enfranchisement of Helots and degradation of citizens under special
circumstances. And in the ancient Greek aristocracies, merit was certainly
recognized as one of the elements on which government was based. The
founders of states were supposed to be their benefactors, who were raised
by their great actions above the ordinary level of humanity; at a later
period, the services of warriors and legislators were held to entitle them
and their descendants to the privileges of citizenship and to the first
rank in the state. And although the existence of an ideal aristocracy is
slenderly proven from the remains of early Greek history, and we have a
difficulty in ascribing such a character, however the idea may be defined,
to any actual Hellenic state--or indeed to any state which has ever existed
in the world--still the rule of the best was certainly the aspiration of
philosophers, who probably accommodated a good deal their views of
primitive history to their own notions of good government. Plato further
insists on applying to the guardians of his state a series of tests by
which all those who fell short of a fixed standard were either removed from
the governing body, or not admitted to it; and this 'academic' discipline
did to a certain extent prevail in Greek states, especially in Sparta. He
also indicates that the system of caste, which existed in a great part of
the ancient, and is by no means extinct in the modern European world,
should be set aside from time to time in favour of merit. He is aware how
deeply the greater part of mankind resent any interference with the order
of society, and therefore he proposes his novel idea in the form of what he
himself calls a 'monstrous fiction.' (Compare the ceremony of preparation
for the two 'great waves' in Book v.) Two principles are indicated by him:
first, that there is a distinction of ranks dependent on circumstances
prior to the individual: second, that this distinction is and ought to be
broken through by personal qualities. He adapts mythology like the Homeric
poems to the wants of the state, making 'the Phoenician tale' the vehicle
of his ideas. Every Greek state had a myth respecting its own origin; the