Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/49

Rh and liberty, which have influenced life and thought ever since. The Greek polls and politeia showed a great advance on the Oriental monarchy, under which all power was in the hands of one man, and government was carried on by his agents. In Greece a tyrannis—the rule of one man not recognised by law — was not regarded as a form of constitution, but as the negation of constitutional government. The three forms recognised were: (1) basileia, the rule of a basileus or constitutional king, which survived in a peculiar form in Sparta till near the Roman period; (2) oligarchy, in which the right to office was confined to certain families or classes among the citizens; and (3) democracy, in which, in its most complete form, all offices were open to all citizens, and all questions were decided by their votes. The last was the popular ideal, though seldom completely attained, and the philosophers did not find it difficult to point out its weaknesses and defects. They usually urged that the right form of government was an aristocracy—that is, when the best men governed. In theory, perhaps, all democrats would say that they held the same view; where they differed was in defining the "best" men and in the plans for selecting them. At any rate these political differences and changes gave rise to political speculations, which have survived in the treatises of Xenophon, in the ideal Laws and Republic of Plato, and in the Politics of Aristotle—books which have influenced political thinkers ever since.

In literature generally they were no less original, and have exercised a no less permanent influence.