Thus at
Elis the governing body was a small senate; and very few ever found
their way into it, because the senators were only ninety in number,
and were elected for life and out of certain families in a manner
similar to the Lacedaemonian elders. Oligarchy is liable to
revolutions alike in war and in peace; in war because, not being
able to trust the people, the oligarchs are compelled to hire
mercenaries, and the general who is in command of them often ends in
becoming a tyrant, as Timophanes did at Corinth; or if there are
more generals than one they make themselves into a company of tyrants.
Sometimes the oligarchs, fearing this danger, give the people a
share in the government because their services are necessary to
them. And in time of peace, from mutual distrust, the two parties hand
over the defense of the state to the army and to an arbiter between
the two factions, who often ends the master of both. This happened
at Larissa when Simos the Aleuad had the government, and at Abydos
in the days of Iphiades and the political clubs. Revolutions also
arise out of marriages or lawsuits which lead to the overthrow of
one party among the oligarchs by another. Of quarrels about
marriages I have already mentioned some instances; another occurred at
Eretria, where Diagoras overturned the oligarchy of the knights
because he had been wronged about a marriage.
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