Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/429

 CHAP. IX. NEW I'EINCIPLES OP GOVEENMENT. 423 cient code when it jDermitted women to claim their dower.' There were still other innovations in this code. In opposition to Draco, who permitted only the family of the victim to prosecute one for a crime, Solon granted this right to every citizen.' Here was one more old pa- triarchal right abolished. Thus at Athens, as at Rome, law began to undergo a change. For the new social state a new code sprang up. Beliefs, manners, and institutions having been modified, laws which had before appeared just and wise ceased to appear so, and by slow degrees were abolished. CHAPTER IX. Ifew Principles of Government. The Public Interest and the Suffrage. The revolution which overthrew the rule of the sacer- dotal class, and raised the lower class to a level with the ancient chiefs of gentes, marked a new period in the history of cities. A sort of social reconstruction was accomplished. It was not simply replacing one ■class of men in power by another. Old principles had been thrust aside, and new rules adopted that were to govern human societies. The new city, it is true, pre- served the exterior forms of the preceding period. The republican system remained; almost everywhere the • Isffius, VII. 24, 25. Dion Chrysostomus, ITeqI antarlas. Harpocration, JJtQa fudtniov. Demosthenes, in .t^vcrgum ; ia jScEotum de dote ; in A'ecsram, 61, 52.
 * Plutarch, Solon, 18.