Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/571

Atticans ( A-m/cot). But from such glimpses of early Attic history as we can get the union of the Attic towns would seem to have been completed before the constitu tional struggle began. That union would answer rather to the union of the three patrician tribes of Rome. Such hints as we have, while they set before us, just as at Rome, a state of things in which small landed proprietors are burthened with debt, also set before us the Attic demos as, largely at least, a body of various origins which had grown up in the city. Clisthenes, for instance, enfran chised many slaves and strangers, a course which certainly formed no part of the platform of Licinius, and which reminds us rather of Cnaeus Flavius somewhat later. On the whole it seems most likely that, while the kernel of the Roman plebs was rural or belonged to the small towns admitted to the Roman franchise, the Attic demos, largely at least, though doubtless not wholly, arose out of the mixed settlers who had come together in the city, answer ing to the peToiKoi of later times. If so, there would be no place in Athens for those great plebeian houses, once patri cian in some other commonwealth, out of which the later Roman nobilitas was so largely formed. Sparta. Thus the history of nobility at Athens supplies a close analogy to the earlier stages of its history at Rome, but it has nothing answering to its later stages. At Sparta we have a third instance of a people shrinking up into a nobility, but it is a people whose position differs altogether from anything either at Rome or at Athens. Sparta is the best case of a nobility of conquest. This is true, whether we look on the Treptot/coi as Achaians or as Dorians, or as belonging some to one race and some to the other. In any case the Spartans form a ruling body, and a body whose privileged position in the land is owing to conquest. The Spartans answer to the patricians, the TrepuuKot to the plebs ; the helots are below the position of plebs or demos. The only difference is that, probably owing to the fact that the distinction was due to conquest, the local char acter of the distinction lived on much longer than it did at Rome. We hardly look on the Spartans as a nobility among the other Lacedaemonians ; Sparta rather is a ruling city bearing sway over the other Lacedaemonian towns. But this is exactly what the original Roman patricians, the settlers on the three oldest hills, were in the beginning. The so-called cities (TroAeis) of the TrepiotKot, answered pretty well to the local plebeian tribes ; the difference is that the TreptoiKot never became a united corporate body like the Roman plebs. Sparta to the last remained what Rome was at the beginning, a city with a populus (S^os) but no plebs. And, as at Rome in early times, there were at Sparta distinctions within the populus ; there were ofj.oioi and vTTOyueioi es, like the majores and minores gentes at Rome. Only at Rome, where there was a plebs to be striven against, these distinctions seem to have had a tend ency to die out, while at Sparta they seem to have had a tendency to widen. The Spartan patriciate could afford to disfranchise some of its own members. The other old Greek cities, as well as those of mediaeval Italy and Germany, would supply us with endless exam ples of the various ways in which privileged orders arose. Venice, a oity not exactly belonging to any of these classes, essentially a city of the Eastern empire and not of the Western, gives us an example than which none is more instructive. The renowned patriciate of Venice was as far removed as might be from the character either of a nobility of conquest or of a nobility of older settlement. Nor was it strictly a nobility of office, though it had more in common with that than with either of the other two. As Athens supplies us with a parallel to the older nobility of Rome without any parallel to the later, so Venice sup plies us with a parallel to the later nobility of Rome with 527 out any parallel to the earlier. Athens has Fabii and Claudii, but no Catuli or Metelli; Venice has Catuli and Metelli, but no Fabii or Claudii. In one point, however, the Venetian nobility differed Venice, from either the older or the newer nobility of Rome, and also from the older nobilities of the mediaeval Italian cities. Nowhere else did nobility so distinctly rise out of wealth, and that wealth gained by commerce. In the original island territory of Venice there could be no such thing as landed property. The agricultural plebeian of old Rome and the feudal noble of contemporary Europe were both of them at Venice impossible characters. The Venetian nobility is an example of a nobility which gradually arose out of the mass of the people as certain families step by step drew all political power into their own hands. The plebs did not gather round the patres, neither were they conquered by the patres ; the patres were developed by natural selection out of the plebs, or, more strictly, out of the ancient populus. The com mune of Venice, the ancient style of the commonwealth, changed into the seigniory of Venice. Political power was % gradually confined to those whose forefathers had held political power. This was what the later nobility of Rome was always striving at, and what they did to a great extent practically establish. But, as the exclusive privileges of the nobility were never recognized by any legal or formal act, men like Caius Marius would ever and anon thrust themselves in. The privileges which the Venetian nobility took to themselves were established by acts which, if not legal, were at least formal. The Roman nobility, resting wholly on sufferance, was overthrown by the ambition of one of its own members. The Venetian nobility, resting also in its beginnings on sufferance, but on sufferance which silently obtained the force of law, lasted as long as Venice remained a separate state. The hereditary oligarchy of Venice was established by a series of changes which took place between the years 1297 and 1319. All of them together really go to make up the " Shutting of the Great Council," a name which is formally given to the act of the first of those years. In 1172 the Great Council began as an elective body; it gradually ousted the popular assembly from all prac tical power. It was, as might be looked for, commonly filled by members of distinguished families, descendants of ancient magistrates, who were already beginning to be looked on as noble. The series of revolutions already spoken of first made descent from former councillors a necessary qualification for election to the council ; then election was abolished, and the council consisted of all descendants of its existing members who had reached the age of twenty-five. Thus the optimates of Venice did what the optimates of Rome strove to do : they esta blished a nobility whose one qualification was descent from those who had held office in past times. This is what the nobility of office, if left unchecked, naturally grows into. But the particular way in which oligarchy was finally established at Venice had some singular results. Some of the great families which were already looked on as noble were not represented in the council at the time of the shutting ; of others some branches were represented and others not. These families and branches of families, however noble they might be in descent, were thus shut out from all the political privileges of nobility. When one branch of a family was admitted and one shut out we have an analogy to the patrician and plebeian Claudii, though the The distinction had come about in quite another way. And Roman in the Great Council itself we have the lively image of the Cu ^ 1 ^ aristocratic popular assembly of Rome, the assembly of Q rea t the populus, that of the curise, where every man of patri- Council cian birth had his place. The two institutions are the of Venice.