But in the first place let me repeat that they were one and all slave-holding democracies, and that for each freeman with a vote there were at least three or four slaves. Hence a Greek democracy can in no wise be compared with the modern democracies of artisans and labourers who have to do all their own drudgery, and have hardly any servants. Even very poor Athenians kept a slave or two; they were saved the worry of much troublesome or degrading manual labour; and so the Athenian or the Tarentine, even when poor and over-worked, was in a serious sense an aristocrat as well as a democrat: he belonged to a small minority ruling a far greater population. Still more eminently was this the case, when the democracy was, like Athens or Rhodes, an Imperial one, ruling over subjects, or allied with smaller polities which were little better than subjects. Holm argues that under Pericles the poorest citizen was paid by public money for doing public duties, and was thus above all care concerning his daily bread[89:1]. But when he adds that by this means Pericles succeeded in making the Athenians in one respect (materially) equal to the Spartans, in that they could be (if they performed public duties) noblemen and gentlemen like the latter, he surely overstates the case. The traditions of a landed aristocracy are wholly different from those of salaried paupers, however great may be the power wielded by these latter, or the privileges that they enjoy. [Sidenote: Athenian leisure.] Still it is quite possible that all the modern aids which our poor can use are not as efficient in helping them to attain culture as the leisure granted to the Greek democrat by slave-labour at home. Nor have we as yet any instance of a society becoming really refined without the aid of some inferior class, some Gibeonites, to hew wood and draw water. [Sidenote: The assembly an absolute sovran.] But if from this point of view the ancient artisan was far freer than his modern counterpart, in another he was not so. As against his brother-citizen, the laws secured him equality and justice; but against the demands of the State he had no redress. The Greek theory required that all citizens should be regarded simply as the property of the State; and such a thing as an appeal to a High Court of Judicature against the decree of the Assembly would have been regarded as absurd[90:1]. The Demos was indeed 'the sovran people,' but sovran in the sense of a tyrant, or irresponsible ruler, as Aristophanes tells the Athenians. These are the general features of Greek democracy, which are not always understood by foreign, and not urged with sufficient clearness by English, historians. FOOTNOTES: [77:1] The reader who desires fuller details may consult the chapter on the 'Lyric Age' in my _Social Life in Greece_, and the chapters on the lyric poets in my _History of Greek Literature_. [78:1] Herodotus, vi. 58. [78:2] The theorists were always framing policies after Spartan ideas.