Section 17. Summary.

At this point, where religion passes into philosophy, the discussion

which has occupied the present chapter must close. So far it was

necessary to proceed, in order to show how wide was the range of the

religious consciousness of the Greeks, and through how many points of

view it passed in the course of its evolution. But its development was

away from the Greek and towards the Christian; and it will therefore be

desirable, in conclusion, to fix once more in our minds that central and

primary phase of the Greek religion under the influence of which their

civilisation was formed into a character definite and distinct in the

history of the world. This phase will be the one which underlay and was

reflected in the actual cult and institutions of Greece and must

therefore be regarded not as a product of critical and self-conscious

thought, but as an imaginative way of conceiving the world stamped as it

were passively on the mind by the whole course of concrete experience.

Of its character we have attempted to give some kind of account in the

earlier part of this chapter, and we have now only to summarise what was

there said.

The Greek religion, then, as we saw, in this its characteristic phase,

involved a belief in a number of deities who on the one hand were

personifications of the powers of nature and of the human soul, on the

other the founders and sustainers of civil society. To the operations of

these beings the whole of experience was referred, and that, not merely

in an abstract and unintelligible way, as when we say that the world was

created by God, but in a quite precise and definite sense, the action of

the gods being conceived to be the same in kind as that of man,

proceeding from similar motives, directed to similar ends, and

accomplished very largely by similar, though much superior means. By

virtue of this uncritical and unreflective mode of apprehension the

Greeks, we said, were made at home in the world. Their religion suffused

and transformed the facts both of nature and of society, interpreting

what would otherwise have been unintelligible by the idea of an activity

which they could understand because it was one which they were

constantly exercising themselves. Being thus supplied with a general

explanation of the world, they could put aside the question of its

origin and end, and devote themselves freely and fully to the art of

living, unhampered by scruples and doubts as to the nature of life.

Consciousness similar to their own was the ultimate fact; and there was

nothing therefore with which they might not form intelligible and

harmonious relations.

And as on the side of metaphysics they were delivered from the

perplexities of speculation, so on the side of ethics they were

undisturbed by the perplexities of conscience. Their religion, it is

true, had a bearing on their conduct, but a bearing, as we saw, external

and mechanical. If they sinned they might be punished directly by

physical evil; and from this evil religion might redeem them by the

appropriate ceremonies of purgation. But on the other hand they were not

conscious of a spiritual relation to God, of sin as an alienation from

the divine power and repentance as the means of restoration to grace.

The pangs of conscience, the fears and hopes, the triumph and despair of

the soul which were the preoccupations of the Puritan, were phenomena

unknown to the ancient Greek. He lived and acted undisturbed by

scrupulous introspection; and the function of his religion was rather to

quiet the conscience by ritual than to excite it by admonition and

reproof.

From both these points of view, the metaphysical and the ethical, the

Greeks were brought by their religion into harmony with the world.

Neither the perplexities of the intellect nor the scruples of the

conscience intervened to hamper their free activity. Their life was

simple, straightforward and clear; and their consciousness directed

outwards upon the world, not perplexedly absorbed in the contemplation

of itself.

On the other hand, this harmony which was the essence of the Greek

civilisation, was a temporary compromise, not a final solution. It

depended on presumptions of the imagination, not on convictions of the

intellect; and as we have seen, it destroyed itself by the process of

its own development. The beauty, the singleness, and the freedom which

attracts us in the consciousness of the Greek was the result of a

poetical view of the world, which did but anticipate in imagination an

ideal that was not realised in fact or in thought. It depended on the

assumption of anthropomorphic gods, an assumption which could not stand

before the criticism of reason, and either broke down into scepticism,

or was developed into the conception of a single supreme and spiritual

power.

And even apart from this internal evolution, from this subversion of its

ideal basis, the harmony established by the Greek religion was at the

best but partial and incomplete. It was a harmony for life, but not for

death. The more completely the Greek felt himself to be at home in the

world, the more happily and freely he abandoned himself to the exercise

of his powers, the more intensely and vividly he lived in action and in

passion, the more alien, bitter, and incomprehensible did he find the

phenomena of age and death. On this problem, so far as we can judge, he

received from his religion but little light, and still less consolation.

The music of his brief life closed with a discord unresolved; and even

before reason had brought her criticism to bear upon his creed, its

deficiency was forced upon him by his feeling.

Thus the harmony which we have indicated as the characteristic result of

the Greek religion contained none of the conditions of completeness or

finality. For on the one hand there were elements which it was never

able to include; and on the other, its hold even over those which it

embraced was temporary and precarious. The eating of the tree of

knowledge drove the Greeks from their paradise; but the vision of that

Eden continues to haunt the mind of man, not in vain, if it prophesies

in a type the end to which his history moves.

CHAPTER II

THE GREEK VIEW OF THE STATE

Section 1. The Greek State a "City."

The present kingdom of Greece is among the smallest of European states;

but to the Greeks it would have appeared too large to be a state at all.

Within that little peninsular whose whole population and wealth are so

insignificant according to modern ideas, were comprised in classical

times not one but many flourishing polities. And the conception of an

amalgamation of these under a single government was so foreign to the

Greek idea, that even to Aristotle, the clearest and most comprehensive

thinker of his age, it did not present itself even as a dream. To him,

as to every ancient Greek, the state meant the City--meant, that is to

say, an area about the size of an English county, with a population,

perhaps, of some hundred thousand, self-governing and independent of any

larger political whole.

If we can imagine the various County Councils of England emancipated

from the control of Parliament and set free to make their own laws,

manage their own finance and justice, raise troops and form with one

another alliances, offensive and defensive, we may form thus some

general idea of the political institutions of the Greeks and some

measure of their difference from our own.

Nor must it be supposed that the size of the Greek state was a mere

accident in its constitution, that it might have been indefinitely

enlarged and yet regained its essential character. On the contrary, the

limitation of size belonged to its very notion. The greatest state, says

Aristotle, is not the one whose population is most numerous; on the

contrary, after a certain limit of increase has been passed, the state

ceases to be a state at all. "Ten men are too few for a city; a hundred

thousand are too many." Not only London, it seems, but every one of our

larger towns, would have been too big for the Greek idea of a state; and

as for the British empire, the very conception of it would have been

impossible to the Greeks.

Clearly, their view on this point is fundamentally different from our

own. Their civilisation was one of "city-states", not of kingdoms and

empires; and their whole political outlook was necessarily determined by

this condition. Generalising from their own experience, they had formed

for themselves a conception of the state not the less interesting to us

that it is unfamiliar; and this conception it will be the business of

the present chapter to illustrate and explain.

Section 2. The Relation of the State to the Citizen.

First, let us consider the relation of the state to the citizens--that

is to say, to that portion of the community, usually a minority, which

was possessed of full political rights. It is here that we have the key

to that limitation of size which we have seen to be essential to the

idea of the city-state. For, in the Greek view, to be a citizen of a

state did not merely imply the payment of taxes, and the possession of a

vote; it implied a direct and active co-operation in all the functions

of civil and military life. A citizen was normally a soldier, a judge,

and a member of the governing assembly; and all his public duties he

performed not by deputy, but in person. He must be able frequently to

attend the centre of government; hence the limitation of territory. He

must be able to speak and vote in person in the assembly; hence the

limitation of numbers. The idea of representative government never

occurred to the Greeks; but if it had occurred to them, and if they had

adopted it, it would have involved a revolution in their whole

conception of the citizen. Of that conception, direct personal service

was the cardinal point--service in the field as well as in the council;

and to substitute for personal service the mere right to a vote would

have been to destroy the form of the Greek state. Such being the idea

the Greeks had formed, based on their own experience, of the relation of

the citizen to the state, it follows that to them a society so complex

as our own would hardly have answered to the definition of a state at

all. Rather they would have regarded it as a mere congeries of

unsatisfactory human beings, held together, partly by political, partly

by economic compulsion, but lacking that conscious identity of interest

with the community to which they belong which alone constitutes the

citizen. A man whose main pre-occupation should be with his trade or his

profession, and who should only become aware of his corporate relations

when called upon for his rates and taxes--a man, that is to say, in the

position of an ordinary Englishman--would not have seemed to the Greeks

to be a full and proper member of a state. For the state, to them, was

more than a machinery, it was a spiritual bond; and "public life", as we

call it, was not a thing to be taken up and laid aside at pleasure, but

a necessary and essential phase of the existence of a complete man.

This relation of the citizen to the state, as it was conceived by the

Greeks, is sometimes described as though it involved the sacrifice of

the individual to the whole. And in a certain sense, perhaps, this is

true. Aristotle, for instance, declares that no one must suppose he

belongs to himself, but rather that all alike belong to the state; and

Plato, in the construction of his ideal republic, is thinking much less

of the happiness of the individual citizens, than of the symmetry and

beauty of the whole as it might appear to a disinterested observer from

without. Certainly it would have been tedious and irksome to any but his

own ideal philosopher to live under the rule of that perfect polity.

