The illustration of Mr. Grote, drawn from the Iliad, is without significance on the question made. Ulysses, from whose address the quotation is taken, was speaking of the command of an army before a besieged city. He might well say: “All the Greeks cannot by any means rule here. The rule of many is not a good thing. Let us have one koiranos, one basileus, to whom Zeus has given the sceptre, and the divine sanctions in order that he may command us.”265 Koiranos and basileus are used as equivalents, because both alike signified a general military commander. There was no occasion for Ulysses to discuss or endorse any plan of government; but he had sufficient reasons for advocating obedience to a single commander of the army before a besieged city.
Basileia may be defined as a military democracy, the people being free, and the spirit of the government, which is the essential thing, being democratical. The basileus was their general, holding the highest, the most influential and the most important office known to their social system. For the want of a better term to describe the government, basileia was adopted by Grecian writers, because it carried the idea of a generalship which had then become a conspicuous feature in the government. With the council and the agora both existing with the basileus, if a more special definition of this form of government is required, military democracy expresses it with at least reasonable correctness; while the use of the term kingdom, with the meaning it necessarily conveys, would be a misnomer.
In the heroic age the Grecian tribes were living in walled cities, and were becoming numerous and wealthy through field agriculture, manufacturing industries, and flocks and herds. New offices were required, as well as some degree of separation of their functions; and a new municipal system was growing up apace with their increasing intelligence and necessities. It was also a period of incessant military strife for the possession of the most desirable areas. Along with the increase of property the aristocratic element in society undoubtedly increased, and was the chief cause of those disturbances which prevailed in Athenian society from the time of Theseus to the times of Solon and Cleisthenes. During this period, and until the final abolition of the office some time before the first Olympiad, (776 B. C.) the basileus, from the character of his office and from the state of the times, became more prominent and more powerful than any single person in their previous experience. The functions of a priest and of a judge were attached to or inherent in his office; and he seems to have been ex officio a member of the council of chiefs. It was a great as well as a necessary office, with the powers of a general over the army in the field, and over the garrison in the city, which gave him the means of acquiring influence in civil affairs as well. But it does not appear that he possessed civil functions. Prof. Mason remarks, that “our information respecting the Grecian kings in the more historical age is not ample or minute enough to enable us to draw out a detailed scheme of their functions.”266 The military and priestly functions of the basileus are tolerably well understood, the judicial imperfectly, and the civil functions cannot properly be said to have existed. The powers of such an office under gentile institutions would gradually become defined by the usage of experience, but with a constant tendency in the basileus to assume new ones dangerous to society. Since the council of chiefs remained as a constituent element of the government, it may be said to have represented the democratic principles of their social system, as well as the gentes, while the basileus soon came to represent the aristocratic principle. It is probable that a perpetual struggle was maintained between the council and the basileus, to hold the latter within the limits of powers the people were willing to concede to the office. Moreover, the abolition of the office by the Athenians makes it probable that they found the office unmanageable, and incompatible with gentile institutions, from the tendency to usurp additional powers.
Among the Spartan tribes the ephoralty was instituted at a very early period to limit the powers of the basileis in consequence of a similar experience. Although the functions of the council in the Homeric and the legendary periods are not accurately known, its constant presence is evidence sufficient that its powers were real, essential and permanent. With the simultaneous existence of the agora, and in the absence of proof of a change of institutions, we are led to the conclusion that the council, under established usages, was supreme over gentes, phratries, tribes and nation, and that the basileus was amenable to this council for his official acts. The freedom of the gentes, of whom the members of the council were representatives, presupposes the independence of the council, as well as its supremacy.
Thucydides refers incidentally to the governments of the traditionary period, as follows: “Now when the Greeks were becoming more powerful, and acquiring possession of property still more than before, many tyrannies were established in the cities, from their revenues becoming greater; whereas before there had been hereditary basileia with specified powers.” (πρότερον δὲ ἦσαν ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς γέρασι πατρικαὶ βασιλεῖαι)267 The office was hereditary in the sense of perpetual because it was filled as often as a vacancy occurred, but probably hereditary in a gens, the choice being by a free election by his gennêtes, or by nomination possibly by the council, and confirmation of the gentes, as in the case of the rex of the Romans.
Aristotle has given the most satisfactory definition of the basileia and of the basileus of the heroic period of any of the Grecian writers. These then are the four kinds of basileia he remarks: the first is that of the heroic times, which was a government over a free people, with restricted rights in some particulars; for the basileus was their general, their judge and their chief priest. The second, that of the barbarians, which is an hereditary despotic government, regulated by laws; the third is that which they call Aesymnetic, which is an elective tyranny. The fourth is the Lacedaemonian, which is nothing more than an hereditary generalship.268 Whatever may be said of the last three forms, the first does not answer to the idea of a kingdom of the absolute type, nor to any recognizable form of monarchy. Aristotle enumerates with striking clearness the principal functions of the basileus, neither of which imply civil powers, and all of which are consistent with an office for life, held by an elective tenure. They are also consistent with his entire subordination to the council of chiefs. The “restricted rights,” and the “specified powers” in the definitions of these authors, tend to show that the government had grown into this form in harmony with, as well as under, gentile institutions. The essential element in the definition of Aristotle is the freedom of the people, which in ancient society implies that the people held the powers of the government under their control, that the office of basileus was voluntarily bestowed, and that it could be recalled for sufficient cause. Such a government as that described by Aristotle can be understood as a military democracy, which, as a form of government under free institutions, grew naturally out of the gentile organization when the military spirit was dominant, when wealth and numbers appeared, with habitual life in fortified cities, and before experience had prepared the way for a pure democracy.
Under gentile institutions, with a people composed of gentes, phratries and tribes, each organized as independent self-governing bodies, the people would necessarily be free. The rule of a king by hereditary right and without direct accountability in such a society was simply impossible. The impossibility arises from the fact that gentile institutions are incompatible with a king or with a kingly government. It would require, what I think cannot be furnished, positive proof of absolute hereditary right in the office of basileus, with the presence of civil functions, to overcome the presumption which arises from the structure and principles of ancient Grecian society. An Englishman, under his constitutional monarchy, is as free as an American under the republic, and his rights and liberties are as well protected; but he owes that freedom and protection to a body of written laws, created by legislation and enforced by courts of justice. In ancient Grecian society, usages and customs supplied the place of written laws, and the person depended for his freedom and protection upon the institutions of his social system. His safeguard was pre-eminently in such institutions as the elective tenure of office implies.
