FOOTNOTES:

Degrees in this stage.

The earliest and rudest of these remains are not in Greece, but at the island of Santorin, under the lava, and in the fort of Ilion (Troy) excavated by Dr. Schliemann[71:1]. The more developed, both in architectural skill and in ornamental designs, are in Argolis (Mycenæ, Tiryns) and in Attica (Spata, Menidi). As I have already mentioned, this civilization does not appear to be the same as that of the epic poems, and the verdict of the learned declares that it dates from a long anterior epoch. What occurred in Greece between the epoch of this curious pre-Hellenic and, partially at least, imported culture, and the age of Homer, none of us can as yet do more than guess[71:2]. But the fact that the popular poetry chose for the scenes of its adventures the very sites of this pre-historic culture, seems to show that the importance of Troy, Mycenæ, and Tiryns either lasted down to the 'epic' time, or was so recent as to hold the popular imagination.

Probably not so old as is often supposed.

Mr. Petrie's evidence.

On the whole, therefore, I am disposed to considerthese pre-historic splendours as not so extravagantly old,—surviving, perhaps, till 1000B.C.; though of course the Trojan remains may be far older than the Mycenæan. Duncker, in his very careful discussion[72:1], thinks the end of this period came about 1100B.C.I look upon this, in an author who is always liberal with his figures, as a substantial agreement with me, but I can now add a remarkable corroboration. Mr. Flinders Petrie, coming fresh from a prolonged and scientific study of Egyptian art-remains, has examined with care the pre-historic collections in Greece, and has established[72:2](1) a very early and widespread communication between the peoples of the Ægean and Egypt; (2) a close similarity, both in materials and workmanship, between the Mycenæan ornaments and the Egyptian of about 1200-1000B.C.The Egyptian pottery, &c., from dynasties earlier or later than this epoch show marked contrasts, and are easily to be distinguished. At the same time, I protest against making therudenessof pottery in itself, without any corroboration, a proof of great antiquity. For there is such a thing as neo-barbarism, especially in pottery; and moreover, simple people will go on for a thousand years making their plain household utensils in the same form and with the same decoration.

The epic stage.

The earliest historical stage.

§ 33. As regards the second stage, or 'epic age,' I have already, in myGreek Literature, shownample reasons for not dating it very early; and further researches since made rather confirm this view. The personages described seem to belong to the ninth century before Christ; but it was gone before the poets brought together their work into the famous epics which were the opening of Greek literature. TheIliadand theOdysseytherefore seem to me to describe the second, then already bygone, stage of Greek history, which was certainly separated by a gap from the third. This last begins with the contemporary allusions of the earliest lyric poets, Archilochus, Callinus, Tyrtæus,—none of whom were earlier than 700B.C., and who more probably lived from 660B.C.onward[73:1].

According to the theory of the Greeks, which is not yet extinct, three centuries separated this real history from the epic period, when the Trojan heroes and their singers lived; and even among recent critics there are some who wish to place the composition of theIliadas far back as 900B.C.

The gap between Homer and Archilochus.

Old lists suspicious, and often fabricated.

No chronology of the eighth centuryB.C.to be trusted.

I do not believe in so huge a gap in Greekliterature. It seems to me impossible that the stream of original epic should have dried up long before Archilochus arose towards the middle of the seventh centuryB.C.And here it is that the moderns have been deceived by the elaborate construction of four centuries of history made by the Greeks to fill the void between the events of theIliadand the events of the earliest history. In the seventh century we have contemporary allusions to Gyges, king of Lydia, known to us from Assyrian inscriptions; we have yearly archons at Athens, and a series of priestesses at Argos; presently we have historical colonies and many other real evidences on which to rely. But before 700B.C.it is not so. Some stray facts remained, as when Tyrtæus tells us that he fought in the second Messenian war, and that the first had been waged by the grandfathers of his fellow-soldiers[74:1]. The double kingship of Sparta was there, though I am at a loss to know how we can trust a list of names coming down from a time when writing was not known[74:2].Nay, we have even distinct examples of fabricated lists. Hellanicus wrote concerning the list of the priestesses at Argos,—in after days a recognized standard for fixing events. But this list reached back far beyond the Trojan war, as it started with Io, paramour of Zeus. The name of the priestess marking the date of the war was solemnly set down. The lists of the Spartan kings came straight down from Heracles. Again, at Halicarnassus has been found a list on stone of twenty-seven priests, starting from Telamon, son of Poseidon, and bringing back the founding of the city to 1174B.C.[75:1]The tail of this list also was historical; the beginning must have been deliberately manufactured! From such data the early history of Greece was constructed[75:2]. Lycurgus is a half-mythical figure, and probably represents the wisdom of several lawgivers. But however individual cases may be judged, in chronology all the early dates are to be mistrusted, and to reconstruct the Greece of the eighth centuryB.C.requires as much combination and as much imagination as to construct a real account of the Homeric age. I am convinced that two capital features in the usual Greek histories of the eighth century, thereign of Pheidon and the colonization of Sicily, belong, not to that century, but to the next.

