Problems in Greek history

by J. P. Mahaffy

The demagogue.

This is the heyday of the demagogue, who tells the people—the poorer crowd—that they have a right to all the comforts and blessings of the State, and that their pleasures must not be curtailed while there are men of large property living in idle luxury. Such arguments produce violences instead of legal decisions; the demagogue becomes a tyrant over the richer classes; the public safety is postponed to private interests; and so the power of the democracy as regards external foes is weakened in proportion as the harmony among its citizens is disturbed.

Internal disease the real cause of decadence.

The Greek States all in this condition,

Such are the changes which Greek theorists regarded as inevitable in a democracy, and as certain to bring about its ultimate fall. Whatever may be the case with the great States of modern days, this prognosis was thoroughly verified in Greek history. It may safely be said that no State was ever crushed by external adversaries at the period of its perfection. In every case internal decay has heralded the overthrow from without. There is no reasonable probability that, had there never been a Philip or an Alexander, Athens, Sparta, Thebes, or Argos would have risen into a glorious future and revived the splendours of Leonidas or of Pericles. We may deeply regret that the maintenance of such prosperity should seem impossible; we may laud in the strongest words the condition of things which had once made it actual: but the day for this splendour was gone by; and far better than the impotence of an

unjust mob, and the chicanery of an unprincipled leader, is the subjection of all to external control, even with the impairing or abolishing of universal suffrage.

as Phocion saw,

This was evidently the opinion of Phocion, an honourable and experienced man, whose contempt for the floods of talk in Athens, leading to waste of time and delay in action, made him the persistent opponent of Demosthenes, but nevertheless trusted and respected even by the mob whom he openly despised. We may indeed feel glad that his policy did not earlier prevail,—we should have lost the speeches of Demosthenes; and to the after world this loss would not have been compensated, had the Athenians merely escaped their troubles and lived in peaceful submission.

but which Demosthenes ignored.