FOREWORD

This work which contributes in one of its aspects to the study of the “Greek miracle” fills also an important place—between “From Tribe to Empire” and “Roman Political Institutions” —in the study of political institutions.

There are—as has already been noted—historians as well as sociologists for whom sociology is quite distinct from history ; sociologists who recognize only necessity in their science and historians who recognize only chance in their discipline find themselves in agreement upon this point of distinction. From our point of view, however, history, the all-embracing study of past events relating to man, necessarily includes sociology. The closely woven web of facts of every kind of which history is composed is interwoven with events demonstrating an inherent necessity in social development—with what we may call mental logic—as well as with innumerable chance happenings. Specialists working in the field of abstractions and generalizations can, undoubtedly, by comparative studies—whether of institutions on the one hand or of religion and intellectual and cesthetic activity on the other—set forth general facts ; but history furnishes the material for these generalizations, and the result of the comparison, when brought to bear on the facts of history, throws human evolution into relief picks out the path it has followed from the mass of groupings, recurrences and regular stages, and leads one to seek in logic—in the meaning we give to this word —for the fundamental cause of these recurrences.

In “From Tribe to Empire” the social aspect as such was dealt with.¹ We there put forward the problem of the origins of society_, of the relations between society and the individual, and, as an hypothesis, distinguished various phases of social organization—phases characterized precisely by the varying nature of these relations. It is our belief that society only exists by virtue of the individuals who compose it, but that in order to consolidate its position and attain to maturity, it has at a certain point to submerge the individual until the day when the latter asserts himself in some way and consciously strives to bring society to perfection by means of the intellectual and spiritual development which it has made possible.

We followed in the East of antiquity the progress of “political organization from the humble germs of individualized power to the formation of strongly centralized kingdoms and vast empires”² We showed how the growth of societies in these “ cosmocracies” encouraged the division of labour and how, in a general way, the development of the individual followed upon this division of labour no less as a result of technical inventions than of specula- tive and œsthetic activity. But the development was limited by the part which, from a political point of view, privileged individualism played. As the chief of the clan gathered up the totemic mana, so the king embodied in himself sacred power : since in his person the human and the divine were united, it was he who gave birth to law ; the men who presided over administration and justice were his representatives.³ Greece as a whole, but Athens in particular, realized a form of political organization which was totally new and, at the same time, a development of the individual which was wholly unprecedented. In opposition to the Barbarian who was subjected to despotism and deified it, the Greek was a free citizen ; in opposition to the Empire, the stupendous creation of the East, he ingeniously managed the affairs of his microscopic State. The Greek city is just as “miraculous” as Greek art or thought ; it represented an “experiment”;⁴ it is an example, a model ek άβί.

This book, which Gustave Glotz was peculiarly well-equipped by all his previous works to write, has a twofold interest : on the one hand it traces, with remarkable erudition, the evolution of Greek institutions, brings out their essential characteristics and, to a certain extent, enters into the details of their construction ; and, on the other hand, it formulates and suggests the general ideas which such a subject admits of and leads on to considérations of a sociological bearing. It combines strict realism and explanations of deep insight.

Fustel de Coulanges explained marvellously well ; he explained too well, too simply, too logically. The respect which Glotz feels for his “masterpiece” does not prevent him from criticizing it. Human societies “are not geometrical figures, but living organisms” “Truth is always complex when it is concerned with men . . . who toil and struggle and are subject to the common needs of humanity”⁵

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This book deals first, therefore, with the genesis of the πόλις. The “fluid” term polis signified the acropolis—the fortified town as opposed to the open village, κώμη—before it was applied to the city.⁶ From a few scattered facts, “guided by precarious conjecture#x201D; Glotz reconstructs its small beginnings. He makes discreet and legitimate use of philology, archœology and “the innumerable analogies which a comparative study of human societies affords” (p. 5). He, too, sets out from the clan⁷— the y epos, the patriarchal clan, the “first unit of society” —and passes through the associations of families, the phratries—whose characteristics he discusses—and the military groupings of clans, the φυ\αί, tribes, to the political organism which grew out of a settled life and synœcism.⁸.

