The Historians' History of the World in Twenty-Five Volumes, Volume 03, Henry Smith Williams

 

 

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THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD

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THE HISTORIANS’
HISTORY
OF THE WORLD

A comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations
as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of
all ages: edited, with the assistance of a distinguished
board of advisers and contributors,
by

HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, LL.D.

IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME III—GREECE TO THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

1904

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Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

All rights reserved.

Press of J. J. Little & Co.
New York, U. S. A.

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Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.

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CONTENTS

VOLUME III
GREECE
	PAGE
Introductory Essay. The Scope and Development of Greek History. By Dr. Eduard Meyer	1
Greek History in Outline	13
CHAPTER I
Land and People	26
The land, 26. The name, 32. The origin of the Greeks, 33. Early conditions and movements, 36.
CHAPTER II
The Mycenæan Age (ca. 1600-1000 B.C.)	40
Mycenæan civilisation, 40. The problem of Mycenæan chronology, 52. The testimony of art, 54. The problem of the Mycenæan race, 56.
CHAPTER III
The Heroic Age (1400-1200 B.C.)	66
The value of the myths, 67. The exploits of Perseus, 68. The labours of Hercules, 69. The feats of Theseus, 71. The Seven against Thebes, 72. The Argonauts, 73. The Trojan War, 76. The town of Troy, 78. Paris and Helen, 79. The siege of Troy, 80. Agamemnon’s sad home-coming, 81. Character and spirit of the Heroic Age, 82. Geographical knowledge, 86. Navigation and astronomy, 88. Commerce and the arts, 89. The graphic arts, 91. The art of war, 92. Treatment of orphans, criminals, and slaves, 94. Manners and customs, 97.
CHAPTER IV
The Transition to Secure History (ca. 1200-800 B.C.)	99
[x]Beloch’s view of the conventional primitive history, 99.
CHAPTER V
The Dorians (ca. 1100-1000 B.C.)	109
The migration in the view of Curtius, 115. Messenia, 117. Argos, 118. Arcadia, 121. Dorians in Crete, 124.
CHAPTER VI
Sparta and Lycurgus (ca. 885 B.C.)	128
Plutarch’s account of Lycurgus, 129. The institutions of Lycurgus, 131. Regulations regarding marriage and the conduct of women, 133. The rearing of children, 135. The famed Laconic discourse; Spartan discipline, 136. The senate; burial customs; home-staying; the ambuscade, 138. Lycurgus’ subterfuge to perpetuate his laws, 140. Effects of Lycurgus’ system, 141.
CHAPTER VII
The Messenian Wars of Sparta (ca. 764-580 B.C.)	143
First Messenian War, 144. The futile sacrifice of the daughter of Aristodemus, 146. The hero Aristomenes and the Second Messenian War, 147. The poet Tyrtæus, 149.
CHAPTER VIII
The Ionians (ca. 650-630 B.C.)	152
Origin and early history of Athens, 154. King Ægeus, 155. Theseus, 158. Rise of popular liberty, 162. Draco, the lawgiver, 164.
CHAPTER IX
Some Characteristic Institutions (884-590 B.C.)	167
The oracle at Delphi, 170. National festivals, 170. The Olympian games, 172. Character of the games, 173. Monarchies and oligarchies, 175. Tyrannies, 177. Democracies, 179.
CHAPTER X
The Smaller Cities and States	181
Arcadia, Ellis, and Achaia, 181. Argos, Ægina, and Epidaurus, 182. Sicyon and Megara, 184. Bœotia, Locris, Phocis, and Eubœa, 187. Thessaly, 189. Corinth under Periander, 191.
CHAPTER XI
Crete and the Colonies	194
[xi]Beloch’s account of Greek colonisation, 198.
CHAPTER XII
Solon the Lawgiver (ca. 638-558 B.C.)	207
The life and laws of Solon according to Plutarch, 209. The law concerning debts, 213. Class legislation, 215. Miscellaneous laws; the rights of women, 216. Results of Solon’s legislation, 217. Solon’s journey and return; Pisistratus, 219. A modern view of Solonian laws and constitution, 220.
CHAPTER XIII
Pisistratus the Tyrant (550-527 B.C.)	222
The virtues of Pisistratus’ rule, 226.
CHAPTER XIV
Democracy Established at Athens (514-490 B.C.)	231
Clisthenes, the reformer, 236. Ostracism, 245. The democracy established, 251. Trouble with Thebes, 252.
CHAPTER XV
The First Foreign Invasion (506-490 B.C.)	261
The origin of animosity, 262. The Ionic revolt, 264. War with Ægina, 267. The first invasion, 268. Battle of Marathon, 272. On the courage of the Greeks, 277. If Darius had invaded Greece earlier, 279.
CHAPTER XVI
Miltiades and the Alleged Fickleness of Republics (489 B.C.)	280
CHAPTER XVII
The Plans of Xerxes (485-480 B.C.)	285
Xerxes bridges the Hellespont, 295. How the host marched, 297. The size of Xerxes’ army, 301.
CHAPTER XVIII
Proceedings in Greece from Marathon to Thermopylæ (489-480 B.C.)	305
Themistocles and Aristides, 306. Congress at Corinth, 308. The vale of Tempe, 313. Xerxes reviews his host, 314.
CHAPTER XIX
Thermopylæ (480 B.C.)	320
The famous story as told by Herodotus, 320. Leonidas and his allies, 321. Xerxes assails the pass, 323. The treachery of Ephialtes, 323. The final assault, 325. Discrepant [xii]accounts of the death of Leonidas, 327. After Thermopylæ, 327.
CHAPTER XX
The Battles of Artemisium and Salamis (480 B.C.)	330
Battle of Artemisium, 331. Athens abandoned, 334. The fleet at Salamis, 337. Xerxes at Delphi, 338. Athens taken, 339. Xerxes inspects his fleet, 340. Schemes of Themistocles, 342. Battle of Salamis, 345. The retreat of Xerxes, 348. The spoils of victory, 351. Syracusan victory over Carthage, 352.
CHAPTER XXI
From Salamis to Mycale (479 B.C.)	353
Mardonius makes overtures to Athens, 354. Mardonius moves on Athens, 356. Athens appeals to Sparta, 357. Mardonius destroys Athens and withdraws, 358. A preliminary skirmish, 360. Preparations for the battle of Platæa, 362. Battle of Platæa, 366. Mardonius falls and the day is won, 370. After the battle, 371. The Greeks attack Thebes, 373. The flight of the Persian remnant, 374. Contemporary affairs in Ionia, 374. Battle of Mycale, 376. After Mycale, 377. A review of results, 379. A glance forward, 379.
CHAPTER XXII
The Aftermath of the War (478-468 B.C.)	382
Athens rebuilds her walls, 382. The new Athens, 384. The misconduct of Pausanias, 386. Athens takes the leadership, 388. The confederacy of Delos, 389. The treason of Pausanias, 391. Political changes at Athens, 394. The downfall of Themistocles, 396.
CHAPTER XXIII
The Growth of the Athenian Empire (479-462 B.C.)	402
The victories of Cimon, 408. Mitford’s view of the period, 409.
CHAPTER XXIV
The Rise of Pericles (462-440 B.C.)	416
The Areopagus, 420. Cimon exiled, 423. The war with Corinth, 424. The Long Walls, 425. Cimon recalled, 427. The Five-Years’ Truce, 430. The confederacy becomes an empire, 431. Commencement of decline, 432. The greatness of Pericles, 435. A Greek federation planned, 436.
CHAPTER XXV
Athens at War (440-432 B.C.)	438
The Samian War, 438. The war with Corcyra, 439. The war with Potidæa and [xiii]Macedonia, 444.
CHAPTER XXVI
Imperial Athens under Pericles (460-430 B.C.)	448
Judicial reforms of Pericles, 454. Rhetors and sophists, 459. Phidias accused, 461. Aspasia at the bar, 462. Anaxagoras also assailed, 463.
CHAPTER XXVII
Manners and Customs of the Age of Pericles (460-410 B.C.)	465
Cost of living and wages, 465. Schools, teachers, and books, 472. The position of a wife in Athens, 473.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Art of the Periclean Age (460-410 B.C.)	477
Architecture, 477. Sculpture, 483. Painting, music, etc., 487. The artists of the other cities of Hellas, 490.
CHAPTER XXIX
Greek Literature	492
Oratory and lyric poetry, 492. Tragedy, 497. Comedy, 504. The glory of Athens, 505.
CHAPTER XXX
The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (432-431 B.C.)	508
Our sources, 508. The origin of the war, 510. Preparations for the conflict, 517. The surprise of Platæa, 522. Pericles’ reconcentration policy, 526. The first year’s ravage, 527.
CHAPTER XXXI
The Plague; and the Death of Pericles (431-429 B.C.)	535
The oration of Pericles, 535. Thucydides’ account of the plague, 539. Last public speech of Pericles, 545. The end and glory of Pericles, 548. Wilhelm Oncken’s estimate of Pericles, 551.
CHAPTER XXXII
The Second and Third Years of the Peloponnesian War (429-428 B.C.)	554
The Spartans and Thebans attack Platæa, 556. Part of the Platæans escape; the [xiv]rest capitulate, 557. Naval and other combats, 560.
CHAPTER XXXIII
The Fourth to the Tenth Years—and Peace (428-421 B.C.)	566
The revolt of Mytilene, 566. Thucydides’ account of the revolt of Corcyra, 570. Demosthenes and Sphacteria, 575. Further Athenian successes, 579. A check to Athens; Brasidas becomes aggressive, 580. The banishment of Thucydides, 581. A truce declared; two treaties of peace, 582.
CHAPTER XXXIV
The Rise of Alcibiades (450-416 B.C.)	584
CHAPTER XXXV
The Sicilian Expedition (481-413 B.C.)	591
Sicilian history, 591. The mutilation of the Hermæ, 596. The fleet sails, 599. Alcibiades takes flight, 601. Nicias tries strategy, 602. Spartan aid, 604. Alcibiades against Athens, 605. Athenian reinforcements, 606. Athenian disaster, 608. Thucydides’ famous account of the final disasters, 610. Demosthenes surrenders his detachment, 613. Nicias parleys, fights, and surrenders, 614. The fate of the captives, 615.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Close of the Peloponnesian War (425-404 B.C.)	617
Athens after the Sicilian débâcle, 617. Alcibiades again to the fore, 620. The overthrow of the democracy; the Four Hundred, 624. The revolt from the Four Hundred, 627. The triumphs of Alcibiades, 630. Alcibiades in disfavour again, 633. Conon wins at Arginusæ, 634. The trial of the generals, 636. Battle of Ægospotami, 638. The fall of Athens, 640. A review of the war, 642. Grote’s estimate of the Athenian Empire, 644.
Brief Reference-List of Authorities by Chapters	647

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PART IX

THE HISTORY OF GREECE

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

ARRIAN, JULIUS BELOCH, A. BŒCKH, JOHN B. BURY, GEORG BUSOLT,
H. F. CLINTON, GEORGE W. COX, ERNST CURTIUS, HERMANN
DIELS, DIODORUS SICULUS, JOHANN G. DROYSEN,
GEORGE GROTE, HERODOTUS, GUSTAV F.
HERTZBERG, ADOLF HOLM,
JUSTIN, JOHN P. MAHAFFY, EDUARD MEYER, WILLIAM MITFORD, ULRICH VON
WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORFF, KARL O. MÜLLER, CORNELIUS NEPOS,
PAUSANIAS, PLATO, PLUTARCH, QUINTUS CURTIUS,
HEINRICH SCHLIEMANN, STRABO, CONNOP
THIRLWALL, THUCYDIDES, XENOPHON

