families of otherwise hostile Greek states leagued themselves secretly for
mutual aid against popular revolts. The middle classes, as well as the rich,
began to distrust democracy as empowered envy, and the poor distrusted it
as a sham equality of votes nullified by a gaping inequality of wealth. The
rising bitterness of the class war left Greece internally as well as
internationally divided when Philip [Philip II, King of Macedon (r. 359-336
B.C.)] of Macedon pounced down upon it in 338 B.C., and many rich
Greeks welcomed his coming as preferable to revolution. Athenian
democracy disappeared under Macedonian dictatorship.
Plato’s reduction of political evolution to a sequence of monarchy,
aristocracy, democracy, and dictatorship found another illustration in the
history of Rome. During the third and second centuries before Christ a
Roman oligarchy organized a foreign policy and a disciplined army, and
conquered and exploited the Mediterranean world. The wealth so won was
absorbed by the patricians, and the commerce so developed raised to
luxurious opulence the upper middle class.
Conquered Greeks, Orientals, and Africans were brought to Italy to serve
as slaves on the latifundia; the native farmers, displaced from the soil,
joined the restless, breeding proletariat in the cities, to enjoy the monthly
dole of grain that Caius Gracchus [Gracchus, Caius Sempronius (153-121
B.C.)] had secured for the poor in 123 B.C. Generals and proconsuls
returned from the provinces loaded with spoils for themselves and the
ruling class; millionaires multiplied; mobile money replaced land as the
source or instrument of political power; rival factions competed in the
wholesale purchase of candidates and votes; in 53 B.C. one group of voters
received ten million sesterces for its support.
murder was available: citizens who had voted the wrong way were in some
instances beaten close to death and their houses were set on fire. Antiquity
had never known so rich, so powerful, and so corrupt a government.
The aristocrats engaged Pompey to maintain their ascendancy; the
commoners cast in their lot with Caesar; ordeal of battle replaced the
