Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/130

 114 HISTORY OF GREECK. the landed property of the state, not with any selfish or personal views, but upon pure ideas of patriotism, well or ill understood, and for the purpose of renovating the lost ascendency of Sparta, we find Plutarch 1 expressing the most unqualified admiration of this young king and his projects, and treating the opposition made to him as originating in no better feelings than meanness and cupidity. The philosophical thinkers on politics conceived and to a great degree justly, as I shall show hereafter that the conditions of security, in the ancient world, imposed upon the citi- zens generally the absolute necessity of keeping up a military spirit and willingness to brave at all times personal hardship and discomfort ; so that increase of wealth, on account of the habits of self-indulgence which it commonly introduces, was regarded by them with more or less of disfavor. If in their estimation any Grecian community had become corrupt, they were willing to sanction great interference with preexisting rights for the pur- pose of bringing it back nearer to their ideal standard : and the real security for the maintenance of these rights lay in the con- servative feelings of the citizens generally, much more than in the opinions which superior minds imbibe from the philosophers. Those conservative feelings were in the subsequent Athenian democracy peculiarly deep-rooted : the mass of the Athenian people identified inseparably the maintenance of property, in all its various shapes, with that of their laws and constitution. And it is a remarkable fact, that though the admiration enter- tained at Athens for Solon, was universal, the principle of his seisachtheia, and of his money-depreciation, was not only never imitated, but found the strongest tacit reprobation ; whereas at Rome, as well as in most of the kingdoms of modern Europe, we know that one debasement of the coin succeeded another, the temptation, of thus partially eluding the pressure of financial embarrassments, proved, after one successful trial, too strong to be resisted, and brought down the coin by successive deprecia- tions from the full pound of twelve ounces to the standard of half an ounce. It is of some importance to take notice of this fact, 1 Sec Plutarch's Life of Agis, especially ch. 13, about the bonfire in which Ihe K^upta, or mortgage-deeds, of the creditors were all burnt, in the agora cf Sparta: compute also the comparison of Agis with Gracchus, c. 2.