Individual enterprise, bent, and choice is rigorously excluded. Nothing

escapes the net of legislation, from the production of children to the

fashion of houses, clothes, and food. It is absurd, says the ruthless

logic of this mathematician among the poets, for one who would regulate

public life to leave private relations uncontrolled; if there is to be

order at all, it must extend through and through; no moment, no detail

must be withdrawn from the grasp of law. And though in this, Plato, no

doubt, goes far beyond the common sense of the Greeks, yet he is not

building altogether in the air. The republic which he desiderates was

realised, as we shall see, partially at least, in Sparta. So that his

insistence on the all-pervading domination of the state, exaggerated

though it be, is exaggerated on the actual lines of Greek practice, and

may be taken as indicative of a real distinction and even antithesis

between their point of view and that which prevails at present in most

modern states.

But on the other hand such a phrase as the "sacrifice of the individual

to the whole", to this extent at least is misleading, that it

presupposes an opposition between the end of the individual and that of

the State, such as was entirely foreign to the Greek conception. The

best individual, in their view, was also the best citizen; the two

ideals not only were not incompatible, they were almost

indistinguishable. When Aristotle defines a state as "an association of

similar persons for the attainment of the best life possible", he

implies not only that society is the means whereby the individual

attains his ideal, but also that that ideal includes the functions of

public life. The state in his view is not merely the convenient

machinery that raises a man above his animal wants and sets him free to

follow his own devices; it is itself his end, or at least a part of it.

And from this it follows that the regulations of the state were not

regarded by the Greeks--as they are apt to be by modern men--as so many

vexatious, if necessary, restraints on individual liberty; but rather as

the expression of the best and highest nature of the citizen, as the

formula of the conduct which the good man would naturally prescribe to

himself. So that, to get a clear conception of what was at least the

Greek ideal, however imperfectly it may have been attained in practice,

we ought to regard the individual not as sacrificed to, but rather as

realising himself in the whole. We shall thus come nearer to what seems

to have been the point of view not only of Aristotle and of Plato, but

also of the average Greek man.

Section 3. The Greek View of Law.

For nothing is more remarkable in the political theory of the Greeks

than the respect they habitually express for law. Early legislators were

believed to have been specially inspired by the divine power--Lycurgus,

for instance, by Apollo, and Minos by Zeus; and Plato regards it as a

fundamental condition of the well-being of any state that this view

should prevail among its citizens. Nor was this conception of the divine

origin of law confined to legend and to philosophy; we find it expressed

in the following passage of Demosthenes, addressed to a jury of average

Athenians, and representing at any rate the conventional and orthodox,

if not the critical view of the Greek public:

"The whole life of men, O Athenians, whether they inhabit a great city

or a small one, is governed by nature and by laws. Of these, nature is a

thing irregular, unequal, and peculiar to the individual possessor; laws

are regular, common, and the same for all. Nature, if it be depraved,

has often vicious desires; therefore you will find people of that sort

falling into error. Laws desire what is just and honourable and useful;

they seek for this, and, when it is found, it is set forth as a general

ordinance, the same and alike for all; and that is law, which all men

ought to obey for many reasons, and especially because every law is an

invention and gift of the Gods, a resolution of wise men, a corrective

of errors intentional and unintentional, a compact of the whole state,

according to which all who belong to the state ought to live."

[Footnote: Demosth. in Aristogeit. Section 17.--Translation by C. R.

Kennedy.]

In this opposition of Law, as the universal principle, to Nature, as

individual caprice, is implied a tacit identification of Law and

Justice. The identification, of course, is never complete in any state,

and frequently enough is not even approximate. No people were more

conscious of this than the Greeks, none, as we shall see later, pushed

it more vigorously home. But still, the positive conception which lay at

the root of their society was that which finds expression in the passage

we have quoted, and which is stated still more explicitly in the

"Memorabilia" of Xenophon, where that admirable example of the good and

efficient citizen represents his hero Socrates as maintaining, without

hesitation or reserve, that "that which is in accordance with law is

just." The implication, of course, is not that laws cannot be improved,

that they do at any point adequately correspond to justice; but that

justice has an objective and binding validity, and that Law is a serious

and on the whole a successful attempt to embody it in practice. This was

the conviction predominant in the best period of Greece; the conviction

under which her institutions were formed and flourished, and whose

overthrow by the philosophy of a critical age was coincident with, if it

was not the cause of, her decline.

Section 4. Artisans and Slaves.

We have now arrived at a general idea of the nature of the Greek state,

and of its relations to the individual citizen. But there were also

members of the state who were not citizens at all; there was the class

of labourers and traders, who, in some states at least, had no political

rights; and the class of slaves who had nowhere any rights at all. For

in the Greek conception the citizen was an aristocrat. His excellence

was thought to consist in public activity; and to the performance of

public duties he ought therefore to be able to devote the greater part

of his time and energy. But the existence of such a privileged class

involved the existence of a class of producers to support them; and the

producers, by the nature of their calling, be they slave or free, were

excluded from the life of the perfect citizen. They had not the

necessary leisure to devote to public business; neither had they the

opportunity to acquire the mental and physical qualities which would

enable them to transact it worthily. They were therefore regarded by the

Greeks as an inferior class; in some states, in Sparta, for example, and

in Thebes, they were excluded from political rights; and even in Athens,

the most democratic of all the Greek communities, though they were

admitted to the citizenship and enjoyed considerable political

influence, they never appear to have lost the stigma of social

inferiority. And the distinction which was thus more or less definitely

drawn in practice between the citizens proper and the productive class,

was even more emphatically affirmed in theory. Aristotle, the most

balanced of all the Greek thinkers and the best exponent of the normal

trend of their ideas, excludes the class of artisans from the

citizenship of his ideal state on the ground that they are debarred by

their occupation from the characteristic excellence of man. And Plato,

though here as elsewhere he pushes the normal view to excess, yet, in

his insistence on the gulf that separates the citizen from the mechanic

and the trader, is in sympathy with the general current of Greek ideas.

His ideal state is one which depends mainly on agriculture; in which

commerce and exchange are reduced to the smallest possible dimensions;

in which every citizen is a landowner, forbidden to engage in trade; and

in which the productive class is excluded from all political rights. The

obverse then, of the Greek citizen, who realised in the state his

highest life, was an inferior class of producers who realised only the

means of subsistence. But within this class again was a distinction yet

more fundamental--the distinction between free men and slaves. In the

majority of the Greek states the slaves were the greater part of the

population; in Athens, to take an extreme case, at the close of the

fourth century, they are estimated at 400,000, to 100,000 citizens. They

were employed not only in domestic service, but on the fields, in

factories and in mines, and performed, in short, a considerable part of

the productive labour in the state. A whole large section, then, of the

producers in ancient Greece had no social or political rights at all.

They existed simply to maintain the aristocracy of citizens, for whom

and in whom the state had its being. Nor was this state of things in the

least repugnant to the average Greek mind. Nothing is more curious to

the modern man than the temper in which Aristotle approaches this theme.

Without surprise or indignation, but in the tone of an impartial,

scientific inquirer, he asks himself the question whether slavery is

natural, and answers it in the affirmative. For, he argues, though in

any particular case, owing to the uncertain chances of fortune and war,

the wrong person may happen to be enslaved, yet, broadly speaking, the

general truth remains, that there are some men so inferior to others

that they ought to be despotically governed, by the same right and for

the same good end that the body ought to be governed by the soul. Such

men, he maintains, are slaves by nature; and it is as much to their

interest to be ruled as it is to their masters' interest to rule them.

To this class belong, for example, all who are naturally incapable of

any but physical activity. These should be regarded as detachable limbs,

so to speak, of the man who owns them, instruments of his will, like

hands and feet; or, to use Aristotle's own phrase, "the slave is a tool

with life in it, and the tool a lifeless slave."

The relation between master and slave thus frankly conceived by the

Greeks, did not necessarily imply, though it was quite compatible with,

brutality of treatment. The slave might be badly treated, no doubt, and

very frequently was, for his master had almost absolute control over

him, life and limb; but, as we should expect, it was clearly recognised

by the best Greeks that the treatment should be genial and humane.

"There is a certain mutual profit and kindness," says Aristotle,

"between master and slave, in all cases where the relation is natural,

not merely imposed from without by convention or force." [Footnote:

Arist. Pol. I. 7. 1255 b 12] And Plato insists on the duty of neither

insulting nor outraging a slave, but treating him rather with even

greater fairness than if he were in a position of equality.

Still, there can be no doubt that the Greek conception of slavery is one

of the points in which their view of life runs most counter to our own.

