66 {Trains and TO icrov 



internal jealousy causing serious friction in most of the several states, at 

 first between nobles and commons, later between rich and poor. The 

 seditions (a-rda-ei?) arising therefrom were causes, not only of inner 

 weakness and other evils, but in particular of intervention from without. 

 Therefore it was often the policy of the victors in party strife to expel 

 or exterminate their opponents, in order to secure to themselves un- 

 disputed control of their own state. This tendency operated to perpe- 

 tuate the smallness of scale in Greek states, already favoured by the 

 physical features of the land. That the Greeks with all their cleverness 

 never invented what we call Representative Government is no wonder. 

 Men's views in general were directed to the independence of their own 

 state under control of their own partisans. The smaller the state, the 

 easier it was to organize the control : independence could only be main- 

 tained by military efficiency, and unanimous loyalty was something to 

 set off against smallness of numbers. Moreover the Greek mind had an 

 artistic bent, and the sense of proportion was more easily and visibly 

 gratified on a smaller scale. The bulk of Persia did not appear favour- 

 able to human freedom and dignity as understood in Hellas. In the 

 Persian empire there was nothing that a Greek would recognize as 

 citizenship. The citizen of a Greek state expected to have some voice 

 in his own government: the gulf between citizen and non-citizen was 

 the line of division, but even in Sparta the full citizens were equals in 

 legal status among themselves. We may fairly say that the principle of 

 equality (TO fcroi/) was at the root of Greek notions of citizenship. 

 Privilege did not become less odious as it ceased to rest on ancestral 

 nobility and became more obviously an advantage claimed by wealth. 

 Since the light thrown on the subject 1 by Dr Grundy, no one will 

 dispute the importance of economic considerations in Greek policy, and 

 in particular of the ever-pressing question of the food-supply. The 

 security of the land and crops was to most states a vital need, and 

 necessitated constant readiness to maintain it in arms. Closely con- 

 nected therewith was the question of distribution. Real property was 

 not only the oldest and most permanent investment. Long before 

 Aristotle 8 declared that 'the country is a public thing' (KOIVOV), that is 

 an interest of the community, that opinion was commonly held, whether 

 formulated or instinctive. The position of the landless man was tradi- 

 tionally a dubious one. The general rule was that only a citizen could 

 own land in the territory of the state. From this it was no great step 

 to argue that every citizen ought to own a plot of land within the 

 borders. This was doubtless not always possible. In such a state as 

 Corinth or Megara or Miletus commercial growth in a narrow territory 



1 In Thucydides and the history of his age chapters m-vii. 



2 Politics in 13 2. 



