ORIGINS AND FORMS OF OLIGARCHY
I
ORIGINS OF OLIGARCHY
THE king, who embodied in himself the power of the city, had as natural enemies the petty kings of the tribes and the phratries who had at their command all the strength of the gene. The outcome of the struggle was never doubtful. Even in the Odyssey one sees a very different monarchy from that which had existed in the great times of the Iliad. Alcinous, king of the Phæacians, with twelve other kings around him, humbly styles himself the thirteenth; let us say that he was the first, primus inter pares, yet even so he could do nothing without consulting the others. Ulysses had only to be away from Ithaca and his son a minor for all the chiefs of the neighbourhood to aspire to take his place by marrying his wife. By the end of the eighth century all was over, the Homeric monarchy was no more.
The only exceptions were the Battiadæ of Cyrene and the Kinyradæ of Cyprus, to whom perhaps can be added the Aleuadæ of Larissa and the Scopads of Crannon. But the former, far overseas, were in the vicinity of Egypt or in touch with the Phoenicians, and the latter did not assume the title of king in spite of their power and the example of the Macedonian dynasty. The Hellenic conception1 is well illustrated by this fact : at Panticapæum in the Euxine the chiefs chosen from the family of the Archeanactidæ, then from that of the Spartacidæ, were kings of the Scythians and archons of the Greeks.2
Although there remained kings whose office was for life and hereditary they were nothing more than magistrates with relatively little power. At Sparta the Agidæ and the Eurypontidæ, generals and high-priests, were held in check by the actual masters, the ephors. Nor is this the only example to be found among the Dorians: the king of Argos retained his military function till the middle of the fifth century;3 at Corinth the dynasty of the Bacchiadæ was successful until the time of its definite fall (657) in nominating from its own number a king with an honorific and life title, as well as the prytanis, the annually appointed head of the government.4 Even in Ionia the Basilidæ, descendants of Androclus, continued to furnish Ephesus with its king; but this king, although always clad in the purple and bearing the sceptre, was only a sacerdotal dignitary.5 Others of the family of the Basilidæ at Chios, Erythræ, Skepsis and probably Clazomenæ6 lost the royal dignity but still remained at the head of the ruling aristocracy. It was the same with the Neleidæ at Miletus and the Penthilidæ at Mitylene.7
Usually monarchy, when reduced to the position of a magistracy, ceased to be a life office and was removed from the family in which it had originally resided; it became an annual office open to all the families of the ruling class. At the same time it was restricted to those functions of which religious sentiment would not suffer it to be deprived— namely, sacred functions. The most celebrated example is that of Athens, where the king was only one of the nine archons, the one who was responsible for dealings with the gods, and where he had not even the honour of giving his name to the year. This rex sacrificulus appears in a great number of Ionian islands and towns: at Siphnos, Naxos, Ios, Chios and at Miletus whence the institution was transported to the Milesian colony of Olbia.8 At Megara the king was likewise an ordinary magistrate with religious duties; but in the Dorian city he was eponymous as he was in the small towns of his domains and in his colonies.9 By an unexplained chance the king of Samothrace was not only eponymous but also enjoyed political powers.10
This persistence of a meaningless title is one of the traits which best illustrates the reluctance of the ancients to interfere with institutions of the past. Even the smallest local kinglets were maintained as magistrates. In certain places, “kings 11 similar to those who administered justice in the villages of Bœotia in the time of Hesiod were recognized until the very end. Athens preserved its phylobasileis, its “ kings of the tribes,” and they came to the Prytaneum to associate themselves with the king of the city in protecting the people from divine vengeance by judging accusations of murder brought against inanimate objects and animals.12 In Elis the basileis of the phratries formed a tribunal presided over by the highest magistrate of the locality.13 But it is in Asia Minor in particular that one sees “ kings” of this kind functioning. In conjunction with the prytanis they made enactments at Mitylene on questions relating to landed property,14 at Næsus they heard accusations of insults to magistrates and of desertion.15 At Kyme they sat under the presidency of the aisymnetes and their administration was subject to the control of the Council.16 At Chios, after a revolution which took place about 600, “the kings” were named in a law in conjunction with a demarch; but in a city which had at one and the same time a king fallen to the rank of rex sacrorum and a prytanis, one may conclude that the demarch had been substituted on the spur of the moment by the victorious party for one or other of these oligarchical magistrates.17