Centuries of Christianity have engendered in us the conviction, or

rather, the instinct, that men are equal at least to this extent, that

no one has a right explicitly to make of another a mere passive

instrument of his will--that every man, in short, must be regarded as an

end in himself. Yet even here the divergence between the Greek and the

modern view is less extreme than it appears at first sight. For the

modern man, in spite of his perfectly genuine belief in equality (in the

sense in which we have just defined the word), does nevertheless, when

he is confronted with racial differences, recognise degrees of

inferiority so extreme, that he is practically driven into the

Aristotelian position that some men are naturally slaves. The American,

for example, will hardly deny that such is his attitude towards the

negro. The negro, in theory, is the equal, politically and socially, of

the white man; in practice, he is excluded from the vote, from the

professions, from the amenities of social intercourse, and even, as we

have recently learnt, from the most elementary forms of justice. The

general and a priori doctrine of equality is shattering itself against

the actual facts; and the old Greek conception, "the slave by nature",

may be detected behind the mask of the Christian ideal. And while thus,

even in spite of itself, the modern view is approximating to that of the

Greeks, on the other hand the Greek view by its own evolution was

already beginning to anticipate our own. Even Aristotle, in formulating

his own conception of slavery, finds it necessary to observe that though

it be true that some men are naturally slaves, yet in practice, under

conditions which give the victory to force, it may happen that the

"natural" slave becomes the master, and the "natural" master is degraded

to a slave. This is already a serious modification of his doctrine. And

other writers, pushing the contention further, deny altogether the

theory of natural slavery. "No man," says the poet Philemon, "was ever

born a slave by nature. Fortune only has put men in that position." And

Euripides, the most modern of the Greeks, writes in the same strain:

"One thing only disgraces a slave, and that is the name. In all other

respects a slave, if he be good, is no worse than a freeman." [Footnote:

Euripides, Ion. 854]

It seems then that the distinction between the Greek and the modern

point of view is not so profound or so final as it appears at first

sight. Still, the distinction, broadly speaking, is there. The Greeks,

on the whole, were quite content to sacrifice the majority to the

minority. Their position, as we said at the outset, was fundamentally

aristocratic; they exaggerated rather than minimised the distinctions

between men--between the Greek and the barbarian, the freeman and the

slave, the gentleman and the artisan--regarding them as natural and

fundamental, not as the casual product of circumstances. The "equality"

which they sought in a well-ordered state was proportional not

arithmetical--the attribution to each of his peculiar right, not of

equal rights to all. Some were born to rule, others to serve; some to be

ends, others to be means; and the problem to be solved was not how to

obliterate these varieties of tone, but how to compose them into an

ordered harmony.

In a modern state, on the other hand, though class distinctions are

clearly enough marked, yet the point of view from which they are

regarded is fundamentally different. They are attributed rather to

accidents of fortune than to varieties of nature. The artisan, for

example, ranks no doubt lower than the professional man; but no one

maintains that he is a different kind of being, incapable by nature, as

Aristotle asserts, of the characteristic excellence of man. The

distinction admitted is rather one of wealth than of natural calling,

and may be obliterated by ability and good luck. Neither in theory nor

in practice does the modern state recognise any such gulf as that which,

in ancient Greece, separated the freeman from the slave, or the citizen

from the non-citizen.

Section 5. The Greek State Primarily Military, not Industrial.

The source of this divergence of view must be sought in the whole

circumstances and character of the Greek states. Founded in the

beginning by conquest, many of them still retained, in their internal

structure, the marks of their violent origin. The citizens, for example,

of Sparta and of Crete, were practically military garrisons, settled in

the midst of a hostile population. These were extreme cases; and

elsewhere, no doubt, the distinction between the conquerors and the

conquered had disappeared. Still, it had sufficed to mould the

conception and ideal of the citizen as a member of a privileged and

superior class, whose whole energies were devoted to maintaining, by

council and war, not only the prosperity, but the very existence of the

state. The original citizen, moreover, would be an owner of land, which

would be tilled for him by a subject class. Productive labour would be

stamped, from the outset, with the stigma of inferiority; commerce would

grow up, if at all, outside the limits of the landed aristocracy, and

would have a struggle to win for itself any degree of social and

political recognition. Such were the conditions that produced the Greek

conception of the citizen. In some states, such as Sparta, they

continued practically unchanged throughout the best period of Greek

history; in others, such as Athens, they were modified by the growth of

a commercial population, and where that was the case the conception of

the citizen was modified too, and the whole polity assumed a democratic

character. Yet never, as we have seen, even in the most democratic

states, was the modern conception of equality admitted. For, in the

first place, the institution of slavery persisted, to stamp the mass of

producers as an inferior caste; and in the second place, trade, even in

the states where it was most developed, hardly attained a preponderating

influence. The ancient state was and remained primarily military. The

great industrial questions which agitate modern states either did not

exist at all in Greece, or assumed so simple a form that they did not

rise to the surface of political life. [Footnote: There was, of course,

the general opposition between rich and poor (see below). But not those

infinitely complex relations which are the problems of modern

statesmanship.] How curious it is, for example, from the modern point of

view, to find Plato, a citizen of the most important trading centre of

Greece, dismissing in the following brief sentence the whole commercial

legislation of his ideal state:

"As to those common business transactions between private individuals in

the market, including, if you please, the contracts of artisans, libels,

assaults, law-proceedings, and the impanelling of juries, or again

questions relating to tariffs, and the collection of such customs as may

be necessary in the market or in the harbours, and generally all

regulations of the market, the police, the custom-house, and the like;

shall we condescend to legislate at all on such matters?

"No, it is not worth while to give directions on these points to good

and cultivated men: for in most cases they will have little difficulty

in discovering all the legislation required." [Footnote: Plato, Rep. IV.

425.--Translated by Davies and Vaughan.]

In fact, throughout his treatise it is the non-commercial or military

class with which Plato is almost exclusively concerned; and in taking

that line he is so far at least in touch with reality that that class

was the one which did in fact predominate in the Greek state; and that

even where, as in Athens, the productive class became an important

factor in political life, it was never able altogether to overthrow the

aristocratic conception of the citizen.

And with that conception, we must add, was bound up the whole Greek view

of individual excellence. The inferiority of the artisan and the trader,

historically established in the manner we have indicated, was further

emphasised by the fact that they were excluded by their calling from the

cultivation of the higher personal qualities--from the training of the

body by gymnastics and of the mind by philosophy; from habitual

conversance with public affairs; from that perfect balance, in a word,

of the physical, intellectual, and moral powers, which was only to be

attained by a process of self-culture, incompatible with the pursuance

of a trade for bread. Such, at any rate, was the opinion of the Greeks.

We shall have occasion to return to it later. Meantime, let us sum up

the course of our investigation up to the present point.

We have seen that the state, in the Greek view, must be so limited, both

in territory and population, that all its citizens might be able to

participate in person in its government and defence; that it was based

on fundamental class distinctions separating sharply the citizen from

the non-citizen, and the slave from the free; that its end and purpose

was that all-absorbing corporate activity in which the citizen found the

highest expression of himself; and that to that end the inferior classes

were regarded as mere means--a point of view which finds its completest

expression in the institution of slavery.

Section 6. Forms of Government in the Greek State.

While, however, this was the general idea of the Greek state, it would

be a mistake to suppose that it was everywhere embodied in a single

permanent form of polity. On the contrary, the majority of the states in

Greece were in a constant state of flux; revolution succeeded revolution

with startling rapidity; and in place of a single fixed type what we

really get is a constant transition from one variety to another. The

general account we have given ought therefore to be regarded only as a

kind of limiting formula, embracing within its range a number of

polities distinct and even opposed in character. Of these polities

Aristotle, whose work is based on an examination of all the existing

states of Greece, recognises three main varieties: government by the

one, government by the few, and government by the many; and each of

these is subdivided into two forms, one good, where the government has

regard to the well-being of the whole, the other bad, where it has

regard only to the well-being of those who govern. The result is six

forms, of which three are good, monarchy, aristocracy, and what he calls

a "polity" par excellence; three bad, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.

Of all these forms we have examples in Greek history, and indeed can

roughly trace a tendency of the state to evolve through the series of

them. But by far the most important, in the historical period, are the

two forms known as Oligarchy and Democracy; and the reason of their

importance is that they corresponded roughly to government by the rich

and government by the poor. "Rich and poor," says Aristotle, "are the

really antagonistic members of a state. The result is that the character

of all existing polities is determined by the predominance of one or

other of these classes, and it is the common opinion that there are two

polities and two only, viz., Democracy and Oligarchy." [Footnote: Arist.

Pol. VI. (IV) 1291 b8.--Translation by Welldon.] In other words, the

social distinction between rich and poor was exaggerated in Greece into

political antagonism. In every state there was an oligarchic and a

democratic faction; and so fierce was the opposition between them, that

we may almost say that every Greek city was in a chronic state of civil

war, having become, as Plato puts it, not one city but two, "one

comprising the rich and the other the poor, who reside together on the

same ground, and are always plotting against one another." [Footnote:

Plat. Rep. viii. 551--Translation by Davies and Vaughan]

Section 7. Faction and Anarchy.

This internal schism which ran through almost every state, came to a

head in the great Peloponnesian war which divided Greece at the close of

the fifth century, and in which Athens and Sparta, the two chief

combatants, represented respectively the democratic and the oligarchic

principles. Each appealed to the kindred faction in the states that were

opposed to them; and every city was divided against itself, the party

that was "out" for the moment plotting with the foreign foe to overthrow

the party that was "in." Thus the general Greek conception of the

ordered state was so far from being realised in practice that probably

at no time in the history of the civilised world has anarchy more

complete and cynical prevailed.

