chapter fifty
-nine of the same work, where he again supports a similar opinion.
M. Sismondi also observes, in speaking of the long attachment of the city of Pisa to the cause of the emperors and to the Ghibelin party: “Pise montra dans plus d’une occasion, par sa constance à supporter la cause des empereurs au milieu des revers, combien la reconnoissance lie un peuple libre d’une manière plus puissante et plus durable qu’elle ne sauroit lier le peuple gouverné par un seul homme.” (Histoire des Républ. Italiennes, ch. xiii, tom. ii, p. 302.)
The fate of Miltiadês, then, so far from illustrating either the fickleness or the ingratitude of his countrymen, attests their just appreciation of deserts. It also illustrates another moral, of no small importance to the right comprehension of Grecian affairs; it teaches us the painful lesson, how perfectly maddening were the effects of a copious draught of glory on the temperament of an enterprising and ambitious Greek. There can be no doubt, that the rapid transition, in the course of about one week, from Athenian terror before the battle to Athenian exultation after it, must have produced demonstrations towards Miltiadês such as were never paid towards any other man in the whole history of the commonwealth. Such unmeasured admiration unseated his rational judgment, so that his mind became abandoned to the reckless impulses of insolence, and antipathy, and rapacity;—that distempered state, for which (according to Grecian morality) the retributive Nemesis was ever on the watch, and which, in his case, she visited with a judgment startling in its rapidity, as well as terrible in its amount. Had Miltiadês been the same man before the battle of Marathon as he became after it, the battle might probably have turned out a defeat instead of a victory. Dêmosthenês, indeed,[684] in speaking of the wealth and luxury of political leaders in his own time, and the profuse rewards bestowed upon them by the people, pointed in contrast to the house of Miltiadês as being noway more splendid than that of a private man. But though Miltiadês might continue to live in a modest establishment, he received from his countrymen marks of admiration and deference such as were never paid to any citizen before or after him; and, after all, admiration and deference constitute the precious essence of popular reward. No man except Miltiadês ever dared to raise his voice in the Athenian assembly, and say: “Give me a fleet of ships: do not ask what I am going to do with them, but only follow me, and I will enrich you.” Herein we may read the unmeasured confidence which the Athenians placed in their victorious general, and the utter incapacity of a leading Greek to bear it without mental depravation; while we learn from it to draw the melancholy inference, that one result of success was to make the successful leader one of the most dangerous men in the community. We shall presently be called upon to observe the same tendency in the case of the Spartan Pausanias, and even in that of the Athenian Themistoklês. It is, indeed, fortunate that the reckless aspirations of Miltiadês did not take a turn more noxious to Athens than the comparatively unimportant enterprise against Paros. For had he sought to acquire dominion and gratify antipathies against enemies at home, instead of directing his blow against a Parian enemy, the peace and security of his country might have been seriously endangered.
[684] Dêmosthenês, Olynth. iii, c. 9, p. 35, R.
Of the despots who gained power in Greece, a considerable proportion began by popular conduct, and by rendering good service to their fellow-citizens: having first earned public gratitude, they abused it for purposes of their own ambition. There was far greater danger, in a Grecian community, of dangerous excess of gratitude towards a victorious soldier, than of deficiency in that sentiment: hence the person thus exalted acquired a position such that the community found it difficult afterwards to shake him off. Now there is a disposition almost universal among writers and readers to side with an individual, especially an eminent individual, against the multitude; and accordingly those who under such circumstances suspect the probable abuse of an exalted position, are denounced as if they harbored an unworthy jealousy of superior abilities. But the truth is, that the largest analogies of the Grecian character justified that suspicion, and required the community to take precautions against the corrupting effects of their own enthusiasm. There is no feature which more largely pervades the impressible Grecian character, than a liability to be intoxicated and demoralized by success: there was no fault from which so few eminent Greeks were free: there was hardly any danger, against which it was at once so necessary and so difficult for the Grecian governments to take security,—especially the democracies, where the manifestations of enthusiasm were always the loudest. Such is the real explanation of those charges which have been urged against the Grecian democracies, that they came to hate and ill-treat previous benefactors; and the history of Miltiadês illustrates it in a manner no less pointed than painful.
I have already remarked that the fickleness, which has been so largely imputed to the Athenian democracy in their dealings with him, is nothing more than a reasonable change of opinion on the best grounds. Nor can it be said that fickleness was in any case an attribute of the Athenian democracy. It is a well-known fact, that feelings, or opinions, or modes of judging, which have once obtained footing among a large number of people, are more lasting and unchangeable than those which belong only to one or a few; insomuch that the judgments and actions of the many admit of being more clearly understood as to the past, and more certainly predicted as to the future. If we are to predicate any attribute of the multitude, it will rather be that of undue tenacity than undue fickleness; and there will occur nothing in the course of this history to prove that the Athenian people changed their opinions on insufficient grounds more frequently than an unresponsible one or few would have changed.
