OLIGARCHY had the same institutions as democracy. On a superficial consideration it would seem that the only difference between the two systems was the number of people who benefited by them. In both fully qualified citizens could attend the Assembly, sit in the Council, be chosen as magistrates. But a closer examination shows that the difference of numbers was of such importance that it gave to institutions of identical appearance a totally different character.
I
THE ASSEMBLY AND THE COUNCIL
In principle sovereignty resided in the mass of active citizens. They exercised it in the Assembly called the Ecclesia or the Halia. They excluded from their meetings all the rest of the demos, the unprivileged mob, the plethos. In Thessalian towns the agora was called “the place of Liberty”; but in what sense must one understand that term ? The magistrates were charged to keep the public square “free from the contamination of merchandise”; it was closed to “the artisan, the peasant and all other such persons.”1
In oligarchies where the rich were relatively numerous, the very nature of the system demanded that the less rich should abandon the direction of affairs to the richest, that is to say to the Council, to a limited Assembly, or to the magistrates. There were several ways of achieving this end. Sometimes the Assembly was allowed to discuss only motions initiated from above, so that it was given a deliberative voice while being deprived of the power to alter the constitution; sometimes it was given the right of sanctioning but not of rejecting decisions made outside itself; sometimes it wasconceded only a consultative voice, while the right of decision resided in the magistrates alone.2 In the towns of Crete although the citizens of the hetaireiai might come in their thousands to the agora they could only give formal ratification, by show of hands or ballot, to the proposals which the Council and the kosmoi brought before them;3 and for the rest they were the passive and silent witnesses of certain official acts such as the choice or the reception of foreign ambassadors.4
It was found to be much more convenient not to convoke all the citizens at one time. In the Boeotian cities of the fifth century the people included in the property census were divided into four sections, each of which in turn acted as Council and introduced measures into the plenary assembly for its final and purely formal ratification.5 By this means, of the approximately 3,000 citizens of Thebes only about 750 at a time had an effective voice in government. This system was copied by the Athenian theorists who formulated the constitution of the Five Thousand. The Five Thousand likewise were to be divided into four sections : in each section those over thirty formed a Council, and each of these Councils was to sit in turn for a year. The Council in office was, therefore, composed of from 800 to 900 members. In grave crises the Council might be doubled: each councillor might in this case choose for himself a colleague from citizens with the requisite age qualification. Sessions of the Council were held normally every five days. The executive consisted of five proedroi chosen by lot, and every day one of them was elected by lot as president or epistatos. If a councillor failed to be present at the opening of the session he had to pay a fine of a drachma, unless he had obtained permission to absent himself 6 This constitution remained a dead letter so long as the leaders of the extreme oligarchy of the Four Hundred wielded revolutionary power: they were authorized to convoke the Five Thousand when they deemed it necessary; not once did they do it.7 But it existed in reality for some months when Theramenes’ constitution retarded the re-establishment of democracy: an official writ gives us details of a commission of proedroi with its president.8
In place of splitting up the Assembly into sections in this manner oligarchy sometimes preferred to interpose between it and the Council a smaller and more reliable Assembly. This is what happened at Sparta. In principle, all Spartiates over thirty who were enrolled in the tribes and obai, and had been through the course of public instruction and were admitted to the common meals, had the right of sitting in the Apella. Originally we are told they numbered nine thousand. They gathered in a plain near the banks of the Eurotas, between the Babyca bridge and the Knakion, and deliberated in the open air, the kings and the gerontes on special seats, the others massed on benches or on the ground. An ordinary assembly was held at least once a month at the time of the full moon ; but extraordinary sessions were frequent. Until the middle of the eighth century the Apella exercised wide powers. It possessed the right of amendment, though not the right of initiative, declared war, superintended operations, concluded treaties of alliance and of peace, nominated the elders and the magistrates and settled questions of succession to the throne. It voted by acclamation, and, in case of doubt, by discession. Thus the Apella possessed at that time “sovereignty and power.”
