If we take up Grecian history after the settling down of the prehistoric invasions, which complicated the ordinary process of rupture and fission, that process is seen occurring so frequently, and in so many different States, that there can be no question as to the presence of a general sociological law, not to be counteracted in any community save by a radical change of conditions. Everywhere the phenomena are broadly the same. The upper class ("upper" in virtue either of primary advantages or of special faculty for acquiring wealth) attains to providing for its future by holding multitudes of poorer citizens in debt--the ancient adumbration of the modern developments of landlordism, national debts, and large joint-stock enterprises, which yield inheritable incomes. In early times, probably, debt led as often to adult enslavement in Greece as in Rome;[95] but in a world of small and warring City-States, shaken by domestic division, constantly making slaves by capture and purchase, and always exposed to the risk of their insurrection, this was too dangerous a course to be long persisted in,[96] and the creditor was led to press his mortgaged debtor in other ways. The son or the daughter was sold to pay the father's dues, or to serve in perpetual payment of interest; and the cultivator's share was ever at the lowest point. The pressure increases till the mass of debtors are harassed into insurrection, or are used by an adventurer to establish himself as despot.[97] Sometimes, in later days, the documents of debt are publicly destroyed;[98] sometimes the land is divided afresh.[99] Landholders burdened with debt would vote for the former course and resist the latter;[100] and as that was clamoured for at Athens in early times, it may be presumed that in some places it was resorted to. Sometimes even a refunding of interest would be insisted on.[101] Naturally such means of rectification availed only for a moment; the despot stood a fair chance of being assassinated; the triumphant demos would be caballed against; the exiled nobles, with the cold rage of Theognis in their hearts, would return; and the last state of the people would be worse than the first; till again slackened vigilance on one side, and intolerable hardship on the other, renewed the cycle of violent change.