TOGETHER WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON

THE SCOPE AND DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK HISTORY

BY

EDUARD MEYER

A STUDY OF

THE EVOLUTION OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY

BY

HERMANN DIELS

AND A CHARACTERISATION OF

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HELLENIC SPIRIT

BY

ULRICH VON WILAMOWITZ-MÖLLENDORFF

WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

CLAUDIUS ÆLIANUS, ANAXIMENES, APPIANUS ALEXANDRINUS, ARISTOBULUS, ARISTOPHANES, ARISTOTLE, W. ASSMANN, W. BELOE, E. G. E. L. BULWER-LYTTON, CALLISTHENES, CICERO, E. S. CREASY, CONSTANTINE VII (PORYPHYROGENITUS), DEMOSTHENES, W. DRUMANN, VICTOR DURUY, ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, EUGAMON, EURIPIDES, EUTROPIUS, G. H. A. EWALD, J. L. F. F. FLATHE, E. A. FREEMAN, A. FURTWÄNGLER AND LÖSCHKE, P. GARDNER, J. GILLIES, W. E. GLADSTONE, O. GOLDSMITH, H. GOLL, J. DE LA GRAVIÈRE, G. B. GRUNDY, H. R. HALL, G. W. F. HEGEL, W. HELBIG, D. G. HOGARTH, ISOCRATES, R. C. JEBB, JOSEPHUS, F. C. R. KRUSE, P. H. LARCHER, W. M. LEAKE, E. LERMINIER, LIVY, LYSIAS, J. C. F. MANSO, L. MÉNARD, H. H. MILMAN, J. A. R. MUNRO, B. G. NIEBUHR, W. ONCKEN, L. A. PRÉVOST-PARADOL, GEORGE PERROT AND CHARLES CHIPIEZ, PHILOSTEPHANUS, PIGORINI, PHOTIUS, R. POHLMAN, POLYBIUS, J. POTTER, PTOLEMY LAGI, JAMES RENNEL, W. RIDGEWAY, K. RITTER, C. ROLLIN, J. RUSKIN, F. C. SCHLOSSER, W. SCHORN, C. SCHUCHARDT, S. SHARPE, G. SMITH, W. SMYTH, E. VON STERN, THEOGNIS, THEOPOMPUS, L. A. THIERS, C. TSOUNTAS AND J. IRVING MANATT, TYRTÆUS, W. H. WADDINGTON, G. WEBER, B. I. WHEELER, F. A. WOLF, XANTHUS

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Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS

All rights reserved

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THE SCOPE AND DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK HISTORY

Written Specially for the Present Work

By Dr. EDUARD MEYER

Professor of Ancient History in the University of Berlin

The history of Greek civilisation forms the centre of the history of antiquity. In the East, advanced civilisations with settled states had existed for thousands of years; and as the populations of Western Asia and of Egypt gradually came into closer political relations, these civilisations, in spite of all local differences in customs, religion, and habits of thought, gradually grew together into a uniform sphere of culture. This development reached its culmination in the rise of the great Persian universal monarchy, the “kingdom of the lands,” i.e. “of the world.” But from the very beginning these oriental civilisations are so completely dominated by the effort to maintain what has been won that all progress beyond this point is prevented. And although we can distinguish an individual, active, and progressive intellectual movement among many nations,—as in Egypt, among the Iranians and Indians, while among the Babylonians and Phœnicians nothing of the sort is thus far known,—nevertheless the forces that represent tradition are in the end everywhere victorious over it and force it to bow to their yoke. Hence, all oriental civilisations culminate in the creation of a theological system which governs all the relations and the whole field of thought of man, and is everywhere recognised as having existed from all eternity and as being inviolable to all future time.

With the cessation of political life and the establishment of the universal monarchy, the nationality and the distinctive civilisation of the separate districts are restricted to religion, which has become theology. The development of oriental civilisation then subsides in the competition of these religions and the unavoidable coalescence consequent thereupon. This is true even of that nation which experienced the richest intellectual development, and did the most important work of all oriental peoples—the Israelites. When the great political storms from which the universal monarchy arose have spent their rage, Israel, the nation, has developed into Judaism; and under the Persian rule and with the help of the kingdom it organises itself as a church which seeks to put an end to all free individual movement, upon which the greatness of ancient Israel rests.

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It was just the same with the ruling nation, the Persians, however vigorous their entrance into history under Cyrus. The Persian kingdom is, indeed, a civilised state, but the civilisations that it includes lack the highest that a civilisation can offer: an energetic, independent life, a combination of the firm institutions and permanent attainments of the past with the free, progressive, and creative movement of individuality. So the East, after the Persian period, was unable of its own force to create anything new. It stagnated, and, had it not received new elements from without, had it been left permanently to itself, would perhaps in the course of centuries have altered its external form again and again, but would hardly have produced anything new or have progressed a step beyond what had already been attained.

But when Cyrus and Darius founded the Persian kingdom, the East no longer stood alone. The nations and kingdoms of the East came into communication with the coast of the Mediterranean very early—not later than the beginning of the second millennium B.C.; and under their influence, about 1500 B.C., a civilisation arose among the Greeks bordering the Ægean. We call it the Mycenæan, and in spite of its formal dependence upon the East it could, in the field of art (where alone we have an exact knowledge of it), take an independent and equal place beside the great civilisations of the East.

How Greek civilisation continued to advance from step to step for many centuries in the field of politics and society as well as in that of the intellect; how it spread simultaneously over all the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean, from Massalia on the coast of the Ligurians and Cumæ in the land of the Oscans to the Crimea and the eastern coast of the Black Sea, and in the south as far as Cyprus and Cilicia; how Greek culture at the same time took root in much more remote districts, especially in Asia Minor; and how under its influence an energetic civilisation arose among the tribes of Italy, cannot be depicted here.

When the Persian kingdom was founded the Hellenes had developed from a group of linguistically related tribes into a nation possessing a completely independent culture whose equal the world had never yet seen, a culture whose mainspring was that very political and intellectual freedom of the individual which was completely lacking in the East.

Hence its character was purely human, its aim the complete and harmonious development of man; and if for that very reason it always strove to be moderate and to adapt itself to the moral and cosmical forces that govern human life, nevertheless it could accomplish this only in free subordination, by absorbing the moral commandment into its own will. Therefore it did not permit the opposing theological tendencies to gain control, strong as was their development in considerable districts of Greece in the sixth century. At that very period, on the other hand, it was stretching out to grasp the apples on the tree of knowledge; in the most advanced regions of Hellas science and philosophy were opposing theology. National as it was, this culture lacked but one thing: the political unity of the nation, the co-ordination of all its powers in the vigorous organism of a great state.

The instinct of freedom itself, upon which the greatness of this civilisation rested, favoured by the geographical conformation of the Greek soil, had caused a constantly increasing political disunion, which saw in the complete and unlimited autonomy of every individual community, even of the tiniest of the hundreds of city states into which Hellas was divided, the highest ideal of liberty, the only fit existence for a Hellene. And, internally,[3] every one of these dwarf states was eaten by the canker of political and social contrasts which could not be permanently suppressed by any attempt to introduce a just political order founded upon a codified law and a written constitution—whether the ideal were the rule of the “best,” the rule of the whole, i.e. of the actual masses, or that of a mixed constitution. The smaller the city and its territory, the more apt were these attempts to become bloody revolutions. Lively as was the public spirit, clearly as the justice of the demand for subordination to law was recognised, every individual and every party interpreted it according to its own conception and its own judgment, and at all times there were not a few who were ready to seize for themselves all that the moment offered.

To be sure, manifold and successful attempts to found a greater political power were brought about by the advancing growth of industry and culture, as well as by the development of the citizen army of hoplites, which had a firm tactical structure and was well schooled in the art of war. In the Peloponnesus Sparta brought the whole south under the rule of its citizens and not only effected the union of almost the whole peninsula into a league, but established its right, as the first military power of Hellas, to leadership in all common affairs.

In middle Greece, Thebes succeeded in uniting Bœotia into a federal state, while its neighbour Athens, which had maintained the unity of the Attic district since the beginning of history, began to annex the neighbouring districts of Megara, Bœotia, and Eubœa, and laid the foundation of a colonial power, as Corinth had formerly done. In the north the Thessalians acquired leadership over all surrounding tribes. In the west, in Sicily, usurpers had founded larger monarchical unified states, especially in Syracuse and Agrigentum.

But all these combinations were after all only of very limited extent and by no means firmly united; on the contrary, the weaker communities felt even the loosest kind of federation, to say nothing of dependence, as an oppressive fetter which impaired the ideal of the individual destiny of the autonomous state, and which at least one party,—generally the one that happened to be out of power,—felt justified in bursting at the first opportunity.

However, as things lay, the nation found itself forced, with this sort of constitution, to take up the struggle for its political independence. The Greeks of Asia Minor, formerly subjects of the kings of Sardis, had become subjects of the Persian kingdom under Cyrus; the free Hellenes had the most varied relations with the latter, and more than once gave him occasion to intervene in their affairs. The Persian kingdom, which under Darius no longer attempted conquests that were not necessary for the maintenance of its own existence, took no advantage of these provocations until the revolt of the Greeks of Asia Minor, supported by Athens, made war inevitable.

After the first attempt had failed Xerxes repeated it on the greatest scale. Against the Hellenic nation, whose alien character was everywhere a hindrance in its path, the Orient arose in the east and the west for a decisive struggle; the Phœnician city of Carthage, the great sea power of the west, was in alliance with the Persian kingdom. Only the minority of the Hellenes joined in the defence; in the west the princes of Syracuse and Agrigentum, in the east Sparta and the Peloponnesian league, Athens, the cities of Eubœa and a few smaller powers. But in both fields of operation the Hellenes won a complete victory; the Carthaginians were defeated on the Himera, in the east Themistocles broke the base of the Persian position by destroying their sea power with the Athenian fleet that he had created, and[4] on the battle-field of Platæa the Persian land forces were defeated by the superiority of the Greek armies of hoplites.

Thus the Hellenes had won the leading position in the world. For the moment there was no other power that could oppose them by land or sea; the Asiatic king never again ventured an attack on Greece. Her absolute military superiority was founded upon the national character, the energetic public spirit, the voluntary subordination to law and discipline and the capacity for conceiving and realising great political ideas. The Hellenes could gain and assert permanently the ascendency over the entire Mediterranean world, and impress upon it for all time the stamp of their nationality, provided only that they were united and saw the way to gather together all their resources into a single firmly knit great power.

But the Greeks were not able to meet this first and most urgent demand; though the days of particularism were irrevocably past, the idea which was so inseparably bound up with the very nature of Hellenism still exerted a powerful influence. As the individual communities were no longer able to maintain an independent existence, they gathered about the two powers that had gained the leadership, and each of which was striving for supremacy: the patriarchal military state of Sparta and the new progressive great power of Athens.

With the victory over the East it had been decided that the individuality of Hellenic culture, the intellectual liberty which gives free play to all vigorous powers in both material and intellectual life, had asserted itself; the future lay only along this way. Mighty was the advance that in all fields carried Greece along with gigantic strides; after only a few decades the time before the Persian wars seemed like a remote and long past antiquity.

But mighty as were the advancing strides of the nation in trade and industry, in wealth and all the luxury of civilisation, in art and science, all these attainments finally became factors of political disintegration. They furthered the unlimited development of individualism, which in custom and law and political life recognises no other rule than its own ego and its claims. The ideal world of the time of the sophists and the politics of an Alcibiades and a Lysander are the results of this development.

Athens perceived the political tasks that were set for the Hellenic people and ventured an attempt to perform them. They could be accomplished only by admitting the new ideas into the programme of democracy, by the foundation and extension of sea power, by an aggressive policy which aimed more and more at the subjection of the Greek world under the hegemony of one city. In consequence all opposing elements were forced under the banner of Sparta, which adopted the programme of conservatism and particularism, in order to strengthen its resistance, and restrict and, if possible, overcome its rival.

The conflict was inevitable, though both sides were reluctant to enter upon it; twenty years after the battle of Salamis it broke out. The fact that Athens was trying at the same time to continue the war against Persia and wrest Cyprus and Egypt from it gave her opponents the advantage; she had far overestimated her strength. After a struggle of eleven years (460-449 B.C.) Athens found herself compelled to make peace with Persia and free the Greek mainland, only retaining absolute control over the sea.

Under the rule of Pericles she consolidated her power, and the ideals that lived in her were embodied in splendid creations. She proved herself equal,[5] in spite of all internal instability and crises, to a second attack of her Greek opponents (431-421 B.C.). But it again became evident that the radical democracy, which was now at the helm, had no grasp of the realities of the political situation; for the second time it stretched out its hand for the hegemony over all Hellas, in unnatural alliance with Alcibiades, the conscienceless, ambitious man who was aiming at the crown of Athens and Hellas.

Mighty indeed was the plan to subdue the Western world, Sicily first of all; then with doubled power first to crush the opponents at home and then gain the supremacy over the whole Mediterranean world. But what a united Hellas might have accomplished was far beyond the resources of Athens, even if the democrats had not overthrown their dangerous ally at the first opportunity, and thus lamed the undertaking at the outset.

