HA MD BOOKS Of ARCHAEOLOGY Am AMTlqU. GREEK CONSTITU T! HISTO G K I A HANDBOOK OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON HOME AY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK . BOSTON • CHICAGO ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO A HANDBOOK OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTOEY BY A. H. J. GEEENIDGE, M.A. LECTURER AND LATE FELLOW OF HERTFORD COLLEGE, AND LECTURER IN ANCIENT HISTORY AT BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXFORD MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MAETIN'S STEEET, LONDON 1911 SITKDBAWN First Edition 1896 Reprinted igoa, 1911 TO MY FATHER PKEFACE This little book is meant to be of assistance to those who find difficulty in mastering what I have often found regarded as the least attractive, probably because it is the least understood, portion of Greek history. The merest glance at its pages will be sufficient to show how little it attempts to compete with such standard works on Greek Political Antiquities as some of those mentioned in the brief bibliography which I have given on page XV. My debt to the works of Hermann, Schomann, Gilbert, and to the scholars who have written in Handbooks or in Dictionaries of Antiquities, is very great indeed ; for no one can move a step in Greek Constitutional Law without consult- ing authorities as remarkable for the fulness as for the accuracy of their detail. But, apart from the obviously smaller compass of this treatise, my object has been somewhat different from that of most of these writers. Completeness of detail could not be aimed at in a work of this size ; such an attempt would have changed what professes to be a History into a too con- cise, and therefore almost unintelligible. Manual of Political Antiquities. My purpose has been to give in a brief narrative form the main lines of development of Greek Public Law, to represent the different types of states in the order of their development, and to pay more attention to the working than to the mere structure of constitutions. I have attempted, in the introductory chapter of this work, to offer some considera- viii OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY tions which justify a separate study of Greek political institu- tions, so rarely attempted in this country ; consequently it is needless to anticipate at this point the reasons for a procedure which, perhaps, does not need defence. Throughout the work I have cited the original passages from ancient authors on which every fact or assertion of any degree of importance is based. Considerations of space forbade more ample quotations from the texts of the original authorities or a fuller discussion of passages which have given rise to differences of interpretation. In citing inscriptions references have been given to the Handbooks which I believed to be most easily accessible to students. In no case have I referred to the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum or the Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum where I knew that the inscription was to be found in the Manuals of Hicks, Dittenberger, and Cauer. My thanks are due to my wife for valuable suggestions in the correction of the proofs, for a great share of the labour in preparing the Index, and for the map which accompanies this A. H. J. G. OxFOiiD, June 1896. CONTENTS (The le Terences ai e to the pages) CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY SECT. The constitutional aspect of Greek History, 1. Primary political con- ceptions, 4 ; the State and the Constitution, 4 ; political office, 6 ; the Citizen, 7 ; the Law, 8 ; public and private law, 9 ; authoritative cliaracter of law, 10. CHAPTER II EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREEK CONSTITUTIONS THROUGH MONARCHY, ARISTOCRACY, AND TYRANNY TO CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT Origin of the city-state ; the tribe and the clan, 12. Origin of Greek monarchy, 14 ; character of the heroic monarchy, 15; downfall of this monarchy, 17. Transfer of government to the clans, 19 ; nature of the clan, 20. The early aristocracies, 21 ; tendency to oligarchic govern- ment, 22. Impulse to colonisation, 24. Early Greek tyranny, 25 ; its origin, 25 ; the tyrants, 27 ; character of their government, 30 ; how far was it constitutional, 31 ; political and social consequences of their rule, 32 ; downfall of tyranny, 33. Rise of constitutional government, 34. CHAPTER III colonisation international law Colonisation^ 1. Causes of colonisation as affecting the form of the colony, 36. Settle- ments due to the migrations ; characteristics of the Asiatic colonies, 37, X OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY ACT. Colouies due to political and commercial causes, 38. Military colonies, 39. Oleruchies, 40. The act of colonisation and colonial charters, 40. Relations between the colony and the mother city, 42. Political history of the colonies ; characteristics of the Western settlements, 44. International Law 2. The unity of Hellas, 45. International obligations based on religion, 46. The ampliictyonies and games, 48. Tribal amphictyonies, 49. Inter- tribal or interpolitical unions, 50. The amphictyouy of Delphi, 51. Secular relations between Greek states, 53 ; interchange of civic rights, 54. Commercial relations, 54. Arbitration, 55. Treaties, 55. CHAPTER IV classification of constitutions — oligarchy The Different Forms of Government 1. Principles of classification, 56. Tendencies of development and causes of variation in constitutions, 57. Classification of constitutions with reference to their form, 58. States in Greece that were not cities, 59. The three main forms of constitution, 60. Oligarchy 2. Conception of oligarchy, 60. Instability of this form of government, 62. The more permanent types of oligarchy, 62. The cities of Thessaly, 62. The Malians, 64. The Opuntian Locrians, 65. The Ozolian Locrians, 66. Thebes, 66. Megara, 68. Sicyon and Corinth, 70. Sicyon, 71. Corinth, 71. Causes of our ignorance of the details of oligarchic govern- ments ; probable simplicity of the type, 73. CHAPTER V MIXED CONSTITUTIONS Meaning of mixed constitution, 74. Characteristics of governments of this type, 76. Sparta — the Classes, the Citizens, and the Land 1. Sparta's position in Laconia, 78. Origin of the Perioeci, 78. Ethnic ele- ments in Sparta, 79. Condition of the Perioeci and their relations to the ruling city, 80. The Helots, 83. The Neodamodeis, 86. The Mothaces, 86. The Spartiatae, 87; *^ peers" and "inferiors," 87. The common meals, 88. Nobles and commons at Sparta, 89. Tenure of land at Sparta 90. Economic evils of the constitution, 91. CONTENTS xi 8ECT. The Political Constitution 2. Meaning of rhetra, 92. Constitution of Lycurgus, 93. Rhetra of Lycurgus, 94. The obes and the tribes, 94. Character of the early con- stitution, 96. The later constitution, 97. The Kings, 97. The Council of Elders, 100. The Ephors, 102. Character of the developed con- stitution, 106. The Peloponnesian Confederacy 3. Origin of the confederacy, 108 ; its legal basis, 108. Means by which Spartan influence was secured, 109. Relations of the states to one another, 110; their relations to Sparta, 111. The Council of the Con- federacy, 112. Elements of weakness in Sparta's hegemony, 113 ; her imperial system, 114. Decline of the Spartan state, 114. The Cities of Crete 4. Origin of the Cretan constitutions, 115. Relations of the Cretan cities to one another, 116. The classes in the states, 117. Social institutions, 118. Political constitution, 118. General character of this constitution, 120. Change to democracy, 120. CHAPTER VI DEMOCRACY Evolution of the power of the people ; the principle of democracy, 122. Degrees in this principle ; modified forms of democracy determined by intention or accident, 123. Athens — the Classes and the State-Divisions 1. Elements in the population of Attica, 124. Early political condition of Attica, 125. The (tvvolkkjixos of Tliescus, 126. The four Ionic tribes, 127. The clans, 128. The phratrics, 129. The Eupatrids, 129. Citizen- ship at Athens, 131. The slaves, 132. The resident aliens, 133. The trittyes and the naucraries, 134. The Political Development of Athens— the JlfAGisTRACV and THE Council 2. Decline of the monarchy and early history of the archonship, 135. "The Archon" as the president of the state, 136 ; Damasias, 137. Decline of the power of the archonship, 137. Early modes of appointment to office, 138 ; modified use of the lot, 138. Meaning of appointment by lot, 139. Justification of this mode of appointment, 140. Qualification for office, 141. The original council at Athens, 142. The Ephetae, 143. The Areiopagus ; history of this council, 145 ; downfair of this council, 147. Powerlessness of the original elements in the constitution, 148. xii OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY SECT. Epochs of Constitutional Reform at Athens 3. Early movements towards reform ; the constitution of Draco, 149. Re- forms of Solon : social, 150; political, 151. Institution of the heliaea ; democratic tendency of this reform, 153. General view of the Solonian constitution, 155. Dangers which threatened this constitution, 156. Reforms of Cleisthenes, 157. General estimate of the work of Cleisthenes, 162. Reforms effected by Pericles and his successors, 162. The Working of the Democratic Constitution of Athens 4. The council of five hundred ; its structure and powers, 166. The ecclesia, 169 ; limitations on its powers, 170. The safeguards of the constitution, 170. Legislation at Athens, 172. Administrative powers of the ecclesia, 173. The heliaea : its organisation, 175 ; its powers, character, and place in the constitution, 176. Administrative oflBces held by in- dividuals, 178. Great power of individuals at Athens, 179. Offices which furnished a basis for such power : the strategia, 180 ; position and powers of the strategi, 180 ; finance offices, 183 ; administration of finance in the fifth century, 183 ; the great finance offices of the fourth century ; 6 iirl dLoiKr}T7] iToXiTela) was chosen from the warriors, and at first from the " charioteers "or " knights (tTTTrets). It was only later, as cities grew larger and the hoplite formed the main strength of the army, that governments became more liberal.^ A type of this first form of aristocracy, which was dependent on wealth, is furnished by the rule of the iTnro^orai of Chalcis, on whose lands the Athenians established a cleruchy in 507. It is described by Strabo as an aristocratic government based on a property qualification.^ In governments of this type the ^ Herodotus (ii. 167) rightly assigns it this origin, and remarks on its presence in the most warlike of the barbarian nations. He adds that in Greece the commercial town of Corinth showed tbe least contempt for 2 Arist. Pol. vii. 2 = p. 1324 a. ^ ib. iv. 5 = p. 1292 b. It must have depended entirely on the char- acter of the country whether i7r7re?s meant charioteers or horsemen. The rule of oirXiTaL Thucydides and Aristotle regard as that of a liberal oligarchy, since the OTrXTrat are eijiropoL (Thuc. viii. 97 ; Arist. Pol. iv. 13 = p. 1297 b). Extreme democracy consists in the admission of the \pLKol and the vavTiKos oxXos to government. Strabo p. 447 airb riix-qixdruju di^dpei dpL(TTOKpaTLKU}S dpxoPT€S. Hcrodotus (v. 77) calls them oi irax^^s. A similar form of government existed in Eretria (Arist. Pol. iv. 3 -p. 1289 b). II EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONS 23 poorer members of the noble clans must have been excluded from all share in power ; but as a rule, especially in countries such as Attica, where wealth depended almost wholly on landed possessions, the aristocracy of wealth and birth must generally have coincided. Such, however, could not have been the case in the maritime states of Asia Minor which were given up to trade, and yet it is here that the aristocracies of the " knights " are especially prominent. Such governments were found at Magnesia on the Maeander, at Colophon, and at Cyme. Another kind of government that hovers between an aristocratic and an oligarchic character deserves some mention here ; for, although it belongs to a later stage of political development, some instances of it are as old as the eighth cen- tury. It is the aristocracy of the colonies, where the original possession of landed property has created a status which may in some cases have become fixed enough to exist without its original support. The privileged class is formed by the yafiopoL or yew/xopoi, round which the later gathers. Instances of such governments are found at Samos, and at Leontini and Syracuse in Sicily. The last stage is marked by more artificial forms of oligarchy, where the aristocratic element is thrust still further into the background. Such governments are mentioned here because, although they are found chiefly in the western colonies, they may in certain cases be a reflection of an earlier state of things in Greece. Even, however, if they be regarded as pure political experiments, such as are found earliest in colonial settlements, the work of the legislator who created them is but an expression of the tentative spirit which at the close of this epoch was seeking to find some other basis for power than that of birth. Sometimes these governments depend on a fixed property -qualification, sometimes they admit only a certain number of citizens to power.^ The government of *'the thou-" sand (o6 x^Atot) is so widely spread in Italy that it may well have owed its origin to some master-mind. At Locri ^ it was probably the work of Zaleucus, and to this influence its presence at Croton ^ and Rhegium ^ may also have been due. 1 If we are to believe the Ath. Pol, this is probably an anachronism, (c. 4), a constitution of the first kind - Polyb. xii. 16. was found at Athens by Draco when he ^ Jambl. VHt, Pythag. 35, 260. began his work of organisation ; but Heracleid Fragm. 25. 24 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. The precise forms assumed by the early aristocracies of the Greek world can very rarely be determined. They depended on the supremacy of caste or of wealth combined with caste, and they may rightly be termed " constitutions," in so far as the power of these governments, like that of the monarchies which had preceded them, was supposed to be limited by the observance of traditional law. There is only one extreme form, which, if it is rightly interpreted by Aristotle, hardly deserves the name of constitution. This is the Swaa-reta or hereditary oligarchy, in which " son succeeds father, and personality and not the law is the governing force." ^ The government of the Thessalian clans in later times furnishes instances of at least the relics of such a system ; but the best example of such a dynasty " which we possess is the rule of the Bacchiadae of Corinth, where the caste system was more marked, and the government apparently more tyrannical, than elsewhere in the states of Greece. The administrative character of these aristocracies is as obscure as their form, and the little that we know about the nature of their rule is confined to the period of their decline. If we fix our attention on the primitive states of Greece proper, and neglect for the moment the later colonial developments on which we have touched, the chief characteristics which we find noted may be summed up in two points : their almost universal oppression of the lower classes, and the extraordinary impulse which they consequently gave to colonisation. The varied and sometimes minute causes which led to the planting of colonies belong to the general history of Greece and not to the history of her institutions ; it is sufficient to remark here that, after the period of the migrations, the latter part of the eighth and the first part of the seventh century were the great periods of the expansion of Hellas ; and for this fact certain general causes can be assigned. One, it is true, was purely physical : the movement set on foot by the migrations was not yet over, and Greece possessed teeming populations with no room to settle on the mainland. But a great political cause is to be found in the discontent of the 5^/xo9 at home under oligarchical govern- ment; for that this was the chief stimulus to emigration is proved by the fact that with the rise of democracy and settled government colonisation on a great scale ceases. Proximate 1 Arist. Pol. iv. 5 = p. 1292 h. II EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONS 25 causes were often furnished by quarrels in the ruling houses. Young and noble adventurers, whom crime or revolution had driven from home, went with bands of retainers to seek new settlements. Such were Archias, the Heracleid founder of Syracuse,^ and the Spartan Partheniae, founders of Tarentum.^ In later times some of the wiser despots, and later still some of the constitutional ministers of Greece, revived colonisation as a political measure. They often succeeded in their immediate objects, but were never able to give colonisation a history such as it had in this age. This was to a greater degree than others the age of chivalry and enterprise in Greece ; for it was the age of discontent, which is the basis of enterprise. And the dissatisfaction with the existing order of things which produced colonisation was soon destined to give birth to a product whose influence was to be as great on the political development of Greece. This was tyranny. The cities of Greece ever showed a remarkable tendency to accept personal rule, for universal subjection was at least one of the modes in which true democratic equality might be secured. We shall find that from the close of the fourth century, at a time when almost every political experiment had been tried and had seemed to fail in turn, tyranny, which at that time usually meant the protection of Macedon or of Persia, was again resorted to and became almost the normal type of government. But, in the earlier period that we are considering, the phenomenon is not complicated by external influences. It was a spontaneous development, and but a passing symptom of the growth of some new and powerful organ. Fortunately the new factors which created it and determined its character can be discovered with some success. The origin of Greek tyranny was in the main commercial, and Thucydides is only reflecting this truth when he makes the somewhat enigmatic statement that it was due to the growing wealth of Hellas.