This transaction at the same time discloses one, at least, of the causes which had exasperated the commonalty against the nobles, who probably had exacted their debts no less harshly than the Athenian Eupatrids. But, in this period of anarchy, neither justice nor religion was held sacred: even temples were plundered; and a company of pilgrims, passing through the territory of Megara, on their way to Delphi, was grossly insulted; many lives even were lost, and the Amphictyonic council was compelled to interpose, to procure the punishment of the ringleaders. It is unquestionably of this period that Aristotle speaks, when he says that the Megarian demagogues procured the banishment of many of the notable citizens for the sake of confiscating their estates; and he adds, that these outrages and disorders ruined the democracy, for the exiles became so strong a body, that they were able to reinstate themselves by force, and to establish a very narrow oligarchy, including those only who had taken an active part in the revolution. Unfortunately we have no means of ascertaining the dates of these events, though the last-mentioned reaction cannot have taken place very long after 600 B.C.
During the following century, our information on the state of Megara is chiefly collected from the writings of the Megarian poet, Theognis, which however are interesting not so much for the historical facts contained in them, as for the light they throw on the character and feelings of the parties which divided his native city and so many others. Theognis appears to have been born about the fifty-fifth Olympiad, not long before the death of Solon; and to have lived down to the beginning of the Persian wars. He left some poems, of which considerable fragments remain, filled with moral and political maxims and reflections. We gather from them, that the oligarchy, which followed the period of anarchy, had been unable to keep its ground; and that a new revolution had taken place, by which the poet, with others of the aristocratical party, had been stript of his fortune and driven into exile. But his complaints betray a fact which throws some doubt on the purity of his patriotism, and abates our sympathy for his misfortunes.
BŒOTIA, LOCRIS, PHOCIS, AND EUBŒA
The peculiar circumstances under which Bœotia was conquered, by a people who had quitted their native land to avoid slavery or subjection, would be sufficient to account for the fact that royalty was very early abolished there. It may indeed be doubted whether the chief named Xanthus, who is called king, sometimes of the Bœotians, sometimes of the Thebans, and who was slain by the Attic king Melanthus, was anything more than a temporary leader. The most sacred functions of the Theban kings seem to have been transferred to a magistrate, who bore the title of archon, and, like the archon-king at Athens, was invested rather with a priestly than a civil character.
From the death of Xanthus, down to about 500 B.C., the constitution of Thebes continued rigidly aristocratical, having probably been guarded from innovation as well by the inland position of the city as by the jealousy of the rulers; and the first change, of which we have any account, was one which threw the government into still fewer hands. But, about the thirteenth Olympiad, it seems as if discontent had arisen, among the members of the ruling caste itself, from the inequality in the division of property, which had perhaps been increased by lapse of time, until some of them were reduced to indigence. Not long after that Olympiad, Philolaus, one of the Corinthian Bacchiads, having been led by a private occurrence to take up his residence at Thebes, was invited to frame a new code of laws; and one of the main objects of his institutions was to prevent the accumulation of estates, and to fix forever the number of those into which the Theban territory, or at least the part of it occupied by the nobles, was divided. He too was perhaps the author of the law which excluded every Theban from public offices who had exercised any trade within the space of ten years. It is probable enough that his code also embraced regulations for the education of the higher class of citizens; and it may have been he who, with the view, as Plutarch supposes, of softening the harshness of the Bœotian character, or to counterbalance an excessive fondness for gymnastic exercises, to which the Thebans were prone, made music an essential part of the instruction of youth.
Our information on the other Bœotian towns is still scantier as to their internal condition; but we may safely presume that it did not differ very widely from that of Thebes, especially as we happen to know that at Thespiæ every kind of industrious occupation was deemed degrading to a freeman: an indication of aristocratical rigour which undoubtedly belongs to this period, and may be taken as a sample of the spirit prevailing in Bœotia. The Bœotian states were united in a confederacy which was represented by a congress of deputies, who met at the festival of the Pambœotia, in the temple of the Itonian Athene, near Coronea, more perhaps for religious than for political purposes. There were also other national councils, which deliberated on peace and war, and were perhaps of nearly equal antiquity, though they were first mentioned at a later period, when there were four of them. It does not appear how they were constituted, or whether with reference to as many divisions of the country, of which we have no other trace. The chief magistrates of the league, called Bœotarchs, presided in these councils, and commanded the national forces. They were, in later times at least, elected annually, and rigidly restricted to their term of office.
As to the institutions of the Locrian tribes in Greece, very little is known, and they never took a prominent part in Greek history. Down to a late period the use of slaves was almost wholly unknown among them, as well as among the Phocians. This fact, which indicates a people of simple habits, strangers to luxury and commerce, and attached to ancient usages, may lead us to the further conclusion that their institutions were mostly aristocratical; and this conclusion is confirmed by all that we hear of them. Opus is celebrated, in the fifth century B.C., as a seat of law and order by Pindar.
Mt. Parnassus, in Phocis
Equally scanty is our information as to the general condition of the Phocians. Their land, though neither extensive nor fertile, was divided among between twenty and thirty little commonwealths, which were united like the Achæans and the Bœotians, and sent deputies at stated times to a congress which was held in a large building, called the Phocicum, on the road between Daulis and Delphi. But Delphi, though lying in Phocis, disclaimed all connection with the rest of the nation. Its government, as was to be expected under its peculiar circumstances, was strictly aristocratical, and was in the hands of the same families which had the management of the temple, on which the prosperity of the city and the subsistence of a great part of the inhabitants depended. In early times the chief magistrate bore the title of king, afterwards that of prytanis. But a council of five, who were dignified with a title marking their sanctity, and were chosen from families which traced their origin—possibly through Dorus—to Deucalion, and held their offices for life, conducted the affairs of the oracle.