The catastrophe of the Athenians before Syracuse (413 B.C.) is the turning-point of Greek history. All the opponents of Athens united, and the Persian king, who saw that the hour had come to regain his former power without a struggle, made an alliance with them. Only through his subsidies was it possible for Sparta and her allies to reduce Athens—until she lay prostrate. And the gain fell to Persia alone, however feeble the kingdom had meanwhile become internally. Sparta, after overthrowing the despotism of Lysander, made an honest attempt to reorganise the Greek world after the conservative programme, and to fulfil the task laid upon the nation in the contest with Persia. But she only furnished her opponents at home, and particularism, which now immediately turned against its former ally, an occasion for a fresh uprising, which Sparta could master only by forming a new alliance with Persia. After the peace of 386 the king of Asia utters the decisive word even in the affairs of the Greek mother-country.

Here dissolution is going rapidly forward. Every power that has once more for a short time possessed some importance in Greece succumbs to it in turn; first Sparta, then Thebes and Athens. The attempts to establish permanent and assured conditions by local unions in small districts, as in Chalcidice under Olynthus, in Bœotia and Arcadia, were never able to hold out more than a short time. It was useless to look longer for the fulfilment of the national destiny. Feeble as the Persian kingdom was internally, every revolt against it, to say nothing of an attempt to make conquests and acquire a new field of colonisation in Asia,—the programme that Isocrates repeatedly urged upon the nation,—was made impossible by internal strife. Prosperity was ruined, the energy of the nation was exhausted in the wild feuds of brigands, the most desolate conditions prevailed in all communities. Greek history ends in chaos, in a hopeless struggle of all against all.

In this same period, to be sure, the positive, constructive criticism of Socrates and his school rose in opposition to the negative tendencies of sophistry; and made the attempt to put an end to the political misery, to create by a proper education the true citizen who looks only to the common welfare in place of the ignorant citizen of the existing states, who was governed only by self-interest. These efforts resulted in the development of science and the preservation for all future time of the highest achievements of the intellectual life of Hellas, but they could not produce an internal transformation of men and states, whose earthly life does not lie within the sphere of the problems of theoretical perception, but in that of the problems of will and power. So at the same time that Greek culture has reached the highest point of its development, prepared to become the culture of the world, the Greek nation is condemned to complete impotence.

[6]

For the development in the West, different as was its course, led to no other result. In the fifth century Greece controlled almost all Sicily except the western point, the whole south of Italy up to Tarentum, Elea and Posidonia and the coast of Campania. Nowhere was an enemy to be seen that might have become dangerous. The Carthaginians were repulsed, and the power of the Etruscans, who in the sixth century had striven for the hegemony in Italy, decayed, partly from internal weakness, partly in consequence of the revolt of their subjects, especially the Romans and the Sabines. The Cumæans under Aristodemus with the Sabines as their allies defeated Aruns, the son of Porsena of Clusium, at Aricia about 500 B.C., and in the year 474 the Etruscan sea power suffered defeat at Cumæ from the fleet of Hiero of Syracuse.

The cities of western Greece stood then as if founded for all eternity; they were adorned with splendid buildings, the gayest and most luxurious life developed in their streets; and they had leisure enough, after the Greek manner, to dissipate their energies, which were not claimed by external enemies, in internal strife and in struggles for the hegemony. Only the bold attempts which Phocæa made in the sixth century to turn the western basin of the Mediterranean likewise into a Greek sea, to get a firm footing in Corsica and southern Spain, had succumbed to the resistance of the Carthaginians, who were in alliance with the Etruscans. Only in the north, on the coast of Liguria from the Alps to the Pyrenees, Massalia maintained its independence. Southern Spain, Gades, and the coast of the land of Tarshish (Tartessus) were occupied by the Carthaginians about the middle of the fifth century; and the Greeks and all foreign mariners in general were cut off from the navigation of the ocean, as well as from the coasts of North Africa and Sardinia.

In the fourth century the political situation is totally changed in both east and west. The Greeks are reduced to the defensive and lose one position after the other. A few years after the destruction of the Athenian expedition the Carthaginians stretched out their hands for Sicily; in the years 409 and 406 they take and destroy Selinus, Himera, and Agrigentum; in the wars of the following years every other Greek city of the island except Syracuse was temporarily occupied and plundered by them.

In Italy after the middle of the fifth century a new people made their entrance into history, the Sabellian (Oscan) mountain tribes. From the valleys of the Abruzzi and the Samnitic Apennines they pressed forward towards the rich plains of the coast, and the land of civilisation with its inhabitants succumbed to them almost everywhere. To be sure, the Sabines under Rome defended themselves against the Æquians and Volscians, and so did the Apulians in the east against the Frentanians and Pentrians of Samnium. But the Etruscans of Capua and Nola and the Greeks of Cumæ were overcome (438 and 421 B.C.) by the Sabellian Campanians, and Naples alone in this district was able to preserve its independence. In the south the Lucanians advanced farther and farther, took Posidonia (Pæstum) in 400 B.C., Pyxus, Laos, and harassed the Greek cities of the east coast and the south.

From between these hostile powers, the Carthaginians and the Sabellians, an energetic ruler, Dionysius of Syracuse (405-367 B.C.), once more rescued Hellenism. In great battles, with heavy losses to be sure, and only by the employment of the military power of the Oscans, of Campanian mercenary troops and of the Lucanians, he succeeded in setting up once more a powerful Greek kingdom, including two-thirds of Sicily, the south of Italy as far as[7] Crotona and Terina; he held Carthage in restraint, scourged the Etruscans in the western sea, and at the same time occupied a number of important points on the Adriatic, Lissus and Pharos in Illyria, several Apulian towns, Ancona, and Hadria at the mouth of the Po in Italy. Dionysius had covered his rear by a close alliance with Sparta, which not only insured him against any republican uprising, but made possible an uninterrupted recruiting of mercenaries from the Peloponnesus. In return Dionysius supported the Spartans in carrying through the Kings’ Peace and against their enemies elsewhere.

The kingdom of Dionysius seemed to rest on a firm and permanent foundation. Had it continued to exist the whole course of the world’s history would have been different; Hellenism could have maintained its position in the West, which might even have received again a Greek impress instead of becoming Italic and Roman.

But the kingdom of Dionysius was in the most direct opposition to all that Greek political theory demanded; it was a despotic state which made the free self-government of communities an empty form in the capital Syracuse, and in the subject territories, for the most part, simply abolished the city-state, the polis. The necessity of a strong government that would protect Hellenism in the West against its external enemies was indeed recognised by the discerning, but internally it seemed possible to relax and to effect a more ideal political formation.

Under the successor of the old despot, Dionysius II, Plato’s pupil, Dion, and Plato himself, made an attempt at reform, first with the ruler’s support, and then in opposition to him. The result was, that the west Grecian kingdom was shattered (357-353 B.C.), while the establishment of the ideal state was not successful; instead anarchy appeared again, and the struggle of all against all. Only the enemies of the nation gained. In Sicily, to be sure, Timoleon (345-337) was able to establish a certain degree of order; he overthrew the tyrants, repulsed the Carthaginians, restored the cities and gave them a modified democratic constitution. But the federation of these republics had no permanence. On the death of Timoleon the internal and external strife began anew, and the final verdict was uttered by the governor of the Carthaginian province.

In Italy, on the other hand, the majority of the Greek cities were conquered by the Lucanians or the newly risen Bruttians. On the west coast only Naples and Elea were left, in the south Rhegium; in the east Locri, Crotona, and Thurii had great difficulty in defending themselves against the Bruttians. Tarentum alone (upon which Heraclea and Metapontum were dependent) possessed a considerable power, owing to its incomparable situation on a sea-girt peninsula and to the trade and wealth which furnished it the means again and again to enlist Greek chieftains and mercenaries in its service for the struggle against its enemies.

It was as Plato wrote to the Syracusans in the year 352 B.C. If matters go on in this way, no end can be foreseen “until the whole population, supporters of tyrants and democrats, alike, has been destroyed, the Greek language has disappeared from Sicily and the island fallen under the power and rule of the Phœnicians or Oscans” (Epist. 8, 353 e). In a century the prophecy was fulfilled. But its range extends a great deal farther than Plato dreamed; it is the fate not only of the western Greeks, but of the whole Hellenic nation, that he foretells here.

The Greek states were not equal to the task of maintaining the position of their nation as a world-power and gaining control of the world for their[8] civilisation. When they had completely failed, a half-Greek neighbouring people, the Macedonians, attempted to carry out this mission. The impotence of the Greek world gave King Philip (359-336) the opportunity, which he seized with the greatest skill and energy, of establishing a strong Macedonian kingdom, including all Thrace as far as the Danube, extending on the west to the Ionian Sea, and finally, on the basis of a general peace, of uniting the Hellenic world of the mother-country in a firm league under Macedonian hegemony (337 B.C.).

Philip adopted the national programme of the Hellenes proposed by Isocrates and began war in Asia against the Persians (336 B.C.). His youthful son Alexander then carried it out on a far greater scale than his father had ever intended. His aim was to subdue the whole known world, the οικουμένη, simultaneously to Macedonian rule and Hellenic civilisation. Moreover, as the descendant of Hercules and Achilles, as king of Macedonia and leader of the Hellenic league, imbued by education with Hellenic culture, the triumphs of which he had enthusiastically absorbed, he felt himself called as none other to this work. Darius III, after the victory of Issus (November 333 B.C.), offered him the surrender of Western Asia as far as the Euphrates; and the interests of his native state and also,—we must not fail to note,—the true interests of Hellenic culture would have been far better served by such self-restraint than by the ways that Alexander followed.

But he would go farther, out into the immeasurable; the attraction to the infinite, to the comprehension and mastery of the universe, both intellectual and material, that lies in the nature of the yet inchoate uniform world-culture, finds its most vivid expression in its champion. When, indeed, he would advance farther and farther, from the Punjab to the Ganges and to the ends of the world, his instrument, his army, failed him; he had to turn back. But the Persian kingdom, Asia as far as the Indus, he conquered, brought permanently under Macedonian rule, and laid the foundation for its Hellenisation. With this, however, only the smaller portion of his mission was fulfilled. The East everywhere offered further tasks which had in part been undertaken by the Persian kingdom at the height of its power under Darius I—the exploration of Arabia, of the Indian Ocean, and of the Caspian Sea, the subjugation of the predatory nomads of the great steppe that extends from the Danube through southern Russia and Turania as far as the Jaxartes.

It was of far more importance that Hellenism had a task in the West like that in the East; to save the Greeks of Italy and Sicily, to overcome the Carthaginians and the tribes of Italy, to turn the whole Mediterranean into a Greek sea, was just as urgently necessary as the conquest of Western Asia. It was the aim that Alcibiades had set himself and on which Athens had gone to wreck.

In the same years in which the Macedonian king was conquering the Persians, his brother-in-law, Alexander of Epirus, at the request of Tarentum, had devoted himself to this task. After some success at the beginning he had been overcome by the Lucanians and Bruttians and the opposition of Hellenic particularism (334-331 B.C.).

Now the Macedonian king made preparations to take up this work also and thus complete his conquest of the world. That the resources of Macedonia were inadequate for this purpose was perfectly clear to him. Since he had rejected the proposals of Darius he had employed the conquered Asiatics in the government of his empire, and above all had endeavoured to form an auxiliary force to his army out of the people that had previously[9] ruled Asia. In his naïve overvaluation of education, due to the Socratic belief in the omnipotence of the intellect, he thought he could make Macedonians out of the young Persians. But as ruler of the world he must no longer bear the fetters which the usage of his people and the terms of the Hellenic league put upon him. He must stand above all men and peoples, his will must be law to them, like the commandment of the gods. The march to Ammon (331 B.C.), which at the time enjoyed the highest regard in the Greek world, inaugurated this departure. This elevation of the kingship to divinity was not an outgrowth of oriental views, although it resembles them, but of political necessity and of the loftiest ideas of Greek culture—of the teaching of Greek philosophy, common to all Socratic schools, of the unlimited sovereignty of the true sage, whose judgment no commandment can fetter; he is no other than the true king.