^ It is true that tyrannies some- times arose in states, such as Athens, which had no claims to commercial greatness ; wherever there was a discontented class — whether this were formed of merchants or peasants — there was a latent possibility of its growth. But the earliest, strongest, and most permanent despotisms certainly sprang ^ Thuc. vi. 3 ; Pint. Amat. Narr. ii. p. 944 Didot. 2 Pans. X. 10, 6 ; Strabo p. 426. 3 Thuc. i. 13. 26 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. from a sudden assertion of their claims by the rich and un- privileged classes — the commercial folk who were outside the pale, and who were not only excluded from all share in the government, but found their properties exposed to the plunder of the dynasties which ruled the towns. These were the conditions which gave birth to the tyrant in Corinth, the rich manufacturing and shipping town which commanded the trade of the Isthmus,^ and in Sicyon, renowned only next to Corinth for its commercial enterprise.^ Both were ripe for revolution. In the former city a violent reaction against the Bacchiadae, who had grossly abused their power and appropriated to their own use the profits of the commercial class,^ upset the dynastic government ; in the latter the social movement was complicated by an ethnic question. At Sicyon both the tyrant and his supporters belonged to the weaker Ionian element in the state — the tribe of the Aegialeis — and the revolution took the form of a reaction against an oppressive Dorian nationality ^ and the assertion of the freedom of the state from Argive influence. Perhaps in this respect Sicyon did not stand alone. The effect of the Dorian migration had been to make social coincide with national distinctions, and tyranny may elsewhere have been the assertion of external freedom for the state as well as of internal liberty for the masses. More than a century later we find the same social causes that had affected Corinth at work in the western colonies. The tyrannies that sprang up during the close of the sixth century in Sicily and Southern Italy, at Leontini, Gela, and Rhegium, developed out of oligarchies,^ and were probably due to the same assertion of their claims by the rich and unprivileged classes. In other states, where a com- mercial had not yet replaced a wholly agricultural civilisation, it was the championship of the poorest class on which the despot based his claim to power. It was thus that Peisistratus of Athens led the poor hill-men of the uplands of Attica, the Diacrii, against the rich men of the plain. ^ Throughout Greece the difficulties, whether national or social, that called for settlement, could admit of but one solution — a personal ascendency of some kind that could lead ^ KdpipQos 7} evdaifiuif, Her. iii. 52. ^' Strabo p. 382. ^ Ael. Var. J/isL i. 19; Strabo p. •* Her. V. 68. 5 Arist. Fol. V. 12 = p. 1.316 a. ^ Her. i. 69; Arist. Pol. v. 5 = p 1305 a. II EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONS 27 to the readjustment of the conflicting claims of the rival parties in the state and the framing of a constitution. But the nature of this personal ascendency varied. In some rare cases it took the form of a constitutional dictatorship. At times the con- tending factions were fortunate or reasonable enough to come to an arrangement, and to agree in appointing an individual for a settlement of their difficulties who bore the title of ala-v- /xv-qrrjs. Such an office was held by Pittacus in Mitylene, by Zaleucus in Locri, and we may even say by Solon in Athens, for, although nominally sole archon, he was practically dictator. It was the only constitutional form of despotism in the Greek world, and is described by Aristotle as an elective tyranny," and as combining the characteristics of monarchy and tyrannis} The aesymnete was given a body-guard of sufficient force to enable him to carry out his work of organisation,^ and, with respect to the length of his tenure of power, three forms of the office are described.^ It was held either for life, or for a fixed term of years, or until certain duties had been performed.^ But in most cities faction was too intense to admit the recognition of such a temporary and legitimised despotism. More frequently the reins of government were seized by a man who constituted himself champion, of a section of the community, and by its help rose to be tyrant. Normal and inevitable as we have seen the development of tyranny to be, it is yet possible that even in its earliest forms it was to some extent a conscious imitation of oriental despotism. At least the word rvpavvos, which cannot be explained as Greek, seems to have come from Lydia and Phrygia, where it is found frequently on inscriptions, both as a title and as a proper name.^ The meaning conveyed by the word to the Greek mind of a later age was that of a man who wielded an absolute authority, which was not sanctioned by the ordinances of the state in 1 Arist. PoL iii. 14 ; iv. 10 = p. 1295 a. " They are royal in so far as the monarch rules according to law and over willing subjects ; but they are tyrannical in so far as he is des- potic and rules according to his own fancy" (Jowett). ^ ib. iii. 15. ^ ib. iii. 14. ^ The aesymnesia, though it belongs particularly to this period, never died out in Greece ; and there is an instance, in a later period, of an aesymnete, Iphiades of Abydos, who made himself despot (Arist. Pol. v. 6 = p. 1306 a). In some states, such as Teos, Cyme, Naxos, and Megara, the title is found as that of a standing office. ^ See Bockli's comment on Q.I.G. n. 3438, where the title is applied to Zeus (/car' iirLrayrju rod Kvpiov rvpdvvov Alos MacrcpaXaTrjvov k.t.X.) 28 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap which it was exercised. Absolutism and irresponsibility are the chief connotations of the word. To the citizen of a later age the tyrant was an outlaw in a threefold sense. He had placed himself outside the pale of positive law ; for this reason he seemed exempt from all moral control, and, as an equally necessary consequence, was outside the protection of the law. It was this idea of "irresponsibility," of being above the ordinances of the state, which above all shocked Greek senti- ment, and gave rise to the gloomy generalisations as to the character and conduct befitting such a position with which the readers of Herodotus are familiar.^ We need only note in passing the gratuitous addition to this conception developed by the later philosophic thought of Greece, viz. that the rule of the tyrant was exercised not in the interest of the subject, but in that of the ruler. It forms the chief ground for Aristotle's distinction between monarchy and tyranny,^ and was a natural consequence of the idea that the latter government was outside the pale of law ; but it was a deduction not always justified by the facts. Historians must judge by results and not by motives; and few governments in Greece betrayed such a keen interest in the welfare of their cities as these unauthorised monarchs.^ The portraits of these pretenders who rose to power in the seventh and sixth centuries are drawn invariably in the same broad outlines.'* They were demagogues who united military prowess, and sometimes, like Peisistratus, a past record for good service in the field, with a zeal, real or pretended, for the popular welfare. They were men who, in later Greece, would have been constitutional "champions of the people" (Trpoo-rarat ^ Her. iii. 80 kQs 5' ai/ etr) xp^^a KaTr}pT7]iuL€uov fiovapX'-Vi ^s^o'^'i f^^- €vdvv(j) iroLeeiv to, (3ov\eTaL ; Here we get the key-note to the Greek prejudice ai^aiiist tyrannis. The internal state of the despot soon became tlie subject of debate in tlie philosophic schools ; and this speculation, assisted perhaps by the experience of the inferior tyrants of the fourth century, formed the basis for the ideal pictures of Plato and Xenophon (Plat. Rep. p. 580 ; Xen. Hiero, passim), [iud for such a monstrous creation as the Periander of Herodotus (v. 92). 2 Arist. Eth. viii. 10. 2 : Pol. iii. 7, 5. 3 The treatment of the vigorous external policy of the tyrants, which raised their cities to a greater height of power than was ever attained in their former, and sometimes in their subse- quent history, and of the magnificence of their courts — the natural result of peace and prosperity — which is so strangely misconstrued by Aristotle {Pol. V. 11 =p. 1313 b), does not belong to constitutional history. I have attempted a sketch of these points in the art. "Tyrannus" in Smith's Did. of Greek and Roman Antiq. (3rd ed.) ^ Plato Rep.v'm. p. 565 d ; Arist. Pol, V. 10 = p. 1310 b ; Dionys. vi. 60. II EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONS 29 Tov SrjfMov) ; but they lived at a time when the sword was a keener weapon than the tongue, and when there was no organised assembly of the people to be swayed by their eloquence, but only a rabble to be led to the acropolis. The best -known types for this early period are Orthagoras of Sicyon, Cypselus of Corinth, Theagenes of Megara, and Peisistratus of Athens. But this type was very constant, and perpetuated itself even in the fourth century. At a time when there was no further political principle left to be fought for, we find Dionysius reach- ing the throne in Syracuse by a championship of social in default of political rights, and he is cited as one of the great historical instances of the demagogue despot.^ It was naturally in the earlier tyrannies that this phenomenon was of most import- ance, for, as Aristotle was the first of Greeks to see, their holders were everywhere the precursors of a new phase of political life. The immediate effect of their rule may be summed up by saying that everywhere they found distraction in their cities, and everywhere they left something approaching unity. We extract from Herodotus,^ an unwilling witness, the fact that at Athens the rule of the Peisistratidae first created a national spirit. It is after their overthrow that the Syj/jios emerges as a united whole, by alliance with which Cleisthenes created the democracy. As unifiers of their cities they were the precursors of popular government, which requires a collective will. It is true that a democratic form of government did not everywhere follow their overthrow ; but even in these cases a constitution of any kind was an improvement on the old dynastic rule. Corinth, the city most grievously chastened, and perhaps the most improved by tyranny, still remained an oligarchy, but an oligarchy of a constitutional type, which rested on, if it did not express, the popular will. The social position of the individual demagogues who made their way to the throne is of some importance for constitutional history, since sometimes it shows a connecting link between the new regime and the old. In some cases, it is true, the tyrants sprang from the oppressed classes which they championed ; Orthagoras, for instance, the founder of the dynasty of Sicyon, belonged to the weaker Ionian element of the state, and is said to have been a cook.^ But more frequently they illustrate the truth that the best democrats spring from the ranks of the 1 Arist. Pol. V. 5 = p. 1305 a ^ qq^ 3 Diodor. viii. 24. 30 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. nobility. They were often members of the oligarchies they overthrew, and sometimes even executive officials of these governments, who made the great powers which they possessed as magistrates a stepping-stone to the crown. According to one account,^ Cypselus of Corinth was enabled to found his dynasty by the mode in which he exercised the office of " polemarch," or chief military commander of the city. It was by the straining of the powers of a magistracy that Phalaris rose to be tyrant of Agrigentum,^ while at Miletus a tyranny arose out of the office of president (irpvTavLs) of the state.^ Peisistratus of Athens was of the royal family of Codrus,^ and Lygdamis, whom he established in Naxos, belonged to the old nobility.^ In cases where a magistracy had been held the transition to power was easier : a fragment of the constitution still remained, and the chief change was that popular now replaced dynastic support. At times this popular support was sufficient to maintain the government which it had established. Thus we are told that Cypselus remained a popular hero, and during the whole period of his rule at Corinth never required a body-guard.^ But as a rule the despot could not hold his position by popular support alone. It was perhaps not so much a distrust of the loyalty of the masses as of their efficiency to protect their leaders against the attacks of the hostile clans, that led to the almost universal employment of bands of mercenaries, for the support of which the subjects were taxed. This unfortunate accompaniment of their rule deepened, if it did not in some cases create, the idea of its unconstitutional character. The maintenance of the tyrant's rule was often typical of its beginning ; for the throne that was supported by force had been in many cases won by violence. A coup dJMat was the necessary supplement to popular favour in the case of Peisistratus ; in other cases it seems to have been a substitute for popular support. It was thus that Polycrates gained the throne in Samos,^ that Aristodemus made himself despot of 1 That of Nicolaus of Damascus, p. 58. ih. iii. 14; v. 10 = p. 1311a. 2 Arist. Pol. V. 10 = p. 1310 b. Herodotus (i. 61) speaks of the Argive 3 V. 5 = p. 1305 a. mercenaries of Peisistratus. * Her. V. 65. ® Yet, if it is true that he seized the Arist. PoZ. V. 6 = p. 1305 b. acropolis with only fifteen hoplites « lb. V. 12 = p. 1315 b. The (Her. iii. 120), he must have relied on Corinthians whom he slew, robbed, the discontent of the dijfjLos, and be- and banished (Her. v. 92), must have lieved that it would accept the result been members of the hostile oligarchy. of the coup d*etat. II EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONS 31 Cumae in Italy/ and that Cylon attempted to occupy the same position at Athens.'^ The first exercise of the tyrant's power was naturally a work of clearance. The most powerful members of the clans, which it was their declared object to resist, had to be disposed of ; and we are not surprised to find that the Bacchiadae were expelled from Corinth by Cypselus,^ and that even Peisistratus, in spite of the mildness of his rule, found it necessary to banish some of the nobles.^ But by the wiser despots no violent change seems to have been made in the machinery of govern- ment where such machinery existed. The Peisistratidae, we are told, ruled in accordance with the KeifxevoL vofMoi, only taking the precaution of having the great offices of state filled by members of their own family.^ The Greek mind, it is true, would eliminate tyranny altogether from constitutional history ; but the position of the Peisistratidae suggests the question whether the early Greek tyrannies were so unconstitutional either in theory or in practice as they are generally represented to have been. Unfortunately the case which we know best can scarcely be taken as typical, for despotism at Athens was a comparatively late development, and followed a thorough reconstruction of the state by Solon. There was a machinery to hand which the new ruler might use, and Peisistratus, while as absolute as the Eoman princeps, posed like him as an executive authority and as a part of the constitution. In the earlier tyrannies this chance was hardly offered, for with the overthrow of the dynasty the whole machinery of government went with it. Yet in those cases where the exercise of a magistracy was made a stepping-stone to tyranny, some shadow of legality might have been preserved by the maintenance of this office. The case of Gelo of Syracuse proves how even the greater tyrants craved legal recognition,^ and how sometimes 1 Dionys. vii. 2-11. 2 Her. V. 71 ; Thuc. i. 126. His failure was largely due to the fatal mistake he made in relying on foreign, in this case Megarian, aid. See W. Fowler The City State p. 127. 3 Dionys. iii. 46 ; cf. Her. v. 92. 4 ib. vi. 103. 5 ib. i. 59 ; Thuc. vi. 54. In the Ath. Pol. (c. 16) Peisistratus is said to have ruled fiaWov ttoKlTlklos tj rvpav- vlkCjs, and his reign was called the age of Cronus. For his observance of con- stitutional forms see Arist. Pol. v. 12 =:p. 1315 b. ^ The rulers of Sicily are exempted by Thucydides (i. 17) from his general condemnation of the pettiness of the tyrant's aims. In Herodotus (vii. 163 ; cf. 157) Gelo is despot, not of Syracuse, but of Sicily. 32 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. this might be won. The lofty ambition of Gelo more than redeems his tyranny ; it was nothing less than the defence of western civilisation against its deadly foe the Semite, by a union of the Sicilian Greeks to resist the Carthaginians. The union was effected, and by the battle of Himera in 480 the victory was won. Then it was that Gelo was acclaimed by the Syracusans as their saviour, their benefactor, and their Jcing.^ The true evil of tyrannis was supposed to be most clearly shown by the necessities of its internal administration. To create a slavish feeling in the subjects, to sow mistrust amongst them, to allow no prominent men in the state, to encourage flatterers, parasites, and espionage, are said to be the character- istics of the despots ; ^ elsewhere stress is laid on the blood- stained character of their rule.^ It is impossible to say whether these criticisms are really applicable to the earlier tyrannies, and they are largely due to the later Greek sentiment that irresponsible must mean evil rule. We hear nothing of general oppression of the citizens ; if we may judge from the case of the Peisistratidae, taxation seems to have been light : they collected only one-twentieth of the products of the soil ; ^ and there are many typical stories which show that it was to the interest of the tyrants to keep the lower classes contented and employed.