CHAPTER IX.

CORINTH, SIKYON, AND MEGARA. — AGE OF THE GRECIAN DESPOTS.

The preceding volume brought down the history of Sparta to the period

marked by the reign of Peisistratus at Athens; at which time she had

attained her maximum of territory, was confessedly the most powerful

state in Greece, and enjoyed a proportionate degree of deference from

the rest. I now proceed to touch upon the three Dorian cities on and

near to the Isthmus,—Corinth, Sikyôn, and Megara, as they existed at

this same period.

Even amidst the scanty information which has reached us, we trace

the marks of considerable maritime energy and commerce among the

Corinthians, as far back as the eighth century B. C. The foundation

of Korkyra and Syracuse, in the 11th Olympiad, or 734 B. C. (of

which I shall speak farther in connection with Grecian colonization

generally), by expeditions from Corinth, affords a good proof that

they knew how to turn to account the excellent situation which

connected them with the sea on both sides of Peloponnesus: and

Thucydides,[1] while he notices them as the chief liberators of the

sea, in early times, from pirates, also tells us that the first

great improvement in ship-building,—the construction of the trireme,

or ship of war, with a full deck and triple banks for the rowers,—was

the fruit of Corinthian ingenuity. It was in the year 703 B. C., that

the Corinthian Ameinoklês built four triremes for the Samians, the

first which those islanders had ever possessed: the notice of this

fact attests as well the importance attached to the new invention,

as the humble scale on which the naval force in those early days

was equipped. And it is a fact of not less moment, in proof of the

maritime vigor of Corinth in the seventh century B. C., that the

earliest naval battle known to Thucydides was one which took place

between the Corinthians and the Korkyræans, B. C. 664.[2]

[1] Thucyd. i, 13.

[2] Thucyd. i, 13.

It has already been stated, in the preceding volume, that the line of

Herakleid kings in Corinth subsides gradually, through a series of

empty names, into the oligarchy denominated Bacchiadæ, or Bacchiads,

under whom our first historical knowledge of the city begins. The

persons so named were all accounted descendants of Hêraklês, and

formed the governing caste in the city; intermarrying usually among

themselves, and choosing from their own number an annual prytanis,

or president, for the administration of affairs. Of their internal

government we have no accounts, except the tale respecting Archias

the founder of Syracuse,[3] one of their number, who had made himself

so detested by an act of brutal violence terminating in the death of

the beautiful youth Aktæôn, as to be forced to expatriate. That such

a man should have been placed in the distinguished post of œkist of

the colony of Syracuse, gives us no favorable idea of the Bacchiad

oligarchy: we do not, however, know upon what original authority the

story depends, nor can we be sure that it is accurately recounted.

But Corinth, under their government, was already a powerful

commercial and maritime city, as has already been stated.

[3] Plutarch, Amator. Narrat. c. 2, p. 772; Diodor. Fragm. lib.

viii, p. 26. Alexander, Ætolus (Fragm. i, 5, ed. Schneidewin),

and the Scholiast ad Apollon. Rhod. iv, 1212, seem to connect

this act of outrage with the expulsion of the Bacchiadæ from

Corinth, which did not take place until long afterwards.

Megara, the last Dorian state in this direction eastward, and

conterminous with Attica at the point where the mountains called

Kerāta descend to Eleusis and the Thracian plain, is affirmed to

have been originally settled by the Dorians of Corinth, and to have

remained for some time a dependency of that city. It is farther said

to have been at first merely one of five separate villages,—Megara,

Heræa, Peiræa, Kynosura, Tripodiskus,—inhabited by a kindred

population, and generally on friendly terms, yet sometimes distracted

by quarrels, and on those occasions carrying on war with a degree

of lenity and chivalrous confidence which reverses the proverbial

affirmation respecting the sanguinary character of enmities between

kindred. Both these two statements are transmitted to us (we know

not from what primitive source) as explanatory of certain current

phrases:[4] the author of the latter cannot have agreed with the

author of the former in considering the Corinthians as masters of the

Megarid, because he represents them as fomenting wars among these

five villages for the purpose of acquiring that territory. Whatever

may be the truth respecting this alleged early subjection of Megara,

we know it[5] in the historical age, and that too as early as the

14th Olympiad, only as an independent Dorian city, maintaining

the integrity of its territory under its leader Orsippus, the

famous Olympic runner, against some powerful enemies, probably the

Corinthians. It was of no mean consideration, possessing a territory

which extended across Mount Geraneia to the Corinthian gulf, on which

the fortified town and port of Pêgæ, belonging to the Megarians, was

situated; it was mother of early and distant colonies,—and competent,

during the time of Solon, to carry on a protracted contest with the

Athenians, for the possession of Salamis, wherein, although the

latter were at last victorious, it was not without an intermediate

period of ill-success and despair.

[4] The first account seems referred to Dêmôn (an author of about

280 B. C., and a collector of Attic archæology, or what is called

Ἀτθιδόγραφος. See Phanodêmi, Dêmônis, Clitodêmi, atque Istri,

Ἀτθίδων, Fragmenta, ed. Siebelis, Præfatio, pp. viii-xi), and is

given as the explanation of the locution—ὁ Διὸς Κόρινθος. See

Schol. ad Pindar. Nem. vii, ad finem; Schol. Aristophan. Ran.

440: the Corinthians seem to have represented their eponymous

hero as son of Zeus, though other Greeks did not believe them

(Pausan. ii, 1, 1). That the Megarians were compelled to come to

Corinth for demonstration of mourning on occasion of the decease

of any of the members of the Bacchiad oligarchy, is, perhaps, a

story copied from the regulation at Sparta regarding the Periœki

and Helots (Herod. vi, 57; Pausan. iv, 14, 3; Tyrtæus, Fragm.).

Pausanias conceives the victory of the Megarians over the

Corinthians, which he saw commemorated in the Megarian θησαυρὸς

at Olympia, as having taken place before the 1st Olympiad,

when Phorbas was life-archon at Athens: Phorbas is placed by

chronologers fifth in the series from Medon, son of Codrus

(Pausan. i, 39, 4; vi, 19, 9). The early enmity between Corinth

and Megara is alluded to in Plutarch, De Malignitate Herodoti, p.

868, c. 35.

The second story noticed in the text is given by Plutarch,

Quæstion. Græc. c. 17, p. 295, in illustration of the meaning of

the word Δορύξενος.

[5] Pausanias, i, 44, 1, and the epigram upon Orsippus in Boeckh,

Corpus Inscript. Gr. No. 1050, with Boeckh’s commentary.

Of the early history of Sikyôn, from the period when it became

Dorian down to the seventh century B. C., we know nothing. Our

first information respecting it, concerns the establishment of

the despotism of Orthagoras, about 680-670 B. C. And it is a

point deserving of notice, that all the three above-mentioned

towns,—Corinth, Sikyôn, and Megara,—underwent during the course of

this same century a similar change of government. In each of them

a despot established himself; Orthagoras in Sikyôn; Kypselus in

Corinth; Theagenês in Megara.

Unfortunately, we have too little evidence as to the state of things

by which this change of government was preceded and brought about, to

be able to appreciate fully its bearing. But what draws our attention

to it more particularly is, that the like phenomenon seems to have

occurred contemporaneously throughout a large number of cities,

continental, insular, and colonial, in many different parts of the

Grecian world. The period between 650 and 500 B. C., witnessed the

rise and downfall of many despots and despotic dynasties, each in

its own separate city. During the succeeding interval between 500

and 350 B. C., new despots, though occasionally springing up, become

more rare; political dispute takes another turn, and the question

is raised directly and ostensibly between the many and the few,—the

people and the oligarchy. But in the still later times which follow

the battle of Chæroneia, in proportion as Greece, declining in

civic not less than in military spirit, is driven to the constant

employment of mercenary troops, and humbled by the overruling

interference of foreigners,—the despot with his standing foreign

body-guard becomes again a characteristic of the time; a tendency

partially counteracted, but never wholly subdued, by Aratus, and the

Achæan league of the third century B. C.

It would have been instructive if we had possessed a faithful record

of these changes of government in some of the more considerable of

the Grecian towns; but in the absence of such evidence we can do

little more than collect the brief sentences of Aristotle and others

respecting the causes which produced them. For as the like change

of government was common, near about the same time, to cities very

different in locality, in race of inhabitants, in tastes and habits,

and in wealth, it must partly have depended upon certain general

causes which admit of being assigned and explained.

In the preceding volume, I tried to elucidate the heroic government

of Greece, so far as it could be known from the epic poems,—a

government founded (if we may employ modern phraseology) upon divine

right as opposed to the sovereignty of the people, but requiring,

as an essential condition, that the king shall possess force, both

of body and mind, not unworthy of the exalted breed to which he

belongs.[6] In this government, the authority which pervades the

whole society, all resides in the king; but on important occasions it

is exercised through the forms of publicity; he consults, and even

discusses, with the council of chiefs or elders,—he communicates

after such consultation with the assembled agora,—who hear and

approve, perhaps hear and murmur, but are not understood to exercise

an option or to reject. In giving an account of the Lykurgean system,

I remarked that the old primitive Rhetræ, or charters of compact,

indicated the existence of these same elements; a king of superhuman

lineage (in this particular case two coördinate kings),—a senate

of twenty-eight old men, besides the kings who sat in it,—and an

ekklesia, or public assembly of citizens, convened for the purpose of

approving or rejecting propositions submitted to them, with little

or no liberty of discussion. The elements of the heroic government

of Greece are thus found to be substantially the same as those

existing in the primitive Lykurgean constitution: in both cases the

predominant force residing in the kings,—and the functions of the

senate, still more those of the public assembly, being comparatively

narrow and restricted; in both cases the regal authority being upheld

by a certain religious sentiment, which tended to exclude rivalry

and to insure submission in the people up to a certain point, in

spite of misconduct or deficiency in the reigning individual. Among

the principal Epirotic tribes, this government subsisted down to the

third century B. C.[7], though some of them had passed out of it, and

were in the habit of electing annually a president out of the gens

to which the king belonged. Starting from these points, common to

the Grecian heroic government, and to the original Lykurgean system,

we find that in the Grecian cities generally, the king is replaced

by an oligarchy, consisting of a limited number of families,—while

at Sparta, the kingly authority, though greatly curtailed, is never

abolished. And the different turn of events at Sparta admits of

being partially explained. It so happened that, for five centuries,

neither of the two coördinate lines of Spartan kings was ever without

some male representatives, so that the sentiment of divine right,

upon which their preëminence was founded, always proceeded in an

undeviating channel. That sentiment never wholly died out in the

tenacious mind of Sparta, but it became sufficiently enfeebled to

occasion a demand for guarantees against abuse. If the senate had

been a more numerous body, composed of a few principal families,

and comprising men of all ages, it might, perhaps, have extended

its powers so much as to absorb those of the king: but a council of

twenty-eight very old men, chosen indiscriminately from all Spartan

families, was essentially an adjunct and secondary force. It was

insufficient even as a restraint upon the king,—still less was it

competent to become his rival; and it served indirectly even as a

support to him, by preventing the formation of any other privileged

order powerful enough to be an overmatch for his authority. This

insufficiency on the part of the senate was one of the causes

which occasioned the formation of the annually-renewed Council of

Five, called the Ephors; originally a defensive board, like the

Roman Tribunes, intended as a restraint upon abuse of power in the

kings, but afterwards expanding into a paramount and unresponsible

Executive Directory. Assisted by endless dissensions between the two

coördinate kings, the ephors encroached upon their power on every

side, limited them to certain special functions, and even rendered

them accountable and liable to punishment, but never aspired to

abolish the dignity. That which the regal authority lost in extent

(to borrow the just remark of king Theopompus)[8] it gained in

durability: the descendants of the twins Eurysthenês and Proklês

continued in possession of their double sceptre from the earliest

historical times down to the revolutions of Agis the Third, and

Kleomenês the Third,—generals of the military force, growing richer

and richer, and reverenced as well as influential in the state,

though the directory of ephors were their superiors. And the ephors

became, in time, quite as despotic, in reference to internal affairs,

as the kings could ever have been before them; for the Spartan mind,

deeply possessed with the feelings of command and obedience, remained

comparatively insensible to the ideas of control and responsibility,

and even averse to that open discussion and censure of public

measures, or officers, which such ideas imply. We must recollect

that the Spartan political constitution was both simplified in its

character, and aided in its working, by the comprehensive range of

the Lykurgean discipline, with its rigorous equal pressure upon rich

and poor, which averted many of the causes elsewhere productive of

sedition,—habituating the proudest and most refractory citizen to

a life of undeviating obedience,—satisfying such demand as existed

for system and regularity,—rendering Spartan personal habits of life

much more equal than even democratical Athens could parallel; but

contributing, at the same time, to engender a contempt for talkers,

and a dislike of methodical and prolonged speech, which of itself

sufficed to exclude all regular interference of the collective

citizens, either in political or judicial affairs.

[6] See a striking passage in Plutarch. Præcept. Reipubl. Gerend.

c. 5, p. 801.

[7] Plutarch, Pyrrh. c. 5. Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 1.

[8] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 1.