Henceforth this view is inseparable from the idea of kingship among all occidental nations down to our own times. It returns in the absolute monarchy that Cæsar wished to found at Rome and which then gradually develops out of the principate of Augustus, until Diocletian and Constantine bring it to perfection; it returns, only apparently modified by Christian views, in the absolute monarchy of modern times, in kingship by the grace of God as well as in the universal monarchy of Napoleon, and in the divine foundation of the autocracy of the Czar.

But Alexander was not able to bring his state to completion. In the midst of his plans, in the full vigour of youth, just as a boundless future seemed to lie before him, he was carried off by death at Babylon, on the thirteenth of June, 323 B.C., in the thirty-third year of his age.

With the death of Alexander his plans were buried. He left no heir who could have held the empire together; his generals fought for the spoils. The result of the mighty struggles of the period of the Diadochi, which covers almost fifty years (323-277 B.C.), is, that the Macedonian empire is divided into three great powers; the kingdom of the Lagidæ, who from the seaport of Alexandria on the extreme western border of Egypt control the eastern Mediterranean with all its coasts, and the valley of the Nile; the kingdom of the Seleucidæ, who strive in continual wars to hold Asia together; and the kingdom of the Antigonidæ, who obtained possession of Macedonia, depopulated by the conquest of the world and again by the fearful Celtic invasion (280), and who, when they wish to assert themselves as a great power, must attempt to acquire an ascendency in some form or other over Greece and the Ægean Sea.

Of these three powers the kingdom of the Lagidæ is most firmly welded together, being in full possession of all the resources that trade and sea power, money and politics, afford. To re-establish the universal monarchy was never its aim, even when circumstances seemed to tempt to it. But as long as strong rulers wear the crown it always stands on the offensive against the other two; it harasses them continually, hinders them at every step from consolidating, wrests from the Seleucidæ almost all the coast towns of Palestine and Phœnicia as far as Thrace, temporarily gains control of the islands of the Ægean, and supports every hostile movement that is made in Greece against Macedonia. The Greek mother-country is thus continually forced anew into the struggle, the play of intrigue between the court of Alexandria and the Macedonian state never gives it an opportunity to become settled. All revolts of the Greek world received the support of Alexandria; the uprising of Athens and Sparta in the war of Chremonides (264), the attempt of Aratus to give the Peloponnesus an independent[10] organisation by means of the Achæan league (beginning in 252), and finally the uprising of Sparta under Cleomenes. The aim of giving the Greek world an independent form was never attained; finally, when at the end of the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes (221) the kingdom of the Lagidæ withdraws and lets Cleomenes fall, the peninsula comes anew under the supremacy of the Macedonians, whom Aratus the “liberator” had himself brought back to the citadel of Corinth. But neither can the Macedonian king attain the full power that Philip and Alexander had possessed a century earlier; in particular, its resources are insufficient, even in alliance with the Achæans, to overthrow the warlike, piratical Ætolian state, which is constantly increasing in power. So Greece never gets out of these hopeless conditions; on the contrary, indeed, through the emigration of the population to the Asiatic colonies, through the decay of a vigorous peasant population which began as early as in the fourth century, through the economic decline of commerce and industry caused by the shifting of the centre of gravity to the east, its situation becomes more and more wretched and the population constantly diminishes. It can never attain peace of itself, but only through an energetic and ruthlessly despotic foreign rule.

In the East, on the contrary, an active and hopeful life developed. The great kings of the Lagidæan kingdom, the first three Ptolemies, fully appreciated the importance of intellectual life to the position of their kingdom in the world. All that Greek culture offered they tried to attract to Alexandria, and they managed to win for their capital the leading position in literature and science. But in other respects the kingdom of the Lagidæ is by no means the state in which the life of the new time reaches its full development. However much, in opposition to the Greek world, in conflict with Macedonia, they coquette with the Hellenic idea of liberty, within their own jurisdiction they cannot endure the independence and the free constitution of the Greek polis, and their subjects are by no means initiated into the new world-culture, but are kept in complete subjugation, sharply distinguished from the ruling classes, the Macedonians and Greeks, to whom also no freedom of political movement whatever is granted.[1]

The development in Asia follows a very different course. Here, through the activity of the great founders of cities, Antigonus, Lysimachus, Seleucus I, and Antiochus I, one Greek city arises after another, from the Hellespont through Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Media, as far as Bactria and India; and from them grow the great centres of culture, full of independent life, by which the Asiatic population is introduced to the modern world-civilisation and becomes Hellenised. Antigonus deliberately supported the independence of the cities within the great organic body of the kingdom, thus following on the lines of the Hellenic league under Philip and Alexander. By the pressure of political necessity and the fact that they could maintain their power only by winning the attachment and fidelity of their subjects, the Seleucidæ were forced into the same ways. And side by[11] side with the great kingdom the political struggle creates a great number of powers of the second rank, in part pure Greek communities, like Rhodes, Chios, Cyzicus, Byzantium, Heraclea, in part newly formed states of Greek origin, like the kingdom of Pergamus and later the Bactrian kingdom, in part fragments of the old Persian kingdom, like Bithynia, Pontus, Cappadocia, Armenia, Atropatene, and not much later the Parthian kingdom. Among these states the eastern retain their oriental character, while the western are forced to pass more and more into the culture of Hellenism.

Destructive as were the effects of the continual wars, and especially of the raids of the Celtic hordes in Asia Minor, nevertheless there pulsates here a fresh, progressive life, to which the future seems to belong. To be sure, there is no lack of counter disturbance; beneath the surface of Hellenism, the native population that is absorbed into the Greek life everywhere preserves its own character, not through active resistance, but through the passivity of its nature. When the orientals become Hellenised, Hellenism itself begins at the same time to take on an oriental impress.

But in this there lies no danger as yet. Hellenism everywhere retains the upper hand and seems to come nearer and nearer to the goal of its mission for the world. In all fields of intellectual life the cultured classes have undisputed control and can look down with absolute contempt on the currents that move the masses far beneath them; the exponents of philosophical enlightenment may imagine they have completely dominated them. When the great ideas upon which Hellenism is based have been created by the classical period and new ones can no longer be placed beside them, the new time sets to work to perfect what it has inherited. The third century is the culmination of ancient science.

However, this whole civilisation lacks one thing, and that is a state of natural growth. Of all the states that developed out of Alexander’s empire, the kingdom of the Antigonidæ in Macedonia was the only one that had a national basis; and therefore, in spite of the scantiness of its resources, it was also the most capable of resistance of them all. All others, on the contrary, were purely artificial political combinations, lacking that innate necessity vital to the full power of a state. They might have been altogether different, or they might not have been at all. The separation of state and nationality, which is the result of the development of the ancient East, exists in them also; they are not supported by the population, which, by the contingencies of political development, is for the moment included in them, and their subjects, so far as the individual man or community is not bound to them by personal advantage, have no further interest in their existence. To be sure, had they maintained their existence for centuries, the power of custom might have sufficed to give them a firmer constitution, such as many later similar political formations have acquired and such as the Austrian monarchy possesses to-day; and as a matter of fact we find the loyalty of subjects to the reigning dynasty already quite strongly developed in the kingdom of the Seleucidæ. But a national state can never arise on the basis of a universal, denationalised civilisation, and the unity is consequently only political, based only upon the dynasty and its political successes. Therefore, except in Macedonia, none of these states can, even in the struggle for existence, set in motion the full national force supplied by internal unity.

The resources at the command of the Macedonio-Hellenic states were consumed in the struggle with one another; nothing was left for the great task that was set them in the West. The remains of Greek nationality, still[12] maintaining their existence here, looked in vain for a deliverer to come from the East. An attempt made by the Spartan prince Cleonymus, in response to the appeal of Tarentum, to take up the struggle in Italy against the Lucanians and Romans, failed miserably through the incapacity of its leader (303-302 B.C.). In Sicily, to be sure, the gifted general and statesman Agathocles (317-289) had once more established, amid streams of blood, and by mighty and ruthless battles against both internal enemies and rivals and against Carthage, a strong Greek kingdom that reached even to Italy and the Ionian Sea. But he was never able to attain the position taken by Dionysius, and at his death his kingdom goes to pieces. At this point also the rôle of the Sicilian Greeks in the history of the world is played out; they disappear from the number of independent powers capable of maintaining themselves by their own resources.

FOOTNOTES

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[13]

GREEK HISTORY IN OUTLINE

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY, COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SWEEP OF EVENTS AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY

It is unnecessary in the summary of a country whose chief events are so accurately dated and so fully understood as in the case of Greece, to amplify the chronology. A synoptical view of these events will, however, prove useful. Questions of origins and of earliest history are obscure here as elsewhere. As to the earliest dates, it may be well to quote the dictum of Prof. Flinders Petrie, who, after commenting on the discovery in Greece, of pottery marked with the names of early Egyptian kings, states that “the grand age of prehistoric Greece, which can well compare with the art of classical Greece, began about 1600 B.C., was at its highest point about 1400 B.C. and became decadent about 1200 B.C., before its overthrow by the Dorian invasion.” The earlier phase of civilisation in the Ægean may therefore date from the third millennium B.C.

2000-1000. Later phase of civilisation in the Ægean (the Mycenæan Age). The Achæans and other Greeks spread themselves over Greece. Ionians settle in Asia Minor. The Pelopidæ reign at Mycenæ. Agamemnon, king of Mycenæ, commands the Greek forces at Troy. 1184. Fall of Troy (traditional date). 1124. First migration. Northern warriors drive out the population of Thessaly and occupy the country, causing many Achæans to migrate to the Peloponnesus. 1104. Dorian invasion. The Peloponnesus gradually brought under the Dorian sway. Dorian colonies sent out to Crete, Rhodes, and Asia Minor. Argos head of a Dorian hexapolis. 885. Lycurgus said to have given laws to Sparta. About this time (perhaps much earlier) Phœnician alphabet imported into Greece. 776. The first Olympic year. 750. First Messenian war.

PERIOD OF GREEK COLONISATION (750-550 B.C.)

683. Athens ruled by nine archons. 632. Attempt of Cylon to make himself supreme at Athens. 621. Draconian code drawn up. 611. Anaximander of Miletus, the constructor of the first map, born. End of seventh century. Second Messenian war. Spartans conquer the country. The Ephors win almost all the kingly power. Cypselus and his son Periander tyrants of Corinth. 600. The poets Alcæus and Sappho flourish at Lesbos. 594-593. Solon archon at Athens. 590-589. Sacred war of the Amphictyonic league against Crissa. Clisthenes tyrant of Sicyon. 585. Pythian games reorganised. Date of first Pythiad. 570. Pisistratus polemarch at Athens. Athenians conquer Salamis and Nisæa. 561. Pisistratus makes himself[14] supreme in Athens. He is twice exiled. 559-556. Miltiades tyrant of the Thracian Chersonesus. 556. Chilon’s reforms in Sparta. 549-548. Mycenæ and Tiryns go over to Sparta.

ATHENS UNDER THE TYRANTS (540-510 B.C.)

540. Pisistratus tyrant of Athens. 530. Pythagoras goes to Croton. 527. Pisistratus dies and is succeeded by his sons, Hippias and Hipparchus. Homeric poems collected. 514. Hipparchus slain by Harmodius and Aristogiton. 510. A Spartan army under Cleomenes blockades Hippias and forces him to quit Athens.

THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY

Clisthenes and Isagoras contend for the chief power in Athens. 507. Isagoras calls in Cleomenes who invades Attica. The Athenians overcome the Spartans, and Clisthenes, who had left Athens, returns. Clisthenes reforms the Athenian democracy. 506. Spartans, Bœotians, and Chalcidians allied against Athens. The Athenians allied with Platæa. Chalcidian territory annexed by Athens. Nearly the whole Peloponnesus forms a league under the hegemony of Sparta. Rivalry between Athens and Ægina. 504. The Athenians refuse to restore Hippias on the Persian demand. 498. Athens and Eretria send ships to aid the Milesians against the Persians. 496. Sophocles born at Athens. 494. Naval battle off Lade, the decisive struggle of the Ionian war, won by the Persians. Battle of Sepeia. The Spartans defeat the Argives. 493. Themistocles, archon at Athens, fortifies the Piræus.

PERIOD OF THE PERSIAN WARS (492-479 B.C.)

