Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/120

96 commemorating the deeds as well as the high descent of men who had brought renown to their cities. And a century later still, the reflection of it may be caught in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, the central feature of whose political teaching is that a man's duty to his State can only be performed at the best when he has fully and rationally developed all his mental and bodily capacities. Such an ideal could never have been formulated by the philosophers, if it had not been already existent in the spirit of the best Greek life. And we may be fairly sure that it originated, not with oligarchy, or tyranny, or democracy, but in an age preceding them all; in an age when it was possible, to use the language of Prof. Duncker, for the ideal of life and conduct to be realised in the man "capable in body and mind, strong and agile in limb, brave in fight, free from personal greed, zealous for the general good." It was the Greek nobles, then, who first recognised the true nature of the State, and of its infinite capacity for ennobling man; they realised "the good life" of the citizen in contrast to the mere life  of the village community. With them begins the development of art and poetry, of education and discipline, of law and public order, in immediate and healthy relation to the State and its needs. And in a different way the Roman aristocracy too, though narrower and less gifted than the Greek, had its own unconscious ideal, and its own peculiar "virtus"; to them and them alone were