Such were the facts at Sparta; but in the rest of Greece the

primitive heroic government was modified in a very different manner:

the people outgrew, much more decidedly, that feeling of divine right

and personal reverence which originally gave authority to the king.

Willing submission ceased on the part of the people, and still more

on the part of the inferior chiefs, and with it ceased the heroic

royalty. Something like a system or constitution came to be demanded.

Of this discontinuance of kingship, so universal in the political

march of Hellas, the prime cause is, doubtless, to be sought in

the smallness and concentrated residence of each distinct Hellenic

society. A single chief, perpetual and unresponsible, was noway

essential for the maintenance of union. In modern Europe, for the

most part, the different political societies which grew up out of

the extinction of the Roman empire embraced each a considerable

population and a wide extent of territory and the monarchical form

presented itself as the only known means of union between the parts,

the only visible and imposing symbol of a national identity. Both

the military character of the Teutonic invaders, as well as the

traditions of the Roman empire which they dismembered, tended towards

the establishment of a monarchical chief, the abolition of whose

dignity would have been looked upon as equivalent, and would really

have been equivalent, to the breaking up of the nation, since the

maintenance of a collective union by means of general assemblies was

so burdensome, that the kings themselves vainly tried to exact it by

force, and representative government was then unknown.

The history of the Middle Ages, though exhibiting constant resistance

on the part of powerful subjects, frequent deposition of individual

kings, and occasional changes of dynasty, contains few instances of

any attempt to maintain a large political aggregate united without a

king, either hereditary or elective. Even towards the close of the

last century, at the period when the federal constitution of the

United States of America was first formed, many reasoners regarded[9]

as an impossibility the application of any other system than the

monarchical to a territory of large size and population, so as to

combine union of the whole with equal privileges and securities to

each of the parts. And it might, perhaps, be a real impossibility

among any rude people, with strong local peculiarities, difficult

means of communication, and habits of representative government

not yet acquired. Hence, throughout all the larger nations of

mediæval and modern Europe, with few exceptions, the prevailing

sentiment has been favorable to monarchy; but wherever any single

city, or district, or cluster of villages, whether in the plains

of Lombardy, or in the mountains of Switzerland, has acquired

independence,—wherever any small fraction has severed itself from

the aggregate,—the opposite sentiment has been found, and the

natural tendency has been towards some modification of republican

government;[10] out of which, indeed, as in Greece, a despot has

often been engendered, but always through some unnatural mixture of

force and fraud. The feudal system, evolved out of the disordered

state of Europe between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries,

always presumed a permanent suzerain, vested with large rights of a

mixed personal and proprietary character over his vassals, though

subject, also, to certain obligations towards them the immediate

vassals of the king had subordinate vassals of their own, to whom

they stood in the same relation: and in this hierarchy[11] of power,

property, and territory blended together, the rights of the chief,

whether king, duke, or baron, were always conceived as constituting

a status apart, and neither conferred originally by the grant, nor

revocable at the pleasure, of those over whom they were exercised.

This view of the essential nature of political authority was a point

in which the three great elements of modern European society,—the

Teutonic, the Roman, and the Christian,—all concurred, though each

in a different way and with different modifications; and the result

was, a variety of attempts on the part of subjects to compromise with

their chief, without any idea of substituting a delegated executive

in his place. On particular points of these feudal monarchies there

grew up, gradually, towns with a concentrated population, among

whom was seen the remarkable combination of a republican feeling,

demanding collective and responsible management in their own local

affairs, with a necessity of union and subordination towards the

great monarchical whole; and hence again arose a new force tending

both to maintain the form, and to predetermine the march, of kingly

government.[12] And it has been found in practice possible to

attain this latter object,—to combine regal government with fixity

of administration, equal law impartially executed, security to

person and property, and freedom of discussion under representative

forms,—in a degree which the wisest ancient Greek would have deemed

hopeless.[13] Such an improvement in the practical working of this

species of government, speaking always comparatively with the kings

of ancient times in Syria, Egypt, Judæa, the Grecian cities, and

Rome,—coupled with the increased force of all established routine,

and the greater durability of all institutions and creeds which have

once obtained footing throughout any wide extent of territory and

people, has caused the monarchical sentiment to remain predominant in

the European mind, though not without vigorous occasional dissent,

throughout the increased knowledge and the enlarged political

experience of the last two centuries.

[9] See this subject discussed in the admirable collection of

letters, called the Federalist, written in 1787, during the time

when the federal constitution of the United States of America was

under discussion.—Letters 9, 10, 14, by Mr. Madison.

“Il est de la nature d’une république (says Montesquieu, Esprit

des Loix, viii, 16) de n’avoir qu’un petit territoire: sans cela,

elle ne peut guère subsister.”

[10] David Hume, in his Essay xii (vol. i, p. 159, ed. 1760),

after remarking “that all kinds of government, free and despotic,

seem to have undergone in modern times (_i. e._ as compared with

ancient) a great change for the better, with regard both to

foreign and domestic management,” proceeds to say:—

“But though all kinds of government be improved in modern times,

yet monarchical government seems to have made the greatest

advances towards perfection. It may now be affirmed of civilized

monarchies, what was formerly said in praise of republics alone,

that they are a government of laws, not of men. They are found

susceptible of order, method, and constancy to a surprising

degree. Property is there secure; industry encouraged; the arts

flourish; and the prince lives secure among his subjects, like

a father among his children. There are, perhaps, and have been

for two centuries, near two hundred absolute princes, great

and small, in Europe; and allowing twenty years to each reign,

we may suppose that there have been in the whole two thousand

monarchs, or tyrants, as the Greeks would have called them; yet

of these there has not been one, not even Philip the Second of

Spain, so bad as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, who were

four in twelve amongst the Roman emperors. It must, however, be

confessed, that though monarchical governments have approached

nearer to popular ones in gentleness and stability, they are

still much inferior. Our modern education and customs instil more

humanity and moderation than the ancient, but have not as yet

been able to overcome entirely the disadvantages of that form of

government.”

[11] See the Lectures of M. Guizot, Cours d’Histoire Moderne,

Leçon 30, vol. iii, p. 187, edit. 1829.

[12] M. Augustin Thierry observes, Lettres sur l’Histoire de

France, Lettre xvi, p. 235:—

“Sans aucun souvenir de l’histoire Grecque ou Romaine, les

bourgeois des onzième et douzième siècles, soit que leur ville

fut sous la seigneurie d’un roi, d’un comte, d’un duc, d’un

évêque ou d’une abbaye, allaient droit à la république: mais

la réaction du pouvoir établi les rejetait souvent en arrière.

Du balancement de ces deux forces opposées résultait pour la

ville une sort de gouvernement mixte, et c’est ce qui arriva, en

général, dans le nord de la France, comme le prouvent les chartes

de commune.”

Even among the Italian cities, which became practically

self-governing, and produced despots as many in number and as

unprincipled in character as the Grecian (I shall touch upon this

comparison more largely hereafter), Mr. Hallam observes, that

“the sovereignty of the emperors, though not very effective, was

in theory always admitted: their name was used in public acts and

appeared upon the coin.”—View of the Middle Ages, part i, ch. 3,

p. 346, sixth edit.

See also M. Raynouard, Histoire du Droit Municipal en France,

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

et fondamentale entre les actes, les agens du gouvernement—et les

actes, les agens de l’administration locale pour les affaires

locales—cette démarcation politique, dont l’empire Romain avoit

donné l’exemple, et qui concilioit le gouvernement monarchique

avec une administration populaire—continua plus ou moins

expressément sous les trois dynasties.”

M. Raynouard presses too far his theory of the continuous

preservation of the municipal powers in towns from the Roman

empire down to the third French dynasty; but into this question

it is not necessary for my purpose to enter.

[13] In reference to the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, M.

Sismondi observes, speaking of Philip della Torre, denominated

_signor_ by the people of Como, Vercelli, and Bergamo, “Dans ces

villes, non plus que dans celles que son frère s’était auparavant

assujetties, le peuple ne croyoit point renoncer à sa liberté:

il n’avoit point voulu choisir un maître, mais seulement un

protecteur contre les nobles, un capitaine des gens de guerre,

et un chef de la justice. L’expérience lui apprit trop tard, que

ces prérogatives réunies constituoient un souverain.”—Républiques

Italiennes, vol. iii, ch. 20, p. 273.

It is important to show that the monarchical institutions and

monarchical tendencies prevalent throughout mediæval and modern

Europe have been both generated and perpetuated by causes peculiar

to those societies, whilst in Hellenic societies such causes had no

place,—in order that we may approach Hellenic phenomena in the proper

spirit, and with an impartial estimate of the feeling universal

among Greeks towards the idea of a king. The primitive sentiment

entertained towards the heroic king died out, passing first into

indifference, next,—after experience of the despots,—into determined

antipathy.

To an historian like Mr. Mitford, full of English ideas respecting

government, this anti-monarchical feeling appears of the nature of

insanity, and the Grecian communities like madmen without a keeper:

while the greatest of all benefactors is the hereditary king, who

conquers them from without,—the second-best is the home-despot, who

seizes the acropolis and puts his fellow-citizens under coercion.

There cannot be a more certain way of misinterpreting and distorting

Grecian phenomena than to read them in this spirit, which reverses

the maxims both of prudence and morality current in the ancient

world. The hatred of kings as it stood among the Greeks, whatever

may be thought about a similar feeling now, was a prëeminent virtue,

flowing directly from the noblest and wisest part of their nature:

it was a consequence of their deep conviction of the necessity

of universal legal restraint—it was a direct expression of that

regulated sociality which required the control of individual passion

from every one without exception, and most of all from him to whom

power was confided. The conception which the Greeks formed of an

unresponsible One, or of a king who could do no wrong, may be

expressed in the pregnant words of Herodotus:[14] “He subverts the

customs of the country: he violates women: he puts men to death

without trial.” No other conception of the probable tendencies of

kingship was justified either by a general knowledge of human nature,

or by political experience as it stood from Solon downward: no other

feeling than abhorrence could be entertained for the character so

conceived: no other than a man of unprincipled ambition would ever

seek to invest himself with it.

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

κτείνει τε ἀκρίτους.

Our larger political experience has taught us to modify this

opinion by showing that, under the conditions of monarchy in the

best governments of modern Europe, the enormities described by

Herodotus do not take place,—and that it is possible, by means

of representative constitutions acting under a certain force of

manners, customs, and historical recollection, to obviate many of

the mischiefs likely to flow from proclaiming the duty of peremptory

obedience to an hereditary and unresponsible king, who cannot

be changed without extra-constitutional force. But such larger

observation was not open to Aristotle, the wisest as well as the most

cautious of ancient theorists; nor if it had been open, could he have

applied with assurance its lessons to the governments of the single

cities of Greece. The theory of a constitutional king, especially

as it exists in England, would have appeared to him impracticable:

to establish a king who will reign without governing,—in whose name

all government is carried on, yet whose personal will is in practice

of little or no effect,—exempt from all responsibility, without

making use of the exemption,—receiving from every one unmeasured

demonstrations of homage, which are never translated into act

except within the bounds of a known law,—surrounded with all the

paraphernalia of power, yet acting as a passive instrument in the

hands of ministers marked out for his choice by indications which

he is not at liberty to resist. This remarkable combination of the

fiction of superhuman grandeur and license with the reality of an

invisible strait-waistcoat, is what an Englishman has in his mind

when he speaks of a constitutional king: the events of our history

have brought it to pass in England, amidst an aristocracy the most

powerful that the world has yet seen,—but we have still to learn

whether it can be made to exist elsewhere, or whether the occurrence

of a single king, at once able, aggressive, and resolute, may not

suffice to break it up. To Aristotle, certainly, it could not have

appeared otherwise than unintelligible and impracticable: not likely

even in a single case,—but altogether inconceivable as a permanent

system and with all the diversities of temper inherent in the

successive members of an hereditary dynasty. When the Greeks thought

of a man exempt from legal responsibility, they conceived him as

really and truly such, in deed as well as in name, with a defenceless

community exposed to his oppressions;[15] and their fear and hatred

of him was measured by their reverence for a government of equal

law and free speech, with the ascendency of which their whole hopes

of security were associated,—in the democracy of Athens more perhaps

than in any other portion of Greece. And this feeling, as it was

one of the best in the Greek mind, so it was also one of the most

widely spread,—a point of unanimity highly valuable amidst so many

points of dissension. We cannot construe or criticize it by reference

to the feelings of modern Europe, still less to the very peculiar

feelings of England, respecting kingship: and it is the application,

sometimes explicit and sometimes tacit, of this unsuitable standard,

which renders Mr. Mitford’s appreciation of Greek politics so often

incorrect and unfair.

[15] Euripides (Supplices, 429) states plainly the idea of a

τύραννος, as received in Greece the antithesis to laws:—

Οὐδὲν τυράννου δυσμενέστερον πόλει·

Ὅπου, τὸ μὲν πρώτιστον, οὔκ εἰσιν νόμοι

Κοινοὶ, κρατεῖ δ᾽ εἷς, τὸν νόμον κεκτημένος

Αὐτὸς παρ᾽ αὑτῷ.

Compare Soph. Antigon. 737. See, also, the discussion in Aristot.