^ More important are the social changes with which they are credited. The scattered notices of these deserve examination since, whether consciously pursued with this motive or not, these reforms had a decidedly political tendency. An inevitable object of their policy was to raise the depressed portion of the population at the expense of the dominant section. This change, probably universal, was most marked where the distinction between classes was a national one. Hence the fame of Cleisthenes's reforms at Sicyon. His hatred of the memory of Adrastus, the Dorian hero, his suppression of the Homeric recitals, and his alteration of the tribe-names,^ were 1 Diodor. xi. 26 evepyirrjSy (Turrrjp ^ Arist. Pol. v. 11 = p. 1313 b. /cat /3acrtXei5s. See Freeman Hist, of ^ Her. iii. 80 ; v. 92. Sicily ii. p. 501. Even before this •* Thnc. vi. 54. The Ath. Pol. (c. Athenian envoys are represented as 16), probably wrongly, makes Peisis- addressing him as & ^acnXeu Ivprj- tratus himself exact a tithe. Koaicov (Her. vii. 161). This was a ^ Ath. Pol. 16 ; Ael. Var. Hist. ix. courtesy title, and in fact the only 25. mode of address possible to a tyrant ^ Her. v. 67, 68. from envoys of a friendly state. II EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONS 33 all meant to elevate the Ionian element in the state at the expense of the Dorian. National unity was to the interest of the tyrant, since his power was equally threatened by clan feuds and by local factions. For this purpose religious festivals were instituted, and Peisistratus's establishment of the greater Panathenaea ^ is typical of the mode in which pageantry might be employed in the interest of order. A third element in their reforms was, characteristically for this period of Greek history, also religious. It can hardly be an accident that the names of Periander, Cleisthenes, and Peisistratus are all associated with the cultivation of the Dionysiac worship ; ^ for by the encourage- ment given to these festivals they were substituting universal and popular cults for the aristocratic and exclusive worship of the nobles. The Dionysiac-Orphic ritual is of great importance • in the history of the democracy. It is not a primitive cult in Greece ; even at Eleusis it replaced an older native worship of Poseidon. With its advent from Thrace two popular movements began — the drama and the mysteries. The mysteries were above all anti-aristocratic ; they were part of a spiritual cult, to which any one might be admitted ; they had, it is true, their special priests, such as the Eumolpidae and Ceryces at Athens, but noble and commoner were on a level amongst the initiated. In all the states the Dionysiac worship was a new thing, connected with no traditional ancestry, appealing to no particular clan. Its tendency was thus unifying and levelling, and for this reason it was encouraged by the tyrants. It was not in the nature of tyranny to last long, however powerful the individual ruler might make himself. We do indeed meet with despotisms of a duration which rivalled that of the ordinary constitutional governments in Greece : the Ortha- goridae ruled at Sicyon for a hundred years, the Gypselidae at Corinth for seventy-three years, the Peisistratidae at Athens, exclusive of the period during which Peisistratus was banished, for thirty-five ; but these periods were exceptional. The tyrants were, as a rule, ministers of the people irregularly appointed to perform a special work, and when the work v/as done and there was no further reason for their continuance, they fell. Their government was brought to an end sometimes through the ^ Schol. Aristeidis p. 323. deuce, though more abundaut, is less 2 Periander (Her. i. 23), Cleisthenes direct. It is collected and examined by (Her. V. 67) ; for Peisistratus the evi- Dyer The Gods in Greece ip^. 125, 126. D 34 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. degeneracy of the successors to the original usurper, as in the case of the Peisistratidae ; sometimes through conspiracies inspired by private motives — a cause of ruin which Aristotle illustrates by the downfall of the earlier and later despotisms at Syracuse.^ But not infrequently their overthrow was effected by external force, and the earliest crusades undertaken in support of a political idea were the expeditions made by certain cities for the destruction of tyranny in others. In early times Sparta gained the greatest name as a liberator, and is said to have put down most of the tyrannies in Greece.^ The other great instance is that of a city which had itself suffered : Syracuse, after the death of Thrasybulus, and after that of the younger Dionysius, vigorously undertook the liberation of the other Sicilian states.^ Such in the main are the faint glimpses we get of early Greek tyranny through the haze of false tradition and real fear. For it was fear that moulded the later Greek conception of this rule. The law-abiding Greek of the fifth and fourth centuries had ever in his mind the haunting fear of a possible despotism such as seemed threatened by men of the type of Alcibiades of Athens — men unwilling to submit to the equality of a democratic constitution, whose chief characteristic was a covetous ambition (TrAcove^ta), and whose rise to power meant the negation of all political principle. It was difficult for him, with such a vision before his eyes, to look back to a time when tyranny had represented a principle, and when it had helped to secure rights for the common folk. With the close of Greek tyranny the ancient history of Greece is left behind us. The rest is modern, in the sense now so familiar to us of history that is modern in its characteristics. If, as has been said, the history of civilisation is the passage from status to contract,* we may say that status in Greece had now been left behind, and that the basis of the contract on which society rests was to be examined and criticised. The most definite answers to the question appear in the various forms of constitution which were now to spring up. Conscious political thought soon followed these creations, with varying results. One day the respective merits of these forms was to be 1 Pol. V. 10 = p. 1312b. 3 Arist. I.e.; Diod. xi. 68; xvi. 2 Thuc. i. 18 ; cf. Arist. I.e., Her. 82. V. 92. ■* Maine Ancie7it Law c. 5. rr EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONS 35 settled by an appeal to the sword in the great political struggle of the Peloponnesian War ; and meanwhile the more peaceful discussion of these claims, which appears already in Herodotus and grows more subtle in Thucydides, had been handed down to the still colder judgment of philosophy, to find at length its grandest exposition in Aristotle's Politics. It was Greek tyranny which, by breaking down all artificial barriers, pre- pared the way for the "bazaar of constitutions" exhibited there. CHAPTER III COLONISATION — INTERNATIONAL LAW The differences of political development which followed the downfall of tyranny are too great to allow us to treat Greek history collectively from this point onwards. Henceforth we shall have to examine distinct types of development ; but, before entering on this more minute phase of the work, it will be convenient to touch here on two political factors which are common more or less to the whole Greek world, to that Hellas which is the name not of a territory, but of a people. These are colonisation and the tendencies which led to such unification as Hellas as a whole attained. § 1 Colonisation We have already noticed that the period of the aristocracies was the great epoch of the expansion of Greece, and we have seen the general political tendencies to which this movement was due. The particular causes which led to the planting of colonies at this or at any other time are of importance for con- stitutional history only in so far as the motive for the foundation of the new state may have affected its form or its relation to the mother city. The differences of the periods in which colonies were founded must have been equally important in both these respects ; but of these we can say but little. It is difficult, in a comprehensive treatment of colonisation, to separate the old from the new, the later deliberate organisation which we know so well from the earlier and more spontaneous movement of which we hear so little. The causes may be summed up generally as being migration CHAr. Ill COLONISATION 37 and the movement of peoples, political faction, agricultural and commercial enterprise, and, lastly, the motives of military and agrarian settlement in the interest of the colonising state. Settlements due to the migrations — such as were, according to current Greek opinion, the Aeolian, Ionian, and Doric cities on the coast of Asia Minor, which some have thought to have had an independent origin and to be as old, at least in germ, as the cities of Greece proper itself — are, if the story of their settlement or reinforcement by the migrations be accepted, rather the result of spontaneous national movement than of conscious colonial enterprise.^ It is possible that the movements of these emigrants may have been to some extent guided by prominent cities on the mainland of Greece ; but later historical reflection, which strove to connect the traditions of East and West, and to attach them to the great working hypothesis of the Dorian migration, was of itself sufficient to float such a theory as that which represents certain of these Ionian cities as having taken their sacred fire from the court-house of the Athenians.^ The theory was assisted by, and made the excuse for later political connections; it established a claim on Athenian protection,^ and formed the basis of the counter claim which Athens made, in the period of her Empire, that she was only ruling over her natural dependencies. Otherwise its political importance is slight, and the peculiarities of the political history of the Greeks in Asia are due to other causes. The antiquity of these settlements led to their pursuing the normal lines of Greek constitutional development, with the exception that the element of wealth seems to have been more strongly marked in their period of aristocratic development.^ Some, such as Miletus, developed tyrannies of the spontaneous type;^ but their political growth was soon arrested by foreign conquest. Herodotus^ mentions a crop of so-called "tyrants" of the Greek cities of Asia Minor of the sixth and fifth centuries, such as Daphnis of Abydos, Aeaces of Samos, Aristagoras of Cyme, ^ Later settlements were due to a similar cause — movement caused by the pressure of enemies. To this was due the emigration of the Pliocaeans, under jiressure from the Persians, to Velia in Italy and Alalia in Corsica (Her. i. 167), and of the Teians to Abdera {ib. i. 168). Similarly the Byzantines and Chalcedonians, after the Ionic revolt, fled from the Persians and settled at Mesembria on the Euxine {ih. vi. 33). Her. i. 146. ^ ib. xi. 106 ; Thuc. i. 95. 4 See p. 23. 5 See p. 30. 6 iv. 138. 38 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. and others. But these cannot be classed with the despots of the early period in Greece proper, Italy, and Sicily, for they were merely native princes who governed the Greek dependencies of Persia, and who were kept in their position by Persian support. Subsequently the Persian government learnt that democracy was a better basis for loyalty than tyranny ; ^ but henceforth these Greeks of Asia have scarcely any independent political history : they are the slaves of Athenian, Spartan, and Persian caprice ; whatever form of government they possess is imposed, or at least tolerated, by a foreign power ; yet they perform their function in the world's history none the worse for this. It was to be the Hellenism of the East, the beginning of which may be traced in the uniform system of the Athenian Empire, while the end is to be found in the municipal administration of the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Political faction, as a ground for colonisation,^ is in no sense a determinant as regards either the nature of the colony or its relation to the parent state. The autonomy enjoyed by such settlements is simply a result of the normal theory of colonisa- tion, not of the special circumstances of their departure. Such a colony is not a chance aggregate moving off in anger from the mother city. It parts with it in a friendly spirit ; the parent, though relieved at the departure, gives the blessing and authorisation necessary to make the offspring a colony ; and the ties of sentimental allegiance between the two are at least as close as those consequent on other motives. When, on the other hand, we turn to the commercial motive, we find many points that demand attention. That it was the most constant of the inspiring causes is shown by the " Greek fringe woven round the coast of the barbarian," noticed by Cicero ; ^ but the stability of Greek political institutions is largely due to the fact that the Greek settlement was rarely, like the Phoenician, a mere factory. The agricultural element, so prominent in the cities of Sicily and the eighty Milesian colonies on the Black Sea, was almost invariably present ; and agriculture implies a permanent settlement and attachment to the soil. Sometimes, indeed, trade might be the only motive ; a Greek " emporium," to which rights had been granted by the people with whom it traded, might grow into a city. It was ^ Her. vi. 43. ^ See p. 24. agris qicasi attexta quaedam videtur ^ de Hep. ii. 4, 9 ita barbarorum ora esse Graeciae. Jll COLONISATION 39 thus that Amasis of Egypt recognised the existence of Naucratis, composed of a society of Greeks of various cities who had long been trading at the Canobic mouth of the Nile. It remained a thoroughly Greek settlement ; its manners and laws were Hellenic, and its constitution appears to have been modelled on that of one of the founding states.^ Yet it was hardly a colony {airoiKla) in the ordinary Greek sense, for it lacked the two characteristics of a mother city and a founder (oLKLo-rris). But Naucratis is probably an exceptional case. Many of the early commercial settlements may have had a similarly unconscious growth ; the ttoXcs may have been a late development from the factory, yet there is every reason to believe that when it became an organised community it received a sanction from a founding state, and became in the strict sense a colony, but with no further political connection with the mother city than that contained in treaties which were the result of community of commercial interest. The tie was sometimes closer when, in place of this unconscious growth, a powerful commercial city founded settlements along its own trade-routes. Corinth attempted a direct control of her western colonies on the coasts of Illyria, Epirus, and Acarnania, and we have a passing reference to the presence of certain Corinthian officials called eTriSrj/jLcovpyoL in Potidaea.^ The political connection was necessarily closer still between colonies founded to serve a military purpose and the states which sent them out. Such settlements were artificial creations of a later age, merely attempts to hold distant dependencies or to create a sphere of military influence near an enemy's territory. They are peculiarly interesting to the student of constitutional history, since the two colonial charters which have been preserved — that of the Periclean colony sent to Brea in Thrace, and that regulating the settlement of Naupactus by the Opuntian Locrians^ — are concerned with foundations the main object, at least, of which was military. From the nature of the case the dependence of such a colony on the mother city is very close, and hence the relations between the two are far ^ TLjxovxoi are magistrates of Nau- of Trade [irpoardTaL tou i/jLiroptov)- cratis as of Teos. The other fouuding Her. ii. 178. states were — Chios, Phocaea,Clazomenae - Thuc. i. 56. (Ionian) ; Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicar- ^ Hicks nn. 29, 63. The respective nassus, Pliaselis (Dorian) ; and Mitylene dates of these foundations are approxi- ( Aeolian). These appointed the Board mately 440 and 460. iO OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. from typical. Amphipolis and the other Periclean colonies in Thrace, which may be taken as types of such settlements, were founded within the empire of Athens, and therefore within the sphere of her direct military influence. The Spartan colony of Heraclea in Trachis,^ a bold enterprise undertaken during the Peloponnesian War for the purpose of commanding the northern dependencies of Athens, was a mere military outpost under the immediate command of Spartan governors. One step further in history and we find the central control becoming still more definite. The KAr/poi^x^a, the last stage in the development of the colonial theory in Greece, is merely an outlying fragment of the central ttoXls with some municipal organisation of its own. Technically it belongs rather to the history of agrarian legislation than to that of colonisation, although military might be combined with social objects in its creation. The cleruchies are known to us almost entirely as one of the modes in which Athens employed her control of subject territory to further the interests of her own state,^ and their treatment consequently belongs more properly to that division of our work which deals with the Athenian system of imperial administration. The questions we have touched on have already illustrated the fact that colonisation was always regarded as a public act in Greece ; no settlement was regarded as quite legitimate unless this act of state had been performed by some city, which was then regarded as the metropolis, and might afterwards become the grandmother of the offshoots of its own colony, since ancient custom directed that the latter, in founding a fresh settlement, should seek a leader (otVco-rr;?) from its own parent state.^ The act of colonisation was preceded by certain formalities. A religious sanction was obtained by the con- sultation of an oracle,^ generally that of Delphi, which appears to have had the fullest information of the places best suited for settlement. Next came the charter of incorporation (to. 1 Founded in 426 (Tliuc. iii. 92). ^ The cleruchies were not, however, confined to Athens. Some of the Milesian settlements on tlie islands (Strabo p. 635), e.{j. at Leros, seem to have been of this nature. 