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est-a noble object! but, unhappily, from the weakness of our nature, utterly inadequate to the desires and passions of the great mass of a people. The insipid and inactive life of the Spartans was accordingly a perpetual subject of raillery to the rest of the Greeks, and to none more than to the busy, restless, and volatile Athenians. To this purpose Elian mentions a witticism of Alcibiades, when some one was vaunting to him the contempt which the Lacedæmonians had for death: It is no wonder," said he, "since it relieves them from the heavy burden of an idle and stupid life."

From the military character, however, of this people, the small extent of their territory, and the wise precautions of their lawgiver for preventing all extension of its limits, the constitution of this republic possessed a very strong principle of duration. We shall see that in reality it subsisted much longer without any important revolution than any other of the states of Greece.

The first material change, however, upon the system of Lycurgus was made within 130 years of his own time, by the introduction of a new magistracy, under the name, of the Ephori. Theopompus, one of the kings, jealous of the power of the senate, which was generally supported by the concurring judgment of the people, devised a plan for influencing their resolutions, by giving them a set of officers of their own body. These officers, termed Ephori, were five in number; they were elected by the people, and enjoyed a similar but a higher power than that of the tribunes of he people at Rome. Instituted at first to form an equipoise between the senate and people, they gradually usurped a paramount power in the state. They could, by their own authority, expel or degrade the senators, and even punish them capitally for any offence which they might interpret into a state crime. The kings themselves were under their control, and the Ephori had a right to fine them and put them in arrest; a dangerous prerogative, which it was easy to see would never stop short of absolute power; and accordingly they assumed at length the function of deposing and putting the kings to death. These, on the other hand, still nominally the chief magistrates, plotted against the power and persons of the Ephori; they bribed, deposed, and murdered them. Thus in the latter periods of the Spartan commonwealth, instead of that equal balance established by the original plan of Lycurgus, there was between the different branches of this constitution a perpetual contention for superiority, the continual source of faction and disorder. Most of the internal causes which in time operated to the decline and fall of the Spartan government, particularly to be found 'n those institutions which led to the corruption of manners, have been already noticed. These silently undermined this political fabric; while other causes external of its constitution were the more direct and immediate causes of its destruction. These shall

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be opened in their order, while we pursue the general outlines of the national history; after a brief delineation of the rival republic of Athens, to which we proceed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER X.

THE REPUBLIC OF ATHENS Revolution in the States of Attica- Regal Government abolished-perpetual Archons - Draco-Solon- His Institutions - Senate - Areopagus re-established Power of the Popular Assemblies -Laws- Ostracism-Appeal from all Courts to the People-Manners-Revenue Grecian History continued, Pisistratus, Hippias, and Hipparchus Alcmæonidæ.

I HAVE, in a former chapter, observed that Greece, in the early part of her history, probably owed some of her greatest political revolutions to her first colonies. The prosperity which the mother country saw her children enjoy in their new settlements, while she herself was yet groaning under the worst of all servitude, that of a bad government, naturally inspired an eager wish to attain if possible a similar freedom of constitution. The domestic disorders of Attica, in particular, had grown to a great height. The union of its states by Theseus was but a forced league of association it was the consequence of the subordinate cities being involved in frequent quarrels, and hence courting the aid of the principal, that the latter thus acquired a sort of dominion over the whole of them. To bind these firmly together it was necessary to annihilate in the smaller states this sense of dependence on the principal; to make them all parts of the same body, by abolishing their particular magistracies, bringing about a submission to the same general magistrates, and giving them a common system of laws. Theseus, and his immediate successor, had attempted this, but were unequal to the task. The disorders which arose from the tyranny of some of those princes effected an union which their slender political talents had labored in vain to accomplish; but an union hostile to their powers, which had for its end the abolition of the regal office. Codrus, the last of the kings, was, as we have seen, a true patriot, and worthy to reign; but he having sacrificed his own life to save his country, the Athenians, dreading a renewal of their former oppression, determined to make the trial of a new constitution. They were ignorant, however, of the best means of obtaining what they desired. They abolished the title

of king, while the magistrates whom they put in his place enjoyed almost the same authority. From respect to the memory of Codrus, they appointed his son Medon chief magistrate, with the title of archon or commander. They conferred on him the office for life, and even continued it hereditary in his family; so that the Athenian republic was governed for 331 years by a succession of perpetual archons of the family of Codrus. Of the difference between their authority and that of the former kings, historians have given us no distinct idea. Some writers, indeed, tell us, in general terms, that the perpetual archons were accountable to the people for their conduct,-a control which the kings did not acknowledge-but as to the precise nature of the Athenian government at this time, we are, on the whole, extremely ignorant.

This form, however, of a monarchy in all its essentials, though without the name, became in the end equally grievous as that which had preceded it. The perpetual archonship_was abolished, and the office was now conferred for ten years. Even this duration was found repugnant to the prevailing spirit of democracy; and after submitting for a few years to the decennial archonship, they reduced the term to a single year, and appointed nine magistrates with equal authority. Of these the chief was called by preeminence the archon, and, like the Roman consuls, gave his name to the current year in the state annals. The second archon had the title of king, (Buoikeus,) and was the head of the religion of the state; the third was termed the polemarch, from his function of regulating all military affairs. The remaining six archons were called thesmothetai, and held the office of judges in the civil courts of the republic. The whole body of nine formed the supreme council of the state.