The reges of the Romans were, in like manner, military commanders, with priestly functions attached to their office; and this so-called kingly government falls into the same category of a military democracy. The rex, as before stated, was nominated by the senate, and confirmed by the comitia curiata; and the last of the number was deposed. With his deposition the office was abolished, as incompatible with what remained of the democratic principle, after the institution of Roman political society.
The nearest analogues of kingdoms among the Grecian tribes were the tyrannies, which sprang up here and there, in the early period, in different parts of Greece. They were governments imposed by force, and the power claimed was no greater than that of the feudal kings of mediæval times. A transmission of the office from father to son through a few generations in order to superadd hereditary right was needed to complete the analogy. But such governments were so inconsistent with Grecian ideas, and so alien to their democratic institutions, that none of them obtained a permanent footing in Greece. Mr. Grote remarks that “if any energetic man could by audacity or craft break down the constitution and render himself permanent ruler according to his own will and pleasure—even though he might rule well—he could never inspire the people with any sentiment of duty towards him. His sceptre was illegitimate from the beginning, and even the taking of his life, far from being interdicted by that moral feeling which condemned the shedder of blood in other cases, was considered meritorious.”269 It was not so much the illegitimate sceptre which aroused the hostility of the Greeks, as the antagonism of democratical with monarchical ideas, the former of which were inherited from the gentes.
When the Athenians established the new political system, founded upon territory and upon property, the government was a pure democracy. It was no new theory, or special invention of the Athenian mind, but an old and familiar system, with an antiquity as great as that of the gentes themselves. Democratic ideas had existed in the knowledge and practice of their forefathers from time immemorial, and now found expression in a more elaborate, and, in many respects, in an improved government. The false element, that of aristocracy, which had penetrated the system and created much of the strife in the transitional period connected itself with the office of basileus, and remained after this office was abolished; but the new system accomplished its overthrow. More successfully than the remaining Grecian tribes, the Athenians were able to carry forward their ideas of government to their logical results. It is one reason why they became, for their numbers, the most distinguished, the most intellectual and the most accomplished race of men the entire human family has yet produced. In purely intellectual achievements they are still the astonishment of mankind. It was because the ideas which had been germinating through the previous ethnical period, and which had become interwoven with every fibre of their brains, had found a happy fruition in a democratically constituted state. Under its life-giving impulses their highest mental development occurred.
The plan of government instituted by Cleisthenes rejected the office of a chief executive magistrate, while it retained the council of chiefs in an elective senate, and the agora in the popular assembly. It is evident that the council, the agora and the basileus of the gentes were the germs of the senate, the popular assembly, and the chief executive magistrate (king, emperor and president) of modern political society. The latter office sprang from the military necessities of organized society, and its development with the upward progress of mankind is instructive. It can be traced from the common war-chief, first to the Great War Soldier, as in the Iroquois Confederacy; secondly, to the same military commander in a confederacy of tribes more advanced, with the functions of a priest attached to the office, as the Teuctli of the Aztec Confederacy; thirdly, to the same military commander in a nation formed by a coalescence of tribes, with the functions of a priest and of a judge attached to the office, as in the basileus of the Greeks; and finally, to the chief magistrate in modern political society. The elective archon of the Athenians, who succeeded the basileus, and the president of modern republics, from the elective tenure of the office, were the natural outcome of gentilism. We are indebted to the experience of barbarians for instituting and developing the three principal instrumentalities of government now so generally incorporated in the plan of government in civilized states. The human mind, specifically the same in all individuals in all the tribes and nations of mankind, and limited in the range of its powers, works and must work, in the same uniform channels, and within narrow limits of variation. Its results in disconnected regions of space, and in widely separated ages of time, articulate in a logically connected chain of common experiences. In the grand aggregate may still be recognized the few primary germs of thought, working upon primary human necessities, which, through the natural process of development, have produced such vast results.
CHAPTER X. - THE INSTITUTION OF GRECIAN POLITICAL SOCIETY.
Failure of the Gentes as a Basis of Government.—Legislation of Theseus.—Attempted Substitution of Classes.—Its Failure.—Abolition of the Office of Basileus.—The Archonship.—Naucraries and Tryttyes.—Legislation of Solon.—The Property Classes.—Partial Transfer of Civil Power from the Gentes to the Classes.—Persons Unattached to any Gens.—Made Citizens.—The Senate.—The Ecclesia.—Political Society Partially Attained.—Legislation of Cleisthenes.—Institution Of Political Society.—The Attic Deme or Township.—Its Organization and Powers.—Its Local Self-government.—The Local Tribe or District.—The Attic Commonwealth.—Athenian Democracy.
The several Grecian communities passed through a substantially similar experience in transferring themselves from gentile into political society; but the mode of transition can be best illustrated from Athenian history, because the facts with respect to the Athenians are more fully preserved. A bare outline of the material events will answer the object in view, as it is not proposed to follow the growth of the idea of government beyond the inauguration of the new political system.
It is evident that the failure of gentile institutions to meet the now complicated wants of society originated the movement to withdraw all civil powers from the gentes, phratries and tribes, and re-invest them in new constituencies. This movement was gradual, extending through a long period of time, and was embodied in a series of successive experiments by means of which a remedy was sought for existing evils. The coming in of the new system was as gradual as the going out of the old, the two for a part of the time existing side by side. In the character and objects of the experiments tried we may discover wherein the gentile organization had failed to meet the requirements of society, the necessity for the subversion of the gentes, phratries and tribes as sources of power, and the means by which it was accomplished.
Looking backward upon the line of human progress, it may be remarked that the stockaded village was the usual home of the tribe in the Lower Status of barbarism. In the Middle Status joint-tenement houses of adobe-bricks and of stone, in the nature of fortresses, make their appearance. But in the Upper Status, cities surrounded with ring embankments, and finally with walls of dressed stone, appear for the first time in human experience. It was a great step forward when the thought found expression in action of surrounding an area ample for a considerable population with a defensive wall of dressed stone, with towers, parapets and gates, designed to protect all alike and to be defended by the common strength. Cities of this grade imply the existence of a stable and developed field agriculture, the possession of domestic animals in flocks and herds, of merchandise in masses and of property in houses and lands. The city brought with it new demands in the art of government by creating a changed condition of society. A necessity gradually arose for magistrates and judges, military and municipal officers of different grades, with a mode of raising and supporting military levies which would require public revenues. Municipal life and wants must have greatly augmented the duties and responsibilities of the council of chiefs, and perhaps have overtaxed its capacity to govern.
