Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/216

192 than they had before. They were simply utilised and organised. But their relation to the State was made much more distinct; they were no longer merely attached to patrician gentes, no longer in an ambiguous position as regards citizenship; they were embodied in the State on the principle of settlement and locality, destined here, as everywhere else, slowly to obliterate the older principle of kinship. The revolution was of the same nature as that of Cleisthenes at Athens; all primitive divisions of the people were superseded, though not destroyed, by the new ones. The State is throwing off the dress of its infancy, and preparing to live the life of vigorous youth in a new form.

At this point, then, and under the same influences as in Greece, the State seems in a fair way to make progress towards democracy. The aristocratic society, of which, as I have pointed out before, the early monarchies were only the constitutional expression, has passed under the influence of a form of tyrannis, and the multitude has been brought forward as an essential factor in the State. But it is not given to every people to develop the art of governing itself; it would seem to need a peculiar type of character to produce this result as it was produced at Athens, — a type in which intellectual quickness is not too strongly tempered by reverence for ancient usage and for ancient social distinctions. Now the Roman, whether patrician or plebeian, had little