had an area of a few square miles; the largest of them was no larger than an English county. Political theory put the limit of the citizen-body at 10,000. Though this number was exceeded in a few cases, it is doubtful if any state, except Athens, ever counted more than 20,000 citizens. In the nation-states of modern times, democratic government is possible only under the form of a representative system; in the city-state representative government was unnecessary, and therefore unknown. In the ancient type of democracy a popular chamber has no existence. The Ecclesia is not a chamber in any sense of the term; it is an assembly of the whole people, which every citizen is entitled to attend, and in which every one is equally entitled to vote and speak. The question raised in modern political science, as to whether sovereignty resides in the electors or their representatives, has thus neither place nor meaning in ancient theory. In the same way, one of the most familiar results of modern analysis, the distinction between the executive and the legislative, finds no recognition in the Greek writers. In a direct system of government there can be no executive in the proper sense. Executive functions are discharged by the ecclesia, to whose decision the details of administration may be referred. The position of the strategi, the chief officials in the Athenian democracy of the 5th century, was in no sense comparable to that of a modern cabinet. Hence the individual citizen in an ancient democracy was concerned in, and responsible for, the actual work of government to a degree that is inconceivable in a modern state. Thus participation in the administrative and judicial business of the state is made by Aristotle the differentia of the citizen (πολίτης ἐστὶν ὁ μετέχων κρίσεως καὶ ἀρχῆς, Aristot. Politics, p. 1275 a 20). A large proportion of the citizens of Athens, in addition to frequent service in the courts of law, must in the course of their lives have held a magistracy, great or small, or have acted for a year or two as members of the Boulē.[1] It must be remembered that there was nothing corresponding to a permanent civil service in the ancient state. Much of the work of a government office would have been transacted by the Athenian Boulē. It must be remembered, too, that political and administrative questions of great importance came before the popular courts of law. Hence it follows that the ordinary citizen of an ancient democracy, in the course of his service in the Boulē or the law-courts, acquired an interest in political questions, and a grasp of administrative work, which none but a select few can hope to acquire under the conditions of the modern system. Where there existed neither a popular chamber nor a distinct executive, there was no opportunity for the growth of a party-system. There were, of course, political parties at Athens and elsewhere—oligarchs and democrats, conservatives and radicals, a peace-party and a war-party, according to the burning question of the day. There was, however, nothing equivalent to a general election, to a cabinet (or to that collective responsibility which is of the essence of a cabinet), or to the government and the opposition. Party organization, therefore, and a party system, in the proper sense, were never developed. Whatever may have been the evils incident to the ancient form of democracy, the “boss,” the caucus and the spoils-system were not among them.
Besides these differences, which, directly or indirectly, result from the difference of scale, there are others, hardly less profound, which are not connected with the size of the city-state. Perhaps the most striking contrast between the democracies of ancient and of modern times is to be found in their attitude towards privilege. Ancient democracy implies privilege; modern democracy implies its destruction. In the more fully developed democracies of the modern world (e.g. in the United States, or in Australia), the privilege of class is unknown; in some of them (e.g. New Zealand, Australia, Norway) even the privilege of sex has been abolished. Ancient democracy was bound up with privilege as much as oligarchy was. The transition from the latter to the former was effected by enlarging the area of privilege and by altering its basis. In an oligarchical state citizenship might be confined to 10% of the free population; under a democracy 50% might enjoy it. In the former case the qualification might be wealth or land; in the latter case it might be, as it was at Athens, birth, i.e. descent, on both sides, from a citizen family. But, in both cases alike, the distinction between a privileged and an unprivileged body of free-born residents is fundamental. To the unprivileged class belonged, not only foreigners temporarily resident (ξένοι) and aliens permanently domiciled (μέτοικοι), but also those native-born inhabitants of the state who were of foreign extraction, on one side or the other.[2] The privileges attaching to citizenship included, in addition to eligibility for office and a vote in the assembly, such private rights as that of owning land or a house, or of contracting a marriage with one of citizen status. The citizen, too, was alone the recipient of all the various forms of pay (e.g. for attendance in the assembly, for service in the Boulē or the law-courts, or for the celebration of the great festivals) which are so conspicuous a feature in the developed democracy of the 4th century. The metoeci could not even plead in a court of law in person, but only through a patron (προστάτης). It is intelligible that privileges so great should be jealously guarded. In the democracies of the modern world naturalization is easy; in those of ancient Greece admission to the franchise was rarely accorded. In modern times, again, we are accustomed to connect democracy Position of women. with the emancipation of women. It is true that only a few democratic constitutions grant them the suffrage; but though, as a rule, they are denied public rights, the growth of popular government has been almost everywhere accompanied by an extension of their private rights, and by the removal of the restrictions imposed by law, custom or public opinion upon their freedom of action. In ancient Greece the democracies were as illiberal in their policy as the oligarchies. Women of the respectable class were condemned to comparative seclusion. They enjoyed far less freedom in 4th-century Athens than in the Homeric Age. It is not in any of the democracies, but in conservative Sparta, that they possess privilege and exercise influence.
The most fundamental of all the contrasts between democracy in its ancient and in its modern form remains to be stated. The ancient state was inseparable from slavery. In this respect there was no difference between democracy and the other forms of government. No inconsistency was felt, Slavery. therefore, between this institution and the democratic principle. Modern political theory has been profoundly affected by the conception of the dignity of labour; ancient political theory tended to regard labour as a disqualification for the exercise of political rights. Where slavery exists, the taint of it will inevitably cling to all labour that can be performed by the slave. In ancient Athens (which may be taken as typical of the Greek democracies) unskilled labour was almost entirely slave-labour, and skilled labour was largely so. The arts and crafts were, to some extent, exercised by citizens, but to a less extent in the 4th than in the 6th century. They were, however, chiefly left to aliens or slaves. The citizen-body of Athens in the age of Demosthenes has been stigmatized as consisting in great measure of salaried paupers. There is, doubtless, an exaggeration in this. It is, however, true, both that the system of state-pay went a long way towards supplying the simple wants of a southern population, and that a large proportion of the citizens had time to spare for the service of the state. Had the life of the lower class of citizens been absorbed in a round of mechanical labours, as fully as is the life of our industrial classes, the working of an ancient democracy would have been impossible. In justice to the ancient democracies it must be conceded that, while popular government carried with it neither the enfranchisement of the alien nor the emancipation of the slave, the rights secured to both classes were more considerable in the democratic states than elsewhere. The lot of the slave, as well as that of the alien, was a peculiarly favourable one at Athens. The pseudo-Xenophon in the 5th century (De rep. Ath. 1. 10-12) and Plato
