ian idea of a Republic was to substitute the impersonal
supremacy of law for the government of men. Mediocrity was a safeguard
against the pretensions of superior capacity, for the established order
was in danger, not from the average citizens, but from men, like
Miltiades, of exceptional renown. The people of Athens venerated their
constitution as a gift of the gods, the source and title of their power,
a thing too sacred for wanton change. They had demanded a code, that the
unwritten law might no longer be interpreted at will by Archons and
Areopagites; and a well-defined and authoritative legislation was a
triumph of the democracy.

So well was this conservative spirit understood, that the revolution
which abolished the privileges of the aristocracy was promoted by
Aristides and completed by Pericles, men free from the reproach of
flattering the multitude. They associated all the free Athenians with
the interest of the State, and called them, without distinction of
class, to administer the powers that belonged to them. Solon had
threatened with the loss of citizenship all who showed themselves
indifferent in party conflicts, and Pericles declared that every man who
neglected his share of public duty was a useless member of the
community. That wealth might confer no unfair advantage, that the poor
might not take bribes from the rich, he took them into the pay of the
State during their attendance as jurors. That their numbers might give
them no unjust superiority, he restricted the right of citizenship to
those who came from Athenian parents on both sides; and thus he expelled
more than 4000 men of mixed descent from the Assembly. This bold
measure, which was made acceptable by a distribution of grain from Egypt
among those who proved their full Athenian parentage, reduced the fourth
class to an equality with the owners of real property. For Pericles, or
Ephialtes--for it would appear that all their reforms had been carried
in the year 460, when Ephialtes died--is the first democratic statesman
who grasped the notion of political equality. The measures which made
all citizens equal might have created a new inequality between classes,
and the artificial privilege of land might have been succeeded by the
more crushing preponderance of numbers. But Pericles held it to be
intolerable that one portion of the people should be required to obey
laws which others have the exclusive right of making; and he was able,
during thirt