed, from the ordinary resources of the State, but
chiefly from contributions coming from the cities
subject to Athens ; contributions not voluntary in
amount, but carefully assessed by Athens herself,
and as rigidly exacted by her.^

It was Pericles himself who introduced this
policy — a policy which met with strong opposition
even in the Athenian assembly, and was one of the
chief factors in rousing against Athens the bitter
animosity of the majority of Greek States. It
is of the greatest importance for us, for it marks an
epoch in the history of the City-State. It was an
essential characteristic of that form of State, as I
have already pointed out,^ that it should be inde-
pendent, and as far as possible self-sufficing. All
that I have been saying in this chapter about the
realisation of " the good life " at Athens is so far
proof of this, that if Athens had been the subject of
another State she could not have lived her keen
political life, or have called into play the gifts of

^ See the quota-lists in Hicks's Ch'cek Historical Inscriptions^
Nos. 24, 30, 35, 47, 48.
a See p. 62.

THE REALISATION OF DEMOCKACY 181

SO many men of genius. The whole tone of her
life would have been duller, without the same in-
tensity and the same resonance. But now we have
to face the fact (to which I shall have to return in
another chapter) that the small City-State, — even
such an one as Athens, with her peculiar advantages
of situation and climate, and with aU the great
natural gifts of the race, — could not reach the highest
level of human life attainable in that day, without
sacrificing the freedom and interests of other States
whose capacity for good may have been as great as
her own. Athens deprived the subjects of her em-
pire of independence, — of the true political life of
the Greek State, — and used their resources for her
own glory and adornment. And in doing so, she
showed at the very same time that she herself was
no longer in the true sense self-sufficing ; she could
not supply even her daily wants from within her own
territory,^ much less could she live the noble life of
which Pericles spoke without encroaching on the
rights of others.

Pericles sought to justify his own policy, and the
new and startling position into which Athens had
drifted, by an argument such as Cicero used in de-
fence of the Eoman Empire, though nobler indeed
and more generous. Athens was to be teacher
of Greece ; to inspire the Greek States with her
own lofty spirit, and to be a central light diffusing
warmth and vitality throughout the Hellenic world.
To him, first perhaps of all Greeks, the system of the
7roXt9 must have seemed small and petty, unequal

^ See, e.gr. Schbmann, Ant. p. 526.

182 THE CITY-STATE

CUAP.

to the attainment of that real unity, strength, and
security, which alone could guarantee the Greeks
against attack from without and slow decay within.
And as we contemplate his grand conception now,
in the light of later Greek history, we may reason-
ably think him right. But great ideas are of little
practical use, unless they are in harmony with the
conditions of life and the feelings of the age ; and
Pericles, and with him Athens, had clearly over-
stepped the limits of the elaOoTa vorjiiara of the
Greeks. As the tyrant, however excellent his in-
tention, could not but find himself sooner or later
outside of the circle of ideas in which he had
been trained, so it was with Athens. The con-
sciousness of this is only too apparent in Pericles'
own words ; for he does not hesitate to tell the
Athenians that their empire is a tyranny, and their
state a tyrant. " You have come by this tyranny,"
he tells them, " and you cannot go back from it ;
you have outrun the tardy motion of the Greek
world of political ideas ; you must keep your power,
but use it for the noblest ends." ^

No wonder, then, that Athens was at last attacked,
and that the ruling ideas of independence and self-
sufficingness rebelled against her claims of light and
leading. The City-State, in reaching its highest
point of development, had broken through the limits
of its own proper nature, and was tending to become
a different kind of political unit ; the TroXt? threat-
ened to grow into an empire, one State menaced the
healthy freedom of the rest. The Peloponnesian war
1 Thuc. ii. 63.

VI THE REALISATION OF DEMOCRACY 183

put an end to the claims of Athens and to the ideas
of Pericles ; the tyrant city fell. That fatal war
was in one sense a struggle between new and old
ideas, between the received notion of Greek political
life and a new doctrine wholly at variance with it.
The new heresy was put down by force, but the old
doctrine had received a shock from which it never
recovered ; the genuine old conception of the TroXt?,
strong as was its hold upon the Greek people, lives
more vividly in the ideals of Plato and Aristotle than
in the history of any City-State after the great
struggle was over. Of all the great wars of anti-
quity, the Peloponnesian war was tliQ_. iSP.ddest and
most useless ; for while it humbled the tyrant city,
it was the _m.eaM_of„ irretrievably weakening the
true leader of Greek culture ; and while the enemies
of Athens believed themselves to be asserting the
true doctrine of the City-State, they ,were in reality
playing into the hands of another and a far worse
tyrant.

I shall recur to this subject in another chapter :
we must now once more turn our attention to the
progress of the City-State in Italy, where we
shall have to notice the same tendency to break the
bounds of the TroXt?, and with a very different result.

CHAPTEK VII

THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION AT ROME

We must now return for a while to that earlier
age of popular stir and uprising, the ultimate results
of which we have just been noting at Athens.
Great as is the obscurity of this period in Greece,
it is even greater in Italy. Of the early history
of other cities besides Rome we have hardly a
trace. The early Roman Republic has indeed
what is called a history, but it is one which
crumbles away at the first touch of scientific criti-
cism. In the corresponding period of Greek history
the poems of Solon and Theognis afford us here and
there a solid footing of fact. But in the early
Roman Republic literature was unknown; such
meagre records as were made after the art of
writing came in, — records of the priestly colleges,
or official records preserved by noble families, —
were probably all destroyed when the city was
captured by the Gauls in 390 B.C. The earliest
annalists wrote more than a century later than
this catastrophe, and what they j)ut together must

AP. VII THE PERIOD OF TKANSITTON AT ROME 185

have been traditional only, filled out and ornamented
by their own invention, by stories adapted from the
Greek, or by the untrustworthy pride of patrician
houses. Others followed their example with even
less conscious regard for truth, and in the Augustan
age Livy and Dionysius worked up the whole mass
into an artistic form, making use at the same time
of much antiquarian lore which the scholars of that
day had unearthed and were trying to interpret.

In its stories of war and conquests, in its speeches
and dramatic incidents, this history is quite worth-
less. Yet there are certain landmarks which stand
out with tolerable clearness in the general mist, and
which become realities for us when our knowledge
of later Eoman institutions is brought to bear on
them. The Eomans, it should never be forgotten,
had always a very clear conception of the salient
features of their own legal institutions, and a very
steady tradition as to their origin. Whatever
doubt there may be as to dates and details, cer-
tain laws mentioned by the annalists may be taken
as historical facts which fixed themselves on the
memory of the Eomans at a time when very few
could read or write ; and of one great piece of legis-
lation some fragments survive even now. These
laws, and such explanations of them as are generally
received, must form the material of the present
chapter. They will provide an outline of this
period of transition, of which we can thus recover the
leading features, though the relation of the events
to each other cannot always be made quite certain.''

* What follows is a sketch in mere outline of a period in which

186 THE CITY-STATE chap

But as a preliminary step we miist look for a
moment back to the period of the monarchy. We
saw that the aristocratic government which suc-
ceeded the last king was probably the result of a
reaction from an exaggerated use of kingly power.
That the monarchy had undergone a change in the
last century of its existence there is hardly a doubt.
As often happened in the history of City-States, the
monarchy in this case changed into something very
like a tyranny, without the interposition of an aris-
tocratic regime between the two ; a change which
was all the more natural at Eome where the con-
ception of magisterial power (imperium) was so
remarkably clear and strong. And the explanation
of this change is not wholly wanting. There is
much evidence that the last three kings were not
of Eoman descent. The very name Tarquinius is
not Eoman but Etruscan, and it was believed by
Etruscan annalists that the original name of Servius
TuUius was Mastarna. Both these names have been

almost every fact is matter more or less of controversy and doubt.
To give fall references would be under these circumstances impos-
sible without overburdening the text, and I prefer to teU the
reader at once that besides Livy and Dionysius, and the first
volume of Mommsen's History, the most valuable works he
can refer to are Mommsen's Staatsrecht, either in the German
original or in the French translation, so far as it has yet appeared,
and Willems* Droit public Romain, which is a concise and useful
compendium of Roman political institutions, superior to Ramsay's
Roman Antiquities, which is still the only book of the kind we
have in English. Professor Pelham's article, "Roman History,"
in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, about to be republished in a sepa-
rate form, contains a masterly analysis of the events of this period,
lime's Roman History is pleasant reading in its English form, but oi
very inferior value to Mommsen.

THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION AT ROME 187

found inscribed on Etruscan wall-paintings in the
forms Tarchnas and Mestrna. They are recognised
by most scholars as genuine Etruscan, rather than
as Etruscan forms of Latin names.

IsTow it is not possible to believe that the
Romans should have willingly elected a king out-
side their own patrician gentes. Nor is it easier to
believe that the powerful Etruscan aristocracy
. should never have been able to subdue Eome as
they had subdued the original inhabitants of half
the peninsula. Though Eoman tradition naturally
refused to allow that the great Etruscan power,
which extended north and south of Latium, had at
one time swallowed up the city on the Tiber, it yet
unconsciously betrays the secret in many ways.
We are justified in believing, in spite of the doubts
of many critics, that an Etruscan dynasty ruled for
a time in Rome, and ruled with something of the
spirit of the tyrant.

Can we make out, in any degree of certainty,
what policy these foreign kings pursued ? Roman
tradition universally ascribed to them some at least
of the features of the Greek tyrant ; but this tra-
dition, it may be said, is hardly to be trusted, and
may be due to the influence of Greeks who read
into Roman history the characteristics of their own
form of City-State. On the other hand, there must
have been a substratum of fact to which such stories
could attach themselves. Extension of Roman
territory, intercourse with other peoples, especially
Greeks and Etruscans, oppression of the aristocracy,
development of the army and of the less privileged

188 THE CITY-STATE

OHAP.

classes, reproduce exactly the policy of the tyrant;
but it would be going too far to assume that they
were ascribed without any reason to a certain Servius
and a certain Tarquinius. We may, however, leave
the stories to the critics, and turn our attention for
a moment to two facts which stand out clearly in
this period — facts which all Eomans connected with
the name of Servius Tullius, and which may beyond
doubt be attributed to the last age of the monarchy.
These are (1) the organisation of the army in classes
and centuries, and (2) the division of the city and
its territory into four local tribes. The two are
closely connected with each other, and they begin
the story which we have to tell in this chapter.

What was the nature of the change which these
two facts indicate ? We may think of the earlier
form of Eoman State as a union of small communities
retaining in some degree the tie of kinship, or at
least the idea of it. But the influence of the land
(see p. 42) had long been felt, disintegrating the
original force of this tie. Alongside of the gentes,
which formed the basis of the original union, there
had grown up, as in Attica, another population which
stood to these in a position of inferiority and de-
pendence. The gentes had the prestige of high
descent, of religious knowledge, of wealth and
prowess in war ; they were the true citizens, cives
Optimo jure, ingenui, patricii} The others were

1 Both words, iiigenuus and jjatriciics, suggest the idea of the
tie of kinship and descent surviving in the City-State as a mark
of superiority, as against tliose who were born outside the sacred
circle of gentes, or born in imperfect wedlock.

THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION AT ROME 189

attached to them as those who hearkened and
obeyed (cUentes), and the clear logic of the Eoman
mind had already put this relation of dependence
into a definite form, with distinct rights and duties
on each side. The clients were thus a part of the
State, but in a diminished sense (minuto jure) : they
could hold no office under the king ; they could not
take the auspices ; they could not marry into the
families of their patroni, and probably could not
share the advantage of the public land. They
were in statu pitpillari, and could only, as it were,
be represented by a tutor. But they were pro-
tected as a matter of duty by their patroni. They
had at least a piece of garden ground given them
sufficient to live upon; they were admitted into
the curice- — the earliest political division of the
State, — and it seems Kkely that they could in
these divisions answer Yes or No to such questions
as the king chose to lay before the whole people.

What was the origin of these clients is a ques-
tion which does not concern us here. What does
concern us is to note how they came to form the
material of the later Eoman State. If a patrician
family died out, the relationship between it and its
clients ceased to exist. There may have been other
ways in which the bond of dependence was relaxed,
but this is the only one which we can discern at all
clearly. These emancipated clients could not be
turned adrift, for they were already part of the
State; they remained so after their emancipation,
and were called by one of the many Latin words
which bid fair to be immortal. They became the

190 THE CITY-STATE OHA?.

flebs, or multitude, retaining exactly the diminished
rights they had before, but being now quite inde-
pendent of patrician authority. In a certain sense,
indeed, they were in a worse position ; they had to
stand on their rights for themselves, and could get no
help from patrician ^6i^rom. They had no organised
religion of their own, no legal locus standi in the
State ; yet they were still a part of it, served in the
army of curiae, and apparently, as we saw, voted in
the curiate assembly. Steadily they increased in
numbers, and more and more they came to be felt
as an indispensable part of the State ; but citizens
in the true sense they certainly were not. They
were now free men, while as clients they had been
only half free ; but their freedom was a negative
one, and brought no positive rights. They were
wholly outside the sacred circle of the gentes ; out-
side the groups of real or supposed kin in which all
cives Optimo jure were comprised.

This plebs, the many as against the few, slowly
won for itself a definite and recognised position both
in social and political life. Gradually they must
have come to be reckoned as ingenui, and as form-
ing gentes of their own ; and so they came also
to have their own popular worships like the Demos
in Attica in the sixth century. How these steps
were one by one secured we can hardly do more
than guess ; but it is the story of their admission
to political equality which concerns us now, and we
may leave the other questions to conjecture.

Up to the time of the later kings nothing had
been done to utilise and organise this population

vii THE PEEIOD OF TRANSITION AT ROME 191

as a part of the State. It could not indeed be
united in any real social union to the patrician
gentes, for it did not share in their religious com-
munion. But Servius Tullius, or some monarch of
genius (the name is of little moment), saw that it
could be turned to good account. It may be that
wars were at this time frequent, and that the king
was hard pressed ; tradition ascribed the great city-
wall to this time,^ and as surely was the new
organisation a military one. The city and its ter-
ritory were divided into four regions or local tribes,
comprising all free men, whether patricians or
plebeians, who possessed and occupied a certain
amount of land (assidui). The object of this was
doubtless to get an administrative basis for military
and financial purposes. Following on this there
came a division of all those free men into five
summonings (classes) ; the first of these being the
largest in number, and comprising those who had
most land, and so downwards to the fifth. These
were again divided into bodies of a hundred (cen-
turice), which formed the tactical unit of the newly-
constructed army. Thus the men of the plebs, or
all of them who were settled on the land as free-
holders, found themselves part of a real working
organisation, comprising the whole community
(populus), and destined for military purposes.
They gained no political advantage ; they had
no more to do with the auspicia ^ and the imperium

^ For the Servian wall and its existing remains, see Professor
Middleton's Rome in 1889, ch. ii,

- For the auspicia and the right of taking them, see Momnisen,

192 THE CITY-STATE CHAP.

than they had before. They were simply utilised
and organised. But their relation to the State
was made much more distinct ; they were no longer
merely attached to patrician gentes, no longer in an
ambiguous position as regards citizenship ; they
were embodied in the State on the principle of
settlement and locality, destined here, as every-
where else, slowly to obliterate the older principle
of kinship. The revolution was of the same nature
as that of Cleisthenes at Athens ; all primitive
divisions of the people were superseded, though not
destroyed, by the new ones. The State is throwing
off the dress of its infancy, and preparing to live
the life of vigorous youth in a new form.

At this point, then, and under the same influ-
ences as in Greece, the State seems in a fair way to
make progress towards democracy. The aristocratic
society, of which, as I have pointed out before, the
early monarchies were only the constitutional
expression, has passed under the influence of a
form of tyranniSi and the multitude has been
brought forward as an essential factor in the
State. But it is not given to every people to
develop the art of governing itself; it would
seem to need a peculiar type of character to
produce this result as it was produced at Athens,
— a type in which intellectual quickness is not too
strongly tempered by reverence for anci&nt usage
and for ancient social distinctions. Now the
Eoman, whether patrician or plebeian, had little

Staatsrecht (ed. 2) i. 73 foil. ; Willems, Droit public Eomain, 232
loU.

VII THE PEKIOD OF TRANSITION AT ROME 193

intellectual quickness, but he had a marvellous
capacity for discipline, and an unbounded venera-
tion for the customs of his forefathers. It was
natural, then, that at Eome, when the tyrmmis came
to an end, it should leave society and manners com-
paratively unchanged ; and in fact we find that as
soon as it disappears the aristocratic idea asserts
itself as strongly as ever. The aristocracy, as we
have already seen, adapted the kingly constitution
to their own ends, and the State became aristocratic
in form as well as in fact.

The patrician families alone could exercise the
imperium ; they alpn(EL_kneH_Jhe_ jiinwritten law ;
they alone knew the secrets of religion, — how to
take the auspices, how to purify the State, how to
conduct marriages and funerals in that traditional
way which alone could find favour with the gods.
On the other hand, the plebeian had his place in
the army, and might fight side by side with the
patrician, but he could never attain to high com-
mand. He might accumulate wealth, and add field
to field, but if he had a quarrel with a patrician
neighbour he had to submit it to a patrician magis-
trate, to be decided by rules of which he was wholly
ignorant. If he borrowed stock or plant from his
neighbour, he had to give his own land or person as
security for the debt.^ He could not marry into a
patrician family without violating the most sacred
prejudices. Thus the " men of the fathers " and

^ On the Roman law of debt see Clark, Earhj Roman Law, p.
108 foil.; and article "Nexiim" in the new edition of the Did.
of Antiquities.

O

194 THE CITY-STATE chap.

the " men of the multitude " stood face to face in
the same State ; the former in exclusive possession
of political power, and forming a solid aristocratic
government of high-born and wealthy men ; the
latter giving their services to the State in the
newly -organised army of centuries, but politically
almost helpless, the machinery of government being
wholly out of theii' reach. >

But the political good sense of tlie Eoman
people, the increase of the plebs by the absorption
of conquered peoples, and the necessities of warfare
in the period which followed the abolition of
monarchy, combined in course of time to unite
these two distinct bodies into one solid political
whole. The process went on through two centuries,
but was at last completed, and left no ill blood
behind it. The patrician position was forced at all
points ; the fortresses of legal knowledge, of religious
knowledge, of executive government, of social exclu-
siveness, were carried one after the other, and,
according to the traditional accounts, with little
violence and no bloodshed. Let us trace the story
of this process of unification step by step, leaving
to another chapter the question as to the form of
government which was the result of it.

At the very outset of the Eepublic, accord-
ing to the received tradition, the new form oi
the armed people — which we may believe to have
been so far used, as it was originally intended,
only for military and financial purposes — begau
to be now applied in the election of magistrates;
the centuriate army became a centuriate assembly.

VII THE PEKIOD OF TRANSITION AT ROME 195

Thus the plebs at once gained a voice in the
election of aristocratic magistrates. And more ; to
this centuriate assembly they could now appeal
equally with patricians if a consul threatened them
with capital punishment. The aristocracy, in se-
curing their own liberties against the power of the
executive, could not help going some way towards
securing those of the plebs as well.

But this security was really of little value to the
plebeian. Beyond doubt, the assembly of centuries
was dominated by patrician influence. The mass
of small plebeian freeholders had no resource if they
were subjected to severe treatment, however legal.
The laws or customary rules of debt, for example,
were terribly hard ; and all small agriculturists are
liable to be driven to borrow by bad seasons or
unlucky accidents.-^ The Servian census proves that
the Komans were a people of farmers, and it also
proves that their holdings differed greatly in size.
Under such conditions it is almost inevitable that
the small holder should borrow of the greater;
and if he does so under such a law as the Eoman
law of debt, administered by magistrates over whom
he has practically no control, it is inevitable that
he should come under bondage to his creditor. The
only resource the plebs could fall back upon was to
linite in depriving the State of their services, to
refuse the military service without which the State

^ We have seen the effects at Athens of this inherent weakness
7 of a society of small holders of land (see p. 130). It may be illus-
trated at the present day from India, Russia, Ireland, and eveo
Switzerland.

196 THE CITY-STATE CHAP

could not resist its enemies, and, as their brethren
had so often done in Greece, to leave the city and
find a home elsewhere.

This must be what is indicated by the famous
story of the Secession to the Sacred Mount. It was
a strike on a grand scale, and in a State instead of
a private undertaking. Such combinations to resist
oppression, and to gain some control over the op-
pressing management, were not possible or needed
in the same form as our strikes, which are the
struggles of organised labour against organised
private capital ; but they occur both in Greek and
Eoman history in the sense of practical protests of
one class against the domination of another. The
plebs marched out to the Anio after refusing their
services at a levy, intending to found a new city
on the banks of that river. Eome was at the mercy
of her enemies, helpless and deprived of that middle
class which is the source of all political strength.
But the plebs were helpless too. Where was the
genius to be found who could overcome for them
the tremendous difficulties in which they were
placed ? Cities could not be founded by any one who
wished, without the aid of priests and religious lore,
without the elements of cohesion in the form of king
and gentes. Mutual perplexity brought mutual con-
cession, as the story suggests ; and the plebs returned
to Eome to fight again for the old city, and also to
fight a long series of political battles under leaders
now definitely recognised by the whole State.

Perhaps there is no such singular event in
ancient history as the establishment of the tribunate

VII THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION AT ROME 197

of the plebs in 494 B.C. ; certainly there is none of
which the results were so strange and far-reaching.
Nor is there any known fact which brings before us
so clearly the contrast of privileged and unprivileged
in a City-State, or the distinctness with which the
Romans conceived this contrast. We see here the
almost absolute separation of noble from ignoble, of
the members of the ancient clans from the population
which had grown up outside them. For these tri-
bunes had nothing to do with the State as a whole ;
they were not magistrates of the State ; they had
no seat in the Senate ; they were not even cives
o2)timo jure. They had no direct hold upon the
policy of the executive and its council. They were
simply officers of the plebs, and, so far as we know,
their powers were limited to the protection of ple-
beians against the action of the State and its magis-
trates. And this protective power could only be
exercised within the city and a mile beyond its walls ;
against the imperium militice, the absolute power of
the consul in the field, they were quite powerless.
Within the walls, if a plebeian called upon them to
help him, the patrician magistrate must withdraw
his lictors ; but in this negative sense only could
they bring influence to bear upon the imperium.

But what guarantee could there be that the
magistrates would respect the interference of these
plebeian officers ? There must be some special bond
to secure this respect, for the nature of the office
suggested none of itself. The tribune was elected
without auspicia, and no religious sanction protected
him such as protected those who were responsible

198 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

for the State religion. The device invented for this
purpose was a curious one, and well illustrates the
peculiar character of the Eoman political mind,
which demanded the sanction of the gods for every
step taken. The tribunes were, during their year
of office, devoted to the gods (sacrosancti) ; the bind-
ing force of the religious idea was called in to protect
them. De Coulanges, going perhaps too far, has
called them a kind of living altars to which the
oppressed could fly for refuge ; at any rate, any one
who violated their sanctity was guilty of sacrilege.
The act of legislation by which this was secured was
itself a lex sacrata^ — that is, a kind of treaty between
two communities foreign to each other, whose rela-
tions need to be controlled by some special religious
security. Soon afterwards the position of the tri-
bunes was further strengthened by a law which
forbade interference with any assembly of the plebs
which a tribune had summoned, and perhaps also
giving them some means of securing the punish-
ment of any one who violated their sanctity or hin-
dered their activity.

It is not necessary here to trace the steps by which
these germs of authority grew gradually into a most
formidable power, positive as well as negative. Let
us keep to the Tribunate as it originally was, and
note the stage it marks in the transitional period
we are traversing. It is no advance towards a real
political union that is here indicated. The aristo-
cracy as yet shows no sign that it can entertain the

^ For the meaning of these terms see Cicero, pro Balbo, ch,
xiv. 32.

THE PERIOD OF TEANSITION AT ROME 199

idea of a State uniting the multitude with the gentes
in one body politic ; the barrier between the two is
even more distinctly marked here than it was under
the kings. In the armed host alone the two appear
as one, and so also in the form in which that host
meets for political purposes (comitia centuriata). In
all other respects the plebs appears now as a dis-
tinct corporation, with officers and a kind of charter
of its own, enabHng those officers to transact its busi-
ness in a purely plebeian assembly, meeting in tribes.
But the very distinctness of this separation
brought the plebs into a new prominence. The
mass of unorganised humanity that seceded to the
Sacred Mount had been given a form and a voice,
and could now act and speak, imperfectly, perhaps,
but efficiently. And as every motive which could
call forth their speech or action was rooted in the
inequality of their position in relation to the patrician
executive, we are not surprised to find them using
their new advantages to do away with that in-
equality. They have at last secured the means of
doing this. They are no longer a mere rabble, like
the followers of Jack Cade, or the Kentish masses
who flocked to London with Wyatt in 1553. They
are a compact and organised body, which has already
gained its charter and its officers, and is about to use
these advantages to obtain others still more effectual
and permanent. Their claim is now for union and
equality; union with the patrician City-State of which
they have so far been, as it were, a mere annex or
suburb, and equality with it in all its rights and
honours and privileges, both social and political.

