spartan Constitution. 61 who says that in respect of the Perioeci the Spartan consti- tution was an oppressive aristocracy : but these words do not imply that its common name of aristocracy had not its origin in different circumstances. Nor again when Miiller^ arguing against the absurd supposition that the Perioeci were ad- mitted to the legislative assembly of Sparta, says that the constitution would have been democratic if the Perioeci had possessed that right (Vol. ii. p. 22)5 does he imply that it was oligarchical because they did not possess that right ; for although their admission might have made it democratical, it does not follow that their exclusion made it oligarchical. There can be no doubt that the exclusion of the Perioeci from the rights of citizenship had a most important influence on the Lacedaemonian state, and gave it in this respect an aristocratical character: yet it is not therefore certain that this was the prominent consideration in the minds of the Greeks when they called it an aristocracy. In all ages the form of government has been considered as determined by the arrangement of the sovereign power in the body politic, without any account being taken of the subjects and slaves. Thus there are states of the American union which are not the less called democracies because the number of slaves ex- ceeds that of the freemen : nor in the Greek states were slaves ever included in the enactments of new legislations (Wachsmuth II. 1. p. Jl). The example of Athens proves that the most oppressive conduct of a dominant community towards sub- jects under the name of allies is quite consistent with the most complete democracy within that community ^^. When therefore we consider the constitution of the Spartan body, the restraints imposed on the assembly ^^, the extensive powers of the councillors, their election for life, their irresponsibility, the exercise of all jurisdiction by the magistrates, the absence of written laws, of paid offices, of offices determined by lot, and other things thought by the Greeks characteristic of a democracy, it is difiicult not to think that these circumstances, 29 " Like the Venetian nobility they fomd a democracy among themselves, although they may be the rulers over subjects many times their own number." Niebuhr, Vol. I. p. 302. ^^ Aristotle attributes the content of the Spartan people to their share in the consti- tution through the Ephors, not through the ecclesia, Pol. 11. 9.