Cases of real antiquity.

Let not the reader imagine that he finds in me one of those who delight in reducing the antiquity of history, and who advocate the more recent date in every controversy. There are nations whose culture seems to be undervalued in duration; to me, for example, those arguments are most convincing[76:1]which place the great Sphinx at the Pyramids in an epoch before any written records, even in Egypt, so that it remains a monument of sculptured art many thousand years before the Christian era. But the Greeks were mere children in ancient history, and they knew it[76:2].

[54:1]Printed in C. Müller'sGeographi Graeci.

[55:1]We shall soon come to a similar instance in Xenophon'sAnabasis.

[55:2]The Greek name isλογοποιοί, seldomλογογράφοι, which usually means a speech-writer. Cf. below,§ 31, a passage from Clinton which also applies here.

[57:1]The solitary exception is Sir G. Cox, whoseHistory of Greecehas found little favour, in spite of its originality. He will not set down any date earlier than 660B.C.as worthy of acceptance; and I think he is right. But he also rides the solar theory of the myths to death, and so repels his reader at the very outset of his work.

[58:1]The arguments of Busolt (G. G. i. 86) which I had intended to discuss, will be antiquated by the appearance of his 2nd edition, which is now in the press, and which discusses the prehistoric conditions by the light of evidence which has accrued since the first publication of his important work. But for the printers' strike (November, 1891) I should probably have been able to quote his revised and amended views. Holm's appears to me a reasonable view. After stating that Apollodorus (ii. 7), Diodorus (4, 33), Plato (Legg.iii. 6, 7), and Isocrates (Archidam.119) are all at variance, he adds (i. 181): 'One of these is just as historical as the other; the current traditions are not better than the accounts of Plato and of Isocrates; they are all mere tales (Sagen) which can neither be proved or refuted.' Here we have the attitude of Grote, pure and simple, but applied to a quasi-historical period.

[59:1]Will it be believed that E. Curtius paraphrases this remark (ἀπ᾽ οὐδενὸς ὁρμώμενον ἀναγκαίου πρὸς πίστιν) by 'zuerst wissenschaftlich bearbeitet von Hippias'?

[59:2]It is an axiom, to which I shall revert, that all sceptics have their credulous side; and so we find that Mr. Evelyn Abbott, a learned and able man, who will not accept anything as real fact from the Homeric poems, takes with childish faith the list in Eusebius, and tells us that there we can read the names of the actual victors from 776B.C.to 221A.D.! (History of Greece, i. 246.) And he adds, with charmingnaïveté, that the alleged fact of one thousand years' record of foot-races 'would be incredible if it were not true. But it is true,' etc. That a critical historian should tell us these things dogmatically, without touching upon any of the difficulties involved, can only be accounted for by the theory that he was following some authority he respected, such as Duncker, without thinking the matter out for himself.

[60:1]I notice that older scholars, such as Newton, in hisChronology, and Mitford, show quite a wholesome scepticism concerning Pheidon's date, which they are disposed to bring down even lower than Curtius proposes.

[60:2]E. g.Duncker, Abbott, Duruy, Busolt (i. 140) with the recent literature cited, Holm (i. 256).

[61:1]The reader may consult a long list of tracts on the credibility of Ephorus, and the accuracy with which our extant Greek authors cited him, with the general conclusions to be inferred, in Busolt (i. 97 and elsewhere) or Holm (i. 11-15).

[62:1]Though the Return of the Heracleids was placed by Eratosthenes in 1104B.C., older authorities, just as competent, placed it later. Thus Isocrates, in three of his orations, delivered 366-342B.C., repeats that the Dorians had now been four hundred years in Peloponnesus. Applying this round number, we obtain 1066-1042 for the Return of the Heracleids. The tenth generation, according to Greek counting, down from this date for Temenus, would give us 760-730B.C.This may be the very computation by which the dates of Archias and Pheidon were fixed. Duncker (i. 139) thinks the Dorians cannot have come before 1000B.C.If he reasoned like a Greek, and held Pheidon to be the tenth Temenid, he would straightway put him below 700B.C.

