The political institutions of the ancient Greeks

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CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Aryan Races 1

II. A Classification of European Political Bodies . . 8

Chapter I. The Aryan Races

It is proved by similarities in the languages of the European peoples and the Hindus and the Persians that they had in some sense a common origin. It is not indeed probable that they are sprung from the same parents: but their ancestors once formed a group of closely associated peoples who lived beside one another as neighbours and used either the same language or dialects of the same language. The peoples which had in this sense a common origin comprise all those that belong to the stocks of the Hindus, the Persians, the Celts, the Greeks, the Italians, the Teutons and the Slavs, and are known collectively as the Aryans or as the Indo-European peoples.

The evidence of language not only proves that the Aryans lived together as neighbours, but also tells us something about their pursuits and habits. From the languages of the Greeks, the Roihans, the Germans and the ancient Hindus we learn that the forefathers of these peoples before they left their common dwelling-place were acquainted with the most important domestic animals and had a name for each of them : for the words cow, German Kuh, Sanskrit gdus, Greek fio£<;, Latin bos, are mere variations from an Aryan word whose meaning they retain unaltered : the same is true of the word ewe, Sanskrit avis, Greek oi<s, Latin ovis; of goose, German Oans, Sanskrit Kansas, Greek xv v > Latin anser ; of sow, German Sau, Sanskrit s-fib, Greek av<i or 55?, Latin sus; of hound, German Hund,

Sanskrit (van, Greek kvcdp, Latin canis; and of Sanskrit agvas, Greek tirwoi, Latin equus, Saxon eoh or ehu.

In like manner the words door, German Thiire, Sanskrit dvaras, Greek 6vpa, Latin fores, prove that the Aryans used a word bearing the same meaning and therefore their dwellings were something more than mere tents or moveable huts. Yoke, German Joch, Sanskrit jugam, Greek fryov, Latin jugum, prove that they employed cattle for draught ; a^cov, Latin axis, Sanskrit akshas (axle and cart), Old High German ahsa (axle) indicate the use of carts ; the Sanskrit ndus, Greek vavi, Latin navis, German Nachen, show that they could make boats : the Sanskrit aritram (an oar or paddle 1 ), Greek iper/ios, Latin remits (resmus), prove that they propelled them by rowing or paddling. The absence however of common words for a mast, a sail, the sea, indicate that the waters that they knew were rivers or small lakes and that they did not possess the art of getting propulsion from the wind".

The Aryans were not entirely ignorant of plants that produce corn : for there was an Aryan word from which are descended the Sanskrit yavas (barley), the Greek £etd (spelt, a kind of grain) and jdva in Zend (or Old Persian), Slavic and Lithuanian. Mommsen, noticing only the Sanskrit and the Greek, and observing the difference of meaning, thinks that the Aryans while they were all together merely gathered and ate the grains of barley and spelt that grew wild. A recent English writer points out the wide diffusion of the words descended from the Aryan word, and thinks it could not have left traces of its existence in so many languages unless corn had been cultivated by the Aryans and had thus become well known to them a . This inference seems to be fair: but

1 See Curtius, Grwndziige der Griechischen Etymologic, under the word &p6u.

2 The evidence derived from comparison of the Greek, Latin and Sanskrit is taken from Mommsen, History of Rome, English translation, vol. i. p. 15: the additional evidence from German languages from Max Muller, Chips from a German Workshop, vol. n. pp. 22, 44. Curtius, Grundziige der Griechischen Etymologie, has been used for verification.

s Mommsen, Hist. Rome, vol. i. p. 16. Kendall, The Cradle of the Aryans p. 11.

the absence of traces of other original Aryan words for agricultural products or instruments shows clearly that agriculture played only a subordinate part in their economy. It is probable that they sowed some kind of grain in little plots of ground that scarcely needed tillage.