To appreciate the gulf that existed between the ideal and the fact, we

have only to contrast such a scheme as that set forth in the "Republic"

of Plato with the following description by Thucydides of the state of

Greece during the Peloponnesian war:

"Not long afterwards the whole Hellenic world was in commotion; in every

city the chiefs of the democracy and of the oligarchy were struggling,

the one to bring in the Athenians, the other the Lacedaemonians. Now in

time of peace, men would have had no excuse for introducing either, and

no desire to do so; but when they were at war and both sides could

easily obtain allies to the hurt of their enemies and the advantage of

themselves, the dissatisfied party were only too ready to invoke foreign

aid. And revolution brought upon the cities of Hellas many terrible

calamities, such as have been and always will be while human nature

remains the same, but which are more or less aggravated and differ in

character with every new combination of circumstances. In peace and

prosperity both states and individuals are actuated by higher motives,

because they do not fall under the dominion of imperious necessities;

but war which takes away the comfortable provision of daily life is a

hard master, and tends to assimilate men's characters to their

conditions.

"When troubles had once begun in the cities, those who followed carried

the revolutionary spirit further and further, and determined to outdo

the report of all who had preceded them by the ingenuity of their

enterprises and the atrocity of their revenges. The meaning of words had

no longer the same relation to things, but was changed by them as they

thought proper. Reckless daring was held to be loyal courage; prudent

delay was the excuse of a coward; moderation was the disguise of unmanly

weakness; to know everything was to do nothing. Frantic energy was the

true quality of a man. A conspirator who wanted to be safe was a

recreant in disguise. The lover of violence was always trusted, and his

opponent suspected. He who succeeded in a plot was deemed knowing, but a

still greater master in craft was he who detected one. On the other

hand, he who plotted from the first to have nothing to do with plots was

a breaker-up of parties and a poltroon who was afraid of the enemy. In a

word, he who could outstrip another in a bad action was applauded, and

so was he who encouraged to evil one who had no idea of it. The tie of

party was stronger than the tie of blood, because a partisan was more

ready to dare without asking why (for party associations are not based

upon any established law, nor do they seek the public good; they are

formed in defiance of the laws and from self-interest). The seal of good

faith was not divine law, but fellowship in crime. If an enemy when he

was in the ascendant offered fair words, the opposite party received

them, not in a generous spirit, but by a jealous watchfulness of his

actions. Revenge was dearer than self-preservation. Any agreements sworn

to by either party, when they could do nothing else, were binding as

long as both were powerless. But he who on a favourable opportunity

first took courage and struck at his enemy when he saw him off his

guard, had greater pleasure in a perfidious than he would have had in an

open act of revenge; he congratulated himself that he had taken the

safer course, and also that he had overreached his enemy and gained the

prize of superior ability. In general the dishonest more easily gain

credit for cleverness than the simple for goodness; men take a pride in

the one, but are ashamed of the other.

"The cause of all these evils was the love of power originating in

avarice and ambition, and the party-spirit which is engendered by them

when men are fairly embarked in a contest. For the leaders on either

side used specious names, the one party professing to uphold the

constitutional equality of the many, the other the wisdom of an

aristocracy, while they made the public interests, to which in name they

were devoted, in reality their prize. Striving in every way to overcome

each other, they committed the most monstrous crimes; yet even these

were surpassed by the magnitude of their revenges which they pursued to

the very utmost, neither party observing any definite limits either of

justice or public expediency, but both alike making the caprice of the

moment their law. Either by the help of an unrighteous sentence, or

grasping power with the strong hand, they were eager to satiate the

impatience of party spirit. Neither faction cared for religion; but any

fair pretence which succeeded in effecting some odious purpose was

greatly lauded. And the citizens who were of neither party fell a prey

to both; either they were disliked because they held aloof, or men were

jealous of their surviving.

"Thus revolution gave birth to every form of wickedness in Hellas. The

simplicity which is so large an element in a noble nature was laughed to

scorn and disappeared. An attitude of perfidious antagonism everywhere

prevailed; for there was no word binding enough, nor oath terrible

enough to reconcile enemies. Each man was strong only in the conviction

that nothing was secure; he must look to his own safety, and could not

afford to trust others. Inferior intellects generally succeeded best.

For aware of their own deficiencies, and fearing the capacities of their

opponents, for whom they were no match in powers of speech, and whose

subtle wits were likely to anticipate them in contriving evil, they

struck boldly and at once. But the cleverer sort, presuming in their

arrogance that they would be aware in time, and disdaining to act when

they could think, were taken off their guard and easily destroyed."

[Footnote: Thuc. iii. 82.--Translated by Jowett.]

The general indictment thus drawn up by Thucydides is amply illustrated

by the events of war which he describes. On one occasion, for example,

the Athenians were blockading Mitylene; the government, an oligarchy,

was driven to arm the people for the defence; the people, having

obtained arms, immediately demanded political rights, under threat of

surrendering the city to the foreign foe; and the government, rather

than concede their claims, surrendered it themselves. Again, Megara, we

learn, was twice betrayed, once by the democrats to the Athenians, and

again by the oligarchs to the Lacedaemonians. At Leontini the Syracusans

were called in to drive out the popular party. And at Corcyra the

people, having got the better of their aristocratic opponents, proceeded

to a general massacre which extended over seven days, with every variety

of moral and physical atrocity.

Such is the view of the political condition of Greece given to us by a

contemporary observer towards the close of the fifth century, and it is

a curious comment on the Greek idea of the state. That idea, as we saw,

was an ordered inequality, political as well as social; and in certain

states, and notably in Sparta, it was successfully embodied in a stable

form. But in the majority of the Greek states it never attained to more

than a fluctuating and temporary realisation. The inherent contradiction

was too extreme for the attempted reconciliation; the inequalities

refused to blend in a harmony of divergent tones but asserted themselves

in the dissonance of civil war.

Section 8. Property and the Communistic Ideal.

And, as we have seen, this internal schism of the Greek state was as

much social as political. The "many" and the "few" were identified

respectively with the poor and the rich; and the struggle was thus at

bottom as much economic as political. Government by an oligarchy was

understood to mean the exploitation of the masses by the classes. "An

oligarchy," says a democrat, as reported by Thucydides, "while giving

the people the full share of danger, not merely takes too much of the

good things, but absolutely monopolises them." [Footnote: Thuc. vi. 39.--

Translated by Jowett.] And, similarly, the advent of democracy was held

to imply the spoliation of the classes in the interest of the masses,

either by excessive taxation, by an abuse of the judicial power to fine,

or by any other of the semi-legal devices of oppression which the

majority in power have always at their command. This substantial

identity of rich and poor, respectively, with oligarch and democrat may

be further illustrated by the following passage from Aristotle:

"In consequence of the political disturbances and contentions between

the commons on the one hand and the rich on the other, whichever party

happens to get the better of its opponents, instead of establishing a

polity of a broad and equal kind, assumes political supremacy as a prize

of the victory, and sets up either a Democracy or an Oligarchy."

[Footnote: Arist. Pol. VI. (IV) 1296 a 27.--Translation by Welldon.]

We see then that it was the underlying question of property that infused

so strong a rancour into the party struggles of Greece. From the very

earliest period, in fact, we find it to have been the case that

political revolution was prompted by economic causes. Debt was the main

factor of the crisis which led to the legislation of Solon; and a re-

division of the land was one of the measures attributed to Lycurgus.

[Footnote: I have not thought it necessary for my purpose, here or

elsewhere, to discuss the authenticity of the statements made by Greek

authors about Lycurgus.] As population increased, and, in the maritime

states, commerce and trade developed, the problem of poverty became

increasingly acute; and though it was partially met by the emigration of

the surplus population to colonies, yet in the fifth and fourth

centuries we find it prominent and pressing both in practical politics

and in speculation. Nothing can illustrate better how familiar the topic

was, and to what free theorising it had led, than the passages in which

it is treated in the comedies of Aristophanes. Here for example, is an

extract from the "Ecclesiazusae" which it may be worth while to insert

as a contribution to an argument that belongs to every age.

PRAXAGORA. I tell you that we are all to share alike and have everything

in common, instead of one being rich and another poor, and one having

hundreds of acres and another not enough to make him a grave, and one a

houseful of servants and another not even a paltry foot-boy. I am going

to introduce communism and universal equality.

BLEPSYRUS. How communism?

PRAX. That's just what I was going to tell you. First of all,

everybody's money and land and anything else he may possess will be made

common property. Then we shall maintain you all out of the common stock,

with due regard to economy and thrift.

BLEPS. But how about those who have no land, but only money that they

can hide?

PRAX. It will all go to the public purse. To keep anything back will be

perjury.

BLEPS. Perjury! Well, if you come to that, it was by perjury it was all

acquired.

PRAX. And then, money won't be the least use to any one.

BLEPS. Why not?

PRAX. Because nobody will be poor. Everybody will have everything he

wants, bread, salt-fish, barley-cake, clothes, wine, garlands,

chickpeas. So what will be the good of keeping anything back? Answer

that if you can!

BLEPS. Isn't it just the people who have all these things that are the

greatest thieves?

PRAX. No doubt, under the old laws. But now, when everything will be in

common what will be the good of keeping anything back?

BLEPS. Who will do the field work?

PRAX. The slaves; all you will have to do is to dress and go out to

dinner in the evening.