The Homeric poems show us a society in process of evolution. The king of kings, “the most royal,” βασιλβεύτατος—for the βασιλεύς, originally, is the chief of the yevos, the man who advances ahead of the others⁹—intermediary between the gods, from whom he is descended (διoγεvής), and man, has uncontested sacerdotal authority, but only a precarious political authority: in the Homeric monarchy we can see elements of the oligarchy which is to succeed it, and even of the democracy, δήμον κράτος, which eventually will establish the voice of the people, δήμον φήμπ (pp. 59-60).¹⁰

When aristocracy destroys the king in his capacity of leader in war and justiciary, he still remains a βασιλβίς, high-priest₉ just as at Rome after the fall of the kings there remained a rex sacrorum. For centuries a single class, more or less numerous, and very variously recruited, holds power in the cities. Glotz emphasizes the “disconcerting” multiplicity of forms which oligarchic government assumes: as a general rule it is not the government of the “best” (αριστοή. Moderate oligarchy, moreover, borders upon moderate democracy, and “it is impossible to say exactly where one ends and the other begins”(p. 79). His keen sense of the complexity of reality prevents Glotz herefrom making distinctions which would be too absolute and theoretical.

Finally, democratic government is established—the rule of state authority in place of the authority of chiefs, of individual responsibility in place of collective responsibility—a system prepared by the “tyrants” whose guiding principle and transitory function is “to humble the aristocracy and uplift the lower classes”(p. III) : “An inherent contradiction doomed tyranny to death as soon as it had infused life into democracy” (p. 116)·

The latter comes to full maturity thanks to the liberation of the individual, who repays to the city in strength what he has gained from it in independence. The “great mistake” which Fustel de Coulanges made was to establish “an absolute antinomy between the omnipotence of the city and individual liberty, whereas, on the contrary, state power and individualism progressed side by side, each supporting the other ” (p. 5). Whilst oligarchical survivals persist for a long time in the Pelo- ponnese and northern Greece, Athens leads the maritime cities in the direction of “natural development”(p. 118). It is her vocation to be the school of democracy. The dates 594-3—the constitution of Solon—and 508-7, the constitution of Cleisthenes, are great dates in the political history of the world. This “Hellas of Hellas ”was to give the people, to use a phrase of Plato¹¹s adopted by Plutarch,“the purest liberty with unstinting hands” (pp. 355, 125).

The demos, we must remember, is the body of members of the city, and not the inhabitants of the town, for slaves and mettes are excluded from it ; it is not man as such, but the citizen who is of value¹²—that, at all events, is the principle. The assembled demos is sovereign ; “its functions were universal and its powers unlimited ”(p. 181). The delegates of the demos—in so far as delegates are necessary for deliberative, judicial and executive power—are again, in principle, appointed by lot. Glotz attempts, in the middle section of his book, to define the nature, detail the organization and examine the working of the Athenian democracy : its Assembly, its Council, its various magistracies. . . .

After his illuminating study of the closed, autonomous society which is the City in general, and Athens in particular, he shows how practical needs were gradually, m spite of everything, to open up this “microcosm” how common interests of defence and common preoccupations created leagues and federations : but—as we have seen before— “in some cases the federal bond was so loose that it allowed the isolation of the cities to survive, and in others the union, imposed by force, collapsed as soon as the small States thought that they could escape from the control of the great State which dominated them”¹³

Though Athens did much for the unification of Greece (p. 286), she was actuated by an imperialist spirit, which encountered lively opposition. Undoubtedly the sense of Panhellenic solidarity, of the oneness of their civilization, as it became more conscious tended to be translated into the political sphere :¹⁴ the bestowal of citizenship, not only upon individuals but upon whole towns, and the multiplication of leagues are proofs of it ; but the atavistic urge towards autonomy was stronger than cultural affinities and the need for unity. “It is a law of nature,” Plato says, “that between all cities war shall be continuous and everlasting” ¹⁵

We know that a united Greece, a Greek people, was to come only with the Empire ; and the substitution of the Empire for the city-system was due far less to an internal need for unity than to increasing anarchy. Glotz makes this point absolutely clear. There was not only war between cities, but also war between citizens. The growth of individualism, unbridled egoism, the disappearance of the middle class, the glaring inequality of wealth which made the proletariat dangerous, led to a state of affairs in which “the city was composed of two opposing and antagonistic sections, of two enemy cities”(p. 316). Although Athens was less embroiled than other cities in intestine strife, after the archonship of Euclides, 403-2, the sovereignty of the people there became increasingly tyrannical and was increasingly used for the benefit of individual interests at the expense of the exchequer and the state.