492. Quarrel between the Spartan kings. King Demaratus flees to the Persian court, and King Cleomenes seizes hostages from Ægina. Thrace and Macedonia subdued by the Persians. 490. The Persians subdue Naxos and other islands, and destroy Eretria before landing in Attica. Battle of Marathon; the Greeks under Miltiades defeat the Persians, the latter losing six thousand men; the Persian fleet sets sail for Asia. 489. Miltiades’ expedition against Paros. Miltiades tried, and fined. His death. 487. War between Athens and Ægina. Themistocles begins to equip an Athenian fleet. 483. Aristides ostracised. 481. Xerxes musters an army to invade Greece. Greek congress at Corinth. 480. Xerxes at the Hellespont. The northern Greeks submit to Xerxes. The Greek army is defeated at the pass of Thermopylæ and Leonidas, the Spartan king, is slain. Battle of Artemisium. The Greek fleet retreats. Athens being evacuated, Xerxes occupies it. Battle of Salamis and complete victory of the Greeks. Retreat of Xerxes. The Greeks fail to follow up their victory. 479. Mardonius invades Bœotia; occupies Athens. Retreat of Mardonius. Battle of Platæa. Mardonius defeated and slain. Retreat of the Persian army. Battle of Mycale and defeat of the Persian fleet.

POST-BELLUM RECONSTRUCTION (479-463 B.C.)

478. Athenians under Xanthippus capture Sestus in the Chersonesus. Confederacy of Delos. 477. Athenian walls rebuilt. Piræus fortified. Themistocles’ law providing for the annual increase of the navy. Pausanias[15] conquers Byzantium. He enters into treacherous relations with the Persians. 476. The Spartans endeavour to reorganise the Amphictyonic league. Their attempts defeated by Themistocles. 474. The poet Pindar flourishes. 473. Scyros conquered by the Athenian, Cimon. Argos defeated by the Spartans at the battle of Tegea. 472. Themistocles ostracised. Persæ of Æschylus performed. 471. The Arcadian league against Sparta crushed at the battle of Dipæa. 470-469. Naxos secedes from the confederacy of Delos, and is compelled to return. 470. Socrates born. 468. Cimon defeats the Persians at the Eurymedon. Argos recovers Tiryns. 465-463. Thasos revolts and is reduced by the fleet under Cimon. 464. Sparta stirred by terrible earthquake and a revolt of the helots. The Third Messenian war. 463-462. Cimon persuades Athens to send help to the Spartans, but the latter refuse the assistance. They are afraid of Athens’ revolutionary spirit. This incident puts an end to Cimon’s Laconian policy. It is the triumph of Ephialtes and his party.

THE AGE OF PERICLES (463-431 B.C.)

463-461. Triumph of democracy at Athens under Ephialtes and Pericles. The Areopagus deprived of its powers. Cimon protests against the changes effected in his absence. He is ostracised, and Athens forms a connection with Argos, which captures and destroys Mycenæ. 460-459. Megara secedes from the Peloponnesian league to Athens. A fleet, sent by Athens to aid the Egyptian revolt against Persia, captures Memphis. 459. Ithome captured by the Spartans. 459-458. Athens at war with the northern states of the Peloponnesus. Athenian victories of Halieis, Cecryphalea, and Ægina. 458. Long walls of Athens completed. 457. Spartan expedition to Bœotia. Victory of Tanagra over the Athenians. Truce between Athens and Sparta. Battle of Œnophyta and conquest of Bœotia by the Athenians. The Phocians and Locrians make alliance with Athens. 456. Ægina surrenders to the Athenians. 454. Greek contingent in Egypt capitulates to the Persians; the Athenian fleet destroyed at the mouth of the Nile. 454-453. Treasury of the confederacy of Delos transferred from the island to Athens. 453. Pericles besieges Sicyon and Œniadæ without success. Achaia passes under the Athenian dominion. 452-451. Five years’ truce between Athens and the Peloponnesus. 450-449. Cimon leads an expedition against Cyprus. Death of Cimon. The fleet on its way home wins the battle of Salamis in Cyprus. 448. Peace of Callias concluded with Persia. Sacred war. The Phocians withdraw from the Athenian alliance. 447. Bœotia lost to Athens by the battle of Coronea. 447-446. Revolt of Eubœa and Megara from the Delian confederacy. Eubœa is subdued and annexed. Pericles plants colonies in the Thracian Chersonesus, Eubœa, Naxos, etc. 446-445. Thirty Years’ Peace between Athens and Sparta. 444. Aristophanes born. 442. Thucydides opposes Pericles; is ostracised, leaving Pericles without a rival in Athens, where he governs for fifteen years with absolute power. Sophocles’ Antigone produced. 440-439. Pericles subdues Samos. Corcyræans defeat Corinthians in a sea-fight. 433. Corcyra concludes alliance with Athens. Battle of Sybota between Corcyra and Corinth. King Perdiccas of Macedonia incites the revolt of Chalcidice against Athens. 432. “Megarian decree,” passed at Athens, excludes Megarians from all Athenian markets. Battle of Potidæa. Athenians defeat the Corinthians.

[16]

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404 B.C.)

431. Sparta decides on war with Athens on the grounds of her having broken the Thirty Years’ Peace. Peloponnesian War. First period called the “Attic War.” Platæa surprised by Thebans. Thebans taken and executed in spite of a promise for their release. King Archidamus of Sparta invades Attica. The population crowd into Athens. Athens annexes Ægina. The fleet takes several important places. 430. The plague in Athens. Trial of Pericles for misappropriation of public money. Potidæa taken by the Athenians and the inhabitants expelled. 429. Archidamus besieges Platæa. Phormion, the Athenian, wins the victory of Naupactus. Death of Pericles. Rivalry between contending parties under Nicias and Cleon. 428. Archidamus invades Attica. Mytilene revolts and is blockaded by the Athenians. 427. Fourth invasion of Attica by the Spartans. Surrender of Mytilene. The Mytilenæan ringleaders executed. Surrender of Platæa to the Peloponnesians. Oligarchs in Corcyra conspire to overthrow the democrats. Civil war and naval engagement. Terrible slaughter. Athenian expedition to Sicily under Laches. Birth of Plato. 426. Athenians under Demosthenes defeated in Ætolia. Battle of Olpæ. Peloponnesians and Ambracians defeated by Demosthenes. Purification of Delos by the Athenians. The Delian festival revived under Athenian superintendence. 425. Athens increases the amount of tribute to be paid by the confederacy. The episode of Pylos, leading, after a long struggle, to the capture of Lacedæmonian forces in Sphacteria. 424. Defeat of Hippocrates at Delium. Thucydides, the historian, banished for not succouring Amphipolis in time. Brasidas takes towns of Chalcidice. 423. Truce between Athens and Sparta. Scione in Chalcidice revolts to Sparta and an Athenian expedition under Cleon is sent against it, notwithstanding the truce. 422. Battle of Amphipolis won by Brasidas, but both he and Cleon are slain. 421. Peace of Nicias ends the first period of the Peloponnesian War. Mutual restoration of conquests. Scione is taken and all the male inhabitants put to death. 420. Second period of the Peloponnesian War. Alcibiades becomes the chief opponent of Nicias. Expedition against Epidaurus. 418. Nicias recovers his power in Athens. The Spartans invade Argolis. Athenians take Orchomenus, but are defeated by the Spartans. Battle of Mantinea. Hyperbolus attempts to obtain the ostracism of Nicias. The decree is passed against himself, being the last instance of ostracism. Argive oligarchy overthrows the democratic government. A counter revolution restores the democrats. Athens concludes alliance with Argos. 416. Melos conquered by the Athenians. The Sicilian city of Segesta appeals to Athens for help against Selinus. Nicias opposes the sending of assistance, but is overruled and sent with Alcibiades in command of a Sicilian expedition. 415. Mysterious mutilation of the Hermæ statues regarded as an evil omen. Alcibiades accused of a plot. His trial postponed. The expedition sails. Fall of Alcibiades; his escape. 414. Siege of Syracuse. The Spartan Gylippus arrives with ships. 413. Nicias appeals for help to Athens and a second expedition is voted. Syracusans worsted in a sea battle. Syracusans capture an Athenian treasure fleet, and win a battle in the harbour of Syracuse. Arrival of the second Athenian expedition and its total defeat. The Athenians retreat by land. The rear guard is forced to surrender and the relics of the main body are captured after the defeat of the Asinarus. Tribute of the confederacy abolished and replaced by an import and export duty. 412. Third period of the Peloponnesian War, called the Decelean or Ionian War. The[17] allies of Athens take advantage of her misfortunes to revolt. Sparta makes a treaty with Persia. Athens wins several naval successes. 411. “Revolution of the Four Hundred.” The fleet and army at Samos place themselves under the leadership of Alcibiades. Spartans defeat the Athenian fleet at Eretria. Fall of the Four Hundred and partial restoration of Athenian democracy. Battle of Cynossema won by the Athenians. Alcibiades defeats the Peloponnesians at Abydos. 410. Battle of Cyzicus won by Alcibiades. Complete restoration of Athenian democracy. 408. Alcibiades conquers Byzantium. 407. Cyrus, viceroy of Sardis, furnishes the Spartan Lysander with money to raise the pay of the Spartan navy. Lysander begins to set up the oligarchical government of the decarchies in the cities conquered by him. Battle of Notium. Athenians defeated. Alcibiades’ downfall. 406. Battle of Arginusæ. Peloponnesians defeated by the Athenians. The victorious generals are blamed for not rescuing their wounded, and are illegally condemned and executed. The Spartans make overtures for peace, which are rejected. 405. Battle of Ægospotami. Most of the Athenian ships are taken and all the prisoners are put to death. The Athenian empire passes to Sparta. Lysander subdues the Hellespont and Thrace, and lays siege to Athens. 404. Surrender of Athens.

SPARTAN SUPREMACY AND PERSIAN INFLUENCE

Return to Athens of exiles of the oligarchical party. Athens under the Thirty. Thrasybulus and other exiles gain Phyle. Theramenes opposes the violent rule of the Thirty and is put to death. 403. Battle of Munychia. Thrasybulus defeats the army of the Thirty. Death of Critias. The Thirty are deposed and replaced by the Ten. The Spartans under Lysander come to the aid of the Ten, but the intervention of the Spartan king, Pausanias, brings about the restoration of the Attic democracy. 401. Cyrus’ campaign and the battle of Cunaxa. Retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks under Xenophon. 400. Spartan invasion of the Persian dominions. 399. Spartans under Dercyllidas occupy the Troad. Elis conquered and dismembered by the Spartans. Socrates put to death for denying the Athenian gods. 398. Agesilaus becomes king of Sparta. 397. Cinadon’s conspiracy. 396. Agesilaus invades Phrygia. 395. Agesilaus wins the victory of Sardis. Revolt of Rhodes. The Spartans invade Bœotia and are repelled with the assistance of the Athenians. Thebes, Athens, Argos, and Corinth allied against Sparta. 394. Agesilaus returns from Asia Minor. Battle of Nemea won by the Spartans. Battle of Cnidus. The Persian fleet under Conon destroys the Spartan fleet. Agesilaus wins the battle of Coronea and retreats from Bœotia. 393. Pharnabazus destroys the Spartan dominion in the eastern Ægean, and supplies Conon with funds to restore the long walls of Athens. Beginning of the “Corinthian War.” 392. Federation of Corinth and Argos. Fighting between the Spartans and the allies on the Isthmus of Corinth. Both sides send embassies to the Persians. 391. The Spartans begin fresh wars in Asia. 389. Successes of Thrasybulus in the northern Ægean. 388. Spartans dispute the supremacy of Athens on the Hellespont and are defeated at Cremaste. 387. Peace of Antalcidas between Persia and Sparta. Athens is compelled to accede. 386. Dissolution of the union of Corinth and Argos. Sparta compels the Mantineans to break down their city walls and separate into small villages. 384-382. The city of Olynthus, having united the Chalcidian towns under her hegemony[18] and increased her territory at the expense of Macedonia, makes alliance with Athens and Thebes. Sparta sends help to the towns which refuse to join. 384. Aristotle born. 382. Spartans seize the citadel of Thebes. 380. Panegyric of Isocrates, a plea for Greek unity. 381-379. Sparta forces Phlius to submit to her dictation. 379. Chalcidian league compelled by Sparta to dissolve. The power of Sparta at its height. Rising of Thebes under Pelopidas against Sparta. Sphodrias, the Spartan, invades Athenian territory. The Spartans decline to punish the aggression.