3 Thuc. i. 24. * Cic. de Div. i. 1, 3 quam vero Graecia coloniam misit in Aeoliam, Inniam, Asiam, Siciliain^ Italiam sine PyUiio aut Dodonaeo aut Hamvionio oraculo 1 The tendency to consult the Pythian oracle gave rise to the worship, so frequent in the colonies, of Apollo Archegetes. Ill COLONISATION 41 a-TTOLKia) given by the government of the founding state. This charter set forth the conditions under which the colony was to be founded, and sometimes the relations, whether religious or political, which were to be maintained between it and the parent state. The fortunate preservation of the decree establishing the colony of Brea gives us a vivid insight into the contents of such documents. This decree (1) specifies the social condition of the intending colonists : they were to be chosen from the " Zeugitae " and the Thetes," the two lower classes in the Solonian census. Such a clause, though characteristic of the state-directed colonies of the Periclean age, must have been extremely unusual, if not unknown, at an earlier period : since emigration, though directed by the state, was as a rule a voluntary act and a matter of private enterprise. (2) It appoints a certain Democleides to be the oecist, the guide and leader, of the new enterprise, and gives him the fullest power over the details of the " establishment " of the colony.^ We can hardly understand by this a free permission to frame constitutional details at his pleasure, although at an earlier period the influence of the oecist on the structure of the new constitution must have been immense. (3) Here follows a clause which is the most remarkable instance we possess of the recognition of absolute religious obligations by constitutional law. It enacts that the religious enclosures (refievr)) in the territory destined for the settlement should be left as they are and no others be enclosed. ^ This can only be an injunction to worship the native gods,^ a provision of Greek international custom to maintain the religious observances of a conquered district, which here finds expression in the public law of Athens. It is probable that universal legal recognition accompanied a sentiment which we know to be typically Greek, and which widened the native Pantheon by the absorption of the cults of Asia Minor and of Thrace, and even of the strange worships left by Sicel or Sican in the West.^ (4) Next comes the mention of the ^ Hicks n. 29, A 1. 8 Aij/LLOKXcidrjp KaTaarrjaaL avroKparopa. " 1. 9 TCL 8^ re/jLevT) ra e^7]prjiuLeva eav KaOdirep ^cttl /cat 6X\a fiy] reixevi^eiv. 3 Gilbert StaatsalL ii. p. 400. The absorption of oriental worships by colonists is not so striking, since it was but a ficsh recognition of an influence early felt by Greek religion. More remarkable is the assumption by Greek settlers of such wholly non- Hellenic worships as those of Hadranus and the Palici in Sicily. See Freeman History of Sicily vol. i. pp. 517 ff. 42 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. supply of money granted by the state to set the colony on its way (ltotot) and " inferiors " (wo/xeiom). All that we know for certain about the peers " is that those only answered to the designation who had been brought up in the characteristic Spartan training;^ but it is implied that another condition for this status was the continuance of the contribution which all citizens owed to the support of the public meals. Aristotle, at least, tells us that " the common meals were meant to be a 1 Xen.. Hell. v. 3, 9. - ^ pj^t. P/wc. 20. 2 Phylarch. I.e. Ael. Var. Hist. 12, ^ Pol. ii. 9, 17. 43. Lysander's father is said to have ^ Xen. Rep. Lac. 10, 7 ; Anab. iv. beeu a Heracleid (Pint. Lys, 2). 6, 1 4. 88 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. popular institution, but the existing manner of regulating them is the reverse of popular. For the very poor can scarcely take part in them ; and, according to ancient custom, those who can- not contribute are not allowed to retain their rights of citizen- ship." ^ We may conclude, therefore, that those Spartans were ofjLOiOL who satisfied both of two conditions, the obedience to all the regulations of the Spartan training, and the continuance of the contribution to the public meals — that the word was, in fact, a designation of all the full citizens of Sparta.^ The v7rofjL€Lov€^, as a class distinct from the " peers," would be most naturally taken to be those who had not fulfilled either one or both of these conditions — who had, therefore, lost their political while still probably retaining their private rights as citizens. It was very characteristic of Spartan institutions to designate all the Spartiatae, nobles and demos alike, as " peers " ; for the reduction of the life of all the citizens to one level was a real basis of equality in the state. It was the Spartans, Thucydides tells us,^ that first set the example of this equality in Greece, by their uniform simplicity in dress and enforced moderation in life. Their equality was the essential one of a common rule of manners ; and, from this point of view, Sparta reminds us of those enlarged oligarchies of which Aristotle speaks,* in which the members of the privileged class formed, as it were, a democracy amongst themselves. The most constant suggestion of this equality was contained in the membership of the common meals {a-vcrcriTia) to which we have referred. Originally, perhaps, mere barrack-room messes for soldiers who had to be ever on their guard against the revolt of a subject district, they attained in time a more refined organisation which gave them a close resemblance to the kratpdaL or unofficial clubs, half political, half social, of the rest of the Greek world. The syssitia were small dining clubs, consisting of about fifteen members each.^ Admission was dependent on ballot and required the unanimous consent of the ^ Pol. ii. 9 (Jovvett). ^(paaav avveLbevai kol e'iXujL Kai veo- - A final proof of this is furnished daixwdeuL Kai roh viro/uLeiocrL Kai rois by the accounts of the conspiracy of irepLOLKOLS. The only classes left to Cinadon in 398. Aristotle says {Pol. be attacked were the dfioioL and the V. 7 = p. 1306 b) that he conspired iiri ^irapTiaraL. They would apparently, roi>s liTrapTLaras. Xenophon says therefore, have been identical. {Hell. iii. 3, 5) that Cinadon himself ^ i. 6. was not one of the ojulolol. As to the ^ 7W. v. 8 = p. 1308 a. conspirators (§ 6), avToi /jUvtol waaLv ^ Plut. Lyc. 12. V MIXED CONSTITUTIONS 89 already elected members ; no doubt the exclusion of a qualified citizen from all these societies was an impossible contingency, and no guarantee of admission was, therefore, needed from the state. A restricted public opinion, such as was encouraged by these clubs, though it gains strength from its very narrowness, and may promote bravery in the field and honour in private life, is not a happy thing to foster in a state, for it creates a character exclusive, proud, and cruel. Private debate in these societies, on the conclusions of which the utmost secrecy was enjoined, was some compensation for the lack of freedom of speech in the assembly ; but it fostered the tendency of the Spartans to secrecy and intrigue, and gave them a penchant to the oligarchical club and a belief in the efficiency of narrow corporations which proved the ruin of the empire which they wrested from Athens in the Peloponnesian War. The principle of co-optation recognised in these clubs must have tended to emphasise such class distinctions as did exist in the state ; but, since membership was certainly attainable by every one who had the means to pay his quota, an appearance of social equality between all the citizens was secured. But, in spite of this apparent equality, we do find a dis- tinction within the o/xotot between the nobles (/caAot KayaOol) and the commons (Srjfxos). It was, apparently, a distinction between the members of the ancient clans and those who were not members, between the old and the new burgesses ; and this distinction was of political importance, for apparently only the nobles were chosen for the yepovo-ia. How it came that a class which could be called the demos grew up at Sparta is not known. From the first there may have been a Dorian popula- tion outside the noble clans, but it was probably recruited by later accessions of inhabitants to the community. Legends of such later accessions are not wanting, and Aristotle tells us that " there was a tradition that, in the days of their ancient kings, the Spartans were in the habit of giving the rights of citizen- ship to strangers, and therefore, in spite of their long wars, no lack of population w^as experienced by them," ^ and that at one time Sparta was said to have numbered ten thousand citizens. The Aegeidae, the non-Dorian tribe whose presence we have already noticed, may be the greatest of the instances of such later additions to the state. 90 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. We have already touched on a qualification for citizenship, which had such important results that it must now be considered more in detail. The mention of membership of the syssitia as a preliminary to the enjoyment of civic rights has prepared us for the fact that property and citizenship were indissolubly connected at Sparta. Aristotle ^ tells us that the decrease in the number of citizens was owing to the accumulation of property in a few hands — a statement which implies that the loss of property meant the loss of civic rights ; and this fact has an important bearing on the much-disputed question of the tenure of land by the Spartans. Since all the wealth of the Spartiatae rested on land, trade being forbidden, and the contribution to the public meal was the basis of citizenship, we should expect to find some provision made for securing land- allotments to the citizens and for preserving this distribution. Some of our authorities assert that an equal allotment of all the available land was made'^ — a statement which cannot be accepted as literally correct, since evidences are found for a very early inequality of wealth amongst the Spartans, and this inequality of wealth must necessarily have meant inequality of landed possessions. But, as has often been pointed out,^ this by no means shows the tradition of the distribution of equal kXtjpol amongst the citizens to have been a fiction. From the earliest times a distinction must have existed between the landed possessions of the nobility and of the demos. The nobility possessed large tracts of land, like the T€fM€vi] of the Spartan kings, in the conquered territory, while the members of the demos had their separate KXrjpoL allotted them, which were originally certainly inalienable and probably equal ; for it by no means follows that, because some members of a state can be proved to be large proprietors, the others do not possess a minimum of land — sucli a minimum as was assigned to poorer citizens by Athens and Eome and other conquering states of the ancient world. The tenures of the ordinary land and of the minimum assigned by the state might naturally be different ; and this seems to have been the case at Sparta, for a clear distinction was drawn between the ordinary landed possessions which an individual might acquire and the "ancient division" (apxaia fjuoipa) or kAtJ/oos which. had been ^ Pol. ii. 9. ^ See especially Gilbert Staatsalt. 1 ^ Plut. Lyc, 8 ; Polyb. vi. 45. P-13; Guirard Xa Prqpr./oTi. p. 41 ff. V MIXED CONSTITUTIONS 91 assigned. It was the latter alone that could not be alienated ; ^ and in the case of the extinction of the family this heritable and inalienable allotment must have lapsed to the state. The division was undertaken for political motives, and was gradual in the sense that it kept pace with conquest and the consequent acquisition of common land. Land once assigned was not thereafter touched by the state ; for neither in Sparta nor in any community of early Greece is there any sign of collectivism or of periodical redistribution. The change in the tenure of land came with the law of the ephor Epitadeus, of unknown date, but which may with probability be placed soon after the Peloponnesian War,"^ the close of which marks the beginning of the social revolution in Sparta. This law permitted to every one free gift and free bequest of his house and land.^ Even now sale was not permitted, and in later times it was still con- sidered disgraceful, though not illegal, to sell one's property ^ — the last relic of the previous inalienability of land and a proof of the grounds on which it had been based. This assignment of equal lots of land to the citizens, besides being the necessary completion of the Lycurgean system, was also more possible at Sparta than in any other state of the Greek world ; for as long as she continued to be a conquering state there could be no difficulty in finding surplus land for distribution. When the period of conquest was closed the theory was still maintained that civic rights should be dependent on the possession of land, and no remedies could be adopted to make an impossible theory effective. So far from any check being placed on the increase of the citizens, the state had encouraged it by pronouncing the father of three sons exempt from garrison duty, the father of four free from all state burdens ; ^ and the inconsistency noticed by Aristotle was committed, of attempting to limit the possession of land without regulating population. He thinks that a possible solution would have been to make the syssitia, as in Crete, depend on public land worked by public slaves; and perhaps it would have been better had Sparta pushed her theory of communism this one step further. The principle which was adhered to — that ^ Heracleides Pouticus 2, 7 iroSKeiv de yijv AaKedaLjuLOvLoLS aiVxpov peuo- /jLiarai, rrjs dpxalas /molpas ov8^ '4^e(^, Thuc. i. 87. s Plut. Agis 11. « ih. V MIXED CONSTITUTIONS 101 and those of the Apella correspondingly diminished by the rhetra of the kings Polydorus and Theopompus (743-724), which enacted that "if the people decided crookedly, the Elders and kings might reverse their decision." ^ The result of this change was possibly the procedure described by Aristotle,^ by which a negative decision of the people is final, a positive not final. The motive for this reaction is unknown ; for the reason assigned by Plutarch — the reckless mode in which the assembly curtailed or amended bills sent down from the upper house — assumes a freedom of debate which probably never existed in the Apella. The change does not seem to have been permanent, since in the debate which decided the outbreak of the Pelo- ponnesian War the Apella seems to have the final ratifying authority.^ The growth of the ephoralty probably restored to the assembly the powers curtailed by Theopompus. We have treated the Gerousia here as a probouleutic assembly ; but undoubtedly most matters of routine administra- tion were within its entire competence, partly in its own right, partly as the council-board of the Ephors. In its own right it seems to have exercised a censorial authority for the maintenance of the Lycurgean discipline,^ although the actual enforcement of the alien acts (^evT^Aacrtat) which made Sparta so unpopular was in the hands of the Ephors.^ The council as a court of justice was concerned with criminal jurisdiction — a survival from the Homeric times, in which the heads of the clan, the y^povres, meet for this purpose. In this sphere its control was absolute, and, as there was no written law at Sparta, its decisions were necessarily arbitrary, mere " dooms " or " ordinances " (^e/xto-res) ; but judgments pronounced by so large and experienced a body would doubt- less be strictly modelled on the customary law. No office could have exempted from its jurisdiction, for the king or regent himself must appear before its tribunal,^ and it could inflict the extremest penalties — such as death and disfranchisement.^ This combination of functions made the Gerousia very powerful, and we are not surprised to find that to the super- ficial observer it seemed the central government of the Spartan state. According to Isocrates it " presided over everything " ; 1 Plut. Lyc. 6. 2 p^i^ 14^ p. 1298 b. ^ rpj^^^g^ 37^ * Gellius xviii. 3. He refers to Aeschiues as his authority. ^ Tier. iii. 148. ^ Pans, iii. 5, 2. ^ Xeu. liesp. Lac. 10, 2, 102 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. according to Dionysius it had the whole control of the com- munity.^ Aristotle ^ is more concerned with noticing its many defects, the childish " mode of election, the committal of the most important judicial functions to old men holding office for life. He objects to their irresponsibility, and says that many of the Elders are known to have taken bribes. The question of its general efficiency is answered by Spartan history ; the question of its actual power depends to a large extent on our view of its procedure. How was it summoned, and who were its presidents 1 Originally, no doubt, it was summoned by the kings, and Schomann thinks that the presidency may have continued to belong to each king alter- nately.^ But it has been noticed that Herodotus does not make the presidency of the council one of the privileges of the kings : they merely " sit as members " ; and the only theory that can explain the working of the Spartan constitution is to suppose that the Ephors — who, we know, for certain purposes sat with the council — also summoned and presided over it. It is at least necessary that there should have been a very close connection between the deliberative and administrative body on the one hand and the executive body on the other. The Ephors were the only officials capable of laying questions of foreign administration and information on foreign politics before this body. The Gerousia is thus the great deliberative, judicial, and administrative body of the state. But the power of a deliberative assembly is clearly limited by its dependence on some other authority for meeting, or at least for the trans- action of its most important business. The council may, for certain purposes, have had stated times for meeting ; but if it could only transact the usual official business on the summons of the Ephors, this fact largely explains the power of the latter body. There is a conflict of evidence about the origin of these officials. Herodotus makes them a creation of Lycurgus ; but ^ Isocr. Panath. § 154 ; Dioiiys. ii. 14. Polybius (vi. 45) is more accurate, ot — y^povres — 5i' cDf /cat fxed* &v irdvTa x^'p'T^7"ctt to, koltcL Tr]v TToKLTeLav. 2 Pol. ii. 9. ^ Antiquities i. -p. 21B. FromThuc. i. 20 {fJLiq. ^rjcpCi) irpoaTLOcaOaL) it has been concluded that the kings voted last. This may have been so, but would not prove them to have been the presidents. At Rome the presiding magistrate did not vote at all. irapi^eLv^ Her. vi. 57. When assembled as a criminal court, Pans. iii. 5, 2, MIXED CONSTITUTIONS 103 constitutional anomalies are not as a rule created, and the slightest knowledge of comparative politics would alone be sufficient to convince us that they were of later growth. The more credible account is that of Aristotle and Plutarch, who refer their origin to the reign of Theopompus.