Vol 1

This is an appendix to: How To Identify The Despotic Minority - 15

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"The constitution of the ‘successor-states’, like that of the Empire itself at the time, was a despotism tempered by revolution. [81]"

"The last of these Barbarian military despotisms was extinguished many centuries before the real beginning of the new growth which has gradually produced the political institutions that are now characteristic of the Modern Western World. [82]"

"In the first place. Western students of non-Western histories unconsciously influenced in their historical thought by their social environment have concentrated their attention upon the political plane because this is the plane on which the Western Society chiefly lives and in which Western minds are chiefly interested; and in many histories the political plane presents at sight the appearance of a static condition of irresponsible despotism. This appearance is largely an illusion; and Western students might have seen through it if they had studied non- Western politics more thoroughly, even without looking deeper. [185]"

"In the sixth century B.C., both Lemnos and the two neighbouring islands of Imbros and Samothrace were inhabited by ... but before 500 B.C. the Lemnian and Imbrian ... were conquered by the Achaemenian Empire (Herodotus, Book V, chaps. 26-7)
and they were then not only conquered for the second time, but were this time also evicted, by the Athenian Miltiades, who was at that time the despot, under Achaemenian suzerainty, of the Galli- poli Peninsula (Herodotus, Book VI, chaps. 136-40). [429]"

"On this principle, Amyntaa I planted the evicted despot of Athens, Peisistratus ... and afterwards offered Anthemus to Feiaistratus’s evicted son Hippias [433]"

"‘The universal currency of the social value of civic equality ... is demonstrated’, says Herodotus, ‘by the particular instance of the Athenians, who displayed no greater military prowess than their neighbours so long as they were under despotic government, but became far and away the first in the field as soon as they had thrown their despots off. [492]"

"and wherever men are not their own masters and not free agents, but are under despotic rule, they are not concerned to make themselves militarily efficient but, on the contrary, to avoid being regarded as good military material — the reason being that they are not playing for equal stakes. [492]"

"A strong argument in favour of my contention is furnished by the fact that all the Hellenes and non-Hellenes in Asia who are not under despotic rule, but are free agents and struggle for their own benefit, are as warlike as any populations in the World — the reason being that they stake their lives in their own cause and reap the rewards of their own valour (and the penalties of their own cowardice, into the bargain). [492]"