But the number of the “Equals” or Homoioi diminished rapidly. The obligation to possess a portion of “civic land” and to contribute to the expenses of the common meals precipitated many into the class of the “Inferiors” or Hypomeiones. At the same time the increasing wealth of a small number exalted above the“ Equals” a controlling aristocracy (the καλοί καγαθοί). This great nobility placed the monarchy in tutelage and reduced the Assembly to impotence. Henceforward the Apella met in an enclosed building, which more than sufficed to hold the handful of citizens who were present. It continued to elect the magistrates, but according to an absurd system which in practice made the right nugatory. As a deliberative body it was not consulted save for form ; its opinion was asked but there was no necessity to adopt it. “If the people gives an unfavourable vote,” said the law, “the gerontes and the kings may set it aside.” Before embarking upon a war or signing a treaty the chiefs of the city heard the opinion of the majority; but they none the less did as they pleased. When they had reached a decision concerning internal policy, they announced it as a command given to men whose duty it was to obey.
The twenty-eight elders and the five ephors did not, however, constitute the whole of the nobility. In times of grave crisis they associated with themselves in closed committee the principal magistrates and the richest or most respected persons. It was this Council larger than the Gerousia, this Assembly smaller than the Apella, which was given the name of “small Assembly” (μικρά εκκλησία). It is mentioned only once in the ancient historians. But we know that the oligarchy of Sparta was surrounded with mystery,9 so that an institution whose very existence we might not have suspected may well have been one of the principal organs of the Spartan government.
The special body which one finds mentioned quite frequently under the name of Escletos or Syncletos, was most probably a “small Assembly” of the Spartan type, a very carefully picked Assembly. The institution functioned under one of these names at Rhegium and at Acragas, side by side with the Halia and the Bola;10 at Croton side by side with the Ecclesia and the Gerousia.11 There were even cities where the Syncletos definitely took the place of the Assembly.12
In oligarchies where the citizens were fewer in number the Assembly could more easily preserve the reality of power. The Thousand of Colophon were all very rich; and all went to the agora, were it only to display their wealth. The Thousand of Opus voted laws in full assembly. The Thousand of Croton, as well as the Syncletos, were consulted on questions of war and peace.13 At Massalia the six hundred timouchoi, who were elected for life and who assembled in the Synedrion, formed the firm basis of a graded pyramid. Moreover in these restricted oligarchies it is extremely difficult to distinguish the Assembly from the Council. At Massalia, for example, the Synedrion might pass for a general Assembly as well as for a Boule, and the Fifteen for a Boule as well as for an executive committee. We are told that at Epidaurus the Hundred and Ninety chose among themselves bouleutai called artynoi ; but the name of these “orderers ” attests that they did not differ greatly from the artynai who formed in the neighbouring city of Argos a college of supreme magistrates, clearly distinguished from the Boule:14 the only difference was that in the small town there was no need to extract from the Assembly a Council, whilst in the large town there was certainly in the time of the oligarchy, as later under the democratic regime, a Bola and a Haliaia.15
From all that one can learn of the Assembly in oligarchical cities this conclusion emerges : the oligarchical principle, which by refusing rights to the poor led the richer to exalt themselves over the less rich, generally resulted in the concentration of political power in the Council.
Where the Council had a “dynastic” character it commonly bore the name of Gerousia. The name was well justified, for not only was the age limit high, but also members held their seats for life. At Sparta where one could not enter the Apella before thirty years of age, one could not become a geron until all military obligations had been discharged, that is until one was sixty, and the title was retained to the end of one’s days. In spite of the high age qualification appointments to the office were rare; for the Spartan Gerousia consisted only of twenty-eight members apart from the two kings, or, if one prefers, of thirty members of whom two were hereditary. Plutarch becomes almost ecstatic when he speaks of these elections. “It was indeed,” he says, “the most glorious struggle that could take place among men, and the one most worthy of arousing competition. From the good and the wise had to be selected the wisest and the best ; the prize of victory was a prize for virtue bestowed for life, with an almost sovereign authority in the State.”16 But in reality it was not so glorious. Candidates were chosen from the narrowest circle of the privileged, as were the judges whose task it was to declare which one was accorded the most enthusiastic acclamations:17 one can imagine to what collusions an election of this kind lent itself. The results of the system were described by Aristotle who cannot be suspected of severity towards an institution of aristocratic character.
