Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/62

 46 HISTORY OF GIJEECE. The Megarian revolution, so far as we apprehend it from Theognis, appears to have improved materially the condition of the cultivators around the town, and to have strengthened a certain class whom he considers " the bad rich," while it extin- guished the privileges of that governing order, to which he him self belonged, denominated in his language " the good and the, virtuous," with ruinous effect upon his own individual fortunes. How far this governing order was exclusively Dorian, we hav* no means of determining. The political change by which Theog- to any ethical standard, but to wealth as contrasted with poverty, nobility with low birth, strength with weakness, conservative and oligarchical politics as opposed to innovation (sect. 10-18). The ethical meaning of these words is not absolutely unknown, yet rare, in Theognis : it gradually grew up at Athens, and became popularized by the Socratic school of philosophers as well as by the orators. But the early or political meaning always remained, and the fluctuation between the two has been productive of fre- quent misunderstanding. Constant attention is necessary when we read the expressions ol uyadol, effdhoi, /Je/lricrrot, KahoKuyadol, xprjarol, etc., or on the other hand, ol KOKOI, deihoi, etc., to examine whether the context is such as to give to them the ethical or the political meaning. Welcker seems to go a step too far, when he says that the latter sense " fell into desuetude, through the influence of the Socratic philosophy." (Proleg. sect. 11, p. xxv.) The two meanings both remained extant at the same time, as we sec by Aristotle (Polit. iv, 8, 2), a%8bv yap napa rote irfaiaTOtf ol v~opoi, TUV KaXuv Kuyaduv SOKOVGL Karexetv x&pav. A careful distinction is sometimes found in Plato and Thncydides, who talk of the oligarchs as " the persons allied super-excellent," roi)f a/loi)f Kuyadovf bvo[iao[i.Evov<; (Thucyd. viii, 48), inrd TUV irTi.ovo'iuv re Kal nahuv Kuya&uv fayofisvuv kv ry irofai (Plato, Rep. viii, p. 569). The same double sense is to be found equally prevalent in the Latin lan- guage : u Bonique et mali cives appellati, non ob merita in rempublicam, omnibus pariter corruptis : sed uti qnisque locupletissimus, et injurui validior, quia praesentia defendebat, pro bono habebatur." ( Sallust, Hist. Fragment. lib. i, p. 935, Cort.) And again, Cicero (De Repnbl. i, 34): "Hoc errore vulgi cum rempublicam opes paucornm, non virtutes, tenere cceperunt, nomen illi principes optimatium mordicus tenent, re autem carent eo nomine." In Cicero's Oration pro Sextio (c. 45) the two meanings are intentionally confounded together, when he gives his deSnition of optimus quistjue. Welcker, Proleg. s. 12) produces several other examples of the like equivocal mean- ing. Nor are there wanting instances of the same use of language in the laws and customs of the early Germans, boni homines, probi homines, Rachinburgi, Gudemanner. See Savigny, Gcschichte des Romisch. Rechta im Mittclalter, vol. i, p. 184; vol. ii, p. xxii