860 mSTORY OF GREECE. • — and to a great degree indeed ideal, insinuating his own recom- mendations under the color of past realities, — is sufficiently obvious : but it enables us to presume generallj, the extensive regulating power of the senate of Areopagus, in affairs both public and private, at the time which we are now describing. Such powers were pretty sure to be abused, and when we learn that the Spartan senatei was lamentably open to bribery, we can hardly presume much better of the life-sitting elders at Athens. But even if their powers had been guided by all that beneficence of intention which Isokrates affirms, they were in their nature such as could only be exercised over a passive and stationary people : and the course of events at Athens, at that time pecuharly, presented conditions altogether the reverse. During the pressure of the Persian invasion, indeed, the senate of Areopagus had been armed with more than ordinary author- ity, which it had employed so creditably as to strengthen its influence, and tighten its supervision during the period immedi- ately following : but that same trial had also called forth in the general body of the citizens a fresh burst of democratical senti- ment, and an augmented consciousness of force, both individual and national. Here then were two forces, not only distinct but opposite and conflicting, both put into increased action at the same time.^ Nor was this all : a novel cast was just then given to Athenian life and public habits by many different circum- stances, — the enlargement of the city, the creation of the forti- fied port and new town of Peiraeus, the introduction of an in- creased nautical population, the active duties of Athens as head > Aristotel. Politic, ii, 6, 18. ^ Aristotle panicularly indicates these two conflicting tendencies in Athens, the one immediately following the other, in a remarkable passage of his Politics (r, 3, 5). yiETajiaTJ.ovai 6's koI etc oXiyapxiav koI elg drj/xov Koi etc "KoXireiav e/c tov EvdoKLixt]aa'L ri fj ai^rjO^/jvai tj apx^lov ?/ fiopiov rrj^ noXecjc • oiov, tj kv 'Apei<f) izayij fiovTJfi evdoKi/iriaaffa ev role M-rjSiKolc eSo^e cvvTovuripav noiTjaai TTjv Tco'kiTEiav. Kot TTttAtv 6 vavTiKO^ ox^or yevofievoi alrtoc rijg irepl "La/Mfilva v'lKTic Kal 6ia ravTTj^ ttjq i^ye/ioviac Kal 6iu Ttjv Kara ■&akaTTav Gvvafj.Lv, Tr/v 6r] fio KpaTiav iaxv porepav iTTotTjaev. The -word awrovuripav ("stricter, more rigid,") stands opposed in another passage to avei/iiva^ (iv, 3, 5).