The weakening and the eventual collapse of the primitive monarchy turned to the profit of those who, consciously or not, had worked towards this end from the beginning. The chiefs of powerful families became masters of the city; and this they remained for many centuries. The archaic period was entirely subjected to a half patriarchal, half feudal rule in which the common interest was an unstable compromise between a few persons each accustomed to command in his own circle.18
They had on their side noble blood; they traced back their origin to some god. The value that was attached to birth is attested by the very persistence of the gene, which had long since split up into small families, and by the care with which the great men preserved their genealogical tree and the traditional history of their house (their πάτρια). A man was as proud to be one of the Alcmæonidæ at Athens or of the Eumolpidæ at Eleusis as he was in Asia Minor to be connected with the royal lines. Towards the year 500 Hecatæus of Miletus made a proud display of his family tree and traced it back to the sixteenth generation, that is to say, reckoning three generations to a century, to the second half of the eleventh century, to the foundation of the city. A little later an inscription on the tomb of a noble of Chios contents itself with enumerating fourteen of his ancestors, thus taking the origins of his family back to the beginning of the tenth century. The Philaïdæ of Athens prided themselves on an equally distant origin: one of their number, Hippocleides, archon in 556-5, claimed to be the twelfth descendant of the hero Ajax. The Spartan kings did not go back so far, for the Agid Polydorus and the Eurypontid Theopompus, who were reigning round about 720, belonged respectively, so it was said, to the seventh and ninth generation of their dynasty.19
No vicissitudes of fortune could wrest from the nobles their natural prestige and right to respect.20 As a matter of fact very few noble houses declined : it was sufficient to belong to an illustrious genos to have a share in the revenues and lands of a wide domain and to enjoy the riches won at the point of the sword by numerous generations. In all parts of Greece a class of gentlemen grew up. They were designated by general terms, such as “the good” (αγαθοί), “the best men” (άριστοι, βέλτιστοι), “the great and good”21 (καΧοϊ καγαθοί), “men of blood ” (εύγενεις, γενναίοι), “men of quality” (εσθΧοί, χρηστοί), “men of honour” (γνώριμοι, επιεικείς). Sometimes more precise terms were employed: they were “well born men,” Eupatridæ; they were “lords of the earth,” Geomoroi; they were “knights,” Hippeis.
It was to this last title that they clung most tenaciously. The noble, who was both landowner and soldier, devoted himself to rearing the horse which gave him superiority in combat. Whilst the wretched foot-soldier was armed only with the short javelin or sometimes only with a sling, the noble approached the enemy clad in heavy brazen armour, his head enclosed in visored helmet, and the rest of his body protected with a cuirass of metal sheets and with greaves, with buckler in his left hand, a long lance in his right, and a two-bladed sword by his side. He fought on foot; but up to the middle of the seventh century he was driven into the midst of the battle field in his chariot by a charioteer (the παραβάτης with the ηνίοχος); later he dispensed with the chariot and rode on horseback, followed by a servant similarly mounted (the ιττιτοβάτης with the ίπποστρόφος).22 The war horse whether yoked or mounted was the distinctive mark of the nobility. Several times Aristotle points out the connection which existed originally between oligarchy and cavalry :
“The first states in Greece which succeeded those where kingly power was established were governed by the military. First of all the horse, for at that time the strength and excellence of the army depended on the horse, for as to the heavy-armed foot, they were useless without proper discipline; but the art of tactics was not known to the ancients, for which reason their strength lay in their horse. . . . This cannot be supported without a large fortune; for which reason in former times those cities whose strength consisted in horse became by that means oligarchies. . . . Where the nature of the country can admit a great number of horse, there a powerful oligarchy may be easily established; for the safety of the inhabitants depends upon a force of that sort, and those who can support the expense of horsemen must be persons of some considerable fortune.”23
There was, therefore, in a very great number of Greek cities a ruling class of knights. Such were the Hippobotæ, the breeders of horses, at Chalcis, and the Hippeis, the horsemen, at Eretria, in Thessaly, at Colophon, at Magnesia ad Mæandrum, and in other towns of Asia, and it was the same in Attica before the epoch when the landowners who cultivated more than five hundred measures of land rose above the other Eupatridæ.24
