debate on any such question, how infinitely better man is educated by one debate than by a thousand leading articles or reports. We may therefore subscribe to Mr. Freeman's statement—that the average Athenian citizen, who performed the duties of juryman in the imperial courts, who judged the greater disputes of all the subjects, and who listened regularly to the debates in the Assembly, was better educated in politics than the average members of our House of Commons.
4. On the other hand, it is by no means so certain that the social growth of Athens profited absolutely by this great development of energy and of political insight. There was, of course, a general increase of intelligence, of knowledge about the outlying parts of the Greek world, of intercourse with men from foreign cities, particularly, moreover, of talking power, transferred from public debate to private conversation; all these advances were indisputable. But it is not so clear that the social intercourse did not become too serious a mental exercise, especially when the country life of the old Attic gentry decayed, and Athens began to absorb all the life and intellect of the people. The picture we have of Kimon at the supper-table, singing bis song among the guests in his turn, and narrating his military experiences, is somewhat different from the ideal talk set down for us by later authors, in which we miss the ease and freedom and want of purpose which characterise the social intercourse of the sporting aristocrat. So also the influence of the gentler sex must have been waning rapidly, when power passed from the Alcmæonids to the charcoal burners of Acharnæ or the sailors of the Piræus. The lady of the old country seats in Attica was a very different power from the immured upper servant we find in the plays of Aristophanes and the dialogues of Xenophon.
We may best describe the life of the Periclean citizen in Euripides' youth by comparing it to the life of a London man, who, though married and having children,
