The causes of ... [the city's] destruction may be reduced to two. One was the change that took place in the course of time in ideas, resulting from t… - Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges

Thus the ancient city was transformed by degrees. In the beginning it was an association of some hundred chiefs of families. Later the number of citizens increased, because the younger branches obtained a position of equality. Later still, the freed clients, the plebs, all that multitude which during centuries had remained outside the political and religious association, sometimes even outside the sacred enclosure of the city, broke down the barriers which were opposed to them, and penetrated into the city, where they immediately became the masters.

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 coveted. 'No relation, no service, no labor united them. The poor could acquire wealth only by despoiling the rich. The lich could defend their property only by extreme skill or by force. They regarded each other with the eyes of hate. There was a double conspiracy in every city the poor conspired from cupidity, the rich from fear. Aristotle says the rich took the following oath among themselves: "I swear always to remain the enemy of the people, and to do them all the injury in my power." It is impossible to say which of the two parties committed the most cruelties and crimes. Hati-ed effaced in their hearts every sentiment of humanity. There was at Miletus a war between the rich and the poor. At first the latter were successful, and drove the rich from the city; but afterwards, regretting that they had not been able to slaughter them, they took their children, collected them into some threshing-floors, and had them trodden to death under the feet of oxen. The rich afterwards returned to the city, and became masters of it. They took, in their turn, the children of the poor, covered them with pitch, and burnt them alive. What, then, became of the democracy? They were not precisely responsible for these excesses and crimes; still they were the first to be affected by them. There were no longer any governing rules; now, the democracy could live only under the strictest and best onserved rules. We no longer see any government, but merely factions in power. The magistrate no longer exercised his integrity for the benefit of peace and law, but for the interests and greed of a party. A command no longer had a legitimate title or a sacred character; there was no longer anything voluntary in obedience; always forced, it was always waiting for an opportunity to take its revenge.

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.