veritable "force" of bowmen on foot and horseback. This police force
consisted--of slaves. The free Athenian regarded this police duty as so
degrading that he preferred being arrested by an armed slave rather than
lending himself to such an ignominious service. That was still a sign of
the old gentile spirit. The state could not exist without a police, but
as yet it was too young and did not command sufficient moral respect to
give prestige to an occupation that necessarily appeared ignominious to
the old gentiles.

How well this state, now completed in its main outlines, suited the
social condition of the Athenians was apparent by the rapid growth of
wealth, commerce and industry. The distinction of classes on which the
social and political institutions are resting was no longer between
nobility and common people, but between slaves and freemen, aliens and
citizens. At the time of the greatest prosperity the whole number of
free Athenian citizens, women and children included, amounted to about
90,000; the slaves of both sexes numbered 365,000 and the
aliens--foreigners and freed slaves--45,000. Per capita of each adult
citizen there were, therefore, at least eighteen slaves and more than
two aliens. The great number of slaves is explained by the fact that
many of them worked together in large factories under supervision. The
development of commerce and industry brought about an accumulation and
concentration of wealth in a few hands. The mass of the free citizens
were impoverished and had to face the choice of either competing with
their own labor against slave labor, which was considered ignoble and
vile, besides promising little success, or to be ruined. Under the
prevailing circumstances they necessarily chose the latter course and
being in the majority they ruined the whole Attic state. Not democracy
caused the downfall of Athens, as the European glorifiers of princes and
lickspittle schoolmasters would have us believe, but slavery
ostracizing the labor of the free citizen.

The origin of the state among the Athenians presents a very typical form
of state organization. For it took place without any marring external
interference or internal obstruction--the usurpation of Pisistratos left
no trace of its short duration. It shows the direct rise of a highly
developed form of a state, the democratic republic, out of gentile
society. And finally, we are sufficiently acquainted with all the
essential details of the pr