Chapter XIV: Democracy Established at Athens (3)

Such variations in the scale of national energy pervade history, modern as well as ancient, but in regard to Grecian history, especially, they can never be overlooked. For a certain measure, not only of positive political attachment, but also of active self-devotion, military readiness, and personal effort, was the indispensable condition of maintaining Hellenic autonomy, either in Athens or elsewhere; and became so more than ever when the Macedonians were once organised under an enterprising and semi-Hellenised prince. The democracy was the first creative cause of that astonishing personal and many-sided energy which marked the Athenian character, for a century downwards from Clisthenes.

That the same ultra-Hellenic activity did not longer continue, is referable to other causes, which will be hereafter in part explained. No system of government, even supposing it to be very much better and more faultless than the Athenian democracy, can ever pretend to accomplish its legitimate end apart from the personal character of the people, or to supersede the necessity of individual virtue and vigour.

During the half-century immediately preceding the battle of Chæronea, the Athenians had lost that remarkable energy which distinguished them during the first century of their democracy, and had fallen much more nearly to a level with the other Greeks, in common with whom they were obliged to yield to the pressure of a foreign enemy. We here briefly notice their last period of languor, in contrast with the first burst of democratical fervour under Clisthenes, now opening--a feeling which will be found, as we proceed, to continue for a longer period than could have been reasonably anticipated, but which was too high-strung to become a perpetual and inherent attribute of any community.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[17] So in the Italian republics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the nobles long continued to possess the exclusive right of being elected to the consulate and the great offices of state, even after those offices had come to be elected by the people: the habitual misrule and oppression of the nobles gradually put an end to this right, and even created in many towns a resolution positively to exclude them. At Milan, towards the end of the twelfth century, the twelve consuls, with the Podestat, possessed all the powers of government: these consuls were nominated by one hundred electors chosen by and among the people.