The Amphiktyonic Council, an institution of prehistoric origin,
concerned mainly with religious affairs pertaining to the worship of the
Delphic Apollo, furnished a precedent for a representative, and indeed
for a federal, assembly. Delegates from various Greek tribes and cities
attended it. The fact that with such a suggestive precedent before their
eyes the Greeks never once hit upon the device of representation, even
in their attempts at framing federal unions, shows how thoroughly their
whole political training had operated to exclude such a conception from
their minds.
The second great consequence of the Graeco-Roman city-system was linked
in many ways with this absence of the representative principle. In
Greece the formation of political aggregates higher and more extensive
than the city was, until a late date, rendered impossible. The good and
bad sides of this peculiar phase of civilization have been often enough
commented on by historians. On the one hand the democratic assembly of
such an imperial city as Athens furnished a school of political training
superior to anything else that the world has ever seen. It was something
like what the New England town-meeting would be if it were continually
required to adjust complicated questions of international polity, if it
were carried on in the very centre or point of confluence of all
contemporary streams of culture, and if it were in the habit every few
days of listening to statesmen and orators like Hamilton or Webster,
jurists like Marshall, generals like Sherman, poets like Lowell,
historians like Parkman.
Pages:
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73