n thought and enterprise. The exhibition of sculpture
and painting alone made them attractive and intellectual, while the
athletic exercises amused ordinary minds. They were not demoralizing, like
the sports of the amphitheatre, or a modern bull-fight, or even
fashionable races. They were more like tournaments in the martial ages of
Europe, but superior to them vastly, since no woman was allowed to be
present at the Olympic games under pain of death.

(M401) It has already been shown that the form of government in the States
of Ancient Greece, in the Homeric ages, was monarchical. In two or three
hundred years after the Trojan war, the authority of kings had greatly
diminished. The great immigration and convulsions destroyed the line of
the ancient royal houses. The abolition of royalty was in substance rather
than name. First, it was divided among several persons, then it was made
elective, first for life, afterward for a definite period. The nobles or
chieftains gained increasing power with the decline of royalty, and the
government became, in many States, aristocratic. But the nobles abused
their power by making an oligarchy, which is a perverted aristocracy. This
aroused hatred and opposition on the part of the people, especially in the
maritime cities, where the increase of wealth by commerce and the arts
raised up a body of powerful citizens. Then followed popular revolutions
under leaders or demagogues. These leaders in turn became tyrants, and
their exactions gave rise to more hatred than that produced by the
government of powerful families. They gained power by stratagem, and
perverted it by violence. But to amuse the people whom they oppressed, or
to please them, they built temples, theatres, and other public buildings,
in which a liberal patronage was extended to the arts. Thus Athens and
Corinth, before the Persian wars, were beautiful cities, from the lavish
expenditure of the public treasury by the tyrants or despots who had
gained ascendency. In the mean time, those who were most eminent for
wealth, or power, or virtue, were persecuted, for fear they would effect a
revolution. But the parties which the tyrants had trampled upon were
rather exasperated than ruined, and they seized every opportunity to rally
the people under their standard, and effect an overthrow of the tyrants.
Sparta, whose constitution remained aristocratic, generally was ready to
assist any State in throwing off the yoke of the usurpers.