It has been shown that in the Lower Status of barbarism the government was of one power, the council of chiefs; that in the Middle Status it was of two powers, the council of chiefs and the military commander; and that in the Upper Status it was of three powers, the council of chiefs, the assembly of the people and the military commander. But after the commencement of civilization, the differentiation of the powers of the government had proceeded still further. The military power, first devolved upon the basileus, was now exercised by generals and captains under greater restrictions. By a further differentiation the judicial power had now appeared among the Athenians. It was exercised by the archons and dicasts. Magisterial powers were now being devolved upon municipal magistrates. Step by step, and with the progress of experience and advancement, these several powers had been taken by differentiation from the sum of the powers of the original council of chiefs, so far as they could be said to have passed from the people into this council as a representative body.
The creation of these municipal offices was a necessary consequence of the increasing magnitude and complexity of their affairs. Under the increased burden gentile institutions were breaking down. Unnumbered disorders existed, both from the conflict of authority, and from the abuse of powers not as yet well defined. The brief and masterly sketch by Thucydides of the condition of the Grecian tribes in the transitional period,270 and the concurrent testimony of other writers to the same effect, leave no doubt that the old system of government was failing, and that a new one had become essential to further progress. A wider distribution of the powers of the government, a clearer definition of them, and a stricter accountability of official persons were needed for the welfare as well as safety of society; and more especially the substitution of written laws, enacted by competent authority, in the place of usages and customs. It was through the experimental knowledge gained in this and the previous ethnical period that the idea of political society or a state was gradually forming in the Grecian mind. It was a growth running through centuries of time, from the first appearance of a necessity for a change in the plan of government, before the entire result was realized.
The first attempt among the Athenians to subvert the gentile organization and establish a new system is ascribed to Theseus, and therefore rests upon tradition; but certain facts remained to the historical period which confirm some part at least of his supposed legislation. It will be sufficient to regard Theseus as representing a period, or a series of events. From the time of Cecrops to Theseus, according to Thucydides, the
Attic people had always lived in cities, having their own prytaneums and archons, and when not in fear of danger did not consult their basileus, but governed their own affairs separately according to their own councils. But when Theseus was made basileus, he persuaded them to break up the council-houses and magistracies of their several cities and come into relation with Athens, with one council-house (βουλευτήριος), and one prytaneum (πρυτανεῖον), to which all were considered as belonging.271 This statement embodies or implies a number of important facts, namely; that the Attic population were organized in independent tribes, each having its own territory in which the people were localized, with its own council-house and prytaneum; and that while they were self-governing societies they were probably confederated for mutual protection, and elected their basileus or general to command their common forces. It is a picture of communities democratically organized, needing a military commander as a necessity of their condition, but not invested with civil functions which their gentile system excluded. Under Theseus they were brought to coalesce into one people, with Athens as their seat of government, which gave them a higher organization than before they had been able to form. The coalescence of tribes into a nation in one territory is later in time than confederations, where the tribes occupy independent territories. It is a higher organic process. While the gentes had always been intermingled by marriage, the tribes were now intermingled by obliterating territorial lines, and by the use of a common council-hall and prytaneum. The act ascribed to Theseus explains the advancement of their gentile society from a lower to a higher organic form, which must have occurred at some time, and probably was effected in the manner stated.
But another act is ascribed to Theseus evincing a more radical plan, as well as an appreciation of the necessity for a fundamental change in the plan of government. He divided the people into three classes, irrespective of gentes, called respectively the Eupatridæ or “well-born,” the Geomori or “husbandmen,” and the Demiurgi or “artisans.” The principal offices were assigned to the first class both in the civil administration and in the priesthood. This classification was not only a recognition of property and of the aristocratic element in the government of society, but it was a direct movement against the governing power of the gentes. It was the evident intention to unite the chiefs of the gentes with their families, and the men of wealth in the several gentes, in a class by themselves, with the right to hold the principal offices in which the powers of society were vested. The separation of the remainder into two great classes traversed the gentes again. Important results might have followed if the voting power had been taken from the gentes, phratries and tribes, and given to the classes, subject to the right of the first to hold the principal offices. This does not appear to have been done, although absolutely necessary to give vitality to the classes. Moreover, it did not change essentially the previous order of things with respect to holding office. Those now called Eupatrids were probably the men of the several gentes who had previously been called into office. This scheme of Theseus died out, because there was in reality no transfer of powers from the gentes, phratries and tribes to the classes, and because such classes were inferior to the gentes as the basis of a system.
The centuries that elapsed from the unknown time of Theseus to the legislation of Solon (594 B. C.) formed one of the most important periods in Athenian experience; but the succession of events is imperfectly known. The office of basileus was abolished prior to the first Olympiad (776 B. C.), and the archonship established in its place. The latter seems to have been hereditary in a gens, and it is stated to have been hereditary in a particular family within the gens, the first twelve archons being called the Medontidæ, from Medon, the first archon, claimed to have been the son of Codrus, the last basileus. In the case of these archons, who held for life, the same question exists which has elsewhere been raised with respect to the basileus; that an election or confirmation by a constituency was necessary before the office could be assumed. The presumption is against the transmission of the office by hereditary right. In 711 B. C. the office of archon was limited to ten years, and bestowed by free election upon the person esteemed most worthy of the position. We are now within the historical period, though near its threshold, where we meet the elective principle with respect to the highest office in the gift of the people clearly and completely established. It is precisely what would have been expected from the constitution and principles of the gentes, although the aristocratical principle, as we must suppose, had increased in force with the increase of property, and was the source through which hereditary right was introduced wherever found. The existence of the elective principle with respect to the later archons is not without significance in its relation to the question of the previous practice of the Athenians. In 683 B. C. the office was made elective annually, the number was increased to nine, and their duties were made ministerial and judicial.272 We may notice, in these events, evidence of a gradual progress in knowledge with respect to the tenure of office. The Athenian tribes had inherited from their remote ancestors the office of archon (ἀρχός) as chief of the gens. It was hereditary in the gens, as may fairly be supposed, and elective among its members. After descent was changed to the male line the sons of the deceased chief were within the line of succession, and one of their number would be apt to be chosen in the absence of personal objections. But now they reverted to this original office for the name of their highest magistrate, made it elective irrespective of any gens, and limited its duration, first to ten years, and finally to one. Prior to this, the tenure of office to which they had been accustomed was for life. In the Lower and also in the Middle Status of barbarism we have found the office of chief, elective and for life; or during good behavior, for this limitation follows from the right of the gens to depose from office. It is a reasonable inference that the office of chief in a Grecian gens was held by a free election and by the same tenure. It must be regarded as proof of a remarkable advancement in knowledge at this early period that the Athenian tribes substituted a term of years for their most important office, and allowed a competition of candidates. They thus worked out the entire theory of an elective and representative office, and placed it upon its true basis.