But in the seventh century there occurred an economic revolution which had powerful repercussions in the social and political conditions of the whole of Greece. The discovery and colonization of a new world led, by an immense development of commerce and industry, to the substitution of a monetary system for the old natural economy. The great landholders, accustomed to appropriating the lion’s share of the booty won in raids and pirating expeditions, were just as favourably placed for making capital out of these new sources. They possessed fields and forests, vineyards and olive plantations, mines and quarries; they built ships and brought home from foreign lands wealth to swell their treasuries. They had not even to move into the towns, for they had lived there always, since the agora was the centre of government as well as of commerce. Thus in innumerable cities aristocracy changed its character. The knights of Chalcis who cultivated the fields of the Lelantine plain were the same who exploited rich copper mines, possessed smelting furnaces, founded colonies in Thrace and in the West, and controlled the flourishing corporation of ship-owners (the aeinautai).25 The breeders, who monopolized the whole of the pasture lands of Megaris, converted the wool which they obtained from their sheep into exomides which they sold to the common people, or sought the corn and fish of the Euxine in the warehouses of the Propontis.26 A Lesbian of high birth, Charaxus, the brother of the poetess Sappho, shipped cargoes of wine to Egypt and squandered the proceeds on the most beautiful courtesan of Naucratis.27 The Athenian Solon, whose family was related to the royal dynasty of the Medon- tidæ, by prosperous voyages restored his dwindling patrimony.28 It was no longer only landed wealth which gave the nobles their power, but money also.
The nobles, however, were not the only ones to lay hands upon the mass of fluid capital, of precious metal, which was circulating now from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. In all the cities the demiourgoi, both artisans and traders, were able to take their share and formed an intermediary class above the thetes: they possessed neither land nor horses; but they had the means of arming themselves as hoplites, and they were sometimes sufficiently strong, with the advantage afforded by their numbers, to endanger the position of the knights. Some by their ability, intelligence and energy managed to rise above the others and brought themselves before the public eye by flaunting their newly gained wealth. The old nobility were contemptuous of these “nouveaux riches,” and the poet Theognis was a merciless critic. Nevertheless many great lords whose resources were no longer adequate for their position were not unwilling to have them for fathers-in-law or even for sons-in-law: it was an alliance of needy pride with wealthy vanity. Thus a hybrid aristocracy was formed in which race and land retained their prestige, but in which the scale of social values was determined by wealth, however gained. “Money makes the man,” “money mingles blood,” sighed the extollers of times past;29 but their protests were fruitless, nothing could be done. Ostentatious wealth constituted a claim to political power. To be entitled to stand for the magistracies a man must be prepared to offer magnificent sacrifices in the ceremony of installation, to entertain the people with banquets and feasts, to adorn the city with temples and statues; and that was why it was wise policy to display in the agora tunics white as snow and mantles of purple, to deck one’s hair with jewels, and to honour the dead of one’s family by sacrificing upon their graves whole hecatombs and pouring forth libations from enormous perforated jars.30 “Ah ! ‘tis not without reason that men honour thee, O Plutus,” said Theognis; and in fact aristocracy was being transformed into plutocracy. The people of the upper class added henceforth to all the epithets earned for them by nobility of blood the new epithets of “rich” (πλούσιοί, εύποροι, τας ουσίας or τα χρήματα εχοντες) and “stout” (παχείς).31
In the innumerable cities where this system prevailed power was always placed in the hands of a few, the oligoi. It was for this reason that the Greeks usually called it oligarchy, and not aristocracy, a name specially reserved for the government of the “best men,” that is to say the ancient nobility, or, according to the vocabulary of the future philosophers, those morally and intellectually the finest.32 But the composition of the ruling class varied infinitely according to its origins. There were some countries which took no part in the colonial and commercial expansion, who withdrew into themselves and remained faithful to rural civilization; the great landowners continued to prevail there. Such was the case in Thessaly and Elis. On the other hand one can mention the case of an island where the paucity and barrenness of the land had long hindered the formation of a landed aristocracy, but which as a result of its excellent position on the sea was exalted suddenly to the first rank: it was Ægina which henceforth only knew an oligarchy of merchants. For the most part there was a working compromise between landed wealth and movable wealth, and riches, serving as a common measure, then seemed the most striking trait of oligarchy. We have just seen examples of this regime at Chalcis, at Megara, in Lesbos and at Athens. The most remarkable example is, perhaps, that offered by Miletus. On the one hand were the masters of the soil, those who found “the horn of Amaltheia” in their fields and who cultivated them by means of their serfs, the Gergithes;33 on the other hand were the manufacturers who controlled the mass of manual workers, the Cheiromacha, and the aeinautai who directed colonization and commerce;34 together they formed the Ploutis which wielded political power and had at its head the dynasty of the Neleidæ.35
