book iii, ch. 12, vol. ii. p. 156: “Cette séparation essentielle

et fondamentale entre les actes, les agens du gouvernement—et les actes, les agens de l’administration locale pour les affaires locales—cette démarcation politique, dont l’empire Romain avoit donné l’exemple, et qui concilioit le gouvernement monarchique avec une administration populaire—continua plus ou moins expressément sous les trois dynasties.”

M. Raynouard presses too far his theory of the continuous preservation of the municipal powers in towns from the Roman empire down to the third French dynasty; but into this question it is not necessary for my purpose to enter.

[13] In reference to the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, M. Sismondi observes, speaking of Philip della Torre, denominated _signor_ by the people of Como, Vercelli, and Bergamo, “Dans ces villes, non plus que dans celles que son frère s’était auparavant assujetties, le peuple ne croyoit point renoncer à sa liberté: il n’avoit point voulu choisir un maître, mais seulement un protecteur contre les nobles, un capitaine des gens de guerre, et un chef de la justice. L’expérience lui apprit trop tard, que ces prérogatives réunies constituoient un souverain.”—Républiques Italiennes, vol. iii, ch. 20, p. 273.

It is important to show that the monarchical institutions and monarchical tendencies prevalent throughout mediæval and modern Europe have been both generated and perpetuated by causes peculiar to those societies, whilst in Hellenic societies such causes had no place,—in order that we may approach Hellenic phenomena in the proper spirit, and with an impartial estimate of the feeling universal among Greeks towards the idea of a king. The primitive sentiment entertained towards the heroic king died out, passing first into indifference, next,—after experience of the despots,—into determined antipathy.

To an historian like Mr. Mitford, full of English ideas respecting government, this anti-monarchical feeling appears of the nature of insanity, and the Grecian communities like madmen without a keeper: while the greatest of all benefactors is the hereditary king, who conquers them from without,—the second-best is the home-despot, who seizes the acropolis and puts his fellow-citizens under coercion. There cannot be a more certain way of misinterpreting and distorting Grecian phenomena than to read them in this spirit, which reverses the maxims both of prudence and morality current in the ancient world. The hatred of kings as it stood among the Greeks, whatever may be thought about a similar feeling now, was a prëeminent virtue, flowing directly from the noblest and wisest part of their nature: it was a consequence of their deep conviction of the necessity of universal legal restraint—it was a direct expression of that regulated sociality which required the control of individual passion from every one without exception, and most of all from him to whom power was confided. The conception which the Greeks formed of an unresponsible One, or of a king who could do no wrong, may be expressed in the pregnant words of Herodotus:[14] “He subverts the customs of the country: he violates women: he puts men to death without trial.” No other conception of the probable tendencies of kingship was justified either by a general knowledge of human nature, or by political experience as it stood from Solon downward: no other feeling than abhorrence could be entertained for the character so conceived: no other than a man of unprincipled ambition would ever seek to invest himself with it.

[14] Herod. iii, 80. Νóμαιά τε κινεῖ πάτρια, καὶ βιᾶται γυναῖκας, κτείνει τε ἀκρίτους.

Our larger political experience has taught us to modify this opinion by showing that, under the conditions of monarchy in the best governments of modern Europe, the enormities described by Herodotus do not take place,—and that it is possible, by means of representative constitutions acting under a certain force of manners, customs, and historical recollection, to obviate many of the mischiefs likely to flow from proclaiming the duty of peremptory obedience to an hereditary and unresponsible king, who cannot be changed without extra-constitutional force. But such larger observation was not open to Aristotle, the wisest as well as the most cautious of ancient theorists; nor if it had been open, could he have applied with assurance its lessons to the governments of the single cities of Greece. The theory of a constitutional king, especially as it exists in England, would have appeared to him impracticable: to establish a king who will reign without governing,—in whose name all government is carried on, yet whose personal will is in practice of little or no effect,—exempt from all responsibility, without making use of the exemption,—receiving from every one unmeasured demonstrations of homage, which are never translated into act except within the bounds of a known law,—surrounded with all the paraphernalia of power, yet acting as a passive instrument in the hands of ministers marked out for his choice by indications which he is not at liberty to resist. This remarkable combination of the fiction of superhuman grandeur and license with the reality of an invisible strait-waistcoat, is what an Englishman has in his mind when he speaks of a constitutional king: the events of our history have brought it to pass in England, amidst an aristocracy the most powerful that the world has yet seen,—but we have still to learn whether it can be made to exist elsewhere, or whether the occurrence of a single king, at once able, aggressive, and resolute, may not suffice to break it up. To Aristotle, certainly, it could not have appeared otherwise than unintelligible and impracticable: not likely even in a single case,—but altogether inconceivable as a permanent system and with all the diversities of temper inherent in the successive members of an hereditary dynasty. When the Greeks thought of a man exempt from legal responsibility, they conceived him as really and truly such, in deed as well as in name, with a defenceless community exposed to his oppressions;[15] and their fear and hatred of him was measured by their reverence for a government of equal law and free speech, with the ascendency of which their whole hopes of security were associated,—in the democracy of Athens more perhaps than in any other portion of Greece. And this feeling, as it was one of the best in the Greek mind, so it was also one of the most widely spread,—a point of unanimity highly valuable amidst so many points of dissension. We cannot construe or criticize it by reference to the feelings of modern Europe, still less to the very peculiar feelings of England, respecting kingship: and it is the application, sometimes explicit and sometimes tacit, of this unsuitable standard, which renders Mr. Mitford’s appreciation of Greek politics so often incorrect and unfair.

[15] Euripides (Supplices, 429) states plainly the idea of a τύραννος, as received in Greece the antithesis to laws:—

Οὐδὲν τυράννου δυσμενέστερον πόλει· Ὅπου, τὸ μὲν πρώτιστον, οὔκ εἰσιν νόμοι Κοινοὶ, κρατεῖ δ᾽ εἷς, τὸν νόμον κεκτημένος Αὐτὸς παρ᾽ αὑτῷ.

Compare Soph. Antigon. 737. See, also, the discussion in Aristot. Polit. iii, sect. 10 and 11, in which the rule of the king is discussed in comparison with the government of laws; compare also iv, 8, 2-3. The person called “a king according to law” is, in his judgment, no king at all: Ὁ μὲν γὰρ κατὰ νόμον λεγόμενος βασιλεὺς οὔκ ἐστιν εἶδος καθάπερ εἴπομεν βασιλείας (iii, 11, 1).

Respecting ἰσονομίη, ἰσηγορίη, παῤῥησία,—equal laws and equal speech,—as opposed to monarchy, see Herodot. iii, 142, v. 78-92; Thucyd. iii, 62; Demosthen. ad Leptin. c. 6, p. 461; Eurip. Ion. 671.

Of Timoleon it was stated, as a part of the grateful vote passed after his death by the Syracusan assembly,—ὅτι τοὺς τυράννους καταλύσας,—ἀπέδωκε ~τοὺς νόμους~ τοῖς Σικελιώταις (Plutarch. Timoleon. c. 39).

See Karl Fried. Hermann, Griech. Staatsalterthümer, sect. 61-65.

When we try to explain the course of Grecian affairs, not from the circumstances of other societies, but from those of the Greeks themselves, we shall see good reason for the discontinuance as well as for the dislike of kingship. Had the Greek mind been as stationary and unimproving as that of the Orientals, the discontent with individual kings might have led to no other change than the deposition of a bad king in favor of one who promised to be better, without ever extending the views of the people to any higher conception than that of a personal government. But the Greek mind was of a progressive character, capable of conceiving and gradually of realizing amended social combinations. Moreover, it is in the nature of things that any government,—regal, oligarchical, or democratical,—which comprises only a single city, is far less stable than if it embraced a wider surface and a larger population: and when that semi-religious and mechanical submission, which made up for the personal deficiencies of the heroic king, became too feeble to serve as a working principle, the petty prince was in too close contact with his people, and too humbly furnished out in every way, to get up a prestige or delusion of any other kind: he had no means of overawing their imaginations by that combination of pomp, seclusion, and mystery, which Herodotus and Xenophon so well appreciate among the artifices of kingcraft.[16] As there was no new feeling upon which a perpetual chief could rest his power, so there was nothing in the circumstances of the community which rendered the maintenance of such a dignity necessary for visible and effective union:[17] in a single city, and a small circumjacent community, collective deliberation and general rules, with temporary and responsible magistrates, were practicable without difficulty.

[16] See the account of Deiokês, the first Median king, in Herodotus, i, 98, evidently an outline drawn by Grecian imagination: also, the Cyropædia of Xenophon, viii, 1, 40; viii, 3, 1-14; vii, 5, 37 ... οὐ τούτῳ μόνῳ ἐνόμιζε (Κῦρος) χρῆναι τοὺς ἄρχοντας τῶν ἀρχομένων διαφέρειν τῷ βελτίονας αὐτῶν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ καὶ καταγοητεύειν ᾤετο χρῆναι αὐτοὺς, etc.

[17] David Hume, Essay xvii, On the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences, p. 198, ed. 1760. The effects of the greater or less extent of territory, upon the nature of the government, are also well discussed in Destutt Tracy, Commentaire sur l’Esprit des Loix de Montesquieu, ch. viii.

To maintain an unresponsible king, and then to contrive accompaniments which shall extract from him the benefits of responsible government, is in reality a highly complicated system, though, as has been remarked, we have become familiar with it in modern Europe: the more simple and obvious change is, to substitute one or more temporary and responsible magistrates in place of the king himself. Such was the course which affairs took in Greece. The inferior chiefs, who had originally served as council to the king, found it possible to supersede him, and to alternate the functions of administration among themselves; retaining probably the occasional convocation of the general assembly, as it had existed before, and with as little practical efficacy. Such was in substance the character of that mutation which occurred generally throughout the Grecian states, with the exception of Sparta: kingship was abolished, and an oligarchy took its place,—a council deliberating collectively, deciding general matters by the majority of voices, and selecting some individuals of their own body as temporary and accountable administrators. It was always an oligarchy which arose on the defeasance of the heroic kingdom: the age of democratical movement was yet far distant, and the condition of the people—the general body of freemen—was not immediately altered, either for better or worse, by the revolution; the small number of privileged persons, among whom the kingly attributes were distributed and put in rotation, being those nearest in rank to the king himself, perhaps members of the same large gens with him, and pretending to a common divine or heroic descent. As far as we can make out, this change seems to have taken place in the natural course of events and without violence. Sometimes the kingly lineage died out and was not replaced; sometimes, on the death of a king, his son and successor was acknowledged[18] only as archon, or perhaps set aside altogether to make room for a prytanis, or president, out of the men of rank around.