The results of the evidence which has been adduced may be summed up by saying that the forefathers of the Greeks, Romans, Germans and Hindus, while they still occupied their common Aryan home, lived not in tents but in houses with doors, and were therefore not mere wanderers but had more or less permanent abodes : they were not savages dependent on wild animals and wild fruits for subsistence, but had sheep and cattle to supply them with flesh and milk : they had carts on wheels and knew how to yoke their oxen and horses: they made boats and propelled them on their rivers or lakes with oars or paddles : and they were acquainted with some kinds of grain,- but were either ignorant of agriculture or cared little for it.

From the condition in which the Aryans lived we may safely infer that they were not totally devoid of political institutions. All men live under government except a few to whom government is either impossible or useless. The multitude of uncivilised races who inhabit or have inhabited the earth may be divided into two great classes; the first and lower class consisting of those who depend for subsistence solely on wild plants and wild animals, the second and upper class comprising all those who, in addition to the wild fruits that they may gather and the wild animals that they may kill, also have tame cattle to supply them with flesh and milk or cultivated plants that produce grain. The lower class are known either as savages or as hunting peoples : the upper, for want of a better name, may be designated as barbarians. In the lower class, the savages and hunting peoples, a very small number of peoples are found who have been prevented by specially adverse circumstances from having any governments : but in the rest of the lower class and in all the upper class of uncivilised peoples the existence of some kind of government is universal.

1—2

In illustration and proof of these statements some facts may be cited. The Bushmen of South Africa were at the beginning of the present century a race of savages who wandered over an arid sloping plain that lies to the South of the Orange River. They just contrived to maintain a miserable existence on the roots that they could grub up and on the flesh of animals that they shot with poisoned arrows or entrapped in pitfalls : but, as every family was compelled to keep itself isolated from all neighbours in order to have enough to eat, government was impossible. Other races resembling the Bushmen in the isolation of their families and in having no government are the Rock Veddahs in Ceylon and the Digger Indians in California. A slightly different case occurs in the regions near the North Pole. The Esquimaux, who live by catching seals and other marine animals, are not precluded from grouping their huts in small clusters: but nature offers so little reward to any combined effort of a large number of men that they have never cared to form political communities : and they afford perhaps the only example of human beings living as neighbours but without government. Leaving these very exceptional cases, we next observe a group of hunting peoples" with whom nature dealt less unkindly. Some forty years ago, almost the only inhabitants of the western part of British North America, now known as Manitoba, were a number of Red Indian tribes who supported themselves entirely by the chase, killing buffalo for food and other animals for their furs, which they passed on to traders in return for such commodities as the traders brought them. During the greater part of the year each Red Indian family wandered almost as much apart from communication with mankind as did the Bushmen, for so the wild animals could most advantageously be pursued: and of course while they remained in dispersion had no government. But at certain seasons in every year a whole tribe came together for a great buffalo hunt: at other times they assembled to organize a war against some neighbouring tribe: and whenever they met for either purpose they subjected themselves to an efficient government, which included even a system of police. Apart from the groups of peoples whom I have mentioned, no great number of savage peoples seems to have been observed in recent times : the New Zealanders when first the Europeans went among them were savages and cannibals, and yet they lived under well established kingly governments.

With regard to the upper class of uncivilised peoples, the barbarians, who either keep cattle or grow corn or do both, it will suffice to say that observation of all of them (and they are extremely numerous) proves that all of them have governments. Nor is the fact hard to understand : for in their case it is never necessary for single families to live in isolation: they do as a matter of fact live collected together in groups of families, and each group gains numberless advantages by living together and acting together : and, where men live together and act together, government naturally comes into existence. Those of the barbarian peoples who, like the Aryans, have more or less fixed abodes, always group themselves in small independent tribes and adopt such simple forms of government as are suited to their circumstances. There are many different kinds of tribal governments. In nearly all of them a small number of men distinguished for prowess daring or intelligence have some authority over the rest : sometimes above these chiefs there is a higher chief or king: and sometimes the whole body of warriors may be called together to hear what the chiefs have to say to them. Among the ancient Aryans all the governments were no doubt tribal governments : but it is impossible to say that any one of the various kinds of tribal governments prevailed to the exclusion of the rest 1 .