FORMS OF OLIGARCHY
We know enough of the origins of oligarchic rule not to be surprised when we find it assuming very diverse forms. The essential difference between democracy and oligarchy consisted in this : in the one all native-born were full citizens ; in the other full citizens were distinguished from natural citizens. Oligarchy always supposed the division of citizens into two classes, of which one only participated in government. But, according to the city, the superior class might be greater or smaller, and extend either to the majority of the people or be confined to a more or less exclusive minority. The privilege which it enjoyed might comprise a varying number of rights. It might pertain to birth, or to landed property estimated according to revenue, or to wealth whether real or movable, assessed either according to capital or to income; in the two last cases it might be determined either by a property qualification, or by a limited number of participants. From one city to another these elements formed different combinations.
In this confusing diversity Aristotle36 distinguishes four principal forms. His classification, though purely logical and hence artificial, is none the less convenient. We shall, therefore, keep to it, although making some alterations. Aristotle examines oligarchy after democracy; that is to say he passes from the most moderate form to the most extreme; we shall invert the order adopted by the philosopher and follow, as is most proper for the historian, the natural evolution of institutions. Aristotle as a theorist remains in the realm of abstractions; we must give life to the theory by concrete examples.
Extreme oligarchy (the fourth form of oligarchy according to Aristotle) is that in which the supreme magistrate possesses hereditary power and commands such wealth and rules over so many followers and subjects that sovereignty, in place of pertaining to law, is in the hands of a man. This regime is reminiscent of the patriarchal monarchy of the city organized according to gene; it is “dynastic” oligarchy.
The history of ancient Thessaly is that of a few dynasties.37 In the most extensive plain of the whole of Greece, the conquering people had divided the land between families grouped in tribes and subdued those of the vanquished who had not taken refuge in the mountains of the frontier. The masters possessed vast kleroi. Their arable land was cultivated by gangs of serfs or penestai, who owed them a yearly service; they themselves devoted their time to stock breeding. They were intrepid horsemen and loved hunting and bull fighting. When they set out for war they were followed by a troop of mounted vassals and a throng of lightly armed penestai. According to a regulation laid down by one of the chiefs each Icleros had to furnish a contingent of forty horsemen and eighty peltastai.38 Many of these great landowners were able to do even more: in the fourth century one man brought to the Athenians two or three hundred horsemen with their penestai, and a tyrant undertook by himself to revictual the whole Athenian army with meat at an absurd price.39 Political rights were the monopoly of these great proprietors, the “good men.”40 Beneath them, indeed, was formed a class of free peasants and, in certain places, a class of merchants and artisans; but few of them were in comfortable circumstances, for in the army there were only two hoplites to each knight.41 Moreover, the middle class had no place in the State. Even in great towns the names of the tribes showed that they had for long been composed of breeders and nobles, and records gave lists of families.42 In these towns the agora was at all times closed to the humble peasants and craftsmen.43 Thessaly, therefore, was entirely subjected to a landed nobility. But the bulk of these lords obeyed a few great suzerains, and it was among these that the dynasts were found. The Aleuadæ were the masters of Larissa : their merits were sung by Pindar and they hoped to become the satraps of Greece in the name of Xerxes. At Crannon the Scopads were celebrated for their treasures. Pharsalus belonged until the middle of the fifth century to the house of Echecratides and later to that of Aparos.44 All these princes had resplendent courts to which they attracted poets such as Simonides and Anacreon. Each of them asked nothing better than to unify Thessaly in order that he might rule over the whole of it.
