Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/276

252 Thucydides, is of very great value, and should be studied with the utmost care; for it shows admirably, not only the strength of the safeguards of the democracy (see p. 170), but also the advantages possessed by a State whose noblest traditions were traditions of the union of all interests in self-improvement or in self-defence. I may not describe it here at length; but the reader of Thucydides's account should note accurately the following points in it. First, he should examine the circumstances under which this revolution came about, and observe that it was only under the severest possible pressure, and with the hope of bringing back by this means to Athens the only man whose abilities and resources would be likely to save her. Secondly, passing in review the details of the revolution, he should see how, without any open violence, the constitution was changed by a show of constitutional means, the Demos being induced by its own orators to resign its own sovereignty, and to entrust it to a Board of 400; and how even then it was deemed necessary to keep up the phantom of a democracy, in the shape of a body of 5000, which perhaps never really met. And lastly, he should pursue the story to its sequel, till he finds the oligarchy of 400 done away with the very next year, and the democratic constitution revived in its entirety without needless violence.

This disease of internal feud, of which the Athenian revolution was so mild an example, was epidemic in Greece during the fifth century, and especially during the Peloponnesian war. That