Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/406

 382 mSTORY OF GREECE. poorer Athenian citizens who served on ship board were distin- guished for the strictest discipline, the hoplites, or middling burghers, who formed the infantry, were less obedient, and the rich citizens who served on horseback the most disobedient of aU. To make rich and powerful criminals effectively amenable to justice, has indeed been found so diflScult everywhere, until a recent period of history, that we should be surprised if it were otherwise in Greece. When we follow the reckless demeanor of rich men like Kritias, Alkibiades,i and Meidias, even under the full grown democracy of Athens, we may be very sure that their predeces- sors under the Kleisthenean constitution would have been often too formidable to be punished or kept down by an individual archon of ordinary firmness,2 even assuming him to be upright and well- roiiai Tolc diSaaKO-Xoig ; Tovro yiip toi, £(p7j, Kal ^avfiaarov earl ■ to rovr [lev TO lovTov g Tre i^apxslv Tolg k<^ eoTuai, Tovg d'e oTr/ltraf. Kal ToiJc l-KTzelq, ol doKovai Ka2,0Kaya-&ia, tz poKSKpic'&ai tuv TToXlTUV, UTT £ f& E aTUTOVg elvat, TTaVTU V. ' See Xenophon, Memorab. i, 2, 12-25 ; Thucyd. vi, 15, and the speech which he gives as spoken by Alkibiades in the assembly, vi, 17; Plutarch, Alkibiad. c. 7-8-16, and the Oration of Demosthenes against Meidias throughout : also Fragm. v. of the UiXapyoL of Aristophanes, Meineke, ii, p. 1128. ^ Sir Thomas Smith, in his Treatise on the Commonwealth of England, explains the Court of Star-chamber as originally constituted in order '• to deal with offenders too stout for the ordinary course of justice." The abun- dant compounds of the Greek language furnish a single word exactly de- scribing this same class of oflfenders, — 'TjSpicTodiKat — the title of one of the lost comedies of Eupolis : see Lleineke, Historia Critica Comicorum Grsecorum, vol. i, p. 145. Dean Tucker observes, in his Treatise on Civil Government: " There was hardly a session of parliament, from the time of Henry the Third to Henry the Eighth, but laws were enacted for restraining the feuds, robberies, and oppressions of the barons and their dependents on the one side, — and to moderate and check the excesses and extortions of the royal purveyors on the other ; these being the two capital evils then felt. Respecting the tyranny of the ancient baronage, even squires as well as others were not ashamed to wear the liveries of their leaders, and to glory in every badge of distinction, whereby they might be known to be retained zs the bulUes of such or such great men, and to engage in their quarrels, just or unjust, right or wrong. The histories of those times, together with the statutes of the realm, infonn us that they associated (or, as they called it, confederated to gether) in great bodies, parading on horseback in fairs and markets, and clad in armor, to the great terror of peaceable subjects : nay. that they