Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/181

VI young sovereign who puts aside his father's too insistent counsellors, has taken the conduct of its affairs entirely into its own hands, confident in its own abilities and in its own reasonableness. The State, not only as the shelter and home, but as the property and occupation of the people, truly is now the whole body of Athenians, and not a part only, as under the oligarchical rule. The individual is identified to the full with the State.

To explain how these great changes have come about would be beyond the scope of this chapter. Even after the discovery of the treatise on the Athenian constitution, the political history of Athens from Solon to Pericles is still a very difficult and complicated study, and there is hardly a point or a date in it which is not still matter of dispute. I am more concerned just now to illustrate a little more fully the actual working of this wonderful democracy; but before attempting this I must recall the history of Athens in broadest outline, in order that we may see, if not precisely by what steps the democratic spirit went forward, at least how it was possible that it should make such rapid and effectual progress.

This progress, we may be sure, was not merely the result of a series of fortunate circumstances, for in the course of it Athens underwent such perils as would have crushed any ordinary state of her size. Four times at least, within a period of some thirty years, Attica was invaded by enemies, and twice her sacred Acropolis was desecrated by their forcible