[64:1]The last has given a summary of the arguments in hisHistory, pp. 224, 241, and in theRhein. Museumfor 1885, pp. 461seq.

[64:2]That Hippys of Rhegium lived during the Persian Wars, and wroteΣικελικα, is stated by Suidas only and without any evidence.

[65:1]Arch.i. 12.

[65:2]Diod. xii. 71. I now repeat these facts, which I had urged long ago, from the recent summary of Busolt (op. cit.p. 224).

[67:1]It is the treaty which he professes to give verbatim in v. 47, with which the reader may compare the actual, though somewhat mutilated text in C. I. A. i. Suppl. 46b.

[67:2]Cf. above,§ 29.

[68:1]The excerpt alluding to Polybius (printed in his text as vi. 2, 2) merely asserts that in the book of Aristodemus of Elis it was stated that no victors were recorded till the twenty-eighth Olympiad, when Corœbus the Elean won and was recorded as the first victor; from which time the Olympiads were then reckoned. Aristotle is reported to have called Lycurgus the founder (fr. 490). Aristodemus was later than Hippias (cf. above,p. 58); and stillit is to his book, and not to old registers, that the Greek writers refer. The recurrence of the 28th as an improper Olympiad shows that this number had some important place in the whole discussion. I think it likely that Corœbus really belonged to the twenty-eighth after 776, and not to that year. The oldest actual record of a victor which Pausanias could find was from Ol. 33, and this he describes as of extraordinary antiquity. Other details are given in theAppendix.

[69:1]Fasti Hell., vol. ii. p. vii.

[69:2]Cf. above, § 30,note.

[71:1]I incline, with Mr. Bent, to place the remains of Santorin before those of Hissarlik, even though they may be in some respects superior in development. As is obvious, the culture of one place need not keep pace with that of another. But the total disappearance from the legends of any mention of the eruption which must have disturbed the whole Ægean Sea, compared with the living memories of Troy, is to me a proof that the latter and its destruction must be far more recent than the former. Mr. E. Abbott, who refers to Bent'sCyclades, is disposed to the other view (History of Greece, i. 43); and so are Duruy (vol. i. chap. ii. § 1) and Holm.

[71:2]Many writers put the Dorian immigration and the resulting changes of population, and emigration to Asia Minor, in the gap.

[72:1]i. 131. Busolt, as he informs me, now agrees with this view.

[72:2]In two remarkable articles (Hellenic Journalfor 1890 and 1891).

[73:1]The date of Archilochus, the earliest of the historical figures among Greek poets, used to be fixed about 709B.C.The researches of Gelzer,Das Zeitalter des Gyges, make it certain that this date is wrong, and must be reduced to at least 670B.C.; for Archilochus names Gyges in an extant fragment, and Gyges appears on a cuneiform inscription as the vassal of an Assyrian king whose time is determinable. Moreover, an eclipse which Archilochus mentions seems to be that in April, 647B.C., which was total at Thasos, where the poet spent his later years. Even the conservative Duncker (vol. ii. p. 175, English ed.) adopts these arguments. Nevertheless, some recent histories still acquiesce in the exploded date!

[74:1]The connected history was, however, not set down then, but by a late epic poet, Rhianus, and a late prose historian, Myron, both of whom Pausanias, who gives us what we now know of these wars, criticises severely, saying that the prose author is the worse of these bad or incomplete authorities (Pausanias, iv. 6), since he conflicts with Tyrtæus. How modern historians in the face of this passage can set down fixed dates for these wars, beginning with 785B.C., passes my comprehension.

[74:2]It is perhaps the most extraordinary fact in the results of the excavations pointed out to me by Mr. Sayce, that in none of the early Greek tombs or treasures discovered have we a single specimen of early writing, though both Egyptians and Phœnicians, who supplied so much to them, must have been long familiar with that art. The author of the Sixth Book of the Iliad refers once to writing as a strange or mysterious thing, and yet on a folded tablet, which could not have been used at the origin of writing, or indeed till far later times.

[75:1]C. I. G. 2655.

[75:2]These inventions were produced at a comparatively late period, and therefore do not conflict with what I said of the rarity of invention in a primitive age which had no theories to support.

[76:1]I allude to the views of M. G. Maspero, in his admirableArchéologie égyptienne.

