ous curse, than a legal sanction capable of
being formally applied in an individual case and after judicial
trial,--though the sentence of _atimy_, under the more elaborated Attic
procedure, was both definite in its penal consequences and also
judicially delivered. We may, however, follow the course of ideas under
which Solon was induced to write this sentence on his tables, and we may
trace the influence of similar ideas in later Attic institutions. It is
obvious that his denunciation is confined to that special case in which
a sedition has already broken out: we must suppose that Cylon has seized
the Acropolis, or that Pisistratus, Megacles, and Lycurgus are in arms
at the head of their partisans. Assuming these leaders to be wealthy and
powerful men, which would in all probability be the fact, the
constituted authority--such as Solon saw before him in Attica, even
after his own organic amendments--was not strong enough to maintain the
peace; it became, in fact, itself one of the contending parties. Under
such given circumstances, the sooner every citizen publicly declared his
adherence to some of them, the earlier this suspension of legal
authority was likely to terminate. Nothing was so mischievous as the
indifference of the mass, or their disposition to let the combatants
fight out the matter among themselves, and then to submit to the victor.
Nothing was more likely to encourage aggression on the part of an
ambitious malcontent, than the conviction that if he could once
overpower the small amount of physical force which surrounded the
archons, and exhibit himself in armed possession of the Prytaneum or the
Acropolis, he might immediately count upon passive submission on the
part of all the freemen without. Under the state of feeling which Solon
inculcates, the insurgent leader would have to calculate that every man
who was not actively in his favor would be actively against him, and
this would render his enterprise much more dangerous. Indeed, he could
then never hope to succeed, except on the double supposition of
extraordinary popularity in his own person and widespread detestation of
the existing government. He would thus be placed under the influence of
powerful deterring motives; so that ambition would be less likely to
seduce him into a course which threatened nothing but ruin, unless under
such encouragements from the preexisting public opinion as to make his
success a result desirable for the community. Amon