BLEPS. But what about the clothes? How are they to be provided?

PRAX. What you have now will do to begin with, and afterwards we shall

make them for you ourselves.

BLEPS. Just one thing more! Supposing a man were to lose his suit in the

courts, where are the damages to come from? It would not be fair to take

the public funds.

PRAX. But there won't be any lawsuits at all!

BLEPS. That will mean ruin to a good many people!

BYSTANDER. Just my idea!

PRAX. Why should there be any?

BLEPS. Why! for reasons enough, heaven knows! For instance, a man might

repudiate his debts.

PRAX. In that case, where did the man who lent the money get it from?

Clearly, since everything is in common, he must have stolen it!

BLEPS. So he must! An excellent idea! But now tell me this. When fellows

come to blows over their cups, where are the damages to come from?

PRAX. From the rations! A man won't be in such a hurry to make a row

when his belly has to pay for it.

BLEPS. One thing more! Will there be no more thieves?

PRAX. Why should any one steal what is his own?

BLEPS. And won't one be robbed of one's cloak at night?

PRAX. Not if you sleep at home!

BLEPS. Nor yet, if one sleeps out, as one used to do?

PRAX. No, for there will be enough and to spare for all. And even if a

thief does try to strip a man, he will give up his cloak of his own

accord. What would be the good of fighting? He has only to go and get

another, and a better, from the public stores.

BLEPS. And will there be no more gambling?

PRAX. What will there be to play for?

BLEPS. And how about house accommodation?

PRAX. That will be the same for all. I tell you I am going to turn the

whole city into one huge house, and break down all the partitions, so

that every one may have free access to every one else. [Footnote:

Aristoph. Eccles. 590.]

The "social problem," then, had clearly arisen in ancient Greece, though

no doubt in an infinitely simpler form than that in which it is

presented to ourselves; and it might perhaps have been expected that the

Greeks, with their notion of the supremacy of the state, would have

adopted some drastic public measure to meet it. And, in fact, in the

earlier period of their history, as has been indicated above, we do find

sweeping revolutions effected in the distribution of property. In

Athens, Solon abolished debt, either in whole or part, by reducing the

rate of interest and depreciating the currency; and in Sparta Lycurgus

is said to have resumed the whole of the land for the state, and

redivided it equally among the citizens. We have also traces of laws

existing in other states to regulate in the interests of equality the

possession and transfer of land. But it does not appear that any attempt

was made in any state permanently to control by public authority the

production and distribution of wealth. Meantime, however, the problem of

social inequality was exercising the minds of political theorists; and

we have notice of various schemes for an ideal polity framed upon

communistic principles. Of these the most important, and the only one

preserved to us, is the celebrated "Republic" of Plato; and never, it

may be safely asserted, was a plan of society framed so consistent,

harmonious and beautiful in itself, or so indifferent to the actual

capacities of mankind. Following out what we have already indicated as

the natural drift of Greek ideas, the philosopher separates off on the

one hand the productive class, who are to have no political rights; and

on the other the class of soldiers and governors. It is the latter alone

with whom he seriously concerns himself; and the scheme he draws up for

them is uncompromisingly communistic. After being purged, by an

elaborate education, of all the egoistic passions, they are to live

together, having all things in common, devoted heart and soul to the

public good, and guiltless even of a desire for any private possession

or advantage of their own. "In the first place, no one," says Plato,

"should possess any private property, if it can possibly be avoided;

secondly, no one should have a dwelling or store house into which all

who please may not enter; whatever necessaries are required by temperate

and courageous men, who are trained to war, they should receive by

regular appointment from their fellow-citizens, as wages for their

services, and the amount should be such as to leave neither a surplus on

the year's consumption nor a deficit; and they should attend common

messes and live together as men do in a camp: as for gold and silver, we

must tell them that they are in perpetual possession of a divine species

of the precious metals placed in their souls by the gods themselves, and

therefore have no need of the earthly one; that in fact it would be

profanation to pollute their spiritual riches by mixing them with the

possession of mortal gold, because the world's coinage has been the

cause of countless impieties, whereas theirs is undefiled: therefore to

them, as distinguished from the rest of the people, it is forbidden to

handle or touch gold and silver, or enter under the same roof with them,

or to wear them in their dresses, or to drink out of the precious

metals. If they follow these rules, they will be safe themselves and the

saviours of the city: but whenever they come to possess lands, and

houses, and money of their own, they will be householders and

cultivators instead of guardians, and will become hostile masters of

their fellow-citizens rather than their allies; and so they will spend

their whole lives, hating and hated, plotting and plotted against,

standing in more frequent and intense alarm of their enemies at home

than of their enemies abroad; by which time they and the rest of the

city will be running on the very brink of ruin." [Footnote: Plato, Rep.

III. 416.--Translation by Davies and Vaughan.]

The passage is interesting, if only as an illustration of the way in

which Plato had been impressed by the evil results of the institution of

private property. But as a contribution to political theory it was open

to severe attack from the representatives of experience and common

sense. Of these, the chief was Aristotle, whose criticism has been

preserved to us, and who, while admitting that Plato's scheme has a

plausible appearance of philanthropy, maintains that it is inapplicable

to the facts of human nature. To this conclusion, indeed, even Plato

himself was driven in the end; for in his later work, the "Laws,"

although he still asserts that community of goods would be the ideal

institution, he reluctantly abandons it as a basis for a possible state.

On the other hand, he endeavours by the most stringent regulations, to

prevent the growth of inequalities of wealth. He distributes the land in

equal lots among his citizens, prohibiting either purchase or sub-

division; limits the possession of money to the amount required for

daily exchange; and forbids lending on interest. The object of a

legislator, he declares, is to make not a great but a happy city. But

only the good are happy, and goodness and wealth are incompatible. The

legislator, therefore, will not allow his citizens to be wealthy, any

more than he will allow them to be poor. He will seek to establish by

law the happy mean; and to this end, if he despair of the possibility of

a thorough-going communism, will legislate at least as indicated above.

The uncompromising idealism of Plato's scheme, with its assumption of

the indefinite plasticity of human nature, is of course peculiar to

himself, not typical of Greek ideas. But it is noticeable that

Aristotle, who is a far better representative of the average Greek mind,

exhibits the same mistrust of the accumulation of private property. In

the beginning of his "Politics" he distinguishes two kinds of money-

making, one natural, that which is pursued for the sake of a livelihood,

the other unnatural, that which is pursued for the sake of accumulation.

"The motive of this latter," he says, "is a desire for life instead of

for good life"; and its most hateful method is that of usury, the

unnatural breeding of money out of money. And though he rejects as

impracticable the compulsory communism of Plato's "Republic", yet he

urges as the ideal solution that property, while owned by individuals,

should be held as in trust for the common good; and puts before the

legislator the problem: "so to dispose the higher natures that they are

unwilling, and the lower that they are unable to aggrandise themselves."

[Footnote: Aristotle, Pol. ii. 7. 1267 b 6.--Translation by Welldon.]

Such views as these, it may be noted, interesting though they be, as

illustrating how keenly the thinkers of ancient Greece had realised the

drawbacks of private property, have but the slightest bearing on the

conditions of our own time. The complexity and extent of modern industry

have given rise to quite new problems, and quite new schemes for their

solution; and especially have forced into prominence the point of view

of the producers themselves. To Greek thinkers it was natural to

approach the question of property from the side of the governing class

or of the state as a whole. The communism of Plato, for example, applied

only to the "guardians" and soldiers, and not to the productive class on

whom they depended; and so completely was he pre-occupied with the

former to the exclusion of the latter, that he dismisses in a single

sentence, as unworthy the legislator's detailed attention, the whole

apparatus of labour and exchange. To regard the "working-class" as the

most important section of the community, to substitute for the moral or

political the economic standpoint, and to conceive society merely as a

machine for the production and distribution of wealth, would have been

impossible to an ancient Greek. Partly by the simplicity of the economic

side of the society with which he was acquainted, partly by the habit of

regarding the labouring class as a mere means to the maintenance of the

rest, he was led, even when he had to deal with the problem of poverty

and wealth, to regard it rather from the point of view of the stability

and efficiency of the state, than from that of the welfare of the

producers themselves. The modern attitude is radically different; a

revolution has been effected both in the conditions of industry and in

the way in which they are regarded; and the practice and the speculation

of the Greek city-states have for us an interest which, great as it is,

is philosophic rather than practical.

Section 9. Sparta.

The preceding attempt at a general sketch of the nature of the Greek

state is inevitably loose and misleading to this extent, that it

endeavours to comprehend in a single view polities of the most varied

and discrepant character. To remedy, so far as may be, this defect, to

give an impression, more definite and more complete, of the variety and

scope of the political experience of the Greeks, let us examine a little

more in detail the character of the two states which were at once the

most prominent and the most opposed in their achievement and their aim--

the state of Sparta on the one hand, and that of Athens on the other. It

was these two cities that divided the hegemony of Greece; they represent

the extremes of the two forms--oligarchy and democracy--under which, as

we saw, the Greek polities fall; and from a sufficient acquaintance with

them we may gather a fairly complete idea of the whole range of Greek

political life.