[18] Aristot. Polit. iii, 9, 7; iii, 10, 7-8.

M. Augustin Thierry remarks, in a similar spirit, that the great political change, common to so large a portion of mediæval Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whereby the many different _communes_ or city constitutions were formed, was accomplished under great varieties of manner and circumstance; sometimes by violence, sometimes by harmonious accord.

“C’est une controverse qui doit finir, que celle des franchises municipales obtenues par l’insurrection et des franchises municipales accordées. Quelque face du problême qu’on envisage, il reste bien entendu que les constitutions urbaines du xii et du xiii siècle, comme toute espèce d’institutions politiques dans tous les temps, ont pu s’établir à force ouverte, s’octroyer de guerre lasse ou de plein gré, être arrachées ou sollicitées, vendues ou données gratuitement: les grandes révolutions sociales s’accomplissent par tous ces moyens à la fois.”—(Aug. Thierry, Récits des Temps Mérovingiens, Préface, p. 19, 2de édit.)

At Athens, we are told that Kodrus was the last king, and that his descendants were recognized only as archons for life; after some years, the archons for life were replaced by archons for ten years, taken from the body of Eupatridæ, or nobles; subsequently, the duration of the archonship was farther shortened to one year. At Corinth, the ancient kings are said to have passed in like manner into the oligarchy of the Bacchiadæ, out of whom an annual prytanis was chosen. We are only able to make out the general fact of such a change, without knowing how it was brought about,—our first historical acquaintance with the Grecian cities beginning with these oligarchies.

Such oligarchical governments, varying in their details but analogous in general features, were common throughout the cities of Greece proper as well as of the colonies, throughout the seventh century B. C. Though they had little immediate tendency to benefit the mass of the freemen, yet when we compare them with the antecedent heroic government, they indicate an important advance,—the first adoption of a deliberate and preconceived system in the management of public affairs.[19] They exhibit the first evidences of new and important political ideas in the Greek mind,—the separation of legislative and executive powers; the former vested in a collective body, not merely deliberating but also finally deciding,—while the latter is confided to temporary individual magistrates, responsible to that body at the end of their period of office. We are first introduced to a community of citizens, according to the definition of Aristotle,—men qualified, and thinking themselves qualified, to take turns in command and obedience: the collective sovereign, called The City, is thus constituted. It is true that this first community of citizens comprised only a small proportion of the men personally free, but the ideas upon which it was founded began gradually to dawn upon the minds of all. Political power had lost its heaven-appointed character, and had become an attribute legally communicable as well as determined to certain definite ends; and the ground was thus laid for those thousand questions which agitated so many of the Grecian cities during the ensuing three centuries, partly respecting its apportionment, partly respecting its employment,—questions sometimes raised among the members of the privileged oligarchy itself, sometimes between that order as a whole and the non-privileged Many. The seeds of those popular movements, which called forth so much profound emotion, so much bitter antipathy, so much energy and talent, throughout the Grecian world, with different modifications in each particular city, may thus be traced back to that early revolution which erected the primitive oligarchy upon the ruins of the heroic kingdom.

[19] Aristot. Polit. iii, 10, 7. Ἐπεὶ δὲ (_i. e._ after the early kings had had their day) συνέβαινε γίγνεσθαι πολλοὺς ὁμοίους πρὸς ἀρετὴν, οὔκετι ὑπέμενον (τὴν Βασίλειαν), ἀλλ’ ~ἐζήτουν κοινόν τι~, καὶ πολίτειαν καθίστασαν.

Κοινόν τι, _a commune_, the great object for which the European towns in the Middle Ages, in the twelfth century, struggled with so much energy, and ultimately obtained: a charter of incorporation, and a qualified privilege of internal self-government.

How these first oligarchies were administered we have no direct information; but the narrow and anti-popular interests naturally belonging to a privileged few, together with the general violence of private manners and passions, leave us no ground for presuming favorably respecting either their prudence or their good feeling; and the facts which we learn respecting the condition of Attica prior to the Solonian legislation (to be recounted in the next chapter) raise inferences all of an unfavorable character.

The first shock which they received, and by which so many of them were subverted, arose from the usurpers called Despots, who employed the prevalent discontents both as pretexts and as aids for their own personal ambition, while their very frequent success seems to imply that such discontents were wide-spread as well as serious. These despots arose out of the bosom of the oligarchies, but not all in the same manner.[20] Sometimes the executive magistrate, upon whom the oligarchy themselves had devolved important administrative powers for a certain temporary period, became unfaithful to his choosers, and acquired sufficient ascendency to retain his dignity permanently in spite of them,—perhaps even to transmit it to his son. In other places, and seemingly more often, there arose that noted character called the Demagogue, of whom historians both ancient and modern commonly draw so repulsive a picture:[21] a man of energy and ambition, sometimes even a member of the oligarchy itself, who stood forward as champion of the grievances and sufferings of the non-privileged Many, acquired their favor, and employed their strength so effectively as to put down the oligarchy by force, and constitute himself despot. A third form of despot, some presumptuous wealthy man, like Kylôn at Athens, without even the pretence of popularity, was occasionally emboldened by the success of similar adventures in other places to hire a troop of retainers and seize the acropolis; and there were examples, though rare, of a fourth variety,—the lineal descendant of the ancient kings,—who, instead of suffering himself to be restricted or placed under control by the oligarchy, found means to subjugate them, and to extort by force an ascendency as great as that which his forefathers had enjoyed by consent. To these must be added, in several Grecian states, the Æsymnête, or Dictator, a citizen formally invested with supreme and unresponsible power, placed in command of the military force, and armed with a standing body-guard, but only for a time named, and in order to deal with some urgent peril or ruinous internal dissension.[22] The person thus exalted, always enjoying a large measure of confidence, and generally a man of ability, was sometimes so successful, or made himself so essential to the community, that the term of his office was prolonged, and he became practically despot for life; or, even if the community were not disposed to concede to him this permanent ascendency, he was often strong enough to keep it against their will.

[20] The definition of a despot is given in Cornelius Nepos, Vit. Miltiadis, c. 8: “Omnes habentur et dicuntur tyranni, qui potestate sunt perpetuâ in eâ civitate, quæ libertate usa est:” compare Cicero de Republicâ, ii, 26, 27; iii, 14.

The word τύραννος was said by Hippias the sophist to have first found its way into the Greek language about the time of Archilochus (B. C. 660): Boeckh thinks that it came from the Lydians or Phyrgians (Comment. ad Corp. Inscrip. No. 3439).

[21] Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 2, 3, 4. Τύραννος—ἐκ προστατικῆς ῥίζης καὶ οὐκ ἄλλοθεν ἐκβλαστάνει (Plato, Repub. viii, c. 17, p. 565). Οὐδενὶ γὰρ δὴ ἄδηλον, ὅτι ~πᾶς~ τύραννος ἐκ δημοκόλακος φύεται (Dionys. Halic. vi, 60): a proposition decidedly too general.

[22] Aristot. iii, 9, 5; iii, 10, 1-10; iv, 8, 2. Αἰσυμνῆται—αὐτοκράτορες μόναρχοι ἐν τοῖς ἀρχαίοις Ἕλλησι—αἱρετὴ τυραννίς: compare Theophrastus, fragment. περὶ Βασιλείας, and Dionys. Hal. A. R. v, 73-74; Strabo, xiii, p. 617; and Aristot. Fragment. Rerum Publicarum, ed. Neumann, p. 122, Κυμαίων Πολιτεία.

Such were the different modes in which the numerous Greek despots of the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. acquired their power. Though we know thus much in general terms from the brief statements of Aristotle, yet, unhappily, we have no contemporary picture of any one of these communities, so as to give us the means of appreciating the change in detail. Of those persons who, possessing inherited kingly dignity, stretched their paternal power so far as to become despots, Aristotle gives us Pheidôn of Argos as an example, whose reign has been already narrated in the preceding volume: of those who made themselves despots by means of official power previously held under an oligarchy, he names Phalaris, at Agrigentum, and the despots at Miletus and other cities of the Ionic Greeks: of those who raised themselves by becoming demagogues, he specifies Panætius in the Sicilian town of Leontini, Kypselus at Corinth, and Peisistratus at Athens;[23] of Æsymnêtes, or chosen despots, Pittakus of Mitylênê is the prominent instance. The military and aggressive demagogue, subverting an oligarchy which had degraded and ill-used him, governing as a cruel despot for several years, and at last dethroned and slain, is farther depicted by Dionysius of Halikarnassus, in the history of Aristodêmus of the Italian Cumæ.[24]

[23] Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 2, 3, 4; v, 4, 5. Aristotle refers to one of the songs of Alkæus as his evidence respecting the elevation of Pittakus: a very sufficient proof doubtless,—but we may see that he had no other informants, except the poets, about these early times.

[24] Dionys. Hal. A. R. vii, 2, 12. The reign of Aristodemus falls about 510 B. C.

From the general statement of Thucydides as well as of Aristotle, we learn that the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. were centuries of progress for the Greek cities generally, in wealth, in power, and in population; and the numerous colonies founded during this period, of which I shall speak in a future chapter, will furnish farther illustration of such progressive tendencies. Now the changes just mentioned in the Grecian governments, imperfectly as we know them, are on the whole decided evidences of advancing citizenship. For the heroic government, with which Grecian communities begin, is the rudest and most infantine of all governments; destitute even of the pretence of system or security, incapable of being in any way foreknown, and depending only upon the accidental variations in the character of the reigning individual, who, in most cases, far from serving as a protection to the poor against the rich and great, was likely to indulge his passions in the same unrestrained way as the latter, and with still greater impunity.

