Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/498

 492 MUNICIPAL REGIME DISAPPEAKS. BOOK V tions and the laws, — and as, moreover, the latter, in the state of instability in which all the cities then found themselves, changed frequently, — patriotism becnme a variable and inconsistent sentiment, which depended upon circumstances, and which was subject to the same fluctuations as the government itself. One loved his country only as much as he loved the form of govern- ment that p'-evailed there for the moment; and he who found its laws bad had no longer anything to at- tach him to it. Municipal patriotism thus became weakened and died out in men's minds. Every man's opinion was more precious to him than his country, and the triumph of his faction became much dearer to him than the grnn- dcur or glory of his city. Each one, if he did not find in his own city the institutions that he loved, begin to prefer some other city, where he saw these institutions established. Men then began to emigrate more freely, and feared exile less. What did it matter if they were excluded from the prytaneum and the lustral water ? They thought little now of the protecting gods, and were easily accustomed to live away from their country. From this to taking up arms against it was not a great step. Men joined a hostile city to make their party victorious in their own. Of two Argives, one preferred an aristocratic government ; he preferred Sparta to Argos: the other j)referred democracy; ho preferred Athens. Neither cared a great deal tor the independence of his own city, and was not much averse to becoming the subject of another city, provided that city sustained his faction in Argos. It is clear, from Thucydides and Xenophon, that it was this disposition of men's minds that brought on and sustained the Pelo- ponnesian war. At Plataea the rich were of the Theban