200 THE CITY-STATE CHAP

The first step they gained in this direction
was by securing what the Greeks called laovo-
fiia, or equality in the incidence of the law on all
classes of society. The law, as we have seen,
meant simply the rules of practice, in public and
private life alike, which had grown up as the State
grew, and formed the outward expression of the im-
perium. Up to this time the knowledge of these rules
had been a secret science, of which the patrician
families were the only craftsmen. All others were
still ignorant of the art of government, and unfit to
propitiate the gods, which was not the least import-
ant part of that art. To borrow another metaphor
from the modern world, the multitude was a multi-
tude of hands, suited to fight and to till the ground,
but wholly ignorant of the science which could turn
their labour to account. But in 451 B.C. they
began to be initiated in the craft. In that year
the rules of practice were at last embodied in a
written code of ten tables, to which two others
were shortly added. This is the fons aequi juris
of Eoman law ; it is also the first unquestionable
fact in the history of the Eepublic, for many genuine
fragments of it still survive.-^

It is interesting to note that this great result
was brought about by the same agency as in the
parallel revolution at Athens. The details of the
story are indeed quite worthless, but the fact is
beyond doubt that the new code was drawn up by

1 For the fragments of the Twelve Tables see Wordsworth,
Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin, p. 254 foil. ; or Brims.
Fontes juris liomani, p. 16 foil. (ed. 4).

VII THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION AT ROME 201

a Board of Ten, having almost absolute power, while
Consulship and Tribunate were for the time sus-
pended. The position of this board thus resembles
that of Solon, and of the Greek arbiter; it is a
genuine example of the tendency to have recourse
to absolutism in settling internal troubles which
were the result of fermentation. But the Komans,
with their singular gift for legal definition, and their
political conception of collegiate power, placed this
new power on a constitutional footing, shared it
between ten members, gave it a definite task to do,
and called on it to resign when the task was accom-
plished.-^ The work was so well done that it lasted
the Eoman State throughout the whole of its
political life. But the immediate result of it was
to give the plebs, through their tribunes, a real
controlling power over the patrician executive, and
so to supply exactly that political basis of action
which had been wanting so far. At this point it
may be said that politics really begin — that is, the
reciprocal action of parties and interests in a
single State as distinguished from negotiations
between two distinct communities. The whole
State has now a common code to refer to in
all legal difficulties. Consuls and tribunes are
now officers of the same State, and the tribunes
can take measures, now they know the secrets of

^ The same formality is well seen in the method of appointing
a Dictator. The Dictatorship affords another example of recur-
rence to the monarchical principle ; but its holder was, strictly
speaking, only the collega major of the consuis, and was limited
both in respect of the work he had to do, and of the time he was
to do it in.

202 THE CITY-STATE chap

the imperium, to gain a positive control over the
executive which exercised it.

That the battle had been already practically
won, even before the last two tables had been
completed, is made clear by the annalists. The list
of the second Board of Ten comprises some names
which are almost beyond doubt plebeian ; and this
is the first example we meet with of plebeians
actually sharing the executive power. And now
the victorious side begins rapidly to press its
advantage. In 449 the consuls Valerius and
Horatius passed a law giving the plebeian assembly
over which the tribunes presided a real sovereign
power in legislation, binding the whole State under
certain conditions which we cannot now recover.
Up to this time such resolutions as the plebs had
passed (plebiscita) had been binding only on the
plebs itself; they were no more laws of the State
than the tribunes were magistrates of the State.
This Lex Yaleria-Horatia marks the beginning of
an entirely new status for this plebeian assembly.
Step by step it gained a legislative power for the
whole State concurrent with that of the patricio-
plebeian assembly of centuries. The latter was
never done away or dropped, for reasons which can
only be thoroughly understood by those who have
studied the Eoman mind and character in its
institutions ; but it was gradually to a great extent
superseded.

Henceforward we have the strange spectacle of
two sovereign assemblies side by side — the populus,
or host of the entire people, presided over by

VII THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION AT ROME 203

consuls (comitia centuriata), and the plebs meeting
in tribes and presided over by tribunes (concilia
flebis). And this means, to put it briefly, that
the plebs is now in the fullest sense part of the
State, and that their tribunes are now State
magistrates.

Eour years later the process of social union, as
distinct from political, which had no doubt been
long going on without legal sanction, is marked by
a law enabling patricians and plebeians to inter-
marry, and so to form one s^pecies where there had
been two before. Doubtless there were great
searchings of heart over a measure which must
have hurt many ancient prejudices, and Livy has
reproduced these misgivings with all his rhetorical
skill.^ The gentes were losing their religious
exclusiveness ; the crowd was pushing profanely
into the sacred ground of high descent. But this
must have been going on for at least a generation
before any one could have been audacious enough
to propose to legalise it ; and we may take this
Lex Canuleia as the best possible proof that there
^as now a growing tendency on both sides to look
upon the State as one complete whole, with common
interests and common duties. The State has won
its final victory over the gens.

And in the same year we meet with yet another
step forward, which is attributed to the same
Canuleius. The question had been already raised
why plebeians should be excluded any longer from
that supi-eme executive which had now been placed
^ Livy, iv. 1 foil.

204 THE CITY-STATE chap

under the restriction of written laws. There had
been plebeian decemvirs, and there were undoubtedly
rich plebeians attaining to eminence in the army,
the conduct of which was at this time of constant
warfare the special duty of the Consul. Why should
not such men be entrusted with the highest com-
mand ? This question was now answered by a law
which made it possible in any year for the Senate
to decide on the election of six military tribunes
(officers of the highest rank in the legion), invested
with consular irnperium like the decemvirs, and
taking the place of consuls. In other words, if
there were eminent plebeian officers their services
might now be utilised by the State as supreme
commanders without admitting them to the patrician
privileges of curule chair and purple-edged toga.
According to the annalists and the Fasti, it was
indeed forty-five years before the ability of any
plebeian was thus actually called into play ; but if
the law be rightly dated, the inference is that the
idea of service done for the State, which itself
implied a certain amount of wealth, was beginning
to override the idea of gentile exclusiveness.

From this point follows a long period in which
we have no landmark of political advance. Though
the records of it are purely traditional, it was beyond
doubt a period of continued wars with the neigh-
bouring ^quians and Volscians, and with the
Etruscan city of Veii, resulting in a great exten-
sion of Eoman territory, and a great increase in the
number of plebeian citizens. The terrible Gallic
invasion of 390 B.C. united all in the common

VII THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION AT ROME 205

defence, and brought out their best qualities. Such
a period of wars must have wrought slowly but
surely a great social revolution which prepared the
way for the completion of the political one. Indi-
viduals among the plebs must have become noted
for their prowess and for their wealth. Patrician
families may have died out under the stress of war.
The great holders of land, increasing in number as
the territory increased, were now plebeian as much
as patrician, and they came thus to have an iden-
tical interest, and the same way of looking at pubhc
questions. More and more it became visible that
the real material of the State was plebeian, and that
the old families could no longer be thought of as
the only true-born cives. New worships began to
gain ground associated chiefly with the plebs. When
the Gauls had retired, and the State was once more
free from immediate danger, it became obvious that
the time was at hand when this slow revolution in
ideas must take shape in a final victory of the
plebs.

In the year 367, after a struggle of ten years,
this final victory was won. There was no revolu-
tion, no bloodshed, only persistent attack on the one
side and obstinate resistance on the other. The
Tribunate, in later times the instrument of passion
and violence, here served the State well, and at last
secured the necessary constitutional reform by
reducing the machinery of the constitution to a
deadlock. The tribunes Licinius and Sextius in
this year passed a law restoring the Consulship in
place of the military Tribunate, and enacting that

206 THE CITY-STATE OHAP.

henceforward one consul must necessarily be a
plebeian.^

The work of these two tribunes may be looked
on as the second of the three most conspicuous
landmarks in the political development of Kome.
The first was the reform attributed to Servius
Tullius ; the third was to wait for nearly three cen-
turies. The ordinances of Servius first organised
the plebs, and by giving it duties to perform for
the State made it and its services indispensable.
After an interval of at least a century and a half
the Licinio-Sextian laws, passed by the plebs itself
as a sovereign legislative body, secured for it a per-
manent share in the executive government of the
whole State. The outward political form of Eome
as a City-State was now complete, and no further
striking change took place, until once more a new
population claimed admission to the State and its
government, and in enforcing their claim initiated
a vital change in the very nature of the Eoman
polity.

It is worth noting that these leading events in
the history of Eome, as well as the more subordinate
ones we have also mentioned, are not connected with
the names of any individuals whose personality has
struck root in human memory. The laws bore the
names of their authors, but these are names and
little more. In Athenian history it is just the

^ This law was not at first faithfully adhered to by the patricians.
But the Licinian law was re-enacted in B.C. 342, and in the same
year it was further enacted that both consuls might henceforward
be plebeians.

VII THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION AT ROME 207

opposite. There the collective wisdom of the com-
munity seems reflected in the virtue or the ambition
of Solon and Cleisthenes, Themistocles and Pericles.
The earlier heroes of Eoman tradition, Coriolanus,
for example, or Camillus, were patrician and con-
servative ; the leaders of progress either were not
suffered to survive as heroes, or, as may very well
have been the case, had nothing heroic about them.
But if they did not leave their features graven on
the stone, these Eoman builders at least understood
their trade ; and this is more especially true of the
Licinius and Sextius who completed the equalisation
of the patrician and plebeian orders.

The work of these two tribunes was as completely
rounded off as that of Solon himself Like Solon,
they seem to have understood that political advan-
tages are comparatively useless except in the hands
of men who are socially and economically comfort-
able ; that agitation is for men who seek comfort,
while government is for men whose" discomfort is
already alleviated. Thus with their great political
law they combined others which were meant to
maintain the well-being and numbers of the Eoman
middle class of freeholders •, and for this combination
they struggled hard for years, even in spite of the
sluggishness of the very class for which they were
lighting. They aimed directly at reducing to a
minimum the two chronic evils of the Eoman
economy — large private estates, and the slave-
labour employed in their cultivation ; so that the
smaller holders, now admitted to a full share in the
government, might retain their land, or at least find

208 THE CITY-STATE CHAP.

employment on the estates of their richer neigh-
bours. Their motives in this struggle may have
been less pure than Solon's/ but their efforts were
plainly directed to the same end as his.

Their work marks, indeed, a stage of development
in some sense even nearer to democracy than that
of Solon. The highest executive office was now open
to all citizens ; the popular legislative assemblies
were sovereign in the constitution ; and if these laws
were faithfully carried out there would be a fairly
even distribution of wealth throughout the com-
munity, such as would enable all to take a reasonable
amount of interest in the government, propor-
tionate to their own share in the general wellbeing.
On the face of things there was no reason why
genuine democratic institutions should not have
taken root and grown, and there are some signs in
the annals a generation or two later that such a
growth was actually beginning.^ But true democracy
is a plant of very great rarity, which will not grow
on every soil. Why it withered at Eome — why
after all, the Eomans never learnt to govern them-
selves like the Athenians — will be explained in
another chapter.

^ It is likely enough, as Mommsen suggests, that they repre-
sented the claims of the richer plebeians in their efforts to throw
open the consulship. Sextius was himself the first plebeian consul
in the year 366 B.C.

2 Livy, ix, ch. 46, x. 7. For the action of Appius, the
censor of 312 B.C., in allowing landless citizens to be enrolled in
any tribe, see Appendix to the first volume of Mommsen's RoTtvan
History, p. 498 foil. There are undoubtedly some signs in the
story both of a tyrannic and of a democratic tendency to deal reck-
lessly with ancient custom, which is exceedingly rare at Rome.

VII THE PEEIOD OF TRANSITION AT ROME 209

Let US turn for a moment, before we leave these
earlier stages of Eoman progress, to another aspect
of Eome's development as a City-State, which has
been of much greater interest to the world than
even the growth of her constitution. The genius of
the Eoman people was to leave one valuable legacy
to modern civilisation ; but it was not to be the
memory of a gifted democracy, like the Athenian,
the nursing mother of poets, orators, sculptors, and
philosophers. It was to be a legacy of legal ideas
and practice ; a systematisation of the rights and
duties of men to each other and to the State, and of
the procedure and the sanctions necessary to secure
them, which preserved the conceptions of legal justice
and equity throughout all the chaos and confusion
of the Middle Ages. Though hard to realise, and
especially so for EngHshmen, it is true that modern
Europe owes to the Eomans its ancient inherited
sense of the sacredness of a free man's person and
property, and its knowledge of the simplest and
most rational methods by which person and property
may be secured with least inconvenience to the
whole community. The nations to come after
Eome were saved the trouble of finding out all this
for themselves ; and it may be doubted whether any
of them had the requisite genius. We in England,
for example, owe the peculiar cumbrousness of our
legal system to the absence of those direct Eoman
influences, which, on the continent, have simplified
and illuminated the native legal material.

The beginnings of Eoman law are to be found in
the period we have just been traversing ; here began
p

210 .. THE CITY-STATE CHA?

that work of systematisation which was to form a
framework for the loose threads of our ideas of legal
justice and equity. It was not, indeed, as the law
of the City-State of Eome that this systematisation
was to dominate the world ; but it was in the City-
State that its roots were firmly fixed. The jus
civile, or law of the cives Romani, was first formulated
in the Twelve Tables drawn up by decemvirs in
451 B.C. and the following year; and we have suf-
ficient fragments of these to gather something both
of their contents and their method. The political
advance which they indicate is very great. We
here see the State for the first time definitely for-
mulating the rules which were to govern the rela-
tions of men, — of privileged and unprivileged alike,
— in regard to person and property ; rules hitherto
traditional in family or gens, or administered by
the magistrate under no security for the consistency
of his action. To these were probably added new
ones adapted from the codes of other States, and
especially from that of Solon. Custom, thus at
once solidified and extended, became what we may
justly call law. Law is a natural product of the
true City-State, which demands something to give
security to the life and dealings of all its members,
— something which neither the savage, nor the
member of a village community, nor even the
gentilis within the infant State, has ever yet pos-
sessed in a formal and, so to speak, scientific
shape ; and this product of State-life the Eomana
were now developing with characteristic exactness.
We see also that the rules laid down in these Tables

VII THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION AT ROME 211

are characterised by a peculiarly rigid formality, —
that is, that the rigid formality of pre-existing
Koman practice is to characterise also the written
law. As in politics the Eomans thought clearly
and logically, and expressed their thoughts in preg-
nant technical terms, so also in the region of law.

The Tables were regarded for centuries with
profound veneration, and throughout Eoman history
continued to form the nucleus of the jus civile (law
of the City-State), which was expanded to meet
further needs almost entirely by intei'preting and
adjusting them. This veneration for prescribed
rules and forms is perhaps the most striking feature
in the Eoman character ; it passed from their prac-
tice in religious ritual into their practice in legal
procedure, and gave their conception of law a dis-
tinctness and certainty never realised by any
other people. The conservative instinct inherent
in human nature, the spirit that shrinks from losing
one jot of what laborious forefathers have stored up
with infinite pains — this spirit was far stronger in
the Eoman than the Greek, and it is one great secret
of the extraordinary solidity of the legal structure
which he raised. It was in this way that the
Eomans realised " the good life " ; not, like the
Greek, by rising from the kco/jltj to new vigour of
intellect in poetry and art, but in perceiving with a
vision so direct how justice could best be secured
between citizen and citizen, and in holding to the
formulated result with a veneration so deep and so
lasting. They never entirely ignored anything that
they had once discovered and prized

212 THE CITY-STATE chap, vii

They never, indeed, wholly ignored it ; but
they had also the. true legal instinct of adapting
their forms and methods to new circumstances, or
of inventing new ones while they still retained the
old. This is the other secret of the stability of
their legal masonry. The jus civile, as expressed in
the Twelve Tables, and even as expanded by their
interpretation, could hardly have been made to suit
the needs of the empire that the Eomans were to
acquire in the next three centuries and a half;
even to have made the attempt would have violated
their legal sensitiveness, and broken the traditions
of the City-State. But they were not at a loss ;
they had now in the Twelve Tables the means of
rudimentary legal training, and they had constant
practice in adjustment and interpretation ; and these,
together with their clear conception of magisterial
power, carried them in due time safely over the
difiiculty. We shall return to this subject at the
end of the next chapter ; this further development
of the Eoman legal instinct was the work of the
two centuries which followed the equalisation of the
orders, and the result of the wholly new conditions
of life under which the State was brought by ever-
increasing conquest and commerca

CHAPTEK VIII

THE PERFECTION OF OLIGARCHY: ROME

By the year_300 B.C. the first great revolution in
Eoman history is completed. The men of the multi-
tude have forced their way into the sacred ground
which patrician exclusiveness regarded as the only
true State ; at point after point the defences have
been broken down, and the crowd mingles freely
and on equal terms with the aristocratic garrison,
sharing with them all privileges and all duties
which the State bestows or demands.

This great change, it should be noted, had been
brought about chiefly by the sheer necessities of the
government in the long series of wars in which Kome
had for two centuries been engaged. It was no more
possible for an army of patricians and their clients
to survive defeat, or reap the fruits of conquest,
than for the feudal army of our own earliest kings
to maintain dominion in France and successfully
attack Wales and Scotland. In each case the people
came to be recognised as the essential material oi

214 THE CITY-STATE CHAP.

the State and its armies, and in each case this led
to a further recognition of the right of the people
to have its voice heard in matters of government.
The parallel must not be pushed too far ; but
this at least is clear, that had Eoman aristocracy
and English kingship been able to live and rule
in peace, studying simply the comfort of their
subjects and the maintenance of existing condi-
tions of society, neither would so soon have found
itself face to face with the people, and obliged to
make terms with them or renounce a career of con-
quest. No historian should allow his sense of the
iniquity or the fruitlessness of war to hinder him
from paying due attention to the vital struggles of
a great State ; for it is in war that the real fibre
and mettle of the masses of population are seen
at their best, and win acknowledgment most eftectu-
ally. Less, indeed, than economic history, but still
to be reckoned along with it, mihtary history is the
exponent of the strength and vitahty of a nation ;
constitutional history, after all, does but sum up
the changes in the outward form of government to
which the vicissitudes of war, commerce, and agri-
culture slowly and painfully give birth. In the
present chapter we shall have special reason to bear
this in mind ; for once more we shall note the con-
stitutional results of a long period of war and
conquest — results so surprising as to seem almost
paradoxical.

If we take our stand at tli.e year 300 B.C., or

better, perhaps, at 287 B.c.,^ and read carefully the

^ This is the date of the Lex Horten&ia, the third of the three

I

\xii THE PERFEOTION OF OLIGARCHY 215

last two or three books of Livy's first decade, we
shall see no apparent reason why the Koman con- |
stitution should not develop in the direction of
democracy. All the preliminary steps seem to have
been taken. The old idea of the prestige of patri-
cian kinship is gone past recall, and every department
of government is open to plebeians. If any class is
under disabilities, it is the patrician.^ The plebeian
assembly is becoming the chief legislative body, and
has also no small judicial power. The executive
seems to be under the control of the people, for a form
of popular trial has come into vogue, by which the
tribunes frequently impeach an ex - magistrate,
examining the case at informal meetings in the
forum, and calling for a final condemnation in the
assembly of centuries. In this assembly, which also
elects the chief magistrates, it is not birth, but pro-
perty, that preponderates in the voting; and the
acquisition of property, landed or other, has long
been as much open to plebeians as to patricians.
The territory of the State has been immensely
enlarged, new tribes have been added, new com-
munities received into citizenship ; and thus the
plebs has continually been strengthened by absorp-
tion, while the patrician body must have as steadily
dwindled in number. Patrician families, in order
to survive, strengthen themselves by plebeian mar-
laws which changed the assembly of the plebs into a sovereign
legislative body.

^ E.g. one consul must be (Lex Licinia, 367 B.C.), both consuls
might be, plebeian (law of 342 B.C.). So, too one censor must
be plebeian. A patrician, too, was of course ineligible for tha
Tribunate of the plebs.

216 THE CITY-STATE CHAP.

riages, and the old prejudice against such alliances
lives on only among a few, or in the hearts of
patrician matrons.^

To sum up : the old social and political ine-
quality has vanished ; the laws press equally on all,
and can be read by all; the people is clearly
sovereign in the legislative assembly of tribes,
presided over by the tribunes of the plebs ; the
executive is under control, each magistrate being
liable to impeachment and popular trial after his
year of office. This is not, indeed, democracy in
the Athenian sense, for the people does not itself
do the actual work of government, though its de-
cision is ! paramount whenever it is called on to
legislate, to give sentence, or to decide on peace and
war. But it answers fairly well to Aristotle's con-\
ception of a moderate democracy, and rests, in fact,]
upon much the same social conditions which he
postulated for that kind of constitution. Aristotle
points out that the characteristic drawbacks of de-
mocracy are not likely to be present where the mass
of the people is occupied with agriculture ; for
their work in the fields will keep them away from
the city, except on certain occasions, and they will
thus escape becoming too political — too much inter-
ested, that is, in matters which they cannot under-
stand. They may elect their magistrates, and ex-,

^ Read Livy, x. 23, which contains a characteristic story of
this age, illustrating both the survival of patrician prejudice among
the ladies of high family, and the renunciation of it by the more
daring. A patrician matron, married to a plebeian, erects an altar
to Pudicitia pleheia.

VIII THE PERFECTION OF OLIGARCHY 217

ercise judgment on them after their time of office ;
but in such a democracy the actual government will
be left to those whose wealth, position, virtue, and
renown, make them competent to discharge such
duties.^ At Eome, at the period we have reached,
these conditions of a moderate democracy were pre-
sent; the population was mainly agricultural, and
came into the city only to vote in elections, or now
and then to decide questions legislative and judicial.
The government was left to those who were capable
of it ; the Roman people itself tilled the ground
and served in the army, but did not govern ; J|^
was sovereign, but it did not rule. Such a consti-
tution was admirably suited to the Roman State
and character, which was as different from the
Athenian as an English labourer is from an Irish-
man. But Eome was already started on a career
which was to bring her imder conditions of political
life unknown in Aristotle's philosophy ; and how
would her constitution fit itself to these ? Was it
to go forward in what might seem its natural course,
towards a complete democracy like the Athenian ?
Or was the character of this Sry/^o? ryecopjiKo^; un-
suited for the detailed work of self-government, for
the organisation of conquests already won, and for
the conduct of long struggles against enemies which
were at this very time beginning to threaten ?

Instead of pursuing the course of Roman history

step by step, let us at once look forward a century

and a half, and, taking a fresh stand about the year

150 B.C., let us take note of the constitution as we

^ This is the general sense of Pol. (1318 B).

218 THE CITY-STATE

find it at that point. There was living then in Eonn
a Greek of ability, who had ample means of observin
the working of the Eoman constitution, and whose
record of it has most fortunately come down to us.^

^Polybius' account is not, indeed, to be accepted
without reserve ; it was coloured by his unbounded
admiration for Eome and her great deeds, as well as

^ by the peculiar philosophical bent of his own mind,
which was apt to deal with political institutions in
the abstract, without taking sufficient account of the
social and economical forces which are continually
acting upon them. But we are not without the
means of criticising and verifying Polybius. Livy's
history, based, in these last books which have sur-
vived from his vast undertaking, on records for the
most part of undoubted value, brings us down to
within a few years of 150 B.C. Looking on, too, we
have materials for a consistent view of the consti-
tution from the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus in
133 B.C., in Appian's Civil Wars, in Plutarch's Lives
of the GraccJd, and in many other writers of whom
Cicero is the most copious. Livy gives us a picture
of a constitution in the highest state of effi-
ciency, performing its work admirably, and almost
without a hitch ; Appian and the later writers show
us this same constitution rapidly getting out of gear,
and sustaining formidable attacks with difficulty;
And between the two we have Polybius, studying it
fcalmly as a foreigner, admiring its perfect balance^

^ Polybius, book vi. 10 foil. It is probable that these chapters
were written about 140 B.C. ; certainly before the Tribunate of
riberius Gracchus. •

i

\

VIII THE PEKFECTION OF OLIGARCHY 219

of parts, and apparently quite unconscious either of
weakness inherent in it, or danger about to beset it.
Our materials are therefore sufficient ; we can make
no serious mistake about this constitution.