RISE OF THEBES (378-359 B.C.)

378. Athens makes alliance with Thebes. 378-377. Formation by the Athenians of a new maritime confederacy. 378-376. Three unsuccessful Spartan expeditions into Bœotia. 376. Great maritime victory of the Athenian Chabrias at Naxos. Successes of Timotheus of Athens in the Ionian Sea. 374. Brief peace between Sparta and Athens. 374-373. Corcyra unsuccessfully invested by the Spartans. 371. Peace of Callias, guaranteeing the independence of each individual Greek city. Thebes not included in the Peace. Jason of Pheræ, despot of Thessaly. Battle of Leuctra. Epaminondas of Thebes defeats the Spartans. Revolutionary outbreaks in Peloponnesus. 370. Arcadian union and restoration of Mantinea. Foundation of Megalopolis. Epaminondas and Pelopidas invade Laconia. 369. Messene restored by the Thebans as a menace to Sparta. Alliance between Sparta and Athens. The Thebans conquer Sicyon. Pelopidas sent to deliver the Thessalian cities from the rivals, Alexander of Macedon and Alexander of Pheræ. 368. The Spartans win the “tearless victory” of Midea over the Arcadians. Death of Alexander II of Macedon. Succession of his brother Perdiccas secured by Athenian intervention. Pelopidas captured by Alexander of Pheræ. 367. Epaminondas rescues him. Pelopidas obtains a Persian decree settling disputed questions in Peloponnesus. The decree disregarded in Greece. 366. The Thebans conquer Achaia, but fail to keep it. Athens makes alliance with Arcadia. 365. Athenians conquer and colonise Samos, and acquire Sestus and Crithote. Perdiccas III of Macedon assassinates the regent. Timotheus takes Potidæa and Torone for Athens. Elis invaded by the Arcadians. 364. Creation of a Bœotian navy encourages the allies of Athens to revolt. Battle of Cynoscephalæ. Alexander of Pheræ, defeated by the Bœotians and their Thessalian allies. Pelopidas falls in the battle. Orchomenus destroyed by the Thebans. Elis invaded by the Arcadians. Spartan operations fail. Battle in the Altis during the Olympic games. The Arcadians appropriate the sacred Olympian treasure. Praxiteles, the sculptor, flourished. 362. Unsuccessful attack on Sparta by Epaminondas. Battle of Mantinea and death of Epaminondas. 361. Agesilaus of Sparta goes to Egypt as a leader of mercenaries. Battle of Peparethus. Alexander of Pheræ defeats the Athenian fleet. He attacks the Piræus. 360. The Thracian Chersonesus lost to Athens.

PHILIP OF MACEDONIA (359-336 B.C.)

359. Death of Perdiccas III of Macedon. Philip seizes the government as guardian for his nephew, Amyntas. 358. Brilliant victories of Philip over the Pæonians and Illyrians. 357. Thracian Chersonesus and Eubœa[19] recovered by Athens. Philip takes Amphipolis. Revolt of Athenian allies, Chios, Cos, and Rhodes. 356. Battle of Embata lost by the Athenians. Philip founds Philippi, takes Pydna and Potidæa, defeats the Illyrians and sets to work to organise his kingdom on a military basis. Birth of Alexander the Great. 355. Peace between Athens and her revolted allies. The Athenians abandon their schemes of a naval empire. Outbreak of the “Sacred war” against the Phocians who had seized the Delphic temple. 354. Battle of Neon. The Phocians defeated. Demosthenes begins his political activity. Phocian successes under Onomarchus. 353. Methone taken by Philip of Macedon. Philip and the Thessalian league opposed to Onomarchus and the tyrants of Pheræ. Onomarchus drives Philip from Thessaly. Philip crushes the Phocians in Magnesia and makes himself master of Thessaly. Phocis saved from him by help from Athens. 352. War in the Peloponnesus. Spartan schemes of aggression frustrated. Thrace subdued by Philip. 351. Demosthenes delivers his First Philippic. 349. Philip begins war against Olynthus which makes alliance with Athens. Athenian attempt to recover Eubœa fails. 348. Philip destroys Olynthus and the Chalcidian towns. 347. Death of Plato. 346. Peace of Philocrates between Philip and Athens. Phocis subdued by Philip. Philip presides at the Pythian games. Philip becomes archon of Thessaly. Demosthenes accuses Æschines of accepting bribes from Philip. 344. Demosthenes delivers The Second Philippic. 343. Megara, Chalcis, Ambracia, Acarnania, Achaia, and Corcyra ally themselves with Athens. 342-341. Philip annexes Thrace. He founds Philippopolis. 341. Demosthenes’ Third Philippic. 340. Diplomatic breach between Athens and Philip. 339. Perinthus and Byzantium unsuccessfully besieged by Philip. Philip’s campaign on the Danube. 338. The Amphictyonic league declares a “holy war” against Amphissa, and requests the aid of Philip. Philip destroys Amphissa and conquers Naupactus. Philip occupies Elatea. Athens makes alliance with Thebes. Battle of Chæronea. Philip defeats the Athenians and Thebans. The hegemony of Greece passes to Macedon. Philip invades the Peloponnesus which, with the exception of Sparta, acknowledges his supremacy. Philip establishes a Greek confederacy under the Macedonian hegemony. Lycurgus appointed to control the public revenues in Athens. 336. Attalus and Parmenion open the Macedonian war in Æolis.

THE AGE OF ALEXANDER (336-323 B.C.)

Murder of Philip and succession of Alexander the Great. Alexander compels the Hellenes to recognise his hegemony. 335. Alexander conducts a successful campaign on the Danube and defeats the Illyrians at Pelium. Thebes revolts against him and is destroyed. 334. Alexander sets out for Asia. Battle of the Granicus. Alexander defeats the Persians. Lydia, Miletus, Caria, Halicarnassus, Lycia, Pamphylia, and Pisidia subdued. 333. Alexander goes to Gordium and cuts the Gordian knot. Death of his chief opponent, the Persian general, Memnon. Submission of Paphlagonia and Cilicia. Battle of Issus. Alexander puts the army of Darius to flight. Sidon and Byblos submit. 332. Tyre besieged and taken. He slaughters the inhabitants and marches southward, storming Gaza. Egypt conquered. He founds Alexandria. 331. Battle of Arbela and defeat of the Great King. Babylon opens its gates to Alexander. He enters Susa. The Spartans rise and are defeated at Megalopolis. 330. Alexander occupies[20] Persepolis. Alexander in Ecbatana, in Parthia, and on the Caspian. Philotas is accused of conspiring against Alexander’s life and is executed. His father, the general Parmenion, put to death on suspicion. Judicial contest between Demosthenes and Æschines ends in the latter’s quitting Athens. Part of Gedrosia (Beluchistan) submits to Alexander. 329. Arachosia conquered. 328. Alexander conquers Bactria and Sogdiana. 327. Alexander quells the rebellion of Sogdiana and Bactria. Clitus killed by Alexander at a banquet. Alexander marries the Sogdian Roxane. Callisthenes, the historian, is put to death under pretext of complicity in the conspiracy of the pages to assassinate Alexander. Beginning of the Indian war. 326. Alexander in the Punjab; he crosses the Indus, and is victorious at the Hydaspes. At the Hyphasis the army refuses to advance further. Alexander builds a fleet and sails to the mouth of the Indus. 325. Conquest of the Lower Punjab. March through Gedrosia (Mekran in Beluchistan) and Carmania. Nearchus makes a voyage of discovery in the Indian Ocean. 324. Alexander in Susa. He punishes treasonable conduct of officials during his absence. Alexander’s veterans discharged at Opis. Harpalus deposits at Athens the money stolen from Alexander. The trial respecting misappropriation of this money ends in Demosthenes being forced to quit Athens. Alexander’s last campaign against the Kossæans. 323. Alexander returns to Babylon and reorganises his army for the conquest of Arabia. Death of Alexander.

THE POST-ALEXANDRIAN EPOCH

323. At Alexander’s death his young half-brother, Philip Arrhidæus, succeeded to his empire, while there are expectations of a posthumous heir by Roxane. The young Alexander is born. Perdiccas is made regent over the Asiatic dominions, while Antipater and Craterus take the joint regency of the West. The Greeks, with Athens at their head, attempt to throw off the Macedonian yoke as soon as Alexander is dead, and the Lamian war breaks out (323-322). But one by one the states yield to Antipater and Craterus. The direct government of the dominions in Europe, Africa, and Western Asia is divided among Alexander’s generals. Thirty-four shared in the allotment; the most important are: Ptolemy Lagus, in Egypt and Cyrenaica; Antigonus, in Phrygia, Pamphylia, and Lycia; Eumenes, the secretary of Alexander, in Paphlagonia and Cappadocia; Cassander, in Caria; Leonnatus, in Hellespontine Phrygia; Menander, in Lydia; and Lysimachus, in Thrace and the Euxine districts. Perdiccas aims to marry Alexander’s sister, Cleopatra, as a means of becoming absolute master of the empire. The other generals league themselves against him, and (321) Perdiccas is murdered by his soldiers while proceeding against Ptolemy. Antipater replaces him as regent, and redivides the empire; Seleucus is given Babylonia to rule over. Antipater dies 319, and the son Cassander and Polysperchon become regents. In 317 and 316, Cassander conquers Greece and Macedonia. Antigonus, with the help of Cassander, attacks and defeats Eumenes, who is betrayed by his own forces in 316. Antigonus now has ambitions to control the whole empire, and in 315 the terrible war of the Diadochi, between him and the other generals, begins. Antigonus and his son, Demetrius Poliorcetes, call themselves kings. Seleucus, Lysimachus, Cassander, and others do the same. Demetrius seizes Athens in 307. At the end of the struggle every member of Alexander’s family is dead, the majority put to death. In 301, at the battle of Ipsus, Antigonus falls, and Demetrius takes to flight. Cassander dies 296, and the succession is[21] contested by his two sons, Philip IV and Antipater. Demetrius takes the opportunity of this quarrel to seize the European dominions. He prepares to invade Asia, and the other successors of the empire, together with King Pyrrhus of Epirus, league against him. In 287 Pyrrhus invades Macedonia, and Demetrius’ army deserts him. Pyrrhus is welcomed as king, and he gives Lysimachus the eastern part of Macedonia to rule over. Demetrius renews the struggle with Pyrrhus, and at his death, in 283, his son, Antigonus Gonatas, carries it on. In 282 Lysimachus is attacked by Seleucus Nicator, and is defeated and killed on the plain of Corus in 281. Ptolemy Ceraunus murders Seleucus, and seizes the European kingdom of Lysimachus. In 280 Pyrrhus goes to Tarentum to make war on the Romans.

THE ACHÆAN AND ÆTOLIAN LEAGUES

The Achæan towns of Patræ, Dyme, Tritæa, and Pharæ expel their Macedonian garrisons and join in a confederacy. 279. The Celts descend on the Balkan countries and on Macedonia. Death of Ptolemy Ceraunus. 278. Celts under Brennus approach Greece. Struggle between Celts and Hellenes round Thermopylæ. Brennus defeated at Delphi. Celts driven back. Ætolian Confederacy becomes the most important representative of Greek independence. 277. Antigonus king of Macedonia. He founds the dynasty of the Antigonids. Pyrrhus conquers Sicily. 276. The Achæan town Ægium expels its garrison and joins Patræ, etc., in the Achæan Confederacy. 274. Pyrrhus returns to Epirus. 273. Pyrrhus expels Antigonus from Macedon. 272. Pyrrhus besieges Sparta, which successfully resists him. He turns against Argos, where he is killed. Antigonus recovers his supremacy in Greece. The Greek cities fight for their independence. 265. The Macedonians defeat the Egyptian fleet at Cos. Antigonus recovers his position in the Peloponnesus. 263. Chremonidean war. 263-262. Antigonus takes Athens. End of the independent political importance of Athens. 255. The Long Walls of Athens broken down. 249. Aratus frees Sicyon from its tyrant Nicocles, and brings the town over to the Achæan League. 245. Aratus becomes president of the Achæan League. Agis IV becomes king of Sparta and attempts to introduce reforms. 242. Aratus conquers Corinth. Megara, Trœzen, and Epidaurus join the Achæans. 241. Agis IV executed. 239. Demetrius, king of Macedon. Alliance between the Achæans and Ætolians. 238-5. Extinction of the Epirote Æacids; federative republic in Epirus. 235. Cleomenes III, king of Sparta. 234. Lydiades abdicates from his tyranny and brings Megalopolis over to the Achæan League. 231. Illyrian corsairs ravage the western coasts of Greece and defy the Achæan and Ætolian fleets. 229. The greater part of Argolis included in the Achæan League. Antigonus Doson, regent of Macedon. Athens frees herself from the Macedonian dominion. The Romans defeat the Illyrian corsairs. 228. Athens makes alliance with Rome. The Achæan League at the height of its power. 227. Beginning of the Spartan war against the Achæan League. 226. Cleomenes III effects fundamental reforms in Sparta. 224. Battle at Dyme. Cleomenes defeats the Achæan League. 223. Aratus calls in the aid of Macedon. Egypt deserts the Achæans and becomes the ally of Sparta. Achæans, Bœotians, Phocians, Thessalians, Epirotes, and Acarnanians form, under the leadership of Macedon, an alliance against Sparta. 222. Battle of Sellasia. Defeat of the Spartans. Antigonus Doson restores the Spartan oligarchy. 220. Philip V[22] king of Macedon. War of Philip and his Greek allies, including the Achæan League, against the Ætolians supported by Sparta. 219. Lycurgus (last king of Sparta). 217. Peace of Naupactus. The destructive war against the Ætolians ended in dread of a Carthaginian invasion. Philip V becomes protector of all the Hellenes.