In the time of Solon, it may be further noticed, the Court of Areopagus, composed of ex-archons, had come into existence with power to try criminals and with a censorship over morals, together with a number of new offices in the military, naval and administrative services. But the most important event that occurred about this time was the institution of the naucraries (ναυκραρίαι), twelve in each tribe, and forty-eight in all; each of which was a local circumscription of householders from which levies were drawn into the military and naval service, and from which taxes were probably collected. The naucrary was the incipient deme or township which, when the idea of a territorial basis was fully developed, was to become the foundation of the second great plan of government. By whom the naucraries were instituted is unknown. “They must have existed even before the time of Solon,” Boeckh remarks, “since the presiding officers of the naucraries (πρυτάνεις τῶν ναυκράρων) are mentioned before the time of his legislation; and when Aristotle ascribes their institution to Solon, we may refer this account only to their confirmation by the political constitution of Solon.”273 Twelve naucraries formed a trittys (τριττύς) a larger territorial circumscription, but they were not necessarily contiguous. It was, in like manner, the germ of the county, the next territorial aggregate above the township.
Notwithstanding the great changes that had occurred in the instrumentalities by which the government was administered, the people were still in a gentile society, and living under gentile institutions. The gens, phratry and tribe were in full vitality, and the recognized sources of power. Before the time of Solon no person could become a member of this society except through connection with a gens and tribe. All other persons were beyond the pale of the government. The council of chiefs remained, the old and time-honored instrument of government; but the powers of the government were now coordinated between itself, the agora or assembly of the people, the Court of Areopagus, and the nine archons. It was the prerogative of the council to originate and mature public measures for submission to the people, which enabled it to shape the policy of the government. It doubtless had the general administration of the finances, and it remained to the end, as it had been from the beginning, the central feature of the government. The assembly of the people had now come into increased prominence. Its functions were still limited to the adoption or rejection of public measures submitted to its decision by the council; but it began to exercise a powerful influence upon public affairs. The rise of this assembly as a power in the government is the surest evidence of the progress of the Athenian people in knowledge and intelligence. Unfortunately the functions and powers of the council of chiefs and of the assembly of the people in this early period have been imperfectly preserved, and but partially elucidated.
In 624 B. C. Draco had framed a body of laws for the Athenians which were chiefly remarkable for their unnecessary severity; but this code demonstrated that the time was drawing near in Grecian experience when usages and customs were to be superseded by written laws. As yet the Athenians had not learned the art of enacting laws as the necessity for them appeared, which required a higher knowledge of the functions of legislative bodies than they had attained. They were in that stage in which lawgivers appear, and legislation is in a scheme or in gross, under the sanction of a personal name. Thus slowly the great sequences of human progress unfold themselves.
When Solon came into the archonship (594 B. C.) the evils prevalent in society had reached an unbearable degree. The struggle for the possession of property, now a commanding interest, had produced singular results. A portion of the Athenians had fallen into slavery, through debt,—the person of the debtor being liable to enslavement in default of payment; others had mortgaged their lands and were unable to remove the encumbrances; and as a consequence of these and other embarrassments society was devouring itself. In addition to a body of laws, some of them novel, but corrective of the principal financial difficulties, Solon renewed the project of Theseus of organizing society into classes, not according to callings as before, but according to the amount of their property. It is instructive to follow the course of these experiments to supersede the gentes and substitute a new system, because we shall find the Roman tribes, in the time of Servius Tullius, trying the same experiment for the same purpose. Solon divided the people into four classes according to the measure of their wealth, and going beyond Theseus, he invested these classes with certain powers, and imposed upon them certain obligations. It transferred a portion of the civil powers of the gentes, phratries and tribes to the property classes. In proportion as the substance of power was drawn from the former and invested in the latter, the gentes would be weakened and their decadence would commence. But so far as classes composed of persons were substituted for gentes composed of persons, the government was still founded upon person, and upon relations purely personal. The scheme failed to reach the substance of the question. Moreover, in changing the council of chiefs into the senate of four hundred, the members were taken in equal numbers from the four tribes, and not from the classes. But it will be noticed that the idea of property, as the basis of a system of government, was now incorporated by Solon in the new plan of property classes. It failed, however, to reach the idea of political society, which must rest upon territory as well as property, and deal with persons through their territorial relations. The first class alone were eligible to the high offices, the second performed military service on horseback, the third as infantry, and the fourth as light-armed soldiers. This last class were the numerical majority. They were disqualified from holding office, and paid no taxes; but in the popular assembly of which they were members, they possessed a vote upon the election of all magistrates and officers, with power to bring them to an account. They also had power to adopt or reject all public measures submitted by the senate to their decision. Under the constitution of Solon their powers were real and durable, and their influence upon public affairs was permanent and substantial. All freemen, though not connected with a gens and tribe, were now brought into the government, to a certain extent, by becoming citizens and members of the assembly of the people with the powers named. This was one of the most important results of the legislation of Solon.
It will be further noticed that the people were now organized as an army, consisting of three divisions; the cavalry, the heavy-armed infantry, and the light-armed infantry, each with its own officers of different grades. The form of the statement limits the array to the last three classes, which leaves the first class in the unpatriotic position of appropriating to themselves the principal offices of the government, and taking no part in the military service. This undoubtedly requires modification. The same plan of organization, but including the five classes, will re-appear among the Romans under Servius Tullius, by whom the body of the people were organized as an army (exercitus) fully officered and equipped in each subdivision. The idea of a military democracy, different in organization but the same theoretically as that of the previous period, re-appears in a new dress both in the Solonian and in the Servian constitution.