And what then was it ? The answer may well
be startling and even paradoxical to those who have
not yet studied the Eoman character, or learnt to
recognise the sternly tenacious conservatism of the
Eoman political mind. Though the conditions of\
the Roman City - State have entirely changed, /
though she has already become an imperial State,/
and though her sway now extends from Macedonia to^
Spain, the constitution remains in outward form pre- \
cisely what it was a hundred and fifty years earlier. /
It is still democratic — not indeed in the Athenian
sense, but in a sense in which we often use the word
now. The people are sovereign in legislation, and
in the most important judicial cases ; they decide
on peace and war; they elect their magistrates
yearly. They are sovereign whenever they are
called on to act, and they must of necessity be
called on frequently. " One might reasonably con-
clude," says Polybius, describing the position of the
Demos at Eome, " that it has the greatest share of
power, and that the constitution is of the most
pronounced democratic type."

But this constitution, as it was actually worked]
in practice, was no more a democracy than the British \
constitution is a monarchy. It was not even whaty
Polybius pronounced it to be, after surveying its
several parts, — a constitution in which the elements
of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy were all

220 THE CITY-STATE CHAP.

to be found, acting and reacting on each other in a
perfectly happy and harmonious combination. Nor
again was it, as Cicero, looking back on it a century
later through the rosy medium of his own imagination,
vainly pictured it to Eoman jurymen, a consti-
tution in which the duties and honours of govern-
ment were open to every citizen whose capability
and industry could give him a claim to them.^ As
we see it in Livy's later books, and as we see it put
to the test in the history of its fall, it was neither\
a democracy, nor a mixed constitution, nor a
government of the best men in the State, but an
oligarchy — the most compact and powerful oligarchv
that the world has ever yet seen. As Athens
realised the most perfect form of democracy of which
the City-State was capable, so did Eome realise the

\y

■)

most perfect form of oligarchy.

The rest of this chapter must be occupied (1)^
with showing that this was the true character of the/
constitution in its actual practice, whatever may I
have been its apparent or legal form, and (2) with )
explaining how this strange result had come about,
The constitution of the Eoman republic is indeed
an exceedingly difficult one to handle, more espe-
cially in a limited space. But it amply repays
the careful student, for it brings him face to face
with one of the most curious and puzzling problems
of political science. How can a constitution be one

^ Cicero, pro Sestio, cli. 65: " Ita magistratus annuos crea*
verunt, ut consilium senatus reipublicse praeponerent sempitemum,
deligerentur autein in id consilium ab universo populo, aditusquo
in ilium suramum ordinem civium industriae ac virtuti pateret. "

VIII THE PERFECTION OF OLIGARCHY 221

thing in theory and another in fact ? How is it
possible to retain the form of a democracy while the
government is actually in the hands of a few or
of one ? Even such an elementary account of the
Koman system of government as I can find space for
in the following pages may possibly throw some
light on these questions.

And first let us see what the Eoman consti-
tution was in its working form at any year in the
period covered by the last books of Livy — say
between 200 and 167 B.C. The first point to
notice is that the essential mark of an oligarchy is
to be found in the executive ; the great magistracies
are in the hands of a comparatively small number
of families. We see, in fact, a reversion to the
character of the earlier aristocratic period, as in
organic nature we often meet with a "throwing
back" to the features of a primitive form. As
formerly the consulship could be held only by the
limited number of old patrician families, so now, if
we look through the consular fasti \ for the period
300-150 B.C., we shall find the same names con-
stantly recurring. There are now, of course,
plebeians also in the list ; but the plebeian names
also appear again and again, and new names are
of comparatively rare occurrence. It is plain that
these families, patrician and plebeian alike, have
acquired a kind of hereditary right to hold the
consulship. The people, it is true, can elect exactly
whom they please ; but they evidently prefer to

* Corpus Inscr. Lat. vol. i. 483 foil. Cf. also the short table in
the second volume of Mommsen's History, ch. xi. p. 325, note.

222 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

entrust those persons with power whose ancestors
have already held it. We see here, in fact, a new
hereditary nobility — not a nobility of patriciai
descent, though the spirit of patricianism ig
evidently not extinct, but a nobility resting its
claims chiefly on service done to the State. The
patrician Cornelii, Valerii, Claudii, and others, and
the plebeian Licinii, Fulvii, or Junii, have done
good service to the State in former generations, and
it may be expected that they will continue to do
it ; for the traditions of wisdom and valour are in
these families, as the images of their ancestors are
in their halls.^ The old instinct of respect for
noble descent has transferred itself to this new
nobility ; the Koman people, always true to its
veneration for a certain type of civic excellence, in
which marked individuality was not prominent,
believed that this type could best be secured in its
leaders by seeking it where it had already been
found. And so it came about that a " new man,"
one whose family had never yet been prominent in
public life, rarely found his way to high office. If
he did so, it was only as the result of pre-eminent
military services, or by the aid of some influential
noble in persuading the people of the validity of his
claim. At a later date the art of oratory came also
to be reckoned as one of the aids of a novics homo ;

^ The jus imaginum, or right to keep in the house the images
of ancestors who had held a curule office, and to have them carried
in funeral processions, is a most characteristic feature of this
nobility. Read Polybius, vi. 53 ; Cic. ad Fam. ix. 21 ; Momm-
sen, Staatsrecht, i. 426 foil.

I

VIII THE PERFECTION OF OLIGAECHY 223

for in defending great men who were attacked in
the law-courts, the young orator could not fail to
improve his own chance of rising to greatness.

To illustrate the paramount social influence of
this new nobility, which thus secured for it as a
class the almost exclusive possession of the execu-
tive in the State, we need only glance at the
circumstances of the three most famous " new men"
who reached the consulship between 200 and 60
B.C. The first of these was M, Porcius Cato (Cato
the elder), consul 195, a farmer at Tusculum, who
entered public life through the influence of a friend
and neighbour belonging to the renowned family of
the Valerii Flacci.-^ The second was Gains Marius,
of an obscure family of Arpinum. This man, who
reached the consulship in 1 0 5 comparatively late in
life, was first noticed by the younger Scipio in the
Numantian war as a young ofi&cer of ability, and
obtained the tribunate of the plebs in 119 B.C.
with the help of L. Caecilius Metellus, with whose
family the Marii had long been in some way con-
nected as adherents.^ The third, M. TuUius Cicero,
also a native of Arpinum, owed his rise chiefly to
his own ability as a pleader, but also in no small
measure to the -notice taken of his father and him-
self by men of family and influence in the time of
his boyhood.^ And indeed when Cicero became a

1 Plutarch, Godo major 3. C. Laelius, cos. 190, probably owed
his success to his friend Scipio Africanus : Mommsen, UUt.
ii. 325.

2 Plutarch, Marius, 3 and 4.
• Cic. Be Oratore, ii. 1.

224 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

candidate for the consulship, at a time when tlie
power of the nobility had long been waning, he felt
the disadvantage of his novitas most keenly. Quintus
Cicero, in the short " Handbook of Electioneering " k
which he drew up for his brother's use, starts with/CU
an emphatic warning on this point — "Every day.W
when you go down to the Forum to canvass, say to
yourself these words : I am a new man ; 1 am a
candidate for the consulship ; and this is Eome." ^
And though Cicero was elected, the unwillingness
of the nobility to act with this newcomer as with
one of themselves had a permanent and disastrous
influence on his declining years.

The overwhelming social prestige of the families
already ennobled by State service, giving them a
strong moral claim to retain within their own circle
the honours and duties of executive government, is
the first fact which must be grasped if we are to
understand the constitution of this period. But
there is another fact still more important and less
easy to explain. If we turn again to our authori-
ties— if, for example, we open the third, fourth, or
fifth decades of Livy — we shall very soon find that
it is not with the executive magistracy that the real
conduct of the State resides. The consul is in
office for a year only, and during that year he is
constantly away from Eome in command of an
army. He may initiate a policy, but he cannot
secure its permanence ; he is liable to be hindered
by the voice of his colleague, or by the veto of the
tribune of the plebs. He is a functionary without
* Quintus Cicero, Commentariolum peiitionis, ch. 1.

THE PEKFECTION OF OLIGARCHY 225

whom the State cannot be governed ; no kind of
public business can be transacted without him, or
without the magistrates below him in rank ; yet it is
not his hand that is on the helm. Nothing can be
done without his initiation, yet he is not the guiding
spirit of the State. It is the great Council over
which he presides, and whose advice an almost
unbroken tradition enjoins him not only to ask, but
to take, in whose hands are really the destinies of
Eome, her empire, and the world.^ What, then, was
this Council ? in what manner selected, and entrusted
with what duties ? Do we find here, as in the
executive, the characteristic marks of an oligarchy ?
Let us see in the first place how the Senate was
filled up, and who were the persons who sat in it.
Every five years the list of its members, three
hundred in number, was revised ; and the revision,
once the duty of the consul, as of the king before
him, was now entrusted to two censors. These
censors must have previously held the consulship ;
they were therefore men of experience, advanced in
life, and members of the hereditary nobility.^ The
principles on which they were to select the senators
were clearly understood, and even defined by statute

^ The following chapters of Livy may be selected as examples to
illustrate the statements in the text : — xxxi. 6 ; xxxiv. 55 and 56 ;
XXXV. 20 (where the consul is forbidden to leave the city) ; xxxvi.
40 (where a tribunician veto is overcome by the Senate ; cf., how-
ever, xxxiii. 25) ; xlv. 21. An excellent example of senatorial
authority in combination with tact will be found in xxxix. 39.

- Cato the elder is again a signal exception : read Livy, xxxix.
40, and Plutarch, Cato 16. He was in actual antagonism to the
nobilitas ; but he had still the support of Valerius Flaccus, who
was elected as his colleague.

Q

226 THE CITY-STATE chap

— they were to choose, up to the number of three
hundred or thereabout, "every most excellent
citizen of any rank" (optimum quemque ex omni
ordine)} But by what standard were they to
measure this excellence ? Whatever was the
precise intention of the words just quoted, — if
indeed they were the actual words of the statute, —
there is no doubt at all as to the way in which the
censors interpreted them. In a community hke
the Koman, where the virtues of the private
man could not expect to attract notice, they had
practically no choice. The only available measure
of excellence was the performance of public duty.
They first of all put upon the roll all who had in
any year held a curule office, i.e. who had been
consul, praetor, or curule sedile. All of these had
already sat in the Senate ever since their year of
office, and were well acquainted with senatorial
procedure and the manner of conducting business ;
those who had held office since the last revision
now became for the first time full senators, though
they had been allowed hitherto to retain the seats
they had acquired as magistrates. Next the
censors added all who had been non-curule magis-
trates, i.e. all ex-aediles of the plebs, ex-tribunes of
the plebs, and ex-quaestors. It has been calculated
that, without going further, the Hst of three

^ The only information we have about this important law is m
Festus' abridgment of Verrius Flaccus, the antiquary of the
Augustan age : ed. Miiller, p. 246, s. v. prceteriti senatores. A full
discussion of it in Willems' S6nat. i. 153 foil. Cf. Momrasen,
Stdatsrecht, ii, 413 ; iii. 873.

VIII

THE PERFECTION OF OLIGARCHY 227

hundred might in some years have been thus com-
pleted.^ But if any more names were needed, as
might happen after severe loss in war, or if the
censors, as they were entitled to do, struck off any
names from the list drawn up by their predecessors,
the persons nominated in addition would be such as
had specially distinguished themselves in the field,
or had in some way gained themselves public credit;
and these were no doubt usually the sons or rela-
tions of men who were or had been senators.^

Thus the Senate was at this time almost entirely
made up of men who had held office and done the
State good service ; and no small proportion of
these had actually reached the consulship, or at
least the prsetorship. They had therefore been
several times elected to office by the votes of the
people, and it may indeed be said, with every
appearance of truth, that the Senate represented
the popular choice. But we have already seen
that the people almost invariably chose for these
higher magistracies members of the families of old
repute and standing ; and thus, though the Senate
was in a sense representative of the popular will,
it is also true that it was fed "by the, hereditary
nobility.

And we must also notice that in the actual

1 It will be worth the reader's while to examine at this point
the hypothetical list of the Senate as revised by the censors of
179 B.C., drawn up at great pains by Willems {Senat, i, 308 foil.).

^ Read the account, in Livy xxiii. 23, of the lectio senatus of
216 B.C., after the terrible losses at Cannae. It ends thus : " Turn
ex iis qui magistratus non cepissent, qui spolia ex hoste fixa domi
habereut, aut civicam coronam accepissent."

228 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP,

conduct of business in the Senate this nobility had
everything their own way. Among the ex- tribunes
and ex-qusestors there might be many men of new
families outside of the hereditary nobility, but these
men would not easily make themselves heard.
When a consul or praetor summoned the Senate
to seek its advice, he began by placing before it the
question to be decided, and then proceeded to ask the
opinions, in a regular order, of the leading senators.
He began with the consuls- elect, and went on to
the consulares (ex-consuls). Long before he reached
any lower rank it is probable that in the age of
which we are speaking the debate had usually ter-
minated. The tribunes, as magistrates armed with
a veto, would occasionally interfere ; but at this
time even they were rarely disloyal to the prestige
of the nobility.^

This great council, then, was not only composed
to a large extent of members of the hereditary
nobility, but these, as men who had seen the longest
service, and best understood the conduct of business,
were by far the most influential men who sat in it,
and could easily influence the votes of any who
were outside the pale. It is a true oligarchical
council ; not, like the Athenian Boule, merely a
large committee of the popular assembly. Almost
every member of it has submitted himself once, or
oftener, to the vote of the people in their elective

^ The Senate was in this period, as a rule, on the best of terras
with the Tribunate ; read Livy, xxxvi. 40, xxxviii. 47, where the
latter is influenced by the Senate ; and xxxiii. 25, and xlii. 21,
where the tribunes urge the Senate to a certain line of action.

1

vm THE PERFECTION OF OLIGAECHY 229

assembly; but as a consequence of the popular
veneration for families of tried worth, the really
pov/erful senators almost always belong to a limited
social oligarchy. In the Senate is gathered all the
wisdom and experience of the State; but this
wisdom and experience is not to^ be_iooked_jfor
outsije of a^ertain boundary line of society. ^JThis
iV^igarchy, and oligarcMcaLmachinery, of the most
admirable and effective kind. The executive and
its advising council form together a compact and
narrow body of identical interest ; a government of
the capable minority such as no other constitution
has ever developed. The English Whig oligarchy
of the eighteenth century was powerful enough, but
it was far from being as compact, or as capable, as
the Eoman senatorial oligarchy. Perhaps the only
modern State to which we can look for a parallel
is mediseval Venice, whose Grand Council, adminis-
tering a great empire, reminds us in some ways of
the Senate in its best days.^

Let us now turn to consider how the oligarchy,
thus constituted on the basis of a hereditary claim
to govern, actually secured and exercised power in
a State legally and theoretically democratic. For
it must be clearly understood that the Senate, the
essential organ of the oligarchic families, had in
constitutional law no independent power of its own ;
it was merely the advising council of the king, and
afterwards of the consul. It could not meet unless

^ Read the valuable comparison of the Venetian Grand Council
and the Roman Senate in the late Professor Freeman's Historical
Essays, vol. iv. pp. 410 foil.

230 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

summoned by a magistrate ; it could not command
the magistrate to take any course of action. Nor
could it necessarily control the assemblies of the
people ; for the magistrate, when proposing a law,
was not legally bound to consult the Senate on the
subject. Whoever studies even cursorily the con-
stitution of the Eoman Eepublic will soon find that
the magistrate had the sole initiative, and that the
ultimate sovereign power lay with the people. How
then was it possible that the Senate should become
the instrument of the dominating power of a close
oligarchy ?

The explanation of this strange phenomenon is
to be found (1) in the moral force exercised by an
assembly of ex-magistrates ; (2) in the nature of the
business which the Eoman government had to
transact as the State increased in power and
importance ; (3) in the character, lacking culture
and initiative, of the Eoman people itself A few
remarks on each of these points must suffice in this
chapter ; but to understand the problem thoroughly
an accurate knowledge is needed not only of the
constitution, but of the economy, the literature, and
the external history of the Eepublic.

1. The magistrate, as we have seen (p. 108),
was under no legal obligation to obey the decrees of
the Senate. But he was morally bound to consult
it ; for it was a principle of the constitution from the
earliest times to the latest, — one of the elcoOora
poijfiara of the Eoman mind, — that one in authority
should fortify himself by the advice of a consilium^

1 See above, p. 77.

VI 11 THE PERFECTION OS" OLIGARCIIY 231

And his own natural instinct must have prompted him
not only to seek this advice, but to follow it when
given ; for the Roman, habitually conservative, was
only too apt to guide himself by the custom of his
ancestors {mos majorum), said, to avoid untrodden paths.

Now consider how this instinct of his would be
strengthened by the overwhelming prestige of such
a council as the Senate. The consul had before
liim in the Senate every living man who had already
held the consulship, as well as all who had learnt
experience in any department of public administra-
tion. He was but one among many who were older
and more experienced than himself; the duties he
was now for the first time learning they had already
discharged with credit. If his council of war
consisted largely of ex-commanders-in-chief, what
general would be able to resist the force of their
authority ? The united voice of such a body as the
Senate, in which was gathered all the wisdom and
experience of the State, was not to be defied or even
neglected by men of the steady and loyal type
which the Eoman people preferred at this period to
entrust with magisterial power.

Thus it is not hard to see how the consul,
though always revered as the impersonation of the
majesty of the Eoman State, and though he sum-
moned the Senate, presided over it, and technically
initiated all its business, should have gradually
slipped into the position of the servant of such a
council of sages. Even the tribunes, young men
often and inexperienced, came to feel the same irre-
sistible authority, and hardly ever ventured in this

232 THE CITY-STATE cnAf

period to dispense with the Senate's sanction foi
their legislative designs. And though the process
was a gradual one — for the Senate's prestige had
itself grown with the growing State, — the impression
made on the Eoman mind was never wholly ob-
literated. Cicero expresses it exactly when, in the
outburst of republican enthusiasm which has already
been quoted, he speaks of the magistrates as " the
agents of the weighty designs of the Senate." He
does not describe them seeking its advice, as men
who might follow it or not as they pleased : that
was indeed the strictly legal view of their powers,
on which, in Cicero's own time, and to his infinite
disgust, his political enemies occasionally acted.
The view he so eloquently enforces represented the
practice of the constitution in its best days, when
the Senate's commanding wisdom was still un-
questioned ; the magistrate must obey the great
council of ex-magistrates, and be the loyal agent of
its most weighty designs.

2. This startling change in the working of the
constitution might, however, have never taken place,
if Eome had enjoyed the comparatively untroubled
youth of most of the City-States of antiquity. But
Eome, as Virgil sang of her, and as Dante wrote of
her long afterwards from a very different point of
view,^ seemed destined from her infancy to conquer
and to rule. Even by the time when the political
equalisation of patricians and plebeians was com-
plete, she had won a dominion in Italy such as had

^ In the De Mo7iarchia, Bk. ii. ; cf. Paradiso, canto vi. ; Virgil^
^n. vi. 756 foil.

VIII THE PERFECTION OF OLIGARCHY 233

been achieved by no Greek city — neither by Athens
nor Sparta. From every disaster, like England in
the eighteenth century, she rose with renewed
strength to fresh expansion. The Latins of the
Campagna lost their ancient equality with her, and
had to become Eoman citizens, for the most part on
an inferior scale of privilege. The dwellers on the
hills round about Latium had already submitted to
her ; and by the year 290 B.C. the Sabine popula-
tions of central Italy, the hardiest of all Italians,
had ceased to struggle against the inevitable. The
Etruscans to the north were less stubborn, and
Eome already dominated the peninsula. In 281
B.C. Pyrrhus of Epirus seemed likely for a time to
put an end to her career ; but Eome at last forced
him to depart, and all Italy acknowledged her as
mistress. Next came the collision with Carthage,
and the long struggle in Sicily ending in the acquisi-
tion of new provinces of government beyond the
sea ; and then more conquest to the north, among
the Gauls of the great plain of the Po. Again for
fourteen years she struggled for life with Carthage,
when Hannibal brought his army to her very gates,
and stripped her for the time of almost all the
dominion she had won. But even such a war as
this only ended in a fresh series of conquests ;
Carthage made humiliating terms, and lost all her
dominion in Spain. Hannibal, intriguing as a last
resource with the Macedonian king, turned Eome's
attention eastwards, and in the course of another
half- century both Macedonia and Greece were under
the rule of Eoman magistrates.

234 THE CITY-STATE chap

We need not now pursue this wonderful story
further, for it is not with the conquests themselves
that we are concerned, but with their reaction on
the constitution. In reading the history of conquer-
ing States, we are apt to dwell too little on the
immense amount of energy and brain-power which
such States have to expend. The levying and
equipment of armies, the building of vast fleets, the
adequate organisation of finance, the choice and
control of commanders, and above all, the settle-
ment of conquered territories and the vigilance
needed to secure their obedience — all these demand
such a strenuous industry in the conquerors as in
these days we can hardly realise. To us Englishmen,
with our peaceful and commercial instincts, a single
little war seems a matter of difficulty and moment ;
the defeat of a single battalion seems a serious
disaster. We have to go back to the days of Pitt
to understand how great a strain on the energies
and resources of a nation is a fierce and widespread
war which lasts for many years with varying result.
But he who would really grasp the meaning of the
senatorial government at Eome must try and realise
the business which that government had to get
through. It was business which called for experi-
ence and knowledge, as well as industry ; it could
not be done by amateurs. It needed the cool-
headedness of men of age and standing ; the steady
perseverance of men who had been trained in busi-
ness from their youth ; the reasonableness in com-
mand of men accustomed to obey. It called foi
unsparing attention to detail, and that exact

s^iii THE PERFECTION OF OLIGARCHY 235

adaptation of means to ends to which no novice in
statesmanship can readily attain. And lastly, this
task of conquest and organisation could not be ful-
filled without sobriety in debate, unity in action,
and that good sense and self-restraint which alone
can make a State orderly, and allow it to put forth
its full strength whenever it strikes a blow.

All these rare gifts were to be found in the
Eonian- Senate of this period ; not high intellectual
gifts, but perseverance, industry, honesty, orderli-
ness, and good sense. Probably no body of men
has~ever sat together for consultation so richly
endowed with these unpretentious qualities ; and
the reason lay not only in the Eoman character (of
which I have a word to say directly), but in the
traditions of those noble families of whose scions the
Senate was composed. To those men office meant
really work, and work meant distinction and honour ;
all had served the State from their youth, and most
of them had learnt how to serve it from their
fathers. If they had only been called on to transact
the ordinary duties of a Greek TroXtrT;?, these tradi-
tions might have had less force, and the peculiar
capacity of the Eoman senator might never have been
developed ; but, drawn on as she was from war to war,
Eome produced exactly the kind of Statesmanship
she most needed, and produced it also in abundance.
We need, then, feel no surprise that in all departments
of government the Senate, in which was gathered
all the wisdom and experience of the State, should
have gradually drawn the actual conduct of business
into its own hands. • And we have only to read a

236 THE CITY-STATE CUAP

few chapters of Livy's later books to convince our-
selves that this was so. The people pass laws, but
at the instance of the Senate ; and it is the decrees
of the Senate which the magistrate executes. The
Senate is foreign minister, financial minister, war
minister ; and the Senate is responsible to no other
person or assembly. Here is an oligarchic organ in
the highest state of adequacy to which necessity and
use can develop it.

3. At Athens, as we have seen, the work of
government in all its details was done by the people
themselves. A novice in Eoman history might not
unnaturally ask why the Eoman people was incap-
able of such work, or let it pass without remon-
strance into the hands of a few. To account for
this merely by reference to the composition of the
Senate, and the long series of wars through which
the Senate steered the State, is hardly going far
enough, it might be said ; the people, as really and
ultimately sovereign, was itself responsible for these
tendencies, and might have substituted for them a
peaceful development towards real democracy.

