to their ruined city. Seldom has it happened in the history of mankind, that rich and poor have been so completely equalized as among the population of Athens in that memorable expatriation and heroic struggle. Nor are we at all surprised to hear that the mass of the citizens, coming back with freshly-kindled patriotism as well as with the consciousness that their country had only been recovered by the equal efforts of all, would no longer submit to be legally disqualified from any office of state. It was on this occasion that the constitution was first made really "common" to all, and that the archons, strategi, and all functionaries, first began to be chosen from all Athenians without any difference of legal eligibility.[1] No mention is made of the lot, in this important statement of Plutarch, which appears to me every way worthy of credit, and which teaches us that, down to the invasion of Xerxes, not only had the exclusive principle of the Solonian law of qualification continued in force (whereby the first three classes on the census were alone admitted to all individual offices, and the fourth or Thetic class excluded), but also the archons had hitherto been elected by the citizens, not taken by lot.
Now for financial purposes, the quadruple census of Solon was retained long after this period, even beyond the Peloponnesian war and the oligarchy of Thirty. But we thus learn that Kleisthenes in his constitution retained it for political purposes also, in part at least : he recognized the exclusion of the great mass of the citizens from all individual offices, such as the archon, the strategus, etc. In his time, probably, no complaints were raised on the subject. His constitution gave to the collective bodies senate, ekklesia, and heliaea, or dikastery a degree of power and importance such as they had never before known or imagined : and we may well suppose that the Athenian people of that day had no objection even to the proclaimed system and theory of being exclusively governed by men of wealth and station as individual magistrates, especially since many of the newly-enfranchised citizens had been previously metics
and slaves. Indeed, it is to be added that, even under the full
- ↑ Plutarch, Arist. ut sup. (
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