“There are also great defects in the institution of their senators. If indeed they were fitly trained to the practice of every human virtue, everyone would admit that they would be useful to the government; but still it might be debated whether they should be continued judges for life, to determine points of the greatest moment, since the mind has its old age as well as the body; but as they are so brought up, that even the legislator could not depend on them as good men, their power must be inconsistent with the safety of the State: for it is known that the members of that body have been guilty both of bribery and partiality in many public affairs; for which reason it would have been much better if they had been made answerable for their conduct, which they are not.”18
In Elis the ninety gerontes, representing the three tribes, were not recruited in the same manner as the twenty-eight of Sparta: it was not possible to have a minimum age limit there since each represented his genos, and the son succeeded the father; 19 but since they remained in office until their death they were, on the whole, old men. From these instances one can guess what was the probable constitution of the Council in other towns where it bore the name of Gerousia, as for example at Ephesus and Croton.20
But the Council did not even need a special qualification in order to have an oligarchical character: it might be styled the Boule, as in a democracy, and consist of members appointed for life. In this case the oligarchical Boule was usually composed of important magistrates who had completed their term of office. In ancient Athens it was composed of ex-archons. This aristocratic Council was never destroyed by democracy, it never ceased to sit on the hill of the Areopagus to try cases of murder; but, before it was reduced to this function by the Boule properly so called, it combined with its supreme jurisdiction an absolute power in all matters concerning the observance of law, the maintenance of order,the responsibility of magistrates, and relations with foreign countries. One must probably recognize an analogous body in the Boule at Chios to which a revolution in about 600 added a double in the form of a popular Boule. In Crete it was certainly so : in every town the kosmoi entered the Boule after their year of office and remained there until their death, and to these bouleu- tai Aristotle does not hesitate to apply the name of gerontes.21 At Cnidos the Boule was not recruited in the same fashion as at Crete and Athens, since there it was composed of a fixed number of members ; but these members, the sixty amnemones, in like manner sat for life and dealt with all affairs of importance under the presidency of the aphester.22
Certain oligarchies discovered that a too large Boule was dangerous; they, therefore, replaced the great Council by a restricted Council, a committee of probouloi. Aristotle sees in these “pre-advisers” an institution essentially opposed to the democratic principle. “One such order is necessary,” he says, “whose business it shall be to consider beforehand and prepare those bills which shall be brought before the people that they may have leisure to attend to their own affairs; and when these are few in number the State inclines to an oligarchy. The pre-advisers indeed must always be few; for they are peculiar to an oligarchy: and where there are both these offices in the same State, the pre-adviser’s is superior to the senator’s, the one having only a democratical power, the other an oligarchical.”23
Aristotle’s opinion was based on many examples. The government of merchants which was established at Corinth after the fall of the Cypselidæ rested upon a Gerousia of eighty members, recruited from the eight tribes. Each tribe nominated nine ordinary councillors and a pre-adviser (pro- boulos). The eight probouloi formed a superior Council, which submitted questions previously prepared to the Gerousia.24 This institution was transmitted to one at least of its colonies; at Corcyra the pre-advisers acted in concert with the executive committee of the Boule, the prodikoi, and their president, the prostatas, presided over the Assembly of the people.2
It can well be understood that in other cities the name of probouloi might be attached sometimes to the councillors or a part of them, sometimes, and most often, to a college of chief magistrates directing from outside the work of the Council. At Delphi the thirty bouleutai were divided into two half-yearly sections, and the first of each section were named with the archon in official documents ;25 it is not surprising that these bouleutai should have been called probouloi somewhat late.26 But elsewhere at Histiæa,27 the probouloi possessed executive power. At Eretria they appeared, indeed, as heads of the State. They guarded the seal and the archives, received the oaths of the citizens, proclaimed public rewards, and directed financial affairs and foreign policy. At the same time they were presidents of the Boule: by virtue of this they drew up memoranda for consideration and the other officials could only propose decrees through them.28 In short, as an inscription expresses it, their duties were those of presidents (άρχή των προκαθημένων).29 When in 411, after the disaster of Sicily, the oligarchical party of Athens once more raised its head, it began by copying this institution; it stripped the Boule of its powers, and vested in a committee of ten probouloi the task of protecting the State from danger by introducing emergency measures ; then it added twenty new officials to the first ten, entrusting them with the duty of proposing all measures which they judged necessary for the safety of the State and with the drawing up of a new constitution.30
THE MAGISTRATES
To understand the position of the magistrates in the oligarchic city one must go back to the past, as it is depicted in the epics. At that time the king exercised his authority through those who assisted him in his Council, the gerontes or the boulephoroi. When he ceased to be master, executive power naturally fell into the hands of those who continued to make up the Gerousia or the Boule. The Council became the supreme magistrature, the αρχή par excellence. This it always remained. This primary fact appears even in cities from which oligarchy had long ago been ousted by democracy; so much so that Aristotle, in his description of the Athenian constitution, groups all the other magistracies round the Boule, the first in importance. But it shows itself most clearly in oligarchical governments, which were bound most closely in origin to Homeric institutions. The close and permanent relations of the magistracies with the Council explain many apparent anomalies.
