Note 260 — Chapter XXXI · GRECIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE EXPULSION OF THE PEISISTRATIDS. — REVOLUTION OF KLEISTHENES AND ESTABLISHMENT OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS.

Aristotle puts these two together; election of magistrates by the mass of the citizens, but only out of persons possessing a high pecuniary qualification; this he ranks as the least democratical democracy, if one may use the phrase (Politic. iii, 6-11), or a mean between democracy and oligarchy,—an ἀριστοκρατία, or πολιτεῖα, in his sense of the word (iv, 7, 3). He puts the employment of the lot as a symptom of decisive and extreme democracy, such as would never tolerate a pecuniary qualification of eligibility.

So again Plato (Legg. iii, p. 692), after remarking that the legislator of Sparta first provided the senate, next the ephors, as a bridle upon the kings, says of the ephors that they were “something nearly approaching to an authority emanating from the lot,”—οἷον ψάλιον ἐνέβαλεν αὐτῇ τὴν τῶν ἐφόρων δύναμιν, ἐγγὺς τῆς κληρωτῆς ἀγαγὼν δυνάμεως.

Upon which passage there are some good remarks in Schömann’s edition of Plutarch’s Lives of Agis and Kleomenês (Comment. ad Ag. c. 8, p. 119). It is to be recollected that the actual mode in which the Spartan ephors were chosen, as I have already stated in my first volume, cannot be clearly made out, and has been much debated by critics:—

“Mihi hæc verba, quum illud quidem manifestum faciant, quod etiam aliunde constat, sorte captos ephoros non esse, tum hoc alterum, quod Hermannus statuit, creationem sortitioni non absimilem fuisse, nequaquam demonstrare videntur. Nimirum nihil aliud nisi prope accedere ephororum magistratus ad cos dicitur, qui sortito capiantur. Sortitis autem magistratibus hoc maxime proprium est, ut promiscue—non ex genere, censu, dignitate—a quolibet capi possint: quamobrem quum ephori quoque fere promiscue fierent ex omni multitudine civium, poterat haud dubie magistratus eorum ἐγγὺς τῆς κληρωτῆς δυνάμεως esse dici, etiamsi αἱρετοὶ essent—h. e. suffragiis creati. Et video Lachmannum quoque, p. 165, not. 1, de Platonis loco similiter judicare.”

The employment of the lot, as Schömann remarks, implies universal admissibility of all citizens to office: though the converse does not hold good,—the latter does not of necessity imply the former. Now, as we know that universal admissibility did not become the law of Athens until after the battle of Platæa, so we may conclude that the employment of the lot had no place before that epoch,—i. e. had no place under the constitution of Kleisthenês.