THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS. London: C. J. CLAY AND SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. Glasgow: 263, ARGYLE STREET. [Illustration: Coat of arms] Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS. New York: MACMILLAN AND CO. THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS BY BASIL EDWARD HAMMOND FELLOW AND LECTURER, TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE: UNIVERSITY LECTURER IN HISTORY. LONDON: C. J. CLAY AND SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. 1895 [_All Rights reserved._] Cambridge: PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. PREFACE. These chapters are not intended to form a whole by themselves. They are merely an enlarged version of a course of lectures in which European Political Institutions in general were treated historically and comparatively: and as I wish hereafter to make similar enlarged versions of the other parts of the course and to append them to what I have here written, I hope that these chapters on the Greek Institutions may prove to be only a first instalment of a book on Comparative Politics. The following pages contain what their title indicates, a description and examination of Greek governments: but in view of the additions which may probably be made to them, they also contain a small amount of matter which is necessary as a preliminary to an examination of European governments in general. The attention which I have paid to method and definitions of terms might lead my readers to suppose that I conceive Comparative Politics to be a science. It is only fair to them to express the opinions that I have formed on the matter. I do think that the part of the comparative study of Politics, which deals with barbaric and more particularly with non-European peoples and their governments, has been placed on a scientific footing by Mr Herbert Spencer in his _Political Institutions_, though he has attained this great result by a method which is not purely comparative, and which, as it takes no heed of historical sequence of events, has not stood him in good stead where he treats of historical European communities and their constitutions. The part--the most interesting and important part--of the study, that which is concerned with civilised peoples and governments, seems to me not yet to be science. It does indeed enable us to lay down empirical rules, or rules founded solely on observation, about peoples and governments, just as the study of a language enables a grammarian to lay down empirical rules about words and sentences. And further, among the rules which have been laid down, there are some, (their number is, I believe, very small,) which seem to be distinguished from the rest in two respects, firstly because they are not subject to any known exception, and secondly because some of the causes which lie at the root of them have been discovered: and these rules have something of