chapter viii

of the Ἐπιτάφιος Λόγος, erroneously ascribed to Demosthenês.

[249] Herodot. v, 69. δέκα δὲ καὶ τοὺς δήμους κατένεμε ἐς τὰς φυλάς.

Schömann contends that Kleisthenês established exactly one hundred demes to the ten tribes (De Comitiis Atheniensium, Præf. p. xv and p. 363, and Antiquitat. Jur. Pub. Græc. ch. xxii, p. 260), and K. F. Hermann (Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alt. ch. 111) thinks that this is what Herodotus meant to affirm, though he does not believe the fact to have really stood so.

I incline, as the least difficulty in the case, to construe δέκα with φυλὰς and not with δήμους, as Wachsmuth (i, 1, p. 271) and Dieterich (De Clisthene, a treatise cited by K. F. Hermann, but which I have not seen) construe it.

There is another point, however, which is at once more certain, and more important to notice. The demes which Kleisthenês assigned to each tribe were in no case all adjacent to each other; and therefore the tribe, as a whole, did not correspond with any continuous portion of the territory, nor could it have any peculiar local interest, separate from the entire community. Such systematic avoidance of the factions arising out of neighborhood will appear to have been more especially necessary, when we recollect that the quarrels of the Parali, the Diakrii, the Pediaki, during the preceding century, had all been generated from local feud, though doubtless artfully fomented by individual ambition. Moreover, it was only by this same precaution that the local predominance of the city, and the formation of a city-interest distinct from that of the country, was obviated; which could hardly have failed to arise had the city by itself constituted either one deme or one tribe. Kleisthenês distributed the city (or found it already distributed) into several demes, and those demes among several tribes; while Peiræus and Phalêrum, each constituting a separate deme, were also assigned to different tribes; so that there were no local advantages either to bestow predominance, or to create a struggle for predominance, of one tribe over the rest.[250] Each deme had its own local interests to watch over; but the tribe was a mere aggregate of demes for political, military, and religious purposes, with no separate hopes or fears, apart from the whole state. Each tribe had a chapel, sacred rites and festivals, and a common fund for such meetings, in honor of its eponymous hero, administered by members of its own choice;[251] and the statues of all the ten eponymous heroes, fraternal patrons of the democracy, were planted in the most conspicuous part of the agora of Athens. In the future working of the Athenian government, we shall trace no symptom of disquieting local factions,—a capital amendment, compared with the disputes of the preceding century, and traceable, in part, to the absence of border-relations between demes of the same tribe.

[250] The deme _Melitê_ belonged to the tribe Kekropis; _Kollytus_, to the tribe Ægêis; _Kydathenæon_, to the tribe Pandionis; _Kerameis_ or _Kerameikus_, to the Akamantis; _Skambônidæ_, to the Leontis.

All these five were demes within the city of Athens, and all belonged to different tribes.

_Peiræus_ belonged to the Hippothoöntis; _Phalêrum_, to the Æantis; _Xypetê_, to the Kekropis; _Thymætadæ_, to the Hippothoöntis. These four demes, adjoining to each other, formed a sort of quadruple local union, for festivals and other purposes, among themselves; though three of them belonged to different tribes.

See the list of the Attic demes, with a careful statement of their localities in so far as ascertained, in Professor Ross, Die Demen von Attika. Halle, 1846. The distribution of the city-demes, and of Peiræus and Phalêrum, among different tribes, appears to me a clear proof of the intention of the original distributors. It shows that they wished from the beginning to make the demes constituting each tribe discontinuous, and that they desired to prevent both the growth of separate tribe-interests and ascendency of one tribe over the rest. It contradicts the belief of those who suppose that the tribe was at first composed of continuous demes, and that the breach of continuity arose from subsequent changes.

Of course there were many cases in which adjoining demes belonged to the same tribe; but not one of the ten tribes was made up altogether of adjoining demes.

[251] See Boeckh, Corp. Inscriptt. Nos. 85, 128, 213, etc.: compare Demosthen. cont. Theokrin. c. 4. p. 1326 R.

The deme now became the primitive constituent element of the commonwealth, both as to persons and as to property. It had its own demarch, its register of enrolled citizens, its collective property, its public meetings and religious ceremonies, its taxes levied and administered by itself. The register of qualified citizens[252] was kept by the demarch, and the inscription of new citizens took place at the assembly of the demots, whose legitimate sons were enrolled on attaining the age of eighteen, and their adopted sons at any time when presented and sworn to by the adopting citizen. The citizenship could only be granted by a public vote of the people, but wealthy non-freemen were enabled sometimes to evade this law and purchase admission upon the register of some poor deme, probably by means of a fictitious adoption. At the meetings of the demots, the register was called over, and it sometimes happened that some names were expunged,—in which case the party thus disfranchised had an appeal to the popular judicature.[253] So great was the local administrative power, however, of these demes, that they are described as the substitute,[254] under the Kleisthenean system, for the naukraries under the Solonian and ante-Solonian. The trittyes and naukraries, though nominally preserved, and the latter (as some affirm) augmented in number from forty-eight to fifty, appear henceforward as of little public importance.

[252] We may remark that this register was called by a special name, the Lexiarchic register; while the primitive register of phrators and gentiles always retained, even in the time of the orators, its original name of the common register—Harpokration, v. Κοινὸν γραμματεῖον καὶ ληξιαρχικόν.

[253] See Schömann, Antiq. Jur. P. Græc. ch. xxiv. The oration of Demosthenês against Eubulidês is instructive about these proceedings of the assembled demots: compare Harpokration, v. Διαψήφισις, and Meier, De Bonis Damnatorum, ch. xii, p. 78, etc.

[254] Aristot. Fragment. de Republ., ed. Neumann.—Ἀθην. πολιτ. Fr. 40, p. 88; Schol. ad Aristophan. Ran. 37; Harpokration, v. Δήμαρχος—Ναυκραρικά; Photius, v. Ναυκραρία.

Kleisthenês preserved, but at the same time modified and expanded, all the main features of Solon’s political constitution; the public assembly, or ekklesia,—the preconsidering senate, composed of members from all the tribes,—and the habit of annual election, as well as annual responsibility of magistrates, by and to the ekklesia. The full value must now have been felt of possessing such preëxisting institutions to build upon, at a moment of perplexity and dissension. But the Kleisthenean ekklesia acquired new strength, and almost a new character, from the great increase of the number of citizens qualified to attend it; while the annually-changed senate, instead of being composed of four hundred members taken in equal proportion from each of the old four tribes, was enlarged to five hundred, taken equally from each of the new ten tribes. It now comes before us, under the name of Senate of Five Hundred, as an active and indispensable body throughout the whole Athenian democracy: and the practice now seems to have begun (though the period of commencement cannot be decisively proved), of determining the names of the senators by lot. Both the senate thus constituted, and the public assembly, were far more popular and vigorous than they had been under the original arrangement of Solon.

The new constitution of the tribes, as it led to a change in the annual senate, so it transformed, no less directly, the military arrangements of the state, both as to soldiers and as to officers. The citizens called upon to serve in arms were now marshalled according to tribes,—each tribe having its own taxiarchs as officers for the hoplites, and its own phylarch at the head of the horsemen. Moreover, there were now created for the first time ten strategi, or generals, one from each tribe; and two hipparchs, for the supreme command of the horsemen. Under the prior Athenian constitution it appears that the command of the military force had been vested in the third archon, or polemarch, no strategi then existing; and even after the latter had been created, under the Kleisthenean constitution, the polemarch still retained a joint right of command along with them,—as we are told at the battle of Marathon, where Kallimachus the polemarch not only enjoyed an equal vote in the council of war along with the ten strategi, but even occupied the post of honor on the right wing.[255] The ten generals, annually changed, are thus (like the ten tribes) a fruit of the Kleisthenean constitution, which was at the same time powerfully strengthened and protected by such remodelling of the military force. The functions of the generals becoming more extensive as the democracy advanced, they seem to have acquired gradually not merely the direction of military and naval affairs, but also that of the foreign relations of the city generally,—while the nine archons, including the polemarch, were by degrees lowered down from that full executive and judicial competence which they had once enjoyed, to the simple ministry of police and preparatory justice. Encroached upon by the strategi on one side, they were also restricted in efficiency by the rise of the popular dikasteries or numerous jury-courts, on the other. We may be very sure that these popular dikasteries had not been permitted to meet or to act under the despotism of the Peisistratids, and that the judicial business of the city must then have been conducted partly by the Senate of Areopagus, partly by the archons; perhaps with a nominal responsibility of the latter at the end of their year of office to an acquiescent ekklesia. And if we even assume it to be true, as some writers contend, that the habit of direct popular judicature, over and above this annual trial of responsibility, had been partially introduced by Solon, it must have been discontinued during the long coercion exercised by the supervening dynasty. But the outburst of popular spirit, which lent force to Kleisthenês, doubtless carried the people into direct action as jurors in the aggregate Heliæa, not less than as voters in the ekklesia,—and the change was thus begun which contributed to degrade the archons from their primitive character as judges, into the lower function of preliminary examiners and presidents of a jury. Such convocation of numerous juries, beginning first with the aggregate body of sworn citizens above thirty years of age, and subsequently dividing them into separate bodies or pannels, for trying particular causes, became gradually more frequent and more systematized: until at length, in the time of Periklês, it was made to carry a small pay, and stood out as one of the most prominent features of Athenian life. We cannot

## particularize the different steps whereby such final development was

attained, and the judicial competence of the archon cut down to the mere power of inflicting a small fine; but the first steps of it are found in the revolution of Kleisthenês, and it seems to have been consummated by the reforms of Periklês. Of the function exercised by the nine archons as well as by many other magistrates and official persons at Athens, in convoking a dikastery, or jury-court, bringing on causes for trial,—and presiding over the trial,—a function constituting one of the marks of superior magistracy, and called the Hegemony, or presidency of a dikastery,—I shall speak more at length hereafter. At present, I wish merely to bring to view the increased and increasing sphere of action on which the people entered at the memorable turn of affairs now before us.

[255] Herodot. vi, 109-111.

The financial affairs of the city underwent at this epoch as complete a change as the military: in fact, the appointment of magistrates and officers by tens, one from each tribe, seems to have become the ordinary practice. A board of ten, called Apodektæ, were invested with the supreme management of the exchequer, dealing with the contractors as to those portions of the revenue which were farmed, receiving all the taxes from the collectors, and disbursing them under competent authority. The first nomination of this board is expressly ascribed to Kleisthenês,[256] as a substitute for certain persons called Kôlakretæ, who had performed the same function before, and who were now retained only for subordinate services. The duties of the apodektæ were afterwards limited to receiving the public income, and paying it over to the ten treasurers of the goddess Athênê, by whom it was kept in the inner chamber of the Parthenon, and disbursed as needed; but this more complicated arrangement cannot be referred to Kleisthenês. From his time forward too, the Senate of Five Hundred steps far beyond its original duty of preparing matters for the discussion of the ekklesia: it embraces, besides, a large circle of administrative and general superintendence, which hardly admits of any definition. Its sittings become constant, with the exception of special holidays, and the year is distributed into ten portions called Prytanies,—the fifty senators of each tribe taking by turns the duty of constant attendance during one prytany, and receiving during that time the title of The Prytanes: the order of precedence among the tribes in these duties was annually determined by lot. In the ordinary Attic year of twelve lunar months, or three hundred and fifty-four days, six of the prytanies contained thirty-five days, four of them contained thirty-six: in the intercalated years of thirteen months, the number of days was thirty-eight and thirty-nine respectively. Moreover, a farther subdivision of the prytany into five periods of seven days each, and of the fifty tribe-senators into five bodies of ten each, was recognized: each body of ten presided in the senate for one period of seven days, drawing lots every day among their number for a new chairman, called Epistatês, to whom during his day of office were confided the keys of the acropolis and the treasury, together with the city seal. The remaining senators, not belonging to the prytanizing tribe, might of course attend if they chose; but the attendance of nine among them, one from each of the remaining nine tribes, was imperatively necessary to constitute a valid meeting, and to insure a constant representation of the collective people.

