Problems in Greek history

by J. P. Mahaffy

Xenophon's ideal.

§ 53. It remains for us to note the chief variations between the positions of the various theorists on the ideal State. Xenophon tells us his views under the parable of the ideal education and government of a perfect king. But as he did not conceive such a personage possible in the Hellenic world, he chooses the great Cyrus of Persia,—a giant figure remote from the Greeks of his day, and looming through the mists of legend[127:1]. But he makes it quite plain that he considers the monarchy of the right man by far the most perfect form of government, and his tract on the Spartan State shows how he hated democracy, and favoured those States which reserved all power for the qualified few.

Aristotle's.

Aristotle's Politics ignore Alexander.

Nor is Aristotle at variance with Xenophon, as both his Ethics and Politics agree in conviction that there were single men superior to average society, and intended by Nature, like superior races, to rule over inferior men. It starts at once to our recollection that Aristotle had before his mind that wonderful pupil who transformed the

Eastern world, and opened a new era in the world's politics. But no. The whole of Aristotle's Politics looks backward and inward at the old Greek State, small, and standing by the side of others of like dimensions, differing as despotisms, aristocracies, republics will differ, but not pretending to carry out a large foreign policy or to dominate the world.

Evidence of the new Politeia.

The recently discovered treatise on the History of the Athenian Constitution does not give us any further light as to the foreign policy which Aristotle thought best for a Greek State. Many critics are, moreover, inclined to deny the genuineness of the work, and a sharp controversy is now proceeding, in which, strange to say, the Germans are for the most part ready to accept the work as Aristotle's, while the English are mostly for its rejection. Against it has been urged (1) its general style, which in its easy straightforwardness does not remind the reader of the Aristotle we know; (2) the particular occurrence of a number of words and phrases not elsewhere extant in the very large vocabulary of his works; (3) certain inconsistencies not only with the Politics, but with Xenophon, and indeed, with the generally accepted facts of earlier Greek history. Thus while the political activity of Themistocles is prolonged, and that of Aristides is exalted beyond the other extant estimates of these men, that of Pericles is lessened into second-rate proportions. The praise of Theramenes as a moderate politician, as a conservative in a very radical

moment, affords no difficulty, for it is not foreign to what we know of Aristotle's views. These, however, are the main objections urged by the English critics who have flooded the literary papers with their emendations. On the other hand, great German scholars,—Gomperz, Wilamowitz von Möllendorf, Kaibel, and others,—have stoutly maintained that there are no adequate reasons for doubting the unanimous testimony of later antiquity, proved as it is by many citations in Plutarch, many more in the Greek grammarians and lexicographers. They add, that we know little or nothing of Aristotle's popular style, and that his lost dialogues have been praised for their easy flow. I do not feel prepared, as yet, to offer an opinion for or against the treatise—adhuc sub judice lis est.

Alexander was to all the theorists an incommensurable quantity.