The despots, who in so many towns succeeded and supplanted this oligarchical government, though they governed on principles usually narrow and selfish, and often oppressively cruel, “taking no thought—to use the emphatic words of Thucydides—except for their own body and their own family,”—yet since they were not strong enough to crush the Greek mind, imprinted upon it a painful but improving political lesson, and contributed much to enlarge the range of experience as well as to determine the subsequent cast of feeling.[25] They partly broke down the wall of distinction between the people—properly so called, the general mass of freemen—and the oligarchy; indeed, the demagogue-despots are interesting, as the first evidence of the growing importance of the people in political affairs. The demagogue stood forward as representing the feelings and interests of the people against the governing few, probably availing himself of some special cases of ill-usage, and taking pains to be conciliatory and generous in his own personal behavior; and when the people, by their armed aid, had enabled him to overthrow the existing rulers, they had thus the satisfaction of seeing their own chief in possession of the supreme power, but they acquired no political rights and no increased securities for themselves. What measure of positive advantage they may have reaped, beyond that of seeing their previous oppressors humiliated, we know too little to determine;[26] but even the worst of despots was more formidable to the rich than to the poor, and the latter may perhaps have gained by the change, in comparative importance, notwithstanding their share in the rigors and exactions of a government which had no other permanent foundation than naked fear.

[25] Thucyd. i, 17. Τύραννοι δὲ ὅσοι ἦσαν ἐν ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς πόλεσι, τὸ ἐφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν μόνον προορώμενοι ἔς τε τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἐς τὸ τὸν ἴδιον οἶκον αὔξειν δι᾽ ἀσφαλείας ὅσον ἐδύναντο μάλιστα, τὰς πόλεις ᾤκουν.

[26] Wachsmuth (Hellenische Alterthumskunde, sect. 49-51) and Tittmann (Griechisch. Staatsverfassungen, pp. 527-533) both make too much of the supposed friendly connection and mutual good-will between the despot and the poorer freemen. Community of antipathy against the old oligarchy was a bond essentially temporary, dissolved as soon as that oligarchy was put down.

A remark made by Aristotle deserves especial notice here, as illustrating the political advance and education of the Grecian communities. He draws a marked distinction between the early demagogue of the seventh and sixth centuries, and the later demagogue, such as he himself and the generations immediately preceding had witnessed: the former was a military chief, daring and full of resource, who took arms at the head of a body of popular insurgents, put down the government by force, and made himself the master both of those whom he deposed and of those by whose aid he deposed them; while the latter was a speaker, possessed of all the talents necessary for moving an audience, but neither inclined to, nor qualified for, armed attack,—accomplishing all his purposes by pacific and constitutional methods. This valuable change,—substituting discussion and the vote of an assembly in place of an appeal to arms, and procuring for the pronounced decision of the assembly such an influence over men’s minds as to render it final and respected even by dissentients,—arose from the continued practical working of democratical institutions. I shall have occasion, at a later period of this history, to estimate the value of that unmeasured obloquy which has been heaped on the Athenian demagogues of the Peloponnesian war,—Kleôn and Hyperbolus; but, assuming the whole to be well-founded, it will not be the less true that these men were a material improvement on the earlier demagogues, such as Kypselus and Peisistratus, who employed the armed agency of the people for the purpose of subverting the established government and acquiring despotic authority for themselves. The demagogue was essentially a leader of opposition, who gained his influence by denouncing the men in real ascendency, and in actual executive functions. Now, under the early oligarchies, his opposition could be shown only by armed insurrection, and it conducted him either to personal sovereignty or to destruction; but the growth of democratical institutions insured both to him and to his political opponents full liberty of speech, and a paramount assembly to determine between them; whilst it both limited the range of his ambition, and set aside the appeal to armed force. The railing demagogue of Athens, at the time of the Peloponnesian war (even if we accept literally the representations of his worst enemies), was thus a far less mischievous and dangerous person than the fighting demagogue of the earlier centuries; and the “growth of habits of public speaking,”[27] to use Aristotle’s expression, was the cause of the difference: the opposition of the tongue was a beneficial substitute for the opposition of the sword.

[27] Aristot. Polit. v, 4, 4; 7, 3. Ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ἀρχαίων, ὅτε γένοιτο ὁ αὐτὸς δημαγωγὸς καὶ στρατηγὸς, εἰς τυραννίδα μετέβαλλον· σχεδὸν γὰρ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν ἀρχαίων τυράννων ἐκ δημαγωγῶν γεγόνασι. Αἴτιον δὲ τοῦ τότε μὲν γενέσθαι, νῦν δὲ μὴ, ὅτι τότε μὲν, οἱ δημαγωγοὶ ἦσαν ἐκ τῶν στρατηγούντων· οὐ γάρ πω δεινοὶ ἦσαν λέγειν· νῦν δὲ, τῆς ῥητορικῆς ηὐξημένης, οἱ δυνάμενοι λέγειν δημαγωγοῦσι μὲν, δι’ ἀπειρίαν δὲ τῶν πολεμικῶν οὐκ ἐπιτίθενται, πλὴν εἴ που βραχύ τι γέγονε τοιοῦτον.

The rise of these despots on the ruins of the previous oligarchies was, in appearance, a return to the principles of the heroic age,—the restoration of a government of personal will in place of that systematic arrangement known as the City. But the Greek mind had so far outgrown those early principles, that no new government founded thereupon could meet with willing acquiescence, except under some temporary excitement. At first, doubtless, the popularity of the usurper,—combined with the fervor of his partizans and the expulsion or intimidation of opponents, and farther enhanced by the punishment of rich oppressors,—was sufficient to procure for him obedience; and prudence on his part might prolong this undisputed rule for a considerable period, perhaps even throughout his whole life. But Aristotle intimates that these governments, even when they began well, had a constant tendency to become worse and worse: discontent manifested itself, and was aggravated rather than repressed by the violence employed against it, until at length the despot became a prey to mistrustful and malevolent anxiety, losing any measure of equity or benevolent sympathy which might once have animated him. If he was fortunate enough to bequeathe his authority to his son, the latter, educated in a corrupt atmosphere and surrounded by parasites, contracted dispositions yet more noxious and unsocial: his youthful appetites were more ungovernable, while he was deficient in the prudence and vigor which had been indispensable to the self-accomplished rise of his father.[28] For such a position, mercenary guards and a fortified acropolis were the only stay,—guards fed at the expense of the citizens, and thus requiring constant exactions on behalf of that which was nothing better than a hostile garrison. It was essential to the security of the despot that he should keep down the spirit of the free people whom he governed; that he should isolate them from each other, and prevent those meetings and mutual communications which Grecian cities habitually presented in the school, the leschê, or the palæstra; that he should strike off the overtopping ears of corn in the field (to use the Greek locution) or crush the exalted and enterprising minds.[29] Nay, he had even to a certain extent an interest in degrading and impoverishing them, or at least in debarring them from the acquisition either of wealth or leisure: and the extensive constructions undertaken by Polykratês at Samos, as well as the rich donations of Periander to the temple at Olympia, are considered by Aristotle to have been extorted by these despots with the express view of engrossing the time and exhausting the means of their subjects.

[28] Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 20. The whole tenor of this eighth chapter (of the fifth book) shows how unrestrained were the personal passions,—the lust as well as the anger,—of a Grecian τύραννος.

Τόν τοι τύραννον εὐσεβεῖν οὐ ῥᾴδιον (Sophokles ap. Schol. Aristides, vol. iii, p. 291, ed. Dindorf).

[29] Aristot. Polit. iii, 8, 3; v, 8, 7. Herodot. v, 92. Herodotus gives the story as if Thrasybulus had been the person to suggest this hint by conducting the messenger of Periander into a cornfield and there striking off the tallest ears with his stick: Aristotle reverses the two, and makes Periander the adviser: Livy (i, 54) transfers the scene to Gabii and Rome, with Sextus Tarquinius as the person sending for counsel to his father at Rome. Compare Plato, Republ. viii, c. 17, p. 565; Eurip. Supplic. 444-455.

The discussion which Herodotus ascribes to the Persian conspirators, after the assassination of the Magian king, whether they should constitute the Persian government as a monarchy, an oligarchy, or a democracy, exhibits a vein of ideas purely Grecian, and altogether foreign to the Oriental conception of government: but it sets forth,—briefly, yet with great perspicuity and penetration,—the advantages and disadvantages of all the three. The case made out against monarchy is by far the strongest, while the counsel on behalf of monarchy assumes as a part of his case that the individual monarch is to be the best man in the state. The anti-monarchical champion Otanes concludes a long string of criminations against the despot, with these words above-noticed: “He subverts the customs of the country: he violates women: he puts men to death untried.” (Herod. iii, 80-82.)

It is not to be imagined that all were alike cruel or unprincipled; but the perpetual supremacy of one man and one family had become so offensive to the jealousy of those who felt themselves to be his equals, and to the general feeling of the people, that repression and severity were inevitable, whether originally intended or not. And even if an usurper, having once entered upon this career of violence, grew sick and averse to its continuance, abdication only left him in imminent peril, exposed to the vengeance[30] of those whom he had injured,—unless, indeed, he could clothe himself with the mantle of religion, and stipulate with the people to become priest of some temple and deity; in which case his new function protected him, just as the tonsure and the monastery sheltered a dethroned prince in the Middle Ages.[31] Several of the despots were patrons of music and poetry, and courted the good-will of contemporary intellectual men by invitation as well as by reward; and there were some cases, such as that of Peisistratus and his sons at Athens, in which an attempt was made (analogous to that of Augustus at Rome) to reconcile the reality of personal omnipotence with a certain respect for preëxisting forms.[32] In such instances the administration, though not unstained by guilt, never otherwise than unpopular, and carried on by means of foreign mercenaries, was doubtless practically milder. But cases of this character were rare, and the maxims usual with Grecian despots were personified in Periander, the Kypselid of Corinth,—a harsh and brutal person, but not destitute either of vigor or intelligence.

[30] Thucyd. ii, 63. Compare again the speech of Kleon, iii, 37-40,—ὡς τυραννίδα γὰρ ἔχετε αὐτὴν, ἣν λαβεῖν μὲν ἄδικον δοκεῖ εἶναι, ἀφεῖναι δὲ ἐπικίνδυνον.

The bitter sentiment against despots seems to be as old as Alkæus, and we find traces of it in Solon and Theognis (Theognis, 38-50; Solon, Fragm. vii, p. 32, ed. Schneidewin). Phanias of Eresus had collected in a book the “Assassinations of Despots from revenge.” (Τυράννων ἀναιρέσεις ἐκ τιμωρίας,—Athenæus, iii, p. 90; x, p. 438.)

[31] See the story of Mæandrius, minister and successor of Polykratês of Samos, in Herodotus, iii, 142, 143.

