power; while Athens itself, during and after its empire, was better and more gently governed than oligarchic cities like Corinth.

Indeed, there is reason in the contention of Edward Freeman that the average Athenian's political training and ability resembled more nearly that of the average member of Parliament (or of the American Congress) than that merely of the average citizen of England or America.

"Moderns are apt to blame the Athenian Democracy for putting power in hands unfit to use it. The truer way of putting the case would be to say that the Athenian Democracy made a greater number of citizens fit to use power than could be made fit by any other system. . . . The Assembly was an assembly of citizens of average citizens without sifting or selection; but it was an assembly of citizens among whom the political average stood higher than it ever did in any other state. . . . The Athenian, by constantly hearing questions of foreign policy and domestic administration argued by the greatest orators the world ever saw, received a political training which nothing else in the history of mankind has been found to equal." 1

...

199. Imperfect Nature of the Democracy; the Final Verdict upon the Empire. — It is easy to see that the Athenian system was imperfect, tried by later standards of representative institutions; but it is more to the point to see that it was an advance in political development over anything before attempted. To be sure, in Attica itself the thirty-five thousand male citizens were less than half the adult male population. Even adding the cleruchs, the fifty thousand cannot have been more than one fifteenth of the adult males of the empire; while - worse than the mere limitation in numbers - they stood all for one locality, and admission to their ranks came only by blood descent. It certainly is to be regretted that Athens could not

1 Freeman, Federal Government. On the advantages of small states, read pp. 37-43 (first edition), from which these passages are taken. Read also a spicy paragraph in Wheeler's Alexander, 116, 117. Galton argues that the average natural ability of the Athenian was as much higher than ours as ours is above that of the African negro (Hereditary Genius, 342, American edition, 1887); but probably Freeman is nearer right in placing the emphasis upon difference in training.

continue to admit her resident aliens to citizenship, as had been done once by Cleisthenes; it is to be regretted that she could not extend to the men of her subject and allied cities that imperial citizenship which she did leave to her cleruchs, as Rome was to do much later. But the important thing is, that she had moved farther in both directions than had any other state up to this time. The admission of metics by Cleisthenes and the cleruch citizenship 'were notable advances. The broadest policy of the age ought not to be condemned as narrow.

200. Leaders and Parties: Pericles. - A few words will summarize party history up to the leadership of Pericles. All factions in Athens had coalesced patriotically against Persia, and afterward in fortifying the city; but the brief era of good feeling was followed by a renewal of party strife. The aristocrats rallied around Cimon, while the two wings of the democrats were led at first, as before the invasion, by Aristeides and Themistocles. Themistocles was ostracized,' and his friend Ephialtes became the leader of the extreme democrats. When Ephialtes was assassinated by aristocratic opponents, Pericles stepped into his place.

The aristocratic party had been ruined by its pro-Spartan policy (§ 185); the two divisions of the democrats reunited, and for a quarter of a century Pericles was in practice as absolute as a dictator, so that Thucydides characterizes Athens during this period of her greatness as "a democracy in name only, in reality ruled by its ablest citizen." Pericles belonged

1 Special topic: Themistocles after Plataea; note opposing views, and see especially Cox, Athenian Empire, 15-24.

to the ancient nobility of Athens, though to families that had always taken the side of the people. His mother was the niece of Cleisthenes the reformer, and his father had impeached Miltiades, so that the enmity between Cimon and Pericles was hereditary. The supremacy of Pericles rested in no way upon the flattering arts of later popular leaders. His proud, austere reserve verged on haughtiness, and he was rarely seen in public. He scofned to display emotion. His stately gravity and unruffled calm were styled Olympian by his admirers who added that, like Zeus, he could on occasion overbear opposition by the majestic thunder of his oratory. His great authority came from no public office. He was elected general, it is true, fifteen times, but in the board he had most weight chiefly because of his unofficial position as recognized "leader of the people" (§ 193). It must be remembered that, general or not, he was master only so long as he could carry the Assembly, and that he was compelled to defend each of his measures against all who chose to attack it. The long and steady confidence given him honors the people of Athens no less than the statesman, and his noblest eulogy is that which he claimed for himself upon his death-bed-that, with all his authority, and despite the virulence of party strife, "no Athenian has had to put on mourning because of me."

He stated his own policy clearly, and in his lifetime, on the whole, carried it to success. As to the empire, he sought to make Athens at once the ruler and the teacher of Hellas, the political, intellectual, and artistic center; and, within the city itself, he wished the people to rule not merely in theory, but in fact, as the best means of training themselves for high responsibilities.

C. INTELLECTUAL AND ARTISTIC ATHENS.

201. The True Significance of Athens. After all, in politics and war, Hellas has had superiors. Her true service to mankind and her imperishable glory lie in her intellectual and artistic development. It was in the Athens of Pericles that

these phases of Greek life developed most fully, and this fact makes the real significance of that city in history.

MAP OF ATHENS, with some structures of the Roman period.

202. Architecture and Sculpture. - Part of the policy of Pericles was to adorn Athens from the surplus revenues of the empire. The justice of this may easily be questioned, but the

result, just at that period of the perfection of Greek art, was to make the city the most beautiful in the world, so that, ever since, her mere ruins have enthralled the admiration of men. Everywhere arose temples, colonnades, porticoes, theatersinimitable to this day.

"No description can give anything but a very inadequate idea of the splendor, the strength, the beauty, which met the eye of the Athenian, whether he walked round the fortifications, or through the broad streets of the Peiraeus, or along the Long Walls, or in the shades of the Academy, or amidst the tombs of the Ceramicus; whether he chaffered in the market place, or attended assemblies in the Pnyx, or loitered in one of the numerous porticoes, or watched the exercises in the Gymnasia, or listened to music in the Odeum or plays in the theaters, or joined the throng of worshipers ascending to the great gateway of the Acropolis. And this magnificence was not the result of centuries of toil; it was the work of fifty years. . . . Athens became a vast workshop, in which ar tisans of every kind found employment, all, in their various degrees, contributing to the execution of the plans of the master minds, Pheidias, Ictinus, Callicrates, Mnesicles, and others."— ABBOTT, Pericles, 303–308.

The center of this architectural splendor was the ancient citadel of the Acropolis, no longer needed as a fortification, but crowned with white marble, and devoted to purposes of religion and art. The "holy hill" was inaccessible except on the west. Here was built a stately stairway of sixty marble steps, leading to a series of noble colonnades and porticoes (the Propylaea) of surpassing beauty. From these the visitor emerged upon the leveled top of the Acropolis, to find himself surrounded by temples and statues, any one of which alone might make the fame of the proudest modern city. Just in front of the entrance stood the colossal bronze statue of Athena the Defender, whose broad spear point glittering in the sun was the first sign of the city to the mariner far out at sea. On the right of the entrance and a little to the rear was the temple of the Wingless Victory, and near the center of the open space rose the larger structures of the Erechtheum and the Par

1

1 Special reports: fuller accounts of all these works may be called for with

profit.