Dynastic oligarchy was just as suited to a large town of traders and ship-owners as to an agricultural and stock- raising country. Corinth offers proof of this. There meagre and barren land prevented the formation of a landed nobility; but an excellent position on two seas enabled energetic and intelligent ship-owners to take the first place in Mediterranean commerce and to acquire vast fortunes. This the Bacchiadæ did. This indeed was a dynasty, which maintained its purity to the end by permitting no alliance with other families. In all probability it had formerly been invested with royal power, and it kept for its chief the royal title, while at the same time reserving to itself the prerogative of naming one of its own number for the principal office, that of prytanis.45 Its policy was essentially mercantile : a harbour was made on the Saronic Gulf and a second on the Gulf of Corinth, a road of wood was laid down between the two for the portage of vessels, trading centres were established all along the northwest coast of Greece, and the colonies of Corcyra and Syracuse were founded. In reality the Bacchiadæ transformed their private affairs into public enterprises and enriched themselves while enriching their city. So long as they were successful they were the absolute masters of the city.
When the chiefs of noble families were not subordinated to one of their number there existed a dynastic oligarchy of greater, though still small, numbers. The circle of choice for all offices of State was confined to a few families ; and all the offices were transmissible from father to son. It differed essentially from the former system, according to Aristotle, in that since all powers were no longer concentrated in the same hands, law necessarily intervened to guarantee the inheritance of privileges. But there is nothing to prove that it had always been so, at any rate in the beginning. In rural cities this type of oligarchy seems to have had a purely traditional character: one finds there traces of the time when there existed kings “more royal ”one than other, with this difference, that among them now no one could say that he was “the most royal”of all. It was only in towns of relatively recent origin, the colonies, and above all in those where commercial wealth had monopolized the government, that one can imagine a constitution of this type fixed by legislative enactment. But one can see how rivalries would spring up in the oligarchy of multiple dynasties. On the one hand “kings” of inferior order would demand a share in the privileges of those who were “ more royal on the other hand, the richest families, for example those of the ship-owners in the ports, would attempt to monopolize more completely the powers which they shared with others less rich.
Take for example an agricultural country. Elis, whose population was scattered among hamlets and which did not possess a single town until the fifth century, obstinately adhered to its ancient institutions and the customs of “the sacred life”: Polybius tells how in his time one met families not a single member of which had been to Elis for two or three generations.46 There were a great number of phratries there, each of which had its chief and its kings, a local aristocracy composed of gene each of which ruled in its hamlet. The central government was in the hands of ninety gerontes who no doubt represented the three tribes of Heraclides. These gerontes, appointed for life, were always chosen from the same families by a “dynastic” system (αϊρεσις δυναστβυτική); they chose by rote from these families the Hellanodikas and the demiourgia who exercised control over the phratries. Aristotle, who tells us of this system, also tells us how it fell. “If the members of an oligarchy agree among themselves, the state is not very easily destroyed without some external force . . . for though the place is small yet the citizens have great power, from the prudent use they make of it. But an oligarchy will be destroyed when they create another oligarchy under it; that is when the management of public affairs is in the hands of a few, and not equally, but when all of them do not partake of the supreme power, as happened once at Elis. . . .”47 What happened was that an oligarchy of two degrees took the place of an oligarchy in which all the privileged persons had equal rights: their chance of entering the Gerousia and of being appointed to the dignity of Ilellanodikas was henceforth reduced by half and dependent upon election by lot.48 How many then were active members of the oligarchy of Elis ? Since they appointed two supreme magistrates instead of one, one jumps to the conclusion that there were twice as many as the gerontes of the old regime; and, indeed, to confirm this hypothesis we find that at Epi- daurus the oligarchy was composed of the “Hundred and Eighty,” the masters of the “Dusty-feet” (Konipodes), who appointed the members of the Council and the magistrates, and whose number was likewise connected with the three Dorian tribes.49
