Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/144

 128 HISTORY OF GREECE. But the Solonian constitution, though only the foundation, was yet the indispensable foundation, of the subsequent democracy ; and if the discontents of the miserable Athenian population, in- stead of experiencing his disinterested and healing management, had fallen at once into the hands of selfish power-seekers, like Kylon or Peisistratus, the memorable expansion of the Athenian mind during the ensuing century would never have taken place, and the whole subsequent history of Greece would probably have taken a different course. Solon left the essential powers of the state still in the hands of the oligarchy, and the party combats to be recounted hereafter between Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and Megakles, thirty years after his legislation, which ended in the despotism of Peisistratus, will appear to be of the same purely oligarchical character as they had been before he was appointed archon. But the oligarchy which he established was very dif- ferent from the unmitigated oligarchy which he found, so teeming with oppression and so destitute of redress, as his own poems testify. It was he who first gave both to the citizens of middling property and to the general mass, a locus ziandi against the eupatrids ; he enabled the people partially to protect themselves, and familiarized them with the idea of protecting themselves, by the peaceful exercise of a constitutional franchise. The new force, through which this protection was carried into effect, was the public assembly called heliaea, 1 regularized and armed with 1 Lysias cont. Theomnest. A. c. 5, p. 357, who gives ilv ftfj Trp 'H/iiaia as a Solonian phrase; though we arc led to doubt whether Solon can ever have employed it, when we find Pollux (vii, 5, 22) distinctly stating that Solon used the word faa'trio. to signify what the orators called The original and proper meaning of the word 'HAtaia is, the public assem- bly (see Tittmann, Gricch. Staatsverfass. pp. 215-216); in subsequent times we find it signifying at Athens 1. The aggregate of six thousand dikust.'i chosen by lot annually and sworn, or the assembled people considered as exercising judicial functions; 2. Each of the separate fractions into which this aggregate body was in practice subdivided for actual judicial business 'EicKfajaia became the term for the public deliberative assembly properly so called, which could never be held on the same day that the dikasteries sat (Demosthen. cont. Timokrat c. 21, p. 726) : every dikastcrv U in fact