Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/46

SO HISTORY OF GREECE. might be. 3. Of those who lived in the town, having no land but exercising handicraft, arts, or commerce. The governing proprietors went by the name of the Garnori, w Geomori, according as the Doric or Ionic dialect might be ised in describing them, since they were found in states belong- ng to one race as well as to the other. They appear to have instituted a close order, transmitting their privileges to their /hildren, but admitting no new members to a participation, for the principle called by Greek thinkers a timocracy, the appoint- ment of political rights and privileges according to comparative property, appears to have been little, if at all, applied in the earlier times, and we know no example of it earlier than Solon. So that, by the natural multiplication of families and mutation of property, there would come to be many individual gamori pos- sessing no land at all, and perhaps worse off than those small freeholders who did not belong to the order ; while some of these latter freeholders, and some of the artisans and traders in the towns, might at the same time be rising in wealth and impor- tance. Under a political classification such as this, of which the repulsive inequality was aggravated by a rude state of manners, and which had no flexibility to meet the changes in relative posi- tion amongst individual inhabitants, discontent and outbreaks were unavoidable, and the earliest despot, usually a wealthy man of the disfranchised class, became champion and leader of the malcontents. 1 However oppressive his rule might be, at least it was an oppression which bore with indiscriminate severity upon all the fractions of the population ; and when the hour of reaction against him or against his successor arrived, so that the common enemy was expelled by the united efforts of all, it was hardly possible to revive the preexisting system of exclusion and inequality without some considerable abatements. As a general rule, every Greek city-community included in its population, independent of bought slaves, the three elements above noticed, considerable land proprietors with rustic de- pendents, small self-working proprietors, and town-artisans, tho three elements being found everywhere in different proportions. Bat the progress of events in Greece, from the seventh century ' Thucvd. i. 13.