In addition to the property element, which entered into the basis of the new system, the territorial element was partially incorporated through the naucraries before adverted to, in which it is probable there was an enrollment of citizens and of their property to form a basis for military levies and for taxation. These provisions, with the senate, the popular assembly now called the ecclesia, the nine archons, and the Court of Areopagus, gave to the Athenians a much more elaborate government than they had before known, and requiring a higher degree of intelligence for its management. It was also essentially democratical in harmony with their antecedent ideas and institutions; in fact a logical consequence of them, and explainable only as such. But it fell short of a pure system in three respects: firstly, it was not founded upon territory; secondly, all the dignities of the state were not open to every citizen; and thirdly, the principle of local self-government in primary organizations was unknown, except as it may have existed imperfectly in the naucraries. The gentes, phratries and tribes still remained in full vitality, but with diminished powers. It was a transitional condition, requiring further experience to develop the theory of a political system toward which it was a great advance. Thus slowly but steadily human institutions are evolved from lower into higher forms, through the logical operations of the human mind working in uniform but predetermined channels.
There was one weighty reason for the overthrow of the gentes and the substitution of a new plan of government. It was probably recognized by Theseus, and undoubtedly by Solon. From the disturbed condition of the Grecian tribes and the unavoidable movements of the people in the traditionary period and in the times prior to Solon, many persons transferred themselves from one nation to another, and thus lost their connection with their own gens without acquiring a connection with another. This would repeat itself from time to time, through personal adventure, the spirit of trade, and the exigencies of warfare, until a considerable number with their posterity would be developed in every tribe unconnected with any gens. All such persons, as before remarked, would be without the pale of the government with which there could be no connection excepting through a gens and tribe. The fact is noticed by Mr. Grote. “The phratries and gentes,” he remarks, “probably never at any time included the whole population of the country—and the population not included in them tended to become larger and larger in the times anterior to Kleisthenes, as well as afterwards.”274 As early as the time of Lycurgus there was a considerable immigration into Greece from the islands of the Mediterranean, and from the Ionian cities of its eastern coasts, which increased the number of persons unattached to any gens. When they came in families they would bring a fragment of a new gens with them; but they would remain aliens unless the new gens was admitted into a tribe. This probably occurred in a number of cases, and it may assist in explaining the unusual number of gentes in Greece. The gentes and phratries were close corporations, both of which would have been adulterated by the absorption of these aliens through adoption into a native gens. Persons of distinction might be adopted into some gens, or secure the admission of their own gens into some tribe; but the poorer class would be refused either privilege. There can be no doubt that as far back as the time of Theseus, and more especially in the time of Solon, the number of the unattached class, exclusive of the slaves, had become large. Having neither gens nor phratry they were also without direct religious privileges, which were inherent and exclusive in these organizations. It is not difficult to see in this class of persons a growing element of discontent dangerous to the security of society.
The schemes of Theseus and of Solon made imperfect provision for their admission to citizenship through the classes; but as the gentes and phratries remained from which they were excluded, the remedy was still incomplete. Mr. Grote further remarks, that “it is not easy to make out distinctly what was the political position of the ancient Gentes and Phratries, as Solon left them. The four tribes consisted altogether of gentes and phratries, insomuch that no one could be included in any one of the tribes who was not also a member of some gens and phratry. Now the new probouleutic or pre-considering senate consisted of 400 members,—100 from each of the tribes: persons not included in any gens and phratry could therefore have had no access to it. The conditions of eligibility were similar, according to ancient custom, for the nine archons—of course, also, for the senate of Areopagus. So that there remained only the public assembly, in which an Athenian, not a member of these tribes, could take part: yet he was a citizen, since he could give his vote for archons and senators, and could take part in the annual decision of their accountability, besides being entitled to claim redress for wrong from the archons in his own person—while the alien could only do so through the intervention of an avouching citizen, or Prostatês. It seems therefore that all persons not included in the four tribes, whatever their grade or fortune might be, were on the same level in respect to political privilege as the fourth and poorest class of the Solonian census. It has already been remarked, that even before the time of Solon, the number of Athenians not included in the gentes or phratries was probably considerable: it tended to become greater and greater, since these bodies were close and unexpansive, while the policy of the new lawgiver tended to invite industrious settlers from other parts of Greece to Athens.”275 The Roman Plebeians originated from causes precisely similar. They were not members of any gens, and therefore formed no part of the Populus Romanus. We may find in the facts stated one of the reasons of the failure of the gentile organization to meet the requirements of society. In the time of Solon, society had outgrown their ability to govern, its affairs had advanced so far beyond the condition in which the gentes originated. They furnished a basis too narrow for a state, up to the measure of which the people had grown.
There was also an increasing difficulty in keeping the members of a gens, phratry and tribe locally together. As parts of a governmental organic series, this fact of localization was highly necessary. In the earlier period, the gens held its lands in common, the phratries held certain lands in common for religious uses, and the tribe probably held other lands in common. When they established themselves in country or city, they settled locally together by gentes, by phratries and by tribes, as a consequence of their social organization. Each gens was in the main by itself—not all of its members, for two gentes were represented in every family, but the body who propagated the gens. Those gentes belonging to the same phratry naturally sought contiguous or at least near areas, and the same with the several phratries of the tribe. But in the time of Solon, lands and houses had come to be owned by individuals in severalty, with power of alienation as to lands, but not of houses out of the gens. It doubtless became more and more impossible to keep the members of a gens locally together, from the shifting relations of persons to land, and from the creation of new property by its members in other localities. The unit of their social system was becoming unstable in place, and also in character. Without stopping to develop this fact of their condition further, it must have proved one of the reasons of the failure of the old plan of government. The township, with its fixed property and its inhabitants for the time being, yielded that element of permanence now wanting in the gens. Society had made immense progress from its former condition of extreme simplicity. It was very different from that which the gentile organization was instituted to govern. Nothing but the unsettled condition and incessant warfare of the Athenian tribes, from their settlement in Attica to the time of Solon, could have preserved this organization from overthrow. After their establishment in walled cities, that rapid development of wealth and numbers occurred which brought the gentes to the final test, and demonstrated their inability to govern a people now rapidly approaching civilization. But their displacement even then required a long period of time.