We shall see here the process of political, judicial, financial and military disorganization which made Greece an easy prey to the onslaughts of ambition. And, since the lust for power was not the least of these unbridled appetites, “the idea of monarchy was in the air”(p. 385). Thus it was exaggerated individualism—both collective and particular—which, by causing the decline of the city, was to put Greece at the mercy of a master and lead to the restoration of the king-god.¹⁶

Gustave Glotz is too good an historian to be satisfied with merely outlining and describing the constitutions and institutions of the City in the abstract : he is keenly alive to their actual life, and by his use of contemporary works, which he draws upon wherever it is apposite and profitable, he summons up the political and social activities of the Greeks in striking and picturesque scenes. We seem to see the men who stood at the top of the social scale— nobles, nouveaux riches, tyrants¹⁷—and the mass of the population_, the humble folk, farmers, workmen, merchants, fishermen, sailors.¹⁸ We might almost think that he had been present in the Ecclesia, had taken part in the elections on the Pnyx or sat in the Boule ; that he hdd seen the blatant luxury of the “magnificent mansions”built in the declining city.¹⁹. By the casual use of a Word—habeas corpus, Tammany clubs, the “haussmannisation” of the towns,²⁰ aptly and without straining, he brings before our very eyes this civilization separated from us by more than two thousand years. In all this we see the hand of the author of the”Ægean Civilization “who, by his learning and his talent, has done more than any other Hellenist to familiarize a large number of readers with a world which, barely thirty years ago, was unknown.

From what has gone before it will, we think, have been gathered that Glotz allows their just share in the development of Greek institutions to historical circumstances, to those contingencies of every kind which were the subject of”The Formation of the Greek People “and which he vividly and brilliantly passes in review. But we wish to emphasize everything which in this book confirms or supplements what we have said elsewhere on the question of the inherent necessity of institutions and on the part which the logical factor plays in social evolution.

Glotz naturally notes the close connection which existed in the beginning between political organization and religion : “The need for mutual defence of which the acropolis and the ramparts are evidence, was expressed, as was every social function in antiquity, in a religious form. Every city had its deity, as had every family ” (p 19). But, he says,“supernatural notions of this sort are always capable of a natural explanation. This fear of the gods was, at bottom, fear of a social force which day by day took to itself new strength. Men feared the demos” (p. 9). Thus our thesis gains support: society utilizes, annexes, institutionalizes beliefs, but religion has its source in the psychology of the individual and not in a strictly social need²¹ The social need properly so called was embodied in their political institutions and their economic institutions, which were at one and the same time clearly distinguished and closely related.

The agora, which was the market, was originally also the public meeting place :²² “with merchants and customers mingled gossips and loungers. At all hours it was the rendezvous where men strolled around, learnt the latest news or talked politics ; and there public opinion was shaped” (p. 22). The popular Assembly had its birth in the agora. We see economic development taking place here, and at the same time we can gauge the intensity of the repercussions of economics on politics (pp. 23, 69, 101). The development of the city was closely bound up with the increase of moveable wealth, with the formation of the class of craftsmen and an aristocracy of nouveaux riches, with the progress of shipping and the rule of money, in short with the emergence of chrematistike, that is of capitalism.

This new system created in the aristocratic city a situation in which the demos—now a proletariat—stood opposed to the nobles and the rich, and became first a dangerous, eventually a victorious party (pp. 101, 311). In the democratic city, and at Athens especially, there was, corresponding to a period of economic prosperity and comparatively fairly distributed wealth, a wise organization in which”a just balance between the legal power of the state and the natural right of the individual “(pp. 124,143) was more or less preserved. But when an unbridgeable gulf was cleft between rich and poor, when this demos,”which was in name sovereign “was made wretched by inequality of conditions, when class conflict raged and communist theories flourished, democratic institutions became corrupt beyond hope of remedy.²³

In the originally undifferentiated field of political organization we see the usual process of differentiation, the progress of the division of labour. The separation of judicial from purely political functions, which hitherto had been combined in the person of the king, can be clearly traced. The latter, together with the”elders,” delivered the themistes, those inspired judgements which formed “the sacred and mysterious code of family justice (themis)”(p. 7). The substitution of written law, of νόμος for oracular tradition—in one sense too rigid and in another too flexible—of individual responsibility—involving definite rights and duties in relation to the State—for collective responsibility, marked an epoch in development (p. 106 ).²⁴ And the organization of justice advanced side by side with law. Because”the progress of the State at the expense of the genos and the economic development of the whole of Greece increased the number of suits,” justice became”a trade”(p. 50). Athens above all was a centre of litigation, simply because law, and consequently chicanery, tended there to take the place of violence (p. 251).