We have just seen that in certain cities the probouloi figured as commissioners preparing business for the Boule, while in others they were in charge of the whole administration. The division of political labour is just as vague in the case of the artynoi or artynai of Epidaurus and Argos. A number of institutions are particularly interesting in this respect: for instance those of the demiourgoi, the timouchoi, the aisymnetai and the prytaneis.
The very name of the demiourgoi is witness to their great antiquity. They date from an epoch when the organization of the city was beginning to free itself from the family regime; for they, like the artisans, were “men who worked for the community.” Moreover the demiourgos is one of the most obscure and ill-defined institutions which we find in Greece. It was, however, widely known, especially in the Peloponnese (Arcadia, Elis, Achæa, Argolis) and in the overseas settlements founded by the Dorians and the Achæans (Amorgus, Asty- palæa, Nisyrus, Cnidus, Chersonesus in the Euxine, Petilia in Greater Greece). There were some cities in which it quite distinctly appears as a Cpuncil of long standing, as for example in Elis,31 and in this form it sometimes functioned side by side with a Boule of more recent origin, as at Argos for instance.32 In other cities it was openly converted into a supreme magistrature, which had almost always the privilege of eponymacy.33 But usually it is impossible to distinguish its functions, and it looks as if this were the fault not so much of insufficient documentary evidence, as of the nature of the institution itself—a vague, hybrid, undeveloped thing.
The timouchoi only existed in the towns of Ionia and their colonies. Their name seems to indicate that they were supreme magistrates;34 such, indeed, they must have been in some distant epoch. At the end of the fifth century other magistrates were associated with them ; but they always kept their religious functions, and, since they had complete control of the Prytaneum they, like the prytaneis, were in constant communication with the Council. At Teos they uttered in the name of the city the imprecations which sanctioned the laws, presided over religious ceremonies, and, in conjunction with the strategoi, proposed decrees. At Priene they proposed motions in the Council and had for meeting-place the common hearth called the Timoucheion. At Naucratis they imposed fines on sacrificers who failed to do their duty in the Prytaneum.35
The history of the aisymnetai is even more curious. Their title stamps them as conservers of convention, of good customs. We must go back to the time when the Ionians were not yet separated from Greece proper and when Patrai in Achæa took for its god one Dionysus Aisymnetes.36 In Asia Minor these guardians of propriety, the aisymnetai, did not act as members of the Council. Already in the Homeric poems they appear as persons of princely lineage selected to organize the dances and games in the festivals.37 One is, therefore, not surprised to see at Miletus38 the ancient and noble fraternity of the molpoi appointing annually an aisymnetes who presided over public ceremonies, crown on head, and who even in the city appeared as an eponymous stephanephoros. The office of aisymnetes, therefore, easily became the supreme magistrature in Ionian towns : at Naxos two aisymnetai were eponymous; at Teos a single aisymnetes exercised a right of jurisdiction which extended to the infliction of the death penalty.39 The title was perhaps borrowed from Ionia by Æolis ; for Aristotle mentions it in his work on the constitution of Kyme. The Æolians, however, gave to the term which denoted “master of conventions” a wide meaning: they applied it to persons armed with extraordinary powers for the ré-establishment of peace between parties and the promulgation of a code of laws. The aisymnetes, therefore, became a sort of dictatorship of the interior, conferred for a term of years or for life, an “elective tyranny,” as Aristotle styles it.40 Hence Pittacus, who was invested with that power at Mitylene, was treated as a tyrant or a king by his adversaries in whose minds lingered memories of Homeric times.41 Whilst in Asia Minor the title of aisymnetes was thus borne by ordinary or extraordinary magistrates, in a canton of Greece proper it remained attached to the institution of the Boule. The Megarians gave the name of aisimnatas in their Dorian dialect to the members of the permanent committee of their Boule, and a chapel near their Bouleuterion was called the Aisimnion.42 The colonies of Megara imitated the mother country in this respect. There were aisimnatai in Selinus from the sixth century.43 They existed at Salymbria, at Chalcedon, at Callatis and at Chersonesus,44 and, in these towns, they had a president who at the same time presided over the Boule, as did the epistatos of the prytaneis at Athens.
