an says in his _Federal Government_, the citizen "looked
down upon the vulgar herd of slaves, the freedmen and unqualified
residents, as his own plebeian fathers had been looked down upon by the
old Eupatrides in the days of Cleisthenes and Solon." Whatever phase
of this Greek society we discuss, we must not forget that there was a
large class excluded from rights of government, and that the few sought
always to maintain their own rights and privileges supported by the
many, and the pretensions of an enlarged privilege of citizenship had
little effect in changing the actual conditions of the aristocratic
government.

_The Athenian Government a Type of Grecian Democracy_.--Indeed, it was
the only completed government in Greece. The civilization of Athens
shows the character of the Greek race in its richest and most beautiful
development. Here art, learning, culture, and government reached their
highest development. It was a small territory that surrounded the city
of Athens, containing a little over 850 English square miles, possibly
less, as some authorities say. The soil was poor, but the climate was
superb. It was impossible for the Athenian to support a high
civilization from the soil of Attica, hence trade sprang up and Athens
grew wealthy on account of its great maritime commerce.

The population of all Attica in the most flourishing times was about
500,000 people, 150,000 of whom were slaves, 45,000 settlers, or
unqualified people, while the free citizens did not exceed 90,000--so
that the equality so much spoken of in Grecian democracies belonged to
only 90,000 out of 500,000, leaving 410,000 disfranchised. The
district was thickly populous for Greece, and the stock of the Athenian
had little mixture of foreign blood in it. The city itself was formed
of {234} villages or cantons, united into one central government.
These appear to be survivals of the old village communities united
under the title of city-state. It was the perfection of this
city-state that occupied the chief thought of the Athenian political
philosophers.

The ancient kingship of Athens passed, on deposition of the last of the
Medoutidae, about 712 B.C., into the hands of the nobles. This was the
first step in the passage from monarchy toward democracy; it was the
beginning of the foundation of the republican constitution. In 682
B.C. the government passed into the hands of nine archons, chosen from
all the rest of the nobles. It w