Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/40

 24 HISTORY OF GREECE. of the free people whom he governed ; that he should isolate them from each other, and prevent those meetings and mutual communications which Grecian cities habitually presented in the school, the lesche, or the paltestra ; that he should strike off the overtopping ears of corn in the field (to use the Greek locution) or crush the exalted and enterprising minds. 1 Nay, he had even to a certain extent an interest in degrading and impoverishing (hem, or at least in debarring them from the acquisition either of wealth or leisure : and the extensive constructions undertaken by Polykrates at Samos, as well as the rich donations of Peri- ander to the temple at Olympia, are considered by Aristotle to have been extorted by these despots with the express view of engrossing the time and exhausting the means of their subjects. It is not to be imagined that all were alike cruel or unprinci- pled ; but the perpetual supremacy of one man and one family had become so offensive to the jealousy of those who felt them- selves to be his equals, and to the general feeling of the people, that repression and severity were inevitable, whether originally intended or not. And even if an usurper, having once entered upon this career of violence, grew sick and averse to its continu- ance, abdication only left him in imminent peril, exposed to the ' Aristot. Polit. iii, 8, 3 ; v, 8, 7. Herodot. v, 92. Herodotus gives the story as if Thrasybnlus had been the person to suggest this hint by conduct- ing the messenger of Periander into a cornfield and there striking off the tallest ears with his stick : Aristotle reverses the two, and makes Periander the adviser : Livy (i, 54) transfers the scene to Gabii and Rome, with Scxtus Tarquinius as the person sending for counsel to his father at Rome. Com- pare Plato, Rcpubl. viii, c. 1 7, p. 565 ; Eurip. Supplic. 444-455. The discussion which Herodotus ascribes to the Persian conspirators, after the assassination of the Magian king, whether they should constitute the Persian government as a monarchy, an oligarchy, or a democracy, exhibits a vein of ideas purely Grecian, and altogether foreign to the Oriental con- ception of government: but it sets forth, briefly, yet with great perspicuity and penetration, the advantages and disadvantages of all the three. The case made out against monarchy is by far the strongest, while the counsel on behalf of monarchy assumes as a part of his case that the individual mon- arch is to be the best man in the state. The anti-monarchical champion Otanes concludes a long string of criminations against the despot, with these words above-noticed : " He subverts the customs of the country : he vio- lates women : he puts men to death untried." (Herod, iii, 80-82.)