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.20On the other hand, aristocratic attitudes and beliefs were conditioned by the ideology of the polis, which demanded an evenhigher degree of tribal loyalty than before, and heightened the traditional expectation that the leaders work for the good of thedemos.In claiming to be better than the common citizens, aristocrats could ultimately only claim to be better citizens.A keyfacet of the aristocratic self-presentation was the image of themselves as hoi chrestoi, the useful and the capable, in the polis,as the rest were achreioi, unfit to lead.21 Competitive display was as important as ever for acquiring kleos and time, though, aswe would expect, individualising displays of wealth give way in the early polis to communalising consumption ofresources for the construction of monuments emphasising the group as a whole.22IVMy argument has been that in the early city-states the refusal and compliance costs to the common people rose, putting themin a much more tense relationship with the leaders than before.Yet the increase of aristocratic power, though significant, wasnot enough for them to rule unchallenged and unchecked.Only power can curb power.In the seventh century, the checks onaristocratic dominance came from the small-farmer hoplites, the direct descendants of the rank-and-file warriors of thechiefdoms.Even though the old vertical ties still held to some extent, the hoplite farmers were emerging as a distinct socialand economic third group, neither the rich nor the poor, and occupying a social level in the society that was ambivalentlypositioned between the superior and inferior families.The type of polity will be determined to a great extent by the numbers of people in the three groups.Unfortunately, wehave almost no numerical evidence.My guess, which is all one can do, is that in the seventh-century poleis, on a roughaverage, the ruling elite (defined as those whose landholdings afforded them a leisured life-style) made up, at the very most,20 per cent of the families.23 I have suggested that wealthy landowners possessed the means to employ brute force against thepoorest citizens, although, since the legal and economic sanctions available to the agathoi made intimidation easy, actualviolence, even when legally sanctioned, need not have been usual.My guess is that the exploited group, those withinsufficient land to support themselves, or none at all, amounted to 30 per cent of the families at most.The 50 per cent, or more, of citizens who were neither rich nor dependent tenants or thetes ranged in the seventh centuryfrom the well-off, though not leisured, families to those who lived at a meagre subsistence level.Assuming that half of all thefree men physically able to bear arms met the hoplite requirement (a figure that I consider a minimum, rather than a maximum),then as many as six out of ten of the non-dependent-farmer group fought in the phalanx.If we take the more frequently citedestimate of a third as the maximum, then only one out of five independent farm-families and only about one of eight of allnon-elite families furnished hoplites.Three of eight non-agatboi seems more reasonable.I do not hesitate to call this subset the middle group in the early polis.They were visibly different from the poor, whofought as light-armed troops (gumnetes) and were quite possibly excluded from the assemblies at that time.And they weredistinct from the rich and well-born agathoi, who commanded them in war and peace and had their own social orbit fromwhich the middle group were excluded.There are indications that they had articulated a self-identification as hoi mesoi by thesixth century.25 These families, though not immune from aristocratic hubris, could not be ruled by force, nor, though theywere economically circumscribed, were they dependent on the agathoi for their living.When they acted collectively, as in themilitia and the assembly, in both of which they were the majority, they made a formidable group, and their opinion waspowerful.Paradoxically, the division of the middle mass of Dark Age households into two distinct strata, with different refusaland compliance costs, increased the influence of the hoplite families in the power arrangements
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