1 The classification of uncivilised peoples as hunting peoples and peoples with cattle forms part of the classification used by John Stuart Hill at the beginning of his Political Economy : and it is adopted and fully worked out by Mr Lewis Morgan in his Ancient Society.

All the statements of a general kind which I have made about uncivilised peoples have been verified by reference to Descriptive Sociology, Division I., an encyclopedia of facts relating to such peoples, which was designed by Mr Herbert Spencer and compiled by Professor Duncan. The advantages whioh uncivilised men gain from living and acting together and from having a government are explained by Mr Herbert Spencer in his Political Institutions, §§ 440-442.

My authorities for the individual peoples which have been noticed are these s

When the Aryans had made such progress as I have described they divided into two groups : one group contained the forefathers of the Europeans, the other the forefathers of the Hindus and Persians. Whether the separation arose through a migration of only the Europeans or of only the Asiatics or from migrations of both Europeans and Asiatics cannot be determined. It is certain however that after the division of the stocks took place the Europeans still remained together long enough to acquire in common the art of ploughing. The English word to ear, Anglo-Saxon erian, Gothic erjan, Old High German even, Latin arare, Greek apoetv, Irish araim (I plough) are mere variations of a single word and show that when ploughing was introduced the European stocks were still in close neighbourhood with one another and all adopted dialectic varieties of the same sound to indicate the new method of breaking up the soil 1 .

The region in which the forefathers of the Europeans lived together cannot be precisely ascertained: the hypothesis that it was in central Europe seems to fit in best with the geographical distribution of their descendants and the relationships between their languages.

The invention of the art of ploughing opened new possibilities for the European peoples : for an agricultural people has far better chances than a people of herdsmen of accumulating wealth and making progress in the useful arts. But not all of them cared to make use of the new art and to become tillers of the soil. Those who took their homes amid the forests of central Europe still continued the life of hunters and herdsmen for the Bushmen, Burchell, Travels (1822), and Thompson, Travels (1827) : for the Esquimaux, 0. P. Hall, Life with the Esquimaux (1864) : for the Red Indians, H. T. Hind, The Canadian Bed River Exploring Expedition (1860). All these books are cited in Descriptive Sociology.

1 It may be objected that the Goths from about 2S0 a.d. were living close to the Greeks, and the Old Germans from about 50 b.c. had the Romans as their neighbours, and possibly learned the art of ploughing from these neighbours and borrowed a name for it. It seems enough, however, to answer that if the Goths had taken a word from apieiv they would have chosen something more like the pattern word than erjan : in like manner if the Germans had borrowed from arare they would hardly have formed eren.

which had once been common to all the Aryans. Others devoted themselves to agricultural pursuits with delight and success : and among them were those who settled in the peninsulas of Greece and Italy, where, favoured by many circumstancesj»they made comparatively rapid progress in arts, knowledge and political development.

Chapter II. A Classification Of European Political Bodies

The subject matter of the study of politics consists firstly of the groups or collections of men who have lived under governments, and secondly of the governments under which they have lived. In the present chapter I wish to speak of the groups, to describe in outline the various forms which they have taken, and to define the names by which their forms are severally known. I must premise that I shall call some of the groups political communities, meaning by a political community a number of persons living under one government and also having much else in common besides government: the rest I shall call political aggregates, meaning by a political aggregate a number of persons or bodies of persons living under one government and having nothing else or very little else in common. Having said this, I can proceed to notice the forms of individual communities or aggregates, with a view to classifying them according to their forms. In my survey the earliest forms will be taken first, and the others afterwards, as far as possible in chronological order 1 .