Meantime the constitution was by no means strictly defined. The laws framed during the regal government, and accommodated to that despotic authority, were quite unsuitable to the democratic spirit now become predominant; and no attempts had yet been made for their alteration or improvement. The limited power of the annual magistrates was insufficient to check those factions and disorders which a yearly returning election kept constantly alive in the mass of the people.

A virtuous citizen of the name of Draco, whose eminent qualities had raised him to the dignity of chief archon, was prompted to attempt a reform, by introducing a code of laws* which might operate as a restraint on all orders of the state. Presuming that a desperate disease requires a violent remedy, and probably influenced by the austerity of his own temper, the penal laws which he framed made no distinction of offences, but punished all equally

*There were probably no written laws at Athens before those of Draco.Aul. Gell. i. 1., c. 18.

with death. The genius of Draco was evidently unequal to the task he had undertaken: he made some changes of form without the essence. He weakened, it is said, the authority of the Areopagus, and instituted a new tribunal, of which the judges were terined ephetai, but which was of no duration; and the extreme severity of his laws defeated their own object. They were rarely executed, and fell at length into complete disuse.

In the 3d year of the 46th Olympiad, and 594 years before the Christian era, Solon, a noble Athenian, of the posterity of Codrus, attained the dignity of archon, and was solemnly intrusted by his countrymen with the high power of new modelling the state, and framing for the Athenians a complete digest of civil laws. Solon was a man of extensive knowledge, a virtuous man, and a true patriot; but he seems to have been deficient in that strength of mind and intrepidity of nature which are absolutely necessary for the reformation of a corrupted government. His disposition was too placid and too temporizing. He ained not at changing the character of his people, nor did he at all attempt to introduce that equality among the citizens so essential to the constitution of a democracy. Accommodating himself to the prevailing passions of men, rather than endeavoring to correct them, his laws, as he said himself, were not the best possible, but the best which the Athenians were capable of receiving.*

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The people claimed the chief power in the state-Solon gave it them. The rich wanted offices and dignities-the system of Solon accommodated them to the utmost of their wishes. He divided the whole citizens into four classes. In the three former were the richer citizens, according to their different degrees of wealth. The first class consisted of those who were worth 500 medimni of grain, or as many measures of oil; the medimus, according to Arbuthnot's tables of weights and measures, was somewhat more than four English pecks. The second class consisted of those who were worth 300 medimni, and who were able to furnish a horse in time of war. The third class comprehended. 'such as had 200 medimni; and the fourth class consisted of all the rest of the citizens. All the dignities and offices of the commonwealth were supplied out of the three first classes, or the wealthy citizens; but the fourth, which was much more numerous than all the other three, had their right of suffrage in the Ecclesia, public assemblies, where the whole important business of the state was canvassed and determined. The framing of laws, the election of magistrates, the making war or peace, the forming treaties and alliances, and the regulation of all that regarded either religion or civil policy, were debated and decreed in the public assemblies;

* Plutarch's Life of Solon.

where the fourth class, from their vast superiority of numbers, carried every question, and of course had supreme rule. In these assemblies every citizen above fifty years of age had the privilege of haranguing.*

To counteract the mischief of a government entirely in the hands of the people, and to regulate in some measure the proceedings of those assemblies, necessarily tumultuous and undecisive, Solon instituted a senate of 400 members, chosen from among the most respectable of the citizens, whom he invested with the power of deliberating on and preparing all public measures before they came under the cognizance of the popular assemblies; a regulation which gave rise to this just remark of Plutarch, that Solon employed the wise men to reason, and the fools to decide. No motion or overture with regard to the affairs of the commonwealth could take its origin in the Ecclesia: it must have been previously canvassed and debated in the Senate. This great council was augmented to 500, and afterwards to 600, upon an increase of number of the Athenian tribes.

Still further to restrain and moderate the proceedings of the public assemblies, Solon re-established the authority of the Areopagus, which Draco had abridged and weakened by the institution of the Ephetai. And this tribunal, of whose origin and constitution we have formerly treated, was now invested with more extensive powers and privileges than it had ever before enjoyed. To this august assembly Solon committed the guardianship of his laws, and the charge of executing them. They had the custody of the public treasury and, as Plutarch informs us in the Life of Themistocles, the charge of its expenditure; but this last seems to be inconsistent with the powers lodged in the senate and people. The court of Areopagus, likewise, had a tutorial power over all the youth of the republic. They appointed them masters and governors, and superintended their education. They were likewise the censors of the manners of the people, and were employed to punish the idle and disorderly, and reward the diligent and industrious. For this purpose, they were empowered to inquire minutely into the private life and conduct of every citizen; the funds he

*To give some idea of the numbers which constituted the public assembly, or the Legislature of Athens, we learn from two polls of the citizens that were taken, first in the time of Pericles, and afterwards in that of Demetrius Phalereus, that the Athenian citizens in the former period amounted to 14,040 persons, and in the latter to 21,000. The remaining population of the republic consisted of slaves, male and female, and children and youth under the age of manhood. The former, namely, the actual slaves, amounted to no less than 400,000. The proportion of the free citizens to slaves was still smaller at Lacedæmon than at Athens; whence we may judge how far liberty was truly the characteristic of these ancient republics, whose constitution has been the subject of so much foolish admiration. See Gillies's Translation of Lysias and Isocrates, Pref.; and Mitford's Greece, vol. p 253.-Thucyd. 1. viii. c. 40

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