Polit. iii, sect. 10 and 11, in which the rule of the king is

discussed in comparison with the government of laws; compare

also iv, 8, 2-3. The person called “a king according to law” is,

in his judgment, no king at all: Ὁ μὲν γὰρ κατὰ νόμον λεγόμενος

βασιλεὺς οὔκ ἐστιν εἶδος καθάπερ εἴπομεν βασιλείας (iii, 11, 1).

Respecting ἰσονομίη, ἰσηγορίη, παῤῥησία,—equal laws and equal

speech,—as opposed to monarchy, see Herodot. iii, 142, v. 78-92;

Thucyd. iii, 62; Demosthen. ad Leptin. c. 6, p. 461; Eurip. Ion.

671.

Of Timoleon it was stated, as a part of the grateful vote passed

after his death by the Syracusan assembly,—ὅτι τοὺς τυράννους

καταλύσας,—ἀπέδωκε ~τοὺς νόμους~ τοῖς Σικελιώταις (Plutarch.

Timoleon. c. 39).

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

When we try to explain the course of Grecian affairs, not from the

circumstances of other societies, but from those of the Greeks

themselves, we shall see good reason for the discontinuance as

well as for the dislike of kingship. Had the Greek mind been as

stationary and unimproving as that of the Orientals, the discontent

with individual kings might have led to no other change than the

deposition of a bad king in favor of one who promised to be better,

without ever extending the views of the people to any higher

conception than that of a personal government. But the Greek mind

was of a progressive character, capable of conceiving and gradually

of realizing amended social combinations. Moreover, it is in the

nature of things that any government,—regal, oligarchical, or

democratical,—which comprises only a single city, is far less stable

than if it embraced a wider surface and a larger population: and when

that semi-religious and mechanical submission, which made up for the

personal deficiencies of the heroic king, became too feeble to serve

as a working principle, the petty prince was in too close contact

with his people, and too humbly furnished out in every way, to get

up a prestige or delusion of any other kind: he had no means of

overawing their imaginations by that combination of pomp, seclusion,

and mystery, which Herodotus and Xenophon so well appreciate among

the artifices of kingcraft.[16] As there was no new feeling upon

which a perpetual chief could rest his power, so there was nothing

in the circumstances of the community which rendered the maintenance

of such a dignity necessary for visible and effective union:[17]

in a single city, and a small circumjacent community, collective

deliberation and general rules, with temporary and responsible

magistrates, were practicable without difficulty.

[16] See the account of Deiokês, the first Median king, in

Herodotus, i, 98, evidently an outline drawn by Grecian

imagination: also, the Cyropædia of Xenophon, viii, 1, 40; viii,

3, 1-14; vii, 5, 37 ... οὐ τούτῳ μόνῳ ἐνόμιζε (Κῦρος) χρῆναι τοὺς

ἄρχοντας τῶν ἀρχομένων διαφέρειν τῷ βελτίονας αὐτῶν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ

καὶ καταγοητεύειν ᾤετο χρῆναι αὐτοὺς, etc.

[17] David Hume, Essay xvii, On the Rise and Progress of the Arts

and Sciences, p. 198, ed. 1760. The effects of the greater or

less extent of territory, upon the nature of the government, are

also well discussed in Destutt Tracy, Commentaire sur l’Esprit

des Loix de Montesquieu, ch. viii.

To maintain an unresponsible king, and then to contrive

accompaniments which shall extract from him the benefits of

responsible government, is in reality a highly complicated system,

though, as has been remarked, we have become familiar with it in

modern Europe: the more simple and obvious change is, to substitute

one or more temporary and responsible magistrates in place of the

king himself. Such was the course which affairs took in Greece. The

inferior chiefs, who had originally served as council to the king,

found it possible to supersede him, and to alternate the functions of

administration among themselves; retaining probably the occasional

convocation of the general assembly, as it had existed before,

and with as little practical efficacy. Such was in substance the

character of that mutation which occurred generally throughout the

Grecian states, with the exception of Sparta: kingship was abolished,

and an oligarchy took its place,—a council deliberating collectively,

deciding general matters by the majority of voices, and selecting

some individuals of their own body as temporary and accountable

administrators. It was always an oligarchy which arose on the

defeasance of the heroic kingdom: the age of democratical movement

was yet far distant, and the condition of the people—the general body

of freemen—was not immediately altered, either for better or worse,

by the revolution; the small number of privileged persons, among whom

the kingly attributes were distributed and put in rotation, being

those nearest in rank to the king himself, perhaps members of the

same large gens with him, and pretending to a common divine or heroic

descent. As far as we can make out, this change seems to have taken

place in the natural course of events and without violence. Sometimes

the kingly lineage died out and was not replaced; sometimes, on the

death of a king, his son and successor was acknowledged[18] only as

archon, or perhaps set aside altogether to make room for a prytanis,

or president, out of the men of rank around.

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

M. Augustin Thierry remarks, in a similar spirit, that the great

political change, common to so large a portion of mediæval

Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whereby the many

different _communes_ or city constitutions were formed, was

accomplished under great varieties of manner and circumstance;

sometimes by violence, sometimes by harmonious accord.

“C’est une controverse qui doit finir, que celle des franchises

municipales obtenues par l’insurrection et des franchises

municipales accordées. Quelque face du problême qu’on envisage,

il reste bien entendu que les constitutions urbaines du xii et du

xiii siècle, comme toute espèce d’institutions politiques dans

tous les temps, ont pu s’établir à force ouverte, s’octroyer de

guerre lasse ou de plein gré, être arrachées ou sollicitées,

vendues ou données gratuitement: les grandes révolutions sociales

s’accomplissent par tous ces moyens à la fois.”—(Aug. Thierry,

Récits des Temps Mérovingiens, Préface, p. 19, 2de édit.)

At Athens, we are told that Kodrus was the last king, and that his

descendants were recognized only as archons for life; after some

years, the archons for life were replaced by archons for ten years,

taken from the body of Eupatridæ, or nobles; subsequently, the

duration of the archonship was farther shortened to one year. At

Corinth, the ancient kings are said to have passed in like manner

into the oligarchy of the Bacchiadæ, out of whom an annual prytanis

was chosen. We are only able to make out the general fact of such

a change, without knowing how it was brought about,—our first

historical acquaintance with the Grecian cities beginning with these

oligarchies.

Such oligarchical governments, varying in their details but analogous

in general features, were common throughout the cities of Greece

proper as well as of the colonies, throughout the seventh century

B. C. Though they had little immediate tendency to benefit the mass

of the freemen, yet when we compare them with the antecedent heroic

government, they indicate an important advance,—the first adoption

of a deliberate and preconceived system in the management of public

affairs.[19] They exhibit the first evidences of new and important

political ideas in the Greek mind,—the separation of legislative and

executive powers; the former vested in a collective body, not merely

deliberating but also finally deciding,—while the latter is confided

to temporary individual magistrates, responsible to that body at

the end of their period of office. We are first introduced to a

community of citizens, according to the definition of Aristotle,—men

qualified, and thinking themselves qualified, to take turns in

command and obedience: the collective sovereign, called The City, is

thus constituted. It is true that this first community of citizens

comprised only a small proportion of the men personally free, but

the ideas upon which it was founded began gradually to dawn upon

the minds of all. Political power had lost its heaven-appointed

character, and had become an attribute legally communicable as well

as determined to certain definite ends; and the ground was thus laid

for those thousand questions which agitated so many of the Grecian

cities during the ensuing three centuries, partly respecting its

apportionment, partly respecting its employment,—questions sometimes

raised among the members of the privileged oligarchy itself,

sometimes between that order as a whole and the non-privileged

Many. The seeds of those popular movements, which called forth so

much profound emotion, so much bitter antipathy, so much energy and

talent, throughout the Grecian world, with different modifications

in each particular city, may thus be traced back to that early

revolution which erected the primitive oligarchy upon the ruins of

the heroic kingdom.

[19] Aristot. Polit. iii, 10, 7. Ἐπεὶ δὲ (_i. e._ after the early

kings had had their day) συνέβαινε γίγνεσθαι πολλοὺς ὁμοίους πρὸς

ἀρετὴν, οὔκετι ὑπέμενον (τὴν Βασίλειαν), ἀλλ’ ~ἐζήτουν κοινόν

τι~, καὶ πολίτειαν καθίστασαν.

Κοινόν τι, _a commune_, the great object for which the

European towns in the Middle Ages, in the twelfth century,

struggled with so much energy, and ultimately obtained: a

charter of incorporation, and a qualified privilege of internal

self-government.

How these first oligarchies were administered we have no direct

information; but the narrow and anti-popular interests naturally

belonging to a privileged few, together with the general violence

of private manners and passions, leave us no ground for presuming

favorably respecting either their prudence or their good feeling; and

the facts which we learn respecting the condition of Attica prior to

the Solonian legislation (to be recounted in the next chapter) raise

inferences all of an unfavorable character.

The first shock which they received, and by which so many of them

were subverted, arose from the usurpers called Despots, who employed

the prevalent discontents both as pretexts and as aids for their

own personal ambition, while their very frequent success seems to

imply that such discontents were wide-spread as well as serious.

These despots arose out of the bosom of the oligarchies, but not all

in the same manner.[20] Sometimes the executive magistrate, upon

whom the oligarchy themselves had devolved important administrative

powers for a certain temporary period, became unfaithful to his

choosers, and acquired sufficient ascendency to retain his dignity

permanently in spite of them,—perhaps even to transmit it to his son.

In other places, and seemingly more often, there arose that noted

character called the Demagogue, of whom historians both ancient and

modern commonly draw so repulsive a picture:[21] a man of energy

and ambition, sometimes even a member of the oligarchy itself, who

stood forward as champion of the grievances and sufferings of the

non-privileged Many, acquired their favor, and employed their

strength so effectively as to put down the oligarchy by force, and

constitute himself despot. A third form of despot, some presumptuous

wealthy man, like Kylôn at Athens, without even the pretence of

popularity, was occasionally emboldened by the success of similar

adventures in other places to hire a troop of retainers and seize

the acropolis; and there were examples, though rare, of a fourth

variety,—the lineal descendant of the ancient kings,—who, instead of

suffering himself to be restricted or placed under control by the

oligarchy, found means to subjugate them, and to extort by force

an ascendency as great as that which his forefathers had enjoyed

by consent. To these must be added, in several Grecian states, the

Æsymnête, or Dictator, a citizen formally invested with supreme

and unresponsible power, placed in command of the military force,

and armed with a standing body-guard, but only for a time named,

and in order to deal with some urgent peril or ruinous internal

dissension.[22] The person thus exalted, always enjoying a large

measure of confidence, and generally a man of ability, was sometimes

so successful, or made himself so essential to the community, that

the term of his office was prolonged, and he became practically

despot for life; or, even if the community were not disposed to

concede to him this permanent ascendency, he was often strong enough

to keep it against their will.

[20] The definition of a despot is given in Cornelius Nepos,

Vit. Miltiadis, c. 8: “Omnes habentur et dicuntur tyranni, qui

potestate sunt perpetuâ in eâ civitate, quæ libertate usa est:”

compare Cicero de Republicâ, ii, 26, 27; iii, 14.

The word τύραννος was said by Hippias the sophist to have

first found its way into the Greek language about the time of

Archilochus (B. C. 660): Boeckh thinks that it came from the

Lydians or Phyrgians (Comment. ad Corp. Inscrip. No. 3439).

[21] Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 2, 3, 4. Τύραννος—ἐκ προστατικῆς ῥίζης

καὶ οὐκ ἄλλοθεν ἐκβλαστάνει (Plato, Repub. viii, c. 17, p. 565).

Οὐδενὶ γὰρ δὴ ἄδηλον, ὅτι ~πᾶς~ τύραννος ἐκ δημοκόλακος φύεται

(Dionys. Halic. vi, 60): a proposition decidedly too general.

[22] Aristot. iii, 9, 5; iii, 10, 1-10; iv, 8, 2.

Αἰσυμνῆται—αὐτοκράτορες μόναρχοι ἐν τοῖς ἀρχαίοις Ἕλλησι—αἱρετὴ

τυραννίς: compare Theophrastus, fragment. περὶ Βασιλείας, and

Dionys. Hal. A. R. v, 73-74; Strabo, xiii, p. 617; and Aristot.

Fragment. Rerum Publicarum, ed. Neumann, p. 122, Κυμαίων Πολιτεία.

Such were the different modes in which the numerous Greek despots of

the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. acquired their power. Though

we know thus much in general terms from the brief statements of

Aristotle, yet, unhappily, we have no contemporary picture of any

one of these communities, so as to give us the means of appreciating

the change in detail. Of those persons who, possessing inherited

kingly dignity, stretched their paternal power so far as to become

despots, Aristotle gives us Pheidôn of Argos as an example, whose

reign has been already narrated in the preceding volume: of those

who made themselves despots by means of official power previously

held under an oligarchy, he names Phalaris, at Agrigentum, and the

despots at Miletus and other cities of the Ionic Greeks: of those who

raised themselves by becoming demagogues, he specifies Panætius in

the Sicilian town of Leontini, Kypselus at Corinth, and Peisistratus

at Athens;[23] of Æsymnêtes, or chosen despots, Pittakus of Mitylênê

is the prominent instance. The military and aggressive demagogue,

subverting an oligarchy which had degraded and ill-used him,

governing as a cruel despot for several years, and at last dethroned

and slain, is farther depicted by Dionysius of Halikarnassus, in the

history of Aristodêmus of the Italian Cumæ.[24]

[23] Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 2, 3, 4; v, 4, 5. Aristotle refers

to one of the songs of Alkæus as his evidence respecting the

elevation of Pittakus: a very sufficient proof doubtless,—but we

may see that he had no other informants, except the poets, about

these early times.

