Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/149

V rose to it by the action of the unprivileged class only, he was called tyrant. In either case the immediate result was the same; the oligarchic executive disappeared, and in most cases could never be re-established on the old basis of social prestige. But the indirect results were often different; for the tyrant was apt to leave behind him a legacy of revolutionary tendency, the natural fruit of his own violence and self-seeking; while the arbiter had at least the chance of leaving a well-ordered State as the result of his labours, which in spite of subsequent difficulties and dangers might never wholly forget the lesson it had received. The government of the arbiter was a government of reason, based on law and begetting law; the government of the tyrant was often one of passion, begetting a spirit of lawlessness utterly alien to the true Greek nature.

The position and work of the arbiter may best be studied in the history of Athens. The tyrant is also to be found there, and, strange to say, immediately following on the arbiter; but the rule of the latter had here preserved the instinct of order, and the tyranny is for the most part of so mild a nature as hardly to be characteristic. I shall therefore postpone the consideration of the real tyrant to the end of this chapter, and keep for the present to Athens, where, in spite of the