A further application of the same principle was, as much as possible, to increase the number, and abridge the duration and authority of public offices, and to transfer their power to the people in a mass. On the same ground, chance was substituted for election in the creation of all magistrates, whose duties did not actually demand either the security of a large fortune or peculiar abilities and experience. In proportion as the popular assembly, or large portions detached from it for the exercise of judicial functions, drew all the branches of the sovereignty more and more into their sphere, the character of their proceedings became more and more subject to the influence of the lower class of the citizens, which constituted a permanent majority. And thus the democracy, instead of the equality which was its supposed basis, in fact established the ascendancy of a faction, which, although greatly preponderant in numbers, no more represented the whole state than the oligarchy itself; and which, though not equally liable to fall into the mechanism of a vicious system, was more prone to yield to the impulse of the moment, more easily misled by blind or treacherous guides, and might thus, as frequently, though not so deliberately and methodically, trample, not only on law and custom, but on justice and humanity. This disease of a democracy was sometimes designated by the term “ochlocracy,” or the dominion of the rabble. A democracy thus corrupted exhibited many features of a tyranny. It was jealous of all who were eminently distinguished by birth, fortune, or reputation; it encouraged flatterers and sycophants; was insatiable in its demands on the property of the rich, and readily listened to charges which exposed them to death or confiscation. The class which suffered such oppression, commonly ill satisfied with the principle of the constitution itself, was inflamed with the most furious animosity by the mode in which it was applied, and regarded the great mass of its fellow-citizens as its mortal enemies.[b] FOOTNOTES [13] The Pythia had once been a maiden, chosen in the flower of youth; but this practice having been attended with inconvenient consequences, women were appointed who had passed the age of fifty, but still wore the dress of virgins. Diodorus, xvi, 26. [Illustration: RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO EPICURIUS, ARCADIA] CHAPTER X. THE SMALLER CITIES AND STATES Aristotle’s survey of the Greek forms of government was founded on a vast store of information which he had collected on the history and constitution of more than a hundred and fifty states, in the mother country and the colonies, and which he had consigned to a great work now unfortunately lost. Our knowledge of the internal conditions and vicissitudes of almost all these states is very scanty and fragmentary: but some of the main facts concerning them, which have been saved from oblivion, will serve to throw light on several parts of the ensuing history.