Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/34

 ^ IIISTOEY OF GREECE. batk to that early revolution which erected the primitive oligar chy upon the ruins of the heroic kingdom. How these first oligarchies were administered we have no direct information ; but the narrow and anti-popular interests naturally belonging to a privileged few, together with the general violence of private manners and passions, leave us no ground for presuming favorably respecting either their prudence or their good feeling ; and the facts which we learn respecting the condition of Attica prior to the Solonian legislation (to be recounted in the next chap- ter) raije inferences all of an unfavorable character. The first shock which they received, and by which so many of them were subverted, arose from the usurpers called Despots, who employed the prevalent discontents both as pretexts and as aids for their own personal ambition, while their very frequent success neems to imply that such discontents were wide-spread as well as serious. These despots arose out of the bosom of the oligarchies, but not all in the same manner. 1 Sometimes the executive mag- "istrate, upon whom the oligarchy themselves had devolved im- portant administrative powers for a certain temporary period, became unfaithful to his choosers, and acquired sufficient ascen- iency to retain his dignity permanently in spite of them, per- haps even to transmit it to his son. In other places, and seem- Migly more often, there arose that noted character called the Demagogue, of whom historians both ancient and modern com- monly draw so repulsive a picture : 2 a man of energy and ambition, sometimes even a member of the oligarchy itself, who stood for- ward as champion of the grievances and sufferings of the non- orivileged Many, acquired their favor, and employed their 1 The definition of a despot is given in Cornelius Nepos, Vit. Miltiadis, n .. 8 : " Omnes habcntur et dicuntur tyranni, qui potcstatc sunt pcrpetua in vii, 14. The word rvpavvof was said by Hippias the sophist to have first found its vay into the Greek language about the time of Archilochus (B. c. 660) : Bocckh thinks that it came from the Lydians or Phyrgians (Comment, ad Corp. Inscrip. No. 3439). uM.o-9ev lK(3Xa<?Tuvi (Plato, Eepub. viii, c. 17, p. 565). Ovdevt yup dq u6r,- ov, art 7rf rvpavvog t/c (J^o/co^a/cof verai (Dionys. Halic. vi, 60) : a propcsition decidedly too general.
 * & civitatc, quas libcrtate usa est : " compare Cicero dc Republic^, ii ; 26, 27 ;
 * Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 2, 3, 4. Tvpavvof kK 7rpoarark?/c f>i&C Kal OVK