The seriousness of the difficulties to be overcome in creating a political society are strikingly illustrated in the experience of the Athenians. In the time of Solon, Athens had already produced able men; the useful arts had attained a very considerable development; commerce on the sea had become a national interest; agriculture and manufactures were well advanced; and written composition in verse had commenced. They were in fact a civilized people, and had been for two centuries; but their institutions of government were still gentile, and of the type prevalent throughout the Later Period of barbarism. A great impetus had been given to the Athenian commonwealth by the new system of Solon; nevertheless, nearly a century elapsed, accompanied with many disorders, before the idea of a state was fully developed in the Athenian mind. Out of the naucrary, a conception of a township as the unit of a political system was finally elaborated; but it required a man of the highest genius, as well as great personal influence, to seize the idea in its fullness, and give it an organic embodiment. That man finally appeared in Cleisthenes (509 B. C.), who must be regarded as the first of Athenian legislators—the founder of the second great plan of human government, that under which modern civilized nations are organized.
Cleisthenes went to the bottom of the question, and placed the Athenian political system upon the foundation on which it remained to the close of the independent existence of the commonwealth. He divided Attica into a hundred demes, or townships, each circumscribed by metes and bounds, and distinguished by a name. Every citizen was required to register himself, and to cause an enrollment of his property in the deme in which he resided. This enrollment was the evidence as well as the foundation of his civil privileges. The deme displaced the naucrary. Its inhabitants were an organized body politic with powers of local self-government, like the modern American township. This is the vital and the remarkable feature of the system. It reveals at once its democratic character. The government was placed in the hands of the people in the first of the series of territorial organizations. The demotæ elected a demarch (δήμαρχος), who had the custody of the public register; he had also power to convene the demotæ for the purpose of electing magistrates and judges, for revising the registry of citizens, and for the enrollment of such as became of age during the year. They elected a treasurer, and provided for the assessment and collection of taxes, and for furnishing the quota of troops required of the deme for the service of the state. They also elected thirty dicasts or judges, who tried all causes arising in the deme where the amount involved fell below a certain sum. Besides these powers of local self-government, which is the essence of a democratic system, each deme had its own temple and religious worship, and its own priest, also elected by the demotæ. Omitting minor particulars, we find the instructive and remarkable fact that the township, as first instituted, possessed all the powers of local self-government, and even upon a fuller and larger scale than an American township. Freedom in religion is also noticeable, which was placed where it rightfully belongs, under the control of the people. All registered citizens were free, and equal in their rights and privileges, with the exception of equal eligibility to the higher offices. Such was the new unit of organization in Athenian political society, at once a model for a free state, and a marvel of wisdom and knowledge. The Athenians commenced with a democratic organization at the point where every people must commence who desire to create a free state, and place the control of the government in the hands of its citizens.
The second member of the organic territorial series consisted of ten demes, united in a larger geographical district. It was called a local tribe (φῦλον τοπικὸν), to preserve some part of the terminology of the old gentile system.276 Each district was named after an Attic hero, and it was the analogue of the modern county. The demes in each district were usually contiguous, which should have been true in every instance to render the analogy complete; but in a few cases one or more of the ten were detached, probably in consequence of the local separation of portions of the original consanguine tribe who desired to have their deme incorporated in the district of their immediate kinsmen. The inhabitants of each district or county were also a body politic, with certain powers of local self-government. They elected a phylarch (φύλαρχος), who commanded the cavalry; a taxiarch (ταξίαρχος), who commanded the foot-soldiers, and a general (στρατηγός), who commanded both; and as each district was required to furnish five triremes, they probably elected as many trierarchs (τριήραρχος) to command them. Cleisthenes increased the senate to five hundred, and assigned fifty to each district. They were elected by its inhabitants. Other functions of this larger body politic doubtless existed, but they have been imperfectly explained.
The third and last member of the territorial series was the Athenian commonwealth or state, consisting of ten local tribes or districts. It was an organized body politic, embracing the aggregate of Athenian citizens. It was represented by a senate, an ecclesia, the court of Areopagus, the archons, and judges, and the body of elected military and naval commanders.
Thus the Athenians founded the second great plan of government upon territory and upon property. They substituted a series of territorial aggregates in the place of an ascending series of aggregates of persons. As a plan of government it rested upon territory which was necessarily permanent, and upon property which was more or less localized; and it dealt with its citizens, now localized in demes through their territorial relations. To be a citizen of the state it was necessary to be a citizen of a deme. The person voted and was taxed in his deme, and he was called into the military service from his deme. In like manner he was called by election into the senate, and to the command of a division of the army or navy from the larger district of his local tribe. His relations to a gens or phratry ceased to govern his duties as a citizen. The contrast between the two systems is as marked as their difference was fundamental. A coalescence of the people into bodies politic in territorial areas now became complete.
The territorial series enters into the plan of government of modern civilized nations. Among ourselves, for example, we have the township, the county, the state, and the United States; the inhabitants of each of which are an organized body politic with powers of local self-government. Each organization is in full vitality and performs its functions within a definite sphere in which it is supreme. France has a similar series in the commune, the arrondissement, the department, and the empire, now the republic. In Great Britain the series is the parish, the shire, the kingdom, and the three kingdoms. In the Saxon period the hundred seems to have been the analogue of the township;277 but already emasculated of the powers of local self-government, with the exception of the hundred court. The inhabitants of these several areas were organized as bodies politic, but those below the highest with very limited powers. The tendency to centralization under monarchical institutions has atrophied, practically, all the lower organizations.
As a consequence of the legislation of Cleisthenes, the gentes, phratries and tribes were divested of their influence, because their powers were taken from them and vested in the deme, the local tribe and the state, which became from thenceforth the sources of all political power. They were not dissolved, however, even after this overthrow, but remained for centuries as a pedigree and lineage, and as fountains of religious life. In certain orations of Demosthenes, where the cases involved personal or property rights, descents or rights of sepulture, both the gens and phratry appear as living organizations in his time.278 They were left undisturbed by the new system so far as their connection with religious rites, with certain criminal proceedings, and with certain social practices were concerned, which arrested their total dissolution. The classes, however, both those instituted by Theseus and those afterwards created by Solon, disappeared after the time of Cleisthenes.279
Solon is usually regarded as the founder of Athenian democracy, while some writers attribute a portion of the work to Cleisthenes and Theseus. We shall draw nearer the truth of the matter by regarding Theseus, Solon and Cleisthenes as standing connected with three great movements of the Athenian people, not to found a democracy, for Athenian democracy was older than either, but to change the plan of government from a gentile into a political organization. Neither sought to change the existing principles of democracy which had been inherited from the gentes. They contributed in their respective times to the great movement for the formation of a state, which required the substitution of a political in the place of gentile society. The invention of a township, and the organization of its inhabitants as a body politic, was the main feature in the problem. It may seem to us a simple matter; but it taxed the capacities of the Athenians to their lowest depths before the idea of a township found expression in its actual creation. It was an inspiration of the genius of Cleisthenes; and it stands as the master work of a master mind. In the new political society they realized that complete democracy which already existed in every essential principle, but which required a change in the plan of government to give it a more ample field and a fuller expression. It is precisely here, as it seems to the writer, that we have been misled by the erroneous assumption of the great historian, Mr. Grote, whose general views of Grecian institutions are so sound and perspicuous, namely, that the early governments of the Grecian tribes were essentially monarchical.280 On this assumption it requires a revolution of institutions to explain the existence of that Athenian democracy under which the great mental achievements of the Athenians were made. No such revolution occurred, and no radical change of institutions was ever effected, for the reason that they were and always had been essentially democratical. Usurpations not unlikely occurred, followed by controversies for the restoration of the previous order; but they never lost their liberties, or those ideas of freedom and of the right of self-government which had been their inheritance in all ages.