[76:2]We have now positive evidence that the Athenians registered their public acts on stone as early as 570-560B.C.On the Acropolis has been found (in 1884) the broken slab which contained the decree as to the legal status of the first cleruchs sent to Salamis upon its conquest by Athens. (See the article of Koehler in theMittheilungenof the German Institute at Athens, vol. ix. p. 117 sq., and theBull. de Corresp. hell.xii. 1sq.where Foucart comments upon the inscription.) Three conditions are implied: (1) thecleruchis assimilated to Athenian citizens, as to taxes and military service, though he is bound to reside on Salamis and not leave his land. This was no doubt a novelty, and distinguishes the Athenian cleruch from the older colonist who had gone to Pontus or Magna Græcia. (2) If he did not reside, or while he did not, he must pay a special absentee's tax to the State. (This is understood differently by Koehler and by Busolt, G. G. i. 548.) The original number of cleruchs was apparently 500 (Foucartop. cit.ibid.). (3) If he defaulted in his payment there was a fine of thirty drachmæ—a very small penalty, even regarding the modest means of the early Greek states.

The Despots; The Democracies.

Brilliant age of the great lyric poets.

The Sparta of Alcman's time.

§ 34. At last we emerge into the open light of day, and find ourselves in the seventh century (more strictly 650-550B.C.), in that brilliant, turbulent, enterprising society which produced the splendid lyric poetry of Alcæus and Sappho, of Alcman and Terpander, and carried Greek commerce over most of the Mediterranean[77:1]. We have still but scanty facts to guide us; yet they are enough to show us the general condition of the country,—aristocratical governments which had displaced monarchies, and beside them the ancient twin-monarchy of Sparta, gradually passing into the oligarchy of the ephors. There is evidence in the character of Alcman's poetry that he did not sing to a Sparta at all resembling the so-called Sparta of Lycurgus. The remains of early art found there point in the same direction, as do also the strange funeral customs described byHerodotus on the death of the kings[78:1]. It would seem that there was luxury, that there was artistic taste, that there was considerable license in this older society. The staid sobriety and simplicity of what is known as Spartan life seems therefore rather a later growth, than the original condition of this Doric aristocracy. And so this type is far more explicable, in its exceptional severity, and its contrast to all other Dorian states, if we take it to be the gradual growth of exceptional circumstances, than if we regard it as a primitive type, which would naturally appear in other branches of the race.

Its exceptional constitution.

At all events the Greeks had before them the example of an ancient, a respectable and a brilliant monarchy. It is nevertheless most remarkable that in all the changes of constitution attempted through the various States, amid the universal respect in which the Spartans were held, no attempt was ever made in practical[78:2]Greek history to copy their institutions. The distinct resemblances to Spartan institutions in some of the Cretan communities were probably not imitations, nor can we say that they were Dorian ideas, for the many Dorian States we know well, such as Argos, Corinth, Syracuse, did not possess them.

E. Curtis on the age of the despots.

The Spartan State may therefore be regarded as standing outside the development of Greece, even in the political sense[78:3]. In one respect only was itspolicy an aggressive one,—in interfering on the side of the aristocracies against the despots who took up the cause of the common people against their noble oppressors. It is one of those brilliant general views which make Curtius' history so attractive, that he interprets this great conflict as partly one of race, so far as Ionic and Doric can severally be called such. The Doric aristocracies of the Peloponnesus were opposed by their Ionic subjects, or by Ionic States rising in importance with the growing commerce and wealth of the Asiatic cities. The tyrants generally carried out an anti-Dorian policy, even though they were often Dorian nobles themselves. There was no more successful aspirant to a tyranny than a renegade nobleman who adopted the cause of the people.

Grote's view.

§ 35. I have already alluded to the chapter in Grote's history[79:1]—indeed there is such a chapter in most histories—entitled the 'Age of the Despots.' The mistake which such a title is likely to engender must be carefully noticed. If we mean the age when this kind of monarch first arose, no objection need be urged; but if it be implied that such an age ceased at any definite moment, nothing can be further from the truth. For this form of government was a permanent feature in the Greek world. When the tyrants were expelled from Athens andfrom the Peloponnesus, they still flourished in Sicily, Italy, the Black Sea coasts, and Cyprus, till they reappeared again in Greece[80:1]. There was no moment in old Greek history when there were not scores of such despots. The closing period, after the death of Alexander, shows us most of the Greek States under their control. It was the great boast of Aratus that he freed his neighbours from them, and brought their cities under the more constitutional Achæan League. But at this period a despot, if he ruled over a large dominion, called himself a king; and we may therefore add to the list most of the so-called kings, who close the history of independent Greece, as they commenced it in the legends.