[24] Dionys. Hal. A. R. vii, 2, 12. The reign of Aristodemus

falls about 510 B. C.

From the general statement of Thucydides as well as of Aristotle,

we learn that the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. were centuries

of progress for the Greek cities generally, in wealth, in power,

and in population; and the numerous colonies founded during this

period, of which I shall speak in a future chapter, will furnish

farther illustration of such progressive tendencies. Now the changes

just mentioned in the Grecian governments, imperfectly as we know

them, are on the whole decided evidences of advancing citizenship.

For the heroic government, with which Grecian communities begin, is

the rudest and most infantine of all governments; destitute even of

the pretence of system or security, incapable of being in any way

foreknown, and depending only upon the accidental variations in the

character of the reigning individual, who, in most cases, far from

serving as a protection to the poor against the rich and great, was

likely to indulge his passions in the same unrestrained way as the

latter, and with still greater impunity.

The despots, who in so many towns succeeded and supplanted this

oligarchical government, though they governed on principles usually

narrow and selfish, and often oppressively cruel, “taking no

thought—to use the emphatic words of Thucydides—except for their

own body and their own family,”—yet since they were not strong

enough to crush the Greek mind, imprinted upon it a painful but

improving political lesson, and contributed much to enlarge the

range of experience as well as to determine the subsequent cast of

feeling.[25] They partly broke down the wall of distinction between

the people—properly so called, the general mass of freemen—and the

oligarchy; indeed, the demagogue-despots are interesting, as the

first evidence of the growing importance of the people in political

affairs. The demagogue stood forward as representing the feelings and

interests of the people against the governing few, probably availing

himself of some special cases of ill-usage, and taking pains to be

conciliatory and generous in his own personal behavior; and when the

people, by their armed aid, had enabled him to overthrow the existing

rulers, they had thus the satisfaction of seeing their own chief

in possession of the supreme power, but they acquired no political

rights and no increased securities for themselves. What measure of

positive advantage they may have reaped, beyond that of seeing their

previous oppressors humiliated, we know too little to determine;[26]

but even the worst of despots was more formidable to the rich than

to the poor, and the latter may perhaps have gained by the change,

in comparative importance, notwithstanding their share in the rigors

and exactions of a government which had no other permanent foundation

than naked fear.

[25] Thucyd. i, 17. Τύραννοι δὲ ὅσοι ἦσαν ἐν ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς

πόλεσι, τὸ ἐφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν μόνον προορώμενοι ἔς τε τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἐς τὸ

τὸν ἴδιον οἶκον αὔξειν δι᾽ ἀσφαλείας ὅσον ἐδύναντο μάλιστα, τὰς

πόλεις ᾤκουν.

[26] Wachsmuth (Hellenische Alterthumskunde, sect. 49-51) and

Tittmann (Griechisch. Staatsverfassungen, pp. 527-533) both make

too much of the supposed friendly connection and mutual good-will

between the despot and the poorer freemen. Community of antipathy

against the old oligarchy was a bond essentially temporary,

dissolved as soon as that oligarchy was put down.

A remark made by Aristotle deserves especial notice here, as

illustrating the political advance and education of the Grecian

communities. He draws a marked distinction between the early

demagogue of the seventh and sixth centuries, and the later

demagogue, such as he himself and the generations immediately

preceding had witnessed: the former was a military chief, daring and

full of resource, who took arms at the head of a body of popular

insurgents, put down the government by force, and made himself

the master both of those whom he deposed and of those by whose

aid he deposed them; while the latter was a speaker, possessed

of all the talents necessary for moving an audience, but neither

inclined to, nor qualified for, armed attack,—accomplishing all

his purposes by pacific and constitutional methods. This valuable

change,—substituting discussion and the vote of an assembly in place

of an appeal to arms, and procuring for the pronounced decision of

the assembly such an influence over men’s minds as to render it

final and respected even by dissentients,—arose from the continued

practical working of democratical institutions. I shall have

occasion, at a later period of this history, to estimate the value

of that unmeasured obloquy which has been heaped on the Athenian

demagogues of the Peloponnesian war,—Kleôn and Hyperbolus; but,

assuming the whole to be well-founded, it will not be the less true

that these men were a material improvement on the earlier demagogues,

such as Kypselus and Peisistratus, who employed the armed agency of

the people for the purpose of subverting the established government

and acquiring despotic authority for themselves. The demagogue

was essentially a leader of opposition, who gained his influence

by denouncing the men in real ascendency, and in actual executive

functions. Now, under the early oligarchies, his opposition could

be shown only by armed insurrection, and it conducted him either

to personal sovereignty or to destruction; but the growth of

democratical institutions insured both to him and to his political

opponents full liberty of speech, and a paramount assembly to

determine between them; whilst it both limited the range of his

ambition, and set aside the appeal to armed force. The railing

demagogue of Athens, at the time of the Peloponnesian war (even if

we accept literally the representations of his worst enemies), was

thus a far less mischievous and dangerous person than the fighting

demagogue of the earlier centuries; and the “growth of habits of

public speaking,”[27] to use Aristotle’s expression, was the cause

of the difference: the opposition of the tongue was a beneficial

substitute for the opposition of the sword.

[27] Aristot. Polit. v, 4, 4; 7, 3. Ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ἀρχαίων,

ὅτε γένοιτο ὁ αὐτὸς δημαγωγὸς καὶ στρατηγὸς, εἰς τυραννίδα

μετέβαλλον· σχεδὸν γὰρ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν ἀρχαίων τυράννων ἐκ

δημαγωγῶν γεγόνασι. Αἴτιον δὲ τοῦ τότε μὲν γενέσθαι, νῦν δὲ μὴ,

ὅτι τότε μὲν, οἱ δημαγωγοὶ ἦσαν ἐκ τῶν στρατηγούντων· οὐ γάρ πω

δεινοὶ ἦσαν λέγειν· νῦν δὲ, τῆς ῥητορικῆς ηὐξημένης, οἱ δυνάμενοι

λέγειν δημαγωγοῦσι μὲν, δι’ ἀπειρίαν δὲ τῶν πολεμικῶν οὐκ

ἐπιτίθενται, πλὴν εἴ που βραχύ τι γέγονε τοιοῦτον.

The rise of these despots on the ruins of the previous oligarchies

was, in appearance, a return to the principles of the heroic

age,—the restoration of a government of personal will in place of

that systematic arrangement known as the City. But the Greek mind

had so far outgrown those early principles, that no new government

founded thereupon could meet with willing acquiescence, except under

some temporary excitement. At first, doubtless, the popularity

of the usurper,—combined with the fervor of his partizans and

the expulsion or intimidation of opponents, and farther enhanced

by the punishment of rich oppressors,—was sufficient to procure

for him obedience; and prudence on his part might prolong this

undisputed rule for a considerable period, perhaps even throughout

his whole life. But Aristotle intimates that these governments,

even when they began well, had a constant tendency to become worse

and worse: discontent manifested itself, and was aggravated rather

than repressed by the violence employed against it, until at length

the despot became a prey to mistrustful and malevolent anxiety,

losing any measure of equity or benevolent sympathy which might

once have animated him. If he was fortunate enough to bequeathe his

authority to his son, the latter, educated in a corrupt atmosphere

and surrounded by parasites, contracted dispositions yet more

noxious and unsocial: his youthful appetites were more ungovernable,

while he was deficient in the prudence and vigor which had been

indispensable to the self-accomplished rise of his father.[28] For

such a position, mercenary guards and a fortified acropolis were

the only stay,—guards fed at the expense of the citizens, and thus

requiring constant exactions on behalf of that which was nothing

better than a hostile garrison. It was essential to the security of

the despot that he should keep down the spirit of the free people

whom he governed; that he should isolate them from each other, and

prevent those meetings and mutual communications which Grecian cities

habitually presented in the school, the leschê, or the palæstra;

that he should strike off the overtopping ears of corn in the field

(to use the Greek locution) or crush the exalted and enterprising

minds.[29] Nay, he had even to a certain extent an interest in

degrading and impoverishing them, or at least in debarring them

from the acquisition either of wealth or leisure: and the extensive

constructions undertaken by Polykratês at Samos, as well as the rich

donations of Periander to the temple at Olympia, are considered by

Aristotle to have been extorted by these despots with the express

view of engrossing the time and exhausting the means of their

subjects.

[28] Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 20. The whole tenor of this eighth

chapter (of the fifth book) shows how unrestrained were the

personal passions,—the lust as well as the anger,—of a Grecian

τύραννος.

Τόν τοι τύραννον εὐσεβεῖν οὐ ῥᾴδιον (Sophokles ap. Schol.

Aristides, vol. iii, p. 291, ed. Dindorf).

[29] Aristot. Polit. iii, 8, 3; v, 8, 7. Herodot. v, 92.

Herodotus gives the story as if Thrasybulus had been the person

to suggest this hint by conducting the messenger of Periander

into a cornfield and there striking off the tallest ears with

his stick: Aristotle reverses the two, and makes Periander the

adviser: Livy (i, 54) transfers the scene to Gabii and Rome, with

Sextus Tarquinius as the person sending for counsel to his father

at Rome. Compare Plato, Republ. viii, c. 17, p. 565; Eurip.

Supplic. 444-455.

The discussion which Herodotus ascribes to the Persian

conspirators, after the assassination of the Magian king, whether

they should constitute the Persian government as a monarchy,

an oligarchy, or a democracy, exhibits a vein of ideas purely

Grecian, and altogether foreign to the Oriental conception

of government: but it sets forth,—briefly, yet with great

perspicuity and penetration,—the advantages and disadvantages of

all the three. The case made out against monarchy is by far the

strongest, while the counsel on behalf of monarchy assumes as a

part of his case that the individual monarch is to be the best

man in the state. The anti-monarchical champion Otanes concludes

a long string of criminations against the despot, with these

words above-noticed: “He subverts the customs of the country:

he violates women: he puts men to death untried.” (Herod. iii,

80-82.)

It is not to be imagined that all were alike cruel or unprincipled;

but the perpetual supremacy of one man and one family had become so

offensive to the jealousy of those who felt themselves to be his

equals, and to the general feeling of the people, that repression

and severity were inevitable, whether originally intended or not.

And even if an usurper, having once entered upon this career of

violence, grew sick and averse to its continuance, abdication only

left him in imminent peril, exposed to the vengeance[30] of those

whom he had injured,—unless, indeed, he could clothe himself with the

mantle of religion, and stipulate with the people to become priest

of some temple and deity; in which case his new function protected

him, just as the tonsure and the monastery sheltered a dethroned

prince in the Middle Ages.[31] Several of the despots were patrons

of music and poetry, and courted the good-will of contemporary

intellectual men by invitation as well as by reward; and there were

some cases, such as that of Peisistratus and his sons at Athens, in

which an attempt was made (analogous to that of Augustus at Rome) to

reconcile the reality of personal omnipotence with a certain respect

for preëxisting forms.[32] In such instances the administration,

though not unstained by guilt, never otherwise than unpopular, and

carried on by means of foreign mercenaries, was doubtless practically

milder. But cases of this character were rare, and the maxims usual

with Grecian despots were personified in Periander, the Kypselid of

Corinth,—a harsh and brutal person, but not destitute either of vigor

or intelligence.

[30] Thucyd. ii, 63. Compare again the speech of Kleon, iii,

37-40,—ὡς τυραννίδα γὰρ ἔχετε αὐτὴν, ἣν λαβεῖν μὲν ἄδικον δοκεῖ

εἶναι, ἀφεῖναι δὲ ἐπικίνδυνον.

The bitter sentiment against despots seems to be as old as

Alkæus, and we find traces of it in Solon and Theognis (Theognis,

38-50; Solon, Fragm. vii, p. 32, ed. Schneidewin). Phanias of

Eresus had collected in a book the “Assassinations of Despots

from revenge.” (Τυράννων ἀναιρέσεις ἐκ τιμωρίας,—Athenæus, iii,

p. 90; x, p. 438.)

[31] See the story of Mæandrius, minister and successor of

Polykratês of Samos, in Herodotus, iii, 142, 143.

[32] Thucyd. vi, 54. The epitaph of Archedikê, the daughter of

Hippias (which was inscribed at Lampsakus, where she died),

though written by a great friend of Hippias, conveys the sharpest

implied invective against the usual proceedings of the despots:—

Ἡ πατρός τε καὶ ἀνδρὸς ἀδελφῶν τ᾽ οὖσα τυράννων

Παιδῶν τ᾽, οὐχ ᾕρθη νοῦν ἐς ἀτασθαλίην (Thuc. vi, 59).