There are some remarkable passages in which Glotz describes the part which Athens played in the development of law—a part which has often been misunderstood. We have had occasion to allude elsewhere to the excellent work in which Henri Ouvré examines”the literary forms of Greek thought.” Ouvré grants the Greeks a capacity for creating constitutions,”ambitious compositions, the extempore creations of the wonder-working vote, regulating everything, providing for everything, and preparing for the peoples an eternal happiness, which lasted a few months.” He emphasizes and exaggerates the abstract and theoretical character of their public law”In Athens, for example, the government seems rather like a practical application of the decimal system : ten tribes, ten strategoi, five hundred councillors, five thousand active heliasts and a thousand in reserve, fifty citizens in the prytany, only ten months to the official year. . . ,”²⁵ As for civil law the Greeks were incapable, according to Ouvré, of giving it”the calm attention which it demands.” The Romans, on the other hand,”into details ; being a closely reasoning people, they expounded the minutest questions.” In what way should this toll be fixed, this mortgage be made, the water in this channel be directed ? They had the stolid patience of the farmer who counts the ears of his corn, and measures inch by inch the land which has been watered less by rains than by his own toiling efforts.”The Roman was a civil lawyer, the Greek not.”²⁶ The whole chapter which Glotz devotes to justice must be read if the Greeks are to be judged fairly. In his eyes the ancestors of the Roman jurisprudentes were the dramatists, the philosophers, the logographoi. Zealous care for equity and the sentiment of humanity were essential characteristics of Athenian law.

At Rome practical sense constructed a juridical monument which was in a measure definitive. At Athens an inherent humanitarianism and democratic principle made laws yielding and flexible. Athens “carried philanthropy so far as to sap the national basis of the institution of slavery—an institution without which it seemed that the city must perish.”²⁷ And, in spite of the principle according to which the foreigner was an enemy, the advances of humanitarianism and pacificism alike had tremendous influence upon international law both public and private.²⁸

To sum up, in Greece law and ethics were not rigorously differentiated until a late date, with the result that ethics was a vital and constant factor in law. Though sometimes we meet in the works of the ancient philosophers the expression”unwritten law” νόμος άγραφος, or“innate law” a careful reading of the texts shows us that the term νόμος is used in the ordinary sense of“custom ”or“usage”²⁹ But thought acted as a kind of leaven upon nomos.

The part played by “logic” also is very clearly brought out in this book. In the first few pages we see“the social impulse which we have spoken of elsewhere, at work, together with that”nameless collective will “ (p. 9) which subordinated the clans, the γένη, to a common interest, to the δήμος, just as previously it had subordinated individuals to the clan. There are many passages, on the other hand, in which the close connection between institutions and the general level of social morality, represented by customs and ideas, is traced and emphasized :” Legal enactments are of no avail against the force of customs “ (p. 356). There were two forces, one proceeding from an inherent yet vague feeling, the other from a comparatively clear recognition of the social bond, of social needs. Society had its basis in the social instinct : individuals are the material of society. But they can also be social agents, or rather, social inventors, that is to say, conscious creators of social”logic. “ So it was in Greece ; to a greater extent than in any other country of antiquity the individual there exercised a powerful and perceptible influence over political institutions. He even developed his personality to a point at which it became a danger to society.³⁰

Tyrants, legislators, leaders of the people (p. 109) and later (pp. 335-336) politicians, first established, then perverted, democratic government. In his interesting chapter on tyranny, Glotz describes—comparing it in certain respects with the Italian podesta³¹—the part played by the “demagogue,” who became the servant of the people in order to be its master, and whom the people used until it found him useless and oppressive. But there were more direct and more deliberate makers of democracy. At Athens in particular there arose men who gave their name to constitutional and judicial achievements (pp. 119-120) : Draco, Solon, Cleisthenes, Ephialtes, Pericles.

