Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/468

 462 THE REVOLUTIONS. BOOK IV^ " which had the love of money in the highest degree, and where everything was permitted to wealth." ' However this may be, these Equals alone had the rights of citizens; they alone composed the assembly;, they alone formed what was called at Sparta the people. From this class came, by election, the senatoi-s, to whom the constitution gave very great authority; for Demosthenes says that the day a man entered the sen- ate he became a despot towards the multitude.* This senate, of which the kings were simple members, gov- erned the state according to the habitual custom of aristocratic bodies; annual magistrates, whose elec- tion belonged indirectly to it, exercised in its name an absolute authority. Thus Sparta had a rei^ublican government; it even had all the externals of a democ- racy — king-priests, annual magistrates, a deliberative senate, and an assembly of the people. But this people was an association of some two or three himdred men. Such was, after Lycurgus, and especially after the es- tablishment of the ephors, the government of Sparta.. An aristocracy, composed of a few rich men, placed an iron yoke upon the Helots, upon the Laconians, and even upon the greater number of the Spartans. By its energy, ability, unscrupulousness, and disregard of all moral laws, it succeeded in holding its power during five centuries ; but it stirred up cruel hatreds, and had Xo suppress a great number of insurrections. We have not spoken of the plots of the Helots. All" those of the Spartans are not known. The government was too wise not to seek to suppress even the recoUec- ' 'A (fiio^Qr^^iarla ZnuQTav 'iXoi ; it was already a proverb in Greece in Aristotle's time. Zonobius, II. 24. Aristotle, Pol., VIII. G, 7 (V. c;.
 * Demosthenes, VraZep^m., 107. Xenophon, Gov. of Laced., 10^