As for the prytaneis it is they who show us most clearly how the gerontes who surrounded the Homeric king seized power and how they exercised it, whether they assumed it as a body or whether they entrusted it to one alone. Each city had its Prytaneum where solemn sacrifices were offered on the common altar and where the flesh of the victims was divided among the public guests. Formerly it was the palace: “the king” there convened “the kings” to hear their opinions and caused the wine of honour to be poured forth for them. Now the “ first of the land,” including the king, were together masters of the sacred edifice which owed to them its name. They formed the Council. Usually the Council was divided into sections each of which in turn exercised the prytany, and the same practice was to hold even in cities where oligarchic institutions were destroyed by democracy. But it also frequently happened that the whole power of the aristocracy was concentrated in the hands of a single prytanis, who was not only the president of the Council, but the virtual head of the republic, invested with executive power. The first of these cases was common in Greece proper: the prytaneis there formed generally a committee of the Boule, even when that committee had special functions as at Delphi, where it was exclusively concerned with finance.45 The second case was customary in Asia Minor : Aristotle mentions the prytanis as supreme magistrate at Miletus; inscriptions inform us that he was eponymous at Halicarnassus, Chios, Teos, Gambreion and especially in the towns of Lesbos, Mitylene, Methymna, Eresos and Antissa.46 Through Corinth which was an exception in Greece proper the West became acquainted with the institution of the single prytanis; he was eponymous at Corcyra and Rhegium.47
It appears from the example of the aisymnetes and the prytanis, that originally there had been no need for a great number of magistrates. The aristocracy merely placed its leader on a level with the king, and the king, himself reduced to the position of a magistrate, saw the greater part of his power rapidly pass to his rival. The Eupatridæ of Athens gave to this annual delegate the name of archon and by making him responsible for the maintenance of the ancient rights of the gene he was made the first man of the State, the one who gave his name to the year and took the place of the king in the Prytaneum.48 Among the Opuntian Locrians the archon had sovereign control over all administration (διοίκησή), and in particular presided over judicial assizes.49 Where there was a single prytanis, it was he who enjoyed this exalted position. At Miletus, Aristotle tells us, his power was so great that with the greatest ease it passed into tyranny.50 At Corinth it was by appropriating the annual office of prytanis and conferring on him all the reality of royal power, that the Bacchiadæ ruled as absolute masters for ninety years.51 The name of the supreme magistrate varied so much from place to place that a law of the Eleans, being unable to enumerate all the titles which he bore in different parts of the country, indicated him in a vague and general term as “the one who performs the highest function.”52
As the cities grew larger progress in the division of political and administrative labour tended to augment the number of magistrates. Although to a lesser degree than in the democracies this tendency was also seen itself in oligarchical cities. One example will suffice. The Eupatridæ of ancient Athens installed by the side of the king and the archon a polemarch, invested with military functions, and later six thesmothetai responsible for the administration of justice.
The organization of justice was the most urgent necessity during the centuries when Greece was under oligarchic rule.
Formerly the kings with their counsellors around them had been consulted on litigious questions when the persons concerned agreed to adopt that course. When this justice by arbitration was converted into an obligatory jurisdiction, the right of giving judgment was naturally divided among the magistrates who inherited it from the kings and the Council constituted as an independent body. In Bœotia Hesiod and his brother brought the question of inheritance upon which they were at variance to be settled by the kings of Thespiæ.53 At Athens, the King Archon, assisted perhaps by the kings of the tribes, presided over the Council which settled all suits concerning public order and which tried criminal cases on the Areopagus.54 At Corinth it was the Gerousia which arrogated to itself penal and political jurisdiction.55 At Sparta the kings had no longer competence save in religious matters, while the Gerousia reserved to itself cases of criminal law and, in conjunction with the ephors, dealt with all affairs which directly or indirectly concerned the welfare of the State.56 At Locri civil law suits were judged by the archons; but doubtful cases were submitted to the kosmopolis, and, if one or other of the parties did not accept his decision, it was deferred to the full Assembly of the Thousand, which condemned the loser to be hanged, whether he were a private individual or a magistrate.57
But since the Homeric epoch, the king, who could not sit from morning to night in the agora to await appeals for arbitration, delegated this task to the dikaspoloi.58 Thus in certain cities there were, side by side with the Council or the magistrate invested with supreme jurisdiction, special judges for cases of minor importance. Such were the dikastai who sat at Gortyna beneath the kosmoi: they exercised only common law jurisdiction, and each of them had his special competence which he exercised with the assistance of a secretary of the archives or mnemon. The dikasteres who functioned among the Opuntian Locrians under the surveillance of the archon must have been the same. And in the same category also should be included the ephetai established by Draco : these ephetai, to the number of fifty-one, formed a jury which took the place of the Council of the Areopagus in the trial of cases of manslaughter.59
But we can spend no more time in enumerating the various magistrates, but must pass to a description of their main characteristics.
