1 8 EMPLOYMENT OF THE PLEBISCITE [316 



became the rival of the Apclla as far as popular rights were 

 concerned. It did not restrain, but it absorbed the rights 

 of the former and " the ephorate takes thus in Sparta the 

 place which the Assembly of the people preserves to the 

 end in the Athenian democracy."-' 



While the decree of the Assembly of the people, together 

 with the formulated code is the source of the written law 

 of Athens, " neither a decree of the Senate nor of the people 

 can supersede the law.""* This was the law still in force 

 in 403 after the expulsion of the thirty tyrants by Trasy- 

 bulus. But, remarks Borgeaud, " wise as it was, such a 

 fundamental distinction between the law and the decree of 

 the sovereign assembly was incompatible with the develop- 

 ment of a democracy as absolute as the one which reigned 

 in the country of Cleon. By and by the ' pscphisma' (the 

 decree of the Assembly) came, at least in fact, to take the 

 place of the ' nomos' (the written law) and the will of the 

 sovereign people was to dictate the law of the state ; • . . 

 this had become the rule in the last century of the inde- 

 pendence and under Macedonian hegemony."^^ At that 

 time the law can be defined in the words of Theon : " A law 

 is a decree enacted by the multitude or by an illustrious 

 man in matters of government not for a definite period of 

 time."-« 



In Sparta and in Athens the right of the people to vote 

 on matters of government and law had not, as was the case 

 in Rome, been secured by threats and application of force, 

 but rather by the established process of constitutional 

 method and procedure. It was, however, in the Greek city 

 states as well as in Rome the result of a political struggle 

 between the ruled and the ruling. 



In Rome the plebiscite was the expression of the will of 

 the plebeian population. It had, after 449, the force of 



25 Borgeaud, pp. 9-1 1. 



2* Andocidcs, De myst'eriis, 87, 89, cited by Borgeaud, p. 26. 

 2^ Borgeaud, pp. 26-27. 



28 Theon, Progymnasmata, XIII, nepl v6fwv^ j (Rhetores Graeci ex 

 recog. Leon Spcngel, Leipzig, 1854, vol. ii, p. 128). 