^ Plato, too, speaks of the " third saviour " of the Spartan state who estab- lished the ephoralty ; ^ and a final proof of this view is found in Pausanias' assertion that the state-seal used by all official boards bore on it the effigy of Polydorus, the colleague of this king.^ The epoch of their institution must have been looked back on as the origin of the liberties of the city, for the Ephors are essentially city magistrates, as opposed to the kings and Elders who represent the nobility. In the oath of office interchanged between the king and the Ephors the king swears " on behalf of himself,'' the Ephors " on behalf of the city." * Even their number, five, has been thought to have a close connection with the local divisions of the city — the four villages and the central fort, the TToAts or aKpoiroXis.^ The name itself (e(/)opot) has been variously explained. It means "inspectors," "overseers," and some have supposed it to mean " inspectors of the market." AVhether this be so or not, that they were from the first judicial magistrates seems shown by the fact that to the last almost their only independent function is that of civil jurisdiction. This gives a strong appearance of truth to the legend that the Ephors were originally representatives of the kings, nominated by them during the Messenian wars for the trial of judicial suits while the kings were absent in the field. ^ Thus they would have been from the first magistrates of the demos which had been growing up by the side of the old nobility. Their career bears a shadowy resemblance to that of the tribunes of the plebs at Rome, with whom they have often been compared. Like them, they grew from being the representatives of a part of the state to being the representatives of the whole state. We may compare the general guardianship of the laws which the Ephors had, as expressed in the oath which we have cited, with the similar i Arist. Pol. V. 11 = p. 1313 a ; Plut. Gleom. 10. ^ Laivs p. 692. The first saviour was the god who gave the Spartans two kings ; the second the half-divine nature who instituted the yepovata, i.e. Lycurgus. 3 Pans. iii. 14, 8. ^ See p. 15. ^ Philolog. Museum ii. pp. 50 ff. « Plut. Cleom. 10. 104 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. functions of the tribunes, and both have an extraordinary power of enforcing their decrees (coercitio). But their origin was more modest than that of the tribunes, the growth of their powers greater, their final position even more important. Aristotle^ admits that this representation of the demos may have been due to chance, and by " chance " he means that the final position of these officials in the state was not that con- templated at their institution. The Ephors were probably at first little more than delegates of the kings, and hence they must have been nominated by the kings. Later on there was no doubt popular election to the office. Aristotle describes the election to the ephoralty, like that to the Gerousia, as childish " ; hence the mode of appoint- ment to the two offices was probably the same. The essential difference lay in the qualification ; to the ephoralty any Spartan was eligible, and hence it is regarded as the democratic element in the Spartan constitution.^ We do not know the successive steps by which the functions of the ephoralty were extended, but we are told that this extension was gradual. An epoch in its history is said to have been marked by the ephoralty of a certain Asteropus "many generations after " the institution of the office.^ What the change here noticed consisted in can only be a matter of con- jecture. Some think it refers to the transference of the appointment of the Ephors from the king to the people ; others think that the powers thus gained were the right of summoning and presiding over the meetings of the popular assembly and the right of sitting at the council. That both these changes took place there is no doubt, but their epochs cannot be determined. The final result was that these popular magis- trates came to supplant the kings as the executive of the state. The dual monarchy rendered united action on the part of the kings impossible, while the board of Elders was too large and perhaps too aged to be an active executive. Hence 1 Pnl. ii. 9. - The Ephors are aTrdvTcou, iK rod orjfjLou, and oi tvx^^tes (Arist. Pol. ii. 9). When Aristotle says {Pol. iv. 9 = p. 1294 b) that one of the demo- cratic elements in the constitution is that the people " appoint to the Gerousia and share in the ephoralty," he by no means implies that the E])hors were not elected by the people. 3 Plut. I.e. The name of Chilon [circa 550) seems also to be associated with some change (Diog. Laert. 1, 3, 68), though what this was cannot be made out. V MIXED CONSTITUTIONS 105 the new power of the Ephors, which was so unlimited as to be described as a " tyrannis." ^ But it appears that, absolute as their authority might be while in power, they might yet be called to account when they had quitted office, and Aristotle seems to imply that this scrutiny was exercised by their successors.^ One of the Ephors gave his name to the year, for the tenure of office was annual. The five formed a college, in which the cttcow/xov had probably an honorary precedence. But they decided all questions by a majority of votes. ^ How important these questions were may be seen by a rapid summary of their developed powers. (1) They summon, and are apparently the only officials that can summon, the Apella, and they conduct the business in this assembly.^ (2) They sit with the council,^ and either preside over, or at least bring all important business before it. As members of this body they also share in its criminal jurisdiction.^ Almost their chief function, however, in connection with the Gerousia, must have been that of carrying out its decrees. It is this merely executive function which accounts for many of the apparently exceptional powers which the Ephors possess. When, for instance, we are told that they could summon the king before them on a charge of treason, and even imprison him, the reference is simply to a duty which they perform as officers of a criminal court."^ (3) Independently of other bodies they have the control of civil jurisdiction. Aristotle® says that "they determine suits about contracts, which they distribute amongst themselves." They act, therefore, in this respect not as a college, but individually. (4) It may possibly have been amongst their duties to call all magistrates to account after their term of office had expired. In this they must have acted only as a court of first instance, for final jurisdiction belonged to the Gerousia. But (5) their most important power was no doubt that of being the executive magistrates for foreign afi'airs — of being, ^ Plato Laws p. 692. 2 Arist. Pol. ii. 9 dd^eie 5' 6lj/ rj tCov i. § 3 The Peloponnesian Confederacy We have given a sketch of the main factors of the Spartan constitution considered from an internal point of view, with a hint, however, that this internal point of view is by itself insufficient. Her institutions are closely connected with her career as a conquering state, and we have already treated her as the mistress of Laconia, Ivlessenia, and Cynuria. Her western conquests were early consolidated, her eastern limit reached about the middle of the sixth century. In the early part of the seventh century her design seems to have been to conquer the whole of Pcloponnese ; but a great defeat inflicted by Argos at Hysiae, and the subsequent rise to power of that state, checked her progress and turned her thoughts into other channels. She now sought to make herself the centre of a powerful confederacy, the stages in the growth of which are unknown, l)ut which is found existing in full vigour in the year 510. This confederacy was brought together by conquest as well as by alliance, and a vigorous display of force was sometimes required to maintain it ; ^ but on the whole a common interest seems to have kept together this largest and most stable of the voluntary unions of the Greek world. In extent it was a union of all the Peloponnesian states with the exception of Argos and the district of Achaea,^ which were divided from Sparta as much on political as on national grounds. The permanent hegemony of Sparta, in fact, did not extent beyond the limits of the Isthmus, Megara on the north-east being her most distant ally. It is true that in the Persian Wars it rose to be a hegemony of nearly all Greece for a special purpose, and that at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War Sparta claims a kind of indefinite leadership over Dorian states outside the Peloponnese, and requests contingents from the Dorian cities of Italy and Sicily ; ^ but these are only instances of temporary union for a professed object, and the union disappeared when the object was attained. We know little or nothing about the legal basis of the ^ Two great attempts were made to ^ Thuc. ii. 9 ; Paus. vii. 6, 3. shake off her hegemony between the Pausanias {I.e.) says of the Achaeans Persian and the Peloponnesian Wars : dia rb '4pyov rb irpbs Tpoiav Aa/ceSat- the first by Tegea supported by Argos, fxoviovs AupLeh diryj^Lovi^ (7tttoTat or KXapwrai),^ if they are to be identified with the fotK-ee? of the Gortyn code, exhibit the mildest form of slavery in Greece. They were house- holders with property of their own, they could apparently intermarry with free women, and they had a subsidiary right of inheritance to their masters' estates. They possessed, however, no legal personality of their own, and before a court and in other legal acts were represented by their masters. The revenue 1 Pint. U. 2 cauer ii. 119. 3 Pol. ii. 10. ^ The oLiriTaLpoL of this code, some- times identified with the perioeci, rather suggest a class within the state — per- haps "freedmen," as thought by Mr. Roby. ^ Atlieuaeus i. p. 2G.3 f. 118 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. paid by the serfs to the state or to their own lords must, as in the case of the helots, have been a fixed one. Lastly we have the privileged class of freemen (TroAtarat), divided into the Dorian tribes of the Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanes. Within this class the noble clans (y^vrj) were distin- guished from the commons by certain special political privileges. These clans as a whole were further subdivided into smaller groups, called o-raproL, the nature of which is unknown. They may have been military, they may have been family divisions : perhaps both. But they played the same part in the state as the obes did at Sparta, for it was on them that election to the higher offices was based.^ The military character of this ruling class, necessitated by the smallness of its numbers, was strongly marked, and a Cretan city has been compared, with as much justice as Sparta, to a camp.^ The citizens met at public meals (dvSpeia), which were supported directly or in- directly by the state ; for even where, as at Lyctus, each member paid a tithe of his produce, he was at least partly reimbursed by receipts from the public revenues.^ The common tables, to which the young were admitted, had by no means merely a social character, for their organisation was directed to military training and to education of a general kind.^ Associations were encouraged of a military, political, and exclusive character. The young formed themselves into bands (dyikai) for hunting and mimic combat, the older men into clubs (eratpetat), which dined together at the public tables,^ possibly fought together in the field, formed the same party in the state, and doubtless fostered the factious life characteristic of the Cretan cities. A union of these clubs was often sufficiently powerful to impair the constitution, as is shown by the occasional abolition of the highest magistracy by the nobles who would not submit to justice.^ The political constitution consisted of magistrates, senate, ^ Baunack (die fnschrift von Gortyn iredov yap iroKiTeiav e'xere. Cf. ib. p. 128) thinks that they were military p. 626. rd^eis into which the most distinguished ^ Arist. PoL ii. 10; for Lyctus of the conquering families were divided. Dosiadas ap. Athenae. v. p. 143 a. But each of these divisions which had Ephorus ap. Strab. p. 483. Each a collective name [e.g. 6 AidaXevs avbpelov contained a iraL^ovbfios. araards Gortyu Code v. 5) may have ^ Athenae. i. p. 263 f. represented a clan. ^ This suspension of the Cosmi In Plato's Laws (i. p. 666) the was known as aKoafiLa^ Arist. PoL Athenian says to the Cretan aTpaTo- ii. 10. V MIXED CONSTITUTIONS 119 and people. The highest magistrates were the Koo-fjLOL,^ ten in number, and chosen only from the noble clans. ^ They were apparently elected by the people, but the choice must have been exceedingly limited, for, as a particular crrapros is men- tioned in connection with the koo-imol of a year,^ it has been concluded that these aristocratic corporations held office in turn, and that the popular choice each year was limited to selecting ten members from a single crra/jro?. The term of office, based as it was on a system of rotation, was probably annual. Aristotle and Ephorus^ compare the Cosmi to the Spartan Ephors. One point of resemblance was probably the gradual growth of their powers and the usurpation of the functions of the kings. Their general position in the state is the same. Like the Ephors they co-operate with and preside over the council ; they are the connecting link between the council and the people ; and they possess civil jurisdiction. But the complete extinction of the monarchy in Crete had caused them to inherit the military duties of the king as well, and command in war was one of their most distinctive functions. This unity of administration was centred in the hands of a narrow class of nobles, and there was no democratic power in the state such as that represented by the Spartan ephoralty. The adminis- trative functions of the Cosmi were shared with the council, which they consulted on the most important matters.^ In the exercise of their judicial functions they probably decided the most important civil suits themselves, while sharing criminal jurisdiction with the council.^ The council (jSujXd, perhaps too yepova-la) was elected by the people from those who had been Cosmi.*^ The numbers of this body and their precise mode of election are unknown. It does not appear that all the ex-Cosmi were admitted ; ^ but if a principle of rotation was adopted, similar to that which characterised the election of the magistrates, the people could have had but little freedom in their choice of councillors. All ^ Other forms are KoajiiovTes aud ^ Arist. I.e. ^ Gortyn Code v. 5 at 6k 6 AidaXevs (cr)ra(rrds, iKOcrfiLov oi (tijp Kv{\)\g. Baunack Lc. ap. Strab. p. 4S2, ^ Strabo I.e. ^ We are not told this, but the 76- povaia, where preserved, seems to have been invariably a criminal court. ^ Arist. Pol. ii. 10 rot's yepovras {aipovi^Tai) 4k tQv K€KOcrjLir)KdTOjv. ^ Ephorus (ap. Strab. p. 482) says oi T7]S tQu KOa/ULCOV CipXVS TJ^LUifXeUOL Kal T&Wa 86KLfJiOl KpLv6jiL€V0L. 120 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. classes of freemen were members of the assembly (dyopd), but it had, besides its elective functions, only the power of ratifying the decrees of the magistrates and council.^ According to the Gortyn code adoption and the renunciation of adoption took place before this assembly ; but here it appears only as the witness of a public act. We cannot piece together the fragments of this Cretan constitution with such success as those of the Spartan, for some of its most important factors — the modes of election of the Cosmi and Elders — are but imperfectly known. It is clearly a constitution of a much more oligarchical or dynastic type than Sparta. What we classed as the most democratic element in that state — the vast powers exercised by the freely-chosen magis- trates of the city — is here lacking; its place is filled by officials, elected it is true, but only in the narrowest manner from the noble clans. In spite of the apparent division of power the council must have been the central point of the administration, for a gathering of ex-officials is of all bodies the most likely to control a recalcitrant magistrate. The working of the constitution, and indeed its structure, must in many points have borne a resemblance to that of early Rome — especially if we consider the council to have been recruited, like the Roman senate, in an automatic manner. Here, as in early Rome, the yearly magistrate is vested with a combination of functions, military, judicial, and administrative, such as those contained in the imperium. He is nominally the controller of, really the intermediary between, senate and people ; in both states the assembly is equally dependent on the magistrate, and can express its opinion only by assent or dissent ; in both the magistrate is controlled by a council of ex-officials, in whose hands the sovereignty practically resides. But in Crete the dynastic element gained a legal recognition that was not present even in patrician Rome. The balance of this mixed constitu- tion was very much on the side of the nobility. But the democracy won in the long run. In Greece the absence of barriers is alone sufficient to account for such a change ; in Crete this absence may be illustrated by the lack of a stable democratic element in the constitution itself, and by the lack of a strong external motive, such as we found present in Sparta, for preserving the antique forms. By the third century ^ Arist. Pol. ii. 10. V MIXED CONSTITUTIONS 121 democratic institutions prevailed in certain towns,^ and seem rapidly to have become universal. The names of the old offices continued to exist, but their nature had entirely changed. Amongst offices (apxa-C) to which annual election was now the rule^ the council was probably included. The Cosmi, who must now have been elected from all the citizens, still represent the state in foreign affairs and preside in the assembly. The voice of the freemen in this assembly (a woXls) is supreme.^ ^ e.g. at Hierapytna, Carer n. 181 I. 69. 