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Updated: May 16, 2025
It is also necessary that the magistrates, upon entering into their offices, should make magnificent sacrifices and erect some public structure, that the people partaking of the entertainment, and seeing the city ornamented with votive gifts in their temples and public structures, may see with pleasure the stability of the government: add to this also, that the nobles will have their generosity recorded: but now this is not the conduct which those who are at present at the head of an oligarchy pursue, but the contrary; for they are not more desirous of honour than of gain; for which reason such oligarchies may more properly be called little democracies.
Until the Reformation and the Renaissance, European ruling oligarchies in territories along the Mediterranean and throughout western Europe were able to perpetuate their privileges and preserve the life styles of an agricultural-feudal society.
The ancient governments were properly oligarchies or kingdoms; for on account of the few persons in each state, it would have been impossible to have found a sufficient number of the middle rank; so these being but few, and those used to subordination, they more easily submitted to be governed.
In the despotic countries of Asia and Africa, there was and could be no question of such a thing; it was an inert mass used at will by the despot. The Phoenician states, and Carthage in particular, were mere oligarchies, with commerce for their chief object, and slaves for mercantile or warlike purposes.
Trust to me, and I will extend the dominion of Sparta till it grasp the whole of Greece. We will depose everywhere the revolutionary Demos, and establish our own oligarchies in every Grecian state. We will Laconize all Hellas." Much of what Pausanias said was wise and profound. Such statesmanship, narrow and congenial, but vigorous and crafty, Sparta taught in later years to her alert politicians.
It is true that Sparta, who lent her powerful aid in destroying tyrannies, aimed at replacing them by oligarchies but the effort seldom produced a permanent result: the more the aristocracy was narrowed, the more certain was its fall. The moment you widen the suffrage, you may date the commencement of universal suffrage.
These taken away, and the absentees flying to Europe or the North from the moral contaminations and material discomforts inseparable from Slavery, and not much more than FIFTY THOUSAND voting men will remain to represent this mighty and all-controlling power! a fact as astounding as it is incontrovertible. Oligarchies are nothing new in the history of the world.
We have churches which profess democracy, but there is reason to fear that many of them are little better than oligarchies; that some of them come near to being monarchies. The new leadership will discern the importance of making every member of the brotherhood, no matter how humble, a partaker of its responsibilities, and a helper in its services.
If the cabals of the day be not speedily arrested, where shall our political bark be anchored? The Sylla of oligarchy, or Charybdis of disorganization must be the portion of our government. Of all tyrannies, oligarchies are the most delusive and dreadful, and anarchy is equally to be deplored.
Pythagoras was sparing in his diet, promoted an earnest culture, in which music was prominent, and gave rise to a mystical school, in which moral reform and religious fueling were connected with an ascetic method of living. COLONIES. It was during the era of the oligarchies and tyrannies that the colonizing spirit was most active among the Greeks.
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