[32] Thucyd. vi, 54. The epitaph of Archedikê, the daughter of Hippias (which was inscribed at Lampsakus, where she died), though written by a great friend of Hippias, conveys the sharpest implied invective against the usual proceedings of the despots:—

Ἡ πατρός τε καὶ ἀνδρὸς ἀδελφῶν τ᾽ οὖσα τυράννων Παιδῶν τ᾽, οὐχ ᾕρθη νοῦν ἐς ἀτασθαλίην (Thuc. vi, 59).

The position of Augustus at Rome, and of Peisistratus at Athens, may be illustrated by a passage in Sismondi, Républiques Italiennes, vol. iv, ch. 26, p. 208:—

“Les petits monarques de chaque ville s’opposaient eux-mêmes à ce que leur pouvoir fût attribué à un droit héréditaire, parce que l’hérédité aurait presque toujours été retorquée contre eux. Ceux qui avaient succédé à une république, avaient abaissé des nobles plus anciens et plus illustres qu’eux: ceux qui avaient succédé à d’autres seigneurs n’avaient tenu aucun compte du droit de leurs prédécesseurs, et se sentaient intéressés à le nier. Ils se disaient donc mandataires du peuple: ils ne prenaient jamais le commandement d’une ville, lors même qu’ils l’avaient soumise par les armes, sans se faire attribuer par les anciens ou par l’assemblée du peuple, selon que les uns ou les autres se montraient plus dociles, le titre et les pouvoirs de seigneur général, pour un an, pour cinq ans, ou pour toute leur vie, avec une paie fixée, qui devoit être prise sur les deniers de la communauté.”

The position of a Grecian despot, as depicted by Plato, by Xenophon and by Aristotle,[33] and farther sustained by the indications in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Isokrates, though always coveted by ambitious men, reveals clearly enough “those wounds and lacerations of mind,” whereby the internal Erinnys avenged the community upon the usurper who trampled them down. Far from considering success in usurpation as a justification of the attempt (according to the theories now prevalent respecting Cromwell and Bonaparte, who are often blamed because they kept out a legitimate king, but never because they seized an unauthorized power over the people), these philosophers regard the despot as among the greatest of criminals: the man who assassinated him was an object of public honor and reward, and a virtuous Greek would seldom have scrupled to carry his sword concealed in myrtle branches, like Harmodius and Aristogeiton, for the execution of the deed.[34] A station which overtopped the restraints and obligations involved in citizenship, was understood at the same time to forfeit all title to the common sympathy and protection,[35] so that it was unsafe for the despot to visit in person those great Pan-Hellenic games in which his own chariot might perhaps have gained the prize, and in which the theors, or sacred envoys, whom he sent as representatives of his Hellenic city, appeared with ostentatious pomp. A government carried on under these unpropitious circumstances could never be otherwise than short-lived. Though the individual daring enough to seize it, often found means to preserve it for the term of his own life, yet the sight of a despot living to old age was rare, and the transmission of his power to his son still more so.[36]

[33] Consult, especially, the treatise of Xenophon, called Hiero, or Τυραννικὸς, in which the interior life and feelings of the Grecian despot are strikingly set forth, in a supposed dialogue with the poet Simonides. The tenor of Plato’s remarks in the eighth and ninth books of the Republic, and those of Aristotle in the fifth book (ch. 8 and 9) of the Politics, display the same picture, though not with such fulness of detail. The speech of one of the assassins of Euphrôn (despot of Sikyon) is remarkable, as a specimen of Grecian feeling (Xenoph. Hellen. vii, 3, 7-12). The expressions both of Plato and Tacitus, in regard to the mental wretchedness of the despot, are the strongest which the language affords: Καὶ πένης τῇ ἀληθείᾳ φαίνεται, ἐάν τις ὅλην ψυχὴν ἐπίστηται θεάσασθαι, καὶ φόβου γέμων διὰ παντὸς τοῦ βίου, σφαδασμῶν τε καὶ ὀδυνῶν πλήρης ... Ἀνάγκη καὶ εἶναι, καὶ ἔτι μᾶλλον γίγνεσθαι αὐτῷ ἢ πρότερον διὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν, φθονερῷ, ἀπίστῳ, ἀδίκῳ, ἀφίλῳ, ἀνοσίῳ, καὶ πάσης κακίας πανδοκεῖ τε καὶ τροφεῖ, καὶ ἐξ ἁπάντων τούτων μάλιστα μὲν αὐτῷ δυστυχεῖ εἶναι, ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ τοὺς πλησίον αὑτῷ τοιούτους ἀπεργάζεσθαι (Republic, ix, p. 580).

And Tacitus, in the well-known passage (Annal. vi, 6): “Neque frustra præstantissimus sapientiæ firmare solitus est, si recludantur tyrannorum mentes, posse aspici laniatus et ictus: quando ut corpora verberibus, ita sævitiâ, libidine, malis consultis, animus dilaceretur. Quippe Tiberium non fortuna, non solitudines, protegebant, quin tormenta pectoris suasque ipse pœnas fateretur.”

It is not easy to imagine power more completely surrounded with all circumstances calculated to render it repulsive to a man of ordinary benevolence: the Grecian despot had large means of doing harm,—scarcely any means of doing good. Yet the acquisition of power over others, under any conditions, is a motive so all-absorbing, that even this precarious and anti-social sceptre was always intensely coveted,—Τυραννὶς, χρῆμα σφαλερὸν, πολλοὶ δὲ αὐτῆς ἐρασταί εἰσι (Herod. iii, 53). See the striking lines of Solon (Fragment, vii, ed. Schneidewin), and the saying of Jason of Pheræ, who used to declare that he felt incessant hunger until he became despot,—πεινῇν, ὅτε μὴ τυραννοῖ· ὡς οὐκ ἐπιστάμενος ἰδιώτης εἶναι (Aristot. Polit. iii, 2, 6).

[34] See the beautiful Skolion of Kallistratus, so popular at Athens, xxvii, p. 456, apud Schneidewin, Poet. Græc.—Ἐν μύρτου κλαδὶ τὸ ξίφος φορήσω, etc.

Xenophon, Hiero, ii, 8. Οἱ τύραννοι πάντες πανταχῆ ὡς διὰ πολεμίας πορεύονται. Compare Isokrates, Or. viii (De Pace), p. 182; Polyb. ii, 59; Cicero, Orat. pro Milone, c. 29.

Aristot. Polit. ii, 4, 8. Επεὶ ἀδικοῦσί γε τὰ μέγιστα διὰ τὰς ὑπερβολὰς, ᾿αλλ᾽ οὐ διὰ τἀναγκαῖα· οἶον τυραννοῦσιν, οὐχ ἵνα μὴ ῥιγῶσι· διὸ καὶ αἱ τιμαὶ μεγάλαι, ἂν ἀποκτείνῃ τις, οὐ κλέπτην, ἀλλὰ τύραννον.

There cannot be a more striking manifestation of the sentiment entertained towards a despot in the ancient world, than the remarks of Plutarch on Timoleon, for his conduct in assisting to put to death his brother, the despot Timophanês (Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 4-7, and Comp. of Timoleon with Paulus Æmilius, c. 2). See also Plutarch, Comparison of Dion and Brutus, c. 3, and Plutarch, Præcepta Reipublicæ Gerendæ, c. 11, p. 805; c. 17, p. 813; c. 32, p. 824,—he speaks of the putting down of a despot (τυραννίδων κατάλυσις) as among the most splendid of human exploits,—and the account given by Xenophon of the assassination of Jason of Pheræ, Hellenic. vi, 4, 32.

[35] Livy, xxxviii, 50. “Qui jus æquum pati non possit, in eum vim haud injustam esse.”

[36] Plutarch, Sept. Sapient. Conviv. c. 2, p. 147,—ὡς ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑπὸ Μολπαγόρου τοῦ Ἴωνος, τί παραδοξότατον εἴης ἑωρακὼς, ἀποκρίναιο, τύραννον γέροντα.—Compare the answer of Thales, in the same treatise, c. 7, p. 152.

The orator Lysias, present at the Olympic games, and seeing the theors of the Syracusan despot Dionysius also present, in tents with gilding and purple, addressed an harangue, inciting the assembled Greeks to demolish the tents (Lysiæ Λόγος Ὀλυμπιακὸς, Fragm. p. 911, ed. Reisk.; Dionys. Halicar. De Lysiâ Judicium, c. 29-30). Theophrastus ascribed to Themistokles a similar recommendation, in reference to the theôrs and the prize-chariots of the Syracusan despot Hiero (Plutarch, Themistokles, c. 25).

The common-places of the rhetors afford the best proof how unanimous was the sentiment in the Greek mind to rank the despot among the most odious criminals, and the man who put him to death among the benefactors of humanity. The rhetor Theon, treating upon _common-places_, says: Τόπος ἐστὶ λόγος αὐξητικὸς ~ὁμολογουμένου~ πράγματος, ἤτοι ἁμαρτήματος, ἢ ἀνδραγαθήματος. Ἐστὶ γὰρ διττὸς ὁ τόπος· ὁ μέν τις, κατὰ τῶν ~πεπονηρευμένων~, οἷον κατὰ ~τυράννου, προδότου, ἀνδροφόνου, ἀσώτου~· ὁ δέ τις, ὑπὲρ τῶν ~χρηστόν~ τι διαπεπραγμένων· οἷον ὑπὲρ ~τυραννοκτόνου, ἀριστέως, νομοθέτου~. (Theon, Progymnasmata, c. vii, ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett. vol. i, p. 222. Compare Aphthonius, Progymn. c. vii, p. 82 of the same volume, and Dionysius Halikarn. Ars Rhetorica, x, 15, p. 390, ed. Reiske.)

Amidst the numerous points of contention in Grecian political morality, this rooted antipathy to a permanent hereditary ruler stood apart as a sentiment almost unanimous, in which the thirst for preëminence felt by the wealthy few, and the love of equal freedom in the bosoms of the many, alike concurred. It first began among the oligarchies of the seventh and sixth centuries B. C., a complete reversal of that pronounced monarchical sentiment which we now read in the Iliad; and it was transmitted by them to the democracies, which did not arise until a later period. The conflict between oligarchy and despotism preceded that between oligarchy and democracy, the Lacedæmonians standing forward actively on both occasions to uphold the oligarchical principle: a mingled sentiment of fear and repugnance led them to put down despotism in several cities of Greece during the sixth century B. C., just as, during their contest with Athens in the following century, they assisted the oligarchical party, where-ever they could, to overthrow democracy. And it was thus that the demagogue-despot of these earlier times, bringing out the name of the people as a pretext, and the arms of the people as a means of accomplishment, for his own ambitious designs, served as a preface to the reality of democracy, which manifested itself at Athens a short time before the Persian war, as a development of the seed planted by Solon.