[256] Harpokration, v. Ἀποδέκται.

During those later times known to us through the great orators, the ekklesia, or formal assembly of the citizens, was convoked four times regularly during each prytany, or oftener if necessity required,—usually by the senate, though the stratêgi had also the power of convoking it by their own authority. It was presided over by the prytanes, and questions were put to the vote by their epistatês, or chairman; but the nine representatives of the non-prytanizing tribes were always present as a matter of course, and seem, indeed, in the days of the orators, to have acquired to themselves the direction of it, together with the right of putting questions for the vote,[257]—setting aside wholly or partially the fifty prytanes. When we carry our attention back, however, to the state of the ekklesia, as first organized by Kleisthenês (I have already remarked that expositors of the Athenian constitution are too apt to neglect the distinction of times, and to suppose that what was the practice between 400-330 B. C. had been always the practice), it will appear probable that he provided one regular meeting in each prytany, and no more; giving to the senate and the stratêgi power of convening special meetings if needful, but establishing one ekklesia during each prytany, or ten in the year, as a regular necessity of state. How often the ancient ekklesia had been convoked during the interval between Solon and Peisistratus, we cannot exactly say,—probably but seldom during the year. But under the Peisistratids, its convocation had dwindled down into an inoperative formality; and the reëstablishment of it by Kleisthenês, not merely with plenary determining powers, but also under full notice and preparation of matters beforehand, together with the best securities for orderly procedure, was in itself a revolution impressive to the mind of every Athenian citizen. To render the ekklesia efficient, it was indispensable that its meetings should be both frequent and free. Men thus became trained to the duty both of speakers and hearers, and each man, while he felt that he exercised his share of influence on the decision, identified his own safety and happiness with the vote of the majority, and became familiarized with the notion of a sovereign authority which he neither could nor ought to resist. This is an idea new to the Athenian bosom; and with it came the feelings sanctifying free speech and equal law,—words which no Athenian citizen ever afterwards heard unmoved: together with that sentiment of the entire commonwealth as one and indivisible, which always overruled, though it did not supplant, the local and cantonal special ties. It is not too much to say that these patriotic and ennobling impulses were a new product in the Athenian mind, to which nothing analogous occurs even in the time of Solon. They were kindled in part doubtless by the strong reaction against the Peisistratids, but still more by the fact that the opposing leader, Kleisthenês, turned that transitory feeling to the best possible account, and gave to it a vigorous perpetuity, as well as a well-defined positive object, by the popular elements conspicuous in his constitution. His name makes less figure in history than we should expect, because he passed for the mere renovator of Solon’s scheme of government after it had been overthrown by Peisistratus. Probably he himself professed this object, since it would facilitate the success of his propositions: and if we confine ourselves to the letter of the case, the fact is in a great measure true, since the annual senate and the ekklesia are both Solonian,—but both of them under his reform were clothed in totally new circumstances, and swelled into gigantic proportions. How vigorous was the burst of Athenian enthusiasm, altering instantaneously the position of Athens among the powers of Greece, we shall hear presently from the lips of Herodotus, and shall find still more unequivocally marked in the facts of his history.

[257] See the valuable treatise of Schömann, De Comitiis, _passim_; also his Antiq. Jur. Publ. Gr. ch. xxxi; Harpokration, v. Κυρία Ἐκκλησία; Pollux, viii, 95.

But it was not only the people formally installed in their ekklesia, who received from Kleisthenês the real attributes of sovereignty,—it was by him also that the people were first called into direct action as dikasts, or jurors. I have already remarked, that this custom may be said, in a certain limited sense, to have begun in the time of Solon, since that lawgiver invested the popular assembly with the power of pronouncing the judgment of accountability upon the archons after their year of office. Here, again, the building, afterwards so spacious and stately, was erected on a Solonian foundation, though it was not itself Solonian. That the popular dikasteries, in the elaborate form in which they existed from Periklês downward, were introduced all at once by Kleisthenês, it is impossible to believe; yet the steps by which they were gradually wrought out are not distinctly discoverable. It would rather seem, that at first only the aggregate body of citizens above thirty years of age exercised judicial functions, being specially convoked and sworn to try persons accused of public crimes, and when so employed bearing the name of the heliæa, or heliasts; private offences and disputes between man and man being still determined by individual magistrates in the city, and a considerable judicial power still residing in the Senate of Areopagus. There is reason to believe that this was the state of things established by Kleisthenês, and which afterwards came to be altered by the greater extent of judicial duty gradually accruing to the heliasts, so that it was necessary to subdivide the collective heliæa. According to the subdivision, as practised in the times best known, six thousand citizens above thirty years of age were annually selected by lot out of the whole number, six hundred from each of the ten tribes: five thousand of these citizens were arranged in ten pannels or decuries of five hundred each, the remaining one thousand being reserved to fill up vacancies in case of death or absence among the former. The whole six thousand took a prescribed oath, couched in very striking words, and every man received a ticket inscribed with his own name as well as with a letter designating his decury. When there were causes or crimes ripe for trial, the thesmothets, or six inferior archons, determined by lot, first, which decuries should sit, according to the number wanted,—next, in which court, or under the presidency of what magistrate, the decury B or E should sit, so that it could not be known beforehand in what cause each would be judge. In the number of persons who actually attended and sat, however, there seems to have been much variety, and sometimes two decuries sat together.[258] The arrangement here described, we must recollect, is given to us as belonging to those times when the dikasts received a regular pay, after every day’s sitting; and it can hardly have long continued without that condition, which was not realized before the time of Periklês. Each of these decuries sitting in judicature was called _The Heliæa_,—a name which belongs properly to the collective assembly of the people; this collective assembly having been itself the original judicature. I conceive that the practice of distributing this collective assembly, or heliæa, into sections of jurors for judicial duty, may have begun under one form or another soon after the reform of Kleisthenês, since the direct interference of the people in public affairs tended more and more to increase. But it could only have been matured by degrees into that constant and systematic service which the pay of Periklês called forth at last in completeness. Under the last-mentioned system the judicial competence of the archons was annulled, and the third archon, or polemarch, withdrawn from all military functions. Still, this had not been yet done at the time of the battle of Marathon, in which Kallimachus the polemarch not only commanded along with the stratêgi, but enjoyed a sort of preëminence over them: nor had it been done during the year after the battle of Marathon, in which Aristeidês was archon,—for the magisterial decisions of Aristeidês formed one of the principal foundations of his honorable surname, the Just.[259]

[258] See in particular on this subject the treatise of Schömann, De Sortitione Judicum (Gripswald, 1820), and the work of the same author, Antiq. Jur. Publ. Græc. ch. 49-55, p. 264, _seqq._; also Heffter, Die Athenäische Gerichtsverfassung, part ii, ch. 2, p. 51, _seqq._; Meier and Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, pp. 127-135.

The views of Schömann respecting the sortition of the Athenian jurors have been bitterly attacked, but in no way refuted, by F. V. Fritzsche (De Sortitione Judicum apud Athenienses Conmentatio, Leipsic, 1835).

Two or three of these dikastic tickets, marking the name and the deme of the citizen, and the letter of the decury to which during that particular year he belonged, have been recently dug up near Athens:—

Δ. Διόδωρος Ε. Δεινίας Φρεάῤῥιος. Ἀλαιεύς.

(Boeckh, Corp. Inscrip. Nos. 207-208.)

Fritzsche (p. 73) considers these to be tickets of senators, not of dikasts, contrary to all probability.

For the Heliastic oath, and its remarkable particulars, see Demosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 746. See also Aristophanês, Plutus, 277 (with the valuable Scholia, though from different hands and not all of equal correctness) and 972; Ekklesiazusæ, 678, _seqq._

[259] Plutarch, Arist. 7; Herodot. vi, 109-111.

With this question, as to the comparative extent of judicial power vested by Kleisthenês in the popular dikastery and the archons, are in reality connected two others in Athenian constitutional law; relating, first, to the admissibility of all citizens for the post of archon,—next, to the choosing of archons by lot. It is well known that, in the time of Periklês, the archons, and various other individual functionaries, had come to be chosen by lot,—moreover, all citizens were legally admissible, and might give in their names to be drawn for by lot, subject to what was called the dokimasy, or legal examination into their status of citizen, and into various moral and religious qualifications, before they took office; while at the same time the function of the archon had become nothing higher than preliminary examination of parties and witnesses for the dikastery, and presidence over it when afterwards assembled, together with the power of imposing by authority a fine of small amount upon inferior offenders.

Now all these three political arrangements hang essentially together. The great value of the lot, according to Grecian democratical ideas, was that it equalized the chance of office between rich and poor. But so long as the poor citizens were legally inadmissible, choice by lot could have no recommendation either to the rich or to the poor; in fact, it would be less democratical than election by the general mass of citizens, because the poor citizen would under the latter system enjoy an important right of interference by means of his suffrage, though he could not be elected himself.[260] Again, choice by lot could never under any circumstances be applied to those posts where special competence, and a certain measure of attributes possessed only by a few, could not be dispensed with without obvious peril,—nor was it ever applied, throughout the whole history of democratical Athens, to the stratêgi, or generals, who were always elected by show of hands of the assembled citizens. Accordingly, we may regard it as certain that, at the time when the archons first came to be chosen by lot, the superior and responsible duties once attached to that office had been, or were in course of being, detached from it, and transferred either to the popular dikasts or to the ten elected stratêgi: so that there remained to these archons only a routine of police and administration, important indeed to the state, yet such as could be executed by any citizen of average probity, diligence, and capacity. At least there was no obvious absurdity in thinking so; and the dokimasy excluded from the office men of notoriously discreditable life, even after they might have drawn the successful lot. Periklês,[261] though chosen stratêgus, year after year successively, was never archon; and it may even be doubted whether men of first-rate talents and ambition often gave in their names for the office. To those of smaller aspirations[262] it was doubtless a source of importance, but it imposed troublesome labor, gave no pay, and entailed a certain degree of peril upon any archon who might have given offence to powerful men, when he came to pass through the trial of accountability which followed immediately upon his year of office. There was little to make the office acceptable either to very poor men, or to very rich and ambitious men; and between the middling persons who gave in their names, any one might be taken without great practical mischief, always assuming the two guarantees of the dokimasy before, and accountability after, office. This was the conclusion—in my opinion a mistaken conclusion, and such as would find no favor at present—to which the democrats of Athens were conducted by their strenuous desire to equalize the chances of office for rich and poor. But their sentiment seems to have been satisfied by a partial enforcement of the lot to the choice of some offices,—especially the archons, as the primitive chief magistrates of the state,—without applying it to all, or to the most responsible and difficult. Nor would they have applied it to the archons, if it had been indispensably necessary that these magistrates should retain their original very serious duty of judging disputes and condemning offenders.

[260] Aristotle puts these two together; election of magistrates by the mass of the citizens, but only out of persons possessing a high pecuniary qualification; this he ranks as the least democratical democracy, if one may use the phrase (Politic. iii, 6-11), or a mean between democracy and oligarchy,—an ἀριστοκρατία, or πολιτεῖα, in his sense of the word (iv, 7, 3). He puts the employment of the lot as a symptom of decisive and extreme democracy, such as would never tolerate a pecuniary qualification of eligibility.

So again Plato (Legg. iii, p. 692), after remarking that the legislator of Sparta first provided the senate, next the ephors, as a bridle upon the kings, says of the ephors that they were “something nearly approaching to an authority emanating from the lot,”—οἷον ψάλιον ἐνέβαλεν αὐτῇ τὴν τῶν ἐφόρων δύναμιν, ἐγγὺς τῆς κληρωτῆς ἀγαγὼν δυνάμεως.

