Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/88

64 We have now to trace the steps by which the City-State reached such perfection as it was capable of attaining. In all cases it passed through many vicissitudes of fortune, and was forced to learn by the experience of failure and disaster. Its progress was attended by the drawbacks that seem to dog all human effort; for example, it could not exist without slavery, and it never wholly freed itself from the distinction of privileged and unprivileged. The citizen who really reached his full stature, and attained, in Aristotelian phrase, the true end of his being, was one of comparatively few: the great majority of those who lived around him either toiled for his enjoyment, or looked enviously on his advantages. We cannot call any City-State perfect; but as we turn from the philosophers to the reality, we can see humanity slowly struggling towards perfection in this form of social union, in spite of many obstacles never wholly overcome.

The first unquestionable fact which meets us in the life of this new kind of community is that it was originally governed by kings. The thing was expressed by various words — Basileus, Archon, Prytanis, Rex, Dictator — but, so far as we know, it was always there in the childhood of the ancient State. Tradition, both in Greece and Italy, always told of a time when the essential acts of