In Sparta we see one extreme of the political development of Greece, and

the one which approaches nearest, perhaps, to the characteristic Greek

type. Of that type, it is true, it was an exaggeration, and was

recognised as such by the best thinkers of Greece; but just for that

reason it is the more interesting and instructive as an exhibition of a

distinctive aspect of Greek civilisation.

The Spartan state was composed of a small body of citizens--the

Spartiatae or Spartans proper-encamped in the midst of a hostile

population to whom they allowed no political rights and by whose labour

they were supplied with the necessaries of life. The distinction between

the citizen class on the one hand and the productive class on the other

was thus as clearly and sharply drawn as possible. It was even

exaggerated; for the citizens were a band of conquerors, the productive

class a subject race, perpetually on the verge of insurrection and only

kept in restraint by such measures as secret assassination. The result

was to draw together the small band of Spartiatae into a discipline so

rigorous and close that under it everything was sacrificed to the

necessity of self-preservation; and the bare maintenance of the state

became the end for which every individual was born, and lived, and died.

This discipline, according to tradition, had been devised by a single

legislator, Lycurgus, and it was maintained intact for several

centuries. Its main features may be summarised as follows.

The production and rearing of children, to begin at the beginning,

instead of being left to the caprice of individuals, was controlled and

regulated by the state. The women, in the first place, were trained by

physical exercise for the healthy performance of the duties of

motherhood; they were taught to run and wrestle naked, like the youths,

to dance and sing in public, and to associate freely with men. Marriage

was permitted only in the prime of life; and a free intercourse, outside

its limits, between healthy men and women, was encouraged and approved

by public opinion. Men who did not marry were subject to social and

civic disabilities. The children, as soon as they were born, were

submitted to the inspection of the elders of their tribe; if strong and

well-formed, they were reared; if not, they were allowed to die.

A healthy stock having been thus provided as a basis, every attention

was devoted to its appropriate training. The infants were encouraged

from the beginning in the free use of their limbs, unhampered by

swaddling-clothes, and were accustomed to endure without fear darkness

and solitude, and to cure themselves of peevishness and crying. At the

age of seven the boys were taken away from the charge of their parents,

and put under the superintendence of a public official. Their education,

on the intellectual side, was slight enough, comprising only such

rudiments as reading and writing; but on the moral side it was stringent

and severe. Gathered into groups under the direction of elder youths--

"monitors" we might call them--they were trained to a discipline of iron

endurance. One garment served them for the whole year; they went without

shoes, and slept on beds of rushes plucked with their own hands. Their

food was simple, and often enough they had to go without it. Every

moment of the day they were under inspection and supervision, for it was

the privilege and the duty of every citizen to admonish and punish not

only his own but other people's children. At supper they waited at table

on their elders, answered their questions and endured their jests. In

the streets they were taught to walk in silence, their hands folded in

their cloaks, their eyes cast down, their heads never turning to right

or left. Their gymnastic and military training was incessant; wherever

they met, we are told, they began to box; under the condition, however,

that they were bound to separate at the command of any bystander. To

accustom them early to the hardships of a campaign, they were taught to

steal their food from the mess-tables of their elders; if they were

detected they were beaten for their clumsiness, and went without their

dinner. Nothing was omitted, on the moral or physical side, to make them

efficient members of a military state. Nor was the discipline relaxed

when they reached years of maturity. For, in fact, the whole city was a

camp. Family life was obliterated by public activity. The men dined

together in messes, rich and poor alike, sharing the same coarse and

simple food. Servants, dogs, and horses, were regarded as common

property. Luxury was strictly forbidden. The only currency in

circulation was of iron, so cumbrous that it was impossible to

accumulate or conceal it. The houses were as simple as possible, the

roofs shaped only with the axe, and the doors with the saw; the

furniture and fittings corresponded, plain but perfectly made. The

nature of the currency practically prohibited commerce, and no citizen

was allowed to be engaged in any mechanical trade. Agriculture was the

main industry, and every Spartan had, or was supposed to have, a landed

estate, cultivated by serfs who paid him a yearly rent. In complete

accordance with the Greek ideal, it was a society of soldier-citizens,

supported by an inferior productive class. In illustration of this point

the following curious anecdote may be quoted from Plutarch. During one

of the wars in which Sparta and her allies were engaged, the allies

complained that they, who were the majority of the army, had been forced

into a quarrel which concerned nobody but the Spartans. Whereupon

Agesilaus, the Spartan king, "devised this expedient to show the allies

were not the greater number. He gave orders that all the allies, of

whatever country, should sit down promiscuously on one side, and all the

Lacedaemonians on the other: which being done, he commanded a herald to

proclaim, that all the potters of both divisions should stand out; then

all the blacksmiths; then all the masons; next the carpenters; and so he

went through all the handicrafts. By this time almost all the allies

were risen, but of the Lacedaemonians not a man, they being by law

forbidden to learn any mechanical business; and now Agesilaus laughed

and said, "You see, my friends, how many more soldiers we send out than

you do." [Footnote: Plut. Agesilaus.--Translation by Clough.]

And certainly, so far as its immediate ends were concerned, this society

of soldier-citizens was singularly successful. The courage and

efficiency of Spartan troops were notorious, and were maintained indeed

not only by the training we have described, but by social penalties

attached to cowardice. A man who had disgraced himself in battle was a

pariah in his native land. No one would eat with him, no one would

wrestle with him; in the dance he must take the lowest place; he must

give the wall at meetings in the street, and resign his seat even to

younger men; he must dress and bear himself humbly, under penalty of

blows, and suffer the reproaches of women and of boys. Death plainly

would be preferable to such a life; and we are not surprised to hear

that the discipline and valour of Spartan troops was celebrated far and

wide. Here is a description of them, given by one of themselves to the

Persian king when he was projecting the invasion of Greece:

"Brave are all the Greeks who dwell in any Dorian land; but what I am

about to say does not concern all, but only the Lacedaemonians. First,

then, come what may, they will never accept thy terms, which would

reduce Greece to slavery; and further, they are sure to join battle with

thee, though all the rest of Greece should submit to thy will. As for

their numbers, do not ask how many they are, that their resistance

should be a possible thing; for if a thousand of them should take the

field, they will meet thee in battle, and so will any number, be it less

than this, or be it more.

"When they fight singly, they are as good men as any in the world, and

when they fight in a body, they are the bravest of all. For though they

be freemen, they are not in all respects free; Law is the master whom

they own; and this master they fear more than thy subjects fear thee.

Whatever he commands they do; and his commandment is always the same: it

forbids them to flee in battle, whatever the number of their foes, and

requires them to stand firm, and either to conquer or die." [Footnote:

Herodotus vii. 102, 4.--Translation by Rawlinson.]

The practical illustration of this speech is the battle of Thermopylae,

where 300 Spartans kept at bay the whole Persian host, till they were

betrayed from the rear and killed fighting to a man.

The Spartan state, then, justified itself according to its own ideal;

but how limited that ideal was will be clear from our sketch. The

individual, if it cannot be said that he was sacrificed to the state--

for he recognised the life of the state as his own--was at any rate

starved upon one side of his nature as much as he was hypertrophied upon

the other. Courage, obedience, and endurance were developed in excess;

but the free play of passion and thought, the graces and arts of life,

all that springs from the spontaneity of nature, were crushed out of

existence under this stern and rigid rule. "None of them," says

Plutarch, an enthusiastic admirer of the Spartan polity "none of them

was left alone to live as he chose; but passing their time in the city

as though it were a camp, their manner of life and their avocations

ordered with a view to the public good, they regarded themselves as

belonging, not to themselves, but to their country." [Footnote: Plut.

Lycurgus, ch. 24.] And Plato, whose ideal republic was based so largely

upon the Spartan model, has marked nevertheless as the essential defect

of their polity its insistence on military virtue to the exclusion of

everything else, and its excessive accentuation of the corporate aspect

of life. "Your military way of life," he says, "is modelled after the

camp, and is not like that of dwellers in cities; and you have your

young men herding and feeding together like young colts. No one takes

his own individual colt and drags him away from his fellows against his

will, raging and foaming, and gives him a groom for him alone, and

trains and rubs him down privately, and gives him the qualities in

education which will make him not only a good soldier, but also a

governor of a state and of cities. Such a one would be a greater warrior

than he of whom Tyrtaeus sings; and he would honour courage everywhere,

but always as the fourth, and not as the first part of virtue, either in

individuals or states." [Footnote: Plato Laws, II. 666 e.--Translation

by Jowett].

The Spartan state, in fact, by virtue of that excellence which was also

its defect--the specialising of the individual on the side of discipline

and rule--carried within it the seeds of its own destruction. The

tendencies which Lycurgus had endeavoured to repress by external

regulation reasserted themselves in his despite. He had intended once

for all both to limit and to equalise private property; but already as

early as the fifth century Spartans had accumulated gold which they

deposited in temples in foreign states; the land fell, by inheritance

and gift, into the hands of a small minority; the number of the citizens

was reduced, not only by war, but by the disfranchisement attending

inability to contribute to the common mess-tables; till at last we find

no more than 700 Spartan families, and of these no more than 100

possessing estates in land.