Here is a second example, this time of a great commercial port. Massalia was governed in the time of Strabo50 by a Synedrion of six hundred members appointed for life: they were called the timouchoi. From the Six Hundred was drawn the Council of Fifteen responsible for the management of current affairs: three of the Fifteen exercised executive power; one of the Three was the official head of the city. A man could not be a timouchos unless he had a legitimate child and unless he belonged to a family which had possessed citizenship for three generations. Exclusive though the government of the Six Hundred was it succeeded an even more exclusive one. The name of the timouchoi goes back, indeed, to the very origins of the town, since it is peculiar to Ionia, the country of its founders.51 Originally, as the etymology of the word and the example of Ionian cities indicate, it could mean only a small number of persons invested with public duties. At that time the body of citizens comprised only a few privileged families and the office of timouchos was exclusively confined to their chiefs. That extreme form of oligarchy could not last indefinitely. It became more “political,” Aristotle declares (ποΧνηκωτέρα). What does this mean ? “For those who had no share in the government ceased not to raise disputes till they were admitted to it: first the elder brothers, and then the younger also.”52 Such a reform made the particular interests of collateral branches prevail over the unity of the genos ; its result was to give to the richest families a larger representation in the government. Oligarchy became more “ political,” that is to say more civic, more republican, in the sense that henceforth a greater share was given to wealth than to nobility of blood : the importance of the genos diminished in favour of the individual. Since primogeniture was the rule of succession it was necessary to make some arrangement by which the best of those who were excluded, the élite of the plethos, should pass into the body of active citizens, into the politeuma: henceforth a periodical revision of the “ Golden Book “ was made.53 But it was decided, either at this time or in a subsequent reform, that the number of the privileged should be limited to six hundred. The title of timouchos belonged to all of them; but it changed its significance since it now only conferred on the ordinary members of the Synedrion the virtual right of being promoted to the Council of Fifteen. Many other cities, among which Aristotle numbers Heraclea, Istros and Cnidus, underwent the same vicissitudes as Massalia.54 One sees then oligarchy extending its bounds, and even perhaps passing from one to the other of the categories distinguished by Aristotle. But these reforms were less profound than they appeared. In the prosperous ports, where population increased rapidly, to increase the number of active citizens was not necessarily to alter the relation of that number to that of passive citizens. Even if the list of privileged persons was lengthened a little, the principle of the constitution did not change, and it was easy enough to render the measure nugatory by forming a new oligarchy within the enlarged oligarchy. When the timouchoi of Massalia numbered six hundred the Fifteen took the place of the old timouchoi, and Cicero was to see in the condition of the Massaliot people “a striking picture of servitude”similar to that of Athens under the Thirty.55
When oligarchy ceased to be “dynastic” and became really “political” it still confined power to a minority of the citizens, but to a comparatively numerous minority. “It supposes,” says Aristotle, “men of property less numerous than in the first hypothesis (the last for us), but with more considerable fortunes. As ambition increases with strength they arrogate to themselves the right of nominating to all the offices of government; but as they are not powerful enough to govern without law, they make a law for that purpose.”56 This regime was usually instituted by a law which rigidly fixed the number of active citizens.
