example is the well-known story of the boy who had stolen the fox, which is given as an illustration of the Lycurgan law which legalised theft if done with formal secrecy, a law which was felt as so directly opposed to the more modern institution of private property that it needed a euhemeristic explanation, which of course has no foundation in fact.
In Athens the change was much more radical, the idea which wielded it much more thoroughly new: it involved the complete transformation of the personal relationship of the free men into a political society.
But in the revolution which bears the names of Solon and Kleisthenes, the group-society had, first of all, become thoroughly corrupted; since the old Gentes had grown to be close corporations amidst a disorganised society of free men who did not share in their privileges, and who were economically oppressed by the outrageous and bald system of usury practised by the privileged. In Sparta, 41 as above said, the old gentile Community retained a great amount of vitality, even amidst the new political order.
It may be remembered, by the way, that the earlier stages of a new social development always show the characteristic evils of the incoming system, not perhaps in their really worst, but, at least, in their most direct and obvious form. For instance, in all early civilised Communities (recently emerged from group-organisations) usury and litigation are rampant, as, amongst other instances, the elaborate account of the life of the time given in the Icelandic sagas shows us. Again, the earlier days of the great capitalistic industries give us examples, worse on the surface, of the cynical brutality which is an essential of Capitalism, than any that are current to-day, although the present evils reach both deeper and wider than they did in its beginnings, and for that very reason are more irremediable under the system.23