But there were two circumstances in the working of the Athenian democracy which imparted to it an appearance of greater fickleness, without the reality: First, that the manifestations and changes of opinion were all open, undisguised, and noisy: the people gave utterance to their present impression, whatever it was, with perfect frankness; if their opinions were really changed, they had no shame or scruple in avowing it. Secondly,—and this is a point of capital importance in the working of democracy generally,—the _present_ impression, whatever it might be, was not merely undisguised in its manifestations, but also had a tendency to be exaggerated in its intensity. This arose from their habit of treating public affairs in multitudinous assemblages, the well-known effect of which is, to inflame sentiment in every man’s bosom by mere contact with a sympathizing circle of neighbors. Whatever the sentiment might be,—fear, ambition, cupidity, wrath, compassion, piety, patriotic devotion, etc,[685]—and whether well-founded or ill-founded, it was constantly influenced more or less by such intensifying cause. This is a defect which of course belongs in a certain degree to all exercise of power by numerous bodies, even though they be representative bodies,—especially when the character of the people, instead of being comparatively sedate and slow to move, like the English, is quick, impressible, and fiery, like Greeks or Italians; but it operated far more powerfully on the self-acting Dêmos assembled in the Pnyx. It was in fact the constitutional malady of the democracy, of which the people were themselves perfectly sensible,—as I shall show hereafter from the securities which they tried to provide against it,—but which no securities could ever wholly eradicate. Frequency of public assemblies, far from aggravating the evil, had a tendency to lighten it. The people thus became accustomed to hear and balance many different views as a preliminary to ultimate judgment; they contracted personal interest and esteem for a numerous class of dissentient speakers; and they even acquired a certain practical consciousness of their own liability to error. Moreover, the diffusion of habits of public speaking, by means of the sophists and the rhetors, whom it has been so much the custom to disparage, tended in the same direction,—to break the unity of sentiment among the listening crowd, to multiply separate judgments, and to neutralize the contagion of mere sympathizing impulse. These were important deductions, still farther assisted by the superior taste and intelligence of the Athenian people: but still, the inherent malady remained,—excessive and misleading intensity of present sentiment. It was this which gave such inestimable value to the ascendency of Periklês, as depicted by Thucydidês: his hold on the people was so firm, that he could always speak with effect against excess of the reigning tone of feeling. “When Periklês (says the historian) saw the people in a state of unseasonable and insolent confidence, he spoke so as to cow them into alarm; when again they were in groundless terror, he combated it, and brought them back to confidence.”[686] We shall find Dêmosthenês, with far inferior ascendency, employed in the same honorable task: the Athenian people often stood in need of such correction, but unfortunately did not always find statesmen, at once friendly and commanding, to administer it.
[685] This is the general truth, which ancient authors often state, both partially, and in exaggerated terms as to degree: “Hæc est natura multitudinis (says Livy); aut humiliter servit aut superbe dominatur.” Again, Tacitus: “Nihil in vulgo modicum; terrere, ni paveant; ubi pertimuerint, impune contemni.” (Annal. i, 29.) Herodotus, iii, 81. ὠθέει δὲ (ὁ δῆμος) ἐμπεσὼν τὰ πρήγματα ἄνευ νοῦ, χειμάῤῥῳ ποταμῷ ἴκελος.
It is remarkable that Aristotle, in his Politica, takes little or no notice of this attribute belonging to every numerous assembly. He seems rather to reason as if the aggregate intelligence of the multitude was represented by the sum total of each man’s separate intelligence in all the individuals composing it (Polit. iii, 6, 4, 10, 12); just as the property of the multitude, taken collectively, would be greater than that of the few rich. He takes no notice of the difference between a number of individuals judging jointly and judging separately: I do not, indeed, observe that such omission leads him into any positive mistake, but it occurs in some cases calculated to surprise us, and where the difference here adverted to is important to notice: see Politic. iii, 10, 5, 6.
[686] Thucyd. ii, 65. Ὅποτε γοῦν αἴσθοιτό τι αὐτοὺς παρὰ καιρὸν ὕβρει θαρσοῦντας, λέγων κατέπλησσεν πάλιν ἐπὶ τὸ φοβεῖσθαι· καὶ δεδιότας αὖ ἀλόγως ἀντικαθίστη πάλιν ἐπὶ τὸ θαρσεῖν.
These two attributes, then, belonged to the Athenian democracy; first, their sentiments of every kind were manifested loudly and openly; next, their sentiments tended to a pitch of great present intensity. Of course, therefore, when they changed, the change of sentiment stood prominent, and forced itself upon every one’s notice,—being a transition from one strong sentiment past to another strong sentiment present.[687] And it was because such alterations, when they did take place, stood out so palpably to remark, that the Athenian people have drawn upon themselves the imputation of fickleness: for it is not at all true, I repeat, that changes of sentiment were more frequently produced in them by frivolous or insufficient causes, than changes of sentiment in other governments.
[687] Such swing of the mind, from one intense feeling to another, is always deprecated by the Greek moralists, from the earliest to the latest: even Demokritus, in the fifth century B. C., admonishes against it,—Αἱ ἐκ μεγάλων διαστημάτων κινεόμεναι τῶν ψυχῶν οὔτε εὐσταθέες εἰσὶν, οὔτε εὔθυμοι. (Democriti Fragmenta, lib. iii, p. 168, ed. Mullach ap. Stobæum, Florileg. i, 40.)
##