Greek hatred of the despot,

how far universal in early days.

The despot, or tyrant[80:2]as he is called, has a very bad reputation in Greek history. The Greeks of every age have not only loved individual liberty, but are a singularly jealous people, who cannot endure that one of themselves shall lord it over the rest. Even in the present day Greeks have often told me that they would not for a moment endure a Greek as king, because they all feel equal, and could not tolerate that any one among them should receive such honour and profit. This is why the ancient tyrant, however wisely and moderately he ruled, was always regarded with hatred bythe aristocrats he had deposed; so that to them the killing of him was an act of virtue approved by all their society. I very much doubt whether in early days the common people generally had any such feeling, as the tyrant usually saved them from much severer oppression. Of course any individual might avenge a particular wrong or insult, and in later days, when a despot overthrew a democratic constitution, the lower classes might share in the old aristocratic hatred of the usurper.

Literary portraits of the Greek despot.

How far exaggerated.

§ 36. But Greek literature was in the hands of the aristocrats; and so we have a long catalogue of accusations from Alcæus, Herodotus, Xenophon, Plato, Polybius, Plutarch,—in fact all through Greek literature; according to which the tyrant is a ruffian who usurps power in order that he may gratify his lusts at the expense of all justice and mercy. Feeling himself the enemy of mankind, he is perpetually in a panic of suspicion, and surrounds himself with mercenaries who carry out his behests. He plunders, confiscates, and violates the sanctity of the family and the virtue of the young.

This terrible indictment, of which the climax was Lycophron'sCasandreans, has been indorsed by the great democratic historian of our century[81:1], to whom the completeness of political liberty is the great goal of all civilization, and who therefore looks with horror upon those who retard its growth.

But it seems to me that the problem has not been fairly handled, and that there is a great dealto be said for these tyrants, in the face of all this literary evidence[82:1]. Of course their irresponsible powers were often abused. Coming without the shackles of tradition or the scruples of legitimacy to a usurped throne, the same Greek who was so jealous of his neighbour was sure to feel insolent elation at his own success, and deep suspicion of his unsuccessful rivals. And if a case can be found of a tyrant overthrowing a fairly working constitution, I surrender it to the verdict of the jury of historians from Herodotus to Grote.

Reductio ad absurdumof the popular view.

But if thetyranniswas so unmixed an evil, how comes it to have been a constant and permanent phenomenon in Greek politics? Man may indeed, as Polybius says, be the most gullible of all animals, though professing to be the most sagacious, and may ever be ready to fall into the same snares that he has seen successful in entrapping others[82:2]. But surely it exceeds all the bounds of human, not to say Greek, stupidity that men should perpetually set a villain over them to plunder, violate, and exile men and women.

The real uses to politics of temporary despots.

The fact is that the tyrant was at one time a necessity, and even a valuablemoment, in the march of Greek culture. The aristocratic governments had only substituted a many-headed sovranty over the poor for the rule of a single king, who mightbe touched by compassion or reached by persuasion. But who could argue with the clubs of young patricians, who thought the poor no better than their slaves, and swore the solemn oath which Aristotle has preserved: 'I will be at enmity with the Demos, and will do it all the harm I can.' To these gentlemen the political differences with the people had gone quite beyond argument; whatever they urged was true, whatever was against them false: each side regarded its opponents as morally infamous. Whenever politics reach this condition, it is time to abandon discussion and appeal to an umpire who can enforce his decision with arms.

Questionable statement of Thucydides.

When the commons had gained wealth and acquired some cohesion, there were consequently violent revolutions and counter-revolutions, massacres and confiscations, so that 'peace at any price' was often the cry of the State. Thucydides has drawn a famous picture of the political factions of his day, in which he declares their violence, fraud, and disregard of every obligation but that of party interests to be novel features of his times. That clever rhetorician knew well enough that these frauds and violences were no new thing in Greek politics. The poems of Alcæus, still more those of Theognis, and many more that were known to him, must have taught him that this war of factions was as old as real Greek history, and that the earliest solution of this terrible problem was the tyrant, who made peace by coercing both sides to his will and punishing with death or exile those that were refractory.

The tyrant welds together the opposing parties.

