Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/267

 FOURTH YEAR OF THE WATS -REVOLT OF MITYLENE. 24A sympathy, especially advantageous at the outset of political life, he found himself farther borne up by the family connections, associations, and political clubs, etc., which exercised very great influence both on the politics and the judicature of Athens, and of which he became a member as a matter of course. Such advantages were doubtless only auxiliary, carrying a man up to a certain point of influence, but leaving him to achieve the rest by his own personal qualities and capacity. But their effect was nevertheless very real, and those who, without possessing them, met and buffeted him in the public assembly, contended against great disadvantages. A person of such low or middling station obtained no favorable presumptions or indulgence on the part of the public to meet him half-way, nor had he established con- nections to encourage first successes, or help him out of early scrapes. He found others already in possession of ascendency, and well-disposed to keep down new competitors ; so that he had to win his own way unaided, from the first step to the last, by qualities personal to himself; by assiduity of attendance, by ac- quaintance with business, by powers of striking speech, and withal by unflinching audacity, indispensable to enable him to bear up against that opposition and enmity which he would incur from the high-born politicians, and organized party clubs, as soon as he appeared to be rising up into ascendency. The free march of political and judicial affairs raised up sev- eral such men, during the years beginning and immediately pre- ceding the Peloponnesian war. Even during the lifetime of Perikles, they appear to have arisen in greater or less numbers : but the personal ascendency of that great man, who combined an aristocratical position with a strong and genuine democratical sentiment, and an enlarged intellect rarely found attached to either, impressed a peculiar character on Athenian politics. The Athenian world was divided into his partisans and his oppo- nents, among each of whom there were individuals high-born and low-born, though the aristocratical party, properly so called, the majority of wealthy and high-born Athenians, either opposed or disliked him. It is about two years after his death that we u7J.ij voXei, dftw/iart <5e irpoyovuv rtuuftevof. Compare Xenophcn, Mem oral)!], i, 2, 25 ; iii, 6, 1.