The position of Augustus at Rome, and of Peisistratus at Athens,

may be illustrated by a passage in Sismondi, Républiques

Italiennes, vol. iv, ch. 26, p. 208:—

“Les petits monarques de chaque ville s’opposaient eux-mêmes à

ce que leur pouvoir fût attribué à un droit héréditaire, parce

que l’hérédité aurait presque toujours été retorquée contre eux.

Ceux qui avaient succédé à une république, avaient abaissé des

nobles plus anciens et plus illustres qu’eux: ceux qui avaient

succédé à d’autres seigneurs n’avaient tenu aucun compte du droit

de leurs prédécesseurs, et se sentaient intéressés à le nier.

Ils se disaient donc mandataires du peuple: ils ne prenaient

jamais le commandement d’une ville, lors même qu’ils l’avaient

soumise par les armes, sans se faire attribuer par les anciens

ou par l’assemblée du peuple, selon que les uns ou les autres se

montraient plus dociles, le titre et les pouvoirs de seigneur

général, pour un an, pour cinq ans, ou pour toute leur vie, avec

une paie fixée, qui devoit être prise sur les deniers de la

communauté.”

The position of a Grecian despot, as depicted by Plato, by Xenophon

and by Aristotle,[33] and farther sustained by the indications in

Herodotus, Thucydides, and Isokrates, though always coveted by

ambitious men, reveals clearly enough “those wounds and lacerations

of mind,” whereby the internal Erinnys avenged the community upon

the usurper who trampled them down. Far from considering success

in usurpation as a justification of the attempt (according to the

theories now prevalent respecting Cromwell and Bonaparte, who are

often blamed because they kept out a legitimate king, but never

because they seized an unauthorized power over the people), these

philosophers regard the despot as among the greatest of criminals:

the man who assassinated him was an object of public honor and

reward, and a virtuous Greek would seldom have scrupled to carry his

sword concealed in myrtle branches, like Harmodius and Aristogeiton,

for the execution of the deed.[34] A station which overtopped the

restraints and obligations involved in citizenship, was understood

at the same time to forfeit all title to the common sympathy and

protection,[35] so that it was unsafe for the despot to visit in

person those great Pan-Hellenic games in which his own chariot

might perhaps have gained the prize, and in which the theors, or

sacred envoys, whom he sent as representatives of his Hellenic city,

appeared with ostentatious pomp. A government carried on under

these unpropitious circumstances could never be otherwise than

short-lived. Though the individual daring enough to seize it, often

found means to preserve it for the term of his own life, yet the

sight of a despot living to old age was rare, and the transmission of

his power to his son still more so.[36]

[33] Consult, especially, the treatise of Xenophon, called Hiero,

or Τυραννικὸς, in which the interior life and feelings of the

Grecian despot are strikingly set forth, in a supposed dialogue

with the poet Simonides. The tenor of Plato’s remarks in the

eighth and ninth books of the Republic, and those of Aristotle in

the fifth book (ch. 8 and 9) of the Politics, display the same

picture, though not with such fulness of detail. The speech of

one of the assassins of Euphrôn (despot of Sikyon) is remarkable,

as a specimen of Grecian feeling (Xenoph. Hellen. vii, 3, 7-12).

The expressions both of Plato and Tacitus, in regard to the

mental wretchedness of the despot, are the strongest which the

language affords: Καὶ πένης τῇ ἀληθείᾳ φαίνεται, ἐάν τις ὅλην

ψυχὴν ἐπίστηται θεάσασθαι, καὶ φόβου γέμων διὰ παντὸς τοῦ βίου,

σφαδασμῶν τε καὶ ὀδυνῶν πλήρης ... Ἀνάγκη καὶ εἶναι, καὶ ἔτι

μᾶλλον γίγνεσθαι αὐτῷ ἢ πρότερον διὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν, φθονερῷ, ἀπίστῳ,

ἀδίκῳ, ἀφίλῳ, ἀνοσίῳ, καὶ πάσης κακίας πανδοκεῖ τε καὶ τροφεῖ,

καὶ ἐξ ἁπάντων τούτων μάλιστα μὲν αὐτῷ δυστυχεῖ εἶναι, ἔπειτα δὲ

καὶ τοὺς πλησίον αὑτῷ τοιούτους ἀπεργάζεσθαι (Republic, ix, p.

580).

And Tacitus, in the well-known passage (Annal. vi, 6): “Neque

frustra præstantissimus sapientiæ firmare solitus est, si

recludantur tyrannorum mentes, posse aspici laniatus et ictus:

quando ut corpora verberibus, ita sævitiâ, libidine, malis

consultis, animus dilaceretur. Quippe Tiberium non fortuna, non

solitudines, protegebant, quin tormenta pectoris suasque ipse

pœnas fateretur.”

It is not easy to imagine power more completely surrounded with

all circumstances calculated to render it repulsive to a man

of ordinary benevolence: the Grecian despot had large means of

doing harm,—scarcely any means of doing good. Yet the acquisition

of power over others, under any conditions, is a motive so

all-absorbing, that even this precarious and anti-social sceptre

was always intensely coveted,—Τυραννὶς, χρῆμα σφαλερὸν, πολλοὶ δὲ

αὐτῆς ἐρασταί εἰσι (Herod. iii, 53). See the striking lines of

Solon (Fragment, vii, ed. Schneidewin), and the saying of Jason

of Pheræ, who used to declare that he felt incessant hunger until

he became despot,—πεινῇν, ὅτε μὴ τυραννοῖ· ὡς οὐκ ἐπιστάμενος

ἰδιώτης εἶναι (Aristot. Polit. iii, 2, 6).

[34] See the beautiful Skolion of Kallistratus, so popular at

Athens, xxvii, p. 456, apud Schneidewin, Poet. Græc.—Ἐν μύρτου

κλαδὶ τὸ ξίφος φορήσω, etc.

Xenophon, Hiero, ii, 8. Οἱ τύραννοι πάντες πανταχῆ ὡς διὰ

πολεμίας πορεύονται. Compare Isokrates, Or. viii (De Pace), p.

182; Polyb. ii, 59; Cicero, Orat. pro Milone, c. 29.

Aristot. Polit. ii, 4, 8. Επεὶ ἀδικοῦσί γε τὰ μέγιστα διὰ τὰς

ὑπερβολὰς, ᾿αλλ᾽ οὐ διὰ τἀναγκαῖα· οἶον τυραννοῦσιν, οὐχ ἵνα μὴ

ῥιγῶσι· διὸ καὶ αἱ τιμαὶ μεγάλαι, ἂν ἀποκτείνῃ τις, οὐ κλέπτην,

ἀλλὰ τύραννον.

There cannot be a more striking manifestation of the sentiment

entertained towards a despot in the ancient world, than the

remarks of Plutarch on Timoleon, for his conduct in assisting

to put to death his brother, the despot Timophanês (Plutarch,

Timoleon, c. 4-7, and Comp. of Timoleon with Paulus Æmilius,

c. 2). See also Plutarch, Comparison of Dion and Brutus, c. 3,

and Plutarch, Præcepta Reipublicæ Gerendæ, c. 11, p. 805; c.

17, p. 813; c. 32, p. 824,—he speaks of the putting down of a

despot (τυραννίδων κατάλυσις) as among the most splendid of human

exploits,—and the account given by Xenophon of the assassination

of Jason of Pheræ, Hellenic. vi, 4, 32.

[35] Livy, xxxviii, 50. “Qui jus æquum pati non possit, in eum

vim haud injustam esse.”

[36] Plutarch, Sept. Sapient. Conviv. c. 2, p. 147,—ὡς ἐρωτηθεὶς

ὑπὸ Μολπαγόρου τοῦ Ἴωνος, τί παραδοξότατον εἴης ἑωρακὼς,

ἀποκρίναιο, τύραννον γέροντα.—Compare the answer of Thales, in

the same treatise, c. 7, p. 152.

The orator Lysias, present at the Olympic games, and seeing the

theors of the Syracusan despot Dionysius also present, in tents

with gilding and purple, addressed an harangue, inciting the

assembled Greeks to demolish the tents (Lysiæ Λόγος Ὀλυμπιακὸς,

Fragm. p. 911, ed. Reisk.; Dionys. Halicar. De Lysiâ Judicium,

c. 29-30). Theophrastus ascribed to Themistokles a similar

recommendation, in reference to the theôrs and the prize-chariots

of the Syracusan despot Hiero (Plutarch, Themistokles, c. 25).

The common-places of the rhetors afford the best proof how

unanimous was the sentiment in the Greek mind to rank the

despot among the most odious criminals, and the man who put him

to death among the benefactors of humanity. The rhetor Theon,

treating upon _common-places_, says: Τόπος ἐστὶ λόγος αὐξητικὸς

~ὁμολογουμένου~ πράγματος, ἤτοι ἁμαρτήματος, ἢ ἀνδραγαθήματος.

Ἐστὶ γὰρ διττὸς ὁ τόπος· ὁ μέν τις, κατὰ τῶν ~πεπονηρευμένων~,

οἷον κατὰ ~τυράννου, προδότου, ἀνδροφόνου, ἀσώτου~· ὁ δέ τις,

ὑπὲρ τῶν ~χρηστόν~ τι διαπεπραγμένων· οἷον ὑπὲρ ~τυραννοκτόνου,

ἀριστέως, νομοθέτου~. (Theon, Progymnasmata, c. vii, ap. Walz.

Coll. Rhett. vol. i, p. 222. Compare Aphthonius, Progymn. c. vii,

p. 82 of the same volume, and Dionysius Halikarn. Ars Rhetorica,

x, 15, p. 390, ed. Reiske.)

Amidst the numerous points of contention in Grecian political

morality, this rooted antipathy to a permanent hereditary ruler

stood apart as a sentiment almost unanimous, in which the thirst

for preëminence felt by the wealthy few, and the love of equal

freedom in the bosoms of the many, alike concurred. It first began

among the oligarchies of the seventh and sixth centuries B. C., a

complete reversal of that pronounced monarchical sentiment which

we now read in the Iliad; and it was transmitted by them to the

democracies, which did not arise until a later period. The conflict

between oligarchy and despotism preceded that between oligarchy

and democracy, the Lacedæmonians standing forward actively on

both occasions to uphold the oligarchical principle: a mingled

sentiment of fear and repugnance led them to put down despotism in

several cities of Greece during the sixth century B. C., just as,

during their contest with Athens in the following century, they

assisted the oligarchical party, where-ever they could, to overthrow

democracy. And it was thus that the demagogue-despot of these earlier

times, bringing out the name of the people as a pretext, and the arms

of the people as a means of accomplishment, for his own ambitious

designs, served as a preface to the reality of democracy, which

manifested itself at Athens a short time before the Persian war, as a

development of the seed planted by Solon.

As far as our imperfect information enables us to trace, the early

oligarchies of the Grecian states, against which the first usurping

despots contended, contained in themselves far more repulsive

elements of inequality, and more mischievous barriers between the

component parts of the population, than the oligarchies of later

days. What was true of Hellas as an aggregate, was true, though in

a less degree, of each separate community which went to compose

that aggregate: each included a variety of clans, orders, religious

brotherhoods, and local or professional sections, which were very

imperfectly cemented together: and the oligarchy was not, like

the government so denominated in subsequent times, the government

of a rich few over the less rich and the poor, but that of a

peculiar order, sometimes a patrician order, over all the remaining

society. In such a case, the subject Many might number opulent and

substantial proprietors as well as the governing Few; but these

subject Many would themselves be broken into different heterogeneous

fractions, not heartily sympathizing with each other, perhaps not

intermarrying together, nor partaking of the same religious rites.

The country-population, or villagers, who tilled the land, seem

in these early times to have been held to a painful dependence on

the proprietors who lived in the fortified town, and to have been

distinguished by a dress and habits of their own, which often drew

upon them an unfriendly nickname. These town proprietors seem to have

often composed the governing class in early Grecian states, while

their subjects consisted,—1. Of the dependent cultivators living

in the district around, by whom their lands were tilled. 2. Of a

certain number of small self-working proprietors (αὐτουργοὶ), whose

possessions were too scanty to maintain more than themselves by the

labor of their own hands on their own plot of ground—residing either

in the country or the town, as the case might be. 3. Of those who

lived in the town, having no land but exercising handicraft, arts, or

commerce.

The governing proprietors went by the name of the Gamori, or

Geomori, according as the Doric or Ionic dialect might be used in

describing them, since they were found in states belonging to one

race as well as to the other. They appear to have constituted a

close order, transmitting their privileges to their children, but

admitting no new members to a participation,—for the principle

called by Greek thinkers a timocracy, the appointment of political

rights and privileges according to comparative property, appears to

have been little, if at all, applied in the earlier times, and we

know no example of it earlier than Solon. So that, by the natural

multiplication of families and mutation of property, there would

come to be many individual gamori possessing no land at all, and

perhaps worse off than those small freeholders who did not belong to

the order; while some of these latter freeholders, and some of the

artisans and traders in the towns, might at the same time be rising

in wealth and importance. Under a political classification such as

this, of which the repulsive inequality was aggravated by a rude

state of manners, and which had no flexibility to meet the changes

in relative position amongst individual inhabitants, discontent

and outbreaks were unavoidable, and the earliest despot, usually a

wealthy man of the disfranchised class, became champion and leader

of the malcontents.[37] However oppressive his rule might be, at

least it was an oppression which bore with indiscriminate severity

upon all the fractions of the population; and when the hour of

reaction against him or against his successor arrived, so that the

common enemy was expelled by the united efforts of all, it was hardly

possible to revive the preëxisting system of exclusion and inequality

without some considerable abatements.