1 I have thought it needless in most cases to give authorities for statements of historical facts made in this chapter, because the statements are generally such that it is very easy to settle whether they are true or false. In cases where verification might be in the least degree difficult I have given references.

The two European races into whose past we can grope our way farthest back are the Germans and the Greeks. Each of these races, when first we have any knowledge of them, had formed a large number of tribes or small primitive political communities. The German tribes in the times of Caesar and of Tacitus and the Greek tribes in the time of Homer were alike in being of small size and in being primitive in their habits and government: but in a German tribe the whole population lived scattered over the open country and there was no walled city, while in a Greek tribe, though most of the people lived in the open country, there was a walled city as a centre for the community and a dwelling place for a few of the most important tribesmen. It is desirable to give the word tribe such a definition as will emphasize the distinction between a tribe and a city, and I shall therefore define it as meaning a small primitive political community, living in the open country without any walled city. From this definition it follows that I must regard the German tribes alone as being perfect specimens of the genus tribe or as being tribes pure and simple : the early Greek communities, though for brevity I shall speak of them as tribes, ought in strict accuracy to be regarded as tribes which were on the way to become cities and which had already acquired some small portion of the qualities by which cities are characterized.

In Greece tribes were succeeded by cities, that is to say small communities in which a walled city is everything, and the country districts are of little importance: and similar communities arose also in Italy. The cities of ancient Greece and Italy are often further designated as city-states, and the name is rightly applied to them : for they were not only cities in the sense which I have given to the word, but were also states because each of them was an independent community with a government of its own.

But the cities of ancient Greece and Italy were not all alike : the Greek cities were inexpansive : in Italy one city expanded itself by conquering a host of other cities and absorbing their populations into its own body politic. The contrast between the inexpansive cities of Greece and the expansive city of Rome is a matter of which I hope some time to speak at length : for the present it will suffice to notice that the Athenians, the largest political community known to Greek history in the age of the city states (that is to say before 338 B.C.), inhabited a territory of less area than an average English county: while in Italy before the beginning of the second Punic war (218 B.C.) towns or fortresses peopled by fully qualified citizens of the Roman Republic were to be found scattered over all the central region from Sena Gallica in Umbria to Sinuessa in Campania, and other towns or fortresses whose inhabitants possessed the private but not the public rights of Roman citizens existed in all parts of the peninsula 1 . It must however be observed that Rome did not by its expansion lose the distinguishing characteristics of a city state : it still continued after its expansion over all Italy to be a community in which a single city was of supreme importance and the population remote from the city was, politically at least, of little moment : but as it was incomparably larger than any ordinary city state, we must call it not simply a city state but an enlarged or expanded city state.

The small size of the Greek cities and their incapacity for acting in concert led to their subjugation by Macedonia in 338 B.C. About sixty or eighty years later many of them had recovered their independence, and some of them, in order to guard against a second conquest by Macedonia, joined together in a league or federation. The union of many communities in a federation was not a new thing in Greek history : during several centuries that preceded the year 338 B.C. some obscure tribes of mountaineers (the Achseans) had lived in such a union; their league had been broken up by the Macedonian conquerors, but they had been able, about 281 B.C., to reconstitute it : and the Greek cities, when they began, about 251 B.C., to see their need of mutual defence, had the Achaean League ready at hand, and were able to gain what they needed by

1 Marquardt, Mmisehe Staatsverwaltung, Vol. i. pages 22-57, in the edition of 1873, comprising the section headed Italien vor der lex Julia. Mommsen, History of Rome, Vol. n., espeoially the Military Map of Italy at the beginning of the volume.

enrolling themselves among its members. The Achaean League, enlarged by the admission of many important cities, was a federal state : that is to say, it was a community in which each city or canton had a government of its own for most purposes, but the federation or union of cities and cantons had also a common government for those matters ,which most nearly concerned the safety of them all. The League was perfectly successful till 221 B.C. in attaining the ends for which it had been established, and is remarkable as furnishing the first example in history of a well organized federal state 1 .