It is to the Eoman character and public economy
that we must look for an explanation of this
difficulty. The very first thing a student of the
Eepublican period should set himself to do is to
make it clear to himself what manner of people
the Eomans were, and what was their daily life and
occupation. In the Latin literature he ordinarily
reads, in Virgil and Horace, for example, he will
find some indication of the way in which the latei
Eomans believed their ancestors to have lived. But

vnr THE PERFECTION OF OLIGARCHY 237

let him open the earliest Latin prose work which we
possess, and if he reads no further than the very
first chapter, he will find a sentence or two which
should give him a clue never to be lost sight of. Cato
wrote his work on agriculture at the close of the
period I have been speaking of, when serious
changes, both in character and economy, had begun
to tell upon the Eoman people ; but he had the
tradition in his mind of an older and better state of
things, and acted upon it himself to the best of his
ability. Here are two sentences from his brief
preface. "When our forefathers would praise a
worthy man, they praised him as a good husband-
man, and a good landlord ; and they believed that
praise could go no further." And again : " Hus-
bandmen make the strongest men, and the bravest
soldiers ; their gain is far less selfish, less uncertain,
less open to envy (than that of the merchant ")}

Cato's evidence is borne out by all we know
from other sources. The older Eoman and Latin
population had two occupations, agriculture and
war, a fact which is reflected in their conception of
their great deity Mars, who was essentially the god
of the husbandman, yet had from the first charac-
teristics which could easily transform him into a
god of war. These farmer- warriors made up that
true middle class of which I spoke in the last
chapter. They were not densely packed within the
walls of a city, but spent their time on their farms,
and only came into Eome for marketing or occa-
sional voting in Comitia. They had the virtues of

' Cato, De lie Eustica, 1.

238 THE CITY-STATE CHAP

an agricultural class, as Cato knew; but to an
Athenian their shortcomings would have been more
obvious. They were not political men ; the real
end and aim of all their political struggles had so
far been economical reform, the recovery of their
land and status, the limitation of large estates.
Constitutional reform had been a means, not an
end,. and had been left in the hands of their more
wealthy leaders. They belonged to the type which
the Spartans represented in Greece ; they were not
men of keen intellect or ready speech, nor were
they eager for new things, or seekers after truth.
They knew their own wants, and did their work
well ; they had a strict sense of duty to the State,
to their families, and to the gods, which made
them excellent soldiers, fathers, and citizens. They
had clear notions, as we have seen, of constituted
authority, and of the reasonable limits which may
be set upon it ; and they had very precise concep-
tions of the nature and use of legal transactions.
Bu.t they were not men of the world, or men of
affairs, nor had they the acuteness or the leisure of
the Athenian. It is plain that they were not the
men to govern themselves ; government they could
leave to their betters, who understood the traditions
of the art. They were not fitted to guide, but they
were always ready to obey ; by their obedience they
conquered the world, but left it to theiFTeaders to
make the best use of their conquests.

Democracy, then, in the Athenian sense of the
word, could never have been reahsed at Eome.
The people had neither wish nor ability to govern

VI ri THE PERFECTION OF OLIGARCHY 239

themselves, but were perfectly content to elect their
magistrates, and to express their opinion occasionally
on projects of legislation, of which perhaps they
only half understood the import. They put entire
trust in the governing class, and their loyalty made
the Senate an object of awe for all the peoples of
the Mediterranean. It was long before that loyalty
gave way, — not till it became perfectly clear that
their natural interests were no longer in harmony
with those of their rulers; not till the trusteeship
of the oKgarchy had been grossly and irretrievably
abused. And by that time they were themselves
ruined, both morally and materially ; their part in
the history of the world was played out, and they
rapidly disappeared. By that time, too, the whole
face of the civilised world was changed ; the City-
State was no more, and a new political system was
beginning slowly to appear.

Before we leave the Eoman oligarchy and its
work of conquest and government, let us turn for
a moment to another side of its indefatigable ac-
tivity, to which I have had no opportunity as yet of
alluding. At the end of the last chapter it was
pointed out that in the period of the equalisation of
the Orders was laid the foundation-stone of that
system of legal rules which was to become Eome's
most valuable legacy to modern civilisation. The
Twelve Tables, however harsh and rude they may
appear to us, provided a sufficient legal basis for
the mutual transactions of Eoman citizens. But
this code was meant for Eoman citizens only ; it

240 THE CITY-STATE CHAf.

expressed the jus civile, that is, the law which bound
<iives Romani and no others. Now in the oligarch-
ical period just surveyed, in which Eome came into
contact with and conquered a great number of other
peoples, Italians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Spaniards,
her commercial transactions increased to an extra-
ordinary extent, and the city became the chief
centre of business for the whole Mediterranean. In
the earlier part of this period a serious legal difficulty
arose out of this great commercial development.
Each foreigner who came on business to Eome was
accustomed to the law of his own State, but at
Eome that law had, of course, no force, nor could
the Eoman jus civile be of any avail for him, unless
the use of it were specially secured him by treaty,
which was very rarely the case.^ If he wanted to
borrow on equitable terms, or to recover a debt, or
to prove his right to a property he had bought, he
had no legal force to fall back on ; all his trans-
actions were carried on at a risk, and had no more
legal security than the barter of savages.

About the end of the first war with Carthage, it
became plain that if Eome was to rival or to outdo
the great trading city of the west, her government
must find some method of giving a legal sanction
to the transactions of foreigners with Eomans, or
among themselves on her own soil. It does not
seem to have occurred to them to apply the jm
civile in this way, for the spirit of the City-State

^ Such a provision is to be found in the second treaty with
Carthage, preserved in Polybius, iii. 24. Reciprocal advantages
were secured to Romans trading at Carthage.

VJii THE PERFECTION OF OLIGARCHY 241

was still strong in them in spite of its wonderful
expansion, and the law of the Tables was a sacred
heirloom of the cives Romani, whose paramount
importance in the world was increasing every year.
The dignity of the Eoman could not brook the use
of his most precious possession for the benefit of
foreigners.

This exclusive spirit forced the Eomans to a
step by which a permanent solution of the difficulty
was found ; at the same time it opened a new
period of development for their system of law, and
widened their appreciation of all legal principles,
which had hitherto been as narrow as they were
clear and strong. They fell back now on that
distinct conception of magisterial power to which I
have already several times alluded. They had already,
at the time of the reforms of Licinius and Sextius,
handed over the civil jurisdiction of the consul to a
praetor, a new magistrate with an imperium, like that
of the consul, sufficient to enforce his commands and
rulings, though he was inferior to the consul in pre-
cedence and dignity. In 243 B.C. they added another
praetor, whose business 1^ ' was to be to decide all
suits between Eomans and foreigners, or between
foreigners themselves ; and henceforward the
pyflRf^or url^^nna ^ndministered the jllS civile, while
the prffitnr pere£;rinus was to do the best he could
with another kind of jus, in which the solution of
the growing difficulty was to be found.

What was the jus which the praetor peregrinus
was to administer ? It existed in no code, like the
Twelve Tables; it was not law in any true sense of the
R

242 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

word. It consisted of the practices and customs of
the various peoples, chiefly Italian and Greek, who
came in that age to Eome on business, and needed
a legal basis for their transactions ; taken together,
no doubt, with those principles of the jus civile in
which the praetor himself had been trained, and from
which he could not escape, especially in dealings
between foreigners and Eomans. This jus came to
be called the jus gentium, or law of all peoples, when
lawyers began to reason upon it and to endeavour
to explain it scientifically ; at first, however, it was
no more than a series of rulings of which the force
depended simply on the imperium of the pr£etor,
entrusted to him for this purpose by the Eoman
people. Thus their clear idea of magisterial power
came to the rescue of the Eomans when their legal
sense was puzzled by the new conditions under
which they found themselves ; and it combined
with their strong practical common sense to build
up a system of equity outside the narrow law of
their own State.

From the close of the first Punic war and on-
wards, the rulings of the praetor peregrinus con-
tinued to accumulate, and to form a body of legal
principles applicable to almost all difficulties that
might arise. They were recorded year by year in the
edict which each praetor issued at the beginning of
his year of office, by virtue of the jus edicendi
which all the higher Eoman magistrates possessed.
Here the conservative spirit of the Eomans, and
their instinct for order and precedent in public
transactions, saved them from a contingency which

vin THE PERFECTION OF OLIGARCHY 243

miglit have ruined the new system, and disordered
the relations between themselves and their subjects
and neighbours. Every praetor issued a fresh edict
on entering office, and it was in his power, if he
chose, to drop all the rulings of his predecessors.
Had he done this, the legal sanction of his juris-
diction would have had no fixity or credit. What he
did was to adopt the edict of his predecessor in its
entirety, expunging perhaps only such rulings as
had been clearly inexpedient, and adding such
others as his own good sense or his predecessor's
experience suggested. Thus was formed by slow
degrees a solid body of precedent, which had the
force of law as issuing from the imperium. It was
not law in the sense in which the Twelve Tables
were law, but it was infinitely more valuable to
mankind, and it was capable of almost endless
expansion. It even came to be considered, in Sir
H. Maine's words, " as a great, though imperfectly
developed model, to which all law ought, as far as
possible, to conform." And it was the immediate
fruit of that love of work and attention to detail of
which the oligarchy gave such splendid proofs in
other departments of government ; and when we
blame them for hardness and materialism, for
rapacity and cruelty, it is as well to remember
that they made at least one discovery which was
of great and lasting value. They found out that
the law of the City-State was not equal to the
needs of mankind in an age of increasing human
intercourse ; and that such intercourse could be
governed by rules drawn from a wider range of

244 THE CITY-STATE chap, vin

life than that of a single ttoX^?, if these were
sanctioned by the irresistible force of the imperivm
of the Eoman magistrate.^

^ On the subject of the jus gentiuvi and the prsetor's edict read
Gains, i. 1 ; Maine, Ancient Laio, chs. iii. and iv. ; Sohm's Insti-
tutes of Roman Law (translated by Ledlie), pp. 38-58. Cf. alsc
Mommsen, Staatsrecht, iii. 590 foil., who embodies the researches
of Professor Nettleship into the meaning and history of the pliras?
jtis gentium.

CHAPTEE IX

DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE INTERNAL CAUSES

So far we have been chiefly following the development
of those two famous City- States of antiquity which
have left us a richer inheritance than any others
It would be a long tale to reckon up the various
causes to which the pre-eminence of Athens and
Eome may be ascribed ; but from what has already
been said in these pages, one at least, and that a
leading one, should have become tolerably clear.
These two States, after passing through the
normal stages of early growth, succeeded in over-
coming the most serious dangers which those stages
brought with them, and above all, the disunion
caused by the struggles of the unprivileged many
to prove themselves a genuine part of the State,
and to share in its government equally with the
privileged few. In other words, when the principle
of locality came into collision with the older
principle of kinship, these two States took no
serious or permanent damage from the ensuing
strife of interests. So far from being crippled in

246 THE CITY-STATE chap.

this critical period of their existence, they emerged
from it stronger and healthier, as from a fever
which has purged away all unwholesome tendencies ;
for they gained vigour by gaining union — by an
almost complete fusion of all conflicting elements
In each case the few were reasonable enough to
refrain from violence in the contest, and to acknow-
ledge in course of time that their commanding
position had been wrested from them ; and in each
case, too, the many were rational enough to make a
moderate use of their victory. It was a struggle,
both at Eome and Athens, of reasonableness against
ancient prejudice ; and in each case the victory of
good sense was followed by a long period of unity
and prosperity. Athens, pursuing a course natural
to the quick intelligence of her citizens, developed
the most complete democracy that the world has
ever yet seen ; and at Eome there grew up an
oligarchy, founded on the reverence of the Eomans
for tried practical wisdom, whose extraordinary
aptitude for government changed the whole face of
the civilised world.

But many, and perhaps most, other States could
hardly have been equally fortunate. Tyranny, as we
have seen, was mild at Athens and almost absent
at Eome, and in both States it helped rather than
hindered the ultimate fusion of interests. But in
some States, at least, tyranny must have left the
jarring elements of society unharmonised and out
of tune. After the earlier tyrannies had passed
away, about the beginning of the fifth century B.C.,
we begin to hear constantly of discord within the

IX DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE 247

cities — discord that in some instances reaches to a
terrible pitch of recklessness, and points to a com-
plete absence of the spirit of compromise and reason
which we have met with at Athens and Rome. In
all such cases the phenomena are mucli the same ;
the few, the comfortable, the rich, the well-born,
the good and honourable, as they were variously
called, are at feud with the many, or, as their
enemies called them, the base, the bad, the low-born.
In these States it is plain that no union of hearts
has been achieved, and that the government must
necessarily be in the hands of one party or the
other, and that the party in power will deal harshly
with its opponents. And, in fact, throughout the
fifth century almost every City-State is either a
decided oligarchy or a decided democracy, and as
the oligarchies have the stronger tradition and
greater experience to help them, they for the most
part are found to have the government in their
hands. They sometimes even succeed in getting
rid altogether of the most dangerous portion
of the many, who leave the city in a body, not
to return as did the plebs at Eome ; and some-
times- it is the many who turn the few out
of house and home, as the only way of secur-
ing themselves against political intrigues and con-
spiracies.

Instances of this uncompromising and fatal
spirit are to be found in abundance both in
Herodotus and Thucydides, who often relate them
with apparent indifference, as though they were too
common to call for special emphasis. But let ue

248 THE CITY-STATE OHAt,

take two or three notable cases by way of illustra-
tion; cases of which we have some definite in-
formation, and which will fix themselves on the
memory as we become sensible of the disastrous
results which each of them brought incidentally
upon the whole of Hellas.

At the end of the sixth century ISTaxos was one
of the most flourishing States in the ^gean Sea ; it
lay in a most favourable position, not too near the
coast to be in danger of concxuest by the Persian,
and was the largest of the islands which the
Greeks knew as the Cyclades. It was repoj:ted to
be able to muster 8000 armed men, and to equip
a large fleet of warships. It was also said to be
rich both in money and slaves. But Naxos was
divided against itself In the year 501 B.C. a
number of its oligarchical party (of the " fat," or
comfortable, as Herodotus calls them) were sent
into exile by the Demos, or fled of their own accord
before violence. They chose to go to Miletus, then
the most powerful Greek city in Ionia. Miletus
had also suffered from internal discord, but had
called in the Parians to cure the disease, and was
now prospering greatly under the strong rule- of a
leading citizen, Aristagoras. To this man the Naxian
oligarchs applied for help. Aristagoras did not
refuse it, but for reasons of his own he made it a
bargain that he should himself ask aid for the
undertaking from his friend Artaphernes, the Persian
satrap in Sardis. This is a story which is con-
stantly repeated in various forms during the two
following centuries ; Greeks, quarrelling among

IX DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE 249

themselves, allow the common enemy to be called
in. In this case, indeed, the Naxian democracy
were for the present let alone, nor do we know
what became of the exiled oligarchs ; for Aris-
tagoras and Artaphernes fell out, and the former,
fearing the consequences, and hoping as leader of
the Greeks to make himself " king," i.e. tyrant of Mi-
letus, stirred up the Greek cities in Asia Minor to
attack Persia, and thereby ultimately brought upon
all Hellas the fearful perils of Persian invasion.
In this invasion Naxos herself was one of the first
to suffer ; her city and its temples were burned, and
a part of her population enslaved. Among the
contingents of which the Greek fleet at Salamis was
composed, there were but four ships from Naxos ;
and these, which had been sent by the democracy
to join, not the Greek, but the Persian fleet, only
escaped the disgrace of other islanders by disregard-
ing the orders of their too submissive government.
Naxos had fallen low, and never really hfted up
her head again.^

The other great war which did most to sap the
vitality of the Greeks was also immediately brought
about by one of these violent intestine feuds. The
story, famihar as it is, is worth careful study in
Thucydides's own words, for it shows how easily
the internal dissensions of a single city could awaken
old jealousies between other cities, and kindle them
into fresh animosities, leading at last to a general

^ For this story, read Herodotus, v. 28 foil., and of. vi. 96, and
viii. 46. Cf. Thucyd. i. 98 for the later revolt of Naxos from
Athens ; after which the island is seldom mentioned.

250 THE CITY-STATE chap

conflagration in which the life and strength of all
chat was best in Hellas was withered.. Thucydidea
shall tell the tale for himself of the first beginning
of this momentous war.

" The city of Epidamnus is situated on the right hand as
you sail up the Ionian gulf. Near it dwelt the Taulantians,
a barbarian tribe of the Illyrian race. The place was
colonised by the Corcyrjeans, but under the leadership of a
Corinthian ; ... he was invited, according to ancient custom,
from the mother city, and Corinthians and other Dorians
joined in the colony. In process of time Epidamnus became
great and populous, but there followed a long period of civil
commotion, and the city is said to have been brought low in
a war against the neighbouring barbarians, and to have lost
her ancient power. At last, shortly before the Peloponnesian
war, the notables (i.e. oligarchs) were driven out hy the people ;
the exiles went over to the barbarians, and, uniting with them,
plundered the remaining inhabitants both by sea and land. These,
finding themselves hard pressed, sent an embassy to the
mother city, Corcyra, begging the Corcyrteans not to leave
them to their fate, but to reconcile them to the exiles and
put down their barbarian enemies. The ambassadors came,
and sitting as suppliants in the temple of Here, preferred
their request ; but the Corcyrajans would not listen to them,
and they returned without success," etc.^

Here we must note, not only the struggle of fac-
tions, and the expulsion of the oligarchs, but once
more the significant fact that these are ready" 4;o
take part with non-Hellenic peoples in order to get
the better of their own fellow-citizens. And worse
still, when the cry comes up to Corcyra of the be-
sieged Epidamnians asking for friendly intervention
and aid against barbarian attack, the mother city will
not listen; she prefers to sit still and see the up-

^ Thucyd. i. 24 (Jowett's translation).

li DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE 251

start Epidamnus destroyed. A policy so selfish and
suicidal in itself was also full of mischief for Greece.
Epidamnus called for aid from Corinth, the mother
city of Corcyra ; this brought Corinth and Corcyra
into collision, in accordance with an old and^^
smouldering ill-will ; Corcyra left the Pelopon-
nesian league and joined the Athenian, and thus
by exaggerating the tension which had long existed
between Athens and Sparta, brought about the
war in which the best energies of Greece were
wasted. Corcyra herself, like Naxos, paid dearly
for her folly and selfishness. Five years later she
was herself the victim of one of these outbreaks
of faction, the direct inheritance of her former
misdoings ; and this outbreak, to which I shall
shortly again refer, was perhaps the most savage
and the most paralysing of any of which we have
record.^

I shall mention one more example of this epi-
demic disease, not because it was very serious in
itself or its consequences, but as a negative instance,
showing that where a State had once fairly over-
come the difficulties of disunion, any attempt of a
weaker party to overthrow a stronger was not likely
to'cause permanent ruin or weakness. In 411 B.C.
the oligarchical party at Athens, which had always
continued to exist, and to carry on a policy of
reasonable opposition to the leaders of the democracy,
succeeded for a short time in getting the govern-
ment into its own hands. The story of this
singular episode in Athenian history, as told by
1 Thucyd. iii. 70.

252 THE CITY-STATE chap

Thucydides,^ is of very great value, and should be
studied with the utmost care ; for it shows admir-
ably, not only the strength of the safeguards of the
democracy (see p. 170), but also the advantages
possessed by a State whose noblest traditions were
traditions of the union of all interests in self-im-
provement or in self-defence. I may not describe
it here at length ; but the reader of Thucydides's
account should note accurately the following points
in it. First, he should examine the circumstances
under which this revolution came about, and observe
that it was only under the severest possible pressure,
and with the hope of bringing back by this means
to Athens the only man whose abilities and resources
would be likely to save her. Secondly, passing in
review the details of the revolution, he should see
how, without any open violence, the constitution was
changed hy a show of constitutional means, the Demos
being induced by its own orators to resign its own
sovereignty, and to entrust it to a Board of 400 ;
and how even then it was deemed necessary to
keep up the phantom of a democracy, in the shape
of a body of 5000, which perhaps never really met.
And lastly, he should pursue the story to its sequel,
till he finds the oligarchy of 400 done away with
the very next year, and the democratic constitution
revived in its entirety without needless violence.

This disease of internal feud, of which the

Athenian revolution was so mild an example, was

epidemic in Greece during the fifth century, and

especially during the Peloponnesian war. That

1 Thucyd. viii. .''.3-70.

i-r DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE 253

war may in fact be called a war of oligarchies and
democracies ; it could not have lasted so long, or
been maintained with such persistent determination,
if in all the cities that took part in it there had
not been some feeling of self-interest or fear, some
desire of revenge upon enemies at home as well as
abroad. In almost every city the few were for
Sparta, and the many for Athens,-^ and the party in
power knew that its only hope of safety either for
person or property lay in the retention of that
power at all costs, and in aiding to the utmost the
confederates on their own side. In the course of the
war both leading States forcibly changed the consti-
tutions of many cities ; and when it was over, Sparta
used her victory to oligarchise them aU. These
facts speak plainly of the universality and the
bitterness of the strife of interests in the narrow
world of the City-State.

And it is to this that we must look for the best
explanation of the inward decay of this form of
State. All States, like all individuals, are liable to
certain diseases, and doubtless there were many, of
which we can gain no accurate diagnosis, which
attacked the City-State of Greece and Italy. We
have already had to deal with one — the Tyrannis ;
and we found that its effects were as often good as
bad. But from this other we can trace only evil
consequences. The best test of healthiness in a
State is union of interests for the common good, or
at the least, the reciprocal action of opposing parties
in a reasonable spirit. The tyrannis tended to

J Thucyd. iii. 47, 2 ; iii. 82, 1.

254 THE CITY-STATE chap.

crush out the bitterness of party feeling, and to
open men's eyes to wider interests than those which
the " Few " and the " Many " respectively repre-
sented; but this new disease was simply the re-
assertion of the old spirit of disunion, — the breaking
out of the old Adam, of the inbred sin of the City-
State, in a form much less natural and far more
dangerous than that which was healed at Athens
by Solon, and at Eome by a gradual process of com-
promise. It meant, not so much the healthy self-
assertion of the people, and the natural resistance
of the old clans, — that inevitable struggle was over
in most States ; but a struggle of reckless poverty
against selfish wealth. The old parties are still
there, and they bear the same names; but each

. seems to have degenerated and to be losing self-

l control.

N The name which the Greeks gave to this fell
disease was Stasis} i.e. a standing, or taking up a
distinct position in the State, with malicious intent
towards another party. During the Peloponnesian
war it aroused grave anxiety in the mind of the
philosophic historian of that day, and in commenting
on one particular and most mahgnant outbreak, he
has spoken in language so intense, so weighty, and
withal so difficult, that he seems to importune us
for our attention by the very earnestness of his
endeavour to express himself It will be well worth

^ Cf. the Latin seditio. The malicious intent implied in stasis
is well illustrated in the oligarchic oath quoted by Aristotle
{Pol. 1310 A) — " I will hate the Demos, and do it all the harnn
in my power."

IX DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE 255

our while to see what it is that Thucydides is so
seriously trying to impress on his countrymen .^

Stasis is common to mankind, he says, i.e. to
mankind living in the only form of community
which he recognised for civilised society; but it
differs in intensity according to circumstances, and
especially is it accentuated by war. For war is a
severe schoolmaster, who makes men discontented
and angry ; the rich man's property is heavily
taxed, the poor man is forced to serve in the field,
and thus the capital which each possesses may be
wasted and destroyed. After this preliminary re-
mark, which had a special meaning for his own age, he
goes on to point out the moral and poKtical effects
of stasis. The virtues, he says, seemed to lose their
value, and to change into something foreign to their
true nature. What in ordinary times would be
called defects of character, laid claim now to be
considered excellences. " Eeckless daring was held
to be loyal courage ; prudent delay was the excuse
of a coward ; moderation was the disguise of un-
manly weakness ; to know everything was to do
nothing. The lover of violence was always trusted,
and his opponent suspected. . . . The tie of party
was stronger than that of blood, because a partisan
was more ready to dare without asking why." ^

A society of clubs and coteries took the place of
family life and family affection, a sure sign of
internal decay in States that had been built up on
the foundation of the family and the clan. Sim-

^ Thucyd. ii. 82, 83.
' Jowett, Thucydides, vol. i. p. 222.x ,

256 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP

plicity and straightforward dealing were laughed
at, which means that the weakest points in the
Greek character were now coming to the front.
And lastly, turning to matters more strictly political,
Thucydides notes the corruption of party principles,
and the destruction of the life-giving middle classes.
He shall speak again in his own words : —

" The cause of all these evils was the love of power,
originating in avarice and ambition, and the party-spirit
which is engendered in them when men are fairly embarked
in a contest. For the leaders on either side used specious
names ; the one party professing to uphold the constitutional
equality of the many, the other the wisdom of an aristocracy,
while they made the public interests, to which in name only
they were devoted, in reality their prize. Striving in every
way to overcome each other, they committed the most mon-
Astrous crimes ; yet even these were surpassed by the magni-
tude of their revenges, which they pursued to the very
uttermost, neither party observing any definite limits either
of justice or public expediency, but both alike making the
caprice of the moment their law. Either by the help of an
unrighteous sentence, or grasping power with the strong
hand, they were eager to satiate the impatience of party-
spirit. . . . And the citizens who were of neither party fell a
prey to hath ; either they were disliked because they held
aloof, or men were jealous of their surviving." ^

It may be said that this language is exaggerated,
that Thucydides is sophistically making the most of
his point, and is carried away by the very magic
of the marvellous language which he is here forcing
into his service. But making all allowance for the
literary characteristics of his age, I cannot but
beheve that in writing this he was conscious of a
great truth, — of a serious unnoticed evil, — and that

^ Jowett, Thxicydides, vol. i. p. 223.

DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE 257

it is his earnest conviction, and not only his
rhetorical art, which has led him into these crabbed
constructions and antithetical obscurities. He sees
evil days coming upon Greece, and he marks the
cause as being not so much the deadly war in which
almost all Greek cities were engaged, as the internal
tendency to disease on which that war acted with
fatal result. The life-blood of the City-State, he
beheved, was poisoned and fevered ; the true end
of this form of social life was no longer pursued ;
every organ lost its natural and healthy action.
And we are justified in believing that Thucydides
was right ; for the Greek cities never wholly re-
covered their tone after the war which had so sadly
exaggerated their chief inherent weakness. Corcyra,
for example, whose misfortunes suggested these
remarks to the historian, was a powerful State
before the war and its attendant stasis, but from
that time forward ceased to exercise any influence
in Greece.-^ She continued to exist, and later in-
scriptions testify to the working of her council and
her assembly, but her growth was apparently
stunted and her strength sapped by the disease.
And with loss of sanity and unity came loss also of
that spirit of youth and independence which in the
sixth and fifth centuries had borne such ripe fruit
in art and poetry. As we pursue Greek history

^ Once, long afterwards, her name was heard in Greece again ;
but it was as the prize of a Sicilian tyrant, Agathocles. This
obscure corner of Greek history has' been lighted up by the late
Professor Freeman in a part of his history of Sicily as yet unpub-
lished. See his smaller History of Sicily (" Story of the Nations "
series), p. 258.

S

258 THE CITY-STATE CHAP.

into the fourth century, we feel that we have already
enjoyed the best that Greece could give us ; that in
the heavier atmosphere of those later times, the
" white violets " of Sappho, and all such delicate
blooms of art and literature, could no longer blow
in quite their old perfection.

Not, indeed, that the decay that set in was
wholly the result of stasis. To reckon up all the
concurrent causes, it would be necessary to do what
is no longer possible, — to write the social and
economical history of the Greek cities, as well as
their external history and their internecine feuds.
But I have followed Thucydides in selecting this
phenomenon of stasis as the one cause most likely
to let us into the secrets of decay, and the one
cause of which we have any knowledge that can be
called accurate ; and I am now further going to call
Aristotle as witness, though I have only space to
allude briefly to his evidence.

Aristotle, writing some sixty or seventy years
after Thucydides, was so deeply impressed with the
universality and the virulence of this disease, that
he devoted a whole book of his Politics to the
analysis of it ; a book which has aptly been called
a treatise on the pathology of Greek society.^ He
deals with it in his own cool and scientific fashion,
starting with a general declaration of its nature, and
proceeding to analyse it as it appeared in the seve-
ral forms of constitution (especially oligarchy and
democracy), and to offer suggestions in each case

^ Book V. in most editions ; book viii. in Congreve's. P. 1303
foil.

DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE 259

as to the best methods by which it could be antici-
pated. I can only say a word here of the way in
which he explains it in general, leaving the reader
to study it in detail, and to refer to it as he goes
on his way through Greek history ; but I shall also
note the two chief preventives for the disease
suggested by the Politics as a whole, as they pre-
sented themselves to Aristotle in the light of all
G-reek experience up to his own time.

The real origin and fountain-head of all stasis,
says Aristotle, is to be found in a want of propor-
tion in the respective claims of the two great
interests by which most States are divided. In
other words, it was an imperfect sense of political
justice that sowed the seeds of the disease. Where
the many, for example, are equal in one thing, i.e.
are all equally free and privileged under the law,
they will think themselves equal in all other respects ;
they will claim to be equal in ability, in virtue, in
dignity, and in wealth. Hence a want of justice
and proportion in their aims, leading to contempt of
moral goodness and of intellectual worth, or more
often perhaps to harsh treatment of old families and
confiscation of their property. This is naturally
resented, and stasis follows. And in the same way
the few, being unequal to the rest in one thing, i.e.
most often in wealth, think themselves entitled to
be superior in all things ; they believe that they
alone are the good, the* noble, the valiant. Here,
again, we have the sense of justice warped, followed
by unfair dealing towards the many ; and the resent-
ment against this injustice will surely lead to stasis,

260 THE CITY-STATE chap

No doubt, Aristotle adds, we are all agreed that the
fair claims of all ought to be respected, and that
justice lies in the observance of such claims ; but
after all it is over these very claims that the quarrels
arise, and who is to enforce the necessary com-
promise ? ^

These remarks, apparently so trite, have yet a
value for all time, and for all states of society, for
they are based upon facts of human nature which
do not often find such clear expression. And when
we apply them to that form of State which Aristotle
was analysing, we feel their force yet more strongly.
In our large modern State parties and interests are
not brought into direct and (so to speak) personal
collision ; or the heat of conflict in great cities is
tempered by the comparative coolness of the
numerous rural population. But in the small
Greek city the conflicting interests were always
in immediate contact with each other; the rich
man daily met the poor man and scorned him ; the
poor man daily saw the rich man and hated him.
In each the sense of justice and proportion was
continually being injured by those Little annoyances
which are so apt to spoil the best natures, just as
an organ of sight or hearing may become dulled
by being constantly brought to bear on something
which irritates it. No wonder that the fine sense
of the Greeks for order and proportion should in
this world of politics have lost its keenness ; no
wonder that the reasonableness of Solon and the
Athenians, and that the practical good sense of

i Politics, 1301 A and B.

EX DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE 261

the early Eomans, should have carried their cities
safely through successive attacks of the disease,
and have proved them in all respects the fittest
to survive.

But before we leave Aristotle, let us consider
for a moment the remedies which he proposes for
siasis, or rather, for he speaks Hke a wise and
scientific physician, the two ways by which these
outbreaks may best be anticipated or modified.
The first of these has already been touched on in
these pages, and referred to as a leading cause of
the strength and prosperity both of Athens and
Eome. Of the second I have as yet said nothing ;
and it is time that an opportunity should be found
for some notice of it, however brief and inadequate.

Aristotle touches, indeed, to start with, on several
maxims which he recommends as practically useful
for securing stability in a State ; but ere long he
recurs to the main principle which he has enunciated
before — his favourite principle of the jtmui} It is
in the middle stratum of society, he says, that salva-
tion is to be found. Eeal equality is only to be
found in this stratum ; and as it is inequality which
causes stasis, the encouragement or increase of this
middle class should be the most valuable means of
averting it. " Every State would, if it could, be
composed of men who are equal ; " this is the
natural instinct of the State, and it is best realised
v/here the middle class is strong. And this instinct
is indeed a natural one ; for a total loss of propor-
tion in the distribution of wealth is at once recog.
1 Politics, 1309 B ; cf. 1296 A.

262 THE CITY-STATE chap

nised as unnatural. Where capital and labour face
each other menacingly, there can be no stabihty •
where wealth is evenly distributed there will be no
, cause of quarrel, no desire to upset existing institu-
tions.^ Aristotle's preventive, it will be noticed, is
much the same as that of the modern Socialist,
whose theory is simply built upon this instinct for
proportion; but there is a difference both in the
object and in the method. Aristotle's object is to
preserve the State and its constitution, while that
of the Socialist (in spite of his name) is to make
the individual more comfortable. With the one the
State is the chief end, with the other it is only a
means. And again, Aristotle, always true to the
facts of life, not forcing them by indulging in ideals,
recommends a reasonable and practicable policy
which was within the reach of any Greek states-
man ; while Socialistic writers, exaggerating both
the evil and its remedy, are often apt to forget that
what can be done must be done by statesmen, and
that no statesman will ever be found to risk his
reputation on an ideal.^

The other chief remedy which Aristotle suggests
is Education ; this he considered so important that
he devoted a whole book to it, of which, unfor-
tunately, only a portion has come down to us.^
From this fragment, however, as well as from what
he says elsewhere, we can see that his idea of
Bducation differed essentially from ours ; and it ie

* Compare Thucyd. iii. 82, 19 ; quoted above, p. 266.

2 Cf. Sir T. Mere's Utopia, last words,

' Politics, book viii. (v. in Congreve's edition), p. 1337 A foil.

rx DECAY OF THE CITY-STAT^ 263

important to note this carefully. As in his
doctrine of the middle class, it is not the benefit
of the individual as such that is in his mind
when he deals with education, but the benefit of
the State, as the only means whereby the indi-
vidual can reach his full mental stature. This is
quite in keeping with his view of the State as a
whole, and that view was founded upon the essential
facts of Greek life. Preserve the State, and you
will keep the conditions under which man can best
develop himself; and to preserve each State, you
must keep up the institutions which have grown
with it and are most natural to it. Education,
then, must be subordinated to the character (77^09)
of the State ; the citizen must be brought up, not
by a code abstractedly good for human nature, but by
one which is based on the traditions and feeling of
his forefathers. And this is how Aristotle comes to
be able to claim educaJtion as one great and direct
preventive of stasis. He does not look on it so
much as a process which makes virtuous and
sensible men, but as one which creates in the
oligarch or democrat the true spirit of the best
oligarchy and democracy of which his city is
capable. He might have used the pregnant expres-
sion of Herodotus to which I have so often referred,
and have said that while no citizen has a right to
step outside his elwOora vorjfMara, he should have
every opportunity of making the best of himself
within those traditional limits. Education, in his
view, should produce rhythm and order in the
State, by tending to subordinate all citizens to the

264 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP

same end in life — the fulfilment of the " good life "
of the State.^

These, then, are Aristotle's two prescriptions for
stasis ; the mean in the distribution of wealth, and
education directed to the true end of the State. It
would be tempting to go one step further, and to
compare these maxims with the actual facts ofj
Greek life ; but my object is not so much to set
out on a task of this kind as to suggest that it
should be attempted. Every student of Greek or
Koman history who will bear in mind these Aris-
totelian principles, and apply them as criteria as he
advances in his study, will not only find his work
become more interesting and instructive, but will
gain a deeper insight into the problems of social
and national life, at all times and in every kind of
State. I will content myself by taking a single
State, and that the greatest of all City-States, and
briefly testing it by these criteria in the days when
it was most sorely afflicted by stasis.

We have as yet seen Kome only in the days of
her growth and her prosperity, overcoming perils of
faction and perils of war by her political good
sense and her tenacity of purpose, and working up
to a certain perfection of government, — not the best
form of government (for oligarchy can never be
the best), but one well adapted, when used in a
moderate spirit, to carry out those ends for which
Eome seemed destined. We left her towards the
end of the sixth century of her existence, at the
time when Polybius was describing her political

1 Politics, 1337 A ; cf. 1332 A.

J
I

IX DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE 265

system with admiration and awe, little dreaming of
the troubles that were to come upon her, and
apparently blind to the social rottenness lying
beneath the imposing structure of her constitution.
Within a few years after Polybius recorded his
observations, Rome was torn asunder by stasis,
which under varying phases lasted for a whole
century, and brought with it evils as terrible and as
weakening as those described by Thucydides.

The revolution begun by Tiberius Gracchus in
133 B.C. cannot indeed be aptly compared to the little
storms, furious as they sometimes were, which
raged in the small City-States of the Greeks. No
sooner do we try to probe to the bottom this great
stasis of Eome, than we find it complicated by so
many side-issues, and by problems so vast in their
reach and complexity, that we instinctively feel
ourselves passing into a new region of pohtics, in
which, if we are to judge fairly, we must adjust
our judgment by some other standard than that of
the TToXi?.

But it is true indeed that this stasis sprang, as
Aristotle says all such quarrels will, from inequality
and from inequality in the distribution of wealth ;
in its first beginning it can be treated as the
stasis of a City-State. The oligarchy which had
been so long in power, and had steered Eome
through so many perils, had also slowly absorbed
the land of the State ; to inequality in power they
added inequality of wealth, and the " people," ac-
customed to have their affairs managed by trustees
in whom they placed implicit confidence, tacitly

266 THE CITY-STATE CHAP

acquiesced in this state of things, and let the
dangerous process go on unheeded. When at last
the counter-claim is made by Tiberius Gracchus, — the
claim of the many for equality in wealth, — stasis at
once sprang up. The oligarchy found their material
interests assailed, and naturally used their constitu-
tional advantages to defend them ; Gracchus, in
attacking their possessions, found it necessary also
to attack their political fortress. He tried to put
the oligarchical Senate aside, and to call to life
again the dormant sovereignty of the people : and
if he had stopped there, no serious harm need have
been done. But he was tempted to break other
sacred traditions of a revered constitution, and in
his hurry and enthusiasm he put himself in the
position of a tyrant ; and he paid for his rashness
with his life. " Ubi semel recto deerratum est, in
prseceps pervenitur."

So far we seem to see no more than the
phenomena which Aristotle described. But trace
the revolution a little further, and we find ourselves
getting beyond the limits of the City-State, and of
the political reasoning of its philosophers. The
interests involved are not merely those of Rome
and her citizens — tlie whole population of Italy has
a claim to make ; a claim to share in the advan-
tages of Roman citizenship, analogous to that of the
plebeians in days gone by, but infinitely more far-
reaching in its importance to Rome and to the
world. The dependencies which Rome has subdued
have also their claim ; not yet a claim for citizen-
ship, but a claim to be governed equitably, to

4

IX DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE 267

retain the material means of development and
prosperity, and to be adequately protected against
the threatening attacks of barbarian enemies. Such
claims created problems for the Eoman statesman
such as no iroXlrr}^ had ever yet had to solve, and
such as had never yet been dreamed of in the philo-
sophy of the TToXfc?. And we must leave them for
the present, for they have no direct connection with
those internal causes of decay which are the subject
of this chapter. I sliall return to them in the
next, and show how they arose as the result mainly
of another set of disintegrating agencies, which we
may call external ; and in my last chapter I shall
endeavour to explain how they were finally solved.

But if Aristotle's philosophy of political life did
not embrace such problems as those of the Eoman
Empire, we may still ask how far the preventives
which he prescribes for stasis had been adopted or
could have been acted on at Eome. Did the
senatorial government, that focus of all Eoman ex-
perience and wisdom, seek to maintain a vigorous
and comfortable middle class , and did they pay
any attention to the problem of education, or en-
deavour to have the sons of Eome brought up in
harmony with the best traditions and the growing
needs of the State ?

We saw that Eome won her position as a leading
city in Italy by the steady obedience and devotion
of her army of freeholders. The Servian census
reveals beyond doubt a middle class such as
Aristotle thought the best for a healthy state — a
middle class of agriculturists ; and this class

268 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

continued to exist, if not always to flourish, in the
first two centuries of the Eepublic, and was also
largely recruited from populations conquered and
absorbed. But during those same centuries we
find a process at work which is incompatible with
the permanent maintenance of that middle class,
and which no legislation seemed capable of effectu-
ally checking. The land of Italy is in this period
slowly and surely passing into the hands of wealthy
Eomans, plebeian as much as patrician ; and as
cattle-breeding pays better than tillage, and winter
pasture is needed for the vast herds which occupy
the higher lands in summer, the small freeholder of
the valleys is gradually got rid of by fair means or
foul, and his land absorbed into the great man's
estate. Nor is he even maintained as a day-
labourer, or allowed, like the Lacedaemonian
Helot, to till the land in return for a proportion
of its fruits ; for all that was needed could be done
by slaves at a much smaller expense ; and slaves
were cheap, owing to the vast number of prisoners
taken in the endless wars. Nothing was left for
the freeholders of the middle class, who had once
been the very marrow of the State, but to take
refuge in Eome itself. There they could not ^ be
suffered actually to starve, for they were still
wanted for the wars ; and there, too, they enjoyed
the privilege of exercising their rights as Eoman
citizens. But they no longer represented Aristotle's
TO fjL€(Tov, and they had no longer the virtues
of the agricultural class which he would have en-
couraged. They were idle and poverty-stricken,

«

IX DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE 269

like the " mean whites " of the Southern States' of
America before the emancipation of the negroes ;
and they came at last to have all the vices of an
idle proletariat in a great city. Thus the middle
class of the Eoman State disappeared, and with its
disappearance came in due time the inevitable
stasis. Efforts were made from time to time to
stay the growing evil, but it could not be effectually
stayed except by interfering with the property of
the ruling class, or by doing away with their system
of slave-labour. It was to the oligarchy that the
disease was due, and it could not be cured so long
as the oligarchy was in power.

And lastly, how far were the Eomans conscious
of Aristotle's other safeguard ? Did they bring up
their children on any system suited to maintain the
character of their State, or capable of growing with
it as it grew ?

In the youth of Eome there had been an
education of unquestionable value, through which
all citizens passed ; not an education of the mind,
but an education of the will and of the body, well
suited, like that of Sparta, to preserve the ^^o? of
the State, and adequate to carry it through all its
early perils. This was the education of the patria
fotestas, supplemented by the discipline of military
training and service. Every Eoman son, what-
ever his age might be, was under the strictest
control of his father ; his very life was always in
the hands of him to whom he originally owed it.
When called to arms, he was equally under discip-
line ; for the dread impeimim of the consul was

270 THE CITY-STATE CHAP

unlimited in the field, and the refractory soldier
could be punished with instant death.

Such an education of obedience, stern and rude
as it seems to us, was of infinite value to the
Romans in the career for which they were marked
out, for, as Mr. Bagehot has so emphatically put it,
the people that can obey is the fittest to survive.
And it would still have been of value, though alone
it could not have been wholly adequate, even when
Eome had passed beyond the limits of the City-
State, and entered on new duties and responsibilities ;
just as our own public school education, though not
highly intellectual for the majority of boys who pass
through it, is yet a discipline excellently well suited
to the needs of a great empire. For a people
whose lot is to conquer and to rule, an education of
the wiU and of the body is indispensable, though
it is not all that is needed.

But by the time when stasis first began to be
formidable at Eome, even this excellent training
was no longer what it had been. Like so many
other Roman institutions, the patria potestas sur-
vived, but had lost its old virtue ; the form of
it remained, but the spirit had vanished. The
discipline of military life was also fast becoming
weaker: the best generals of this age, such as
Scipio the Younger, Metellus, and Marius, had as
much trouble with their troops as with the enemy.
And with the old education thus breaking down,
Rome had to meet an entirely new set of responsi-
bilities. The whole end of her existence had
changed by the close of the sixth century, — to keep

IX DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE 271

to Aristotelian language, the epyov of the State was
no longer the same as in her youth. She had
resisted enemies and conquered them; but she had
now to organise and rule them, to develop their
resources and to Eomanise them, and to do this
work with justice as well as force. What educa-
tion, had she now, to fit her to cope with such a
task as this ?

A new education had indeed come into fashion,
and one of a more intellectual type; but it was
wholly inadequate to meet the demands which the
world was now making on the Eoman. The young
man now learnt rhetoric, chiefly from Greeks, and
from Greeks of a degenerate age ; he learnt the art
of making black look like white, and of reconciling
consciences to what they inwardly feel to be wrong.
Ehetoric might be supplemented by philosophy, but
even this was not of a character to train the mind
and will to just and generous action. The teachers
of childhood were for the most part slaves, and the
tutors of youth were Greek rhetoricians ; from
neither was it to be expected that the Eoman could
be trained in virtue and self-restraint. And as the
temptations of the age were manifold, the Eoman
character utterly gave way ; the characteristics of
the period of the revolution are want of principle,
unbridled selfishness, recklessness, and cruelty, in all
classes. We need not be surprised that stasis,
when it came, raged with such bitterness and for
so long, for the State was left without any safeguard
tx) avert it or to modify it.

I cannot forbear from concluding this chapter

272 THE CITY-STATE

CHIP

with a passage from Plutarch's life of Cato the
Elder, in which he describes the education given to
his son by a man who was enlightened as well as
austere. It was an exception to the general rule,
and had it been generally imitated, the history of
the later Eepublic might have been very different.

" As soon as the dawn of understanding appeared, Cato
took upon himself the office of schoolmaster to his son,
though he had a slave named Chilo. who was a respectable
grammarian and taught several other children. But he did
not choose (he tells us) that his son should be reprimanded
by a slave, or pulled by the ears if he happened to be slow
in learning ; or that he should be indebted to so mean a
person for his education. He was therefore himself his
preceptor in grammar, in law, and in the necessary exercises.
For he taught him not only how to throw a dart, to fight
hand to hand, and to ride ; but to box, to endure heat and
cold, and to swim in the roughest and most rapid parts of
the river. He wrote histories for him^ he further ac-
quaints us, with his own hand in large characters ; so that,
without stirring out of his father's house, he might gain a
knowledge of the illustrious actions of the ancient Romans,
and of the customs of his country. And he was as careful not
to utter an indecent word before his son, as he would have
been in the presence of the Vestal virgins." i'' ,

This is the older Roman education at its very
best, fulfilling entirely the Aristotelian condition
that the object of education should be to make the
best of every individual in order to preserve the
ri0o<; of the State. Nothing is said in it of learning
Greek ; and we know from this same biography
how bitterly Cato distrusted the growing influence
of Greek rhetoric on the young Eoman. But Rome

* Plutarch, Cato major, eh. xx.

«

DECAY OF THE CITY-STATE

273

was now ceasing to be a true City-State, and to
have an rjdo^ of her own in which she could train
up her sons ; and Cato was hardly in his grave
when the new education began to gain ground, a
mixture of Eoman and Greek culture, less valid for
public and private morality, but more in harmony
with the life of a State which had absorbed all
other States into one far-reaching dominion. We
might almost say that Cato's life and precepts are
the last, and not the meanest, fruit ever produced
by the ancient form of polity.

-^^

CHAPTER X

EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY

In the last chapter we made a rapid survey of the
operation of stasis, as the most striking agent of
disintegration in the life of the City-State. We saw
that under the influence of this disease, which may
be described as internal, organic, and natural to this
form of State, unity of feeling and of action tended
to disappear, and that with it vanish e~d" also much
of that youthful health and beauty which we
associate with all that is Greek in the best days
of Greece.

But there were other causes of decay at work,
which for want of a better word we may call
external ; causes, that is, which did not spring so
directly from the inner life and the true nature
of the City-State as such. These were influences
acting from without upon that inner being of the
TToXt?, modifying it and even distorting it, and
often combining with stasis to destroy it altogether.
In order to make it plain what these external
influences were, T must revert for a moment to

CHAP. X EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 275

the distinction between the ancient and the modern
form of State which was explained in the first
chapter.

The ancient form of State was there described
as a city with an adjunct of territory ; the citizens
being really members of a City-Community, not
merely inhabitants of a territory which happens
to have a convenient capital town. From this
definition it follows that the true City-State should
not have too large a territory ; for the larger the
territory, the less truly would the inhabitants
realise their membership of the City -Community.
Men living at a great distance from the city, which
was the heart and life of the State, could not share
adequately in that life, or feel the pulse -beat of
the organism to wliich they belonged. They would
be apt to develop interests of their own apart
from their interests as members of the State ; and
thus the essential fact of the true life of the TroXt?,
the identification of the individual with the State,
would be less completely realised in their' case.
It follows, too, that there must be a limit to the
population of a City-State ; for a large territory
is necessary as a rule to a large population, and
if the one is unsuited for the reahsation of perfect
unity, so also will the other be.

The size of its territory and population was thus
a very important question for every City-State, and
as we should naturally expect, Aristotle was well
aware of this. When he is considering the ex-
ternal features of his ideal State, e.g. its geographical
position, and the conditions under which it will be

276 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

and remain free and self-sufficing, and adequate in
every respect for its population, he also discusses the
question of its size and the proper limits of its in-
crease. The gist of what he says is as follows : ^ —

There is a certain limit of size, he tells us
beyond which the 7ro\t? ceases to be at its best;
though many Greeks erroneously believe that the
greater the population and territory, the greater
will the State be. Experience shows that the best
governed States are not the largest ; in a very large
State, for example, we shall not find law working
with the best result. Law is a kind of order, and
good law is good order ; but a very great multitude
cannot be orderly, at least without the aid of some
divine power such as that which orders the whole
universe. States are like animals and plants, and
even like products of human art, such as tools or
ships, in that they cannot exceed a certain size
without either losing their true nature, or at least
without being spoilt for use. Where, then, is this
limit of size to be found ? What test can we apply
to a State in order to discover whether it has grown
beyond its proper and natural size ?

