Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/137

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CHAPTER V

TRANSITION FROM ARISTOCRACY TO DEMOCRACY (GREECE)

The picture given in the last chapter of the rule of the aristocracies was necessarily a somewhat ideal one. We were dealing with a period of which we have no direct historical evidence; we had to interpret the work of the aristocracies by attributing to them a certain stage of development in the life of the City-State, which cannot, so far as we can see, be accounted for in any other way.^[1] That work must have been partly destructive, partly constructive. The loose fabric of ancient monarchy was pulled down; but a new fabric slowly arose, more compact, and better suited to

↑ From what is now called the Mycenæan age, i.e. the age of the art treasures found at Mycenæ and elsewhere, to the seventh century, there is a gap in Greek history, generally supposed to he occupied by a Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese, by a series of colonising movements, by the settlement of the constitution at Sparta, and the abolition of kingship elsewhere. All these events belong to the age of aristocracy, or (what is the same thing) to the age of declining kingship.

[1] From what is now called the Mycenæan age, i.e. the age of the art treasures found at Mycenæ and elsewhere, to the seventh century, there is a gap in Greek history, generally supposed to he occupied by a Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese, by a series of colonising movements, by the settlement of the constitution at Sparta, and the abolition of kingship elsewhere. All these events belong to the age of aristocracy, or (what is the same thing) to the age of declining kingship.

[1]