In the dynastic oligarchies they were hereditary and for life; consequently they did not involve responsibility to any body, a grave defect which Aristotle’s acute mind did not fail to see.60 Naturally it was the same in States where sovereign power belonged to a single family, as in the principalities of Thessaly, and even in those where it was divided among a few families, as in Massalia, Cnidus, Istros and Heraclea.61 In the most moderate oligarchies the magistracies were annual. But even there the principle of life-tenure might reappear in the formation of the Council: the archons of Athens and the hosmoi of Crete did not return into private life at the end of their term of office, since they alone constituted the Boule. The oligarchical nature of this principle was so apparent that Athenian democracy would not allow it to be applied in the Areopagus without modification by the drawing of lots.62
When the privilege of holding office was comparatively widely diffused63 the conditions of eligibility were even more variable. They were sometimes determined by birth and gave to otherwise moderate oligarchies a dynastic character. In Crete the citizens of the hetaireiai, divided into tribes, were allowed to choose the hosmoi from certain families (έκ ττνων λενών) which formed the élite of each tribe, the startos.64 Certain colonies such as Thera and Apollonia selected their magistrates exclusively from the descendants of the first colonists.65 Usually a property qualification determined eligibility. For Plato as for Aristotle this timocratic form of appointment is a distinctive trait of oligarchy.66 At the same time Aristotle makes a reservation : according to him if the choice is made from the whole body of those within the property-census the institution is rather aristocratic, in the highest sense he gives to this word, and it is only really oligarchical when the choice is confined to a small circle.67 He observes even that it has its raison d’être in the governments midway between oligarchy and democracy. He who sometimes identified oligarchy with this single characteristic, the timocratic system,68 nevertheless allows that democracy may subject the right of exercising public functions to a moderate property qualification.69 In fact, in Athenian history, the monopoly of the principal offices of state, assigned to the richest by the Eupatridæ, was retained with the system of census classes by Solon and Cleisthenes,70 and for this reason the names of the two reformers, commonly considered as the founders of democracy, were nevertheless on occasion claimed by the parties of reaction.71 In exceptional cases the magistrates were chosen from the leaders of the army. Among the Malians they were required to have exercised command in battle.72 In every way the appointment of magistrates tended to constitute an oligarchy within an oligarchy.4
One of the rules which this regime always observed was the fixing of a minimum age for the exercising of public functions. There is no doubt that democratic cities took a precaution of this kind: the Athenian constitution, for example, which permitted all citizens to enter the Ecclesia as soon as they had attained their majority and completed their military service, did not open the Boule and the Heliæa to them until they were thirty and they were not allowed to give judgment by arbitration until they were sixty. Even Athenian oligarchy went little further than that: in 411-10 it merely perpetuated the age limit of thirty for the Council; 73 and when certain theorists proposed to apply it to all the magistrates74 their proposal was defeated; it was thought sufficient to require an age limit of forty for deputies responsible for drawing up the new constitution or compiling the list of citizens.75 But purely oligarchical cities went much further. They were not content with appointing the members of the Council for life. They recruited the Gerousia from the old men, as at Sparta, where the councillors had to be sixty years old, or else indeed they formed the Boule from ex-magistrates. They rigorously excluded the young from access to important offices. In the towns of Sicily the democrats themselves recognized that there was nothing to be done against the laws which stood in the way of premature ambition.76 At Chalcis one had to be forty years old to aspire to any office, even to an embassy.77 The gymnasiarch of Coressus had to be not less than thirty years old; the nomographoi of Teos and certain commissioners of Andania,78 not less than forty. A decree of Corcyra directed the Boule to select office holders for any function whatever from among the richest men between the ages of thirty and seventy.79 In short, Greek oligarchies, even when they did not give the members of the Council the name of gerontes, had a natural inclination towards gerontocracy.