The Romans employed the strength, which they had acquired through their conquest of Italy and their success in the second Punic war, in getting possession of many distant territories inhabited by alien races. Before 146 B.C. they were masters of Macedonia, part of Asia Minor, Spain and northern Africa, and the Roman dominions presented an example of a mere political aggregate, or heterogeneous empire or number of peoples having no natural attraction for one another and held together only by force. For the rule of a heterogeneous empire the institutions of a city and even of an expanded city proved utterly unsuitable : and it was necessary that both the conquering city and the dominions which it had conquered should submit to be ruled under a centralised and despotic system of government adapted to the needs of a heterogeneous empire. The right system was only gradually made, but it had been completed by the death of the Emperor Constantine the Great in 337 A.D.

But it is time to return to the Germans : for the Germans were the successors of the Romans as masters of Western Europe. The Germans in their primitive tribal condition possessed a great aptitude for forming large political communities by the union of many small communities: — an aptitude which is probably common to all peoples in a tribal condition: — and they inhabited a flat country which put no obstacles in the way of the amalgamation of their tribes. At any rate the German tribes between 150 A.D. and 400 A.D. were

1 For details see Chapter vn.

engaged in a process of amalgamation. About 150 A.D. Ptolemy enumerated more than fifty of them 1 : by the year 400 all or nearly all of these had gathered themselves into a few great hordes or associations of tribes, (which may themselves be called overgrown tribes,) bearing severally the names of the Saxons, the Salian Franks, the Ripuarian Franks, the Angli, the Alamanni, the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Lombards. After 400 A.D. came the great migrations of the German peoples: some of them invaded the provinces of the Western Roman Empire, still full of wealth and of such civilisation as the Romans had planted there : others, in the second half of the fifth century, betook themselves to Britain, from whence the Romans had departed in the year 407.

During the eleven centuries which intervened between the migrations of the Germans and the year 1500, the Germans who went to Britain, Spain and Gaul succeeded in forming certain large political communities which are usually known as the nations of medieval Europe. These political communities as they existed about the year 1480 or 1500 possessed three of the distinguishing features of nations : for each of them was of large size, lived under a single government, and was composed of men well suited for living together and under one government : but all of them lacked one quality which is essential for the making of a perfect nation: and that lacking quality was a strong cohesion between the inhabitants of the different parts of their territories. But it will be necessary to observe in detail the processes by which the large political communities were built up.

The Saxons, Angles, and Jutes who went to Britain established themselves at first in a number of small settlements on its southern and eastern coasts. From these settlements they gradually pushed their way inland, and by 577 a.d. they had conquered nearly all the richest and most fertile regions in Britain. The many political communities formed by settlement and conquest were soon afterwards engaged in strife with one another : in the beginning of the ninth century the West Saxons

1 Smith's Atlas of Ancient Geography, Map 13, contains a map of Germania Magna according to Ptolemy.

overpowered all their opponents and the West Saxon king received the submission of all the German settlers in the island. The conquering West Saxons and the conquered Angles and Jutes showed the same genius for amalgamation as had been shown by their forefathers in Germany long before : and by the middle of the ninth century all the Germans in Britain (we may now call them the English) had combined into a single large political community. Three times over, in 867-878, 988-1016, and 1066-1070, the English were disturbed by invasions of fresh immigrants from the continent of Europe: but on each occasion the new comers were successfully united in a single political community with the older settlers, and by the year 1174 or at any rate by 1215 the English people had been for the last time fashioned into one kindred under one government.

