صفحة 360 من 1391

But such was not the necessary order of succession in States;

nor, indeed, can any order be discerned in the endless

fluctuation of Greek history (like the tides in the Euripus),

except, perhaps, in the almost uniform tendency from monarchy to

aristocracy in the earliest times. At first sight there appears

to be a similar inversion in the last step of the Platonic

succession; for tyranny, instead of being the natural end of

democracy, in early Greek history appears rather as a stage

leading to democracy; the reign of Peisistratus and his sons is

an episode which comes between the legislation of Solon and the

constitution of Cleisthenes; and some secret cause common to them

all seems to have led the greater part of Hellas at her first

appearance in the dawn of history, e.g. Athens, Argos, Corinth,

Sicyon, and nearly every State with the exception of Sparta,

through a similar stage of tyranny which ended either in

oligarchy or democracy.