As far as our imperfect information enables us to trace, the early oligarchies of the Grecian states, against which the first usurping despots contended, contained in themselves far more repulsive elements of inequality, and more mischievous barriers between the component parts of the population, than the oligarchies of later days. What was true of Hellas as an aggregate, was true, though in a less degree, of each separate community which went to compose that aggregate: each included a variety of clans, orders, religious brotherhoods, and local or professional sections, which were very imperfectly cemented together: and the oligarchy was not, like the government so denominated in subsequent times, the government of a rich few over the less rich and the poor, but that of a peculiar order, sometimes a patrician order, over all the remaining society. In such a case, the subject Many might number opulent and substantial proprietors as well as the governing Few; but these subject Many would themselves be broken into different heterogeneous fractions, not heartily sympathizing with each other, perhaps not intermarrying together, nor partaking of the same religious rites. The country-population, or villagers, who tilled the land, seem in these early times to have been held to a painful dependence on the proprietors who lived in the fortified town, and to have been distinguished by a dress and habits of their own, which often drew upon them an unfriendly nickname. These town proprietors seem to have often composed the governing class in early Grecian states, while their subjects consisted,—1. Of the dependent cultivators living in the district around, by whom their lands were tilled. 2. Of a certain number of small self-working proprietors (αὐτουργοὶ), whose possessions were too scanty to maintain more than themselves by the labor of their own hands on their own plot of ground—residing either in the country or the town, as the case might be. 3. Of those who lived in the town, having no land but exercising handicraft, arts, or commerce.

The governing proprietors went by the name of the Gamori, or Geomori, according as the Doric or Ionic dialect might be used in describing them, since they were found in states belonging to one race as well as to the other. They appear to have constituted a close order, transmitting their privileges to their children, but admitting no new members to a participation,—for the principle called by Greek thinkers a timocracy, the appointment of political rights and privileges according to comparative property, appears to have been little, if at all, applied in the earlier times, and we know no example of it earlier than Solon. So that, by the natural multiplication of families and mutation of property, there would come to be many individual gamori possessing no land at all, and perhaps worse off than those small freeholders who did not belong to the order; while some of these latter freeholders, and some of the artisans and traders in the towns, might at the same time be rising in wealth and importance. Under a political classification such as this, of which the repulsive inequality was aggravated by a rude state of manners, and which had no flexibility to meet the changes in relative position amongst individual inhabitants, discontent and outbreaks were unavoidable, and the earliest despot, usually a wealthy man of the disfranchised class, became champion and leader of the malcontents.[37] However oppressive his rule might be, at least it was an oppression which bore with indiscriminate severity upon all the fractions of the population; and when the hour of reaction against him or against his successor arrived, so that the common enemy was expelled by the united efforts of all, it was hardly possible to revive the preëxisting system of exclusion and inequality without some considerable abatements.

[37] Thucyd. i, 13.

As a general rule, every Greek city-community included in its population, independent of bought slaves, the three elements above noticed,—considerable land proprietors with rustic dependents, small self-working proprietors, and town-artisans,—the three elements being found everywhere in different proportions. But the progress of events in Greece, from the seventh century B. C. downwards, tended continually to elevate the comparative importance of the two latter, while in those early days the ascendency of the former was at its maximum, and altered only to decline. The military force of most of the cities was at first in the hands of the great proprietors, and formed by them; it consisted of cavalry, themselves and their retainers, with horses fed upon their lands. Such was the primitive oligarchical militia, as it was constituted in the seventh and sixth centuries B. C.,[38] at Chalkis and Eretria in Eubœa, as well as at Kolophôn and other cities in Ionia, and as it continued in Thessaly down to the fourth century B. C.; but the gradual rise of the small proprietors and town-artisans was marked by the substitution of heavy-armed infantry in place of cavalry; and a farther change not less important took place when the resistance to Persia led to the great multiplication of Grecian ships of war, manned by a host of seamen who dwelt congregated in the maritime towns. All the changes which we are able to trace in the Grecian communities tended to break up the close and exclusive oligarchies with which our first historical knowledge commences, and to conduct them either to oligarchies rather more open, embracing all men of a certain amount of property, or else to democracies. But the transition in both cases was usually attained through the interlude of the despot.

[38] Aristot. Polit. iv, 3, 2; 11, 10. Aristot. Rerum Public. Fragm. ed. Neumann. Fragm. v. Εὐβοέων πολιτεῖαι, p. 112; Strabo, x, p. 447.

In enumerating the distinct and unharmonious elements of which the population of these early Grecian communities was made up, we must not forget one farther element which was to be found in the Dorian states generally,—men of Dorian, as contrasted with men of non-Dorian race. The Dorians were in all cases emigrants and conquerors, establishing themselves along with and at the expense of the prior inhabitants. Upon what terms the cohabitation was established, and in what proportions invaders and invaded came together, we are without information; and important as this circumstance is in the history of these Dorian communities, we know it only as a general fact, and are unable to follow its results in detail. But we see enough to satisfy ourselves that in those revolutions which overthrew the oligarchies both at Corinth and Sikyon,—perhaps also at Megara,—the Dorian and non-Dorian elements of the community came into conflict more or less direct.

The despots of Sikyon are the earliest of whom we have any distinct mention: their dynasty lasted one hundred years, a longer period than any other Grecian despots known to Aristotle; they are said,[39] moreover, to have governed with mildness and with much practical respect to the preëxisting laws. Orthagoras,[40] the beginner of the dynasty, raised himself to the position of despot about 676 B. C., subverting the preëxisting Dorian oligarchy; but the cause and circumstances of this revolution are not preserved. He is said to have been originally a cook. In his line of successors we find mention of Andreas, Myrôn, Aristônymus, and Kleisthenês; but we know nothing of any of them until the last, except that Myrôn gained a chariot victory at Olympia in the 33d Olympiad (648 B. C.), and built, at the same holy place, a thesaurus containing two ornamented alcoves of copper for the reception of commemorative offerings from himself and his family.[41] Respecting Kleisthenês (whose age must be placed between 600-560 B. C., but can hardly be determined accurately,) some facts are reported to us highly curious, but of a nature not altogether easy to follow or verify.

[39] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 21. An oracle is said to have predicted to the Sikyonians that they would be subjected for the period of a century to the hand of the scourger (Diodor. Fragm. lib. vii-x; Fragm. xiv, ed. Maii).

[40] Herodot. vi, 126; Pausan. ii, 8, 1. There is some confusion about the names of Orthagoras and Andreas; the latter is called a _cook_ in Diodorus (Fragment. Excerpt. Vatic. lib. vii-x, Fragm. xiv). Compare Libanius in Sever. vol. iii, p. 251, Reisk. It has been supposed, with some probability, that the same person is designated under both names: the two names do not seem to occur in the same author. See Plutarch, Ser. Numin. Vind. c. 7, p. 553.

Aristotle (Polit. v, 10, 3) seems to have conceived the dominion as having passed direct from Myrôn to Kleisthenês, omitting Aristônymus.

[41] Pausan. vi, 19, 2. The Eleians informed Pausanias that the brass in these alcoves came from Tartessus (the south-western coast of Spain from the Strait of Gibraltar to the territory beyond Cadiz): he declines to guarantee the statement. But O. Müller treats it as a certainty: “Two apartments inlaid with Tartessian brass, and adorned with Doric and Ionic columns. Both the architectural orders employed in this building, and the Tartessian brass, which the Phocæans had then brought to Greece in large quantities from the hospitable king Arganthonius, attest the intercourse of Myrôn with the Asiatics.” (Dorians, i, 8, 2.) So also Dr. Thirlwall states the fact: “Copper of Tartessus, which had not long been introduced into Greece.” (Hist. Gr. ch. x, p. 483, 2d ed.) Yet, if we examine the chronology of the case, we shall see that the 33d Olympiad (648 B. C.) must have been earlier even than the first discovery of Tartessus by the Greeks,—before the accidental voyage of the Samian merchant Kôlaeus first made the region known to them, and more than half a century (at least) earlier than the commerce of the Phocæans with Arganthonius. Compare Herod. iv. 152; i, 163, 167.

We learn from the narrative of Herodotus that the tribe to which Kleisthenês[42] himself (and of course his progenitors Orthagoras and the other Orthagoridæ also) belonged, was distinct from the three Dorian tribes, who have been already named in my previous chapter respecting the Lykurgean constitution at Sparta,—the Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanes. We also learn that these tribes were common to the Sikyonians and the Argeians; and Kleisthenês, being in a state of bitter hostility with Argos, tried in several ways to abolish the points of community between the two. Sikyôn, originally Dorized by settlers from Argos, was included in the “lot of Temenus,” or among the towns of the Argeian confederacy: the coherence of this confederacy had become weaker and weaker, partly without doubt through the influence of the predecessors of Kleisthenês; but the Argeians may perhaps have tried to revive it, thus placing themselves in a state of war with the latter, and inducing him to disconnect, palpably and violently, Sikyôn from Argos. There were two anchors by which the connection held,—first, legendary and religious sympathy; next, the civil rites and denominations current among the Sikyonian Dorians: both of them were torn up by Kleisthenês. He changed the names both of the three Dorian tribes, and of that non-Dorian tribe to which he himself belonged: the last he called by the complimentary title of archelai (commanders of the people); the first three he styled by the insulting names of hyatæ, oneatæ, and chœreatæ, from the three Greek words signifying a boar, an ass, and a little pig. The extreme bitterness of this insult can only be appreciated when we fancy to ourselves the reverence with which the tribes in a Grecian city regarded the hero from whom their name was borrowed. That these new denominations, given by Kleisthenês, involved an intentional degradation of the Dorian tribes as well as an assumption of superiority for his own, is affirmed by Herodotus, and seems well-deserving of credit.

[42] Herodot. v. 67.

