The first species was a form of government adopted by some Greek peoples after the fall of the heroic monarchies. In that age distinctions of class depended on military efficiency, and military efficiency on wealth. The only effective warriors were those who fought on horseback or from a chariot (we do not know whether chariots were still used in fighting, and Aristotle's words are ambiguous): those men who possessed horses, whether they served in war themselves or placed their horses at the disposal of other warriors, helped to furnish the effective part of the army; and, because they rendered this service to the community, they became the ruling class. In the Polity thus constituted the ruling class was not a large one, though larger than the ruling class in a mere oligarchy: and this species of Polity, though it was not oligarchy, had a somewhat oligarchical character. The second species of Polity was constructed on much the same lines as the first, but in a later age, when the effective warriors included not only the horsemen but also a much larger force of heavy armed infantry or hoplites. In this case, as in the other, military efficiency was dependent on property: the panoply, or complete suit of armour and set of weapons which a hoplite required, had to be skilfully wrought, and was a possession beyond the means of the poor, though it cost far less than the breeding and keep of a horse. The ruling class included every man who furnished, either for his own use or for use by another, either a war-horse or the equipment of a hoplite: and the ruling class was so large that the Polities of the second species were known in the times when they existed, though not in Aristotle's time, as democracies[233]. There were also many other varieties of Polities. In all of them, political power was shared by a class or classes which included a large part of the free men, and therefore the classes that were neither very rich nor very poor were of great political importance. The importance of the upper and middle classes might be secured by various methods: by conceding political rights only to those who had a certain amount of property, the amount being so fixed that those who had political rights were slightly more numerous than those who had them not; by giving political rights to all free men but compelling those who had property to be regular, under pain of a fine, in attendance at the assembly; or by other like devices. [233] Aristotle, IV. 13. 10, 11. Bekker. Welldon, pages 291, 292. The one feature common to all Polities was that they were made by a fusion of oligarchy and democracy. They were in one way democratic because they conceded political rights to a large body of free men: but in another sense they had a trace of oligarchy in their composition, because they gave more power to a man with property than to one who was very poor[234].