The people had been accustomed to change.

They had been led against monarchy, and found they had only resigned the one master to obtain the many:--A demagogue arose, sometimes one of their own order, more often a dissatisfied, ambitious, or empoverished noble.

For they who have wasted their patrimony, as the Stagirite shrewdly observes, are great promoters of innovation! Party ran high--the state became divided--passions were aroused--and the popular leader became the popular idol.

His life was probably often in danger from the resentment of the nobles, and it was always easy to assert that it was so endangered .-- He obtained a guard to protect him, conciliated the soldiers, seized the citadel, and rose at once from the head of the populace to the ruler of the state.

Such was the common history of the tyrants of Greece, who never supplanted the kingly sway (unless in the earlier ages, when, born to a limited monarchy, they extended their privileges beyond the law, as Pheidon of Argos), but nearly always aristocracies or oligarchies [157].