Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/147

 THE KLEISTHENEAN COXtJTITUTION. 129 lavcs, and regarding only the free inhabitants, it was in point of fact a scheme approaching to universal suffrage, both political and judicial. The slight and cursory manner in which Herodotus announces this memorable revolution tends to make us overlook its real importance. He dwells chiefly on the alteration in the num bei and names of the tribes : Kleisthenes, he says, despised jLe lonians so much, that he would not tolerate the continuance in Attica of the four tribes which prevailed in the Ionic cities, 1 deriving their names from the four sons of Ion, just as his grandfather, the Sikyonian Kleisthenes, hating the Dorians, had degraded and nicknamed the three Dorian tribes at Sikyon. Such is the representation of Herodotus, who seems himself to have entertained some contempt for the lonians, 2 and therefore to have suspected a similar feeling where it had no real exist- ence. But the scope of Kleisthenes was something far more extensive : he abolished the four ancient tribes, not because they were Ionic, but because they had become incommensurate with the existing condition of the Attic people, and because such abo- lition procured both for himself and for his political scheme new as well as hearty allies. And indeed, if we study the circum stances of the case, we shall see very obvious reasons to suggest the proceeding. For more than thirty years an entire gener- ation the old constitution had been a mere empty formality, working only in subservience to the reigning dynasty, and strip- ped of all real controlling power. "We may be very sure, there- fore, that both the Senate of Four Hundred and the popular assembly, divested of that free speech which imparted to them certain number of intelligent slaves living apart from their masters (%upic oiicovvTef), in a state between slavery and freedom, working partly on con- dition of a fixed payment to him, partly for themselves, and perhaps con- tinuing to pass nominally as slaves after they had bought their liberty by in- stalments. Such men would be doO/lot fieroiKoi : indeed, there are cases in which dcvtot signifies freedmen (Meier, De Gentilitate Attica, p. 6) : they must have been industrious and pushing men, valuable partisans to a polit- ical revolution. See K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alterth, ch. Ill, not. 15. 1 Herodot. v, 69. Kfaicrdevqc i-epi&vv 'luvaf, Iva ifj 3<jn.ci. al ciifaf fuai ipv'kai Kol 'luai. VOL. IV. 6* sloe.
 * Such a disposition seems evident in Herodot. i. 141