Upon which passage there are some good remarks in Schömann’s edition of Plutarch’s Lives of Agis and Kleomenês (Comment. ad Ag. c. 8, p. 119). It is to be recollected that the actual mode in which the Spartan ephors were chosen, as I have already stated in my first volume, cannot be clearly made out, and has been much debated by critics:—

“Mihi hæc verba, quum illud quidem manifestum faciant, quod etiam aliunde constat, sorte captos ephoros non esse, tum hoc alterum, quod Hermannus statuit, creationem sortitioni non absimilem fuisse, nequaquam demonstrare videntur. Nimirum nihil aliud nisi prope accedere ephororum magistratus ad cos dicitur, qui sortito capiantur. _Sortitis autem magistratibus hoc maxime proprium est, ut promiscue—non ex genere, censu, dignitate—a quolibet capi possint_: quamobrem quum ephori quoque fere promiscue fierent ex omni multitudine civium, poterat haud dubie magistratus eorum ἐγγὺς τῆς κληρωτῆς δυνάμεως esse dici, etiamsi αἱρετοὶ essent—h. e. suffragiis creati. Et video Lachmannum quoque, p. 165, not. 1, de Platonis loco similiter judicare.”

The employment of the lot, as Schömann remarks, implies universal admissibility of all citizens to office: though the converse does not hold good,—the latter does not of necessity imply the former. Now, as we know that universal admissibility did not become the law of Athens until after the battle of Platæa, so we may conclude that the employment of the lot had no place before that epoch,—_i. e._ had no place under the constitution of Kleisthenês.

[261] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 9-16.

[262] See a passage about such characters in Plato, Republic, v, p. 475 B.

I think, therefore, that these three points: 1. The opening of the post of archon to all citizens indiscriminately; 2. The choice of archons by lot; 3. The diminished range of the archon’s duties and responsibilities, through the extension of those belonging to the popular courts of justice on the one hand and to the stratêgi on the other—are all connected together, and must have been simultaneous, or nearly simultaneous, in the time of introduction: the enactment of universal admissibility to office certainly not coming after the other two, and probably coming a little before them.

Now in regard to the eligibility of all Athenians indiscriminately to the office of archon, we find a clear and positive testimony as to the time when it was first introduced. Plutarch tells us[263] that the oligarchical,[264] but high-principled Aristeidês, was himself the proposer of this constitutional change,—shortly after the battle of Platæa, with the consequent expulsion of the Persians from Greece, and the return of the refugee Athenians to their ruined city. Seldom has it happened in the history of mankind, that rich and poor have been so completely equalized as among the population of Athens in that memorable expatriation and heroic struggle. Nor are we at all surprised to hear that the mass of the citizens, coming back with freshly-kindled patriotism as well as with the consciousness that their country had only been recovered by the equal efforts of all, would no longer submit to be legally disqualified from any office of state. It was on this occasion that the constitution was first made really “common” to all, and that the archons, stratêgi, and all functionaries, first began to be chosen from all Athenians without any difference of legal eligibility.[265] No mention is made of the lot, in this important statement of Plutarch, which appears to me every way worthy of credit, and which teaches us that, down to the invasion of Xerxês, not only had the exclusive principle of the Solonian law of qualification continued in force (whereby the first three classes on the census were alone admitted to all individual offices, and the fourth or Thêtic class excluded), but also the archons had hitherto been elected by the citizens,—not taken by lot.

[263] Plutarch, Arist. 22.

[264] So at least the supporters of the constitution of Kleisthenês were called by the contemporaries of Periklês.

[265] Plutarch, Arist. _ut sup._ γράφει ψήφισμα, κοινὴν εἶναι τὴν πολιτείαν, καὶ τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἐξ Ἀθηναίων πάντων αἱρεῖσθαι.

Now for financial purposes, the quadruple census of Solon was retained long after this period, even beyond the Peloponnesian war and the oligarchy of Thirty. But we thus learn that Kleisthenês in his constitution retained it for political purposes also, in part at least: he recognized the exclusion of the great mass of the citizens from all individual offices,—such as the archon, the stratêgus, etc. In his time, probably, no complaints were raised on the subject. His constitution gave to the collective bodies—senate, ekklesia, and heliæa, or dikastery—a degree of power and importance such as they had never before known or imagined: and we may well suppose that the Athenian people of that day had no objection even to the proclaimed system and theory of being exclusively governed by men of wealth and station as individual magistrates,—especially since many of the newly-enfranchised citizens had been previously metics and slaves. Indeed, it is to be added that, even under the full democracy of later Athens, though the people had then become passionately attached to the theory of equal admissibility of all citizens to office, yet, in practice, poor men seldom obtained offices which were elected by the general vote, as will appear more fully in the course of this history.[266]

[266] So in the Italian republics of the twelfth and thirteenth century, the nobles long continued to possess the exclusive right of being elected to the consulate and the great offices of state, even after those offices had come to be elected by the people: the habitual misrule and oppression of the nobles gradually put an end to this right, and even created in many towns a resolution positively to exclude them. At Milan, towards the end of the twelfth century, the twelve consuls, with the Podestat, possessed all the powers of government: these consuls were nominated by one hundred electors chosen by and among the people. Sismondi observes: “Cependant le peuple imposa lui-même a ces électeurs, la règle fondamentale de choisir tous les magistrats dans le corps de la noblesse. Ce n’étoit point encore la possession des magistratures que l’on contestoit aux gentilshommes: on demandoit seulement qu’ils fussent les mandataires immédiats de la nation. Mais plus d’une fois, en dépit du droit incontestable des citoyens, les consuls regnant s’attribuèrent l’élection de leurs successeurs.” (Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, chap. xii, vol. ii, p. 240.)

The choice of the stratêgi remained ever afterwards upon the footing on which Aristeidês thus placed it. But the lot for the choice of archon must have been introduced shortly after his proposition of universal eligibility, and in consequence too of the same tide of democratical feeling,—introduced as a farther corrective, because the poor citizen, though he had become eligible, was nevertheless not elected. And at the same time, I imagine, that elaborate distribution of the Heliæa, or aggregate body of dikasts, or jurors, into separate pannels, or dikasteries, for the decision of judicial matters, was first regularized. It was this change that stole away from the archons so important a part of their previous jurisdiction: it was this change that Periklês more fully consummated by insuring pay to the dikasts. But the present is not the time to enter into the modifications which Athens underwent during the generation after the battle of Platæa. They have been here briefly noticed for the purpose of reasoning back, in the absence of direct evidence, to Athens as it stood in the generation before that memorable battle, after the reform of Kleisthenês. His reform, though highly democratical, stopped short of the mature democracy which prevailed from Periklês to Demosthenês, in three ways especially, among various others; and it is therefore sometimes considered by the later writers as an aristocratical constitution:[267] 1. It still recognized the archons as judges to a considerable extent, and the third archon, or polemarch, as joint military commander along with the stratêgi. 2. It retained them as elected annually by the body of citizens, not as chosen by lot.[268] 3. It still excluded the fourth class of the Solonian census from all individual office, the archonship among the rest. The Solonian law of exclusion, however, though retained in principle, was mitigated in practice thus far,—that whereas Solon had rendered none but members of the highest class on the census (the Pentakosiomedimni) eligible to the archonship, Kleisthenês opened that dignity to all the first three classes, shutting out only the fourth. That he did this may be inferred from the fact that Aristeidês, assuredly not a rich man, became archon.

[267] Plutarch, Kimon, c. 15. τὴν ἐπὶ Κλεισθένους ἐγείρειν ἀριστοκρατίαν πειρωμένου: compare Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 2, and Isokratês, Areopagiticus, Or. vii, p. 143, p. 192, ed. Bek.

[268] Herodotus speaks of Kallimachus the Polemarch, at Marathon, as ὁ τῷ κυάμῳ λαχὼν Πολέμαρχος (vi, 110).

I cannot but think that in this case he transfers to the year 490 B. C. the practice of his own time. The polemarch, at the time of the battle of Marathon, was in a certain sense the first stratêgus; and the stratêgi were never taken by lot, but always chosen by show of hands, even to the end of the democracy. It seems impossible to believe that the stratêgi were elected, and that the polemarch, at the time when his functions were the same as theirs, was chosen by lot.

Herodotus seems to have conceived the choice of magistrates by lot as being of the essence of a democracy (Herodot. iii, 80).

Plutarch also (Periklês, c. 9) seems to have conceived the choice of archons by lot as a very ancient institution of Athens: nevertheless, it results from the first chapter of his life of Aristeidês,—an obscure chapter, in which conflicting authorities are mentioned without being well discriminated,—that Aristeidês was _chosen archon by the people_,—not drawn by lot: an additional reason for believing this is, that he was archon in the year following the battle of Marathon, at which, he had been one of the ten generals. Idomeneus distinctly affirmed this to be the fact.—οὐ κυαμευτὸν, ἀλλ᾽ ἑλομένων Ἀθηναίων (Plutarch, Arist. c. 1).

Isokratês also (Areopagit. Or. vii, p. 144, p. 195, ed. Bekker) conceived the constitution of Kleisthenês as including all the three points noticed in the text: 1. A high pecuniary qualification of eligibility for individual offices. 2. Election to these offices by all the citizens, and accountability to the same after office. 3. No employment of the lot.—He even contends that this election is more truly democratical than sortition; since the latter process might admit men attached to oligarchy, which would not happen under the former,—ἔπειτα καὶ δημοτικωτέραν ἐνόμιζον ταύτην τὴν κατάστασιν ἢ τὴν διὰ τοῦ λαγχάνειν γιγνομένην· ἐν μὲν γὰρ τῇ κληρώσει τὴν τύχην βραβεύσειν, καὶ πολλάκις λήψεσθαι τὰς ἀρχὰς τοὺς τῆς ὀλιγαρχίας ἐπιθυμοῦντας, etc. This would be a good argument if there were no pecuniary qualification for eligibility,—such pecuniary qualification is a provision which he lays down, but which he does not find it convenient to insist upon emphatically.

I do not here advert to the γραφὴ παρανόμων, the νομοφύλακες, and the sworn νομόθεται,—all of them institutions belonging to the time of Periklês at the earliest; not to that of Kleisthenês.

I am also inclined to believe that the Senate of Five Hundred, as constituted by Kleisthenês, was taken, not by election, but by lot, from the ten tribes,—and that every citizen became eligible to it. Election for this purpose—that is, the privilege of annually electing a batch of fifty senators, all at once, by each tribe—would probably be thought more troublesome than valuable; nor do we hear of separate meetings of each tribe for purposes of election. Moreover, the office of senator was a collective, not an individual office; the shock, therefore, to the feelings of semi-democratized Athens, from the unpleasant idea of a poor man sitting among the fifty prytanes, would be less than if they conceived him as polemarch at the head of the right wing of the army, or as an archon administering justice.

A farther difference between the constitution of Solon and that of Kleisthenês is to be found in the position of the Senate of Areopagus. Under the former, that senate had been the principal body in the state, and he had even enlarged its powers; under the latter, it must have been treated at first as an enemy, and kept down. For as it was composed only of all the past archons, and as, during the preceding thirty years, every archon had been a creature of the Peisistratids, the Areopagites collectively must have been both hostile and odious to Kleisthenês and his partisans,—perhaps a fraction of its members might even retire into exile with Hippias. Its influence must have been sensibly lessened by the change of party, until it came to be gradually filled by fresh archons springing from the bosom of the Kleisthenean constitution. But during this important interval, the new-modelled Senate of Five Hundred, and the popular assembly, stepped into that ascendency which they never afterwards lost. From the time of Kleisthenês forward, the Areopagites cease to be the chief and prominent power in the state: yet they are still considerable; and when the second fill of the democratical tide took place, after the battle of Platæa, they became the focus of that which was then considered as the party of oligarchical resistance. I have already remarked that the archons, during the intermediate time (about 509-477 B. C.), were all elected by the ekklesia, not chosen by lot,—and that the fourth (or poorest and most numerous) class on the census were by law then ineligible; while election at Athens, even when every citizen without exception was an elector and eligible, had a natural tendency to fall upon men of wealth and station. We thus see how it happened that the past archons, when united in the Senate of Areopagus, infused into that body the sympathies, prejudices, and interests of the richer classes. It was this which brought them into conflict with the more democratical party headed by Periklês and Ephialtês, in times when portions of the Kleisthenean constitution had come to be discredited as too much imbued with oligarchy.

One other remarkable institution, distinctly ascribed to Kleisthenês, yet remains to be noticed,—the Ostracism; upon which I have already made some remarks,[269] in touching upon the memorable Solonian proclamation against neutrality in a sedition. It is hardly too much to say that, without this protective process, none of the other institutions would have reached maturity.