Thus it happened that a great number of cities were ruled by the Thousand. We know of two in Asia Minor: Kyme, where the Thousand seized power from the knights, which probably means that an aristocracy of wealth replaced an aristocracy of birth;57 and Colophon, where the Thousand appeared in the agora clad in mantles of purple which were worth their weight in silver, adorned with diadems of gold and scented with perfumes.58 In eastern Locris the capital, Opus, was governed by the assembly of the Thousand; the majority of these citizens, compelled to keep one war horse, belonged without doubt to the “hundred households,” to the families which traced back their noble titles to the time of Ajax. Towards the beginning of the seventh century Opus handed on its institutions to its colony Epizephyrian Locri: there also the Thousand administered the laws, and the principal families claimed descent from the women of the “hundred households” who had followed the first colonists.59 Two neighbouring towns of Epizephyrian Locri, Croton60 and Rhegium,61 possessed in the same way their assembly of the Thousand, which later continued to sit side by side with the popular assembly under the name of Syncletos or Eşcleios. It was the same away in the south of Sicily at Acragas.62
But no mystic quality was attached to this number of a thousand. In relatively small cities the body of citizens might be much smaller, but the government was not for that reason so much the more oligarchical ; in very large cities it might be much greater, without approaching any nearer to democracy. Thus at Massalia and Heraclea Pontica a comparatively generous measure of reform was necessary to bring the numbers of the oligarchy up to six hundred, whilst the Synedrion of six hundred which legislated at Syracuse for twenty years had a strongly oligarchical character in a town so populous.63 The constitutional history of Athens towards the end of the fifth century is rich in partisan experiments in which rival parties endlessly disputed as to the ratio to be established between the number of inhabitants and that of active citizens. In 411-10, whilst the extreme oligarchy of the Four Hundred was making itself hateful to a people of close on thirty thousand, what were the theorists proposing in their search for a just mean ? Theramenes brought in a law which entrusted the whole government “to the Athenians most capable of serving the State with their person and their possessions, to a number of not less than five thousand.” The constitution of the Five Thousand, whose minimum was in fact a maximum, thus deprived five-sixths of the citizens of their political rights. It functioned for some months after the fall of the Four Hundred in 410.64 In 404, the opposition of Theramenes compelled the Thirty to imitate it and to draw up a list of three thousand citizens who had the right to participate in government and were guaranteed against the arbitrary power of tyrants.65 Finally, in 312, Antipatros decided that to be a citizen it was necessary to possess a capital of two thousand drachmas—equivalent to an income of from 200 to 240 drachmas: this property qualification excluded twelve thousand out of a total population of twenty- one thousand.66
Such constitutions could, however, cloak a much more strictly oligarchical rule. The common run of citizens often had for their sole privilege the right of attending a powerless Assembly, while all actual power resided in a small Council. Tho history of the Athenian oligarchies makes this fact clear : the paper nomination of the Five Thousand and the Three Thousand limited in no respect the omnipotence of the Four Hundred and the Thirty. None the less these were revolutionary tentatives. But elsewhere oligarchies within oligarchies were of normal and frequent occurrence. The most celebrated example is that of Sparta with its oligarchy in the form of a pyramid : above the Helots, who were not free, and the Perioikoi, who were not citizens, were placed the Spartiates; above the “Inferiors” who were admitted to the great assembly or Apella, the “Equals,” provided with a patrimony and paying their quota towards the common meals, formed alone the small assembly where they gathered in ever decreasing numbers; above all was the Council of the thirty gerontes, itself controlled by the five ephors, which actually exercised sovereignty. In the same way at the time when Athens had for its masters the Four Hundred, Thasos was in the hands of the Three Hundred and Sixty.67 After the fashion of Sparta, Croton, according to the constitution of Pythagoras, had its Assembly and its Gerousia, in addition to its Syncletos of the Thousand.68
The last form of oligarchy (the first for Aristotle) was characterized by a property qualification sufficiently high to exclude the poorest from the magistracies but sufficiently low to give easy access to the privileged classes and to admit, for example, anyone who was capable of serving as a hoplite. While not having enough money to live without working the citizens had sufficient not to be a burden to the State. At all events, their number was too great for sovereignty to be concentrated in one person, and it necessarily found its expression, therefore, in the law.
