Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/30

 14 HISTORY OF GREECE. their reverence for a government of equal law and free speech, with the ascendency of which their whole hopes of security were associated, in the democracy of Athens more perhaps than in any other portion of Greece. And this feeling, as it was one of the best in the Greek mind, so it was also one of the most widely spread, a point of unanimity highly valuable amidst so many points of dissension. We cannot construe or criticize it by reference to the feelings of modern Europe, still less to the very peculiar feelings of England, respecting kingship : and it is the application, sometimes explicit and sometimes tacit, of this un- suitable standard, which renders Mr. Mitford's appreciation of Greek politics so often incorrect and unfair. When we try to explain the course of Grecian affairs, not from the circumstances of other societies, but from those of the Greeks themselves, we shall see good reason for the discontinuance as well as for the dislike of kingship. Had the Greek mind been as stationary and unimpi'oving as that of the Orientals, the dis- content with individual kings might have led to no other change than the deposition of a bad king in favor of one who promised to be better, without ever extending the views of the people to any higher conception than that of a personal government. But the Greek mind was of a progressive character, capable of conceiving and gradually of realizing amended social combina- tions. Moreover, it is in the nature of things that any govern- ment, regal, oligarchical, or democratical, which comprises only a single city, is far less stable than if it embraced a wider surface and a larger population : and when that semi-religious and mechanical submission, which made up for the personal deficiencies of the heroic king, became too feeble to serve as a working See, also, the discussion in Aristot. Polit. iii, sect. 10 and 11, in which the rule of the king is discussed in comparison with the government of laws ; compare also iv, 8, 2-3. The person called " a king according to law " is, in his judgment, no king at all : 'O fj.ev yap Kara v6fj.ov 7*.ey6p.evo<; /?a<7t/Ut)f OVK tonv eWof /ca$u7rep e*nro[j.v flaGikeiaq (iii, 11, 1). Respecting iaovopir], iarj-yopiri, Trapprjaia, equal laws and equal speech, as opposed to monarchy, see Herodot. iii, 142, v. 78-92 ; Thucyd. iii, 62 ; Demosthen. ad Leptin. c. 6, p. 461 ; Eurip. Ion. 671. Of Timoleon it was stated, as a part of the grateful vote passed after his death by the Syracusan assembly, ort rove rvpuvvovf Kara^vaaf, UTTE^UKI roi)f vopovf rolf 'ZiKE^iuTaif (Plutarch. Timoleon. c. 39). Sec Karl Fried. Hermann, Gricch. Staats Altcrthdmer, sect 61-65.