[269] See above, chap. xi. vol. iii. p. 145.

By the ostracism, a citizen was banished without special accusation, trial, or defence, for a term of ten years,—subsequently diminished to five. His property was not taken away, nor his reputation tainted; so that the penalty consisted solely in the banishment from his native city to some other Greek city. As to reputation, the ostracism was a compliment rather than otherwise;[270] and so it was vividly felt to be, when, about ninety years after Kleisthenês, the conspiracy between Nikias and Alkibiadês fixed it upon Hyperbolus. The two former had both recommended the taking of an ostracizing vote, each hoping to cause the banishment of the other; but before the day arrived, they accommodated the difference. To fire off the safety-gun of the republic against a person so little dangerous as Hyperbolus, was denounced as the prostitution of a great political ceremony: “it was not against such men as him (said the comic writer, Plato),[271] that the oyster-shell (or potsherd) was intended to be used.” The process of ostracism was carried into effect by writing upon a shell, or potsherd, the name of the person whom a citizen thought it prudent for a time to banish; which shell, when deposited in the proper vessel, counted for a vote towards the sentence.

[270] Aristeidês Rhetor. Orat. xlvi. vol ii. p. 317, ed. Dindorf.

[271] Plutarch (Nikias, c. 11; Alkibiad. c. 13; Aristeid. c. 7): Thucyd. viii, 73. Plato Comicus said, respecting Hyperbolus—

Οὐ γὰρ τοιούτων οὕνεκ᾽ ὄστραχ᾽ ηὑρέθη.

Theophrastus had stated that Phæax, and not Nikias, was the rival of Alkibiadês on this occasion, when Hyperbolus was ostracized; but most authors, says Plutarch, represent Nikias as the person. It is curious that there should be any difference of statement about a fact so notorious, and in the best-known time of Athenian history.

Taylor thinks that the oration which now passes as that of Andokidês against Alkibiadês, is really by Phæax, and was read by Plutarch as the oration of Phæax in an actual contest of ostracism between Phæax, Nikias, and Alkibiadês. He is opposed by Ruhnken and Valckenaer (see Sluiter’s preface to that oration, c. 1, and Ruhnken, Hist. Critic. Oratt. Græcor. p. 135). I cannot agree with either: I cannot think with him, that it is a real oration of Phæax; nor with them, that it is a real oration in any genuine cause of ostracism whatever. It appears to me to have been composed after the ostracism had fallen into desuetude, and when the Athenians had not only become somewhat ashamed of it, but had lost the familiar conception of what it really was. For how otherwise can we explain the fact, that the author of that oration complains that he is about to be ostracized without any secret voting, in which the very essence of the ostracism consisted, and from which its name was borrowed (οὔτε διαψηφισαμένων κρυβδὴν, c. 2)? His oration is framed as if the audience whom he was addressing were about to ostracize one out of the three, by show of hands. But the process of ostracizing included no meeting and haranguing,—nothing but simple deposit of the shells in a cask; as may be seen by the description of the special railing-in of the agora, and by the story (true or false) of the unlettered country-citizen coming into the city to give his vote, and asking Aristeidês, without even knowing his person, to write the name for him on the shell (Plutarch, Aristeid. c. 7). There was, indeed, previous discussion in the senate as well as in the ekklesia, whether a vote of ostracism should be entered upon at all; but the author of the oration to which I allude does not address himself to _that_ question; he assumes that the vote is actually about to be taken, and that one of the three—himself, Nikias, or Alkibiadês—must be ostracized (c. 1). Now, doubtless, in practice, the decision commonly lay between two formidable rivals; but it was not publicly or formally put so before the people: every citizen might write upon the shell such name as he chose. Farther, the open denunciation of the injustice of ostracism as a system (c. 2), proves an age later than the banishment of Hyperbolus. Moreover, the author having begun by remarking that he stands in contest with Nikias as well as with Alkibiadês, says nothing more about Nikias to the end of the speech.

I have already observed that all the governments of the Grecian cities, when we compare them with that idea which a modern reader is apt to conceive of the measure of force belonging to a government, were essentially weak, the good as well as the bad,—the democratical, the oligarchical, and the despotic. The force in the hands of any government, to cope with conspirators or mutineers, was extremely small, with the single exception of a despot surrounded by his mercenary troop; so that no tolerably sustained conspiracy or usurper could be put down except by the direct aid of the people in support of the government; which amounted to a dissolution, for the time, of constitutional authority, and was pregnant with reactionary consequences such as no man could foresee. To prevent powerful men from attempting usurpation was, therefore, of the greatest possible moment; and a despot or an oligarchy might exercise preventive means at pleasure,[272] much sharper than the ostracism, such as the assassination of Kimon, mentioned in my last chapter, as directed by the Peisistratids. At the very least, they might send away any one, from whom they apprehended attack or danger, without incurring even so much as the imputation of severity. But in a democracy, where arbitrary action of the magistrate was the thing of all others most dreaded, and where fixed laws, with trial and defence as preliminaries to punishment, were conceived by the ordinary citizen as the guarantees of his personal security and as the pride of his social condition,—the creation of such an exceptional power presented serious difficulty. If we transport ourselves to the times of Kleisthenês, immediately after the expulsion of the Peisistratids, when the working of the democratical machinery was as yet untried, we shall find this difficulty at its maximum; but we shall also find the necessity of vesting such a power somewhere absolutely imperative. For the great Athenian nobles had yet to learn the lesson of respect for any constitution; their past history had exhibited continual struggles between the armed factions of Megaklês, Lykurgus, and Peisistratus, put down after a time by the superior force and alliances of the latter. And though Kleisthenês, the son of Megaklês, might be firmly disposed to renounce the example of his father, and to act as the faithful citizen of a fixed constitution,—he would know but too well that the sons of his father’s companions and rivals would follow out ambitious purposes without any regard to the limits imposed by law, if ever they acquired sufficient partisans to present a fair prospect of success. Moreover, when any two candidates for power, with such reckless dispositions, came into a bitter personal rivalry, the motives to each of them, arising as well out of fear as out of ambition, to put down his opponent at any cost to the constitution, might well become irresistible, unless some impartial and discerning interference could arrest the strife in time. “If the Athenians were wise (Aristeidês is reported to have said,[273] in the height and peril of his parliamentary struggle with Themistoklês), they would cast both Themistoklês and me into the barathrum.”[274] And whoever reads the sad narrative of the Korkyræan sedition, in the third book of Thucydidês, together with the reflections of the historian upon it,[275] will trace the gradual exasperation of these party feuds, beginning even under democratical forms, until at length they break down the barriers of public as well as of private morality.

[272] See the discussion of the ostracism in Aristot. Politic. iii, 8, where he recognizes the problem as one common to all governments.

Compare, also, a good Dissertation—J. A. Paradys, De Ostracismo Atheniensium, Lugduni Batavor. 1793; K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staatsalterthümer, ch. 130; and Schömann, Antiq. Jur. Pub. Græc. ch. xxxv, p. 233.

[273] Plutarch, Aristeid. c. 3.

[274] The barathrum was a deep pit, said to have had iron spikes at the bottom, into which criminals condemned to death were sometimes cast. Though probably an ancient Athenian punishment, it seems to have become at the very least extremely rare, if not entirely disused, during the times of Athens historically known to us; but the phrase continued in speech after the practice had become obsolete. The iron spikes depend on the evidence of the Schol. Aristophan. Plutus, 431,—a very doubtful authority, when we read the legend which he blends with his statement.

[275] Thucyd. iii, 70, 81, 82.

Against this chance of internal assailants Kleisthenês had to protect the democratical constitution,—first, by throwing impediments in their way and rendering it difficult for them to procure the requisite support; next, by eliminating them before any violent projects were ripe for execution. To do either the one or the other, it was necessary to provide such a constitution as would not only conciliate the good-will, but kindle the passionate attachment, of the mass of citizens, insomuch that not even any considerable minority should be deliberately inclined to alter it by force. It was necessary to create in the multitude, and through them to force upon the leading ambitious men, that rare and difficult sentiment which we may term a constitutional morality; a paramount reverence for the forms of the constitution, enforcing obedience to the authorities

## acting under and within those forms, yet combined with the habit of

open speech, of action subject only to definite legal control, and unrestrained censure of those very authorities as to all their public acts,—combined too with a perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the constitution will be not less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own. This coexistence of freedom and self-imposed restraint,—of obedience to authority with unmeasured censure of the persons exercising it,—may be found in the aristocracy of England (since about 1688) as well as in the democracy of the American United States: and because we are familiar with it, we are apt to suppose it a natural sentiment; though there seem to be few sentiments more difficult to establish and diffuse among a community, judging by the experience of history. We may see how imperfectly it exists at this day in the Swiss cantons; and the many violences of the first French revolution illustrate, among various other lessons, the fatal effects arising from its absence, even among a people high in the scale of intelligence. Yet the diffusion of such constitutional morality, not merely among the majority of any community, but throughout the whole, is the indispensable condition of a government at once free and peaceable; since even any powerful and obstinate minority may render the working of free institutions impracticable, without being strong enough to conquer ascendency for themselves. Nothing less than unanimity, or so overwhelming a majority as to be tantamount to unanimity, on the cardinal point of respecting constitutional forms, even by those who do not wholly approve of them, can render the excitement of political passion bloodless, and yet expose all the authorities in the state to the full license of pacific criticism.

At the epoch of Kleisthenês, which by a remarkable coincidence is the same as that of the regifuge at Rome, such constitutional morality, if it existed anywhere else, had certainly no place at Athens; and the first creation of it in any particular society must be esteemed an interesting historical fact. By the spirit of his reforms,—equal, popular, and comprehensive, far beyond the previous experience of Athenians,—he secured the hearty attachment of the body of citizens; but from the first generation of leading men, under the nascent democracy, and with such precedents as they had to look back upon, no self-imposed limits to ambition could be expected: and the problem required was to eliminate beforehand any one about to transgress these limits, so as to escape the necessity of putting him down afterwards, with all that bloodshed and reaction, in the midst of which the free working of the constitution would be suspended at least, if not irrevocably extinguished. To acquire such influence as would render him dangerous under democratical forms, a man must stand in evidence before the public, so as to afford some reasonable means of judging of his character and purposes; and the security which Kleisthenês provided, was, to call in the positive judgment of the citizens respecting his future promise purely and simply, so that they might not remain too long neutral between two formidable political rivals,—pursuant in a certain way to the Solonian proclamation against neutrality in a sedition, as I have already remarked in a former chapter. He incorporated in the constitution itself the principle of _privilegium_ (to employ the Roman phrase, which signifies, not a peculiar favor granted to any one, but a peculiar inconvenience imposed), yet only under circumstances solemn and well defined, with full notice and discussion beforehand, and by the positive secret vote of a large proportion of the citizens. “No law shall be made against any single citizen, without the same being made against _all_ Athenian citizens; unless it shall so seem good to six thousand citizens voting secretly.”[276] Such was that general principle of the constitution, under which the ostracism was a particular case. Before the vote of ostracism could be taken, a case was to be made out in the senate and the public assembly to justify it. In the sixth prytany of the year, these two bodies debated and determined whether the state of the republic was menacing enough to call for such an exceptional measure.[277] If they decided in the affirmative, a day was named, the agora was railed round, with ten entrances left for the citizens of each tribe, and ten separate casks or vessels for depositing the suffrages, which consisted of a shell, or a potsherd, with the name of the person written on it whom each citizen designed to banish. At the end of the day, the number of votes was summed up, and if six thousand votes were found to have been given against any one person, that person was ostracized; if not, the ceremony ended in nothing.[278] Ten days were allowed to him for settling his affairs, after which he was required to depart from Attica for ten years, but retained his property, and suffered no other penalty.