But the violence of which Kleisthenês was capable in his anti-Argeian antipathy, is manifested still more plainly in his proceedings with respect to the hero Adrastus and to the legendary sentiment of the people. Something has already been said, in my former volume,[43] about this remarkable incident, which must, however, be here again briefly noticed. The hero Adrastus, whose chapel Herodotus himself saw in the Sikyonian agora, was common both to Argos and to Sikyôn, and was the object of special reverence at both: he figures in the legend as king of Argos, and as the grandson and heir of Polybus, king of Sikyôn. He was the unhappy leader of the two sieges of Thebes, so famous in the ancient epic,—and the Sikyonians listened with delight both to the exploits of the Argeians against Thebes, as celebrated in the recitations of the epical rhapsodes, and to the mournful tale of Adrastus and his family misfortunes, as sung in the tragic chorus. Kleisthenês not only forbade the rhapsodes to come to Sikyôn, but farther resolved to expel Adrastus himself from the country,—such is the literal Greek expression,[44] the hero himself being believed to be actually present and domiciled among the people. He first applied to the Delphian oracle for permission to carry this banishment into direct effect, but the Pythian priestess returned an answer of indignant refusal,—“Adrastus is king of the Sikyonians, but thou art a ruffian.” Thus baffled, he put in practice a stratagem calculated to induce Adrastus to depart of his own accord.[45] He sent to Thebes to beg that he might be allowed to introduce into Sikyôn the hero Melanippus, and the permission was granted. Now Melanippus was celebrated in the legend as the puissant champion of Thebes against Adrastus and the Argeian besiegers, and as having slain both Mêkisteus the brother, and Tydeus the son-in-law, of Adrastus; and he was therefore preëminently odious to the latter. Kleisthenês brought this anti-national hero into Sikyôn, assigning to him consecrated ground in the prytaneium, or government-house, and even in that part which was most strongly fortified[46] (for it seems that Adrastus was conceived as likely to assail and do battle with the intruder);—moreover, he took away both the tragic choruses and the sacrifice from Adrastus, assigning the former to the god Dionysus, and the latter to Melanippus.

[43] See above, vol. ii, p. 129, part i, ch. 21.

[44] Herod. v, 67. Τοῦτον ἐπεθύμησε ὁ Κλεισθένης, ἐόντα Ἀργεῖον, ἐκβαλεῖν ἐκ τῆς χώρης.

[45] Herod. v, 67. Ἐφρόντιζε μηχανὴν τῇ αὐτὸς ὁ Ἄδρηστος ἀπαλλάξεται.

[46] Ἐπαγαγόμενος δὲ ὁ Κλεισθένης τὸν Μελάνιππον, τέμενος οἱ ἀπέδεξε ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ πρυτανηΐῳ, καί μιν ἐνθαῦτα ἵδρυσε ἐν τῷ ἰσχυροτάτῳ. (Herod. _ib._)

The religious manifestations of Sikyôn being thus transferred from Adrastus to his mortal foe, and from the cause of the Argeians in the siege of Thebes to that of the Thebans, Adrastus was presumed to have voluntarily retired from the place, and the purpose which Kleisthenês contemplated, of breaking the community of feeling between Sikyôn and Argos, was in part accomplished.

A ruler who could do such violence to the religious and legendary sentiment of his community may well be supposed capable of inflicting that deliberate insult upon the Dorian tribes which is implied in their new appellations. As we are uninformed, however, of the state of things which preceded, we know not how far it might have been a retaliation for previous insult in the opposite direction. It is plain that the Dorians of Sikyôn maintained themselves and their ancient tribes quite apart from the remaining community, though what the other constituent portions of the population were, or in what relation they stood to these Dorians, we are not enabled to make out. We hear, indeed, of a dependent rural population in the territory of Sikyôn, as well as in that of Argos and Epidaurus, analogous to the Helots in Laconia. In Sikyôn, this class was termed the Korynêphori (club men), or the Katônakophori, from the thick woollen mantle which they wore, with a sheepskin sewn on to the skirt: in Argos, they were called Gymnêsii, from their not possessing the military panoply or the use of regular arms: in Epidaurus, Konipodes, or the dusty-footed.[47] We may conclude that a similar class existed in Corinth, in Megara, and in each of the Dorian towns of the Argolic Aktê. But besides the Dorian tribes and these rustics, there must probably have existed non-Dorian proprietors and town residents, and upon them we may suppose that the power of the Orthagoridæ and of Kleisthenês was founded, perhaps more friendly and indulgent to the rustic serfs than that of the Dorians had been previously. The moderation, which Aristotle ascribes to the Orthagoridæ generally, is belied by the proceedings of Kleisthenês: but we may probably believe that his predecessors, content with maintaining the real predominance of the non-Dorian over the Dorian population, meddled very little with the separate position and civil habits of the latter,—while Kleisthenês, provoked or alarmed by some attempt on their part to strengthen alliance with the Argeians, resorted both to repressive measures and to that offensive nomenclature which has been above cited. The preservation of the power of Kleisthenês was due to his military energy (according to Aristotle) even more than to his moderation and popular conduct; it was aided, probably, by his magnificent displays at the public games, for he was victor in the chariot-race at the Pythian games 582 B. C., as well as at the Olympic games besides. Moreover, he was in fact the last of the race, nor did he transmit his power to any successor.[48]

[47] Julius Pollux, iii, 83; Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 1, p. 291; Theopompus ap. Athenæum, vi, p. 271; Welcker, Prolegomen. ad Theognid. c. 19, p. xxxiv.

As an analogy to this name of Konipodes, we may notice the ancient courts of justice called Courts of _Pie-powder_ in England, _Pieds Poudrés_.

[48] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 21; Pausan. x, 7, 3.

The reigns of the early Orthagoridæ, then, may be considered as marking a predominance, newly acquired but quietly exercised, of the non-Dorians over the Dorians in Sikyôn: the reign of Kleisthenês, as displaying a strong explosion of antipathy from the former towards the latter; and though this antipathy, and the application of those opprobrious tribe-names in which it was conveyed, stand ascribed to Kleisthenês personally, we may see that the non-Dorians in Sikyôn shared it generally, because these same tribe-names continued to be applied not only during the reign of that despot, but also for sixty years longer, after his death. Of course, it is needless to remark that such denominations could never have been acknowledged or employed among the Dorians themselves. After the lapse of sixty years from the death of Kleisthenês, the Sikyonians came to an amicable adjustment of the feud, and placed the tribe-names on a footing satisfactory to all parties; the old Dorian denominations (Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanes) were reëstablished, and the name of the fourth tribe, or non-Dorians, was changed from Archelai to Ægialeis,—Ægialeus son of Adrastus being constituted their eponymus.[49] This choice of the son of Adrastus for an eponymus, seems to show that the worship of Adrastus himself was then revived in Sikyôn, since it existed in the time of Herodotus.

[49] Herod, v, 68. Τούτοισι τοῖσι οὐνόμασι τῶν φυλέων ἐχρέωντο οἱ Σικυώνιοι, καὶ ἐπὶ Κλεισθένεος ἄρχοντος, καὶ ἐκείνου τεθνεῶτος ἔτι ἐπ᾽ ἔτεα ἑξήκοντα· μετέπειτα μέντοι λόγον σφισι δόντες, μετέβαλον ἐς τοὺς Ὑλλέας καὶ Παμφύλους καὶ Δυμανάτας· τετάρτους δὲ αὐτοῖσι προσέθεντο ἐπὶ τοῦ Ἀδρήστου παιδὸς Αἰγιαλέος τὴν ἐπωνυμίην ποιεύμενοι κεκλῆσθαι Αἰγιαλέας.

Of the war which Kleisthenês helped to conduct against Kirrha, for the protection of the Delphian temple, I shall speak in another place. His death and the cessation of his dynasty seem to have occurred about 650 B. C., as far as the chronology can be made out.[50] That he was put down by the Spartans, as K. F. Hermann, O. Müller, and Dr. Thirlwall suppose,[51] can be hardly admitted consistently with the narrative of Herodotus, who mentions the continuance of the insulting names imposed by him upon the Dorian tribes for many years after his death. Now, had the Spartans forcibly interfered for the suppression of his dynasty, we may reasonably presume that, even if they did not restore the decided preponderance of the Dorians in Sikyôn, they would at least have rescued the Dorian tribes from this obvious ignominy. But it seems doubtful whether Kleisthenês had any son: and the extraordinary importance attached to the marriage of his daughter, Agaristê, whom he bestowed upon the Athenian Megaklês of the great family of Alkmæônidæ, seems rather to evince that she was an heiress,—not to his power, but to his wealth. There can be no doubt as to the fact of that marriage, from which was born the Athenian leader Kleisthenês, afterwards the author of the great democratical revolution at Athens after the expulsion of the Peisistratidæ; but the lively and amusing details with which Herodotus has surrounded it, bear much more the stamp of romance than of reality. Dressed up, apparently, by some ingenious Athenian, as a compliment to the Alkmæonid lineage of his city, which comprised both Kleisthenês and Periklês, the narrative commemorates a marriage-rivalry between that lineage and another noble Athenian house, and at the same time gives a mythical explanation of a phrase seemingly proverbial at Athens—“_Hippokleides don’t care._”[52]

[50] The chronology of Orthagoras and his dynasty is perplexing. The commemorative offering of Myron at Olympia is marked for 648 B. C., and this must throw back the beginning of Orthagoras to a period between 680-670. Then we are told by Aristotle that the entire dynasty lasted one hundred years; but it must have lasted, probably, somewhat longer, for the death of Kleisthenês can hardly be placed earlier than 560 B. C. The war against Kirrha (595 B. C.) and the Pythian victory (582 B. C.) fall within his reign: but the marriage of his daughter Agaristê with Megaklês can hardly be put earlier than 570 B. C., if so high; for Kleisthenês the Athenian, the son of that marriage, effected the democratical revolution at Athens in 509 or 508 B. C.: whether the daughter, whom Megaklês gave in marriage to Peisistratus about 554 B. C., was also the offspring of that marriage, as Larcher contends, we do not know.

Megaklês was the son of that Alkmæon who had assisted the deputies sent by Crœsus of Lydia into Greece to consult the different oracles, and whom Crœsus rewarded so liberally as to make his fortune (compare Herod. i, 46; vi, 125): and the marriage of Megaklês was in the next generation after this enrichment of Alkmæon,—μετὰ δὲ, γενεῇ δευτέρῃ ὕστερον (Herod. vi, 126). Now the reign of Crœsus extended from 560-546 B. C. and his deputation to the oracles in Greece appears to have taken place about 556 B. C.; and if this chronology be admitted, the marriage of Megaklês with the daughter of the Sikyonian Kleisthenês cannot have taken place until considerably after 556 B. C. See the long, but not very satisfactory, note of Larcher, ad Herodot. v, 66.