2 Polyb. vi. 46. ^ The usual formula of decrees is edo^e roLs koctjjlols Kai rq, irbXei (Gilbert ii. p. 227). Gilbert concludes from the usual absence of the /SwXd in documents its comparative unimport- ance. Its duty was probably chiefly to prepare business for the assembly CHAPTER VI DEMOCRACY In the primitive Greek state there are three powers, king, council, and people : the two first real, the last but dimly discerned. The monarchy fades first from view, and the magistracy which takes over its functions is not much more permanent as an independent authority. Even in mixed governments the collegiate principle is recognised, and olig- archies of a simple type tend to subordinate the magistrate to the council. Then comes the turn of the assembly, which, controlling or absorbing the functions of magistrate and council, claims to direct the whole administration of the state, and, to do so eff*ectually, evolves from itself the new growth of a popular judicature. It is this rule of the freeman (eAeij^epos) through his assembly and his law-courts that the Greeks called democracy. The democratic principle in its extreme form is the assertion that the mere fact of free birth (iXevOepLo) is alone sufficient to constitute a claim to all offices. It is never the claim of a majority to rule, but it is the demand that every one, whether rich or poor, high- or low-born, shall be equally repre- sented in the constitution. This is what Aristotle calls the principle of numerical equality. In itself it is the shallowest of claims unless it implies a belief in the fitness of the freeman to rule — that is, unless it is in some sense aristocratic. And indeed we find that current Greek thought made an attempt to supply an aristocratic basis for democracy. Athenagoras, the Syracusan demagogue of Thucydides, represents democracy as the " collective name for a state " in which each class finds its proper level, in which the rich are the guardians of its wealth, the wise are chosen as its advisers, and the masses only make CHAP. VI DEMOCRACY 123 the claim of being capable critics and judges of policy and conduct.^ This belief in the KpcTtKr) ovvafjus which even Aristotle believes to reside in the masses, which in large assemblies of men eliminates the error of individuals and makes the collective judgment well-nigh infallible,^ is a deeper analysis and a sounder defence than the assumed fact of nuncerical equality. But it is only sound because it is narrow, and the claim to equal repre- sentation in the state was not justified by the ground advanced. It shows that the principle of democracy was clearly one which admitted of degrees. These degrees might be determined by intention or by accident. They are determined by intention when a democracy recognises that certain other principles shall prevail in the administration of certain duties. The statement of Athenagoras has no meaning as a legal maxim unless he implies that the diflferent degrees of excellence shall be reflected in the institu- tions of the state — that appointment to offices requiring special skill shall not be made by lot, that the finance offices shall be closed to all who cannot show a certain census. But such a state is not, according to the strict definition, a pure democracy. If, on the other hand, he merely implies that the "general will" of the people will recognise these qualities and choose their possessors as leaders or adviseis, the state may be a democracy and the conflict simply be one between legal theory and moral influence. But with moral influence constitutional law is not concerned. That state only is a pure democracy in which no other principle but that of equal representation claims legal recognition. As a matter of fact such a pure democracy did not exist in Greece. In all we see certain aristocratic or oligarchic elements preserved. Yet the state was democratic where the true character of such elements was modified by subordination to the popular will, which could criticise and punish all holders of office. This is indeed the practical meaning of democracy in the Greek world ; it is a power of fearless criticism which can at any moment issue in action. A modification of this form of government may be determined by accident, when the social conditions of a nation are not sufficiently favourable to enable it to realise its own political ideals. Democracy in Greece meant personal rule exercised by each individual citizen. This was only possible in great com- 1 Thuc. vi. 39 ; cf. ii. 40. 2 ^^.^gt. Pol. iii. 11. 124 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY cHAr. mercial or imperial states ; for personal government meant leisure and therefore wealth, and also implied a residence close to the centre of affairs. Thus poverty or an agricultural life might necessitate a strongly aristocratic element in a nominal democracy. We need not linger here to classify states according as they illustrate these changes in the conception or practice of popular government. The long history of Athens which we shall sketch illustrates all these conditions and variations in turn. To this we shall add the outline of the constitutions of a few states, about whose internal history little is known, but which seem to illustrate certain particular democratic tendencies. § 1 Athens — the Classes and the State-Divisions The foundation of Athens illustrates a process characteristic of early Greek societies — that of the amalgamation of many distinct centres of government into one city ; as this amalgama- tion was conceivably accompanied by a corresponding union of many distinct nationalities, some consideration of the original elements of the population of Attica is necessary even from the point of view of constitutional history. The population of Attica was generally considered to be typically Ionian. Herodotus calls it Pelasgian, which, in this context at least, is equivalent to Ionian,^ and the Athenians claimed to be natives of the soil {avroxOov^'^), But there were many legends in Attica which conflicted with this account of their origin by recalling memories of the immigration of large branches of the population. Amongst such legends we may cite that which assigns a Thracian origin to the Eumolpidae of Eleusis and a Phoenician origin to the Gephyraei ; ^ while, according to Attic tradition, Theseus himself, the highest type of lonism, was a wanderer from Troezen in Argolis, and the last line of kings, the Melanthidae or Medontidae, came from Pylus in Messenia. More tangible evidence of intermixture 1 Her. i. 56. lb. V. 57, 62. Toepfter's dis- cussion of both these legends {Attische Oenealogie pp. 24 and 293) tends to undermine the belief in the Thracian origin of the one race or the Phoenician origin of the other. VI DEMOCRACY 125 is given by local and family cults, such as the Carian worship of the family of Isagoras and the Phoenician worship of Heracles, which was peculiarly cultivated in Attica, was found at Marathon,! and formed the bond of union of the "four villages " of the South. ^ A further trace of Eastern, possibly Hittite, worship which has been noticed is the worship of Artemis in Brauron and Munychia. These oriental influences were impressed on the latest strata of that ancient civilisation, the infancy and maturity of which may both be traced in the tombs of Spata, Menidi, and Thoricus ; though some may have been borrowed, after Attica, in consequence of the migrations, had become a refuge for the dispossessed of other lands. There is, therefore, abundant evidence that Attica in early times was subjected to varied influences ; and this to some extent helps to explain the state of its earliest political organisation, which was scattered, circumscribed, and local. The early condition of Attica, as sketched by Thucydides, was the same as that of Elis prior to its o-woLKLo-fxos in 471.^ It was inhabited by a country population gathered round separate strongholds (TrdAet?) ; and Thucydides rightly regards the local interests and habits of the Athenians of his own day as a survival from the times when these local divisions were independent organisations. He might have added a further proof from the permanence of local legends, which, as Pausanias tells us, did not always agree with the legends of the capital.^ Attica, according to this view, was composed of a number of quite independent organisations, each TrdAt? having its own court-house (irpvTaveLov) and magistrates (apxovre^), and only uniting under a central government in times of some pressing national danger. At times there was even war between these communes, as between the Eleusinians under Eumolpus and the Athenians under Erectheus ; ^ and, since some of the small inde- pendent TToAets of early Greece subdued one another,^ a part of the unity of Attica may have been the result of conquest. But the main bond of union seems to have been religion. The earliest groups of cities were associations for a religious purpose round a common centre. Some of these groups can be recovered, and ^ Diodor. iv. 39 ; Pans. i. 15, 3. suggested the details of Thucydides' 2 Pollux iv. 105. description. 3 Thuc. ii. 14-17. It has been •* Paus. i. 14, 6. thought that this union of Elis, occur- ^ Thuc. I.e. ; cf. Her. i. 30. ring in historical times, may have ^ Thuc. i. 8. 126 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. may be regarded as the starting-points of the union. Such were the rerpaTroAt? of Marathon in the North (composed of Marathon, Oenoc, Probalinthus, and Tricory thus in the South the T€TpdK0)fjbOL (two of which villages were Peiraeus and Phalerum), and a group known as the TpLKoyfioi,'^ From in- scriptions we learn the existence of the evrafcpets and /xea-oyctot, centres of worship in later times.^ But by the side of this isolated grouping we find an account of a division of Attica, made by Cecrops, into twelve states, the chief division before the time of Theseus. Philo- chorus,^ our authority for this division, gives eleven names, Cecropia, Tetrapolis, Epacria, Deceleia, Eleusis, Aphidnae, Thoricus, Brauron, Cytherus, Sphettus, and Cephisia; it has been suggested that the twelfth was Phalerum. This enu- meration is based on a division which constantly occurs in Ionian settlements. The SuySeKdirokcs was found in Aegialis (the later Achaea) in Peloponnese and in the Ionian states of Asia Minor; and this may have been the reason why the same system was invented for Attica. Invented it clearly was, for the country could hardly have been united and then divided into twelve prior to its final union. The only importance of the list is to be found in the real local unions which it indicates in certain cases, especially in those of Cecropia (the original Athens), Tetrapolis, and Eleusis. The next legendary epoch was marked by the a-vvotKurfjbo^ effected by Theseus, commemorated by the festival of the o-vvoLKta.^ Athens was made the political centre of the whole of Attica ; the people still dwelt in their old homes as before, but had now but one ttoAis, one f3ovXevT7]piov^ and one irpvTavelov, Some points in the legends concerning Theseus throw light on this work, which is ascribed to him. To the Greek mind he was much more of a historical than a mythical figure, and belonged, it was felt, to a period of late development in politics. He came to be regarded in later times as the hero of the democracy, the first creator of popular government, and the first who broke down the local influence exercised by the noble ^ Strabo p. 483. ^ Thuc. ii. 15. Besides the avvolKLa 2 PoUux Ix. ; Steph. Byz. s.v. Eu- Theseus is said to have made the TToplraL. Panathenaea a common festival (Plut. 3 For the latter cf. Ath. Pol. 21 TJies. 24). It had existed before in (ten of Cleisthenes's trittyes were r^s • the central state, its origin being fieaoyeLov). ap. Strab. p. 397. attributed to Erichthonius. 4 VI DEMOCRACY 127 clans in Attica.^ How this great union was brought about we do not know. The legends of Theseus' many struggles may show that it was not effected without violence ; ^ from the Ionian character of Athens after the union we may perhaps infer that immigrant bands of lonians united the country and turned the scale in favour of an Ionian civilisation. Attica as a united country is always represented as divided into four tribes (cfivXai). The final division into the four Ionic tribes of Geleontes (or Teleontes), Hopletes, Aegicoreis, and Argadeis lasted down to the time of Cleisthenes, and was the basis of much of the religious and political organisation of the state. It was believed, however, that these were by no means the earliest tribe-names in Attica, and there are no less than three lists which precede them. But these earlier lists are practically worthless ; they show a cross-classification of epony- mous and local names,^ and may perhaps be regarded as a later creation of Attic chroniclers or legend. The final list is at least consistent ; it was to the Greek mind a classification on a system, a division of the citizens according to /Slol or modes of life. The Hopletes are warriors, the Aegicoreis shepherds, the Argadeis artisans. Over Geleontes the learned stumbled. To Strabo they were priests, to Plutarch field-labourers. The first explanation is impossible, as no priestly caste ever existed in Attica, and both interpretations are obviously guesses.^ It is indeed difficult to see how these tribes could ever have denoted classes of the population. By the time of Solon at least they were of equal importance, for his council admitted an equal number of members from each. Again, by the side of this tribal division we have a cross-division that does denote class distinctions, that into Eupatridae, Geomori, and Demiurgi, which is attributed to Theseus ; ^ and this distribution into eOvrj or " classes " is not coincident with the division into tribes. The Eupatridae, for instance, and each of the other classes seem to have been distributed over all the tribes. ^ Theophr. CJucr. viii. (xxvi.) ire pi oXiyapxicLs : Plut. Thes. 25. ^ cf. Thnc. I.e. yevofxevos fxera rod ^vverou /cat dvvaros. e.g. the first (the division under Cecrops) is KeKpowis, Avrbx^^v, *A/craia, HapaXla : the second (the division under Cranaos) is Yipavals. 'AtOls, Mecroyaia, AiaKpis (Pollux viii. 109-111). 4 Strabo p. 383 ; Plut. Sol. 23 ; cf. Plato Tiinaeus 24. Zei)s TeXeibu is found in an Attic inscription {C.2.A. iii. 2) ; it has been thought that the word may mean "brilliant," "glancing." 5 Plut. Thes. 25. 128 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap If we surrender the view that they were class distinctions, the most probable explanation of their origin is that they were introduced from abroad, and were arbitrarily applied as the divisions of the people of Attica at a time when the meanings of the names — if these ever signified jHoi — had been wholly lost. The names themselves are genuinely Ionic, and as persistently accompany Ionian settlement as the Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanes accompany Dorian foundations. They are all found at Cyzicus, the Argadeis at Ephesus and Tomi, and the Geleontes at Teos. No time seems more suitable for their application to Attica than the period of the o-vvolkktiios. The country was united by immigrants from abroad, and the names were imposed as tribal divisions when lonism finally prevailed. If these tribes were local, they were so only in the sense that, like the phratries and the clans, they had their local religious centres — for the tribe was inherited, not acquired by residence. In fact, the division of the Athenian people into cf^parptai and y€vr], for the purposes of private life and private law, is indissolubly connected with these four Ionic tribes. Our authorities ^ represent a thoroughly systematic arrangement, each tribe being divided into three phratries, each phratry into thirty clans. The total number of clans would thus have been three hundred and sixty. But such a systematic division does not tally with the character of the clan, which was a natural unity or association based on family life. Such associations cannot be regulated numerically ; and, if such a distribution was made at any period of Athenian history, it could have been at the utmost but a selection of those clans whose religious rites the state cared to recognise, and to which, therefore, it attached those members of the community who were outside the family circles. The members of the Attic yevos appear under three names — yevvrjrat, ofxoydkaKres, and opyetjves. Of these words gennetae may have been used as the generic name including the other two ; but strictly it is equivalent to homogalactes,^ this word signifying those members who had traditions and what to them 1 Pollux viii. 11 ; Schol. in Plat. Axioch. p. 465. 2 In the Lexic. Demosth. (p. 152) it appears in a still narrower sense, of those thirty members of each clan Cov al iepojaui/ai eKdaroLS 7rpoar)KOvaai iKXtJpOUPTO, VI DEMOCRACY 129 were proofs of common descent, who were therefore the only true members of the clan sharing in all its rights, amongst them the decisive family right of inheritance in the last resort. The orgeones were those who had no such traditions, who were not full members, and were only attached to a clan as participators in its sacred rites (opyta).^ From this distinction it is evident that the clans at Athens were aristocratic institutions, and that all remained noble and exclusive. They never admitted new members except as mere participators in their rites — or rather in some of these, for it is not likely that an 6py€(ov would have been allowed to share in the inner cultus of the clan. Every Athenian citizen was, therefore, in a certain sense a member of a yevo9, but only a limited number were in the fullest sense yevvTjTaL. Thus the created citizens {h-qixoirolriToi) could never become full members, except possibly by adoption. The (f^parpLaL, on the other hand, were in historic times unions which included any and every Athenian citizen, for the juristic formula ran : " The members of the phratry must receive into their body both the homogalactes and the orgeones." ^ Every Athenian father had to bring his child for admission into the phratry at the Apaturia, and take the oath that it had been born of a citizen woman who was his wedded wife.^ The (f>paTopes voted on the question, and an adverse vote meant a denial of the legitimacy of the child, and therefore a denial of its right to citizenship. The phratry is thus the connecting link between the family and the state, for membership of this body was the deciding point in the question of citizenship. The external sign of such membership was the right to partici- pate in the two sacred cults of Apollo Patrons and Zeus Herceius, which were common to all of these associations.