[276] Andokidês, De Mysteriis, p. 12, c. 13. Μηδὲ νόμον ἐπ᾽ ἀνδρὶ ἐξεῖναι θεῖναι, ἐὰν μὴ τὸν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσιν Ἀθηναίοις· ἐὰν μὴ ἑξακισχιλίοις δόξῃ, κρυβδὴν ψηφιζομένοις. According to the usual looseness in dealing with the name of Solon, this has been called a law of Solon (see Petit. Leg. Att. p. 188), though it certainly cannot be older than Kleisthenês.

“Privilegia ne irroganto,” said the law of the Twelve Tables at Rome (Cicero, Legg. iii, 4-19).

[277] Aristotle and Philochorus, ap. Photium, App. p. 672 and 675, ed. Porson.

It would rather appear by that passage that the ostracism was never formally abrogated; and that even in the later times, to which the description of Aristotle refers, the form was still preserved of putting the question whether the public safety called for an ostracizing vote, long after it had passed both out of use and out of mind.

[278] Philochorus, _ut supra_; Plutarch, Aristeid. c. 7; Schol. ad Aristophan. Equit. 851; Pollux, viii, 19.

There is a difference of opinion among the authorities, as well as among the expositors, whether the minimum of six thousand applies to the votes given in all, or to the votes given against any one name. I embrace the latter opinion, which is supported by Philochorus, Pollux, and the Schol. on Aristophanês, though Plutarch countenances the former. Boeckh, in his Public Economy of Athens, and Wachsmuth, (i, 1, p. 272) are in favor of Plutarch and the former opinion; Paradys (Dissertat. De Ostr. p. 25), Platner, and Hermann (see K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Gr. Staatsalt. ch. 130, not. 6) support the other, which appears to me the right one.

For the purpose, so unequivocally pronounced, of the general law determining the absolute minimum necessary for a _privilegium_, would by no means be obtained, if the simple majority of votes, among six thousand voters in all, had been allowed to take effect. A person might then be ostracized with a very small number of votes against him, and without creating any reasonable presumption that he was dangerous to the constitution; which was by no means either the purpose of Kleisthenês, or the well-understood operation of the ostracism, so long as it continued to be a reality.

It was not the maxim at Athens to escape the errors of the people, by calling in the different errors, and the sinister interest besides, of an extra-popular or privileged few; nor was any third course open, since the principles of representative government were not understood, nor indeed conveniently applicable to very small communities. Beyond the judgment of the people—so the Athenians felt—there was no appeal; and their grand study was to surround the delivery of that judgment with the best securities for rectitude and the best preservatives against haste, passion, or private corruption. Whatever measure of good government could not be obtained in that way, could not, in their opinion, be obtained at all. I shall illustrate the Athenian proceedings on this head more fully when I come to speak of the working of their mature democracy: meanwhile, in respect to this grand protection of the nascent democracy,—the vote of ostracism,—it will be found that the securities devised by Kleisthenês, for making the sentence effectual against the really dangerous man, and against no one else, display not less foresight than patriotism. The main object was, to render the voting an expression of deliberate public feeling, as distinguished from mere factious antipathy: the large minimum of votes required, one-fourth of the entire citizen population, went far to insure this effect,—the more so, since each vote, taken as it was in a secret manner, counted unequivocally for the expression of a genuine and independent sentiment, and could neither be coerced nor bought. Then again, Kleisthenês did not permit the process of ostracizing to be opened against any one citizen exclusively. If opened at all, every one without exception was exposed to the sentence; so that the friends of Themistoklês could not invoke it against Aristeidês,[279] nor those of the latter against the former, without exposing their own leader to the same chance of exile. It was not likely to be invoked at all, therefore, until exasperation had proceeded so far as to render both parties insensible to this chance,—the precise index of that growing internecive hostility, which the ostracism prevented from coming to a head. Nor could it even then be ratified, unless a case was shown to convince the more neutral portion of the senate and the ekklesia: moreover, after all, the ekklesia did not itself ostracize, but a future day was named, and the whole body of the citizens were solemnly invited to vote. It was in this way that security was taken not only for making the ostracism effectual in protecting the constitution, but to hinder it from being employed for any other purpose. And we must recollect that it exercised its tutelary influence, not merely on those occasions when it was actually employed, but by the mere knowledge that it might be employed, and by the restraining effect which that knowledge produced on the conduct of the great men. Again, the ostracism, though essentially of an exceptional nature, was yet an exception sanctified and limited by the constitution itself; so that the citizen, in giving his ostracizing vote, did not in any way depart from the constitution or lose his reverence for it. The issue placed before him—“Is there any man whom you think vitally dangerous to the state? if so, whom?”—though vague, was yet raised directly and legally. Had there been no ostracism, it might probably have been raised both indirectly and illegally, on the occasion of some special imputed crime of a suspected political leader, when accused before a court of justice, —a perversion, involving all the mischief of the ostracism, without its protective benefits.

[279] The practical working of the ostracism presents it as a struggle between two contending leaders, accompanied with chance of banishment to both—Periklês πρὸς τὸν Θουκυδίδην εἰς ἀγῶνα περὶ τοῦ ὀστράκου καταστὰς, καὶ διακινδυνεύσας, ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἐξέβαλε, κατέλυσε δὲ τὴν ἀντιτεταγμένην ἑταιρείαν (Plutarch, Periklês, c. 14; compare Plutarch, Nikias, c. 11).

Care was taken to divest the ostracism of all painful consequence except what was inseparable from exile; and this is not one of the least proofs of the wisdom with which it was devised. Most certainly, it never deprived the public of candidates for political influence: and when we consider the small amount of individual evil which it inflicted,—evil too diminished, in the cases of Kimon and Aristeidês, by a reactionary sentiment which augmented their subsequent popularity after return,—two remarks will be quite sufficient to offer in the way of justification. First, it completely produced its intended effect; for the democracy grew up from infancy to manhood without a single attempt to overthrow it by force,[280]—a result, upon which no reflecting contemporary of Kleisthenês could have ventured to calculate. Next, through such tranquil working of the democratical forms, a constitutional morality quite sufficiently complete was produced among the leading Athenians, to enable the people after a certain time to dispense with that exceptional security which the ostracism offered.[281] To the nascent democracy, it was absolutely indispensable; to the growing yet militant democracy, it was salutary; but the full-grown democracy both could and did stand without it. The ostracism passed upon Hyperbolus, about ninety years after Kleisthenês, was the last occasion of its employment. And even this can hardly be considered as a serious instance: it was a trick concerted between two distinguished Athenians (Nikias and Alkibiadês), to turn to their own political account a process already coming to be antiquated. Nor would such a manœuvre have been possible, if the contemporary Athenian citizens had been penetrated with the same, serious feeling of the value of ostracism as a safeguard of democracy, as had been once entertained by their fathers and grandfathers. Between Kleisthenês and Hyperbolus, we hear of about ten different persons as having been banished by ostracism. First of all, Hipparchus of the deme Cholargus, the son of Charmus, a relative of the recently-expelled Peisistratid despots;[282] then Aristeidês, Themistoklês, Kimon, and Thucydidês son of Melêsias, all of them renowned political leaders; also Alkibiadês and Megaklês (the paternal and maternal grandfathers of the distinguished Alkibiadês), and Kallias, belonging to another eminent family at Athens;[283] lastly, Damôn, the preceptor of Periklês in poetry and music, and eminent for his acquisitions in philosophy.[284] In this last case comes out the vulgar side of humanity, aristocratical as well as democratical; for with both, the process of philosophy and the persons of philosophers are wont to be alike unpopular. Even Kleisthenês himself is said to have been ostracized under his own law, and Xanthippus; but both upon authority too weak to trust.[285] Miltiadês was not ostracized at all, but tried and punished for misconduct in his command.

[280] It is not necessary in this remark to take notice, either of the oligarchy of Four Hundred, or that of Thirty, called the Thirty Tyrants, established during the closing years of the Peloponnesian war, and after the ostracism had been discontinued. Neither of these changes were brought about by the excessive ascendency of any one or few men: both of them grew out of the embarrassments and dangers of Athens in the latter period of her great foreign war.

[281] Aristotle (Polit. iii, 8, 6) seems to recognize the political necessity of the ostracism, as applied even to obvious superiority of wealth, connection, etc. (which he distinguishes pointedly from superiority of merit and character), and upon principles of symmetry only, even apart from dangerous designs on the part of the superior mind. No painter, he observes, will permit a foot, in his picture of a man, to be of disproportionate size with the entire body, though separately taken it may be finely painted; nor will the chorus-master allow any one voice, however beautiful, to predominate beyond a certain proportion over the rest.

His final conclusion is, however, that the legislator ought, if possible, so to construct his constitution, as to have no need of such exceptional remedy; but, if this cannot be done, then the second-best step is to apply the ostracism. Compare also v, 2, 5.

The last century of the free Athenian democracy realized the first of these alternatives.

[282] Plutarch, Nikias, c. 11: Harpokration. v. Ἵππαρχος.

[283] Lysias cont. Alkibiad. A. c. 11, p. 143: Harpokration. v. Ἀλκιβιάδης; Andokidês cont. Alkibiad. c. 11-12, pp. 129, 130: this last oration may afford evidence as to the facts mentioned in it, though I cannot imagine it to be either genuine, or belonging to the time to which it professes to refer, as has been observed in a previous note.

[284] Plutarch, Periklês. c. 4; Plutarch. Aristeid. c. 1.

[285] Ælian, V. H. xiii, 24; Herakleidês, περὶ Πολιτειῶν, c. 1, ed. Köhler.

I should hardly have said so much about this memorable and peculiar institution of Kleisthenês, if the erroneous accusations against the Athenian democracy,—of envy, injustice, and ill-treatment of their superior men, had not been greatly founded upon it, and if such criticisms had not passed from ancient times to modern with little examination. In monarchical governments, a pretender to the throne, numbering a certain amount of supporters, is, as a matter of course, excluded from the country. The duke of Bordeaux cannot now reside in France,—nor could Napoleon after 1815,—nor Charles Edward in England during the last century. No man treats this as any extravagant injustice, yet it is the parallel of the ostracism,—with a stronger case in favor of the latter, inasmuch as the change from one regal dynasty to another does not of necessity overthrow all the collateral institutions and securities of the country. Plutarch has affirmed that the ostracism arose from the envy and jealousy inherent in a democracy,[286] and not from justifiable fears,—an observation often repeated, yet not the less demonstrably untrue. Not merely because ostracism so worked as often to increase the influence of that political leader whose rival it removed,—but still more, because, if the fact had been as Plutarch says, this institution would have continued as long as the democracy; whereas it finished with the banishment of Hyperbolus, at a period when the government was more decisively democratical than it had been in the time of Kleisthenês. It was, in truth, a product altogether of fear and insecurity,[287] on the part both of the democracy and its best friends,—fear perfectly well-grounded, and only appearing needless because the precautions taken prevented attack. So soon as the diffusion of a constitutional morality had placed the mass of the citizens above all serious fear of an aggressive usurper the ostracism was discontinued. And doubtless the feeling, that it might safely be dispensed with, must have been strengthened by the long ascendency of Periklês,—by the spectacle of the greatest statesman whom Athens ever produced,

## acting steadily within the limits of the constitution; as well as by

the ill-success of his two opponents, Kimon and Thucydidês,—aided by numerous partisans and by the great comic writers, at a period when comedy was a power in the state such as it has never been before or since,—in their attempts to get him ostracized. They succeeded in fanning up the ordinary antipathy of the citizens towards philosophers, so far as to procure the ostracism of his friend and teacher Damôn: but Periklês himself, to repeat the complaint of his bitter enemy, the comic poet Kratinus,[288] “was out of the reach of the oyster-shell.” If Periklês was not conceived to be dangerous to the constitution, none of his successors were at all likely to be so regarded. Damôn and Hyperbolus were the two last persons ostracized: both of them were cases, and the only cases, of an unequivocal abuse of the institution, because, whatever the grounds of displeasure against them may have been, it is impossible to conceive either of them as menacing to the state,—whereas all the other known sufferers were men of such position and power, that the six or eight thousand citizens who inscribed each name on the shell, or at least a large proportion of them, may well have done so under the most conscientious belief that they were guarding the constitution against real danger. Such a change, in the character of the persons ostracized, plainly evinces that the ostracism had become dissevered from that genuine patriotic prudence which originally rendered it both legitimate and popular. It had served for two generations an inestimable tutelary purpose,—it lived to be twice dishonored,—and then passed, by universal acquiescence, into matter of history.