But I shall show grounds for believing, when I recount the interview between Solon and Crœsus, that Herodotus in his conception of events misdates very considerably the reign and proceedings of Crœsus as well as of Peisistratus: this is a conjecture of Niebuhr which I think very just, and which is rendered still more probable by what we find here stated about the succession of the Alkmæonidæ. For it is evident that Herodotus here conceives the adventure between Alkmæon and Crœsus as having occurred one generation (about twenty-five or thirty years) anterior to the marriage between Megaklês and the daughter of Kleisthenês. That adventure will thus stand about 590-585 B. C., which would be about the time of the supposed interview (if real) between Solon and Crœsus, describing the maximum of the power and prosperity of the latter.

[51] Müller, Dorians, book i, 8, 2; Thirlwall, Hist. of Greece, vol. i, ch. x, p. 486, 2d ed.

[52] Herod. vi, 127-131. The locution explained is,—Οὐ φροντὶς Ἱπποκλείδῃ: compare the allusions to it in the Parœmiographi, Zenob. v, 31; Diogenian. vii, 21; Suidas, xi, 45, ed. Schott.

The convocation of the suitors at the invitation of Kleisthenês from all parts of Greece, and the distinctive mark and character of each, is prettily told, as well as the drunken freak whereby Hippokleidês forfeits both the favor of Kleisthenês, and the hand of Agaristê, which he was on the point of obtaining. It seems to be a story framed upon the model of various incidents in the old epic, especially the suitors of Helen.

On one point, however, the author of the story seems to have overlooked both the exigencies of chronology and the historical position and feelings of his hero Kleisthenês. For among the suitors who present themselves at Sikyôn in conformity with the invitation of the latter, one is Leôkêdês, son of Pheidôn the despot of Argos. Now the hostility and vehement antipathy towards Argos, which Herodotus ascribes in another place to the Sikyonian Kleisthenês, renders it all but impossible that the son of any king of Argos could have become a candidate for the hand of Agaristê. I have already recounted the violence which Kleisthenês did to the legendary sentiment of his native town, and the insulting names which he put upon the Sikyonian Dorians,—all under the influence of a strong anti-Argeian feeling. Next, as to chronology: Pheidôn king of Argos lived some time between 760-730; and his son can never have been a candidate for the daughter of Kleisthenês, whose reign falls 600-500 B. C. Chronologers resort here to the usual resource in cases of difficulty: they recognize a second and later Pheidôn, whom they affirm that Herodotus has confounded with the first: or they alter the text of Herodotus, and in place of “son of Pheidôn,” read “descendant of Pheidôn.” But neither of these conjectures rests upon any basis: the text of Herodotus is smooth and clear, and the second Pheidôn is nowhere else authenticated. See Larcher and Wesseling, _ad loc._; compare also vol. ii, p. 419, part ii, ch. 4, of this History.

Plutarch numbers Æschinês of Sikyôn[53] among the despots put down by Sparta: at what period this took place, or how it is to be connected with the history of Kleisthenês as given in Herodotus, we are unable to say.

[53] Plutarch, De Herod. Malign. c. 21, p. 859.

Contemporaneous with the Orthagoridæ at Sikyôn,—but beginning a little later and closing somewhat earlier,—we find the despots Kypselus and Periander at Corinth. The former appears as the subverter of the oligarchy called the Bacchiadæ. Of the manner in which he accomplished his object we find no information: and this historical blank is inadequately filled up by various religious prognostics and oracles, foreshadowing the rise, the harsh rule, and the dethronement, after two generations, of these powerful despots.

According to an idea deeply seated in the Greek mind, the destruction of a great prince or of a great power is usually signified to him by the gods beforehand, though either through hardness of heart or inadvertence, no heed is taken of the warning. In reference to Kypselus and the Bacchiadæ, we are informed that Melas, the ancestor of the former, was one of the original settlers at Corinth who accompanied the first Dorian chief Alêtês, and that Alêtês was in vain warned by an oracle not to admit him;[54] again, too, immediately before Kypselus was born, the Bacchiadæ received notice that his mother was about to give birth to one who would prove their ruin: the dangerous infant escaped destruction only by a hair’s breadth, being preserved from the intent of his destroyers by lucky concealment in a chest. Labba, the mother of Kypselus, was daughter of Amphion, who belonged to the gens, or sept, of the Bacchiadæ; but she was lame, and none of the gens would consent to marry her with that deformity. Eetion, son of Echekratês, who became her husband, belonged to a different, yet hardly less distinguished heroic genealogy: he was of the Lapithæ, descended from Kæneus, and dwelling in the Corinthian deme called Petra. We see thus that Kypselus was not only a high-born man in the city, but a Bacchiad by half-birth; both of these circumstances were likely to make exclusion from the government intolerable to him. He rendered himself highly popular with the people, and by their aid overthrew and expelled the Bacchiadæ, continuing as despot at Corinth for thirty years until his death (B. C. 655-625). According to Aristotle, he maintained throughout life the same conciliatory behavior by which his power had first been acquired; and his popularity was so effectually sustained that he had never any occasion for a body-guard. But the Corinthian oligarchy of the century of Herodotus,—whose tale that historian has embodied in the oration of the Corinthian envoy Sosiklês[55] to the Spartans,—gave a very different description, and depicted Kypselus as a cruel ruler, who banished, robbed, and murdered by wholesale.

[54] Pausan. ii, 4, 9.

[55] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 22; Herodot. v, 92. The tale respecting Kypselus, and his wholesale exaction from the people, contained in the spurious second book of the Œconomica of Aristotle, coincides with the general view of Herodotus (Aristot. Œconom. ii, 2); but I do not trust the statements of this treatise for facts of the sixth or seventh centuries B. C.

His son and successor Periander, though energetic as a warrior, distinguished as an encourager of poetry and music, and even numbered by some among the seven wise men of Greece,—is, nevertheless, uniformly represented as oppressive and inhuman in his treatment of subjects. The revolting stories which are told respecting his private life, and his relations with his mother and his wife, may for the most part be regarded as calumnies suggested by odious associations with his memory; but there seems good reason for imputing to him tyranny of the worst character, and the sanguinary maxims of precaution so often acted upon by Grecian despots were traced back in ordinary belief to Periander,[56] and his contemporary Thrasybulus, despot of Milêtus. He maintained a powerful body-guard, shed much blood, and was exorbitant in his exactions, a part of which was employed in votive offerings at Olympia; and this munificence to the gods was considered by Aristotle and others as part of a deliberate system, with the view of keeping his subjects both hard at work and poor. On one occasion, we are told that he invited the women of Corinth to assemble for the celebration of a religious festival, and then stripped them of their rich attire and ornaments. By some later writers, he is painted as the stern foe of everything like luxury and dissolute habits,—enforcing industry, compelling every man to render account of his means of livelihood, and causing the procuresses of Corinth to be thrown into the sea.[57] Though the general features of his character, his cruel tyranny no less than his vigor and ability, may be sufficiently relied on, yet the particular incidents connected with his name are all extremely dubious: the most credible of all seems to be the tale of his inexpiable quarrel with his son, and his brutal treatment of many noble Korkyræan youths, as related in Herodotus. Periander is said to have put to death his wife, Melissa, daughter of Proklês, despot of Epidaurus; and his son Lykophrôn, informed of this deed, contracted an incurable antipathy against him. After vainly trying, both by rigor and by conciliation, to conquer this feeling on the part of his son, Periander sent him to reside at Korkyra, then dependent upon his rule; but when he found himself growing old and disabled, he recalled him to Corinth, in order to insure the continuance of the dynasty. Lykophrôn still obstinately declined all personal communication with his father, upon which the latter desired him to come to Corinth, and engaged himself to go over to Korkyra. So terrified were the Korkyræans at the idea of a visit from this formidable old man, that they put Lykophrôn to death,—a deed which Periander avenged by seizing three hundred youths of their noblest families, and sending them over to the Lydian king, Alyattês at Sardis, in order that they might be castrated and made to serve as eunuchs. The Corinthian vessels in which the youths were dispatched fortunately touched at Samos in the way; where the Samians and Knidians, shocked at a proceeding which outraged all Hellenic sentiment, contrived to rescue the youths from the miserable fate intended for them, and, after the death of Periander, sent them back to their native island.[58]

[56] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 2-22; iii, 8, 3; Herodot. v, 92.

[57] Ephorus, Frag. 106, ed. Marx.; Herakleidês Ponticus, Frag. v, ed. Köhler; Nicolaus Damasc. p. 50, ed. Orell.; Diogen. Laërt. i, 96-98; Suidas, v. Κυψελίδων ἀνάθημα.

[58] Herodot. iii, 47-54. He details at some length this tragical story. Compare Plutarch, De Herodoti Malignitat. c. 22, p. 860.

While we turn with displeasure from the political life of this man, we are at the same time made acquainted with the great extent of his power,—greater than that which was ever possessed by Corinth after the extinction of his dynasty. Korkyra, Ambrakia, Leukas, and Anaktorium, all Corinthian colonies, but in the next century independent states, appear in his time dependencies of Corinth. Ambrakia is said to have been under the rule of another despot named Periander, probably also a Kypselid by birth. It seems, indeed, that the towns of Anaktorium, Leukas, and Apollonia in the Ionian gulf, were either founded by the Kypselids, or received reinforcements of Corinthian colonists, during their dynasty, though Korkyra was established considerably earlier.[59]

[59] Aristot. Polit. v, 3, 6; 8, 9. Plutarch, Amatorius, c. 23, p. 768, and De Serâ Numinis Vindictâ, c. 7, p. 553. Strabo, vii, p. 325; x, p. 452. Scymnus Chius, v, 454, and Antoninus Liberalis, c. iv, who quotes the lost work called Ἀμβρακικὰ of Athanadas.

The reign of Periander lasted for forty years (B. C. 625-585): Psammetichus son of Gordius, who succeeded him, reigned three years, and the Kypselid dynasty is then said to have closed, after having continued for seventy-three years.[60] In respect of power, magnificent display, and wide-spread connections both in Asia and in Italy, they evidently stood high among the Greeks of their time. Their offerings consecrated at Olympia excited great admiration, especially the gilt colossal statue of Zeus, and the large chest of cedar-wood dedicated in the temple of Hêrê, overlaid with various figures in gold and ivory: the figures were borrowed from mythical and legendary story, and the chest was a commemoration both of the name of Kypselus and of the tale of his marvellous preservation in infancy.[61] If Plutarch is correct, this powerful dynasty is to be numbered among the despots put down by Sparta;[62] yet such intervention of the Spartans, granting it to have been matter of fact, can hardly have been known to Herodotus.