Recurring for a moment to the basileus, the office tended to make the man more conspicuous than any other in their affairs. He was the first person to catch the mental eye of the historian by whom he has been metamorphosed into a king, notwithstanding he was made to reign, and by divine right, over a rude democracy. As a general in a military democracy, the basileus becomes intelligible, and without violating the institutions that actually existed. The introduction of this office did not change the principles of the gentes, phratries and tribes, which in their organization were essentially democratical, and which of necessity impressed that character on their gentile system. Evidence is not wanting that the popular element was constantly active to resist encroachments on personal rights. The basileus belongs to the traditionary period, when the powers of government were more or less undefined; but the council of chiefs existed in the centre of the system, and also the gentes, phratries and tribes in full vitality. These are sufficient to determine the character of the government.281
The government as reconstituted by Cleisthenes contrasted strongly with that previous to the time of Solon. But the transition was not only natural but inevitable if the people followed their ideas to their logical results. It was a change of plan, but not of principles nor even of instrumentalities. The council of chiefs remained in the senate, the agora in the ecclesia; the three highest archons were respectively ministers of state, of religion, and of justice as before, while the six inferior archons exercised judicial functions in connection with the courts, and the large body of dicasts now elected annually for judicial service. No executive officer existed under the system, which is one of its striking peculiarities. The nearest approach to it was the president of the senate, who was elected by lot for a single day, without the possibility of a re-election during the year. For a single day he presided over the popular assembly, and held the keys of the citadel and of the treasury. Under the new government the popular assembly held the substance of power, and guided the destiny of Athens. The new element which gave stability and order to the state was the deme or township, with its complete autonomy, and local self-government. A hundred demes similarly organized would determine the general movement of the commonwealth. As the unit, so the compound. It is here that the people, as before remarked, must begin if they would learn the art of self-government, and maintain equal laws, and equal rights and privileges. They must retain in their hands all the powers of society not necessary to the state to insure an efficient general administration, as well as the control of the administration itself.
Athens rose rapidly into influence and distinction under the new political system. That remarkable development of genius and intelligence, which raised the Athenians to the highest eminence among the historical nations of mankind, occurred under the inspiration of democratic institutions.
With the institution of political society under Cleisthenes, the gentile organization was laid aside as a portion of the rags of barbarism. Their ancestors had lived for untold centuries in gentilism, with which they had achieved all the elements of civilization, including a written language, as well as entered upon a civilized career. The history of the gentile organization will remain as a perpetual monument of the anterior ages, identified as it has been with the most remarkable and extended experience of mankind. It must ever be ranked as one of the most remarkable institutions of the human family.
In this brief and inadequate review the discussion has been confined to the main course of events in Athenian history. Whatever was true of the Athenian tribes will be found substantially true of the remaining Grecian tribes, though not exhibited on so broad or so grand a scale. The discussion tends to render still more apparent one of the main propositions advanced—that the idea of government in all the tribes of mankind has been a growth through successive stages of development.
CHAPTER XI. - THE ROMAN GENS.
Italian Tribes Organized in Gentes.—Founding of Rome.—Tribes Organized into a Military Democracy.—The Roman Gens.—Definition of a Gentilis by Cicero.—By Festus.—By Varro.—Descent in Male Line.—Marrying out of the Gens.—Rights and Obligations of the Members of a Gens.—Democratic Constitution of Ancient Latin Society.—Number of Persons in a Gens.
When the Latins, and their congeners the Sabellians, the Oscans and the Umbrians, entered the Italian peninsula probably as one people, they were in possession of domestic animals, and probably cultivated cereals and plants.282 At the least they were well advanced in the Middle Status of barbarism; and when they first came under historical notice they were in the Upper Status, and near the threshold of civilization.
The traditionary history of the Latin tribes, prior to the time of Romulus, is much more scanty and imperfect than that of the Grecian, whose earlier relative literary culture and stronger literary proclivities enabled them to preserve a larger proportion of their traditionary accounts. Concerning their anterior experience, tradition did not reach beyond their previous life on the Alban hills, and the ranges of the Appenines eastward from the site of Rome. For tribes so far advanced in the arts of life it would have required a long occupation of Italy to efface all knowledge of the country from which they came. In the time of Romulus283 they had already fallen by segmentation into thirty independent tribes, still united in a loose confederacy for mutual protection. They also occupied contiguous territorial areas. The Sabellians, Oscans, and Umbrians were in the same general condition; their respective tribes were in the same relations; and their territorial circumscriptions, as might have been expected, were founded upon dialect. All alike, including their northern neighbors the Etruscans, were organized in gentes, with institutions similar to those of the Grecian tribes. Such was their general condition when they first emerged from behind the dark curtain of their previous obscurity, and the light of history fell upon them.
Roman history has touched but slightly the particulars of a vast experience anterior to the founding of Rome (about 753 B. C.). The Italian tribes had then become numerous and populous; they had become strictly agricultural in their habits, possessed flocks and herds of domestic animals, and had made great progress in the arts of life. They had also attained the monogamian family. All this is shown by their condition when first made known to us; but the particulars of their progress from a lower to a higher state had, in the main, fallen out of knowledge. They were backward in the growth of the idea of government; since the confederacy of tribes was still the full extent of their advancement. Although the thirty tribes were confederated, it was in the nature of a league for mutual defense, and neither sufficiently close or intimate to tend to a nationality.
