Polıteía 39
this one refuge of privacy for the procreation, rearing, and nourishment of its
future citizens.^9
If, then, one desired to understand a particular pólıs and its operations,
the proper procedure for one to follow, at least at the outset, would be to take
the ancient witnesses at their word. This is precisely what Adam Ferguson did
when he prefaced his observations regarding the Spartan constitution with
the remark that “we may easily account for the censures bestowed on the gov-
ernment of Sparta, by those who considered it merely on the side of its forms.
It was not calculated to prevent the practice of crimes, by balancing against
each other the selfish and partial dispositions of men; but to inspire the virtues
of the soul, to procure innocence by the absence of criminal inclinations, and
to derive its internal peace from the indifference of its members to the ordi-
nary motives of strife and disorder.” This is what Jean-Jacques Rousseau did
when he drew attention to the absence of “partial societies” in ancient Sparta.^10
There were, in fact, no organized political parties in any of the republics
of archaic and classical Greece; there was no formed opposition. Indeed, prior
to the appearance of Edmund Burke’s Thoughts on the Present Discontents—
which was published on the eve of the American Revolution, in the very pe-
riod which elicited Namier’s interest—partisanship and party government were
all but universally held in bad odor. Of course, before that time, when emer-
gencies had presented themselves, would-be statesmen had openly banded
together in associations at least putatively aimed at preserving or restoring the
traditional rights of the citizens and the ancestral constitution. But these alli-
ances never acknowledged partisan purpose; they always claimed to speak for
the whole and to be strictly defensive in character. In principle, they were in-
tended to be temporary, for they were explicitly directed at eliminating the
need for party divisions altogether. They would otherwise have had to present
themselves as conspiracies—which was a characterization that they reserved
for those against whom they had mounted their assault. Prior to 1770 in the
modern era, no respectable figure had ever even dared to argue that party
government, formed opposition, and a lasting division of the community into
political parties could ever be condoned, much less merit esteem.^11
In this respect, the Greeks were typical. The Greek language actually lacks
a word to designate such a formed and lasting opposition. The word stásıs
refers not to a political party in the modern sense, but to a faction, as we have
seen. To be precise, it refers to a group of men who “stand together.” In the
póleıs of ancient Hellas, men sometimes attached themselves to a recognized