[37] Thucyd. i, 13.

As a general rule, every Greek city-community included in its

population, independent of bought slaves, the three elements above

noticed,—considerable land proprietors with rustic dependents, small

self-working proprietors, and town-artisans,—the three elements

being found everywhere in different proportions. But the progress of

events in Greece, from the seventh century B. C. downwards, tended

continually to elevate the comparative importance of the two latter,

while in those early days the ascendency of the former was at its

maximum, and altered only to decline. The military force of most

of the cities was at first in the hands of the great proprietors,

and formed by them; it consisted of cavalry, themselves and their

retainers, with horses fed upon their lands. Such was the primitive

oligarchical militia, as it was constituted in the seventh and sixth

centuries B. C.,[38] at Chalkis and Eretria in Eubœa, as well as at

Kolophôn and other cities in Ionia, and as it continued in Thessaly

down to the fourth century B. C.; but the gradual rise of the small

proprietors and town-artisans was marked by the substitution of

heavy-armed infantry in place of cavalry; and a farther change not

less important took place when the resistance to Persia led to the

great multiplication of Grecian ships of war, manned by a host of

seamen who dwelt congregated in the maritime towns. All the changes

which we are able to trace in the Grecian communities tended to

break up the close and exclusive oligarchies with which our first

historical knowledge commences, and to conduct them either to

oligarchies rather more open, embracing all men of a certain amount

of property, or else to democracies. But the transition in both cases

was usually attained through the interlude of the despot.

[38] Aristot. Polit. iv, 3, 2; 11, 10. Aristot. Rerum Public.

Fragm. ed. Neumann. Fragm. v. Εὐβοέων πολιτεῖαι, p. 112; Strabo,

x, p. 447.

In enumerating the distinct and unharmonious elements of which the

population of these early Grecian communities was made up, we must

not forget one farther element which was to be found in the Dorian

states generally,—men of Dorian, as contrasted with men of non-Dorian

race. The Dorians were in all cases emigrants and conquerors,

establishing themselves along with and at the expense of the prior

inhabitants. Upon what terms the cohabitation was established, and in

what proportions invaders and invaded came together, we are without

information; and important as this circumstance is in the history of

these Dorian communities, we know it only as a general fact, and are

unable to follow its results in detail. But we see enough to satisfy

ourselves that in those revolutions which overthrew the oligarchies

both at Corinth and Sikyon,—perhaps also at Megara,—the Dorian and

non-Dorian elements of the community came into conflict more or less

direct.

The despots of Sikyon are the earliest of whom we have any distinct

mention: their dynasty lasted one hundred years, a longer period than

any other Grecian despots known to Aristotle; they are said,[39]

moreover, to have governed with mildness and with much practical

respect to the preëxisting laws. Orthagoras,[40] the beginner of

the dynasty, raised himself to the position of despot about 676

B. C., subverting the preëxisting Dorian oligarchy; but the cause

and circumstances of this revolution are not preserved. He is said

to have been originally a cook. In his line of successors we find

mention of Andreas, Myrôn, Aristônymus, and Kleisthenês; but we know

nothing of any of them until the last, except that Myrôn gained a

chariot victory at Olympia in the 33d Olympiad (648 B. C.), and

built, at the same holy place, a thesaurus containing two ornamented

alcoves of copper for the reception of commemorative offerings from

himself and his family.[41] Respecting Kleisthenês (whose age

must be placed between 600-560 B. C., but can hardly be determined

accurately,) some facts are reported to us highly curious, but of a

nature not altogether easy to follow or verify.

[39] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 21. An oracle is said to have

predicted to the Sikyonians that they would be subjected for the

period of a century to the hand of the scourger (Diodor. Fragm.

lib. vii-x; Fragm. xiv, ed. Maii).

[40] Herodot. vi, 126; Pausan. ii, 8, 1. There is some confusion

about the names of Orthagoras and Andreas; the latter is called a

_cook_ in Diodorus (Fragment. Excerpt. Vatic. lib. vii-x, Fragm.

xiv). Compare Libanius in Sever. vol. iii, p. 251, Reisk. It has

been supposed, with some probability, that the same person is

designated under both names: the two names do not seem to occur

in the same author. See Plutarch, Ser. Numin. Vind. c. 7, p. 553.

Aristotle (Polit. v, 10, 3) seems to have conceived the dominion

as having passed direct from Myrôn to Kleisthenês, omitting

Aristônymus.

[41] Pausan. vi, 19, 2. The Eleians informed Pausanias that the

brass in these alcoves came from Tartessus (the south-western

coast of Spain from the Strait of Gibraltar to the territory

beyond Cadiz): he declines to guarantee the statement. But O.

Müller treats it as a certainty: “Two apartments inlaid with

Tartessian brass, and adorned with Doric and Ionic columns. Both

the architectural orders employed in this building, and the

Tartessian brass, which the Phocæans had then brought to Greece

in large quantities from the hospitable king Arganthonius, attest

the intercourse of Myrôn with the Asiatics.” (Dorians, i, 8, 2.)

So also Dr. Thirlwall states the fact: “Copper of Tartessus,

which had not long been introduced into Greece.” (Hist. Gr. ch.

x, p. 483, 2d ed.) Yet, if we examine the chronology of the

case, we shall see that the 33d Olympiad (648 B. C.) must have

been earlier even than the first discovery of Tartessus by the

Greeks,—before the accidental voyage of the Samian merchant

Kôlaeus first made the region known to them, and more than half a

century (at least) earlier than the commerce of the Phocæans with

Arganthonius. Compare Herod. iv. 152; i, 163, 167.

We learn from the narrative of Herodotus that the tribe to which

Kleisthenês[42] himself (and of course his progenitors Orthagoras

and the other Orthagoridæ also) belonged, was distinct from the

three Dorian tribes, who have been already named in my previous

chapter respecting the Lykurgean constitution at Sparta,—the Hylleis,

Pamphyli, and Dymanes. We also learn that these tribes were common to

the Sikyonians and the Argeians; and Kleisthenês, being in a state

of bitter hostility with Argos, tried in several ways to abolish

the points of community between the two. Sikyôn, originally Dorized

by settlers from Argos, was included in the “lot of Temenus,” or

among the towns of the Argeian confederacy: the coherence of this

confederacy had become weaker and weaker, partly without doubt

through the influence of the predecessors of Kleisthenês; but the

Argeians may perhaps have tried to revive it, thus placing themselves

in a state of war with the latter, and inducing him to disconnect,

palpably and violently, Sikyôn from Argos. There were two anchors by

which the connection held,—first, legendary and religious sympathy;

next, the civil rites and denominations current among the Sikyonian

Dorians: both of them were torn up by Kleisthenês. He changed the

names both of the three Dorian tribes, and of that non-Dorian tribe

to which he himself belonged: the last he called by the complimentary

title of archelai (commanders of the people); the first three he

styled by the insulting names of hyatæ, oneatæ, and chœreatæ, from

the three Greek words signifying a boar, an ass, and a little pig.

The extreme bitterness of this insult can only be appreciated when

we fancy to ourselves the reverence with which the tribes in a

Grecian city regarded the hero from whom their name was borrowed.

That these new denominations, given by Kleisthenês, involved an

intentional degradation of the Dorian tribes as well as an assumption

of superiority for his own, is affirmed by Herodotus, and seems

well-deserving of credit.

[42] Herodot. v. 67.

But the violence of which Kleisthenês was capable in his anti-Argeian

antipathy, is manifested still more plainly in his proceedings with

respect to the hero Adrastus and to the legendary sentiment of the

people. Something has already been said, in my former volume,[43]

about this remarkable incident, which must, however, be here again

briefly noticed. The hero Adrastus, whose chapel Herodotus himself

saw in the Sikyonian agora, was common both to Argos and to Sikyôn,

and was the object of special reverence at both: he figures in the

legend as king of Argos, and as the grandson and heir of Polybus,

king of Sikyôn. He was the unhappy leader of the two sieges of

Thebes, so famous in the ancient epic,—and the Sikyonians listened

with delight both to the exploits of the Argeians against Thebes, as

celebrated in the recitations of the epical rhapsodes, and to the

mournful tale of Adrastus and his family misfortunes, as sung in the

tragic chorus. Kleisthenês not only forbade the rhapsodes to come

to Sikyôn, but farther resolved to expel Adrastus himself from the

country,—such is the literal Greek expression,[44] the hero himself

being believed to be actually present and domiciled among the people.

He first applied to the Delphian oracle for permission to carry this

banishment into direct effect, but the Pythian priestess returned an

answer of indignant refusal,—“Adrastus is king of the Sikyonians, but

thou art a ruffian.” Thus baffled, he put in practice a stratagem

calculated to induce Adrastus to depart of his own accord.[45] He

sent to Thebes to beg that he might be allowed to introduce into

Sikyôn the hero Melanippus, and the permission was granted. Now

Melanippus was celebrated in the legend as the puissant champion of

Thebes against Adrastus and the Argeian besiegers, and as having

slain both Mêkisteus the brother, and Tydeus the son-in-law, of

Adrastus; and he was therefore preëminently odious to the latter.

Kleisthenês brought this anti-national hero into Sikyôn, assigning

to him consecrated ground in the prytaneium, or government-house,

and even in that part which was most strongly fortified[46] (for it

seems that Adrastus was conceived as likely to assail and do battle

with the intruder);—moreover, he took away both the tragic choruses

and the sacrifice from Adrastus, assigning the former to the god

Dionysus, and the latter to Melanippus.

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

[44] Herod. v, 67. Τοῦτον ἐπεθύμησε ὁ Κλεισθένης, ἐόντα Ἀργεῖον,

ἐκβαλεῖν ἐκ τῆς χώρης.

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

ἀπαλλάξεται.

[46] Ἐπαγαγόμενος δὲ ὁ Κλεισθένης τὸν Μελάνιππον, τέμενος οἱ

ἀπέδεξε ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ πρυτανηΐῳ, καί μιν ἐνθαῦτα ἵδρυσε ἐν τῷ

ἰσχυροτάτῳ. (Herod. _ib._)

The religious manifestations of Sikyôn being thus transferred from

Adrastus to his mortal foe, and from the cause of the Argeians in the

siege of Thebes to that of the Thebans, Adrastus was presumed to have

voluntarily retired from the place, and the purpose which Kleisthenês

contemplated, of breaking the community of feeling between Sikyôn and

Argos, was in part accomplished.

A ruler who could do such violence to the religious and legendary

sentiment of his community may well be supposed capable of inflicting

that deliberate insult upon the Dorian tribes which is implied in

their new appellations. As we are uninformed, however, of the state

of things which preceded, we know not how far it might have been a

retaliation for previous insult in the opposite direction. It is

plain that the Dorians of Sikyôn maintained themselves and their

ancient tribes quite apart from the remaining community, though what

the other constituent portions of the population were, or in what

relation they stood to these Dorians, we are not enabled to make out.

We hear, indeed, of a dependent rural population in the territory of

Sikyôn, as well as in that of Argos and Epidaurus, analogous to the

Helots in Laconia. In Sikyôn, this class was termed the Korynêphori

(club men), or the Katônakophori, from the thick woollen mantle

which they wore, with a sheepskin sewn on to the skirt: in Argos,

they were called Gymnêsii, from their not possessing the military

panoply or the use of regular arms: in Epidaurus, Konipodes, or the

dusty-footed.[47] We may conclude that a similar class existed in

Corinth, in Megara, and in each of the Dorian towns of the Argolic

Aktê. But besides the Dorian tribes and these rustics, there must

probably have existed non-Dorian proprietors and town residents,

and upon them we may suppose that the power of the Orthagoridæ and

of Kleisthenês was founded, perhaps more friendly and indulgent to

the rustic serfs than that of the Dorians had been previously. The

moderation, which Aristotle ascribes to the Orthagoridæ generally,

is belied by the proceedings of Kleisthenês: but we may probably

believe that his predecessors, content with maintaining the real

predominance of the non-Dorian over the Dorian population, meddled

very little with the separate position and civil habits of the

latter,—while Kleisthenês, provoked or alarmed by some attempt on

their part to strengthen alliance with the Argeians, resorted both

to repressive measures and to that offensive nomenclature which has

been above cited. The preservation of the power of Kleisthenês was

due to his military energy (according to Aristotle) even more than

to his moderation and popular conduct; it was aided, probably, by

his magnificent displays at the public games, for he was victor in

the chariot-race at the Pythian games 582 B. C., as well as at the

Olympic games besides. Moreover, he was in fact the last of the race,

nor did he transmit his power to any successor.[48]

[47] Julius Pollux, iii, 83; Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 1, p. 291;

Theopompus ap. Athenæum, vi, p. 271; Welcker, Prolegomen. ad

Theognid. c. 19, p. xxxiv.