§ 37. In the shocking condition of cities like Athens before Peisistratus, or the Megara of Theognis, we may even go so far as to say that, without an interval during which both parties were taught simply to obey, no reasonable political life was possible. The haughty noble must be taught that he too had a master; he must be taught to treat his plebeian brother as another man, and not merely as a beast of burden. The poor must learn that they could be protected from every rich man's oppression, that they could follow their business in peace, and that they could appeal to a sovran who ruled by their sympathy and would listen to their voice.

Cases of an umpire voluntarily appointed.

There were even a few cases where the opposing parties voluntarily elected a single man, such as Pittacus or Solon, as umpire, and where their trust was nobly requited. But even in less exceptional cases, such as that of Peisistratus of Athens, I make bold to say that the constitution of Cleisthenes would not have succeeded, had not the people received the training in peace and obedience given them by the Peisistratid family. The despots may have murdered or exiled the leading men; they at all events welded the people into some unity, some homogeneity, if it were merely in the common burdens they inflicted, and the common antipathies they excited. And this is the most adverse view that can be urged. The picture we have of Peisistratus, especially in thePolity of the Atheniansof recent fame, is that of a just and kindly man, wieldinghis power of coercion for the general happiness of his subjects.

Services of the tyrants to art.

Examples.

This then was thepoliticalvalue of the early tyrants, and a feature in them which is generally overlooked. Their services to theartisticprogress of Greece in art and literature are more manifest, and therefore less ignored. The day of great architectural works, such as the castles and tombs of Argolis, the draining of Lake Copais, had passed away with the absolute rulers of pre-historic times. Even Agamemnon and his fellows, who probably represent a later stage in Greek society, would not have dared to set their subjects to such task-work. So long as there were many masters in each city and State, all such achievements were impossible. With the tyrants began again the building of large temples, the organizing of fleets, the sending out of colonies, the patronage of clever handicrafts, the promoting of all the arts. It was the care of Peisistratus for the study of Homer, and no doubt for other old literature, which prepared the Athenian people to understand Æschylus. Nay, this tyrant is said to have specially favoured the nascent drama, and so to have led the way to the splendid results that come upon us, with apparent suddenness, in liberated Athens. The Orthagorids, the Cypselids, and single tyrants such as Polycrates of Samos and Pheidon of Argos, did similar services for Greek art: they organized fleets and promoted commerce; they had personal intercourse of a more definite and intimate kind with one another thanStates as such can possibly have; they increased the knowledge and wealth of the lower classes, as well as their relative position in the State; and so out of apparent evil came real good[86:1].

Verdict of the Greek theorists.

Even after all the full experience of Greek democracies, of the complete liberty of the free citizen, of the value of public discussion, and of the responsibility of magistrates to the people, we find all the later theorists deliberately asserting that if you could secure the right man, a single-headed State was the most perfect. All the abuses of tyranny, therefore, so carefully pictured by literary men, had not seemed to them equal to the abuses of mob-rule,—the violence and the vacillation of an incompetent or needy public. I cannot but repeat, that if we regard the world at large, and the general fitness of men for democratic liberties, we shall hesitate to pronounce the majority of races even now fit for government by discussion and by vote of the majority.

Peisistratus and Solon.

It is very instructive to reflect that Peisistratus, the most enlightened of tyrants, was contemporary with Solon, the father of Greek democracy. The theory, therefore, of a constitution in which wealth as well as birth should have influence, and which should also regard the rights and the burdens of the poor, was not only alive, but represented by Solon, when Peisistratus made himself masterof the State. Solon's theory, though supported by hislaw against neutrality[87:1], was unable to overcome the turbulence of faction; and it required a generation of strong rule to prepare the whole people for the revival of Solon's theory, with many further developments, by Cleisthenes.

Nevertheless, Solon remains a capital figure in early Greek history, known to us not by legends and legislation only, but also by the fragments of his poetry[87:2].

Contrast of Greek and modern democracy.

§ 38. This is the right place to consider the nature of those Greek democracies that followed upon the expulsion of aristocrats and tyrants, andthat have been so lauded in modern histories. The panegyric of Grote is well known; and there is also a very fine chapter[88:1]in which Duruy, without being intimate, apparently, with Grote (for he only quotes Thirlwall in his support), has not only defended and praised this form of government at Athens, but even justified the coercion of all recalcitrant members of the Delian confederacy. The student has, therefore, the case of democracies in Greece ably and brilliantly stated.

Slave-holding democracies.

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