The German peoples who invaded Spain were the Vandals, the Alans, the Suevi and the Visigoths. The Visigoths proved to be the strongest of the four, and by the early years of the sixth century they had occupied nearly all the peninsula except the north east corner, which they left to the Suevi. In the enjoyment of the luxuries afforded by Roman civilisation, and in the fancied security of their position, they neglected the arts of war in which they had once so greatly excelled. In 710 A.D. their country was invaded and in the three following years was conquered by Moors from Africa, so that none of it was left to the Goths, the Suevi and some other tribes who were neither Germans nor Moors, except some valleys among the Pyrenees and a narrow strip of land about twenty miles broad and two hundred miles long between the shore of the Bay of Biscay and the mountain range of Cantabria and Asturias 1 .

During the five centuries which followed the Moorish conquest of Spain the Goths who lived on the shores of the Bay of Biscay and the inhabitants of the southern valleys of the Pyrenees gradually expanded by reconquering territory from the Moors, and before the middle of the twelfth century had formed the two large political communities of Castile and

1 Spruner-Menke, Historischer Hand-Atlas, Maps 14 and 15.

Arragon 1 . Each of these communities during its long contest with the Moors had acquired habits, thoughts and institutions of its own, and they were but little inclined to join themselves together into a single nation. The marriage of Ferdinand of Arragon with Isabella of Castile in 1469 produced as its result some time later that both Castile and Arragon were ruled by the same government: but differences and jealousies between the two peoples continued to exist long afterwards, even so late as the War of the Spanish Succession in the eighteenth century 2 , and it may well be doubted whether the two were ever welded together into a single Spanish nation until after the terrible misfortunes which they endured and the great efforts which they made in a common cause during their war against Napoleon.

In Gaul the formation of a large political community was delayed till late in the middle ages ; in Germany, the original home of the Germans, no large political community of great importance was established till late in the seventeenth century. In both countries the same hindrances stood in the way of the making of great communities. The two countries were included in the heterogeneous empires founded between 687 a.d. and 800 a.d. by the house of Pepin, especially by Charlemagne, the greatest man of the house of Pepin: in that empire, as in all heterogeneous empires, it was found necessary that the central ruler should delegate very great powers to the officials who governed provinces or districts: and under the circumstances of the time it was also found convenient for him to grant large estates of land to men who had been useful to him and could be trusted to serve him well in the future. In 843 Gaul (or the land of the West Franks) was severed from the empire, and set up a king of its own, who pretended to have the same powers as Charlemagne had exercised. But the kings of the West Franks could not control the local officials and landowners: by the eleventh century the local officials and the landowners had converted themselves into independent sovereigns, each ruling his own

1 Hallam, Middle Ages, Chapter iv.

a Stanhope, Reign of Queen Anne, Vol. i. p. 264.

A CLASSIFICATION OP EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES. 15

lands and the men who lived on his lands: that particular landowner who still enjoyed the title of king had no authority (or at any rate no authority which he could habitually exercise) except within the lands which specially belonged to him : and even within his own lands he, like the other landowners in Gaul, found that his authority was often disputed in arms by his tenants.

In the early years of the twelfth century Louis VI., owning or claiming to own an estate or demesne of land which had Paris as its centre and measured about 140 miles from north to south and about 50 miles from east to west, set himself to establish order and government within his demesne by force of arms. The inhabitants of the demesne valued the good government and the order that was maintained among them by Louis VI. and his grandson Philip II., and when the twelfth century ended they may be counted as forming a small political community or a body of men, possessing not only a common government, but also common interests habits and wishes 1 . In the thirteenth century the king's demesne was increased by the acquisition of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Poitou, Champagne in the north of Gaul, and by the distant region of Languedoc in the south. The new parts of the demesne were placed under the same government with the old, and no doubt those of them which lay together in the north of Gaul constantly tended to unite themselves into a single political community. But the work of unification was greatly impeded by causes all closely connected with the independence which the different parts of Gaul had possessed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and it had not made very great progress in 1415 when France was invaded by the armies of the English. After the expulsion of the invaders the work was taken up again and carried on with better success by Charles VII., Louis XI. and the later kings of France.