Class Struggle in Classical Greece

The lines of demarcation in such internal conficts were frequently too complex to be characterized simply as "rich" versus "poor." For example, at some times and places the heart of the struggle was between long-established aristocratic families and a rising mercantile class, many of whose leading members might actually be wealthier than many aristocrats. At other times (usually later, after the new rich had supplanted or been absorbed into the landed aristocracy), the conflict was more directly between the rich and the poor. Each of these was equally to be regarded as a form of stasis.

Such conflict was a driving force of Greek history. The colonizing movement of the pre-classical period was probably driven largely not by overpopulation per se, but by land shortages, which threatened to reduce much of the population to pauperdom, and thus exacerbated latent social tensions (Snodgrass, 40). But this proved only a temporary expedient, and the threat of stasis soon re-emerged. The rise and fall of tyrannies (which in Greek usage connotated any extralegal dictatorship, whether or not it w

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lis in its distinctive form appeared about 700 BC, just as the phalanx was becoming the general rule. The older aristocracy had no choice but to receive as fellow-members of the community the class of men who had to fight the community's battles. Yet if the phalanx possibly gave birth to the conception of the polis, the integral community, neither it nor any other institution was capable of banishing the internal tensions that gave rise to stasis, and which wracked the Greek world with increasing severity. Colonization, populist tyranny, Spartan militarism, and Athenian maritime imperialism; all these reforms failed to eliminate the underlying tensions within the community. It was in response to this continuing crisis that Plato offered the most sweeping reform of all, that embodied in the Republic. His solution to the problem was to establish a specialized ruling stratum, the "Guardians," whose entire lives were to be devoted to training in the art of governance: So we must choose from among our guardians those who appear to us on observation to be most likely to devote their lives to doing what they judge to be in the interest of the community, and who are never prepared to act against it ... A close watch
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Approximate Word count = 3355
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

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