Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/145

 MITIGATED OLIGARCHY. 129 enlarge 1 prerogatives, and farther strengthened by its indispen- sable ally, the pro-bouleutic or pre-considering senate. Under the Solonian constitution, this force was merely secondary and defensive, but after the renovation of Kleisthenes, it became paramount and sovereign ; it branched out gradually into those numerous popular dikasteries which so powerfully modified both public and private Athenian life, drew to itself the undivided reverence and submission of the people, and by degrees rendered the single magistracies essentially subordinate functions. The popular assembly as constituted by Solon, appearing in modified efficiency, and trained to the office of reviewing and judging the general conduct of a past magistrate, forms the intermediate stage between the passive Homeric agora, and those omnipotent assemblies and dikasteries which listened to Perikles or Demos- thenes. Compared with these last, it has in it but a faint streak of democracy, and so it naturally appeared to Aristotle, who wrote with a practical experience of Athens in the time of the orators ; but compared with the first, or with the ante-Solonian constitution of Attica, it must doubtless have appeared a con- cession eminently democratical. To impose upon the eupatrid archon the necessity of being elected, or put upon his trial of after-accountability, by the rabble of freemen (such would be the phrase in eupatrid society), would be a bitter humiliation to those among whom it was first introduced ; for we must recollect that this was the most extensive scheme of constitutional reform yet propounded in Greece, and that despots and oligarchies shared between them at that time the w r hole Grecian world. As it ap- pears that Solon, while constituting the popular assembly with its pro-bouleutic senate, had no jealousy of the senate of areopa- ahvuys addressed as if it were the assembled people engaged in a specific duty. I imagine the term 'HMaia in the time of Solon to have been used in its original meaning, the public assembly, perhaps with a connotation of employment in judicial proceeding. The fixed number of six thousand does riot date before the time of Kleisthenes, because it is essentially con- nected with the ten tribes ; while the subdivision of this body of six thou- sand into various bodies of jurors for different courts and purposes did not commence, probably, until after the first reforms of Kleisthenes. I sha'J revert to this point when I touch upon the latter, and hi* times. VOL. III. A* 9OC.