THE ROMAN CONQUEST (216-146 B.C.)

216. Philip concludes an alliance with Hannibal and provokes the first Macedonian war with Rome. 214. Battle near the mouth of the Aous. The Romans surprise Philip and defeat him. Ætolians, Eleans, Messenians, and Illyrians accept Roman protection. 213. Aratus poisoned at Philip’s instigation. 211. Sparta goes over to Rome. Savage wars of the Grecian cities against one another. 208. Philopœmen becomes general of the Achæan League, and revives its military power. 205. Philip makes peace with Rome, ceding the country of the Parthenians and several Illyrian districts to Rome. Philip carries on war in Rhodes, Thrace, and Mysia, and sends auxiliaries to Carthage. 200. Second Macedonian war declared by Rome. Romans under Sulpicius invade Macedonia. 199. Romans kept inactive by mutiny in the army. 198. Defeat of Philip by Flamininus. Achæans and Spartans join the Romans. 197. Battle of Cynoscephalæ and destruction of the Macedonian phalanx. Philip accepts humiliating terms and renounces his supremacy over the Greeks. 194. Flamininus returns to Rome. The Ætolians, dissatisfied, pillage Sparta, which joins the Achæan League. Antiochus III of Syria comes to the aid of the Ætolians. 191. Battle of Thermopylæ. Antiochus defeated by the Romans. 190. Battle of Magnesia. Romans defeat Antiochus. Submission of the Ætolians. 183. Messene revolts from the Achæan League. 179. Callicrates succeeds Philopœmen as general of the Achæan League. Death of Philip V and accession of Perseus, who conciliates the Greeks, and makes alliances with Syria, Rhodes, etc. 169. Attempted assassination of Eumenes of Pergamum on his return from Rome. 168. Third Macedonian war declared by the Romans. Romans are unsuccessful at first, but the battle of Pydna is won by Paulus Æmilius, the Macedonians losing twenty thousand men. Flight and subsequent surrender of Perseus. 150. Death of Callicrates. 152. Andriscus lays claim to the throne of Macedon. 148. Andriscus defeated at Pydna and taken to Rome. 146. Macedon made a Roman province. Romans support Sparta in her attempt to withdraw from the Achæan League. Corinthians take up arms, and are joined by the Bœotians and by Chalcis. Battle of Scarphe and victory of the Romans under Metellus. Corinth is taken by Mummius; its art treasures are sent to Rome, and the city delivered up to pillage. Achæan and Bœotian leagues dissolved.

THE EGYPTIAN KINGDOM OF THE PTOLEMIES OR LAGIDÆ (323-30 B.C.)

In 323 Ptolemy I, son of Lagus, receives the government of Egypt and Cyrenaica in the division of Alexander’s Empire. He rules at Alexandria. In 321 he allies himself with Antipater against the ambitious Perdiccas. He joins the alliance against Antigonus in 315. 306. He assumes the title of king. 304. He assists the Rhodians to repel Demetrius, and wins the surname of Soter (Saviour). 285. He abdicates in favour of his son, Ptolemy[23] (II) Philadelphus, and dies two years later. Ptolemy II reigns almost in undisturbed peace. About 266 he annexes Phœnicia and Cœle-Syria. He is famous as a great patron of commerce, science, literature, and art, and raises the Alexandrian Museum and Library to importance. On his death in 247, his son, Ptolemy (III) Euergetes, reunites Cyrenaica, of which his father’s half-brother, Magas, had declared himself king on the death of Ptolemy I. In 245 he invades Syria, to avenge his sister Berenice, the wife of Antiochus II, slain by Laodice. He also marches to and captures Babylon, but is recalled to Egypt by a revolt in 243. In 222 he is succeeded by his son, Ptolemy (IV) Philopator. In 217 this king defeats Antiochus the Great at Raphia, recovering Phœnicia and Cœle-Syria, which has been wrested from him. Ptolemy (V) Epiphanes began his reign in 205 or 204. Antiochus the Great invades Egypt, and the Romans intervene. Ptolemy marries Cleopatra, daughter of Antiochus. He dies by poison in 181. His son, Ptolemy (VI) Philometor, succeeds, with Cleopatra as regent until her death in 174. Then the ministers make war on Antiochus Epiphanes, who captures Ptolemy in 170. The king’s brother, Ptolemy (VII) Euergetes or Physcon, then proclaims himself king, and reigns jointly with his brother after the latter’s release. In 164 Ptolemy VII expels Ptolemy VI, but is compelled to recall him at the demand of Rome. Ptolemy VII returns to Cyrenaica, which he holds as a separate kingdom until his brother’s death, 146, when he returns to Egypt, slays the legitimate heir, and rules as sole king. The people of Alexandria expel him in 130, but he manages to get back in 127. Dies 117. His son, Ptolemy (VIII) Philometor or Lathyrus, shares the throne with his mother, Cleopatra III. In 107 his mother expels him, and puts her favourite son, Ptolemy (IX) Alexander, on the throne. Ptolemy VIII keeps his power in Cyprus, and on his mother’s death the Egyptians recall him and banish his brother. The wars with the Seleucid princes are kept up. Berenice III, the daughter of Ptolemy VIII, succeeds him in 81. Her stepson, Ptolemy X or Alexander II, son of Ptolemy Alexander, comes from Rome as Sulla’s candidate, and marries her. The queen is at once murdered, by her husband’s order, and the people put him to death, 80. The legitimate line is now extinct. An illegitimate son of Ptolemy Lathyrus, Ptolemy (XI) Neus Dionysus or Auletes, takes Egypt; and a younger brother, Cyprus. Weary of taxation, the Alexandrians expel Auletes in 58, but the Romans restore him in 55. His son, Ptolemy XII, and his daughter, Cleopatra, succeed him in joint reign in 51. In 48 Ptolemy expels his sister, who flees to Syria, and attempts to recover Egypt by force of arms. Cæsar effects her restoration in 48, and the civil war with Pompey results. Ptolemy is defeated on the Nile, and drowned. Cleopatra’s career after this belongs to Roman history, q.v. Unwilling to appear in Octavian’s triumph after Actium, she kills herself in some unknown way, 30 B.C.

THE SELEUCID KINGDOM OF SYRIA (312-65 B.C.)

Seleucus (I) Nicator receives the satrapy of Babylon from Antipater. He founds his kingdom in 312. He extends his conquests into Central Asia and India, assuming the title of king about 306. He takes part against Antigonus in the battle of Ipsus, 301. After this a part of Asia Minor is added to his dominions, and the Syrian kingdom is formed. He defeats Lysimachus on the plain of Corus in 281 and is assassinated by Ptolemy Ceraunus in 280. He is the builder of the capital cities of Seleucia and[24] Antioch. His son Antiochus (I) Soter succeeds. He gives up all claim to Macedonia on the marriage of Seleucus’ daughter, Phila, to Antigonus Gonatas. Dies 261, his son Antiochus (II) Theos succeeding. In this reign the kingdom is greatly weakened by the revolt of Parthia and Bactria, leading to the establishment of the Parthian empire by Arsaces about 250. He also involves himself in a ruinous war with Ptolemy Philadelphus, concluding with the peace of 250. He is killed, 246, and succeeded by his son Seleucus (II) Callinicus who wars with the Parthians and Egyptians until his death in 226. Seleucus (III) Ceraunus after a short reign of three years is succeeded by his brother Antiochus (III) the Great, the most famous of the Seleucidæ. 223. Alexander and Molon the rebellious brothers of the king are subdued. Antiochus goes to war with Ptolemy Philopator and is beaten at Raphia, 217, losing Cœle-Syria and Phœnicia. 214. Achæus the governor of Asia Minor rebels, and is defeated and killed. 212. Antiochus begins an attempt to regain Parthia and Bactria, but in 205 is compelled to acknowledge their independence. Continued warfare with Egypt. Phœnicia and Cœle-Syria regained by battle of Paneas in 198, but these territories are given back to Egypt when Ptolemy Epiphanes marries Cleopatra, daughter of Antiochus. 196. The Thracian Chersonesus taken from Macedonia. 192-189. War with the Romans, who demand restoration of the Thracian and Egyptian provinces. 190. Battle of Magnesia; great defeat of Antiochus by the Romans. 187. Antiochus killed by his subjects as he attempts to rob the temple of Elymais to pay the Romans. His son Seleucus (IV) Philopator succeeds. Before his death, in 175, Seleucus satisfies the Roman claims. His successor is his brother Antiochus (IV) Epiphanes. Armenia, lost by Antiochus III, is reconquered, also Phœnicia and Cœle-Syria, 171-168. Antiochus attempts to stamp out the Jewish religion, giving rise to the Maccabæan rebellion in 167. Antiochus (V) Eupator succeeds his father in 164. Lysias is regent, as the king is only nine years old. A peace with the Jews is concluded and then Antiochus is killed, 162, by Demetrius (I) Soter, son of Seleucus Philopator, who seizes the throne. The Maccabæans hold their own against this king. Alexander Balas, a pretended son of Antiochus Epiphanes, organises an insurrection. He invades Syria, and Demetrius is killed, 150, in battle. Alexander Balas usurps the throne. Demetrius (II) Nicator, son of Demetrius I, contests the throne but not with much success. Balas wars with Ptolemy Philopator and is killed, 145. A war of succession begins between Demetrius Nicator and Balas’ young son Antiochus VI. The latter is supported by the Jews. Antiochus VI is slain by Tryphon, the general of Alexander Balas, in 142. Tryphon rules until 139, when he is put to death by Antiochus (VII) Sidetes. Meanwhile one faction recognises Demetrius Nicator as king. He marries Cleopatra, an Egyptian princess, goes to war with the Parthians, is captured, and Antiochus Sidetes takes his place for ten years. Sidetes wages war with the Parthians, and is killed in battle, 128. Demetrius Nicator now resumes his rule, but owing to his misgovernment is assassinated at the instigation of Cleopatra, in 125. The eldest son, Seleucus V, is put to death the same year by Cleopatra, and the second son, Antiochus (VII) Grypus, takes the throne. He expels Alexander Zabina, a usurper. Civil war breaks out between Antiochus and his half-brother, Antiochus (IX) Cyzicenus, who in 112 compels a division of the kingdom, taking Phœnicia and Cœle-Syria as his share. Antiochus VIII is assassinated, 96. Antiochus IX is killed in 95 by Seleucus (VI) Epiphanes, son of Grypus, who rules only one year. Antiochus (X) Eusebes, son of Antiochus IX, follows. His claims are contested by the sons of Grypus,[25] Philip, Demetrius (III) Eucærus, and Antiochus (XI) Epiphanes. The latter is drowned fleeing from Eusebes and the other two rule over the whole of Syria. In 88 Demetrius is captured by the Parthians and another brother Antiochus (XII) Dionysius, shares the rule with Philip. He is killed in a war with the Arabians. Civil strife has now reached such a state that the Syrians invite Tigranes of Armenia to put an end to it. He conquers Syria in 83, and rules it until 69, when, after his defeat by Lucullus, Antiochus (XIII) Asiaticus, son of Antiochus Eusebes, regains the throne. He is deposed, 65, by Pompey, and Syria becomes a Roman province.

