Problems in Greek history

by J. P. Mahaffy

afforded Holm the materials for his fascinating chapters upon Imperial Athens[96:1].

The newly-found tract On the Constitution of Athens.

But even since the appearance of his book (1889) a new and important review of the obscure moments of Athenian growth has been recovered in the work of Aristotle on The Polity of the Athenians[96:2]. He does not indeed concern himself either with the foreign policy or with the artistic grandeur of the city. But as regards her internal development he brings us several new and curious facts. He ascribes the creation of the sovran Demos living at Athens on salaries for public duties, not to Pericles, but to Aristides. The whole democratic reform is in fact completed before the former arrives at power. The political activity of Themistocles is also prolonged for several years later than we had suspected, and it is even at his instigation that Ephialtes attacks the Areopagus. The political rôle of Pericles is in fact so reduced, that we almost suspect an animus against him in the author, who elsewhere shows his preference for the conservative side in politics. We should indeed rejoice could we confront this Aristotle with Thucydides, and see what truth there is in his departure from our received histories. Plutarch, who uses the work constantly in the Life

of Solon, evidently disregards it when he comes to treat of Themistocles and Pericles. Had Thucydides been a little fuller, had he given himself the trouble to preserve a few more details, we should be in a better position to face this new historical problem, and estimate the really great period of the history of Athens.

Effects of his literary genius.

The Peloponnesian war of no world-wide consequence.

And yet such was his literary genius, such his rhetorical force, that, crabbed and sour as he may have been, he has so impressed his own and his subject's importance upon the learned world as to bring the Peloponnesian war into much greater prominence than the greater events of Greek history. Thus in a well-known selection of fifteen decisive battles from the world's history, the defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse figures as a world event; whereas it only settled the question whether one kind of Greek or another should dominate in Sicily, and perhaps in Greece. The domestic quarrels within the limits of a single nationality are not of this transcendent import. If the Carthaginians had crushed Rome, or the northern hordes of Asia destroyed the civilization of Persia when it was growing under Cyrus, there indeed a great battle might be called a decisive event. But even had the Athenians conquered Syracuse, it is quite certain that their domination of the Greek world would have broken down from within, from the inherent weaknesses in all Greek democracies, which Plato and Aristotle have long ago analyzed and explained.

No representation in Greek assemblies.

§ 40. This statement requires some further illustration to the modern reader, who thinks, I suppose rightly, that the surest and most stable of governments is that based upon the free resolve of the whole nation. But the Athenian imperial democracy was no such government. In the first place, there was no such thing as representation in their constitution. Those only had votes who could come and give them at the general Assembly, and they did so at once upon the conclusion of the debate[98:1]. There was no Second Chamber or Higher Council to revise or delay their decisions; no Crown; no High Court of Appeal to settle claims against the State. The body of Athenian citizens formed the Assembly. Sections of this body formed the jury to try cases of violation of the constitution either in act or in the proposal of new laws.