[286] Plutarch, Themistoklês, 22; Plutarch, Aristeidês, 7, παραμυθία φθόνου καὶ κουφισμός. See the same opinions repeated by Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, ch. 48, vol. i, p. 272, and by Platner, Prozess and Klagen bey den Attikern, vol. i, p. 386.

[287] Thucyd. viii, 73, διὰ δυνάμεως καὶ ἀξιώματος φόβον.

[288] Kratinus ap. Plutarch, Periklês, 13.

Ὁ σχινοκέφαλος Ζεὺς ὁδὶ προσέρχεται Περικλέης, τᾠδεῖον ἐπὶ τοῦ κρανíου Ἔχων, ἐπειδὴ τοὔστρακον παροίχεται.

For the attacks of the comic writers upon Damôn, see Plutarch, Periklês, c. 4.

A process analogous to the ostracism subsisted at Argos,[289] at Syracuse, and in some other Grecian democracies. Aristotle states that it was abused for factious purposes: and at Syracuse, where it was introduced after the expulsion of the Gelonian dynasty, Diodorus affirms that it was so unjustly and profusely applied, as to deter persons of wealth and station from taking any part in public affairs; for which reason it was speedily discontinued. We have no particulars to enable us to appreciate this general statement. But we cannot safely infer that because the ostracism worked on the whole well at Athens, it must necessarily have worked well in other states,—the more so, as we do not know whether it was surrounded with the same precautionary formalities, nor whether it even required the same large minimum of votes to make it effective. This latter guarantee, so valuable in regard to an institution essentially easy to abuse, is not noticed by Diodorus in his brief account of the Petalism,—so the process was denominated at Syracuse.[290]

[289] Aristot. Polit. iii, 8, 4; v, 2, 5.

[290] Diodor. xi, 55-87. This author describes very imperfectly the Athenian ostracism, transferring to it apparently the circumstances of the Syracusan Petalism.

Such was the first Athenian democracy, engendered as well by the reaction against Hippias and his dynasty as by the memorable partnership, whether spontaneous or compulsory, between Kleisthenês and the unfranchised multitude. It is to be distinguished, both from the mitigated oligarchy established by Solon before, and from the full-grown and symmetrical democracy which prevailed afterwards from the beginning of the Peloponnesian war towards the close of the career of Periklês. It was, indeed, a striking revolution, impressed upon the citizen not less by the sentiments to which it appealed than by the visible change which it made in political and social life. He saw himself marshalled in the ranks of hoplites, alongside of new companions in arms,—he was enrolled in a new register, and his property in a new schedule, in his deme and by his demarch, an officer before unknown,—he found the year distributed afresh, for all legal purposes, into ten parts bearing the name of prytanies, each marked by a solemn and free-spoken ekklesia, at which he had a right to be present,—that ekklesia was convoked and presided by senators called prytanes, members of a senate novel both as to number and distribution,—his political duties were now performed as member of a tribe, designated by a name not before pronounced in common Attic life, connected with one of ten heroes whose statues he now for the first time saw in the agora, and associating him with fellow-tribemen from all parts of Attica. All these and many others were sensible novelties, felt in the daily proceedings of the citizen. But the great novelty of all was, the authentic recognition of the ten new tribes as a sovereign dêmos, or people, apart from all specialties of phratric or gentile origin, with free speech and equal law; retaining no distinction except the four classes of the Solonian property-schedule with their gradations of eligibility. To a considerable proportion of citizens this great novelty was still farther endeared by the fact that it had raised them out of the degraded position of metics and slaves; and to the large majority of all the citizens, it furnished a splendid political idea, profoundly impressive to the Greek mind,—capable of calling forth the most ardent attachment as well as the most devoted sense of active obligation and obedience. We have now to see how their newly-created patriotism manifested itself.

Kleisthenês and his new constitution carried with them so completely the popular favor, that Isagoras had no other way of opposing it except by calling in the interference of Kleomenês and the Lacedæmonians. Kleomenês listened the more readily to this call, as he was reported to have been on an intimate footing with the wife of Isagoras. He prepared to come to Athens; but his first aim was to deprive the democracy of its great leader Kleisthenês, who, as belonging to the Alkmæônid family, was supposed to be tainted with the inherited sin of his great-grandfather Megaklês, the destroyer of the usurper Kylôn. Kleomenês sent a herald to Athens, demanding the expulsion “of the accursed,”—so this family were called by their enemies, and so they continued to be called eighty years afterwards, when the same manœuvre was practised by the Lacedæmonians of that day against Periklês. This requisition had been recommended by Isagoras, and was so well-timed that Kleisthenês, not venturing to disobey it, retired voluntarily, so that Kleomenês, though arriving at Athens only with a small force, found himself master of the city. At the instigation of Isagoras, he sent into exile seven hundred families, selected from the chief partisans of Kleisthenês: his next attempt was to dissolve the new Senate of Five Hundred and place the whole government in the hands of three hundred adherents of the chief whose cause he espoused. But now was seen the spirit infused into the people by their new constitution. At the time of the first usurpation of Peisistratus, the Senate of that day had not only not resisted, but even lent themselves to the scheme. But the new Senate of Kleisthenês resolutely refused to submit to dissolution, and the citizens manifested themselves in a way at once so hostile and so determined, that Kleomenês and Isagoras were altogether baffled. They were compelled to retire into the acropolis and stand upon the defensive; and this symptom of weakness was the signal for a general rising of the Athenians, who besieged the Spartan king on the holy rock. He had evidently come without any expectation of finding, or any means of overpowering, resistance; for at the end of two days his provisions were exhausted, and he was forced to capitulate. He and his Lacedæmonians, as well as Isagoras, were allowed to retire to Sparta; but the Athenians of the party captured along with him were imprisoned, condemned,[291] and executed by the people.

[291] Herodot. v, 70-72; compare Schol. ad Aristophan. Lysistr. 274.

Kleisthenês, with the seven hundred exiled families, was immediately recalled, and his new constitution materially strengthened by this first success. Yet the prospect of renewed Spartan attack was sufficiently serious to induce him to send envoys to Artaphernês, the Persian satrap at Sardis, soliciting the admission of Athens into the Persian alliance: he probably feared the intrigues of the expelled Hippias in the same quarter. Artaphernês, having first informed himself who the Athenians were, and where they dwelt,—replied that, if they chose to send earth and water to the king of Persia, they might be received as allies, but upon no other condition. Such were the feelings of alarm under which the envoys had quitted Athens, that they went the length of promising this unqualified token of submission. But their countrymen, on their return, disavowed them with scorn and indignation.[292]

[292] Herodot. v, 73.

It was at this time that the first connection began between Athens and the little Bœotian town of Platæa, situated on the northern slope of the range of Kithæron, between that mountain and the river Asôpus,—on the road from Athens to Thebes; and it is upon this first occasion that we become acquainted with the Bœotians and their polities. In one of my preceding volumes,[293] the Bœotian federation has already been briefly described, as composed of some twelve or thirteen autonomous towns under the headship of Thebes, which was, or professed to have been, their mother-city. Platæa had been, so the Thebans affirmed, their latest foundation;[294] it was ill-used by them, and discontented with the alliance. Accordingly, as Kleomenês was on his way back from Athens, the Platæans took the opportunity of addressing themselves to him, craved the protection of Sparta against Thebes, and surrendered their town and territory without reserve. The Spartan king, having no motive to undertake a trust which promised nothing but trouble, advised them to solicit the protection of Athens, as nearer and more accessible for them in case of need. He foresaw that this would embroil the Athenians with Bœotia; and such anticipation was in fact his chief motive for giving the advice, which the Platæans followed. Selecting an occasion of public sacrifice at Athens, they dispatched thither envoys, who sat down as suppliants at the altar, surrendered their town to Athens, and implored protection against Thebes. Such an appeal was not to be resisted, and protection was promised; it was soon needed, for the Thebans invaded the Platæan territory, and an Athenian force marched to defend it. Battle was about to be joined, when the Corinthians interposed with their mediation, which was accepted by both parties. They decided altogether in favor of Platæa, pronouncing that the Thebans had no right to employ force against any seceding member of the Bœotian federation.[295] But the Thebans, finding the decision against them, refused to abide by it, and, attacking the Athenians on their return, sustained a complete defeat: the latter avenged this breach of faith by joining to Platæa the portion of Theban territory south of the Asôpus, and making that river the limit between the two. By such success, however, the Athenians gained nothing, except the enmity of Bœotia,—as Kleomenês had foreseen. Their alliance with Platæa, long continued, and presenting in the course of this history several incidents touching to our sympathies, will be found, if we except one splendid occasion,[296] productive only of burden to the one party, yet insufficient as a protection to the other.

[293] See vol. ii, p. 295, part ii, ch. 3.

[294] Thucyd. iii, 61.

[295] Herodot. vi, 108. ἐᾷν Θηβαίους Βοιωτῶν τοὺς μὴ βουλομένους ἐς Βοιωτοὺς τελέειν. This is an important circumstance in regard to Grecian political feeling: I shall advert to it hereafter.

[296] Herodot. vi, 108. Thucydidês (iii, 58), when recounting the capture of Platæa by the Lacedæmonians in the third year of the Peloponnesian war, states that the alliance between Platæa and Athens was then in its 93rd year of date; according to which reckoning it would begin in the year 519 B. C., where Mr. Clinton and other chronologers place it.

I venture to think that the immediate circumstances, as recounted in the text from Herodotus (whether Thucydidês conceived them in the same way, cannot be determined), which brought about the junction of Platæa with Athens, cannot have taken place in 519 B. C., but must have happened _after_ the expulsion of Hippias from Athens in 510 B. C.,—for the following reasons:—

1. No mention is made of Hippias, who yet, if the event had happened in 519 B. C., must have been the person to determine whether the Athenians should assist Platæa or not. The Platæan envoys present themselves at a public sacrifice in the attitude of suppliants, so as to touch the feelings of the Athenian citizens generally: had Hippias been then despot, _he_ would have been the person to be propitiated and to determine for or against assistance.

2. We know no cause which should have brought Kleomenês with a Lacedæmonian force near to Platæa in the year 519 B. C.: we know from the statement of Herodotus (v, 76) that no Lacedæmonian expedition against Attica took place at that time. But in the year to which I have referred the event, Kleomenês is on his march near the spot upon a known and assignable object. From the very tenor of the narrative, it is plain that Kleomenês and his army were not designedly in Bœotia, nor meddling with Bœotian affairs, at the time when the Platæans solicited his aid; he declines to interpose in the matter, pleading the great distance between Sparta and Platæa as a reason.

3. Again, Kleomenês, in advising the Platæans to solicit Athens, does not give the advice through good-will towards them, but through a desire to harass and perplex the Athenians, by entangling them in a quarrel with the Bœotians. At the point of time to which I have referred the incident, this was a very natural desire: he was angry, and perhaps alarmed, at the recent events which had brought about his expulsion from Athens. But what was there to make him conceive such a feeling against Athens during the reign of Hippias? That despot was on terms of the closest intimacy with Sparta: the Peisistratids were (ξείνους—ξεινίους ταμάλιστα—Herod. v, 63, 90, 91) “the

## particular guests” of the Spartans, who were only induced to

take part against Hippias from a reluctant obedience to the oracles procured, one after another, by Kleisthenês. The motive, therefore, assigned by Herodotus, for the advice given by Kleomenês to the Platæans, can have no application to the time when Hippias was still despot.

