Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/160

136 composed of men who are equal in wealth and influence. With a strong intermediate class of moderate wealth it may most nearly realise its aim, and avoid the supreme danger of all small States — the bitterness of party strife. Aristotle reasoned thus from the facts of Hellenic life as they had been for a century and more before his time. He knew that the mischief for which he was prescribing a remedy had already half ruined Greece, and that the instinct of the best Greek statesmen, such as the ideal Lycurgus, Solon, Charondas, had led them to foresee and attempt to avert it. His chapter is a protest, on behalf of the State, against the greed of the individual, and strikes the keynote of all truly Greek political reasoning.

But if Solon had contented himself with simply shaking off the burdens from the shoulders of the poor, his work would have been left but half done. They must also be secured against the binding of these burdens afresh on their backs by an oligarchy of wealth which also held the reins of government. As we saw at the end of the last chapter, the strength of the executive power is the chief characteristic both of the early monarchies and aristocracies; and in this chapter we have already seen how a degenerate aristocracy could use that strength for their own advantage, rather than for the benefit of the State as a whole. Somehow the ruled must be protected permanently against their rulers. If they were not yet ripe to rule themselves, — and Solon's reasonable mind fully recognised the fact that they were wholly ignorant of the art which it had been the task of