The Etruscan tribes were confederated; and the same was probably true of the Sabellian, Oscan and Umbrian tribes. While the Latin tribes possessed numerous fortified towns and country strongholds, they were spread over the surface of the country for agricultural pursuits, and for the maintenance of their flocks and herds. Concentration and coalescence had not occurred to any marked extent until the great movement ascribed to Romulus which resulted in the foundation of Rome. These loosely united Latin tribes furnished the principal materials from which the new city was to draw its strength. The accounts of these tribes from the time of the supremacy of the chiefs of Alba down to the time of Servius Tullius, were made up to a great extent of fables and traditions; but certain facts remained in the institutions and social usages transmitted to the historical period which tend, in a remarkable manner, to illustrate their previous condition. They are even more important than an outline history of actual events.
Among the institutions of the Latin tribes existing at the commencement of the historical period were the gentes, curiæ and tribes upon which Romulus and his successors established the Roman power. The new government was not in all respects a natural growth; but modified in the upper members of the organic series by legislative procurement. The gentes, however, which formed the basis of the organization, were natural growths, and in the main either of common or cognate lineage. That is, the Latin gentes were of the same lineage, while the Sabine and other gentes, with the exception of the Etruscans, were of cognate descent. In the time of Tarquinius Priscus, the fourth in succession from Romulus, the organization had been brought to a numerical scale, namely: ten gentes to a curia, ten curiæ to a tribe, and three tribes of the Romans; giving a total of three hundred gentes integrated in one gentile society.
Romulus had the sagacity to perceive that a confederacy of tribes, composed of gentes and occupying separate areas, had neither the unity of purpose nor sufficient strength to accomplish more than the maintenance of an independent existence. The tendency to disintegration counteracted the advantages of the federal principle. Concentration and coalescence were the remedy proposed by Romulus and the wise men of his time. It was a remarkable movement for the period, and still more remarkable in its progress from the epoch of Romulus to the institution of political society under Servius Tullius. Following the course of the Athenian tribes and concentrating in one city, they wrought out in five generations a similar and complete change in the plan of government, from a gentile into a political organization.
It will be sufficient to remind the reader of the general facts that Romulus united upon and around the Palatine Hill a hundred Latin gentes, organized as a tribe, the Ramnes; that by a fortunate concurrence of circumstances a large body of Sabines were added to the new community whose gentes, afterwards increased to one hundred, were organized as a second tribe, the Tities; and that in the time of Tarquinius Priscus a third tribe, the Luceres, had been formed, composed of a hundred gentes drawn from surrounding tribes, including the Etruscans. Three hundred gentes, in about the space of a hundred years, were thus gathered at Rome, and completely organized under a council of chiefs now called the Roman Senate, an assembly of the people now called the comitia curiata, and one military commander, the rex; and with one purpose, that of gaining a military ascendency in Italy.
Under the constitution of Romulus, and the subsequent legislation of Servius Tullius, the government was essentially a military democracy, because the military spirit predominated in the government. But it may be remarked in passing that a new and antagonistic element, the Roman senate, was now incorporated in the centre of the social system, which conferred patrician rank upon its members and their posterity. A privileged class was thus created at a stroke, and intrenched first in the gentile and afterwards in the political system, which ultimately overthrew the democratic principles inherited from the gentes. It was the Roman senate, with the patrician class it created, that changed the institutions and the destiny of the Roman people, and turned them from a career, analogous to that of the Athenians, to which their inherited principles naturally and logically tended.
In its main features the new organization was a masterpiece of wisdom for military purposes. It soon carried them entirely beyond the remaining Italian tribes, and ultimately into supremacy over the entire peninsula.
The organization of the Latin and other Italian tribes into gentes has been investigated by Niebuhr, Hermann, Mommsen, Long and others; but their several accounts fall short of a clear and complete exposition of the structure and principles of the Italian gens. This is due in part to the obscurity in which portions of the subject are enveloped, and to the absence of minute details in the Latin writers. It is also in part due to a misconception, by some of the first named writers, of the relations of the family to the gens. They regard the gens as composed of families, whereas it was composed of parts of families; so that the gens and not the family was the unit of the social system. It may be difficult to carry the investigation much beyond the point where they have left it; but information drawn from the archaic constitution of the gens may serve to elucidate some of its characteristics which are now obscure.
Concerning the prevalence of the organization into gentes among the Italian tribes, Niebuhr remarks as follows: “Should any one still contend that no conclusion is to be drawn from the character of the Athenian gennē**tes to that of the Roman gentiles, he will be bound to show how an institution which runs through the whole ancient world came to have a completely different character in Italy and in Greece.... Every body of citizens was divided in this manner; the Gephyræans and Salaminians as well as the Athenians, the Tusculans as well as the Romans.”284
Besides the existence of the Roman gens, it is desirable to know the nature of the organization; its rights, privileges and obligations, and the relations of the gentes to each other, as members of a social system. After these have been considered, their relations to the curiæ, tribes, and resulting people of which they formed a part, will remain for consideration in the next ensuing chapter.
After collecting the accessible information from various sources upon these subjects it will be found incomplete in many respects, leaving some of the attributes and functions of the gens a matter of inference. The powers of the gentes were withdrawn, and transferred to new political bodies before historical composition among the Romans had fairly commenced. There was, therefore, no practical necessity resting upon the Romans for preserving the special features of a system substantially set aside. Gaius, who wrote his Institutes in the early part of the second century of our era, took occasion to remark that the whole jus gentilicium had fallen into desuetude, and that it was then superfluous to treat the subject.285 But at the foundation of Rome, and for several centuries thereafter, the gentile organization was in vigorous activity.
The Roman definition of a gens and of a gentilis, and the line in which descent was traced should be presented before the characteristics of the gens are considered. In the Topics of Cicero a gentilis is defined as follows: Those are gentiles who are of the same name among themselves. This is insufficient. Who were born of free parents. Even that is not sufficient. No one of whose ancestors has been a slave. Something still is wanting. Who have never suffered capital diminution. This perhaps may do; for I am not aware that Scaevola, the Pontiff, added anything to this definition.286 There is one by Festus: “A gentilis is described as one both sprung from the same stock, and who is called by the same name.”287 Also by Varro: As from an Aemilius men are born Aemilii, and gentiles; so from the name Aemilius terms are derived pertaining to gentilism.288