4. That Herodotus did not conceive the victory gained by the Athenians over Thebes as having taken place _before_ the expulsion of Hippias, is evident from his emphatic contrast between their warlike spirit and success when liberated from the despots, and their timidity or backwardness while under Hippias (Ἀθηναῖοι τυραννευόμενοι μὲν, οὐδαμῶν τῶν σφέας περιοικεόντων ἔσαν τὰ πολέμια ἀμείνους, ἀπαλλαχθέντες δὲ τυράννων, μακρῷ πρῶτοι ἐγένοντο· δηλοῖ ὦν ταῦτα, ὅτι κατεχόμενοι μὲν, ἐθελοκάκεον, etc. v, 78). The man who wrote thus cannot have believed that, in the year 519 B. C., while Hippias was in full sway, the Athenians gained an important victory over the Thebans, cut off a considerable portion of the Theban territory for the purpose of joining it to that of the Platæans, and showed from that time forward their constant superiority over Thebes by protecting her inferior neighbor against her.

These different reasons, taking them altogether, appear to me to show that the first alliance between Athens and Platæa, as Herodotus conceives and describes it, cannot have taken place before the expulsion of Hippias, in 510 B. C.; and induce me to believe, either that Thucydidês was mistaken in the date of that event, or that Herodotus has not correctly described the facts. Not seeing any reason to suspect the description given by the latter, I have departed, though unwillingly, from the date of Thucydidês.

The application of the Platæans to Kleomenês, and his advice grounded thereupon, may be connected more suitably with his first expedition to Athens, after the expulsion of Hippias, than with his second.

Meanwhile Kleomenês had returned to Sparta full of resentment against the Athenians, and resolved on punishing them, as well as on establishing his friend Isagoras as despot over them. Having been taught, however, by humiliating experience, that this was no easy achievement, he would not make the attempt, without having assembled a considerable force; he summoned allies from all the various states of Peloponnesus, yet without venturing to inform them what he was about to undertake. He at the same time concerted measures with the Bœotians, and with the Chalkidians of Eubœa, for a simultaneous invasion of Attica on all sides. It appears that he had greater confidence in their hostile dispositions towards Athens than in those of the Peloponnesians, for he was not afraid to acquaint them with his design,—and probably the Bœotians were incensed with the recent interference of Athens in the affair of Platæa. As soon as these preparations were completed, the two kings of Sparta, Kleomenês and Demaratus, put themselves at the head of the united Peloponnesian force, marched into Attica, and advanced as far as Eleusis on the way to Athens. But when the allies came to know the purpose for which they were to be employed, a spirit of dissatisfaction manifested itself among them. They had no unfriendly sentiment towards Athens; and the Corinthians especially, favorably disposed rather than otherwise towards that city, resolved to proceed no farther, withdrew their contingent from the camp, and returned home. At the same time, king Demaratus, either sharing in the general dissatisfaction, or moved by some grudge against his colleague which had not before manifested itself, renounced the undertaking also. And these two examples, operating upon the preëxisting sentiment of the allies generally, caused the whole camp to break up and return home without striking a blow.[297]

[297] Herodot. v, 75.

We may here remark that this is the first instance known in which Sparta appears in act as recognized head of an obligatory Peloponnesian alliance,[298] summoning contingents from the cities to be placed under the command of her king. Her headship, previously recognized in theory, passes now into act, but in an unsatisfactory manner, so as to prove the necessity of precaution and concert beforehand,—which will be found not long wanting.

[298] Compare Kortüm, Zur Geschichte Hellenischer Staats-Verfassungen, p. 35 (Heidelberg, 1821).

I doubt, however, his interpretation of the words in Herodotus (v, 63)—εἴτε ἰδίῳ στόλῳ, εἴτε δημοσίῳ χρησόμενοι.

Pursuant to the scheme concerted, the Bœotians and Chalkidians attacked Attica at the same time that Kleomenês entered it. The former seized Œnoê and Hysiæ, the frontier demes of Attica on the side towards Platæa, while the latter assailed the north-eastern frontier, which faces Eubœa. Invaded on three sides, the Athenians were in serious danger, and were compelled to concentrate all their forces at Eleusis against Kleomenês, leaving the Bœotians and Chalkidians unopposed. But the unexpected breaking up of the invading army from Peloponnesus proved their rescue, and enabled them to turn the whole of their attention to the other frontier. They marched into Bœotia to the strait called Euripus, which separates it from Eubœa, intending to prevent the junction of the Bœotians and Chalkidians, and to attack the latter first apart. But the arrival of the Bœotians caused an alteration in their scheme; they attacked the Bœotians first, and gained a victory of the most complete character,—killing a large number, and capturing seven hundred prisoners. On the very same day they crossed over to Eubœa, attacked the Chalkidians, and gained another victory so decisive that it at once terminated the war. Many Chalkidians were taken, as well as Bœotians, and conveyed in chains to Athens, where after a certain detention they were at last ransomed for two minæ per man; and the tenth of the sum thus raised was employed in the fabrication of a chariot and four horses in bronze, which was placed in the acropolis to commemorate the victory. Herodotus saw this trophy when he was at Athens. He saw too, what was a still more speaking trophy, the actual chains in which the prisoners had been fettered, exhibiting in their appearance the damage undergone when the acropolis was burnt by Xerxês: an inscription of four lines described the offerings and recorded the victory out of which they had sprung.[299]

[299] Herodot. v, 77; Ælian, V. H. vi, 1; Pausan. i, 28, 2.

Another consequence of some moment arose out of this victory. The Athenians planted a body of four thousand of their citizens as klêruchs (lot-holders) or settlers upon the lands of the wealthy Chalkidian oligarchy called the Hippobotæ,—proprietors probably in the fertile plain of Lêlantum, between Chalkis and Eretria. This is a system which we shall find hereafter extensively followed out by the Athenians in the days of their power; partly with the view of providing for their poorer citizens,—partly to serve as garrison among a population either hostile or of doubtful fidelity. These Attic klêruchs (I can find no other name by which to speak of them) did not lose their birthright as Athenian citizens: they were not colonists in the Grecian sense, and they are known by a totally different name,—but they corresponded very nearly to the colonies formally planted out on the conquered lands by Rome. The increase of the poorer population was always more or less painfully felt in every Grecian city. For though the aggregate population never seems to have increased very fast, yet the multiplication of children in poor families caused the subdivision of the smaller lots of land, until at last they became insufficient for a maintenance; and the persons thus impoverished found it difficult to obtain subsistence in other ways, more especially as the labor for the richer classes was so much performed by imported slaves. Doubtless some families possessed of landed property became extinct; but this did not at all benefit the smaller and poorer proprietors; for the lands thus rendered vacant passed, not to them, but by inheritance, or bequest, or intermarriage, to other proprietors, for the most part in easy circumstances,—since one opulent family usually intermarried with another. I shall enter more fully at a future opportunity into this question,—the great and serious problem of population, as it affected the Greek communities generally, and as it was dealt with in theory by the powerful minds of Plato and Aristotle. At present it is sufficient to notice that the numerous klêruchies sent out by Athens, of which this to Eubœa was the first, arose in a great measure out of the multiplication of the poorer population, which her extended power was employed in providing for. Her subsequent proceedings with a view to the same object will not be always found so justifiable as this now before us, which grew naturally, according to the ideas of the time, out of her success against the Chalkidians.

The war between Athens, however, and Thebes with her Bœotian allies, still continued, to the great and repeated disadvantage of the latter, until at length the Thebans in despair sent to ask advice of the Delphian oracle, and were directed to “solicit aid from those nearest to them.”[300] “How (they replied) are we to obey? Our nearest neighbors, of Tanagra, Korôneia, and Thespiæ, are now, and have been from the beginning, lending us all the aid in their power.” An ingenious Theban, however, coming to the relief of his perplexed fellow-citizens, dived into the depths of legend and brought up a happy meaning. “Those nearest to us (he said) are the inhabitants of Ægina: for Thêbê (the eponym of Thebes) and Ægina (the eponym of that island) were both sisters, daughters of Asôpus: let us send to crave assistance from the Æginetans.” If his subtle interpretation (founded upon their descent from the same legendary progenitors) did not at once convince all who heard it, at least no one had any better to suggest; and envoys were at once sent to the Æginetans,—who, in reply to a petition founded on legendary claims, sent to the help of the Thebans a reinforcement of legendary, but venerated, auxiliaries,—the Æakid heroes. We are left to suppose that their effigies are here meant. It was in vain, however, that the glory and the supposed presence of the Æakids Telamôn and Pêleus were introduced into the Theban camp. Victory still continued on the side of Athens; and the discouraged Thebans again sent to Ægina, restoring the heroes,[301] and praying for aid of a character more human and positive. Their request was granted, and the Æginetans commenced war against Athens without even the decent preliminary of a herald and declaration.[302]

[300] Herodot. v, 80.

[301] In the expression of Herodotus, the Æakid heroes are _really_ sent from Ægina, and _really_ sent back by the Thebans (v, 80-81)—Οἱ δέ σφι αἰτέουσι ἐπικουρίην τοὺς Αἰακίδας συμπέμπειν ἔφασαν, αὖτις οἱ Θηβαῖοι πέμψαντες, ~τοὺς μὲν Αἰακίδας σφι ἀπεδίδοσαν, τῶν δὲ ἀνδρῶν ἐδέοντο~. Compare again v, 75; viii, 64; and Polyb. vii, 9, 2. θεῶν τῶν συστρατευομένων.

Justin gives a narrative of an analogous application from the Epizephyrian Lokrians to Sparta (xx, 3): “Territi Locrenses ad Spartanos decurrunt: auxilium supplices deprecantur: illi longinquâ militiâ gravati, auxilium a Castore et Polluce petere eos jubent. Neque legati responsum sociæ urbis spreverunt; profectique in proximum templum, facto sacrificio, auxilium deorum implorant. Litatis hostiis, _obtentoque, ut rebantur, quod petebant—haud secus læti quam si deos ipsos secum avecturi essent_—pulvinaria iis in navi componunt, faustisque profecti ominibus, _solatia suis pro auxiliis_ deportant.” In comparing the expressions of Herodotus with those of Justin, we see that the former believes the direct literal presence and action of the Æakid heroes (“the Thebans sent back the heroes, and asked for men”), while the latter explains away the divine intervention into a mere fancy and feeling on the part of those to whom it is supposed to be accorded. This was the tone of those later authors whom Justin followed: compare also Pausan. iii, 19, 2.

[302] Herodot. v, 81-82.

This remarkable embassy first brings us into acquaintance with the Dorians of Ægina,—oligarchical, wealthy, commercial, and powerful at sea, even in the earliest days; more analogous to Corinth than to any of the other cities called Dorian. The hostility which they now began without provocation against Athens,—repressed by Sparta at the critical moment of the battle of Marathon,—then again breaking out,—and hushed for a while by the common dangers of the Persian invasion under Xerxês, was appeased only with the conquest of the island about twenty years after that event, and with the expulsion and destruction of its inhabitants some years later. There had been indeed, according to Herodotus,[303] a feud of great antiquity between Athens and Ægina,—of which he gives the account in a singular narrative, blending together religion, politics, exposition of ancient customs, etc.; but at the time when the Thebans solicited aid from Ægina, the latter was at peace with Athens. The Æginetans employed their fleet, powerful for that day, in ravaging Phalêrum and the maritime demes of Attica; nor had the Athenians as yet any fleet to resist them.[304] It is probable that the desired effect was produced, of diverting a portion of the Athenian force from the war against Bœotia, and thus partially relieving Thebes. But the war of Athens against both of them continued for a considerable time, though we have no information respecting its details.

[303] Herodot. v, 83-88.

[304] Herodot. v, 81-89. μεγάλως Ἀθηναίους ἐσινέοντο.

Meanwhile the attention of Athens was called off from these combined enemies by a more menacing cloud, which threatened to burst upon her from the side of Sparta. Kleomenês and his countrymen, full of resentment at the late inglorious desertion of Eleusis, were yet more incensed by the discovery, which appears to have been then recently made, that the injunctions of the Delphian priestess for the expulsion of Hippias from Athens had been fraudulently procured.[305] Moreover, Kleomenês, when shut up in the acropolis of Athens with Isagoras, had found there various prophecies previously treasured up by the Peisistratids, many of which foreshadowed events highly disastrous to Sparta. And while the recent brilliant manifestations of courage, and repeated victories, on the part of Athens, seemed to indicate that such prophecies might perhaps be realized,—Sparta had to reproach herself, that, from the foolish and mischievous conduct of Kleomenês, she had undone the effect of her previous aid against the Peisistratids, and thus lost that return of gratitude which the Athenians would otherwise have testified. Under such impressions, the Spartan authorities took the remarkable step of sending for Hippias from his residence at Sigeium to Peloponnesus, and of summoning deputies from all their allies to meet him at Sparta.