*^ Does this account of family associations as they existed in later times throw any light on the status of those members of the old nobility who in early Athens were known as Ev- irarptSaL ? The fact that membership of the two phratric cults was the old test for admission to the archonship,^ makes it possible that in early times the phratries with their worship were confined to the Eupatrids. This is equivalent to saying ^ Photius s.v. Photius s.v. 'EpKeios Zeus. 2 Suidas s.v. dpyeCoves. ^ The question asked of the candi- ^ Dem. c. E'ubul. § 67 rhv ud/uLi/uLov dates was el 'A7r6\XaJV iariv avrois Kal Toh (ppdropaiv opKov aarbv daTTjs 7a€vs"Epklos (Pollux viii. 85). iyyvr)T7]s avT(^ yeyevrjfx^vov cidujs." K 130 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. that they were composed wholly of homogalactes, and that the class of orgeones was of later growth. With the growth of this class, participation in these cults, which was originally a condition of admissibility to the higher offices, became a con- dition of citizenship. If the Eupatrids were originally the only phrators, a fortiori they must have been the sole members of the clans, and the exclusive possession of both phratry and clan would have made them the only full citizens of Athens. The true members of the clan, the homogalactes, may have been from time to time recruited by adoption, and have swelled to large numbers without ever becoming merged in the orgeones, who always continued outside this exclusive and select circle. But with this change the term Ewar/otSTys ceased eventually to mean " true member of a clan," and what it signified in later Athenian history cannot be precisely determined.^ Yet, if the Eupatrids were the only citizens, the members of the demos were from the first freemen ; Athens shows no trace of the clientship of Rome, and has no traditions of a gradual evolution of private and personal rights. Although the phratries came to include individuals who were only partially members of the clans, yet the connection between the two forms of association continued unimpaired, and in many cases it was a local connection ; the centre of worship of some important clan might be taken as that of a phratry, although in these cases the priests of the two associa- tions were probably distinct. The number of the phratries is not known, but certainly seems to have been greater than the traditional number twelve. A chance of adding to them was offered to Cleisthenes when he enrolled a number of new citizens, who could not be made full members of the ancient clans, but had to be made members of the phratries. This might have been done either by attaching them as (fypdropes to the existing divisions or by increasing the number of the latter. A statement of Aristotle, of rather vague import, has been quoted to show that he adopted the latter course ; ^ but it is difficult to see how the phratries could be increased without either increasing the number of the clans, or disturbing the ^ The term came to denote such a ^ Arist. Pol. vi. 4 = p. 1319 b. The narrow class, that Toepffer {Attische passage in the Ath. Pol. (21) only Genealogie p. 175) thinks that there states that Cleisthenes did not disturb was a special genos of Eupatridae at the existing relations of individuals to Athens. the y^yj and (pparpiai. VI DEMOCRACY 131 existing connection between a particular phratry and a clan, and it is more probable that their original number remained unaltered. As may be gathered from the position of the phratry in the state, citizenship at Athens was, as a rule, hereditary. It was, indeed, possible to increase the citizen body by a vote of the people, but the privilege was jealously guarded ; rash proposals for admission were punished by the laws, and Solon laid down the conditions that no foreigners should be received but those who had been driven from their country into perpetual exile, or those who, for the sake of practising a trade, had transferred themselves and all their family to Athens.^ But the hereditary principle itself admitted of variations, and in Greek states generally the particular qualification by birth depended partly on the nature of the constitution, partly on the numbers of the population.^ At Athens it fluctuated considerably. The main principle adhered to was that the union from which the child was sprung must be one recognised by the state ; this was usually legitimate marriage with a wife (yi'vr;), either through betrothal by a parent or guardian (iyyvrjcns), or through assign- ment by a magistrate (eVtSiKao-ta) ; ^ but the quasi-polygamous customs of the fourth century placed on the same level legiti- mate cohabitation with a concubine (TraAAa/vt's),^ probably when it had been preceded by formal betrothal. Both these conditions are included in the oath for admission into the phratry, the primary condition of citizenship. The ancient formula also demands the possession of citizen rights by both parents. But the development which Aristotle traces began at an early period in Athens, assisted no doubt by the difficulties of pre- serving an accurate register in a large state ; for it was not easy, in ancient communities where there were so many grades of political status and where birth, descent, and legal marriage had to be taken into account, to prevent the entrance of ^ Plut. Sol. 24. maternity of the child was certain, its 2 Arist. Pol. iii. 5. In this passage paternity might be doubtful, it may be noticed that greater stress is ^ In the latter case, where the laid on the citizenship of the motlier heiress was a ward in chancery, than on that of the father. The child Gilbert remarks that formal iyyv-qais is regarded as belonging naturally to must have taken place through the the mother; and where the condition Archon, for the formula (p. 129) implies of legitimate marriage was not taken it. into account, as it usually could not Isaeus in her. Philocicm. § 21 ; be if one parent was a foreigner, the Dem. c. Boeot. § 40. 132 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap unqualified names. We find difficulties as early as the time of Peisistratus/ and the overthrow of the tyranny was followed by a scrutiny of the list. But the old conditions came again to be disregarded, and were revived by Pericles in 45 1.^ He is said to have passed a measure limiting citizenship to those who were born of two Athenian parents, with the result that nearly five thousand citizens were disfranchised. This would have been a revolution had it been effected by a new law with retrospective force. It was probably a mere scrutiny of the list, permitted by a decree of the people, which resulted in the removal of names improperly registered. These renewed quali- fications were again neglected, or dropped by legal enactment, during the Peloponnesian War, partly no doubt through the necessity of recruiting the population, partly perhaps through the influence of the Athenian Empire, which resulted in freer intercourse with other Greek states and a corresponding extension of the right of €7rtya/xta. With the loss of empire the raison d'etre of this extension disappeared. The old conditions were revived, at first with retrospective force, in the archonship of Eucleides (403). But the retrospective action of the law was felt to be too severe : this was removed, and it became simply prospective.^ At the close of the fourth century the old conditions of citizenship were still in force. The classes that stood outside the phratries had no part in the constitution ; but without one of these classes the democratic constitution, at least in its final form, would not have been possible. The four hundred thousand Athenian slaves of the fifth and fourth centuries were the " necessary condition " of Athenian development. They were the " living instruments " of the household and the farm, they worked for the wealthy contractor in the mines, they manned the merchant fleet, and they sometimes formed a class of country tenants (ol x^/ots olKovvTes) who paid, like the helot, a fixed proportion of the produce to their leisured masters in the city. Socially they differed little from the poorer classes of citizens, and the democratic atmosphere of Athens had given them a freedom of demeanour and of speech which found few parallels in Greece.'^ ^ Ath. Pol. 13. Tlie Diacrii, Peisis- ^ Carystius ap. Atheiiae. xi. p. 577 tratus' followers, were joined by oi t(? c. ; Schol. in Aesch. c. Timarch. § 39. ^77 Kadapol dia rbv v\rj which he commanded ^ Arist. Pol. vi. 4 = p. 1319 b ; Ath. sents Cleisthenes as making citizens of Pol. 21. actual slaves. 2 Arist. Pol. iii. 2 iroWovs yap ^ ib. vi. 4 = p. 1319 b. i Lolling) Kai rovs drjfjLovs KareveLfie is ras (pvXds. Polemo (of the end of the third or beginning of the second century) gave the number as 174 (Strabo p. 396). If we exclude duplicates (such as a " lower " corresponding to an "upper" Lamptrae), the number of known names is 168 (Gelzer in Her- mann's Stcvatsalt. pp. 797 IF.). Ath. PoL U, s ib. VI DEMOCRACY 161 from the state for ten years of an unwelcome citizen by a decree of the people, which, however, did not entail the loss of honour, rights, or property. The primary motive for its introduction at Athens, as subsequently at Syracuse, was the avoidance of tyranny. It was, therefore, meant to be employed when one man's influence became so great as to threaten the existence of the constitution ; it was an effectual way of showing that there was an overwhelming majority against him, and a mode of frustrating his possible designs w^ithout having to resort to violence and bloodshed. But it also served the important secondary purpose of producing a national consciousness and sustaining an interest in the government, as the careful nature of the procedure adopted forced the people to continuous re- flection on the political situation. The ecclesia had first to determine whether a resort to ostracism was advisable, and on this occasion the whole political situation would necessarily be discussed. If the resolution was in the affirmative, the people met again and voted by tribes, under the presidency of the nine Archons and the council,^ recording on tablets the names of the men whom they individually destined for exile. A bare majority was sufficient to effect it, but at this second stage six thousand votes had to be recorded in all.^ Considering the frailty of Greek constitutional governments, and the recent experience of Athens in the time of Cleisthenes, the institu- tion was a useful one ; but it was evidently open to abuse. Ostracism might be worked by a powerful party to banish a legitimate constitutional leader. It was a combination of this kind — one resulting from the mutual fears of party leaders — that resulted in the banishment of the possibly objectionable but politically harmless Hyperbolus in 417;^ and this abuse caused the downfall of the institution at Athens. Its abstract justification is hardly on a level with its utility, and Aristotle rightly treats ostracism as a "tyrannical" act, as an exercise of sheer force and a policy comparable to that pursued by imperial states, of crushing all likely opposition by force of arms ; yet he admits that, on the presumption that the ex- isting form of the state is worth maintaining, it is a necessary ^ Append. Photii (Porsoii) p. 675. votes had to be recorded in all in the 2 It is improbable that 6000 votes cases of vofioi eir dvdpl {primlegia)^ had to be recorded against a single amongst which ostracism would fall. man for ostracism to be effective. It ^ Time. viii. 73. was a principle of Attic law that 6000 M 162 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. assertion of that community's principle of justice, a means of restoring symmetry to the state when it has become un- symmetrical through the abnormal growth of one of its members.^ It is somewhat easier to form a general estimate of Cleisthenes' work than it was of Solon's, for his aims were simpler. To ancient writers he sometimes appeared the creator of the democracy ; ^ his restoration of popular govern- ment after the despotism of the Peisistratidae might have partly suggested the title,^ but it is sometimes used with a deeper meaning which a general review of Cleisthenes' con- stitutional arrangements makes it at first sight hard to justify ; for, so far as positive reforms went, they were no great advance on the Solonian. The Areiopagus still remained a power, the magistracy was still limited to the landed class, and we hear of no development of the popular judicature. Half a century later "the aristocracy of Cleisthenes" was on the lips of con- servative statesmen who wished to stem the democratic reforms of Pericles;* and on the establishment of the oligarchy of 411, a proposal was mooted to examine into the laws of Cleisthenes as suited to the existing exigencies of the state.^ His claim as a reformer rests on the abolition of certain conditions which were unfavourable to any form of established government. The break-up of the clan -organisation, the fresh local unions which banished old associations and substituted new ones in their place, and the introduction of ostracism, were all means of getting rid of disturbing causes. Thus the creations of Cleisthenes were permanent, and were the starting-point for all further development. The Cleisthenean constitution was the unalterable basis on which the future ultra -democratic changes rested, and in this sense, but in this sense only, Cleisthenes was the founder of the Athenian democracy. We will now see how this ultimate end was reached. Between the times of Cleisthenes and Pericles, Athens had passed through the most eventful period of her history. The Persians had been fought and conquered, and the Athenian Empire had been created. The influence of the Persian War in raising the aspirations of the demos is dwelt on by Aristotle,^ ^ Arist. Pol. iii. 13. 2 Her. V. 69 ; vi. 131. 3 Ath, Pol. 20. 4 Plut. Cim. 15. 5 Ath. Pol. 29. 6 Pol. V. 4 = p. 1304 a. VI DEMOCRACY 163 but the influence of the empire was equally great. From 454, when the treasury of the league was removed from Delos, Athens became a " tyrant city," and all Athenians came to feel an equal interest in the preservation of the empire which they had won and which was a source both of honour and of profit. The Periclean idea, as expressed by Thucydides, is that the citizens of Athens, resting on the empire as their material basis, should form an ideal of intellectual and political development for the Greek world, that the individual Athenian should be a type of intellectual many-sidedness and varied political activity. Such an ideal as this left no room for an aristocracy within Athens, and hence the tendency of political development within the state was necessarily democratic. The guidance of the Areiopagus had been swept away, and grave duties now devolved on the popular bodies. The ecclesia, which had of old pronounced on matters of foreign policy, on peace and war, had now to decide the most momentous questions of imperial administration. To the dicasteries had to be brought important cases from the subject allies, such cases as must come under the cognisance of an imperial state. This made their business infinitely larger, and rendered it necessary to increase the attendance at these courts and to properly subdivide their functions. When we take all this into consideration, it does not surprise us to learn that the chief change connected with the name of Pericles was the introduction of payment for state- services. Our authorities are inclined to regard this change made by Pericles as mere bribery — an effort to counteract the influence of his wealthier rival Cimon by "giving the masses their own property."^ He taught the people, Greek critics said, to live ofl" the state, which practically meant living off" the temporary supremacy of Athens, instead of subsisting on their own industry. A possible element of truth in these charges is that the reforms of Pericles may to some extent have been directed by the necessities of his political position ; but the question of payment admits of another explanation, which shows it to be necessarily connected with a political ideal such as that which he pursued. Payment for administrative services was clearly a necessity of a true democratic constitution, as ancient states understood democracy. A modern democracy may tolerate the expression of the people's will through representatives, ^ diddvat ToTs ttoWoTs tcl avrCov [Ath. Pol. 27) ; cf. Plut. Per. 9. 164 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. who may be willing and able to perform their administrative duties gratuitously. But to the Greek such a government was aristocratic. Since popular government meant personal government on the part of the demos, and such personal government, which implied the political education of the masses, was part of the Periclean ideal, to secure services from the poorer citizens some compensation for the loss of time was necessary, and the numerical equality which democracy demands would have been a mere fiction had not these services been secured by pay. This is the extreme theory of the system of payment, the theory as expressed in the institutions of the period succeeding the Peloponnesian War. The system inaugurated by Pericles fell far short of this. He introduced pay only for the courts ^ — that is, only for a portion of the people engaged in an occupation which absorbed all their time and attention. Considering the circumstances of the time this was clearly a necessity, for the heliaea was now organised and subdivided and perhaps for the first time assumed the form of courts sitting permanently, and the increase of business, due to the formation of the empire, rendered an increase of attendance necessary. Again, the pay as given by Pericles was not a real compensation for services. The SLKacmKhs [mutOos seems origin- ally to have been only one obol per day,^ and, though it was afterwards raised to three, the mention of the rptw/JoAov by Aristophanes in connection with Cleon's name^ renders it probable that it was that statesman, the exaggerator of all Periclean tendencies, who was responsible for its introduction. Three obols was probably full compensation for services and as much as could be earned in an ordinary trade."