And this decline from within was hastened by external events. The

constitution devised for a small state encamped amidst a hostile

population, broke down under the weight of imperial power. The conquest

of Athens by Sparta was the signal of her own collapse. The power and

wealth she had won at a stroke alienated her sons from her discipline.

Generals and statesmen who had governed like kings the wealthy cities of

the east were unable to adapt themselves again to the stern and narrow

rules of Lycurgus. They rushed into freedom and enjoyment, into the

unfettered use of their powers, with an energy proportional to the

previous restraint. The features of the human face broke through the

fair but lifeless mask of ancient law; and the Spartan, ceasing to be a

Spartan, both rose and fell to the level of a man.

Section 10. Athens.

In the institutions of Sparta we see, carried to its furthest point, one

side of the complex Greek nature--their capacity for discipline and law.

Athens, the home of a different stock, gives us the other extreme--their

capacity for rich and spontaneous individual development. To pass from

Sparta to Athens, is to pass from a barracks to a playing-field. All the

beauty, all the grace, all the joy of Greece; all that chains the desire

of mankind, with a yearning that is never stilled, to that one golden

moment in the past, whose fair and balanced interplay of perfect flesh

and soul no later gains of thought can compensate, centres about that

bright and stately city of romance, the home of Pericles and all the

arts, whence from generation to generation has streamed upon ages less

illustrious an influence at once the sanest and the most inspired of all

that have shaped the secular history of the world. Girt by mountain and

sea, by haunted fountain and sacred grove, shaped and adorned by the

master hands of Pheidias and Polygnotus and filled with the breath of

passion and song by Euripides and Plato, Athens, famed alike for the

legended deeds of heroes and gods and for the feats of her human sons in

council, art, and war, is a name, to those who have felt her spell, more

familiar and more dear than any of the few that mark with gold the

sombre scroll of history. And still across the years we feel the throb

of the glorious verse that broke in praise of his native land from the

lips of Euripides:

"Happy of yore were the children of race divine

Happy the sons of old Erechtheus' line

Who in their holy state

With hands inviolate

Gather the flower of wisdom far-renowned,

Lightly lifting their feet in the lucid air

Where the sacred nine, the Pierid Muses, bare

Harmonia golden-crowned.

There in the wave from fair Kephisus flowing

Kupris sweetens the winds and sets them blowing

Over the delicate land;

And ever with joyous hand

Braiding her fragrant hair with the blossom of roses,

She sendeth the Love that dwelleth in Wisdom's place

That every virtue may quicken and every grace

In the hearts where she reposes."

[Footnote: Eurip. Medea, 825.]

And this, the Athens of poetry and art, is but another aspect of the

Athens of political history. The same individuality, the same free and

passionate energy that worked in the hearts of her sculptors and her

poets, moulded also and inspired her city life. In contradistinction to

the stern and rigid discipline of Sparta, the Athenian citizen displayed

the resource, the versatility and the zeal that only freedom and self-

reliance can teach. The contrast is patent at every stage of the history

of the two states, and has been acutely set forth by Thucydides in the

speech which he puts into the mouths of the Corinthian allies of Sparta:

"You have never considered," they say to the Lacedaemonians, "what

manner of men are these Athenians with whom you will have to fight, and

how utterly unlike yourselves. They are revolutionary, equally quick in

the conception and in the execution of every new plan; while you are

conservative--careful only to keep what you have, originating nothing,

and not acting even when action is most necessary. They are bold beyond

their strength; they run risks which prudence would condemn; and in the

midst of misfortunes they are full of hope. Whereas it is your nature,

though strong, to act feebly; when your plans are most prudent, to

distrust them; and when calamities come upon you, to think that you will

never be delivered from them. They are impetuous, and you are dilatory;

they are always abroad, and you are always at home. For they hope to

gain something by leaving their homes; but you are afraid that any new

enterprise may imperil what you have already. When conquerors, they

pursue their victory to the utmost; when defeated, they fall back the

least. Their bodies they devote to their country as though they belonged

to other men; their true self is their mind, which is most truly their

own when employed in her service. When they do not carry out an

intention which they have formed, they seem to have sustained a personal

bereavement; when an enterprise succeeds, they have gained a mere

instalment of what is to come; but if they fail, they at once conceive

new hopes and so fill up the void.

"With them alone to hope is to have, for they lose not a moment in the

execution of an idea. This is the lifelong task, full of danger and

toil, which they are always imposing upon themselves. None enjoy their

good things less, because they are always seeking for more. To do their

duty is their only holiday, and they deem the quiet of inaction to be as

disagreeable as the most tiresome business. If a man should say of them,

in a word, that they were born neither to have peace themselves nor to

allow peace to other men, he would simply speak the truth." [Footnote:

Thuc. i. 70.--Translated by Jowett.]

The qualities here set forth by Thucydides as characteristic of the

Athenians, were partly the cause and partly the effect of their

political constitution. The history of Athens, indeed, is the very

antithesis to that of Sparta. In place of a type fixed at a stroke and

enduring for centuries, she presents a series of transitions through the

whole range of polities, to end at last in a democracy so extreme that

it refuses to be included within the limits of the general formula of

the Greek state.

Seldom, indeed, has "equality" been pushed to so extreme a point as it

was, politically at least, in ancient Athens. The class of slaves, it is

true, existed there as in every other state; but among the free

citizens, who included persons of every rank, no political distinction

at all was drawn. All of them, from the lowest to the highest, had the

right to speak and vote in the great assembly of the people which was

the ultimate authority; all were eligible to every administrative post;

all sat in turn as jurors in the law-courts. The disabilities of poverty

were minimised by payment for attendance in the assembly and the courts.

And, what is more extraordinary, even distinctions of ability were

levelled by the practice of filling all offices, except the highest, by

lot.

Had the citizens been a class apart, as was the case in Sparta, had they

been subjected from the cradle to a similar discipline and training,

forbidden to engage in any trade or business, and consecrated to the

service of the state, there would have been nothing surprising in this

uncompromising assertion of equality. But in Athens the citizenship was

extended to every rank and calling; the poor man jostled the rich, the

shopman the aristocrat, in the Assembly; cobblers, carpenters, smiths,

farmers, merchants, and retail traders met together with the ancient

landed gentry, to debate and conclude on national affairs; and it was

from such varied elements as these that the lot impartially chose the

officials of the law, the revenue, the police, the highways, the

markets, and the ports, as well as the jurors at whose mercy stood

reputation, fortune, and life. The consequence was that in Athens, at

least in the later period of her history, the middle and lower classes

tended to monopolise political power. Of the popular leaders, Cleon, the

most notorious, was a tanner; another was a baker, another a cattle-

dealer. Influence belonged to those who had the gift of leading the

mass; and in that competition the man of tongue, of energy, and of

resource, was more than a match for the aristocrat of birth and

intellect.

The constitution of Athens, then, was one of political equality imposed

upon social inequality. To illustrate the point we may quote a passage

from Aristophanes which shows at once the influence exercised by the

trading class and the disgust with which that influence was regarded by

the aristocracy whom the poet represents. The passage is taken from the

"Knights," a comedy written to discredit Cleon, and turning upon the

expulsion of the notorious tanner from the good graces of Demos, by the

superior impudence and address of a sausage-seller. Demosthenes, a

general of the aristocratic party, is communicating to the latter the

destiny that awaits him.

DEMOSTHENES (_to the_ SAUSAGE-SELLER _gravely_).

Set these poor wares aside; and now--bow down

To the ground; and adore the powers of earth and heaven.

S.-S. Heigh-day! Why, what do you mean?

DEM. O happy man!

Unconscious of your glorious destiny,

Now mean and unregarded; but to-morrow,

The mightiest of the mighty, Lord of Athens.

S.-S. Come, master, what's the use of making game?

Why can't ye let me wash my guts and tripe,

And sell my sausages in peace and quiet?

DEM. O simple mortal, cast those thoughts aside!

Bid guts and tripe farewell! Look here! Behold!

(_pointing to the audience_)

The mighty assembled multitude before ye!

S.-S. (_with a grumble of indifference_).

I see 'em.

DEM. You shall be their lord and master,

The sovereign and the ruler of them all,

Of the assemblies and tribunals, fleets and armies;

You shall trample down the Senate under foot,

Confound and crush the generals and commanders,

Arrest, imprison, and confine in irons,

And feast and fornicate in the Council House.

S.-S. Are there any means of making a great man

Of a sausage-selling fellow such as I?

DEM. The very means you have, must make ye so,

Low breeding, vulgar birth, and impudence,

These, these must make ye, what you're meant to be.

S.-S. I can't imagine that I'm good for much.

DEM. Alas! But why do ye say so? What's the meaning

Of these misgivings? I discern within ye

A promise and an inward consciousness

Of greatness. Tell me truly: are ye allied

To the families of gentry?

S.-S. Naugh, not I;

I'm come from a common ordinary kindred,

Of the lower order.

DEM. What a happiness!

What a footing will it give ye! What a groundwork

For confidence and favour at your outset!

S.-S. But bless ye! only consider my education!

I can but barely read.... in a kind of way.

DEM. That makes against ye!--the only thing against ye--

The being able to read, in any way:

For now no lead nor influence is allowed

To liberal arts or learned education,

But to the brutal, base, and underbred.