Such was the regime in countries where there existed many people of small substance. With peasants such as the Malians the right of full citizenship belonged to the veteran hoplites, that is to those who possessed a complete suit of armour and had completed their term of service.69 The towns which formed the Boeotian Confederation, in the second half of the fifth century and the first third of the fourth, confined political powers to an assembly of men who had the required minimum wealth—all landed proprietors: at Thebes a fixed number of inalienable estates was maintained by law and access to any magistracy was forbidden to anyone who had followed a trade during at least the last ten years ; at Thespiæ those who had learnt a mechanical trade and even those who tilled their own land were excluded.70 It is true that the qualification was not very high: at Orchomenus it appears to have been 45 medimni or 23 sacks of corn,71 which meant in an age of small yields and a biennial rotation of crops about 12 acres of land. From the contingents of hoplites and knights furnished by each city in the confederation one can estimate the number of active citizens at 3,000 for Thebes, more than 1,500 for Orchomenus, 1,500 for Thespiæ and Tanagra, 500 for Eutresis and Thisbe, rather fewer for Platæa, 500 for Haliartus, Lebadea, Coronea, Acræphia, Copæ and Chæronea.72 In Cretan cities the qualified people consisted of citizens who had been admitted into the hetaireiai, where after having completed their service as members of an agela, they lived in common and ate together at the expense of the treasury.73 They formed a considerable body. In a town of secondary importance, at Dreros, a class of agelaoi comprised, in the third century, 180 youths,74 a figure which corresponds to a body of about 7,000 citizens. But the tribes, which embraced them all, accorded a special place to the startos composed of privileged families from which were recruited the kosmoi who were entrusted with executive power.75
It was constitutions of this type which were eulogized in Spartan propaganda at the end of the fifth century. One of its agents, a sophist speaking in the name of a Thessalian party, proposed this model to his fellow-citizens: “People will say to me : 76 But the Lacedaemonians have established oligarchy everywhere.’ Yes, an oligarchy which we have long invoked in our prayers, ... if the name of oligarchy can be given to such governments in comparison with those which merit the name in our country (a country of dynastic governments). Is there in their league a city, however small it may be, where a third of the citizens does not participate in the affairs of government ? He who has not the means to procure armour and to take part in politics, not Lacedæmon, but fortune excludes him from public life. He is excluded only until he can show the lawful property-qualification.”77
Modified oligarchy merges into modified democracy, and it is impossible to say with precision where the one ends and the other begins. The oligarchic constitution which had existed in Athens since the middle of the seventh century needed very little reform at the hands of Solon to yield place to a system which prepared the way for absolute democracy. This timocratic constitution divided the people into four classes, among which offices and honours were partitioned in proportion to their income from land.78 When Cleisthenes had abolished this system and proclaimed almost complete equality for all Athenians, the opponents of democracy never ceased to regret “ the constitution of their ancestors.” We know this from the examination of a pamphlet in which one of them put his own views into a supposed constitution of Draco. He proposed to concede political rights, including therein access to the Council and minor offices, to the citizens who were in a position to arm themselves as hoplites, but to elect the arehons and the treasurers from those who possessed a capital of ten mince (a thousand drachmas), and the strategoi and the hipparchs from those who could show a capital of a hundred mince and had lawful children over ten years of age.79 As a matter of fact each time that the opponents of Athenian democracy succeeded in attaining their ends they instituted a violent oligarchy, such as that of the Four Hundred and that of the Thirty, or at the least gave power to a minority, as did Theramenes and Antipatros. There were, however, politicians who thought it was possible to turn away from democracy without falling into oligarchy. In 403 a man named Phormisios proposed to confine political rights to Athenian landowners, that is to about fifteen thousand citizens out of a total of more than twenty thousand native born Athenians:80 thus a very mild form of oligarchy would have been instituted, but it would nevertheless have meant the end of democratic principle.
To all these types of oligarchy is added a last—nominal democracy. Aristotle gives interesting details of the subterfuges by which the people were deprived in practice of the rights which were theirs in theory and of the simple deceptions which were used. These subterfuges were directed towards five objects: the Assembly, the magistracies, courts of justice, possession of arms and gymnastic exercises.
“With respect to their public assemblies, in having them open to all, but in fining the rich only, or others very little for not attending; with respect to offices, in permitting the poor to swear off, but not granting this indulgence to those who are within the census; with respect to their courts of justice, in fining the rich for non-attendance, but the poor not at all, or those a great deal and these very little, as was done by the laws of Charondas. In some places every citizen who was enrolled had a right to attend the public assemblies and to try causes; which if they did not do, a very heavy fine was laid upon them; that through fear of the fine they might avoid being enrolled, as they were then obliged to do neither the one nor the other. The same spirit of legislation prevailed with respect to their bearing arms and their gymnastic exercises; for the poor are excused if they have no arms, but the rich are fined; the same method takes place if they do not attend their gymnastic exercises, there is no penalty on one, but there is on the other: the consequence of which is that the fear of this penalty induces the rich to keep the one and attend the other, while the poor do neither.”81