As an analogy to this name of Konipodes, we may notice the

ancient courts of justice called Courts of _Pie-powder_ in

England, _Pieds Poudrés_.

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

The reigns of the early Orthagoridæ, then, may be considered as

marking a predominance, newly acquired but quietly exercised, of the

non-Dorians over the Dorians in Sikyôn: the reign of Kleisthenês, as

displaying a strong explosion of antipathy from the former towards

the latter; and though this antipathy, and the application of those

opprobrious tribe-names in which it was conveyed, stand ascribed to

Kleisthenês personally, we may see that the non-Dorians in Sikyôn

shared it generally, because these same tribe-names continued to

be applied not only during the reign of that despot, but also for

sixty years longer, after his death. Of course, it is needless to

remark that such denominations could never have been acknowledged

or employed among the Dorians themselves. After the lapse of sixty

years from the death of Kleisthenês, the Sikyonians came to an

amicable adjustment of the feud, and placed the tribe-names on a

footing satisfactory to all parties; the old Dorian denominations

(Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanes) were reëstablished, and the name

of the fourth tribe, or non-Dorians, was changed from Archelai

to Ægialeis,—Ægialeus son of Adrastus being constituted their

eponymus.[49] This choice of the son of Adrastus for an eponymus,

seems to show that the worship of Adrastus himself was then revived

in Sikyôn, since it existed in the time of Herodotus.

[49] Herod, v, 68. Τούτοισι τοῖσι οὐνόμασι τῶν φυλέων ἐχρέωντο οἱ

Σικυώνιοι, καὶ ἐπὶ Κλεισθένεος ἄρχοντος, καὶ ἐκείνου τεθνεῶτος

ἔτι ἐπ᾽ ἔτεα ἑξήκοντα· μετέπειτα μέντοι λόγον σφισι δόντες,

μετέβαλον ἐς τοὺς Ὑλλέας καὶ Παμφύλους καὶ Δυμανάτας· τετάρτους

δὲ αὐτοῖσι προσέθεντο ἐπὶ τοῦ Ἀδρήστου παιδὸς Αἰγιαλέος τὴν

ἐπωνυμίην ποιεύμενοι κεκλῆσθαι Αἰγιαλέας.

Of the war which Kleisthenês helped to conduct against Kirrha, for

the protection of the Delphian temple, I shall speak in another

place. His death and the cessation of his dynasty seem to have

occurred about 650 B. C., as far as the chronology can be made

out.[50] That he was put down by the Spartans, as K. F. Hermann,

O. Müller, and Dr. Thirlwall suppose,[51] can be hardly admitted

consistently with the narrative of Herodotus, who mentions the

continuance of the insulting names imposed by him upon the Dorian

tribes for many years after his death. Now, had the Spartans forcibly

interfered for the suppression of his dynasty, we may reasonably

presume that, even if they did not restore the decided preponderance

of the Dorians in Sikyôn, they would at least have rescued the

Dorian tribes from this obvious ignominy. But it seems doubtful

whether Kleisthenês had any son: and the extraordinary importance

attached to the marriage of his daughter, Agaristê, whom he bestowed

upon the Athenian Megaklês of the great family of Alkmæônidæ, seems

rather to evince that she was an heiress,—not to his power, but to

his wealth. There can be no doubt as to the fact of that marriage,

from which was born the Athenian leader Kleisthenês, afterwards the

author of the great democratical revolution at Athens after the

expulsion of the Peisistratidæ; but the lively and amusing details

with which Herodotus has surrounded it, bear much more the stamp of

romance than of reality. Dressed up, apparently, by some ingenious

Athenian, as a compliment to the Alkmæonid lineage of his city, which

comprised both Kleisthenês and Periklês, the narrative commemorates

a marriage-rivalry between that lineage and another noble Athenian

house, and at the same time gives a mythical explanation of a phrase

seemingly proverbial at Athens—“_Hippokleides don’t care._”[52]

[50] The chronology of Orthagoras and his dynasty is perplexing.

The commemorative offering of Myron at Olympia is marked for 648

B. C., and this must throw back the beginning of Orthagoras to a

period between 680-670. Then we are told by Aristotle that the

entire dynasty lasted one hundred years; but it must have lasted,

probably, somewhat longer, for the death of Kleisthenês can

hardly be placed earlier than 560 B. C. The war against Kirrha

(595 B. C.) and the Pythian victory (582 B. C.) fall within his

reign: but the marriage of his daughter Agaristê with Megaklês

can hardly be put earlier than 570 B. C., if so high; for

Kleisthenês the Athenian, the son of that marriage, effected the

democratical revolution at Athens in 509 or 508 B. C.: whether

the daughter, whom Megaklês gave in marriage to Peisistratus

about 554 B. C., was also the offspring of that marriage, as

Larcher contends, we do not know.

Megaklês was the son of that Alkmæon who had assisted the

deputies sent by Crœsus of Lydia into Greece to consult the

different oracles, and whom Crœsus rewarded so liberally as

to make his fortune (compare Herod. i, 46; vi, 125): and the

marriage of Megaklês was in the next generation after this

enrichment of Alkmæon,—μετὰ δὲ, γενεῇ δευτέρῃ ὕστερον (Herod. vi,

126). Now the reign of Crœsus extended from 560-546 B. C. and his

deputation to the oracles in Greece appears to have taken place

about 556 B. C.; and if this chronology be admitted, the marriage

of Megaklês with the daughter of the Sikyonian Kleisthenês cannot

have taken place until considerably after 556 B. C. See the long,

but not very satisfactory, note of Larcher, ad Herodot. v, 66.

But I shall show grounds for believing, when I recount the

interview between Solon and Crœsus, that Herodotus in his

conception of events misdates very considerably the reign and

proceedings of Crœsus as well as of Peisistratus: this is

a conjecture of Niebuhr which I think very just, and which

is rendered still more probable by what we find here stated

about the succession of the Alkmæonidæ. For it is evident that

Herodotus here conceives the adventure between Alkmæon and Crœsus

as having occurred one generation (about twenty-five or thirty

years) anterior to the marriage between Megaklês and the daughter

of Kleisthenês. That adventure will thus stand about 590-585 B.

C., which would be about the time of the supposed interview (if

real) between Solon and Crœsus, describing the maximum of the

power and prosperity of the latter.

[51] Müller, Dorians, book i, 8, 2; Thirlwall, Hist. of Greece,

vol. i, ch. x, p. 486, 2d ed.

[52] Herod. vi, 127-131. The locution explained is,—Οὐ φροντὶς

Ἱπποκλείδῃ: compare the allusions to it in the Parœmiographi,

Zenob. v, 31; Diogenian. vii, 21; Suidas, xi, 45, ed. Schott.

The convocation of the suitors at the invitation of Kleisthenês

from all parts of Greece, and the distinctive mark and character

of each, is prettily told, as well as the drunken freak whereby

Hippokleidês forfeits both the favor of Kleisthenês, and the hand

of Agaristê, which he was on the point of obtaining. It seems to

be a story framed upon the model of various incidents in the old

epic, especially the suitors of Helen.

On one point, however, the author of the story seems to have

overlooked both the exigencies of chronology and the historical

position and feelings of his hero Kleisthenês. For among the

suitors who present themselves at Sikyôn in conformity with

the invitation of the latter, one is Leôkêdês, son of Pheidôn

the despot of Argos. Now the hostility and vehement antipathy

towards Argos, which Herodotus ascribes in another place to

the Sikyonian Kleisthenês, renders it all but impossible that

the son of any king of Argos could have become a candidate for

the hand of Agaristê. I have already recounted the violence

which Kleisthenês did to the legendary sentiment of his native

town, and the insulting names which he put upon the Sikyonian

Dorians,—all under the influence of a strong anti-Argeian

feeling. Next, as to chronology: Pheidôn king of Argos lived some

time between 760-730; and his son can never have been a candidate

for the daughter of Kleisthenês, whose reign falls 600-500 B.

C. Chronologers resort here to the usual resource in cases of

difficulty: they recognize a second and later Pheidôn, whom they

affirm that Herodotus has confounded with the first: or they

alter the text of Herodotus, and in place of “son of Pheidôn,”

read “descendant of Pheidôn.” But neither of these conjectures

rests upon any basis: the text of Herodotus is smooth and clear,

and the second Pheidôn is nowhere else authenticated. See Larcher

and Wesseling, _ad loc._; compare also vol. ii, p. 419, part ii,

ch. 4, of this History.

Plutarch numbers Æschinês of Sikyôn[53] among the despots put down by

Sparta: at what period this took place, or how it is to be connected

with the history of Kleisthenês as given in Herodotus, we are unable

to say.

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

Contemporaneous with the Orthagoridæ at Sikyôn,—but beginning a

little later and closing somewhat earlier,—we find the despots

Kypselus and Periander at Corinth. The former appears as the

subverter of the oligarchy called the Bacchiadæ. Of the manner in

which he accomplished his object we find no information: and this

historical blank is inadequately filled up by various religious

prognostics and oracles, foreshadowing the rise, the harsh rule, and

the dethronement, after two generations, of these powerful despots.

According to an idea deeply seated in the Greek mind, the destruction

of a great prince or of a great power is usually signified to him

by the gods beforehand, though either through hardness of heart

or inadvertence, no heed is taken of the warning. In reference

to Kypselus and the Bacchiadæ, we are informed that Melas, the

ancestor of the former, was one of the original settlers at Corinth

who accompanied the first Dorian chief Alêtês, and that Alêtês

was in vain warned by an oracle not to admit him;[54] again, too,

immediately before Kypselus was born, the Bacchiadæ received notice

that his mother was about to give birth to one who would prove their

ruin: the dangerous infant escaped destruction only by a hair’s

breadth, being preserved from the intent of his destroyers by lucky

concealment in a chest. Labba, the mother of Kypselus, was daughter

of Amphion, who belonged to the gens, or sept, of the Bacchiadæ;

but she was lame, and none of the gens would consent to marry her

with that deformity. Eetion, son of Echekratês, who became her

husband, belonged to a different, yet hardly less distinguished

heroic genealogy: he was of the Lapithæ, descended from Kæneus,

and dwelling in the Corinthian deme called Petra. We see thus that

Kypselus was not only a high-born man in the city, but a Bacchiad by

half-birth; both of these circumstances were likely to make exclusion

from the government intolerable to him. He rendered himself highly

popular with the people, and by their aid overthrew and expelled the

Bacchiadæ, continuing as despot at Corinth for thirty years until

his death (B. C. 655-625). According to Aristotle, he maintained

throughout life the same conciliatory behavior by which his power had

first been acquired; and his popularity was so effectually sustained

that he had never any occasion for a body-guard. But the Corinthian

oligarchy of the century of Herodotus,—whose tale that historian has

embodied in the oration of the Corinthian envoy Sosiklês[55] to the

Spartans,—gave a very different description, and depicted Kypselus

as a cruel ruler, who banished, robbed, and murdered by wholesale.

[54] Pausan. ii, 4, 9.

[55] Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 22; Herodot. v, 92. The tale

respecting Kypselus, and his wholesale exaction from the people,

contained in the spurious second book of the Œconomica of

Aristotle, coincides with the general view of Herodotus (Aristot.

Œconom. ii, 2); but I do not trust the statements of this

treatise for facts of the sixth or seventh centuries B. C.

His son and successor Periander, though energetic as a warrior,

distinguished as an encourager of poetry and music, and even numbered

by some among the seven wise men of Greece,—is, nevertheless,

uniformly represented as oppressive and inhuman in his treatment of

subjects. The revolting stories which are told respecting his private

life, and his relations with his mother and his wife, may for the

most part be regarded as calumnies suggested by odious associations

with his memory; but there seems good reason for imputing to him

tyranny of the worst character, and the sanguinary maxims of

precaution so often acted upon by Grecian despots were traced back in

ordinary belief to Periander,[56] and his contemporary Thrasybulus,

despot of Milêtus. He maintained a powerful body-guard, shed much

blood, and was exorbitant in his exactions, a part of which was

employed in votive offerings at Olympia; and this munificence to the

gods was considered by Aristotle and others as part of a deliberate

system, with the view of keeping his subjects both hard at work and

poor. On one occasion, we are told that he invited the women of

Corinth to assemble for the celebration of a religious festival,

and then stripped them of their rich attire and ornaments. By some

later writers, he is painted as the stern foe of everything like

luxury and dissolute habits,—enforcing industry, compelling every

man to render account of his means of livelihood, and causing the

procuresses of Corinth to be thrown into the sea.[57] Though the

general features of his character, his cruel tyranny no less than his

vigor and ability, may be sufficiently relied on, yet the particular

incidents connected with his name are all extremely dubious: the most

credible of all seems to be the tale of his inexpiable quarrel with

his son, and his brutal treatment of many noble Korkyræan youths, as

related in Herodotus. Periander is said to have put to death his

wife, Melissa, daughter of Proklês, despot of Epidaurus; and his son

Lykophrôn, informed of this deed, contracted an incurable antipathy

against him. After vainly trying, both by rigor and by conciliation,

to conquer this feeling on the part of his son, Periander sent him

to reside at Korkyra, then dependent upon his rule; but when he

found himself growing old and disabled, he recalled him to Corinth,

in order to insure the continuance of the dynasty. Lykophrôn still

obstinately declined all personal communication with his father, upon

which the latter desired him to come to Corinth, and engaged himself

to go over to Korkyra. So terrified were the Korkyræans at the idea

of a visit from this formidable old man, that they put Lykophrôn to

death,—a deed which Periander avenged by seizing three hundred youths

of their noblest families, and sending them over to the Lydian king,

Alyattês at Sardis, in order that they might be castrated and made

to serve as eunuchs. The Corinthian vessels in which the youths were

dispatched fortunately touched at Samos in the way; where the Samians

and Knidians, shocked at a proceeding which outraged all Hellenic

sentiment, contrived to rescue the youths from the miserable fate

intended for them, and, after the death of Periander, sent them back

to their native island.[58]

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

[57] Ephorus, Frag. 106, ed. Marx.; Herakleidês Ponticus, Frag.

v, ed. Köhler; Nicolaus Damasc. p. 50, ed. Orell.; Diogen. Laërt.

i, 96-98; Suidas, v. Κυψελίδων ἀνάθημα.

