Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/299

 GRECIAK AFFAIRS AFTER THE PERSL^N IXVASIOX. 275 Yocation of Athens as bead of the Delian confederacy, appear now ascendant in the political constitution also ; not in any way as a separate or privileged class, but as leavening the whole mass, strengthening the democratical sentiment, and protesting against all recognized political inequalities. In fact, during the struggle at Salamis, the whole city of Athens had been nothing else than " a maritime multitude," among which the proprietors and chief men had been confounded, until, by the efibrts of all, the common country had been reconquered : nor was it likely that this multitude, after a trying period of forced equality, during which political privilege had been eifaced. would patiently ac- quiesce in the full restoration of such privilege at home. We see by the active political sentiment of the German people, after the great struggles of 1813 and 1814, how much an energetic and successful military effort of the people at large, blended with endurance of serious hardship, tends to stimulate the sense of political dignity and the demand for developed citizenship : and if this be the tendency even among a people habitually passive on such subjects, much more was it to be expected in the Athe- nian population, who bad gone through a previous training of near thirty years under the democracy of Kleisthencs. At the time when that constitution was first established,! it was perhaps the most democratical in Greece : it had worked extremely well and had diffused among the people a sentiment favorable to equal citizenship and unfriendly to avowed privilege: so that the impressions made by the struggle at Salamis found the pop- ular mind prepared to receive them. Early after the return to Attica, the Kleisthenean constitution was enlarged as respects eligibility to the magistracy. According to that constitution, ths fourth or last class on the Solonian census, including the consid- erable majority of the freemen, were not admissible to offices of state, though they possessed votes in common with the rest : no person was eligible to be a magistrate unless he belonged to tuTiog Tijc vept la?Mfzlva vikt/^, kqI 6iu ravrrj^ ttj^ tiyefioviac Kal did. rfjv Kcrii ■&a}Maeav dvvauiv, ttjv dijuoKpariav icxvpoTipav trroiijcev. 'O vavriKdc ox^-oc (Thucyd. viii, 72 and passim). xxxi, p. 142, seqq.
 * For the constitution of Kleisthenes, see vol. iv, of this History, cIi.