In every city the rich and the poor were two enemies living by the side of each other, the one coveting wealth, and the other seeing their wealth cov… - Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges

Now, before the day on which the city was founded, the family already contained within itself this distinction of classes. Indeed, the family was never dismembered; it was indivisible, like the primitive religion of the hearth. The oldest son alone, succeeding the father, took possession, of the priesthood, the property, and the authority, and his brothers were to him what they had been to their father. From generation to generation, from first-born to first-born, there was never but one family chief. He presided at the sacrifice, repeated the prayer, pronounced judgment, and governed. To him alone originally belonged the title of pater; for this word, which signified power, and not paternity, could be applied only to the chief of the family. His sons, his brothers, his servants, all called him by this title. Here, then, in the inner constitution of the family is the first principle of inequality. The oldest is the privileged one for the worship, for the succession, and for command. After several centuries, there were naturally formed, in each of these great families, younger branches, that were, according to religion and by custom, inferior to the older branch, and who, living under its protection, submitted to its authority.

It is a strong proof of the antiquity of this belief, and of these practices, to find them at the same time among men on the shores of the Mediterranean and among those of the peninsula of India. Assuredly the Greeks did not borrow this religion from the Hindus, nor the Hindus from the Greeks. But the Greeks, the Italians, and the Hindus belonged to the same race; their ancestors, in a very distant past, lived together in Central Asia. There this creed originated and these rites were established. The religion of the sacred fire dates, therefore, from the distant and dim epoch when there were yet no Greeks, no Italians, no Hindus; when there were only Aryas. When the tribes separated they carried this worship with them, some to the banks of the Ganges, others to the shores of the Mediterranean. Later, when these tribes had no intercourse with each other, some adored Brahma, others Zeus, and still others Janus; each group chose its own gods; but all preserved, as an ancient legacy, the first religion which they had known and practiced in the common cradle of their race.

When this poor class, after several civil wars, saw that victories gained them nothing, that the opposite party always returned to power, and that, after many interchanges of confiscations and restitutions the struggle always recommenced, they dreamed of establishing a monarchical government which should conform to their interests, and which, by forever suppressing the opposite party, should assure them, for the future, the fruits of their victory. And so they set up tyrants. From that moment the parties changed names; they were no longer aristocracy or democracy; they fought for liberty or for tyranny. Under these two names wealth and poverty were still at war. Liberty signified the government where the rich had the rule, and defended their fortunes; tyranny indicated exactly the contrary. It is a general fact, and almost without exception in the history of Greece and of Italy, that the tyrants sprang from the popular party, and had the aristocracy as enemies. “The mission of the tyrant,” says Aristotle, “is to protect the people against the rich; he has always commenced by being a demagogue, and it is the essence of tyranny to oppose the aristocracy.” “The means of arriving at a tyranny,” he also says, “is to gain the confidence of the multitude, and one does this by declaring himself the enemy of the rich. This was the course of Peisistratus at Athens, of Theagenes at Megara, and of Dionysius at Syracuse.” The tyrant always made war upon the rich. At Megara, Theagenes surprises the herds of the rich in the country and slaughters them. At Comae, Aristodemus abolishes debts, and takes the lands of the rich to give them to the poor. ...They could maintain their power only while they satisfied the cravings of the multitude, and administered to their passions.