By their origin and their organization the magistratures clearly show the high place they held in oligarchical cities. The confusion of powers which so often prevents one from distinguishing the rôle of the Council and that of the supreme magistrate, turned usually to the profit of the individual, to the detriment of the nameless multitude. Those who by their appointment stood as an “élite within an élite” were by the extent of their powers the masters of the republic. It is not surprising that the magistrates were, in general, more honoured in oligarchies than in democracies. Their persons and their honour were vigilantly guarded by law.80 At Sparta, the ideal type of aristocratic city, the wielders of public authority obtained an unquestioning obedience from all. Whilst in other States the citizens, especially the great men, were unwilling to appear afraid of the magistrates and considered such fear unworthy of a free man, the leading men among the Spartans gloried in humbling themselves before those who were the incarnation of law.81 It was for this reason that the philosophers considered oligarchy a rigid, authoritarian, in a word, “despotic” system, that is a system in which the magistrate exercised a power analogous to that of a master over his slaves.82
Such was the regime which all Greece knew and which persisted in places which remained faithful to rural life. As one would expect it is in a Hymn to Earth, Mother of All that this idealized description of the aristocratic city occurs :
“Happy is he whom thou cherishest in thy kindly bosom ! Abundance is his. His fertile fields are burdened with crops, and his pastures are rich in cattle; his house is filled with all good things. In the city are beautiful women, and its masters rule in the name of just laws, and happiness and plenty flow therefrom. Their sons rejoice in the pleasures of youth, and their virgin daughters joyfully dance and sport through the soft meadow flowers in floral revelry. Such is the life of those whom thou eherishest, O holy goddess.”83
Such a government could exist only where good order reigned.84 Anarchic despotism has no durable qualities. Aristotle, however, states that oligarchy and tyranny were the least stable forms of government.85 What happened was that inequality inevitably created discontent, and lasting discontent always ends by suppressing its cause. Oligarchy maintained itself easily where the conditions which had given it birth persisted, namely wealth comprised exclusively of landed property and the concentration of a large clientela round some great proprietor. It usually ceased to have its raison d’être in places where the development of a commercial and monetary regime created within the demos a powerful class of merchants and artisans. The object of the struggle was often the supreme magistracy. When the oligarchy was determined not to yield an inch, it imposed on the members of the Boule, by execrable oaths, the duty of hating the people, and it reserved power to those who had proved the sincerity ‘ of their hate by their deeds.86 At other times oligarchy felt itself compelled to come to an understanding with the demos; it decided then upon curious compromises. After the reforms of Solon when the Eupatridæ had to struggle against the class of small peasants (the georgoi) and the urban class of the craftsmen (the demiourgoi) the archonship was divided : it was stipulated in an ephemeral agreement that five archons should be chosen from the Eupatridæ, three from the georgoi and two from the demiourgoi.87 At Tarentum oligarchy maintained domestic peace by the same means : it duplicated all offices, and confided each to two office holders, the one elected that the work might be well done, the other chosen by lot that the people might have its share.88 More often still, in order to keep the plebs in submission, the oligarchs gave it minor appointments as a bone to gnaw. According to the constitution drawn up by the Four Hundred in 411 magistrates of any importance were to be chosen by the Council from among its members, while petty officials were to be elected by lot outside the Council.89
But it is always the fate of the oligarchic system that it creates more and more inequality, even among the privileged. The monopoly of the magistratures gave to certain families or to a coterie such power that the majority, excluded from affairs, refused to submit when once it realized its own strength. Aristotle insists on the fact that, time and time again, oligarchy succumbed to attacks directed against it, not by the mass of the people, but by an opposing faction.90 He gives us for example a terrible picture of Crete under oligarchy :
“To remedy the faults of their constitution the Cretans have adopted an absurd means of a violence opposed to all principles of government : for very often either their fellow magistrates or some private persons conspire together and turn out the kosmoi. They are also permitted to resign their office before their time has elapsed. . . . But what is worst of all is that general confusion which those who are in power introduce to impede the ordinary course of justice; which sufficiently shows what is the nature of the government, or rather lawless force: for it is usual with the principal persons amongst them to collect together some of the common people and their friends, and then revolt and set up for themselves, and come to blows with each other. And what is the difference, if a state is dissolved at once by such violent means, or if it gradually so alters in process of time as to be no longer the same constitution ?”91
And these consequences of the oligarchic system were so general that Herodotus, when attempting to describe it, can speak only of hatreds, violence, disorder and massacres.92