Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/143

V the position of the class to whom all these secrets and advantages belonged. While the State was not yet fully realised, while its elements were still in solution, this distinctness was less strong. But when the various elements of population came to face each other in the well-knit State, the idea of privilege began to make itself felt. The holders of the secrets which we have been describing, so soon as they began to use them for their own advantage as a class, would cease to be thought of as heaven-appointed trustees, and would come to be considered as privileged.

And as such we find them when history opens. Their right to exclusive advantages is already questioned, and they are themselves responsible for this. They have initiated a period in which the established order is called in question. They claim to be the only true men of the State, and thus suggest the question of what citizenship is, and who is a citizen. They absorb the land, by lending money or stock on the security of estate or person, and thus they raise questions about the justice of the unwritten law, and the power of the executive which enforces it. In manners and bearing they show an increasing contempt for all who are not born and educated like themselves, and for all employments which are not after their own kind; and here again they unconsciously invite questioning as to the order of things in the world — the difference between freeman and slave, rich and poor, noble and ignoble. It is this questioning that is the chief characteristic of the age we now have to deal with — an age in