* But the one obol introduced by Pericles must be looked on rather as an ecftoSiov — a means of ensuring country people the power of getting to Athens and performing their services at all. The system as adopted by its first exponent was, therefore, a very mild one ; its importance was due to its recognition of the true democratic principle, — that services could be expected from all the citizens only on the condition of the introduction of some such measure.^ The council of five hundred came also to be 1 Arist. Pol. ii. 12 ; Ath. Pol. 27. ^ Aristoph. Clouds 863. 3 Knights 255 ; cf. Wasps 595. * It was the rate of pay for the fleet and half the rate for the Athenian hoplites on foreign service. ^ In Plato's G^or^za5(p.515E) we find that it was Pericles who first made the Athenians "idle and talkative" (dpyol Kal XctXoi), which means (interpreted VI DEMOCRACY 165 paid — we do not know when, but probably at an early period,^ — for this was a permanent body sitting all the year round, and it was as necessary for its members to receive payment as it was for the dicasts. The rate was a drachma a day for all days except festivals.^ The pay for attendance at the ecclesia (/xto-^bs iKKXrjo-Lao-TL- Kos) was a much more sweeping measure. It was not introduced until after the Peloponnesian War by Agyrrhius, who became a prominent politician about the year 395. The amount was at first one obol, which was then raised by a certain Heracleides to two, and afterwards by Agyrrhius again to three obols.^ This payment was a consequence of the loss of the empire and the consequent lack of interest in public business, for we are told that it was considered necessary to ensure a sufficient attendance of the masses, and a chance reference, dating probably from 392, informs us that the attendance became larger when the pay had been raised to three obols.^ This pay- ment for the ecclesia was much less necessary than that for the other bodies, for the assembly met less frequently and its sittings were less prolonged. There is, in fact, some absurdity involved in the idea of a whole people paying itself for attend- ance on public business, and the payment may have been in the nature of a fine, those present gaining what those who were absent lost. But the money may have been drawn largely from burdens laid upon the rich ; the institution seems to have been a desperate effort to keep up tho old traditions and retain the balance of classes, and this efi'ort pushed up the rate at the close of the fourth century to a drachma a day.^ Other measures connected with the leaders of this period are so-called bribes in the shape of state-distributions to the people (Siavo/xat or StaSocrets). This custom was established long before the time of Pericles, for the surplus revenue from the mines of Laurium had in early days been so divided.^ The later distri- butions consisted of corn-doles, land-assignments in the form of into Pericleaii language) that they had G9) mentions this ixiados lor the year the ty irpo^ovXevaaaap Hell. vii. 1, 1-14. ttjj^ povXrjv i^eveyKeiv is rov dvfJiov irepl 2 The formula runs 5^5ox^at (or '^t^- ^ Hicks n. 56. VI DEMOCRACY 171 of a psephism or the initiator of a law, and the mover was liable to prosecution within the limit of a year, if his measure was invalid either in matter or in form. A psephism was invalid in form if it had not been submitted to the judgment of the council, or if it was one of those bills which, like the raising of a property - tax, required as a preliminary to its promulgation a decree of exemption {aSeia) which had not been gained ; it was invalid in contents if it was in conflict with an existing law. The invalidity of laws rested chiefly on the question of form ; neglect of proper promulgation or of the other rules which regulated the introduction of new laws might expose a would-be legislator to this indictment.^ Attempts on the part of the ecclesia to assume a legislative power and on the part of individuals to tamper with the constitution were thus frustrated. Since there was no proper ministry at Athens holding office for a term of years and responsible for all im- portant measures, the introduction of the ypacf^rj irapavoinDv was necessary to make the unofficial orator feel the responsibility of his position, and was the means by which the assembly protected itself from the appalling consequences that might follow the extreme freedom of initiative permitted in that body. It has, indeed, been thought that a law at least might be assailed " on the vague charge of inexpediency," and that the indictment lay against legislation which was not unconstitutional but which subsequent reflection proved to be bad.^ It is not im- possible that the ever -increasing danger threatened by the irresponsible adviser may have forced the Athenians even to this stage of iniquitous precaution, but it is unlikely that the principle found a place in the original theory of this indictment. There were, however, limits to the Graphe and precautions against its being used as a mere party weapon. After the expiration of a year the mover was free from criminal prosecu- tion, and the law or psephism alone could be assailed, while the prosecutor who did not obtain one-fifth of the votes was fined and lost the right of bringing such indictments in the future. There was therefore, properly speaking, no strictly legis- ^ lu one rare case we find a conflict from the day on which they were of the contents of laws. Tiniocrates passed (Dera. c. Tim. §§ 43, 73). proposed a law of liis own with retro- But this too is resolvable into a spective action, without previously re- question of form, pealing a law which enacted that - Wayte (Dem. c. Androt. and c. measures should come into operation Timocr. p. xxxv.) 172 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. lative sovereign at Athens, no one body whose mandate had immediately the force of law ; for the Athenian, like the Greek citizen generally, conceived himself to be living under the impersonal sovereignty of law itself. Yet, although progressive legislation was an idea which had little attraction for a Greek, revision and amendment were indispensable, and there was a means, at once safe, rapid, and scientific, of effecting a change in the laws at Athens. The procedure of early times is indeed lost to us, and we know the process of legislation only in its final stage. Two normal modes of correcting the laws were ultimately developed — one depending on the initiative of private individuals, the other on that of officials whose duty was revision. The first mode was initiated in the ecclesia. At annual intervals the question was put to the vote whether the laws should be confirmed as they stood or be revised, and for this purpose they were submitted in groups to the people.^ If a revision of one or more groups was voted for, provision was taken for the appointment of vo/xo^erat by the ecclesia. Mean- while individuals who wished to suggest changes had to ensure the proper publication of their amendments, while the assembly appointed five public advocates (o-vvi-jyopoL) to argue in defence of the laws assailed. The nomothetae, the final ratifying authority to which the respective claims of the new and the old measures were to be submitted, were not a permanent body, but were on each occasion appointed by lot from the heliaea, their numbers varying from five hundred to a thousand, probably according to the importance of the laws under consideration. They were organised as a miniature ecclesia with an epistates and proedri of their own, and their vote, whether given in favour of the existing measure or of the new proposal, was final. The second mode (the 8i6p6w(TL<; tcjv vo/xwv) difi'ers from the first only in the respect that this machinery was set in motion by the thesmothetae of the year. It was their annual duty to examine the whole code of laws and to see if there were any which were contradictory or out of date.^ Discoveries of this kind were published with amendments suggested by these officials, and the alternatives submitted, as in the former case, to the judgment of nomothetae appointed by the ecclesia. Legislation, therefore, was work of co-operation between the two great popular bodies, the ecclesia and the heliaea. But, 1 Dem. c. Timocr. §§ 20 ff. 2 Aesch. c. Ctes. § 38. DEMOCRACY 173 though hampered in its legislative action, the administrative powers of the assembly were as wide as they well could be.^ It declared war and made peace, received envoys introduced to it by the council, appointed ambassadors, and sanctioned com- mercial relations with foreign states. It had the supreme ratifying authority in all matters aflfecting revenues and the administration of finance, even venturing at times on such extreme measures as the creation of monopolies ^ and the depreciation of the coinage.^ It professed to control the state religion and to sanction the admission of foreign gods into the Attic Pantheon, until the liberalism of the democracy, combined with the desire for divine protection of every kind, had made of Athens a very Egypt of strange divinities.^ It conferred citizen- ship and the right of intermarriage on foreigners, immunity on states or kings, and rewards and honours, such as maintenance in the Prytaneium, on its benefactors. There is nothing surprising in the exercise of powers of a general or only occasionally recurring character by a body constituted like the Athenian ecclesia. What may surprise us is the minute attention it paid to the details of administration, typical instances of which may best be found in its control of the highest officials of the state in a department which a popular body has peculiar difficulty in administering — that of foreign policy. The ecclesia exercised a minute supervision over the conduct of generals engaged on a foreign campaign, and the free criticism of their actions by the assembly was often a prelude to prosecution before a court of law. The independent powers of commanders on foreign expeditions do not appear to have been very clearly defined, and the difficulty of the position of the strategi was due to the fact that no clear line was drawn between what they might and what they might not do. The jealous demos might even censure them for granting unauthorised terms to a town which they had captured ; ^ and generals seem occasionally to have been convicted for carrying out the literal ^ Ou these see Schomann de Comitiis Atheniensium pp. 281-338. 2 [Arist.] Oecon. ii. 37. 3 Aristoph. Ecdes. 816 ff. * Aristoph. ap. Atheiiae. ix. p. 372 b. [Fragm. 476 Dindorf) A:(ryvirTov avTUJv Tr}u irdXtv ireiroLriKas dvT 'Adrj- vQp. It was the ecclesia that deified Alexander (Ael. Var. Hist. 5, 12) and paid divine honours to Demetrius Poliorcetes (Pint. Demetr, 10). 5 Thuc. ii. 70 (the surrender of Potidaea in the winter of 430) 'Adrji'aToL Tovs (TTpar7]yovs iirrfTLaaavTo 6tl dveu 174 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. instructions and not the implied wishes of the people.^ For, though it was the courts that condemned, this condemnation was but the final expression of the criticism of the assembly. The supposed limitations of the ordinary commander are best illustrated by the fact that, for distant or important expeditions, generals were sometimes appointed with autocratic powers (o-r/oa- T7]yoi avTOKpdropes) who were not expected to refer the details of administration to the home government — that is, to the council and the ecclesia. If patriotism or strong political feeling prompted a general in the field to adopt an independent line of action, he was playing a somewhat uneven game. Success did not always mean condonation, for it might not coincide with the political views of the majority for the time, while failure meant treason and death. When the Thebans freed themselves from their Spartan garrison in 379, two generals co-operated with them from the Athenian frontier ; they were successful but condemned. When Diopeithes, the Athenian general in the Chersonese, made a wanton and unauthorised attack in 342 on the Macedonian possession of Thrace, his action was justified by the people, and the war which ended with Chaeroneia was the result. A strong government can aff'ord to be capricious. Its absence of principle does not render it assailable from within, and may enable it to accept the results of success from without. The authority of the ecclesia, great as it was, would have been very incomplete had it not been supplemented by that of the parallel corporation of the heliaea. This ranks with the council as one of the sworn, responsible, and (for foreign purposes) representative bodies of the Athenian state.^ It was composed nominally of all full Athenian citizens over thirty years of age ; but, since service appears to have been voluntary, it would practically have consisted of those who, having taken the heliastic oath,^ had given in their names to the nine Archons and been declared duly qualified for the service. Their number in the fifth century appears to have been unfixed, and the ^ As e.g. in the condemnation of the generals of the Sicilian expedition of 425 (Thuc. iv. 65). These generals seem to have acted within their in- structions {lb. iii. 115), but they had not accomplished the unexpressed object of conquering Sicily. 2 e.g. the treaty with Chalcis (Hicks n. 28) begins AiSyvrjros elire' Kara rdde Tov opKov ofibaoLL ' AdrjvaLwv ttjp jBovXrjv Kai Toifs dLKaards. All Athenian citizens took the heliastic oath (Harpocrat. s.v. Ardettus). VI DEMOCRACY 175 traditional six thousand, if not an exaggeration,^ was probably a nominal number. For the extreme improbability has been pointed out of so many duly-qualified citizens serving in the same year.^ The list must have excluded the magistrates, the council of five hundred, and all citizens who did not wish to serve, since the duty was not compulsory. Aristophanes' references would lead us to suppose that the jurors were usually elderly, and indeed the post, though a convenient retiring pension for an old man, would not be a good investment for the energy of a young one. In the fourth century we find the heliasts divided into ten panels (the number having no connection with the tribes), and these panels, as well as their places of meeting, were called " dicasteries." It is generally supposed that they were composed of five hundred jurors each, with one thousand as an added and supplementary number. But, if the full number was not six thousand, different panels must have been partly composed, as Frankel has shown, of the same individuals — a practice for which there is direct evidence.^ These dicasteries were numbered A to K, and each heliast was presented with a ticket which contained the number of his panel and his own name and deme. The court in which each section had to sit for the day was assigned by lot, but every case was not tried by a complete section. Some were heard before parts of sections, others before several sections combined, the numbers varying from 200 to 2500.^ These panels may doubt- less be dated back to the fifth century, and form the final development of the right of appeal which Solon gave to the people. As these appeals had been made indifferently in civil and criminal cases, so the final jurisdiction of the courts covered both. The distinction between the civil or private law and the criminal as a part of the public law, though not strongly marked in theory, was expressed by a difi'erence of procedure and a difi'erence of name. The characteristics of private suits (3iKaL iSiaL or SiKai simply) were that they could be brought only by the interested party, that the compensation recovered belonged ^ Aristophanes ( Wasps 660) gives it diravrcs oi diKa^ovres dafxa aireijdovcriv as an approximate, the Ath. Pol. (24) €v iroXXols yeypacpdai ypdjuL/maaiv. as a round number. ^ Qg^^Q ^^as, liowever, taken that the 2 Frankel die Attische Geschwomen- number should always be an odd one, gerichte. . to avoid equality of votes. 3 Aristoph. Plut. 1166 oi^K erbs 176 OUTLINES OF GREEK CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY chap. to the plaintiff, that court fees (Trpvraveia) were deposited as a surety, and that if the plaintiff threw up the action he was not punished for his retirement from the case. In public suits on the other hand (SiKai 8r]fx6orLaL or ypac^at), which covered criminal cases, such as serious offences against the person and offences against the state, the charge could be brought by any full Athenian citizen and the compensation, if in money, belonged to, or, if it took the form of punishment, was inflicted by, the state. No court fees were deposited, and if the prosecutor gave up the charge or did not get one-fifth of the votes, he was fined a thousand drachmae and lost the power of bringing other similar charges in the future. In the heliastic oath the jurors swore to give their decisions according to the laws and decrees in force ; ^ but there was little guarantee that they knew the law, and the circumstances were adverse to their respecting it when known. It is true that Athens, as perhaps most Greek states, took care to sim- plify her law as much as possible by constant revision, and the process of codification and publication which was ever going on enabled her to dispense with a professional class of lawyers. But the theory that every Athenian citizen knew the whole law was hardly a justifiable corollary from this practice, or a sufficient ground for dispensing with a class of skilled inter- preters. The dicasts did not, like the Eoman judices in criminal trials and like the modern jurymen, decide on questions of fact under the legal guidance of a judge. The only guidance they had was that of interested parties quoting the law on either side. Most of their verdicts must have been mere decisions in equity, on what seemed to them the merits of the case ; and appeals to an Athenian jury must have been at the best appeals to abstract considerations of justice, at the worst to personal passions and prejudices. There was no power which could revise their sentences ; a new trial might be granted by the legal fiction of false evidence having been tendered in the first {Blktj xj/evSofjiapTvpLiov), but most of the cases before these courts were of the nature of SUaL avroreXeis, final and irrevocable. If we add to all this the fact that the dicasts were the only irre- sponsible officials at Athens, the great powers which they wielded are manifest and must have been only too clearly felt ^ Dem. c. Timocr. p. 746 xp-qcpLov- aixara rod drj/jLov rod ^Adrjvaluy Kal jULai Kara tovs uSfiovs Kal ra \//7}