[60] See Mr. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, ad ann. 625-585 B. C.

[61] Pausan. v, 2, 4; 17, 2. Strabo, viii, p. 353. Compare Schneider, Epimetrum ad Xenophon. Anabas. p. 570. The chest was seen at Olympia, both by Pausanias and by Dio Chrysostom (Or. xi, p. 325, Reiske).

[62] Plutarch, De Herodot. Malign. c. 21, p. 859. If Herodotus had known or believed that the dynasty of the Kypselids at Corinth was put down by Sparta, he could not have failed to make allusion to the fact, in the long harangue which he ascribes to the Corinthian Sosiklês (v, 92). Whoever reads that speech, will perceive that the inference from silence to ignorance is in this case almost irresistible.

O. Müller ascribes to Periander a policy intentionally anti-Dorian,—“prompted by the wish of utterly eradicating the peculiarities of the Doric race. For this reason he abolished the public tables, and prohibited the ancient education.” (O. Müller, Dorians, iii, 8, 3.)

But it cannot be shown that any _public tables_ (συσσίτια), or any peculiar education, analogous to those of Sparta, ever existed at Corinth. If nothing more be meant by these συσσίτια than public banquets on particular festive occasions (see Welcker, Prolegom. ad Theognid. c. 20, p. xxxvii), these are noway peculiar to Dorian cities. Nor does Theognis, v, 270, bear out Welcker in affirming “syssitiorum vetus institutum” at Megara.

Coincident in point of time with the commencement of Periander’s reign at Corinth, we find Theagenês despot at Megara, who is also said to have acquired his power by demagogic arts, as well as by violent aggressions against the rich proprietors, whose cattle he destroyed in their pastures by the side of the river. We are not told by what previous conduct on the part of the rich this hatred of the people had been earned, but Theagenês carried the popular feeling completely along with him, obtained by public vote a body of guards ostensibly for his personal safety, and employed them to overthrow the oligarchy.[63] But he did not maintain his power, even for his own life: a second revolution dethroned and expelled him; on which occasion, after a short interval of temperate government, the people are said to have renewed in a still more marked way their antipathies against the rich; banishing some of them with confiscation of property, intruding into the houses of others with demands for forced hospitality, and even passing a formal palintokia, or decree, to require from the rich who had lent money on interest, the refunding of all past interest paid to them by their debtors.[64] To appreciate correctly such a demand, we must recollect that the practice of taking interest for money lent was regarded by a large proportion of early ancient society with feelings of unqualified reprobation; and it will be seen, when we come to the legislation of Solon, how much such violent reactionary feeling against the creditor was provoked by the antecedent working of the harsh law determining his rights.

[63] Aristot. Polit. v, 4, 5; Rhetor. i, 2, 7.

[64] Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 18, p. 295.

We hear in general terms of more than one revolution in the government of Megara,—a disorderly democracy, subverted by returning oligarchical exiles, and these again unable long to maintain themselves;[65] but we are alike uninformed as to dates and details. And in respect to one of these struggles, we are admitted to the outpourings of a contemporary and a sufferer,—the Megarian poet Theognis. Unfortunately, his elegiac verses, as we possess them, are in a state so broken, incoherent, and interpolated, that we make out no distinct conception of the events which call them forth,—still less, can we discover in the verses of Theognis that strength and peculiarity of pure Dorian feeling, which, since the publication of O. Müller’s History of the Dorians, it has been the fashion to look for so extensively. But we see that the poet was connected with an oligarchy, of birth and not of wealth, which had recently been subverted by the breaking in of the rustic population previously subject and degraded,—that these subjects were contented to submit to a single-headed despot, in order to escape from their former rulers,—and that Theognis had himself been betrayed by his own friends and companions, stripped of his property, and exiled, through the wrong doing “of enemies whose blood he hopes one day to be permitted to drink.”[66] The condition of the subject cultivators previous to this revolution he depicts in sad colors;—they “dwelt without the city, clad in goatskins, and ignorant of judicial sanctions or laws:”[67] after it, they had become citizens, and their importance had been immensely enhanced. And thus, according to his impression, the vile breed has trodden down the noble,—the bad have become masters, and the good are no longer of any account. The bitterness and humiliation which attend upon poverty, and the undue ascendency which wealth confers even upon the most worthless of mankind,[68] are among the prominent subjects of his complaint, and his keen personal feeling on this point would be alone sufficient to show that the recent revolution had no way overthrown the influence of property; in contradiction to the opinion of Welcker, who infers without ground, from a passage of uncertain meaning, that the land of the state had been formally redivided.[69] The Megarian revolution, so far as we apprehend it from Theognis, appears to have improved materially the condition of the cultivators around the town, and to have strengthened a certain class whom he considers “the bad rich,”—while it extinguished the privileges of that governing order, to which he himself belonged, denominated in his language “the good and the virtuous,” with ruinous effect upon his own individual fortunes. How far this governing order was exclusively Dorian, we have no means of determining. The political change by which Theognis suffered, and the new despot whom he indicates as either actually installed or nearly impending, must have come considerably after the despotism of Theagenês; for the life of the poet seems to fall between 570-490 B. C., while Theagenês must have ruled about 630-600 B. C. From the unfavorable picture, therefore, which the poet gives as his own early experience of the condition of the rural cultivators, it is evident that the despot Theagenês had neither conferred upon them any permanent benefit, nor given them access to the judicial protection of the city.

[65] Aristot. Polit. iv, 12, 10; v, 2, 6; 4, 3.

[66] Theognis, vv. 682, 715, 720, 750, 816, 914, Welcker’s edition:—

Τῶν εἴη μέλαν αἷμα πιεῖν, etc.

[67] Theognis, v, 20.—

Κύρνε, πόλις μὲν ἔθ᾽ ἥδε πόλις, λαοὶ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι, Οἳ πρόσθ᾽ οὕτε δίκας ᾔδεσαν οὔτε νόμους, Ἀλλ᾽ ἀμφὶ πλευρῇσι δορὰς αἰγῶν κατέτριβον, Ἔξω δ᾽ ὥστ᾽ ἔλαφοι τῆσδ’ ἐνέμοντο πόλεος.

[68] See, especially, the lines from 500-560, 816-830, in Welcker’s edition.

[69] Consult the Prolegomena to Welcker’s edition of Theognis; also, those of Schneidewin (Delectus Elegiac. Poetar. pp. 46-55).

The Prolegomena of Welcker are particularly valuable and full of instruction. He illustrates at great length the tendency common to Theognis, with other early Greek poets, to apply the words _good_ and _bad_, not with reference to any ethical standard, but to wealth as contrasted with poverty,—nobility with low birth,—strength with weakness,—conservative and oligarchical politics as opposed to innovation (sect. 10-18). The ethical meaning of these words is not absolutely unknown, yet rare, in Theognis: it gradually grew up at Athens, and became popularized by the Socratic school of philosophers as well as by the orators. But the early or political meaning always remained, and the fluctuation between the two has been productive of frequent misunderstanding. Constant attention is necessary when we read the expressions οἱ ἀγαθοὶ, ἐσθλοὶ, βέλτιστοι, καλοκἀγαθοὶ, χρηστοὶ, etc., or on the other hand, οἱ κακοὶ, δειλοὶ, etc., to examine whether the context is such as to give to them the ethical or the political meaning. Welcker seems to go a step too far, when he says that the latter sense “fell into desuetude, through the influence of the Socratic philosophy.” (Proleg. sect. 11, p. xxv.) The two meanings both remained extant at the same time, as we see by Aristotle (Polit. iv, 8, 2),—σχεδὸν γὰρ παρὰ τοῖς πλείστοις οἱ εὔποροι, τῶν καλῶν κἀγαθῶν δοκοῦσι κατέχειν χώραν. A careful distinction is sometimes found in Plato and Thucydides, who talk of the oligarchs as “the persons called super-excellent,”—τοὺς καλοὺς κἀγαθοὺς ὀνομαζομένους (Thucyd. viii, 48),—ὑπὸ τῶν πλουσίων τε καὶ καλῶν κἀγαθῶν λεγομένων ἐν τῇ πόλει (Plato, Rep. viii, p. 569).

The same double sense is to be found equally prevalent in the Latin language: “_Boni_que et _mali_ cives appellati, non ob merita in rempublicam, omnibus pariter corruptis: sed uti quisque locupletissimus, et injuriâ validior, quia præsentia defendebat, pro bono habebatur.” (Sallust, Hist. Fragment. lib. i, p. 935, Cort.) And again, Cicero (De Republ. i, 34): “Hoc errore vulgi cum rempublicam opes paucorum, non virtutes, tenere cœperunt, nomen illi principes _optimatium_ mordicus tenent, re autem carent eo nomine.” In Cicero’s Oration pro Sextio (c. 45) the two meanings are intentionally confounded together, when he gives his definition of _optimus quisque_. Welcker (Proleg. s. 12) produces several other examples of the like equivocal meaning. Nor are there wanting instances of the same use of language in the laws and customs of the early Germans,—boni homines, probi homines, Rachinburgi, Gudemänner. See Savigny, Geschichte des Römisch. Rechts im Mittelalter, vol. i, p. 184; vol. ii, p. xxii.

It is thus that the despots of Corinth, Sikyôn, and Megara serve as samples of those revolutionary influences, which towards the beginning of the sixth century B. C., seem to have shaken or overturned the oligarchical governments in very many cities throughout the Grecian world. There existed a certain sympathy and alliance between the despots of Corinth and Sikyôn:[70] how far such feeling was farther extended to Megara, we do not know. The latter city seems evidently to have been more populous and powerful during the seventh and sixth centuries B. C., than we shall afterwards find her throughout the two brilliant centuries of Grecian history: her colonies, found as far distant as Bithynia and the Thracian Bosphorus on one side, and as Sicily on the other, argue an extent of trade as well as naval force once not inferior to Athens: so that we shall be the less surprised when we approach the life of Solon, to find her in possession of the island of Salamis, and long maintaining it, at one time with every promise of triumph, against the entire force of the Athenians.

[70] Herod. vi. 128.