The answer which Aristotle makes to these
questions is at first sight a most singular one ;
but it is all the more significant of the true nature
of the TToXt?. " The true limit of the population
of a State is the largest number which suffices for
the [higher] purposes of life, and which can he taken
in at a single view!' ^ Just as the ttoX^? begins

* Politics, 1326 A and B.

• " S^Xov Toivvv ws oCros iart. iroXews 6pos dpiaros, t) /JLeylcTrj tou

X EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 277

truly to exist when it is sufficiently large to realise
the good life,- — when it rises beyond the mere life
of the village to the higher life of the State, — so
it ceases to be a useful and beautiful State when
it is too large to be easily taken in by the eye
and mind of its members. And Aristotle is not
writing vaguely or loosely here ; he means some-
thing definite, as he invariably does. He tells us
in the same passage that the citizens ought to knovj
each others characters, if they are to decide suits
and to elect magistrates wisely ; and also that they
ought to be able to recognise foreign visitors and
residents readily, so as to keep them outside of
their own citizen-body, and to maintain their pure
State character undeteriorated.

Aristotle is here, as usual in the Politics, only
reflecting the normal phenomena of Greek political
life ; he is discarding the exceptional and (as he
would call them) the unnatural tendencies of many
States, and especially of the great commercial cities,
such as the Athens of his day, and many of the
great Greek colonies. He is picturing an ideal
State, but he is copying its features from those of
the Greek TrdXt? in its most typical form, indulging
its most natural instincts. The true iroXi^ was,
as we have seen, an independent and self-sufficing
organism ; it had its own tone and character, which
its system of education was to keep up ; and for

TrXrfdovs VTep^oXi] npbs airdpKeiav forijs evavvovTos." Politics, iv.
(vii. ) A Ji7i. I have ventured to insert the word "higher" in
quoting Professor Jowett's translation ; see Mr. Newman's remarks
on this chapter, in his first volume, pp. 313, 314.

278 THE CITY-STATE OHAP,

this to be realised at its best, the citizen body must
be maintained of pure descent, and should be always
ready to appear on the scene of State action in the
market-place of the city itself. The best example
of such a State was perhaps to be found in Sparta.
Though Sparta violated some of the best Greek
instincts, though her " good life " was not of the
finest quality, yet in outward form and in the
steady maintenance of her peculiar character, Sparta
is a genuine City -State; and for this reason she
often attracted the attention and admiration of
reflecting Greeks. The same may also be said of
Rome in the earlier stages of her history.

Now it is essential to notice the two principal
ways in which Aristotle's limit of size could be
exceeded, in order to understand how the City-
State gradually came to suffer and to decay from
sxternal causes as well as internal. In the first
place, it is obvious that if a State grew too large
and powerful, and came to subordinate other States
to itself, a twofold result would follow. The domi-
nant State would be liable to lose its old State
character, having to face new duties and responsi-
bilities outside its natural sphere of action. And
the conquered States would lose their true existence
as TToXet?, being no longer self-sufficing and self-
governing, and having in fact no longer any definite
State character to maintain. They would resemble
a fading photograph, whose colour changes, and
whose outlines lose their sharpness. Thus imperial
States, in which one city rules a number of others,
were clearly not contemplated in Aristotle's political

X EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 279

reasonings ; they could not, in his view, realise the
best life, and might do permanent harm to States in
which that best life flourished.

There is also another kind of State which Aris-
totle does not take into account ; this is the federa-
tion or union of States with each other on equal
terms under a common central government.^ In a
true federation this common central government has
some definite controlling influence over the gover-
ments of the several States composing the union ;
each of these therefore will have given up some
part of its own independence in order to obtain the
benefits of union, confessing, as it were, that it is not
strong enough to stand and flourish by itself.^ Now
it will be at once obvious that a union of this
kind, sufficiently centralised to be called a State in
itself as distinct from its component units, like
the United States of America, or the present Swiss-
federation, must have been wholly out of harmony
with the instincts of the free and self-sufficing City-
State ; and in fact it is not probable that such a
federation ever existed in Greece until the best
days of Greek life were over. In Greece the City-
State seems to have had a peculiar repugnance to
this form of union. The Greeks felt instinctively
that by entering into such federations each ttoX*?
would lose its own peculiar tone and character, its

^ The only passage which can be construed into an allusion to
such a federation is in Politics, iv. (vii.) 7, 3, 1327 B ; and here
it is only spoken of as a necessary condition of Hellenic rule over
barbarians, not as desirable for Hellas itself.

^ See the most recent discussion of this question in Sidgwick's
Elements of Politics, eh. xxvi.

280 THE CITY-STATE chap

lively interest in its own political affairs, or even
the efficacy and importance of its own religious
worships ; a feeling inherited from the time when
international relations, as we call them, hardly
existed, and when the citizen of each State was a
total stranger and practically an enemy to the
citizen of every other.

Yet it is most interesting to notice, as we pursue
the history of the City-State century by century,
that our attention is drawn more and more to the
appearance both of imperial and federative States.
The two forms were in Greece very closely con-
nected together; for federations either came into
existence to resist encroaching cities, or they them-
selves were slowly but surely converted into im-
perial States. In these tendencies we cannot fail
to see evidence of the fading individuality of the
true City -State; we see it passing under new
conditions of life, which in Aristotle's view and in
that of the ordinary Greek of the best age were
incompatible with its existence in perfection, and
with the " good life " of its individual members.

In order, then, to gain some idea of the external
causes, as I have called them, which enfeebled and
finally destroyed the City-State, our plan will be to
take a rapid survey of the growth of federative and
imperial States from the sixth century B.C. onwards ;
and this is what I propose to do in the remainder
of this chapter. Such a sketch must necessarily be
very cursory and imperfect, but it may be sufficient
to mark out the ground for more elaborate studies,
and to give them a definite meaning and object. It

1

X EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 281

will be convenient to divide the history of Greece
for this purpose into three periods —

1. Before the Persian wars.

2. From the Persian wars to the rise of Macedon.

3. From the rise of Macedon to the final conquest
by Kome.

1. Down to the time of the Persian wars it may
be said that though we find here and there a league or
alliance, the TroXei? composing them remained politi-
cally independent. There were ancient alliances,
for example, for the protection of a temple and its
worship. Of these the most famous is the Amphic-
tionic League for the protection of the temples of
Apollo at Thermopylae and Delphi, and for the
carrying out of Apollo's precepts for the con-
duct of the several members towards each other.
But this was in no true sense a union of TroXet? ;
it was one of races, — Dorians, Achseans, MaHans,
etc., and probably dates from an age before the full
development of the City-State. On the pohtics of
a later age it has only an incidental influence, and
does not call for further consideration here. It was
a civilising and a unifying influence, but not a
union in any true political sense. Other leagues,
originating probably after the development of the
TToXt?, are also found among the Achaean cities in the
north of the Peloponnese, in the Ionic colonies of
Asia Minor, in Arcadia, and elsewhere ; but these
also were far from being permanent political federa-
tions, so far as our knowledge enables us to judge.
They are only found in districts inhabited by the

282 THE CITY-STATE CHAP.

same stock, and they indicate " no inward organic
development of the TroXt?." ^ They are simply
groups of independent TroXet? without real political
cohesion. There was indeed one league, that of the
Boeotian cities, which even in the sixth century may
have approached to the nature of a federation; but
our knowledge of it in that period is extremely
scanty, and I shall have an opportunity of adverting
to it later on.

There were, however, certain centralising forces ati
work in Greece in the sixth century, one at least of
which must be taken into account. Apart from the
influence of the Delphic oracle, and the Olympic
and other games, which brought the Greeks into
more intimate relations with each other; and ac-
centuated the feeling that they all belonged to a
common race as distinct from the " barbarian," we
have to notice the tendency of one City-State to
assert a political predominance over others in the
direction at once of empire and federation. This
State was Sparta ; the very one, it is curious to note,
which in the following century assumed the position
of champion of the free and self-sufficing TroXt?
against another far more dangerous centralising
power.

By the middle of the sixth century, says Herod-
otus, Sparta had subdued the greater part of the
Peloponnese ; that is, she was already mistress of a

^ See Holm, Gesch. Griech. vol. iii. p. 511. Such unions may
have come into play only from time to time, as was the case with
the " <TvyKpr]Ti(Tfi6s " of the Cretan cities ; G. Gilbert, Handbuch, ii,
218, and reff.

X EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 283

small empire {ap'x;i])} But this empire, if indeed
the word can be applied to it, extended only over
the south of the peninsula, and it was Messenia
alone whose State life was wholly destroyed by it.
Over the Peloponnese generally Sparta claimed only
I leadership {rjye/jiovLa), and this meant no more
than the first place in a military alliance of all the"
cities with the exception of the Achaeans in the
north, and Argos, Epidaurus, and Troezen in the
east. This alliance, it is true, shows a certain
tendency towards centralisation, and we have some
evidence that Sparta even interfered in the inter-
nal affairs of the cities so far as to put down the
tyrannies prevalent at this time.^ She also put
forward claims to a leadership of all Hellas, and
tried, though with little success, to meddle with
the constitutions of States beyond the Peloponnese,
and especially of Athens. But this was under
a king of remarkable talent and great energy,
Cleomenes I. ; and even he failed to secure the
adherence of the allies to his schemes for bring-
ing a tyrant back to Athens. The story of this
attempt, as told by Herodotus, shows plainly enough
how loose the alliance was, and how firmly the idea
of independence held its ground even among the
Peloponnesian cities.^

Besides Sparta tliere was in Greece at this time

^ Herod, i. 68, 69. Busolt, Lakedaimonien, p. 24^ foil. It ia
difficult to explain this early aggressiveness of the Spartans, which
teased to be characteristic of them later on.

2 Herod, v. 92, 2 ; Thucyd. i, 18.

« Herod, v. 92, 93.

284 THE CITY-STATE chap,

but one other influence which made for political
centralisation, namely, the influence of the great
tyrants. I have already pointed out the tendency
of these to open up relations with other States, and
also to conquer or maltreat them for their own
private ends. I illustrated this tendency by the
example of Polycrates, the mighty master of Samos ;
and this Polycrates did actually for a short time
acquire something in the nature of a naval empire
over the islands of the ^gean.^ But tyrannies were
short-lived, and Polycrates' dominion fell with him.
Neither tyranny nor hegemony could force the
Greeks out of their chosen path of autonomy, out of
the inherited instincts — the eiwOora vorj^ara of
the race as a whole. "We may fairly conclude that
the whole weight of Greek feeling was at this period
entirely at variance with all genuine attempts to
blurr the sharp outlines of the individual life of the
City-State.

2. With the Persian invasions a new era begins
in the external history of the City-State. Their
immediate result was to force upon Greece a tem-
porary and imperfect union, and for the first and
almost the only time, a general congress of Greeks
met together to discuss how the common danger
could best be met.^ No sooner had this danger
passed away than the unifying forces ceased to
work; but the Persian power has henceforward a
marked influence on the political relations of the
Greeks. The cities had been taught that they
could not resist such an enemy without some kind
1 Herod, iii. 39.^ ^ /j_ ^_ 145,

X EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 285

of cohesion; but they had learnt the lesson im-
perfectly and reluctantly. From this time onward
we have two forces at work side by side in conflict
with each other, and combining to wear out the
vitality of the individual States. One of these is
the desire of leading States to organise confederacies
under pretext of successive dangers from Persia, or
from some Greek city which had grown too powerful ;
the other is the reluctance of the TroXei? to coalesce
into such unions. These two forces act and react
on each other throughout the whole of this period.

The familiar story need not be here repeated
how Athens and Sparta gradually fell apart after
Salamis, and how Athens formed a great naval
league for the defence of the ^gean, Sparta retain-
ing her old leadership of the Peloponnesian States
and a few others. Thus Greece came to be split
into two great alliances ; the one an old and well-
tried institution under the foremost military and
aristocratic State, representing the conditions of
Hellenic development before the Persian wars ; the
other an entirely new organisation under the newly
risen naval leader, representing that spirit of popular
intelligence and political progress which we have
seen ripening into the democracy of Pericles.
Neither of these alliances, however, was a real federal,
union; neither had a common central government
sufficiently strong to constitute a State power in
itself apart from the governments of its component
units. The keen edge of true city life was not at
first seriously blunted either by the confederacy of
Delos or by the Peloponnesian League. It might

I

286 THE CITY-STATE chaj. '

have been as well if the former at least could have
been established on a true federal basis, even at some
small expense of autonomy to the cities ; for the
direction taken by the league was towards empire,
not federation, and the Spartan alliance eventually
followed suit. But the cities would not readily
unite in any really useful or permanent federation,
and their unwillingness gave the leading State the
chance and the excuse to use force to compel them
to do it. Now both force and a leading State are
elements unnatural to a federation, and the ultimate
result was in this case not federation but an
Athenian empire.

The transformation of the Delian confederacy
into the empire of Athens is thus of the utmost
importance in the history of the City-State. We
do not know exactly by what successive steps the
change was brought about, but we have sufficient
material to estimate its nature and its influence on
the life of the TroXet?. To begin with, we can gain
a tolerably clear idea of the character of the con-
federacy of Delos from Thucydides' own words -} —

" Thus the Athenians by the good-will of the alHes, who
detested Pausanias, obtained the leadership. They imme-
diately fixed which of the cities should supply money and
which of them ships for the war against the barbarians, the
avowed object being to compensate themselves and the allies
for their losses by devastating the king's country. Then
was first instituted at Athens the office of Hellenic treasurers
(Hellenotamiai), who received the tribute, for so the impost
was termed. The amount was originally fixed at 460 talents.
The island of Delos was the treasury, and the meetings of

* Thucyd. i. 96 ; I quote Jowett's translation.

I
I

X EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 287

the allies were held in the temple. At first the allies were
independent and deliberated in a common assembly under
the leadership of Athens."

It is obvious from these words that every member
of the league was as free in all essentials as before
the league was formed. All agreed to follow a
common foreign policy, and to support that policy
by a common fund ; but the treasury was at the
neutral and sacred island of Delos, and though
administered by Athenian officials, was so adminis-
tered by the general consent of all. At Delos also
the representatives of the cities met periodically,
not to meddle with each other's affairs, but to
deliberate on the policy of the whole league. This
was certainly no more than a very loose form of
federal union, though Athenian quickness and vigour
supplied it with a centralising tendency far stronger
than that of any league which had yet appeared in
Greece.

But it was this very Athenian energy which
constituted the weak point in it as a federation. The
superior strength of one member of a league is, as I
have already said, a serious difficulty in the way of
a true federal union ; and in this case the ever-
increasing strength of Athens had its natural con-
sequence. The league had been established in 475
B.C. ; in little more than twenty years it had begun
to pass into an Athenian empire. From 454 on-
wards we have sure evidence of this in inscribed
documents, apart from the literary evidence of
Thucydides.^ It is important for our present pur-

^ For the nature and contents of these documents, see Mr

288 , THE CITY-STATE chap

pose to see how the true freedom of the TroXet? was
thus interfered with by the growing power of
Athens.

A perfectly independent State must be able to
take its own way without hindrance in at least four
several departments of government ; m finance, in
judicial matters, in the form of its constitution, and
in its foreign policy. If Ireland, for example, were
whoUy independent of Great Britain in these four
points, she would constitute a separate State.
Now, after! 451,; it may fairly be said that none
the members of the league were independent
Athens in all these particulars, and that some
them, at least, were subject to her in all. Let
take these points one by one.

1. The common fund had been transferred
Athens. A portion of the contributions was paid
into the Athenian treasury ; the assessment and
administration were alike in Athenian hands. These
contributions have therefore practically become a
tribute paid to Athens. 2. In , the case of some
cities, at least, and perhaps of most, the most im-
portant lawsuits had to be taken to Athens for
trial; and we know from an inscription that in
criminal cases involving death, exile, or disfranchise-
ment there was an appeal from one city (Chalcis)
to the Athenian popular courts.^ 3. Though Athens
did not usually interfere with the constitution of the

Abbott's History of Greece, vol. ii. pp. 370 foil. , and Appendix iii. ;
Hicks, Greek Historical TnscriptioTis, pp. 29 foil. ; G. Gilbert,
Handbuch, i. 402.

^ Hicks, op. dt. No. 28 Jin. p. 35.

X EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 289

cities if they were obedient and gave no trouble, she
did not hesitate to do so if she deemed it advisabla
She seems to have made separate treaties with in-
dividual cities, by which constitutions were set up
in them under her own supervision ; and these were
naturally of a democratic type.-^ 4. As is evident to
every reader of Thucydides, the foreign policy of
the " allies " was entirely controlled by Athens ;
and, so far as we know, the synod of members
which had originally been used to meet at Delos
either ceased to exist or fell into utter insignifi-
cance.

It is plain, then, that the members of the league,
some 200 in number, have ceased to be City-States
in the true sense of the word ; that they are no
longer free and self-sufficing.^ This will be made
still more apparent from the following clause in the
extant treaty with Chalcis containing an oath to
be taken by all adult Chalcidians on pain of dis-
franchisement.

" I will not revolt from the people of the Athenians, in any
way or shape, in word or deed, or be an accomplice in revolt.
If any one revolts I will inform the Athenians. I will pay
the Athenians the tribute, which I can persuade them (to
accept), and I will be a faithful and true ally to the utmost
of my power. I will help and assist the Athenian people if
any one injures them, and I will obey their commands." ^

^ Treaties with Erythrae, Miletus, Colophon, and Chalcis are
in part extant. Corp. Inscr. Att. i. 9, 10, 11, and 13 ; iv. 22a and
27a = Hicks, No. 28.

- Read, for example, the speech of Euphemus, the Athenian
envoy at Syracuse, in Tliucyd. vi. 82 foil.

^ This most telling document is translated in full by Mr. Abbott,
vol. ii. p. 345 ; Hicks, Greek Historical Inscriptions, p. 34.
U

290 THE CITY-STATE chap

This Athenian empire is the leading fact in the
period we are dealing with. Though it made Athens
great and fruitful, it was the first serious blow dealt
at the life of the true TroXt?. And it had other
results, more dangerous because more lasting. It
had the natural effect of drawing the members o^
the other great union closer togethei-, and of putting
Sparta, after the downfall of Athens, into the posi-
tion of their mistress instead of their leader. We
saw that this Peloponnesian league was formerly-
mere alliance, and that the cities were really autono-^
mous ; even in foreign policy they could success-
fully press their views against Sparta. But the
same change occurred here as in the case of the
Delian League ; one State of overwhelming military
strength made a fair and equal alliance impractic-
able, when once that State had been roused into full
activity. Sparta began the Peloponnesian war by
-demanding autonomy for all Greek cities, and she
ended it by reducing most of them to subjection ;
she forced oligarchies upon them under the super-
intendence of Spartan " harmosts," and by the aid
of Persian satraps compelled them to follow her
foreign policy. She was too rough-handed, too
ignorant of organisation, to elaborate such an empire
as the Athenian ; but in most respects the cities
-were worse off under this champion of liberty than
under the intellectual supremacy of Athens.^

The remainder of this period is occupied with

* Our knowledge of the Si^artan Empire is, however, far less
complete than of the Athenian ; see a discussion of the evidence in
Holm, Gesch. Griech. iii. 15 foil.

;( EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 291

the formation or concentration of other leagues, whose
object was to put an end to Spartan tyranny ;^ and
throughout it we have the melancholy spectacle of
constant appeal on all sides to the Persian power
for aid. The cities are not only getting accustomed
to the loss of autonomy at home, but also to the loss
of that common feeling of Hellenic freedom which
had sprung independently from the same root. A
new Athenian league arose in 378 B.C., sheltered
at first under the power of Persia ; the object was
opposition to the tyranny of Sparta, so that the posi-
tion and policy of the two leading States is now
exactly reversed. In this union, which only com-
prised some seventy cities, and did not last long, the
autonomy of each State was guaranteed by Athens.
She was leader, but the contributions of the allies
were not called or considered tribute, and there was
httle or no interference with their internal affairs.
The significance of this league is not great for our
present purpose ; but there is one feature in it
which is of real interest. We know, not only from
historians, but from inscriptions, that the allies
were represented by commissioners {avvehpoi) at
Athens. This is clearly an attempt to reproduce
the most significant feature in the early constitution
of the confederacy of Delos, — that feature which
indicates most plainly an approach to a real federa-
tion.^

1 Of one of these, which seems to have been the result of the
battle of Cnidus in 394, we know only from the evidence of coins :
see a valuable note in Holm, iii. 54 foil.

- Hicks, Historical Inscriptions, No. 81 (C. I. A. ii. 17) ;
Diodorus, xv. 28.

292 THE CITY-STATE chap.

But the Spartan Empire was also the cause of
the rise of another power, much stronger than the
new Athenian alliance, and more strikingly illustra-
tive of the growing weakness of the individual TroXt?.
In Boeotia there had always been a league of cities,
and the physical conditions of the district seemed to
make a real federal union more possible here than
elsewhere in Greece proper. Boeotia was full of
cities, which were not separated from each other by
great mountain chains ; but one of these cities,
Thebes, was larger, stronger, and more renowned
than the rest. A true federation of equals was
therefore here again impossible ; and as Professor
Freeman has suggested, a (TvvoiKL(Tfi6<; with Thebes,
like that of the Attic communities with Athens,
would have been a more practicable form of union.-^
But the other Boeotian towns were probably much
stronger than the village communities of Attica, and
a loose federal union was the utmost they would
bear. Of the constitution of this union we know
very little ; but the one indisputable fact in it is
that Thebes constituted a centralising tendency
^ which was apt to irritate the other cities, and drove
Platsea and Thespise into the arms of Athens.^

It is obvious that under pressure of a common
danger this centralising tendency of Thebes would
rapidly gain ground. Thebes had missed her chance
in the Persian wars by ignobly taking the side of

^ History of Federal Government, vol. i. 155 foil. The evidence
for this league is succinctly brought together by Gilbert, Hand-
bicch, ii. 52 foil. Read Herod, vi. 108 ; Thucyd. iii. 53 ; iv. 76..
91, 92.

2 Herod, v. 79 ; vi. 108 ; Thucyd. iv. 133.

1

I

X EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 293

the enemies of Greece. But against Athenian
aggression she only too gladly took the lead, and at
Delium in 424 was at the head of an army of an
almost united Boeotia. Thus the Athenian Empire
had its natural result in strengthening this league as
well as the Peloponnesian ; but it was the Spartan
Empire that completed the work by occupying the
Theban fortress with a garrison, and treating Thebes
as a dependency. The rise of Thebes to supremacy-
in Boeotia was the result of a sudden revolt against
this Spartan tyranny. Only eight years after that
revolt (371 B.C.) Theban envoys could claim at Sparta
to be enrolled in the peace of that year, not as
Theban but as Boeotian. The policy of Thebes must-
be the policy of Boeotia, and any rebellious city
must pay the penalty.^ Orchomenus was utterly de-
stroyed, in the absence, we are glad to learn, of
Epaminondas. It would seem as though no City-
State could rise to power as the champion of Hellenic
autonomy without using that power to take her share
in destroying it. Athens, Sparta, Thebes, all in
turn yield to the temptation ; they deal successive
blows at the ttoXc^;, and they all negotiate with
Persia for help in gaining their ends. Even such
a man as Epaminondas, a Greek man of action of
the noblest type, is not free from the prevailing

^ So, too, with the coinage; from 374 to 338 b.o. the other
Boeotian cities have no independent coinage ; see the Brit. Mus.
Catalogue of Greek Coins, Central Greece, introduction, p. xlii.
At this time there was a real federal currency, and the coins beat
the name not of any city, but of the federal magistrate. Orcho-
menus alone, the ancient rival of Thebes, issued a few 1" separatist"
coins of her own.

294 THE CITY-STATE ohap.

weakness. But as the determined enemy of the narrow
Spartan spirit, he worked mainly in the right direc-
tion ; and his death at Mantinea in 362 B.C. deprived
the Greeks of the only leader capable of dealing
successfully with the dangerous man of genius who
three years later ascended the throne of Macedon.

To sum up: in this period we find the Greek
States much more ready than in the previous one to
coalesce into leagues of real political importance.
They combine, it is true, only under pressure from
without ; at first against the Persian enemy, and
later against the leading cities which successively
convert their own leagues into powerful empires.
Leagues, imperial States, and Persian arms and
diplomacy, all have their share in wearing out the
vitality of the individual cities ; the free and self-
sufi&cing 7roA-fc9 seems to be fading away, and it is
hard to see what new political combination can be
found to take its place.

