Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/45

 EARLY OLIGARCHIES. 29 the following century, they assisted the oligarchical party, where- ever they coald, to overthrow democracy. And it was thus that the demagogue-despot of these earlier times, bringing out the name of the people as a pretext, and the arms of the people as a means of accomplishment, for his own ambitious designs, served as a preface to the reality of democracy, which mani- fested itself at Athens a short time before the Persian war, as a development of the seed planted by Solon. As far as our imperfect information enables us to trace, the early oligarchies of the Grecian states, against which the first usurping despots contended, contained in themselves far more repulsive elements of inequality, and more mischievous barriers between the component parts of the population, than the oligar- chies of later days. What was true of Hellas as an aggregate, was true, though in a less degree, of each separate community which went to compose that aggregate : each included a variety of clans, orders, religious brotherhoods, and local or professional sections, which were very imperfectly cemented together: and the oligarchy was not, like the government so denominated in subsequent times, the government of a rich few over the less rich and the poor, but that of a peculiar order, sometimes a patrician order, over all the remaining society. In such a case, the subject Many might number opulent and substantial proprietors as well as the governing Few ; but these subject Many would themselves be broken into different heterogeneous fractions, not heartily sym- pathizing with each other, perhaps not intermarrying together, nor partaking of the same religious rites. The country-popula- tion, or villagers, who tilled the land, seem in these early times to have been held to a painful dependence on the proprietors who lived in the fortified town, and to have been distinguished by a dress and habits of their own, which often drew upon them an unfriendly nickname. These town proprietors seem to have often composed the governing class in early Grecian states, while their subjects consisted, 1. Of the dependent cultivators living in the district around, by whom their lands were tilled. 2. Of a certain number of small self- working proprietors (avrot'pyoJ), whose possessions were too scanty to maintain more than them selves by the labor of their oft'n hands on their own plot of ground residing either in the country or the town, as the case