communistic systems to succeed it. This tendency, however, was not like the modern either in motive or in general type. Modern socialism aims to be scientific, and professes to build a scientific system on a basis of economic laws. Greek socialism had no such aim. It did not lay claim to any relation to economic law, but frankly presented itself for what it was, a politico-moral sentiment. Other points of distinction will be observed as we proceed, but this primary one must not be overlooked, if either the spirit or the meaning of the Greek social theory is to be understood.
Two considerations made the communistic sentiment a normal one to the Greek democrat.
- (a) The institution of private property had not become so thoroughly imbedded in the very foundations of society as it has today. The custom of family tenure was not entirely forgotten, and in some backlying districts may well have been still in vogue.287 In some states, also, a part of the land was probably still held in common by the citizenship. The frequent establishment of cleruchies in conquered territories, in which the land was regularly assigned by lot, and the ever-recurring revolutions, which usually resulted in confiscation of the land in favor of the victorious party, must have assisted materially in unsettling the confidence of the Greeks in private property as a basal institution of society. The actual existence of a polity like that of Sparta, where private ownership does not seem to have been so absolute,288 doubtless also exerted its influence on the imagination of Greek thinkers.
(b) As is generally recognized, the Greek, far more than the modern, took for granted the subordination of the individual citizen to the state. We have also seen that he tended to magnify the power of legislation as sufficient to