GREECE--VENICE--THE RULE OF “CASTE.”
Although ancient Greece was divided into many small countries, yet they
were united by bonds of union, of community, of blood and language, of
religious rites and festivals, manners and character. In these respects
they were distinguished from all other people, whom they called
barbarians.
A thousand years before the Christian era the Greeks were divided into
the nobles, who were powerful and wealthy; the freemen, some of whom
owned estates; and the slaves.
But the manners of the highest class were simple. The nobles were proud
of their skill in the manual arts, and their wives and daughters ably
discharged their household duties.
Two hundred years later (B.C. 800) most of the states and cities of
Greece became democratic. One uniform method characterized the change
from monarchy to democracy. An oligarchy of nobles would overthrow the
monarchy, and then some one noble would overthrow the oligarchy and
establish the cause of the people.
Sparta was the highest type of oligarchy; Athens of democracy.
Ever since Aristotle distinguished them, there have been three
recognized types of government--monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy--the
rule of one man, the rule of a few men, and the rule of the people.
That the last is the just and the true form of polity, the enlightened
opinion of the world has long ago irrevocably decided. Of the other
two, experience shows that monarchy is more tolerable. A Nero may
have stained the pages of history by the diabolic cruelty to which
autocratic power gave free scope; a Napoleon may have poured out half
the life-blood of his country to further his selfish personal ambition;
yet, on the whole, the evils of one man’s rule have been more endurable
than those of the domination of a class or “caste.” In latter days
the sovereign has come to be looked upon less as a personal ruler
than as an abstraction--an embodiment of theory expressed in the old
maxim that “the king can do no wrong”--a conception far less offensive
to the innate democracy of all manly peoples; or, he is regarded as
a mere figure-head, as may be said to be the case is England, whose
nominal monarch has far less practical influence upon the executive and
legislative departments than has the President of the United States.
An oligarchy is the worst of all governmental systems. It has never
made a people truly great. Wherever such a government has existed its
record has almost always been dark and its end bloody.
Look, for example, at two of the most successful oligarchies of
history--ancient Sparta and mediæval Venice. Sparta was, as Bulwer
justly observes in his “Rise and Fall of Athens,” a “machine wound
up by the tyranny of a fixed principle, which did not permit it even
to dine as it pleased; its children were not its own--itself had no
property in self. So it flourished and decayed, bequeathing to fame
men only noted for hardy valor, fanatical patriotism, and profound but
dishonorable craft--attracting, indeed, the wonder of the world, but
advancing no claim to its gratitude and contributing no single addition
to its intellectual stores.”
Such was the state that was ruled by the privileged “caste” of the
Spartans and its administrative committee, the Ephoræ--a state
remembered only for its brief military supremacy over her Grecian
neighbors. Contrast her with one of those neighbors--Athens, the most
typical and the most democratic of ancient democracies.[4] “The people
of Athens,” says Bulwer, “were not, as in Sparta, the tools of the
state--they were the state! In Athens the true blessing of freedom
was rightly placed in the opinions and the soul. This unshackled
liberty had its convulsions and its excesses, but it produced masterly
philosophy, sublime poetry, and accomplished art with the energy and
splendor of unexampled intelligence. Looking round us, more than four
and twenty centuries after, in the establishment of the American
Constitution, we yet behold the imperishable blessings which we derive
from the liberties of Athens. Her life became extinct, but her soul
transfused itself, immortal and immortalizing, throughout the world.”
Venice was another such oligarchy as Sparta--ruled by a small patrician
“caste,” who chose an all-powerful Senate from their own number; and
from the Senate was selected an Executive Council of Three--a name that
has become proverbial for a body of secret and irresponsible tyrants.
Venice’s strength was in commerce, in finance, as Sparta’s was in war.
Her rich trade with the East and West made her seem
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy.[5]
But her internal government was one long reign of terror. The Council
of Three met at night, masked and robed in scarlet cloaks, to judge
those against whom accusations had been thrust into the yawning “Lions’
Mouths”--two slots in the wall into which any might thrust an anonymous
denunciation of his enemy. And from the Council’s sentence there was no
hope of appeal; its victims were hurried across the Bridge of Sighs to
vanish forever from human sight in the awful torture chambers to which
that melancholy passage led.
The ending of most oligarchies has been a violent one, as was that of
the Thirty Tyrants at Athens, or that of the Decemviri at Rome. At
Venice the sway of a “caste” lasted for centuries, and was ended only
by a foreign conqueror--so complete an ascendency had the privileged
patricians gained over the fettered populace. The wonderful mercantile
prosperity of the community stifled the sentiment of popular
liberty--a notable warning to mercantile and materialistic America!
No oligarchy, and nothing of oligarchic tendencies can be endured in
this country. We must not and will not have a dominant “caste.”
FOOTNOTES:
[4] In the best age of Athens, life was marked by a dignified and
elegant simplicity. Every free citizen was one of the rulers of the
state, through his vote in the assembly and the law courts; and,
consequently, there was little exclusiveness in social life. An
Athenian might be poor, but if he had general ability, wit, or artistic
skill, he was welcome in the best houses of Athens.--_Sanderson’s
Epitome of History_, p. 169.
[5] Childe Harold, Canto IV.