Embrace then and hold fast the promises

Which the oracles of the gods announce to you.

[Footnote: Aristoph. Knights. 155.--Translation by Frere.]

We have here an illustration, one among many that might be given, of the

political equality that prevailed in Athens. It shows us how completely

that distinction between the military or governing, and the productive

class, which belonged to the normal Greek conception of the state, had

been broken down, on the side at least of privilege and right, though

not on that of social estimation, in this most democratic of the ancient

states. Politically, the Athenian trader and the Athenian artisan was

the equal of the aristocrat of purest blood; and so far the government

of Athens was a genuine democracy.

But so far only. For in Athens, as in every Greek state, the greater

part of the population was unfree; and the government which was a

democracy from the point of view of the freeman, was an oligarchy from

the point of view of the slave. For the slaves, by the nature of their

position, had no political rights; and they were more than half of the

population. It is noticeable, however, that the freedom and

individuality which was characteristic of the Athenian citizen, appears

to have reacted favourably on the position of the slaves. Not only had

they, to a certain extent, the protection of the law against the worst

excesses of their masters, but they were allowed a license of bearing

and costume which would not have been tolerated in any other state. A

contemporary writer notes that in dress and general appearance Athenian

slaves were not to be distinguished from citizens; that they were

permitted perfect freedom of speech; and that it was open to them to

acquire a fortune and to live in ease and luxury. In Sparta, he says,

the slave stands in fear of the freeman, but in Athens this is not the

case; and certainly the bearing of the slaves introduced into the

Athenian comedy does not indicate any undue subservience. Slavery at the

best is an undemocratic institution; but in Athens it appears to have

been made as democratic as its nature would admit.

We find then, in the Athenian state, the conception of equality pushed

to the farthest extreme at all compatible with Greek ideas; pushed, we

may fairly say, at last to an undue excess; for the great days of Athens

were those when she was still under the influence of her aristocracy,

and when the popular zeal evoked by her free institutions was directed

by members of the leisured and cultivated class. The most glorious age

of Athenian history closes with the death of Pericles; and Pericles was

a man of noble family, freely chosen, year after year, by virtue of his

personal qualities, to exercise over this democratic nation a

dictatorship of character and brain. It is into his mouth that

Thucydides has put that great panegyric of Athens, which sets forth to

all time the type of an ideal state and the record of what was at least

partially achieved in the greatest of the Greek cities:

"Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the

institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours, but are an

example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the

administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while

the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes,

the claim of excellence is also recognised; and when a citizen is in any

way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a

matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a

bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his

condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our

private intercourse we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with

our neighbour if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at

him, which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus

unconstrained in our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence pervades

our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for

authority and for the laws, having an especial regard for those which

are ordained for the protection of the injured, as well as for those

unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation

of the general sentiment.

"And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits many

relaxations from toil; we have regular games and sacrifices throughout

the year; at home the style of our life is refined; and the delight

which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish melancholy.

Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow

in upon us, so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as

of our own.

"Then again, our military training is in many respects superior to that

of our adversaries. Our city is thrown open to the world, and we never

expel a foreigner or prevent him from seeing or learning anything of

which the secret if revealed to an enemy might profit him. We rely not

upon management and trickery, but upon our own hearts and hands. And in

the matter of education, whereas they from early youth are always

undergoing laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at

ease, and yet are ready to face the perils which they face.

"If then we prefer to meet danger with a light heart but without

laborious training, and with a courage which is gained by habit and not

enforced by law, are we not greatly the gainers? Since we do not

anticipate the pain, although when the hour comes, we can be as brave as

those who never allow themselves to rest; and thus too our city is

equally admirable in peace and in war. For we are lovers of the

beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without

loss of manliness.

"Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when there is a real

use for it. To avow poverty with us is no disgrace; the true disgrace is

in doing nothing to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect the

state because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us

who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone

regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless,

but as a useless character; and if few of us are originators, we are all

sound judges of a policy. The great impediment to action is, in our

opinion, not discussion but the want of that knowledge which is gained

by discussion preparatory to action. For we have a peculiar power of

thinking before we act, and of acting too, whereas other men are

courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection. And they are

surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who have the clearest sense

both of the pains and pleasures of life, but do not on that account

shrink from danger.

"To sum up, I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, and that the

individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of

adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the utmost

versatility and grace. This is no passing and idle word, but truth and

fact; and the assertion is verified by the position to which these

qualities have raised the state. For in the hour of trial Athens alone

among her contemporaries is superior to the report of her. No enemy who

comes against her is indignant at the reverses which he sustains at the

hands of such a city; no subject complains that his masters are unworthy

of him. And we shall assuredly not be without witnesses; there are

mighty monuments of our power which will make us the wonder of this and

of succeeding ages: we shall not need the praises of Homer or of any

other panegyrist, whose poetry may please for the moment, although his

representation of the facts will not bear the light of day. For we have

compelled every land, every sea, to open a path for our valour, and have

everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of our

enmity." [Footnote: Thuc. ii. 37.--Translated by Jowett.]

An impression so superb as this it is almost a pity to mar with the

inevitable complement of disaster and decay. But our account of the

Athenian polity would be misleading and incomplete if we did not

indicate how the idea of equality, on which it turned, defeated itself,

as did, in Sparta, the complementary idea of order, by the excesses of

its own development. Already before the close of the fifth century, and

with reiterated emphasis in the earlier decades of the fourth, we hear

from poets and orators praise of a glorious past that is dead, and

denunciations of a decadent present. The ancient training in gymnastics,

we are told, the ancient and generous culture of mind and soul, is

neglected and despised by a generation of traders; reverence for age and

authority, even for law, has disappeared; and in the train of these have

gone the virtues they engendered and nurtured. Cowardice has succeeded

to courage, disorder to discipline; the place of the statesman is

usurped by the demagogue; and instead of a nation of heroes, marshalled

under the supremacy of the wise and good, modern Athens presents to view

a disordered and competitive mob, bent only on turning each to his own

personal advantage the now corrupt machinery of administration and law.

And however much exaggeration there may be in these denunciations and

regrets, we know enough of the interior working of the institutions of

Athens to see that she had to pay in licence and in fraud the bitter

price of equality and freedom. That to the influence of disinterested

statesmen succeeded, as the democracy accentuated itself, the tyranny of

unscrupulous demagogues, is evidenced by the testimony, not only of the

enemies of popular government, but by that of a democrat so convinced as

Demosthenes. "Since these orators have appeared," he says, "who ask,

What is your pleasure? what shall I move? how can I oblige you? the

public welfare is complimented away for a moment's popularity, and these

are the results; the orators thrive, you are disgraced.... Anciently the

people, having the courage to be soldiers, controlled the statesmen, and

disposed of all emoluments; any of the rest were happy to receive from

the people his share of honour, office, or advantage. Now, contrariwise,

the statesmen dispose of emoluments; through them everything is done;

you, the people, enervated, stripped of treasure and allies, are become

as underlings and hangers-on, happy if these persons dole you out show-

money or send you paltry beeves; and, the unmanliest part of all, you

are grateful for receiving your own." [Footnote: Dem. 01. iii.--

Translation by Kennedy.]

And this indictment is amply confirmed from other sources. We know that

the populace was demoralised by payments from the public purse; that the

fee for attendance in the Assembly attracted thither, as ready

instruments in the hands of ambitious men, the poorest and most degraded

of the citizens; that the fees of jurors were the chief means of

subsistence for an indigent class, who had thus a direct interest in the

multiplication of suits; and that the city was infested by a race of

"sycophants", whose profession was to manufacture frivolous and

vexatious indictments. Of one of these men Demosthenes speaks as

follows:

"He cannot show any respectable or honest employment in which his life

is engaged. His mind is not occupied in promoting any political good; he

attends not to any trade, or husbandry, or other business; he is

connected with no one by ties of humanity or social union: but he walks

through the market-place like a viper or a scorpion, with his sting up-

lifted, hastening here and there, and looking out for someone whom he

may bring into a scrape, or fasten some calumny or mischief upon, and

put in alarm in order to extort money." [Footnote: Demosth. in

Aristogeit. A. 62.--Translated by C. R. Kennedy.]

From all this we may gather an idea of the way in which the Athenian

democracy by its own development destroyed itself. Beginning, on its

first emergence from an earlier aristocratic phase, with an energy that

inspired without shattering the forms of discipline and law, it

dissolved by degrees this coherent whole into an anarchy of individual

wills, drawn deeper and deeper, in pursuit of mean and egoistic ends,

into political fraud and commercial chicanery, till the tradition of the

gentleman and the soldier was choked by the dust of adventurers and

swindlers, and the people, whose fathers had fought and prevailed at

Marathon and Salamis, fell as they deserved, by treachery from within as

much as by force from without, into the grasp of the Macedonian

conqueror.

Section 11. Sceptical Criticism of the Basis of the State.

Having thus supplemented our general account of the Greek conception of

the state by a description of their two most prominent polities, it

remains for us in conclusion briefly to trace the negative criticism

under whose attack that conception threatened to dissolve.