[305] Herodot. v, 90.

The convocation thus summoned deserves notice as the commencement of a new era in Grecian politics. The previous expedition of Kleomenês against Attica presents to us the first known example of Spartan headship passing from theory into act: that expedition miscarried because the allies, though willing to follow, would not follow blindly, nor be made the instruments of executing purposes repugnant to their feelings. Sparta had now learned the necessity, in order to insure their hearty concurrence, of letting them know what she contemplated, so as to ascertain at least that she had no decided opposition to apprehend. Here, then, is the third stage in the spontaneous movement of Greece towards a systematic conjunction, however imperfect, of its many autonomous units. First we have Spartan headship suggested in theory, from a concourse of circumstances which attract to her the admiration of all Greece,—power, unrivalled training, undisturbed antiquity, etc.: next, the theory passes into act, yet rude and shapeless: lastly, the act becomes clothed with formalities, and preceded by discussion and determination. The first convocation of the allies at Sparta, for the purpose of having a common object submitted to their consideration, may well be regarded as an important event in Grecian political history. The proceedings at the convocation are no less important, as an indication of the way in which the Greeks of that day felt and acted, and must be borne in mind as a contrast with times hereafter to be described.

Hippias having been presented to the assembled allies, the Spartans expressed their sorrow for having dethroned him,—their resentment and alarm at the new-born insolence of Athens,[306] already tasted by her immediate neighbors, and menacing to every state represented in the convocation,—and their anxiety to restore Hippias, not less as a reparation for past wrong, than as a means, through his rule, of keeping Athens low and dependent. But the proposition, though emanating from Sparta, was listened to by the allies with one common sentiment of repugnance. They had no sympathy for Hippias,—no dislike, still less any fear, of Athens,—and a profound detestation of the character of a despot. The spirit which had animated the armed contingents at Eleusis now reappeared among the deputies at Sparta, and the Corinthians again took the initiative. Their deputy Sosiklês protested against the project in the fiercest and most indignant strain: no language can be stronger than that of the long harangue which Herodotus puts into his mouth, wherein the bitter recollections prevalent at Corinth respecting Kypselus and Periander are poured forth. “Surely, heaven and earth are about to change places,—the fish are coming to dwell on dry land, and mankind going to inhabit the sea,—when you, Spartans, propose to subvert the popular governments, and to set up in the cities that wicked and bloody thing called a Despot.[307] First try what it is, for yourselves at Sparta, and then force it upon others if you can: you have not tasted its calamities as we have, and you take very good care to keep it away from yourselves. We adjure you, by the common gods of Hellas,—plant not despots in her cities: if you persist in a scheme so wicked, know that the Corinthians will not second you.”

[306] Herodot. v, 90, 91.

[307] Herodot. v, 92. ... τυραννίδας ἐς τὰς πόλις κατάγειν παρασκευάζεσθε, τοῦ οὔτε ἀδικώτερον ἐστὶ οὐδὲν κατ᾽ ἀνθρώπους οὔτε μιαιφονώτερον.

This animated appeal was received with a shout of approbation and sympathy on the part of the allies. All with one accord united with Sosiklês in adjuring the Lacedæmonians[308] “not to revolutionize any Hellenic city.” No one listened to Hippias when he replied, warning the Corinthians that the time would come, when they, more than any one else, would dread and abhor the Athenian democracy, and wish the Peisistratidæ back again. He knew well, says Herodotus, that this would be, for he was better acquainted with the prophecies than any man. But no one then believed him, and he was forced to take his departure back to Sigeium: the Spartans not venturing to espouse his cause against the determined sentiment of the allies.[309]

[308] Herodot. v, 93. μὴ ποιέειν μηδὲν νεώτερον περὶ πόλιν Ἑλλάδα.

[309] Herodot. v, 93-94.

That determined sentiment deserves notice, because it marks the present period of the Hellenic mind: fifty years later it will be found materially altered. Aversion to single-headed rule, and bitter recollection of men like Kypselus and Periander, are now the chords which thrill in an assembly of Grecian deputies: the idea of a revolution, implying thereby a great and comprehensive change, of which the party using the word disapproves, consists in substituting a permanent One in place of those periodical magistrates and assemblies which were the common attribute of oligarchy and democracy: the antithesis between these last two is as yet in the background, nor does there prevail either fear of Athens or hatred of the Athenian democracy. But when we turn to the period immediately before the Peloponnesian war, we find the order of precedence between these two sentiments reversed. The anti-monarchical feeling has not perished, but has been overlaid by other and more recent political antipathies,—the antithesis between democracy and oligarchy having become, not indeed the only sentiment, but the uppermost sentiment, in the minds of Grecian politicians generally, and the soul of active party-movement. Moreover, a hatred of the most deadly character has grown up against Athens and her democracy, especially in the grandsons of those very Corinthians who now stand forward as her sympathizing friends. The remarkable change of feeling here mentioned is nowhere so strikingly exhibited as when we contrast the address of the Corinthian Sosiklês, just narrated, with the speech of the Corinthian envoys at Sparta, immediately antecedent to the Peloponnesian war, as given to us in Thucydidês.[310] It will hereafter be fully explained by the intermediate events, by the growth of Athenian power, and by the still more miraculous development of Athenian energy.

[310] Thucydid. i, 68-71, 120-124.

Such development, the fruit of the fresh-planted democracy as well as the seed for its sustentation and aggrandizement, continued progressive during the whole period just adverted to. But the first unexpected burst of it, under the Kleisthenean constitution, and after the expulsion of Hippias, is described by Herodotus in terms too emphatic to be omitted. After narrating the successive victories of the Athenians over both Bœotians and Chalkidians, that historian proceeds: “Thus did the Athenians grow in strength. And we may find proof, not merely in this instance but everywhere else, how valuable a thing freedom is: since even the Athenians, while under a despot, were not superior in war to any of their surrounding neighbors, but, so soon as they got rid of their despots, became by far the first of all. These things show that while kept down by one man, they were slack and timid, like men working for a master; but when they were liberated, every single man became eager in exertions for his own benefit.” The same comparison reappears a short time afterwards, where he tells us, that “the Athenians when free, felt themselves a match for Sparta; but while kept down by any man under a despotism, were feeble and apt for submission.”[311]

[311] Herodot. v, 78-91. Ἀθηναῖοι μέν νυν ηὔξηντο· δηλοῖ δὲ οὐ κατ᾽ ἓν μόνον ἀλλὰ πανταχῇ, ἡ ἰσηγορίη ὡς ἔστι χρῆμα σπουδαῖον, εἰ καὶ Ἀθηναῖοι τυραννευόμενοι μὲν, οὐδαμῶν τῶν σφέας περιοικεόντων ἔσαν τὰ πολέμια ἀμείνους, ἀπαλλαχθέντες δὲ τυράννων, μακρῷ πρῶτοι ἐγένοντο· δηλοῖ ὦν ταῦτα, ὅτι κατεχόμενοι μὲν, ἐθελοκάκεον, ὡς δεσπότῃ ἐργαζόμενοι, ἐλευθερωθέντων δὲ, αὐτὸς ἕκαστος ἑωϋτῷ προθυμέετο κατεργάζεσθαι.

(c. 91.) Οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι—νόῳ λαβόντες, ὡς ἐλεύθερον μὲν ἐὸν τὸ γένος τὸ Ἀττικὸν, ἰσόῤῥοπον τῷ ἑωϋτῶν ἂν γένοιτο, κατεχόμενον δὲ ὑπό του τυραννίδι, ἀσθενὲς καὶ πειθαρχέεσθαι ἐτοῖμον.

Stronger expressions cannot be found to depict the rapid improvement wrought in the Athenian people by their new democracy. Of course this did not arise merely from suspension of previous cruelties, or better laws, or better administration. These, indeed, were essential conditions, but the active transforming cause here was, the principle and system of which such amendments formed the detail: the grand and new idea of the sovereign People, composed of free and equal citizens,—or liberty and equality, to use words which so profoundly moved the French nation half a century ago. It was this comprehensive political idea which acted with electric effect upon the Athenians, creating within them a host of sentiments, motives, sympathies, and capacities, to which they had before been strangers. Democracy in Grecian antiquity possessed the privilege, not only of kindling an earnest and unanimous attachment to the constitution in the bosoms of the citizens, but also of creating an energy of public and private

## action, such as could never be obtained under an oligarchy, where

the utmost that could be hoped for was a passive acquiescence and obedience. Mr. Burke has remarked that the mass of the people are generally very indifferent about theories of government; but such indifference—although improvements in the practical working of all governments tend to foster it—is hardly to be expected among any people who exhibit decided mental activity and spirit on other matters; and the reverse was unquestionably true, in the year 500 B. C., among the communities of ancient Greece. Theories of government were there anything but a dead letter: they were connected with emotions of the strongest as well as of the most opposite character. The theory of a permanent ruling One, for example, was universally odious: that of a ruling Few, though acquiesced in, was never positively attractive, unless either where it was associated with the maintenance of peculiar education and habits, as at Sparta, or where it presented itself as the only antithesis to democracy, the latter having by peculiar circumstances become an object of terror. But the theory of democracy was preëminently seductive; creating in the mass of the citizens an intense positive attachment, and disposing them to voluntary action and suffering on its behalf, such as no coercion on the part of other governments could extort. Herodotus,[312] in his comparison of the three sorts of government, puts in the front rank of the advantages of democracy, “its most splendid name and promise,”—its power of enlisting the hearts of the citizens in support of their constitution, and of providing for all a common bond of union and fraternity. This is what even democracy did not always do: but it was what no other government in Greece _could_ do: a reason alone sufficient to stamp it as the best government, and presenting the greatest chance of beneficent results, for a Grecian community. Among the Athenian citizens, certainly, it produced a strength and unanimity of positive political sentiment, such as has rarely been seen in the history of mankind, which excites our surprise and admiration the more when we compare it with the apathy which had preceded,—and which is even implied as the natural state of the public mind in Solon’s famous proclamation against neutrality in a sedition.[313] Because democracy happens to be unpalatable to most modern readers, they have been accustomed to look upon the sentiment here described only in its least honorable manifestations,—in the caricatures of Aristophanês, or in the empty common-places of rhetorical declaimers. But it is not in this way that the force, the earnestness, or the binding value, of democratical sentiment at Athens is to be measured. We must listen to it as it comes from the lips of Periklês,[314] while he is strenuously enforcing upon the people those active duties for which it both implanted the stimulus and supplied the courage; or from the oligarchical Nikias in the harbor of Syracuse, when he is endeavoring to revive the courage of his despairing troops for one last death-struggle, and when he appeals to their democratical patriotism as to the only flame yet alive and burning even in that moment of agony.[315] From the time of Kleisthenês downward, the creation of this new mighty impulse makes an entire revolution in the Athenian character. And if the change still stood out in so prominent a manner before the eyes of Herodotus, much more must it have been felt by the contemporaries among whom it occurred.

[312] Herodot. iii, 80. Πλῆθος δὲ ἄρχον, ~πρῶτα μὲν, οὔνομα πάντων κάλλιστον ἔχει, ἰσονομίην~· δεύτερα δὲ, τούτων τῶν ὁ μόναρχος, ποιέει οὐδέν· πάλῳ μὲν ἀρχὰς ἄρχει, ὑπεύθυνον δὲ ἀρχὴν ἔχει, βουλεύματα δὲ πάντα ἐς τὸ κοινὸν ἀναφέρει.

The democratical speaker at Syracuse, Athenagoras, also puts this name and promise in the first rank of advantages—(Thucyd. vi, 39)—ἐγὼ δέ φημι, ~πρῶτα μὲν~, δῆμον ξύμπαν ὠνόμασθαι, ὀλιγαρχίαν δὲ, μέρος, etc.

[313] See the preceding