3. A new period opens with the growth of the
Macedonian power under Philip (359-336 B.C.).
We are here chiefly concerned to notice the effect on
the City-State, not only of the strength and policy
of this new power, but also of the efforts of the
Greeks themselves to counteract it.

At the time of Philip's accession the so-called
Theban supremacy had just practically ended with
the death of Epaminondas. There was now a kind
of balance of power between the three leading
States, Sparta, Athens, and Thebes, no one of which
was greatly stronger than the others ; and such a
balance could easily be worked upon by any great

X EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 295

power from without. Thus when Macedon came
into the range of Greek politics, under a man of
great diplomatic as well as military capacity, who,
like a Czar of to-day, wished to secure a firm footing
on the sea-board of the ^.gean, she found her work
comparatively easy.

The strong imperial policy of Philip found no
real antagonist except at Athens. Weak as she was,
and straitened by the break-up of her new con-
federacy, Athens could still produce men of great
talent and energy ; but she was hampered by divided
counsels. Two Athenians of this period seem to
represent the currents of Greek political thought,
now running in two different directions. Demos-
thenes represents the cause of the City-State in this
age, of a union, that is, of perfectly free Hellenic
cities against the common enemy. Phocion represents
the feeling, which seems to have been long growing up
among thinking men at Athens, that the City-State
was no longer what it had been, and could no longer
stand by itself ; that what was needed was a general
Hellenic peace, and possibly even an arbiter from
without,^ an arbiter not wholly un-Hellenic like the
Persian, yet one who might succeed in stilling the
fatal jealousies of the leading States. We may do
well to compare the views of these two statesmen
somewhat more closely.

■^ Tlie connection between a general peace and a strong arbiter is
curiously expressed by Dante in his De Monarchia, ch. iv. foil. The
relation of the Greek cities to Macedon is not unlike that of the
Italian States to the Empire in Dante's time : See Bryce's Holy
Roman Empire, pp. 76 foil.

296 THE CITY-STATE chap.

Tlie Policy of Demosthenes,

Let us note, in the first place, that the efforts of
Demosthenes to check Philip fall into two periods
divided by the peace of Philocrates in 346 B.C.
In the first of these he is acting chiefly with Athens
alone ; Philip is to him not so much the common
enemy of Greece as the dangerous rival of Athens
in the north. His whole mind was given to the
internal reform of Athens so as to strengthen her
against Philip. In her relation to other Greek States
he perhaps hardly saw beyond a balance of power ;
and as Athens alone was far too weak to resist
Macedon, this policy in which Demosthenes repre-
sents the old patriotism of the iroXi^ was doomed
to certain failure.

It is true that after 346 his Athenian feeling
seems to become more distinctly Hellenic.^ But
what could even such a man as Demosthenes do
with the Hellas of that day ? He could not force
on the Greeks a real and permanent union ; he
could but urge new alliances. His strength was
spent in embassies with this object, embassies
too often futile. No such alliance could save
Greece from the Macedonian power, as subsequent
events plainly showed. What was needed was a
real federal union between the leading States, with

^ Traces of such a feeling are certainly to be found at an earlier
date, e.g. in the speech for the Megalopolitans (352 B.C.) ; but I
believe I am representing rightly the general change in the char-
acter of Demosthenes' public orations. See Curtius, Hist, of
Greece, vol. v. 251.

X EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 297

a strong central controlling force ; and Demosthenes'
policy was hopeless just because Athens could never
be the centre of such a union, nor could any other
city.

Demosthenes is thus the last, and in some
respects the most heroic champion of the old Greek
instinct for autonomy. He is the true child of the
City-State, but the child of its old age and decrepi-
tude. He still believes in Athens, and it is on
Athens that all his hopes are based. He looks on
Philip as one who must inevitably be the foe alike
of Athens and of Greece. He seems to think that he
can be beaten off as Xerxes was, and to forget that
even Xerxes almost triumphed over the divisions
of the Greek States, and that Philip is a nearer,
a more permanent, and a far less barbarian foe.
Splendid figure as he is, the failure of Demosthenes
shows clearly that the vitality of the TroXt? has
been greatly weakened since the Persian wars, and
at the same time that the old instinct still has force
enough to make a real and life-giving union im-
practicable.

Tlie Policy of Phocion

This remarkable Athenian figure was the some-
what odd exponent of the practical side of a school
of thought which had been gaining strength in
Greece for some time past. This school was now
brought into prominence by the rise of Macedon,
and came to have a marked influence on the history
of the City State.

It began with the philosophers, and with the

298 THE CITY-StATE chap

idea that the philosopher may belong to the world as
well as to a particular city. When Socrates described
himself as KoafiKy^, i.e. a citizen of the world, he
meant that the State did not bind him in everything,
that there was a world of duty and of thought
beyond and transcending the State.-^ We can re-
cognise this feeling also in the Eepublic of Plato,
and connect it with a philosophical reaction against
the political life of the Athenian citizen. Athens
was far more open to criticism now than in the
days of Pericles ; and a cynical dislike betrays itself
in the Eepublic for the politicians of the day and
their tricks, and a longing for a strong government
of reason, which Plato could find in no existing
Greek ttoXl^.^ Not indeed that Plato really gave up
the TToXt? as hopeless, or sought for a new form of
State to take its place. His object, as seen more
especially in his later work, the Laws, is rather " to
re-adapt it to the promotion of virtue and noble
living."^ And it is true that the most practical
of all the thinking men of Greece, one who lived in
this age and was intimately connected with Mace-
don and her two great kings, has nothing to tell us
of the insufficiency of the TroXt? as such ; in his
eyes it was Nature's gift to man to enable him to
perfect himself in the "good life." Aiistotle took
the facts of city life as they were and showed how
they might be made the most of " Not a par-

1 Bernays, Phokion, 31 ; Cic. Tusc. v. 108 ; Plul;arch, de
ixilio, 5. Cf. Butcher, Deinosthenes, pp. 25, 26.

2 See e.g. Republic, vi. 496 B.

3 Newman, Politics of Aristotle, vol. i. 478.

EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 299

tide of his attention," says a great authority, " is
diverted from the TroXt? to the eOvo^} But to him
Macedon was assuredly not wholly barbarian ; and
war to the death with her kings could not have
been to him as natural or desirable as it seemed to
Demosthenes. And though he has nothing to tell
us of Macedon, we can hardly avoid the conclusion
that his desire was for peace and internal reform,
even if it were under the guarantee of the northern
power, for the sake of the TroXt? itself rather than
for the sake of gaining military strength to oppose
that power as an enemy.

Of this philosophical view of Greek politics
Phocion was in a manner the political exponent.
But his policy was too much a negative one ; it
might almost be called one of indifferentism, like the
feeling of Lessing and Goethe in Germany's most
momentous period. So far as we know, Phocion
never proposed an alliance of a durable kind, either
Athenian or Hellenic, with Macedon ; he was con-
tent to be a purely restraining influence.^ Athens
had been constantly at war since 432 ; her own
resources were of the weakest ; there was little
military skill to be found in her, no reserve force,
much talk, but little solid courage. Athens was
vulnerable at various points, and could not possibly
defend more than one at a time, therefore Phocion

^ Newman, ib. p. 479. Read also the valuable discussion of
the connection of Aristotle with Macedon, pp. 469 foil. Bernays,
Phohion, pp. 40 foil.

^ Plutarch's Life of Phocion, ch. viii. ; " eiroXiTeuero fikv ael irp6'
elp^vrjv Kol Tjavxiav ," etc. Cf. ch. xvi.

300 THE CITY-STATE chap

despaired of war, and the event proved him right.
The faithfulness of the Athenians towards him is a
proof that they also instinctively felt that he was
right. But he was wanting on the practical and
creative side, and never really dominated either
Athens, Greece, or Philip.

There seems then to have been no way of saving
the TToXt? from the threatening power of Macedon,
either by united resistance or by the acceptance of
Macedonian leadership. A policy of resistance
found the City -State too weak to defend itself;
a policy of inaction would land it in a Macedonian
empire which would still further weaken its remain-
ing vitality. The first poKcy, that of Demosthenes,
did actually result in disaster and the presence of
Macedonian garrisons in Greek cities. The second
policy then took its place, and initiated a new era
for Greece. After the fatal battle of Chaeronea
(338 B.C.) Philip assumed the position of leader of
the Greek cities. Inspired by his Greek education,
by the memory of the Persian wars, by the career
of the Spartan Agesilaus, and by the writings of
Isocrates, he determined to lead a united Greece
against Persia, and summoned representatives of the
cities to meet him at the Isthmus as the first step.
Assassination cut short his designs ; but in his son
Greece found a still mightier exponent of this idea
of her true relation to Macedon. Under Alexander
it was not Macedon that conquered the East, but
Greece. And at home it was not only Alexander's
generals who kept Greece under the influence of
Macedon, but Greeks and even Athenians — Phocion

EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 301

and Demetrius of Phalerum.^ Thus the policy of
union and reorganisation for the TroXei? under the
strong guardianship of Macedon was the one which
was eventually successful; but it cost them the-
loss of much of their remaining vitality as free and
self-sufficing poHtical organisms. True, neither
Philip nor Alexander dealt hardly with the cities,
Thebes alone excepted ; they left them nominally
free,^ and they identified the interest of the Greeks
with their own. But they could and did interfere
with them whenever they chose, and without meet-
ing with any successful resistance. Their forcible
supervision cast a great shadow upon the City- State,
dimming and almost obliterating the clear outlines
of its political life.

A great future was still before the Greek race,
which was yet to set its mark upon the world's
history, with a force it never could have exerted
under the older political system. But the ttoX^?,
the pecuKar product of the political genius of the
Greeks, their true home in which all their choicest
work had been done, was now no longer tsheir own.
They were like the freeholder of an ancient family,
who has mortgaged and lost his inheritance, but is
still allowed to live on in the old home as tenant.

^ Of this philosopher-statesman, who was iirL/xeXriTyjs of Athens
under Cassander, and altered her constitution perhaps on the
model of Aristotle's ideal State, we should be glad to know more.
What little we do know will be found succinctly put together in
Thirlwall, Hist, of Greece, vol. vii. 355 foil.

- Alexander, for example, made proclamation of their autonomy
after the battle of Issus. See Plutarch's life of him, ch. xxxiv., and
cf. xvi. Jin.

302 THE CITY-STATE CHAP

The essential charm of ownership was gone for
them, and with it all the joy and intensity of social
life ; and though this very calamity might widen
their mental horizon, and find them new interests
and fresh work to do, the stream of their intel-
lectual effort would never again run so clear and
strong as in the days of the perfect freedom of the
individual City-State.

Of the ultimate fate of the Greek cities I shall
give some account in the next chapter. But it may
be as well to follow out the story we have been
pursuing by referring at once to the last attempt
of the Greeks to recover political independence ;
especially as that attempt was for a time successful,
and successful just because the old instinct of
autonomy had steadily become feebler, and the
cities were more willing than in the earher periods
to unite into real federal unions.

After Alexander's empire had been broken up,
his successors on the throne of Macedon continued
to press more or less heavily on the Greek cities.
Though for the most part left nominally inde-
pendent, they were not really so; more than one of
them was a Macedonian fortress, and in others the
old disease of tyranny, aided now by the Macedonian
power, begins once more to appear. About 280
B.C. four cities of the old Achaean Lea^e, which
nad been dissdivea by Alexander, united afreshma
more solid union than their former one. These
were quickly joined by others, and in 251 Aratus
of Sicyon compelled his native city to join the
league. From this latter year we may date the

EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 303

beginning of the first real federation which Greece
had ever known. This federation, of which Aratus
at once became the leading spirit, was beyond all
doubt what the Germans happily term a Bundes-
staat, as distinguished from a Staatenbund ;^ that
is, it constituted a State in itself, and was not
merely an alliance of perfectly independent cities.
Plutarch, who had studied it carefully, in order to
write his life of Aratus, thus briefly sketches it in
his later biography of Philopoemen (ch. viii.) : —

" Aratus was the first who raised the commonwealth of
the Achasans to dignity and power. For whereas before
they were in a low condition, scattered in unconnected cities,
he combined them in one body, and gave them a moderate
civil government worthy of Greece. And as it happens in
running waters that when a few small bodies stop others
stick to them, and one part strengthening another the whole
becomes one firm and solid mass, so it was with Greece. At
a time when she was weak and easily broken, dispersed in
a variety of independent cities, the Achaeans first united
themselves : and then attaching some of the neighbouring
cities by assisting them to expel their tyrants, while others
voluntarily joined them for the sake of that unanimity
whicli they beheld in so well constituted a government, they
conceived the design of incorporating Peloponnesus into one
great power."

The general idea of the character of the League
which is here indicated is borne out by the valuable
evidence of Polybius, whose connection with it in
its later days was an important though a melancholy
one. Chiefly from him we learn the following
significant facts.^ Unlike the older Greek leagues,

^ Freeman, Comparative Politics, p 387.

" Polyb. ii. 37. The evidence from coins is here niteresting, as

304 THE CITr-STATE chap.

in which some dominant city was almost always an
element of insecurity, the Achaean federation was
composed of cities among which no single one was
decidedly preponderant ; each of these had one vote
only in the common assembly, which was held in
the later period of the League at least turn by turn
in all of them. And further, the central government
was a strong one, consisting of a single arparTjyo^ or
general, assisted by a council of ten, and having for
the year of his office complete administrative and
executive power. The central government thus
constituted exercised control over the foreign policy
of the League, over its military resources, its
finance, coinage, and weights and measures. What
was the judicial and constraining power which sup-
ported the central government we do not clearly
know ; but we can hardly doubt that there was a
judicial tribunal of some kind common to the whole
League.^

These facts show beyond question that the
Achaean federation formed a State in itself as
distinct from the States composing it ; and in this

showing that some important cities, e.g. Argos and Sicyon, issued
their own coinage independently of that of the League. Hence we
learn (1) that the spirit of autonomy was still alive in them, and
(2) that though no one city was preponderant, a few were far
more powerful than the rest, — many in fact being still mere
villages. See Brit. Mus. Catalogue, Peloponnesus, p. 24 foil.

^ The evidence for this constitution is to be found discussed in
Freeman's History of Federal Government (unfortunately a difficult
book to procure), vol. i. 23G foil. ; or in a more concentrated form
in Gilbert, Handbueh, ii. 110 foil. The authorities are chiefly
Polybius, Livy's later books, Plutarch's Lives of Aratus, Cleomencs,
and Philopoemen, and a few passages in Pausanias, etc.

X EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 306

consists at once its peculiarity and its significance
in Greek history. As in all true federations, the
members were quite free to manage their own local
affairs, but by uniting into one great State they now
at last made confession that those local affairs were
no longer of absorbing interest. Even now it is
curious to notice that the more famous cities,
Athens, Sparta, Corinth, which had once drawn
their health and strength from the older system,
were always reluctant to come into the League;
but among the lesser ones at least the old passion
for autonomy has fretted itself away, and they are
now able to unite without misgivings or jealousies.

But this new form of State proved hardly more
capable of defending or uniting Greece than the
one which had gone before it. To increase its
strength the Achaean League sought to compel
other cities to join it, and to attain this object it
allied itself with the very enemy whose encroach-
ments had called it into existence. The rivalry
and hatred between the League and Sparta is the
saddest fact in the last pages of Greek history ; and
when we find Achaeans under such a Greek as
Philopoemen united with Macedon in crushing the
noblest of all Spartan kings on the heights of
Sellasia, we feel that the City -State and Pan-
Hellenic feeling are vanishing away together, and
that with them passes also all that is best and
noblest in the most gifted of all races.

CHAPTER XI

DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY-STATE : THE KOMAN EMPIRE

It has often been said that the history of Greece
starts afresh with the conquests of Alexander. True
as this is in many ways, it is not really true of the
political life of the Greeks. The Greek City-State
makes no fresh start at this point, but languishes on
in gradual decay for nearly three centuries.

Yet Greece, through Alexander, her foster-child
and pupil, came herself very near to the discovery
of a new political system. For the few short years
of Alexander's manhood it must have seemed as
though the City-State were to escape further linger-
ing decay, and to pass at once into a new existence
as the organised material of a great empire. Just
as the Greeks were now to turn their intellectual
gifts in new directions, so it seemed as if they were
about to put their peculiar political creation to a
new use. In the marvellous career of Alexander,
it is easy to forget that he was at heart a Greek,
and that he identified himself and his aims with
Greece and her ancient aspirations ; but this must

CHAP. XI DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY-STATE 307

be clearly understood, as well as the ideas of empire
which were fermenting in his mind, if we would see
how the Greeks had once the chance of anticipating
the work of Eome, and how it came about that they
lost it.

Even in Philip, as we saw in the last chapter,
the desire for empire was combined with the con-
viction that such empire must be founded on a basis
of Greek civilisation. Philip is, as has often been
said, one of those men of whose inner history we
would fain know more. His respect for Greek
culture, combined with his strife for empire, make
him one of the most singular figures in history. He
dealt gently with Greece ; he respected the Greek
religion ; he called on the Greeks to unite with him
in freeing their Asiatic brethren from Persian domi-
nation. But in his son, whose character has come
down to us as clearly as the features on his coins,
we see the Greek influence most unmistakably. It
is just this Greek side of Alexander's nature, or at
least the result of a thoroughly Greek training on
his mind, which gives Plutarch's biography its special
value as distinct from other accounts of him ; and it
may be as well to dwell on this for a moment if
we would appreciate the bearing of his brief and
wonderful life on the history of the City-State.

Plutarch's portrait of Alexander is that of a man
whose power of self-restraint (awcppoavvT)) makes
him even more Greek than most Greeks of his day,
in spite of an occasional outbreak of passion.^ It is

^ Plutarch, Alex. 21-23 ; cf. 40. "rod vi.kS.v roiis Tro\efjt,lovs rb
Kparelv eavTov /SacrtXt/cwTepov riyov^efos."

308 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP,

a portrait also of one in whom can be discerned a
humanity and sensibility which are perhaps not
essentially Greek, but might well be the result of a
Greek education on a fine semi-Hellenic mind.^ And
Plutarch also depicts him as feeling his permanent
source of strength to be Hellenic, and looking upon
his Macedonians as little more than necessary tools.
Allowing something for Plutarch's Hellenism, we
find that the facts bear out these statements. " The
Greeks are demigods among Macedonian brutes,"
Alexander cried in one of his fits of passion. The
Greek Eumenes was his secretary ; with Aristotle,
his former tutor, and Phocion, who understood his
aspirations, he is said to have kept up corre-
spondence.^ The boys in Babylon were edu-
cated in Greek fashion, though they were taught
the Macedonian drill. After the battle of Issus
he sent a portion of the spoils to Greek cities as far
distant as Croton, and at the same time made
proclamation of their autonomy. He told the
Athenians, after the destruction of Thebes, " to
attend to affairs, as they would have to rule Greece
if anything happened to him ; " and even if this
last story be only an Athenian invention, the fact
that it could be invented is itself significant.^

It seems, then, that whether we look at his
character, or at his conduct towards the Greeks,
and his respect for their culture, Alexander had
advanced a long way beyond his father in his
acknowledgment of the claims of the Hellenic

1 Plutarch, Alex. 27 sub fin., 29, 39 sub fin.
« Ibid. 39 ;, cf. 17 sub fin. =* Ibid. 13.

XI DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY-STATE 309

genius. But we have also to consider what he did,
or meant to do, as a military Statesman representing
Greece. English writers, with the exception per-
haps of Thirlwall, have not taken a high view of
Alexander's schemes of empire ; but the following
facts seem to have been sufficiently proved by the
one great modern historian of this and the following
age.^ First, he projected the foundation of cities
throughout his conquests, to be peopled as far as
possible by Greeks, and governed under Greek con-
stitutional forms ; and it is matter of history that
he himself actually began this work. Not only the
new foundations of Tyre and Gaza, and the still
more famous Alexandria, attest his intention of
carrying the Greek iroXc^i into his new dominions,
but also many cities in the far east, even in
Afghanistan and India, in which we now know that
there was a Greek element, though they were
largely made up of the native populations. Alex-
ander indeed himself was cut short at the outset
of his work ; but it was carried on by the succes-
sors among whom his empire was divided, and
especially by Seleucus, who left a great name behind
him as a founder of cities. Secondly, it is beyond
question that Alexander had in his mind the estab-
lishment of a great system of world-commerce, which
should draw together Greece and Egypt and the
East, and of which the Nile, the Tigris, and the
Indus were to be the principal channels.

Combining these facts with what we have

^ Droysen, Hellenismus, vol. iii. The same view is taken by
Professor Gardner in his New Chapters of Greek History, cli. xiv.

310 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

already seen of Alexander's Hellenic feeling, we
can hardly avoid the inference that the idea was
present to his mind of Hellenising the world by
means of cities and communications, and that he
looked upon Hellenic civilisation as the only exist-
ing cement capable of holding together the structure
of a universal empire.

It is hardly necessary to point out what would
have been the result for the City-State of such an
empire as this, had it been possible for Alexander
or his successors to realise it. The Greek race as
a whole might have gained much, but the 7r6\i<;
would have sunk into the position of a municipal
town. Each State would have lost at once and for
ever those very conditions of life in which had been
nurtured all that was most brilliant in the Greek
character ; that absolute freedom and independence
of all others, which brought thought and action into
such perfect harmony, and gave to the life of every
citizen a unique value in relation both to himself
and his State. This at least would have been the
loss of a people who had proved that they could
bring their form of State very near to perfection.
But the last two chapters will have shown in some
degree that this form of State was very far from
being any longer perfect ; and from such an empire
as that which Alexander's imagination suggested,
something at least might have been gained for the
Greeks, if not for their TroXt?. Had he lived to
carry out his great schemes, a new prospect of
life, social, political, intellectual, might have opened
before the Greek race ; the whole stream of theii

XI DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY-STATE 311

infinite capacity might have been turned into a new
channel. Even as it was, they left the mark of
Hellenic genius in every land to which Alexandei
led them ; and who shall say that such a people
might not have developed also a system of law and
government adequate to the needs of the human
race from the Indus to the Adriatic ?

But the idea and the possibility of such a system
perished for the time with Alexander. At the
moment of his death two problems called impera-
tively for solution, if the project of universal empire
were to be carried out; and these two problems
were equally insoluble. First, the Persians had to
be combined with the Macedonians ; secondly, the
Macedonians had to be combined with the Greeks.
The hopelessness of the first of these combinations
made itself felt at once. The Macedonians would
not accept as king the child of Alexander by an
Oriental ; and as they were the real instruments of
conquest, with them lay the fatal decision. The
Persians were ready, not the Macedonians. No
union was possible save through a personality such
as Alexander's had been, for there was no idea to
ground it on, or none that was sufficiently clear
and comprehensible. For the union of Macedonians
and Greeks there might indeed have been some faint
hope. There was one striking character, a Greek
of culture, ability, and feeling, the subject of one of
Plutarch's most interesting biographies, who con-
tinued to represent the union of Greece and Macedon
for some time after Alexander's death. But Eumenes
Btruggled in vain against a combination of uncultured

312 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP

rivals, and was finally betrayed by the Macedonians
whom he had taught, as Plutarch tells us, to love
and obey him.^

Alexander's empire was soon broken up into
Macedonian satrapies or kingdoms. Greece was
the continual prey of one of these, and the scene
of struggle between others ; and the difficulty of
maintaining these kingdoms, together with the rude
character of their Macedonian rulers, led to con-
tinual wars between individual kings at the head
of mercenary armies, — wars which seem for a time
to deprive history of all its value. Meanwhile
the Greeks, instead of finding new life and hope
in a mighty political combination of which they,
like their TroXt? in its surrounding territory, were
to have been the brain and Hfe, were left to con-
tinue half-heartedly, weary and worn-out, in their
City-States, under the ominous shadow of Mace-
donian kings, until some new power should appear
with a poKtical genius adequate to the organising
of the world afresh.

Such a power at last appeared, after an interval
of a century and a half, in that great City-State of
the West whose political development has been
already sketched. In tracing this development I
intentionally dwelt upon those points which seemed
to indicate that of all City-States Eome was the
best equipped for the task of governing the world.

^ It is possible that Plutarch's life of Euiuoiies may be too
favourable, as based on the evidence of his fellow - townsman
Hieronymus ; but it is not contradicted by other writers. Cf.
Ranke, iFeltgeschichte, vol. i. i)t. ii. 221 Coll.