[58] Herodot. iii, 47-54. He details at some length this tragical

story. Compare Plutarch, De Herodoti Malignitat. c. 22, p. 860.

While we turn with displeasure from the political life of this man,

we are at the same time made acquainted with the great extent of

his power,—greater than that which was ever possessed by Corinth

after the extinction of his dynasty. Korkyra, Ambrakia, Leukas,

and Anaktorium, all Corinthian colonies, but in the next century

independent states, appear in his time dependencies of Corinth.

Ambrakia is said to have been under the rule of another despot named

Periander, probably also a Kypselid by birth. It seems, indeed, that

the towns of Anaktorium, Leukas, and Apollonia in the Ionian gulf,

were either founded by the Kypselids, or received reinforcements

of Corinthian colonists, during their dynasty, though Korkyra was

established considerably earlier.[59]

[59] Aristot. Polit. v, 3, 6; 8, 9. Plutarch, Amatorius, c. 23,

p. 768, and De Serâ Numinis Vindictâ, c. 7, p. 553. Strabo,

vii, p. 325; x, p. 452. Scymnus Chius, v, 454, and Antoninus

Liberalis, c. iv, who quotes the lost work called Ἀμβρακικὰ of

Athanadas.

The reign of Periander lasted for forty years (B. C. 625-585):

Psammetichus son of Gordius, who succeeded him, reigned three

years, and the Kypselid dynasty is then said to have closed, after

having continued for seventy-three years.[60] In respect of power,

magnificent display, and wide-spread connections both in Asia and

in Italy, they evidently stood high among the Greeks of their time.

Their offerings consecrated at Olympia excited great admiration,

especially the gilt colossal statue of Zeus, and the large chest of

cedar-wood dedicated in the temple of Hêrê, overlaid with various

figures in gold and ivory: the figures were borrowed from mythical

and legendary story, and the chest was a commemoration both of the

name of Kypselus and of the tale of his marvellous preservation

in infancy.[61] If Plutarch is correct, this powerful dynasty is

to be numbered among the despots put down by Sparta;[62] yet such

intervention of the Spartans, granting it to have been matter of

fact, can hardly have been known to Herodotus.

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

[61] Pausan. v, 2, 4; 17, 2. Strabo, viii, p. 353. Compare

Schneider, Epimetrum ad Xenophon. Anabas. p. 570. The chest was

seen at Olympia, both by Pausanias and by Dio Chrysostom (Or. xi,

p. 325, Reiske).

[62] Plutarch, De Herodot. Malign. c. 21, p. 859. If Herodotus

had known or believed that the dynasty of the Kypselids at

Corinth was put down by Sparta, he could not have failed to make

allusion to the fact, in the long harangue which he ascribes to

the Corinthian Sosiklês (v, 92). Whoever reads that speech, will

perceive that the inference from silence to ignorance is in this

case almost irresistible.

O. Müller ascribes to Periander a policy intentionally

anti-Dorian,—“prompted by the wish of utterly eradicating the

peculiarities of the Doric race. For this reason he abolished the

public tables, and prohibited the ancient education.” (O. Müller,

Dorians, iii, 8, 3.)

But it cannot be shown that any _public tables_ (συσσίτια),

or any peculiar education, analogous to those of Sparta, ever

existed at Corinth. If nothing more be meant by these συσσίτια

than public banquets on particular festive occasions (see

Welcker, Prolegom. ad Theognid. c. 20, p. xxxvii), these are

noway peculiar to Dorian cities. Nor does Theognis, v, 270, bear

out Welcker in affirming “syssitiorum vetus institutum” at Megara.

Coincident in point of time with the commencement of Periander’s

reign at Corinth, we find Theagenês despot at Megara, who is also

said to have acquired his power by demagogic arts, as well as by

violent aggressions against the rich proprietors, whose cattle he

destroyed in their pastures by the side of the river. We are not told

by what previous conduct on the part of the rich this hatred of the

people had been earned, but Theagenês carried the popular feeling

completely along with him, obtained by public vote a body of guards

ostensibly for his personal safety, and employed them to overthrow

the oligarchy.[63] But he did not maintain his power, even for his

own life: a second revolution dethroned and expelled him; on which

occasion, after a short interval of temperate government, the people

are said to have renewed in a still more marked way their antipathies

against the rich; banishing some of them with confiscation of

property, intruding into the houses of others with demands for forced

hospitality, and even passing a formal palintokia, or decree, to

require from the rich who had lent money on interest, the refunding

of all past interest paid to them by their debtors.[64] To appreciate

correctly such a demand, we must recollect that the practice of

taking interest for money lent was regarded by a large proportion of

early ancient society with feelings of unqualified reprobation; and

it will be seen, when we come to the legislation of Solon, how much

such violent reactionary feeling against the creditor was provoked by

the antecedent working of the harsh law determining his rights.

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

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

We hear in general terms of more than one revolution in the

government of Megara,—a disorderly democracy, subverted by returning

oligarchical exiles, and these again unable long to maintain

themselves;[65] but we are alike uninformed as to dates and details.

And in respect to one of these struggles, we are admitted to the

outpourings of a contemporary and a sufferer,—the Megarian poet

Theognis. Unfortunately, his elegiac verses, as we possess them,

are in a state so broken, incoherent, and interpolated, that we

make out no distinct conception of the events which call them

forth,—still less, can we discover in the verses of Theognis that

strength and peculiarity of pure Dorian feeling, which, since the

publication of O. Müller’s History of the Dorians, it has been the

fashion to look for so extensively. But we see that the poet was

connected with an oligarchy, of birth and not of wealth, which had

recently been subverted by the breaking in of the rustic population

previously subject and degraded,—that these subjects were contented

to submit to a single-headed despot, in order to escape from their

former rulers,—and that Theognis had himself been betrayed by his

own friends and companions, stripped of his property, and exiled,

through the wrong doing “of enemies whose blood he hopes one day to

be permitted to drink.”[66] The condition of the subject cultivators

previous to this revolution he depicts in sad colors;—they “dwelt

without the city, clad in goatskins, and ignorant of judicial

sanctions or laws:”[67] after it, they had become citizens, and

their importance had been immensely enhanced. And thus, according

to his impression, the vile breed has trodden down the noble,—the

bad have become masters, and the good are no longer of any account.

The bitterness and humiliation which attend upon poverty, and the

undue ascendency which wealth confers even upon the most worthless of

mankind,[68] are among the prominent subjects of his complaint, and

his keen personal feeling on this point would be alone sufficient to

show that the recent revolution had no way overthrown the influence

of property; in contradiction to the opinion of Welcker, who infers

without ground, from a passage of uncertain meaning, that the land of

the state had been formally redivided.[69] The Megarian revolution,

so far as we apprehend it from Theognis, appears to have improved

materially the condition of the cultivators around the town, and

to have strengthened a certain class whom he considers “the bad

rich,”—while it extinguished the privileges of that governing order,

to which he himself belonged, denominated in his language “the good

and the virtuous,” with ruinous effect upon his own individual

fortunes. How far this governing order was exclusively Dorian,

we have no means of determining. The political change by which

Theognis suffered, and the new despot whom he indicates as either

actually installed or nearly impending, must have come considerably

after the despotism of Theagenês; for the life of the poet seems to

fall between 570-490 B. C., while Theagenês must have ruled about

630-600 B. C. From the unfavorable picture, therefore, which the

poet gives as his own early experience of the condition of the rural

cultivators, it is evident that the despot Theagenês had neither

conferred upon them any permanent benefit, nor given them access to

the judicial protection of the city.

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

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

edition:—

Τῶν εἴη μέλαν αἷμα πιεῖν, etc.

[67] Theognis, v, 20.—

Κύρνε, πόλις μὲν ἔθ᾽ ἥδε πόλις, λαοὶ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι,

Οἳ πρόσθ᾽ οὕτε δίκας ᾔδεσαν οὔτε νόμους,

Ἀλλ᾽ ἀμφὶ πλευρῇσι δορὰς αἰγῶν κατέτριβον,

Ἔξω δ᾽ ὥστ᾽ ἔλαφοι τῆσδ’ ἐνέμοντο πόλεος.

[68] See, especially, the lines from 500-560, 816-830, in

Welcker’s edition.

[69] Consult the Prolegomena to Welcker’s edition of Theognis;

also, those of Schneidewin (Delectus Elegiac. Poetar. pp. 46-55).

The Prolegomena of Welcker are particularly valuable and full of

instruction. He illustrates at great length the tendency common

to Theognis, with other early Greek poets, to apply the words

_good_ and _bad_, not with reference to any ethical standard,

but to wealth as contrasted with poverty,—nobility with low

birth,—strength with weakness,—conservative and oligarchical

politics as opposed to innovation (sect. 10-18). The ethical

meaning of these words is not absolutely unknown, yet rare, in

Theognis: it gradually grew up at Athens, and became popularized

by the Socratic school of philosophers as well as by the orators.

But the early or political meaning always remained, and the

fluctuation between the two has been productive of frequent

misunderstanding. Constant attention is necessary when we read

the expressions οἱ ἀγαθοὶ, ἐσθλοὶ, βέλτιστοι, καλοκἀγαθοὶ,

χρηστοὶ, etc., or on the other hand, οἱ κακοὶ, δειλοὶ, etc.,

to examine whether the context is such as to give to them the

ethical or the political meaning. Welcker seems to go a step too

far, when he says that the latter sense “fell into desuetude,

through the influence of the Socratic philosophy.” (Proleg. sect.

11, p. xxv.) The two meanings both remained extant at the same

time, as we see by Aristotle (Polit. iv, 8, 2),—σχεδὸν γὰρ παρὰ

τοῖς πλείστοις οἱ εὔποροι, τῶν καλῶν κἀγαθῶν δοκοῦσι κατέχειν

χώραν. A careful distinction is sometimes found in Plato and

Thucydides, who talk of the oligarchs as “the persons called

super-excellent,”—τοὺς καλοὺς κἀγαθοὺς ὀνομαζομένους (Thucyd.

viii, 48),—ὑπὸ τῶν πλουσίων τε καὶ καλῶν κἀγαθῶν λεγομένων ἐν τῇ

πόλει (Plato, Rep. viii, p. 569).

The same double sense is to be found equally prevalent in the

Latin language: “_Boni_que et _mali_ cives appellati, non ob

merita in rempublicam, omnibus pariter corruptis: sed uti quisque

locupletissimus, et injuriâ validior, quia præsentia defendebat,

pro bono habebatur.” (Sallust, Hist. Fragment. lib. i, p. 935,

Cort.) And again, Cicero (De Republ. i, 34): “Hoc errore vulgi

cum rempublicam opes paucorum, non virtutes, tenere cœperunt,

nomen illi principes _optimatium_ mordicus tenent, re autem

carent eo nomine.” In Cicero’s Oration pro Sextio (c. 45) the two

meanings are intentionally confounded together, when he gives his

definition of _optimus quisque_. Welcker (Proleg. s. 12) produces

several other examples of the like equivocal meaning. Nor are

there wanting instances of the same use of language in the laws

and customs of the early Germans,—boni homines, probi homines,

Rachinburgi, Gudemänner. See Savigny, Geschichte des Römisch.

Rechts im Mittelalter, vol. i, p. 184; vol. ii, p. xxii.

It is thus that the despots of Corinth, Sikyôn, and Megara serve

as samples of those revolutionary influences, which towards

the beginning of the sixth century B. C., seem to have shaken

or overturned the oligarchical governments in very many cities

throughout the Grecian world. There existed a certain sympathy and

alliance between the despots of Corinth and Sikyôn:[70] how far such

feeling was farther extended to Megara, we do not know. The latter

city seems evidently to have been more populous and powerful during

the seventh and sixth centuries B. C., than we shall afterwards find

her throughout the two brilliant centuries of Grecian history: her

colonies, found as far distant as Bithynia and the Thracian Bosphorus

on one side, and as Sicily on the other, argue an extent of trade as

well as naval force once not inferior to Athens: so that we shall be

the less surprised when we approach the life of Solon, to find her in

possession of the island of Salamis, and long maintaining it, at one

time with every promise of triumph, against the entire force of the

Athenians.

[70] Herod. vi. 128.