Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/393

LEADING GREEKS CORRUPTED BY SUCCESS. 37ft home, instead of directing his blow against a Parian enemy, the peace and security of his country might have been serious!? endangered. Of the despots who gained power in Greece, a considerable proportion began by popular conduct, and by rendering good ser- vice to their fellow-citizens : having first earned public gratitude, they abused it for purposes of their own ambition. There AVUS far greater danger, in a Grecian community, of dangerous excess of gratitude towards a victorious soldier, than of deficiency in that sentiment : hence the person thus exalted acquired a position such that the community found it difficult afterwards to shake him off. Now there is a disposition almost universal among writers and readers to side with an individual, especially an emi- nent individual, against the multitude ; and accordingly those who under such circumstances suspect the probable abuse of an exalted position, are denounced as if they harbored an unworthy jealousy of superior abilities. But the truth is, that the largest analogies of the Grecian character justified that suspicion, and required the community to take precautions against the corrupt- ing effects of their own enthusiasm. There is no feature which more largely pervades the impressible Grecian character, than a liability to be intoxicated and demoralized by success : there was no fault from which so few eminent Greeks were free : there was hardly any danger, against which it was at once so necessary and so difficult for the Grecian governments to take security, especially the democracies, where the manifestations of enthu- siasm were always the loudest. Such is the real explanation of those charges which have been urged against the Grecian de- mocracies, that they came to hate and ill-treat previous benefac- tors ; and the history of Miltiades illustrates it in a manner no less pointed than painful. I have already remarked that the fickleness, which has been so largely imputed to the Athenian democracy in their dealings with him, is nothing more than a reasonable change of opinion on the best grounds. Nor can it be said that fickleness was in any case an attribute of the Athenian democracy. It is a well- known fact, that feelings, or opinions, or modes of judging, which have once obtained footing among a large number of people, are more lasting and unchangeable than those which belong only to