XI DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY-STATE 313

We saw that from the beginning she was not a
wholly isolated community, but the member of a
Latin league, of which she made herself successively
the leader and the mistress. We have noticed the
strength of her early realisation of the meaning of
magisterial power and the ready faculty she dis-
played in the conception, and later in the extended
application, of legal ideas. We have seen in passing
how the habits and temperament of her people fitted
them for war and conquest, and how as early as the
age of kingship her military resources were fully
organised. And we traced in outline the steady
development of her institutions in the direction of
popular sovereignty, and the course of the counter-
current that brought her under the rule of an
oligarchy of wonderful aptitude for the detailed
business of government.' It remains to explain
how Eome, herself a City- State, ceased at last to
be one; how in the vast reach of her endeavour
to deprive all others of their autonomous life, she
too lost the genius of the TroXt?. And we must
take also a glance, however rapid and superficial,
at the system of universal empire which Eomans,
rather than Eome, succeeded at last in creating
out of the old materials.

Almost before her history can be truly said to
begin, the Eoman territory had already exceeded
the limits which Aristotle regarded as sufficient for
the perfect City- State. When Alexander died at
Babylon in 323 B.C. she had reduced her own
kindred, the Latins, together with other peoples in
her vicinity, and was engaged in a deadly struggle

-J 14 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP

with the hardy stocks of the interior of the penin-
sula. While his successors were fighting amongst
themselves, and wasting the strength of Greece by
the loss of one mercenary army after another, Kome
was conquering and organising all Italy, and wrest-
ing from Carthage the empire of the Western Medi-
terranean. During the age of the struggles and
intrigues of the Achaean League, she was going
through her mortal conflict with Hannibal, in the
course of which she acquired a Spanish dominion,
and from which she rose more formidable than ever,
to attack and ruin the Macedonian power itself
Greece then passed under her protection, and before
long was united with Macedonia as a Roman pro-
vince. The Greek king of Pergamus bequeathed
his kingdom to her; the one Greek City-State
which still retained a real independence and pros-
perity, the city and island of Rhodes, was her firm
friend and ally. Greek historians, and especially
the cosmopolitan Polybius, began to recognise a new
order of things in the world, and like Virgil
a century later, and Dante in the Middle Ages,
looked upon Rome, as destined from her foundation
to be the mistress of a mighty empire. By the
end of the second century B.C. that empire included
every valuable region of the Mediterranean except
Egypt, and a century later it stretched from the
Euphrates to the Atlantic.

And yet, during almost the whole of this period,
Rome continued to be in some sense a City-State,
and what is more, for some time at least believed
herself to be maintaining the free city-life of her

XI DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY STATE 315

Greek subjects wherever it still existed. Civic life
and civic government are terms which perfectly
well express the nature of the Roman polity even
after all these conquests. The government which
conquered Spain and Africa, Syria and Gaul, was
essentially the same in form as that which had
ruled Eome when she had yet to conquer Italy.
The magistrates continued to convene the Senate
in Roman temples, to transact there the business of
the world ; in the ancient Forum of Romulus the
" Roman people " still passed laws and ratified
treaties. Even after Rome had become the world's
emporium, and the resort of men of business and
learning from every quarter of the Empire, her
social life was still, as it was for Cicero,^ that of a
City-State, and it was as a City-State that she still
ruled the world. And wherever she found the
City-State in existence among the cities she con-
quered, she retained it, if only as a matter of policy,
at least in its outward form and features.

We may best realise the truth of all this, and
the nature of the change which finally came over
the world, if we turn our attention for a moment to
the way in which the Roman oligarchy of the
Republic dealt with the conquered peoples. To
meet the needs of government as they successively
arose, the Roman Senate invented no new system ;

^ Cicero stands in this respect to Rome as Demosthenes to
Athens ; he was the last-born legitimate son of the Roman City-
State. Perhaps this may be best seen illustrated in the second and
third books of his treatise, "De Legibus " ; but it is obvious
throughout his writings, and is the real clue to the right apprecia-
tion of his political career.

316 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

adaptation rather than invention was what they
chiefly excelled in. In dealing with their conquests
they turned to account their faculty of adaptation
in two distinct ways/v First, they used their city-
magistracy for the government of their new acquisi-
tions ; that dread imperium, which their fathers
had handed down to them as the greatest political
treasure of their State, they now simply extended
in its full force over the vast territories they con-
quered. We saw (p. 108) that the consul in the
field retained undiminished the imperium of the
Eex. Now as fresh wars or rebellions might always
be expected in the conquered lands, this undi-
minished imperiuvi, i.e. supreme military and judi-
cial power in combination, was utilised to do the
required work. The consul, holding this power,
presided over Italy as the sphere of his government
(provincia). Even when the islands of Sicily and
Sardinia were annexed, no new office was created ;
four praetors were elected, instead of two, and among
these four the provincice were allotted, two of juris-
diction at home, two of government beyond the
sea. Those who undertook these last held an im-
perium precisely equal in all essentials to that of
the consul in the field ; and like him they were in
the eye of the law simply magistrates of the City-
State of Eome. With a slight extension this simple
system was maintained during more than two
centuries. In course of time the imperium of con-
sul or praetor came to be prorogued, as it was called,
so that he might discharge the growing business of
the home government duiing one year, and proceed

XI DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY-STATE 317

in the second to his provincial command ; but
viewed constitutionally his magistracy was precisely'
the same during both years. Thus the ancient
imperium of the City-State was found to be suffi-
cient for all purposes of government, whether in
Eome, Italy, or beyond the sea.^
>^ Secondly, wherever the Eomans found City-
/ States in the countries they subdued, they retained
them together with their local institutions ; modify-
ing these so far as they deemed it advisable, but
rarely putting fresh ones in their place. This was
their policy in Italy, in Sicily, in Greece, in Asia,
wherever in fact the city-community had flourished
in any form. Occasionally indeed they destroyed
a city, as they wantonly destroyed Corinth ; and
sometimes they might deprive it of all real self-
government, as they degraded Capua after the
HannibaUc war. But for the most part, both as
matter of convenience and policy, they let the local
magistrates and councils continue to administer the
local laws. Even in those provinces where the
City-State had never really existed, as in North
Italy and in Spain, they did all that could be done
to initiate city-life on the model of their own. Like
Alexander, they began the foundation of cities by
drawing the native population together into new
centres ; and as time went on, colonies of the full
Eoman, as well as of the inferior Latin franchise,
each a miniature Eome, with its own magistrates
and Senate, began to appear even in the transmarine

1 Mommsen, Staatsrecht, vol. ii. pt. i. (ed. 2) 229 foil. Willema
Droit public Romain, pp. 249 foil., 274 foil.

318 THE CITY-STATE chap.

provinces. Neither Romans nor Greeks could think
of civilised life apart from the city as a centre of
business, government, and pleasure ; and the Roman
oligarchy, true to its practical instincts, saw also in
the city a most convenient machinery for raising
the taxes they imposed.^

It need hardly be said that it was the city,
rather than the City-State, which they thus turned
to account. Here is exactly the point at which we
can best see how the older form of State slowly
passed into an imperial one, forming, as it were, out
of its old and well-worn material a fresh cellular
tissue for a new political system. It will be by
this time sufl&ciently obvious that the real life of
the TToXt? was now everywhere already extinct, or
rapidly passing away. The bodily appearance was
there, but the spirit had departed. Yet the material
which remained could be turned to new purposes ;
the cities could become, by an easy transition, the
municipal towns of an empire. Some few indeed
were still nominally the allies of Rome, had their
freedom guaranteed by treaty, and paid no taxes
to the Roman Government; but all the rest were
now to be treated as convenient centres of adminis-
tration, and to pass under the control, more or less
direct in various degrees, of the magistrates of the
mistress of the world. And this mistress, though

^ A useful account of Roman policy in x-egard to town-life will
be found in the last chapter of W. T. Arnold's Roman Provincial
Administration, based chiefly on the Staatsverwaltung of Mar-
quardt. See also articles " Colonia " and " Foederatse civitates " in
the last edition of Smith's Diet, of Classical Antiquities.

XI DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY-STATE 31 S

herself still in outward form a City-State, had also
long ago passed beyond the limits within which it
was possible to realise at its best the life of this
ancient form of polity.

It will thus appear that there were two leading
principles in the treatment of their conquests by
the Eoman oligarchy of the EepubKc : first,
government by the Roman city magistrate, under
supervision, of course, by the great oligarchical
council ; and secondly, local self-government within
certain limits, as yet not clearly defined, by the
magistrates and councils of the subject cities. For
a time these two principles worked fairly well in
combination ; so long, that is, as the Roman oligarchy
maintained its old vigour and integrity, and so long
as any healthy life was left in the cities, such as
might fit them for their new duties as the municipal
towns of a great empire. During the greater part
of the period of its growth the dominion of the
Republic was so far a success that it astonished
and overawed the world ; it seemed as though the
universal empire were at last about to be realised,
spreading from the west instead of from the east.
But time showed that in this case the Roman policy
of adaptation was in all essential respects a failure.
A City-State had been called on to undertake the
government of an empire as great as Alexander's ;
and the machinery and the morality which it could
bring to bear upon the work were alike found
wanting. The machinery, — magistrates, senate,
and people, — might possibly have been adequate
to the task ; but for the good government of

320 THE CITY-STATE

CHAP.

dependencies you must have more than machinery,
— you must have also conscience . and self-re-
straint. The Eomans might extend their civic
government and law, but they could not extend
their ancient civic virtues, to the government of
an empire.

The story of this failure of the Eepublican
Empire is familiar enough ; I can only here allude
to the more obvious causes of it.^ The governors^
of provinces began to enrich themselves by using
their imperium to rob their subjects ; and there
was no way found of keeping them under proper
control. The Senate, admirable in the management
of the details of war and diplomacy, could discover
no effective check on the rapacity of the governors,
and after a time they ceased to have any real
desire to do so. There was no real guarantee that" u
the local institutions, or even the lives and the
property, of the subject peoples would be respected
by the Eoman governor; and as a matter of fact
they were often treated with the utmost contempt.
And in all cases, whether the governor were just or
unjust, whether or no he adhered to the terms on
which local government had been granted to the
cities of his province, the life of the City- State,
which had been so long decaying, was now finally
crushed out under the pressure of the Eoman^^'
imperium. True loyalty towards that imperium}
cottM' not grow up under such a system. There
was no solid and well-meaning government to which

^ Read the chapter on " The Government and the Governed " in
the second vol. of Mommsen's Hist, of Rome.

ii DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY-STATE 321

to be loyal. There was therefore little apparent
hope that a great imperial State could be constituted
on a solid and permanent basis, which might embrace
and protect the innumerable City-States which it
had absorbed. There was no principle of unity in
this great dominion, — such unity as springs from the
vigorous action of a strong central power, aided by
responsible subordinates in the various parts, as
well as by the healthy local action of the smaller
centres of which it was composed.

There were other causes too at work which
made it almost impossible for this vast dominion to
progress successfully towards the realisation of true
political unity. There was the s_tartling difference
between the peoples of the east and the peoples of
the west; between the Greeks, including all who
had felt the magic of Greek civilisation, and the
inhabitants of Spain and Gaul, who had as yet
developed no State, no law, no art, and no literature.
There was the no less startling distinction between
the status of the Eoman citizen, whose life and
property were everywhere sacred, and the status of
the citizen of a subject community, which might
look in vain to the Eoman governor for protection.
There was again, during the whole of the last
century of the Eepublic, constant danger from the
enemies of the Eoman power on its frontiers ; from
powerful kings like Jugurtha, Mithridates, or
Ariovistus, with whom the Senate could only cope
by allowing ambitious generals to continue for
years in command of large armies, thus straining
the machinery of the City-State far beyond its

322 THE CITY-STATE chap

natural capacity of endurance. And lastly, there
was that fatal stasis within the State itself of wliich
I have already spoken, paralysing the energies of
men whose attention should have been given to the
work of union and defence, narrowing their views,
embittering their hatreds, and making all honest
discussion in the great council ever more hopeless
and impossible.

If in fact we test the Eoman dominion in the
last century of the Eepublic by our definition of the
State as given in chapter i., it is difficult to see in
what sense it could be called a State at all. Of the
natural ties it had none ; neither community of race
or religion, nor of common feeling and history. The
common government which constitutes the chief
artificial bond in a State it was indeed supposed
to possess ; but this government had grown to be
so weakened and discredited, so beset by enemies
within and without, that it could hardly be said to
exist except in name. The oligarchical Senate
could no longer keep its magistrates under control,
and save in this Senate, to which the whole world
had once looked up with reverence, there was no
central unifying influence to be found. From the
City-State, whether in Eome or her dependencies,
there was no longer any regenerating influence to
be looked for ; its part in the history of the world
had been played to the end. It is clear that we
have come at last to the end of our story ; that one
City-State has sucked the life out of all the rest,
and has herself lost her ancient Statehood in the
gigantic effort. From this last century of the

DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY-STATE 323

Republic the City-State may truly be said to have
ceased to exist.

Yet it was found possible to build up out of the
ruins left by the older civilisation a. new State of
sufficient strength and unity to supply almost all
the needs which in this melancholy age were most
keenly felt. When the Roman Republic came to
an end, leaving the whole dominion in conflict and
disorder, what was most urgently needed was a great
central unifying force, competent to protect against
invasion from without, and against injustice and
dissension from within ; something to which to be
loyal ; something to constitute a clear visible im-
personation of the majesty of the Roman government.
Nor was this all. Within the State so constituted
there was need for uniformly organised municipal
life, in which the rights and duties of every man
should be clearly laid down for him, even in the
parts most distant from the centre. There was
need, in short, for an order and a civilisation which,
far from breaking wholly with the past, should be
capable of retaining and handing on all the
treasures which the City-State had accumulated, —
treasures of government and legal knowledge,
treasures of literature and art, of science and of
philosophy.

For a few brief months before the assassination
of the Dictator Caesar an outward imperial unity
was actually realised. There was a general peace,
and an almost universal recognition of the pre-
eminent power of a single determined ruler, who,

324 THE CITY-STATE chap

wherever he might be in the Empire, was a centre
of government far more effectual than the City-
Senate of the last few generations. This extra-
ordinary man did not live to organise the new State-
unity which his military genius had forced upon the
world. There is indeed sufficient proof that he was
ready as well as able to put his hand to that work.^
But assassination put an end to his endeavours, and
his death was followed by a new period of con-
fusion.

Then at last upon his foundation the mighty
fabric began slowly to arise. In its first form it
was almost complete at the close of the long life of
Augustus. That skilful architect, with the true
Iioman instinct to pull down nothing that had onc6
been erected, and with the just feeling that the Senate
of the Eepublic could not be degraded or rudely set
aside, perceived that the ruins of the great City-
State of Kome might be embodied in the new struc-
ture. Later on, as men's eyes grew accustomed to
the fabric that was being reared, the old fragments
became more and more obscured, though they were
never entirely hidden ; and by the second century
A.D. it may be said that the Eoman Empire was an
entirely new form of State, such as the world had
never yet seen, and had hardly as yet hoped for.

It was not unlike that which had presented itself
to the mind of Alexander, for the intellectual forces

^ In the Lex Julia Municipalis and the Lex Rubria, regulating
the municipal towns of Italy and Cisalpine Gaul. Of the
former a large portion is extant ; of the latter only a small but
valuable fragment. Bruns, Pontes juris Bomani, p. 91 foil,
(ed. 4).

XI DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY-STATE 325

at work in it were in the main Greek, and in the
system of its construction his two leading ideas of
city-life and commercial communications were
elaborately carried out. It resembled his transient
dominion also in the fact that its centre of gravity
was no longer a City-State, but a personality, —
the personality of the Caesar wherever he might be
in the Empire. And it had one advantage which
Alexander's empire could never have realised. It
drew its chief material strength, not from worn-out
Greece, or from an effeminate East, but from the
youth and vigour of those western peoples, the fruits
of whose civilisation have been in modern times the
most complete justification of Eoman conquest.

It was not indeed a perfect system ; there were
weak points inherent in it, some of which, already
indicated in this chapter, were handed on to it from
that wholly inadequate system with which the
Koman Eepublic had sought to govern the world.
Yet it was a real State, united together by artificial
ties of great power of endurance; and what has
proved for us even more valuable, it remained for
more than three centuries a loyal trustee of the
treasure which the City-State had bequeathed to it.
The literature, the art, the philosophy, the law,
and in great part even the religion of the
TToXt?, were valued and preserved under the Eoman
Empire, which thus became an indestructible bridge
uniting ancient and modern civilisation.

It is beyond the scope of this little book to
attempt to explain, even in outline, the details
of this great structure, or to point out how it

326 THE CITY-STATE chap

supplied the demands for unity and local organisa-
tion, which had arisen with the dissolution of the
City-State. But the Eoman Empire is now attract-
ing the attention of scholars more perhaps than any
other period of history, owing to the vast accumula-
tion of valuable evidence which the collection of in-
scriptions has supplied in recent years, and is still
steadily increasing; and as the work to be done is
of immense extent, and of infinite human interest,
it may be as well to conclude by indicating the
several lines on which that work must necessarily
be carried on.

First, there is the study of the new Imperial
Constitution. Here the special interest lies in
tracing the process by which the authority of the
Caesar, based on the old imjperium, and called by
the same name, came in time to penetrate every
department of government; and it is here more
particularly fruitful to examine the methods of pro-
vincial government, because it is in the provinces
that the unifying force of the whole system may
best be observed at work. Augustus had left the
quieter provinces in the care of the Senate, which
continued to send out its proconsuls, — relics of the
old city -magistracy, — as it had so long done under
the Eepublic ; while he himself, like Julius, governed
the others and watched the enemies of the State
beyond their frontiers by the agency of his own
delegates. But the student of the Empire has also
to learn how even the Senate and its executive
came to be controlled indirectly by the supreme
ruler, and how by slow degrees one senatorial pro-

SI DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY-STATE 327

vince after another passed under his immediate
authority. If we open the correspondence, most
fortunately preserved to us, between Trajan and his
friend Pliny the younger, whom he had sent out to
regulate the province of Bithynia, we get a wonder-
fully vivid picture of the working of the new
centralised government. This province had been
badly administered under senatorial rule, and was
now to be reorganised by a delegate of the emperor.
The lesson we learn from these letters is that to be
governed by the delegate was equivalent to being
governed by Trajan himself. Even at a distance
of 1000 miles Pliny writes to consult his master
on matters of the minutest detail, and invariably
receives an answer sufficiently definite to guide him.
These answers of Trajan are very brief and business-
like ; they show that he had found time to attend
to the question addressed to him, and that he had
made up his mind upon it; while at the same time
they often leave the delegate to act on his own
discretion without needlessly hampering his freedom
of action. Nowhere can we get a better idea of
the way in which government was actually carried
on in this new form of State by an intelligent and
industrious ruler.-^

Secondly, there is the study of the various forms
of local government within each province. We are
still learning how city-life was everywhere en-
couraged and organised ; how towns were formed

^ These letters may conveniently be consulted in Mr. E. G.
Hardy's edition ; a good example, taken at random, is letter 65,
with Trajan's reply, which follows it.

328 THE CITY-STATE chap

where there had been none before, whether as
Koman or Latin colonies, or as accretions round the
military stations of the legions, or by the gathering
together of smaller commimities round a newly
founded centre. We are still learning how the local
institutions of all towns were regulated on the
Roman model with tolerable uniformity ; how the
central authority slowly gained an increasing influence
over them; how the cities were grouped together
for purposes of administration, with the worship of
the Caesars as a unifying factor; and how the
enjoyment of life was made possible for the inhabit-
ants by the erection of baths, theatres, and porticoes.
All these and many others are matters of which
we have only recently come to know much or fully
to appreciate the value. To take the question of
municipal government alone, we have now several
valuable documents relating to this subject, which
have either recently been discovered, or have only
of late years been adequately interpreted,^ besides
innumerable inscriptions of less value individually,
yet each making its contribution to our knowledge
of the whole. At any moment we may be put in
possession of something even more valuable than
any of these. The territory of the Eoman Empire
is full of monuments which still lie buried beneath

1 Besides the Lex Julia Municipalis already referred to we have
parts of the "Lex Coloniae Genetivse" (a Spanish foundation of
Cesar's), and of the laws regulating two Spanish non-Roman towns,
Salpensa and Malaca. Bruns, Pontes, etc., p. 110 foil., 130 foil.
Cf. Mommsen, Provinces of the Roman Empire, p. 285 foil. The
whole of Mommsen's chapter vii., to which reference is here
made, may well be carefully studied in this connection.

XI DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY-STATE 329

its ruins ; and it is not too much to say that if we
had the wliole number of inscriptions set up in any-
Roman town, during a single century, we should
have an almost perfect picture of its life and
government.

Thirdly, in order fully to understand the nature
of the new State and the progress towards a sub-
stantial unity of all its parts, it is necessary to have
some acquaintance with the history of Roman law
under the Empire, and of what is closely connected
with it, the history of the incorporation of all free
inhabitants into the Roman citizenship. We have
seen how upon the law of the City-State {jus civile)
was engrafted a new body of legal rules {jus gen-
tium), through the agency of the praetor peregrinus,
destined in time to cover all the difficulties that
might arise between man and man, whether Roman
or non-Roman. Strictly speaking, this new law
had been administered in Rome only ; in the pro-
vinces either the local communities administered
their own law, or the provincial governor decided
cases after his own method, — that method being
often arbitrary, and not necessarily brought into
harmony with the principles on which the praetor
was acting at home. Only in communities of Roman
or Latin citizens was the Roman law alone supreme.
But even before the Republic came to an end it is
probable that many non-Roman towns voluntarily
adopted the Roman law. And at the same time
we find the process of extending the citizenship to
such towns already beginning ; so that, just as
Roman law had become the general law of Italy

330 THE CITY-STATE Chap.

after the citizenship had been extended to all the
Italians, so it now sets out on its course of extension
over the whole civilised world. The process was
complete in the year„2Jv2-A.D. when Caracalla gave
the Eoman franchise to all free inhabitants of the
Empire, so that one uniform legal system was hence-
forward in use from Syiia to Britain. And mean-
while that system was being perfected by the most
illustrious series of lawyers that the world has ever
seen ; men from all parts of the Empire, some of
whom brought the acute intelligence of the Greek
to the aid of the practical good sense of the Eoman
legal mind.^

Without going further, it will be possible to
gain from such studies as these some idea of the
nature of the new imperial State which arose out
of the scattered ruins of the older one. There are
indeed other lines of research in the history of the
Empire, in themselves of the deepest interest, which
bear less directly on the political aspect of the age,
yet reveal to us more of that life and thought of
the people which is to the State itself as the circu-
lating blood to the living animal. There is the
study of the economical conditions of life in the
various parts of the Empire ; of the way in which
land was held and cultivated, of the methods of
commerce and credit, of the distribution of wealth
among the various classes of society, the incidence
of taxation, and the prices of the necessaries of
life. Again there is the whole range of the litera-

^ See Sohin's Institutes of Roman Law (translated by Ledlie),
ch. iL

71 DISSOLUTION OF THE CITY-STATE 331

ture of the Empire ; a literature quite distinct
from that of the vigorous youth of the City-State,
when thought and action were more completely in
harmony, and creative power more natural and-
spontaneous. The literature of the Empire is
neither civic nor national; it has not the freshness
and originality which civic or national life alone
can give. But it reflects the life and thought of
a Grajco-Koman age, and whether it be Greek or
Roman, the traces of ancient nationality are now
merged in the consciousness of a new and cosmo-
politan era. Lastly, the religious history of the
Empire offers a vast field of study which has as
yet been only half explored. Here, more clearly
perhaps than elsewhere, we may be able to trace
the gradual dissolution of the older forms of
thought and life. Tlie intensely local character
of the religion of the City-State now gives place
to a new religion of the world. The old city-
worships, — the divine inhabitants of each individual
city, — die out slowly but surely ; at first, under
the influence of the all-pervading worship of the
Caesars, and later, under the irresistible spell of
a new religion, of which the inspiring principle was
the brotherhood of all men.

The Roman Empire was at last broken up ; it
liad its own inherent weaknesses, which increased
as time went on, and rendered it incapable of
further resistance to the flood of barbarism which
had long been surging on its frontiers. But it
had accomplished its work. Had the northern
peoples swept over the Empire in the last century

332

THE CITY-STATE

CHAP. XI

of the Eepublic, it is not impossible that the world
might have lost for ever all or most of what man-!
kind had learnt in the age of the City-State. As
it was, the Eoman Empire of the Caesars held thej
barbarians at bay long enough to inspire them with
such reverence for its own greatness, that the rich!
legacy which it had inherited from its forefathers
of the TToXt? could not be entirely dissipated in the
general confusion which followed its downfall.

THE END.

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