“Athens of the fifth century lived according to the civil laws of Solon and the political laws of Cleisthenes” (p. 123). Draco had previously amended the ancient patriarchal law, which was linked up with religion³² by the intervention of the State and the principles of a lay moral code ; Solon with his wise economic and social reforms and his introduction of democratic elements into the constitution completed the downfall of oligarchy. “To judge him by his reforms Cleisthenes was a great man, a true Ionian type, with a mind both practical and logical . . . balanced yet innovating” bolder than Solon, “he was not content to stay within the confines of tradition ; he was not content merely to amend and perfect. Paying no heed to current practices and customs he received and reinvigorated in its most essential organs the very life of the Republic. . . . His is the earliest attempt of which we know to found a constitution based not on tradition but on reason”³³ Finally, Pericles, the pupil of the philosophers, realized complete democracy.

In this evolution of democratic institutions it is scarcely possible to ignore traces of religious survivals, but they are not easy to specify. Thus was drawing “by the bean” at bottom an abandoning of decision to the gods? Can we say that “all the principles which seem to us to-day emanations of human reason derive from a desire to discover the will of the gods” that “all the forms which dominate modern states—the will of the people, the infallibility of universal suffrage—owe their character to the fact that the people has taken the place of the king, who succeeded to the place of a god?”³⁴ Whatever the case, Athens effected a swift and radical transformation, a complete rationalization of the religious elements inherent in primitive societies. Glotz quotes Thucydides’ wonderful commentary on Athenian demo- cracy,”whose every word is like a medal of pure gold to the image of Athena Polias”and in which “there are maxims which one might say had inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Man ” (pp. 141,142; cf p. 175).

It is impossible to insist too strongly on the novelty and importance of this study of society, which henceforth exists side by side with the study of nature. The searchfor the common good became increasingly a theoretical study : it ended in a pitiless criticism of democratic government, of the excesses to which it was liable, and into which, in actual fact₉ the professional politicians did drag Athens ; to the desire that”philosophers should be the rulers of cities, or that kings and dynasts should be good philosophers,” that “political power and philosophy should coincide”³⁵

Theorizing gave birth to the most fantastic conceptions, but Athens at the height of her powers has none the less proved to be the “school” of humanity in general and not merely of Greece. She had supreme moments in which she succeeded in achieving an harmonious reconciliation between the needs of the State and the desires of the individual, under the sovereignty of law which”secured the reign of reason, nous, logos”(p. 136)—i.e., logic.³⁶

When circumstance had made the Empire possible, and even necessary, the Hellenization of the world popularized the form of the polis and perpetuated many democratic principles, though not” the provisions which best illustrated the spirit of Athenian legislation, which caused vigorous individualism and a fine philanthropy to flourish “ (p. 391). In modern times,” the men of the Revolution and the philosophers their masters were inspired more by Athens than by Rome when they laid the foundations of the modern State.”

But, as Glotz so well says, the City was “a very small affair” both in area and in the number of its citizens. This was to be a major problem for modern States, to adapt the most logical elements of Greek institutions to societies completely different in structure. On a copy (editio princeps, Amsterdam, 1762) of the “Contrat Social,” so obviously inspired by Gi’eek democracy,³⁷ I read these words dated 1791: “Though all parts of the system set forth in this social contract are not applicable to the government of a people inhabitating a large area, it will always be worthy of praise for its broad outlook on questions of the general welfare.”³⁸

The “Cité antique” must always be read because it embodies a large portion of the truth and because it is a remarkable piece of work, clear-cut and finished. But in exaggerating the connection between institutions and beliefs Fustel is led to exaggerate the resemblance between the Greeks and Romans and the difference —which he regards as”fundamental and essential” —between ancient peoples and modern societies.

The “Greek City and its Institutions”—and, further, “Roman Political Institutions,” “Rome the Law-Giver”and the “Roman Empire” in this series—must be read if we are to understand social development in Greece, the permanent contribution made by the Athenian Republic in spite of its elements of weakness, the extension of the Roman city into a territorial State and an Empire.

From reading this book which is so rich in erudition, in thought, in apt quotation, in vivid pictures, just as from reading the “Cité antique” a keen (esthetic pleasure is derived—a pleasure which proceeds from more than one source, for in these pages besides the charm of life and colour we find the intellectual satisfaction which vigorous writing gives.

HENRI BERR.