We find from Plato that a society of five thousand freemen capable of bearing arms was deemed powerful enough to constitute an independent state.

One great cause of the ascendency of Athens and Sparta was, that each of those cities had from an early period swept away the petty independent states in their several territories of Attica and Laconia.
[153] Machiavel (Discor., lib.i., c.

ii.).
[154] Lib.iv., c.

13.
[155] Aristotle cites among the advantages of wealth, that of being enabled to train horses.

Wherever the nobility could establish among themselves a cavalry, the constitution was oligarchical.