THE SICILIAN TYRANTS (570-210 B.C.)

The government of the Greek colonies in Sicily is originally oligarchical, but the rule soon gets into the hands of despots or tyrants, who hold uncontrolled power. 570-554. Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum or Acrargas, brings that city to be the most powerful in the island. About 500, Cleander obtains possession of Gela. His brother Hippocrates succeeds, and is followed by Gelo, who makes himself master of Syracuse. 488. Theron is tyrant of Agrigentum, and, 481, expels Terillus from Himera. Terillus appeals to the Carthaginians who besiege Himera, 480. Gelo aids Theron and defeats Hamilcar. 478. Gelo succeeded by his brother Hiero I, an oppressive ruler. 472. Thrasydæus succeeds Theron in Agrigentum, but is expelled by Hiero. 467. Thrasybulus succeeds Hiero, but is driven from Sicily by the people, 466. The fall of Thrasybulus is the signal for great internal dissensions, settled, 461, by a congress, which restores peace and prosperity for half a century, interrupted only by a quickly suppressed revolt of the Sicels in 451. 409. Hannibal, grandson of Hamilcar, attempts the conquest of Sicily. 405. Dionysius attains to despotic power in Syracuse. 383. After constant war the limits of Greek and Carthaginian power in Sicily are fixed. 367. Dion succeeds Dionysius; after an oppressive rule he is murdered, 353. A period of confusion follows. The younger Dionysius and Hicetas hold power against each other. The latter calls in the Carthaginians, and Timoleon comes from Corinth, defeats Hicetas, and restores Greek liberty in 343. Democratic government is also reinstated in other parts of Sicily. 340. Defeat of Hasdrubal and Hamilcar at the Crimisus puts an end to all fear from Carthage. 317. Agathocles establishes a despotism in Syracuse. His reign is oppressive and disastrous for Sicily. 310. Defeat of Agathocles by Hamilcar at Ecnomus. Agathocles goes to Africa to carry on the war; meanwhile Hamilcar gets possession of a large part of Sicily. Agathocles makes peace with Carthage, and perpetrates a fearful massacre of his opponents. 289. Death of Agathocles. Hicetas becomes tyrant of Syracuse. Agrigentum, under Phintias, attains to great power. The Carthaginians now begin to be predominant in the island. 278. Pyrrhus lands in Sicily to aid the Greeks, but returns to Italy, 276. Hiero II is chosen general by the Syracusans. He fights the Mamertines. 270. Hiero assumes title of king. He allies with Carthage to expel the Mamertines. The Romans espouse the latter’s cause, and the First Punic War is begun, 264. 263. Hiero makes peace with Rome. 241. Battle off the Ægetan Islands. The whole island, except the territory of Hiero, becomes a Roman province. 215. Hieronymus, grandson and successor of Hiero, breaks the treaty with Rome in the Second Punic War, and is assassinated. Marcellus is sent to Syracuse. 212. Syracuse falls into his hands. 210. Agrigentum captured. Roman conquest completed.

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[26]

CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE

The character of every people is more or less closely connected with that of its land. The station which the Greeks filled among nations, the part which they acted, and the works which they accomplished, depended in a great measure on the position which they occupied on the face of the globe. The manner and degree in which the nature of the country affected the bodily and mental frame, and the social institutions of its inhabitants, may not be so easily determined; but its physical aspect is certainly not less important in a historical point of view, than it is striking and interesting in itself. An attentive survey of the geographical site of Greece, of its general divisions, and of the most prominent points on its surface, is an indispensable preparation for the study of its history. In the following sketch nothing more will be attempted, than to guide the reader’s eye over an accurate map of the country, and to direct his attention to some of those indelible features, which have survived all the revolutions by which it has been desolated.

THE LAND

The land which its sons called Hellas, and for which we have adopted the Roman name Greece,[2] lies on the southeast verge of Europe, and in length extends no further than from the thirty-sixth to the fortieth degree of latitude. It is distinguished among European countries by the same character which distinguishes Europe itself from the other continents—the great range of its coast compared with the extent of its surface; so that while in the latter respect it is considerably less than Portugal, in the former it exceeds the whole Pyrenean peninsula. The great eastern limb which projects from the main trunk of the continent of Europe grows more and more finely articulated as it advances towards the south, and terminates in the peninsula of Peloponnesus, the smaller half of Greece, which bears some resemblance to an outspread palm. Its southern extremity is at a nearly equal distance from the two neighbouring continents: it fronts one of the most beautiful and fertile regions of Africa, and is separated from the nearest point of Asia by the southern outlet of the Ægean Sea—the sea, by the Greeks familiarly called their own, which, after being contracted into a narrow stream by the approach of the opposite shores at the Hellespont,[27] suddenly finds its liberty in an ample basin as they recede towards the east and the west, and at length, escaping between Cape Malea and Crete, confounds its waters with the broader main of the Mediterranean. Over that part of this sea which washes the coast of Greece, a chain of islands, beginning from the southern headland of Attica, Cape Sunium, first girds Delos with an irregular belt, the Cyclades, and then, in a waving line, links itself to a scattered group (the Sporades) which borders the Asiatic coast. Southward of these the interval between the two continents is broken by the larger islands Crete and Rhodes. The sea which divides Greece from Italy is contracted, between the Iapygian peninsula and the coast of Epirus, into a channel only thirty geographical miles in breadth; and the Italian coast may be seen not only from the mountains of Corcyra, but from the low headland of the Ceraunian hills.

Thus on two sides Greece is bounded by a narrow sea; but towards the north its limits were never precisely defined. The word Hellas did not convey to the Greeks the notion of a certain geographical surface, determined by natural or conventional boundaries: it denoted the country of the Hellenes, and was variously applied according to the different views entertained of the people which was entitled to that name. The original Hellas was included in the territory of a little tribe in the south of Thessaly. When these Hellenes had imparted their name to other tribes, with which they were allied by a community of language and manners, Hellas might properly be said to extend as far as these national features prevailed. On the east, Greece was commonly held to terminate with Mount Homole at the mouth of the Peneus; the more scrupulous, however, excluded even Thessaly from the honour of the Hellenic name, while Strabo,f with consistent laxity, admitted Macedonia. But from Ambracia to the mouth of the Peneus, when these were taken as the extreme northern points, it was still impossible to draw a precise line of demarcation; for the same reason which justified the exclusion of Epirus applied, perhaps much more forcibly, to the mountaineers in the interior of Ætolia, whose barbarous origin, or utter degeneracy, was proved by their savage manners, and a language which Thucydidesg describes as unintelligible. When the Ætolians bade the last Philip withdraw from Hellas, the Macedonian king could justly retort, by asking where they would fix its boundaries, and by reminding them that of their own body a very small part was within the pale from which they wished to exclude him.

The northern part of Greece is traversed in its whole length by a range of mountains, the Greek Apennines. This ridge first takes the name of Pindus, where it intersects the northern boundary of Greece, at a point where an ancient route still affords the least difficult passage from Epirus into Thessaly. From Pindus two huge arms stretch towards the eastern sea, and enclose the vale of Thessaly, the largest and richest plain in Greece: on the north the Cambunian hills, after making a bend towards the south, terminate in the loftier heights of Olympus, which are scarcely ever entirely free from snow; the opposite and lower chain of Othrys parting, with its eastern extremity, the Malian from the Pagasæan Gulf, sinks gently towards the coast. A fourth rampart, which runs parallel to Pindus, is formed by the range which includes the celebrated heights of Pelion and Ossa; the first a broad and nearly even ridge, the other towering into a steep conical peak, the neighbour and rival of Olympus, with which, in the songs of the country, it is said to dispute the pre-eminence in the depth and duration of its snows. The mountain barrier with which Thessaly is thus encompassed is broken only at the northeast corner, by a deep and narrow cleft, which[28] parts Ossa from Olympus: the defile so renowned in poetry as the vale, in history as the pass, of Tempe. The imagination of the ancient poets and declaimers delighted to dwell on the natural beauties of this romantic glen, and on the sanctity of the site, from which Apollo had transplanted his laurel to Delphi.

From other points of view, the same spot no less forcibly claims the attention of the historian. It is the only pass through which an army can invade Thessaly from the north, without scaling the high and rugged ridges of its northern frontier. The whole glen is something less than five miles long, and opens gradually to the east into a spacious plain, stretching to the shore of the Thermaic Gulf. On each side the rocks rise precipitously from the bed of the Peneus, and in some places only leave room between them for the stream; and the road, which at the narrowest point is cut in the rock, might in the opinion of the ancients be defended by ten men against a host.

On the eastern side of the ridge which stretches from Tempe to the Gulf of Pagasæ, a narrow strip of land, called Magnesia, is intercepted between the mountains and the sea, broken by lofty headlands and the beds of torrents, and exposed without a harbour to the fury of the northeast gales.

South of this gulf the coast is again deeply indented by that of Malis, into which the Sperchius, rising from Mount Tymphrestus, a continuation of Pindus, winds through a long narrow vale, which, though considered as a part of Thessaly, forms a separate region, widely distinguished from the rest by its physical features. It is intercepted between Othrys and Œta, a huge rugged pile, which, stretching from Pindus to the sea at Thermopylæ, forms the inner barrier of Greece, as the Cambunian range is the outer, to which it corresponds in direction, and is nearly equal in height. To the south of Thessaly and between it and Bœotia lie the countries of Doris and Phocis. Doris is small and obscure, but interesting as the foster-mother of a race of conquerors who became the masters of Greece. Phocis is somewhat larger than Doris, and separates it from Bœotia.

The peculiar conformation of the principal Bœotian valleys, the barriers opposed to the escape of the streams, and the consequent accumulation of the rich deposits brought down from the surrounding mountains, may be considered as a main cause of the extraordinary fertility of the land. The vale of the Cephissus especially, with its periodical inundations, exhibits a resemblance, on a small scale, to the banks of the Nile—a resemblance which some of the ancients observed in the peculiar character of its vegetation. The profusion in which the ordinary gifts of nature were spread over the face of Bœotia, the abundant returns of its grain, the richness of its pastures, the materials of luxury furnished by its woods and waters, are chiefly remarkable, in a historical point of view, from the unfavourable effect they produced on the character of the race, which finally established itself in this envied territory. It was this cause, more than the dampness and thickness of their atmosphere, that depressed the intellectual and moral energies of the Bœotians, and justified the ridicule which their temperate and witty neighbours so freely poured on their proverbial failing.

Eubœa, that large and important island, which at a very early period attracted the Phœnicians by its copper mines, and in later times became almost indispensable to the subsistence of Athens, though it covers the whole eastern coast of Locris and Bœotia, is more closely connected with the latter of these countries. The channel of the Euripus which parts it from the mainland, between Aulis and Chalcis, is but a few paces in width, and is broken by a rocky islet, which now forms the middle pier of a bridge.

[29]

A wild and rugged, though not a lofty, range of mountains, bearing the name of Cithæron on the west, of Parnes towards the east, divides Bœotia from Attica. Lower ridges, branching off to the south, and sending out arms towards the east, mark the limits of the principal districts which compose this little country, the least proportioned in extent of any on the face of the earth to its fame and its importance in the history of mankind. The most extensive of the Attic plains, though it is by no means a uniform level, but is broken by a number of low hills, is that in which Athens itself lies at the foot of a precipitous rock, and in which, according to the Attic legend, the olive, still its most valuable production, first sprang up.

Attica is, on the whole, a meagre land, wanting the fatness of the Bœotian plains, and the freshness of the Bœotian streams. The waters of its principal river, the Cephisus, are expended in irrigating a part of the plain of Athens, and the Ilissus, though no less renowned, is a mere brook, which is sometimes swollen into a torrent. It could scarcely boast of more than two or three fertile tracts, and its principal riches lay in the heart of its mountains, in the silver of Laurium, and the marble of Pentelicus. It might also reckon among its peculiar advantages the purity of its air, the fragrance of its shrubs, and the fineness of its fruits. But in its most flourishing period its produce was never sufficient to supply the wants of its inhabitants, and their industry was constantly urged to improve their ground to the utmost. Traces are still visible of the laborious cultivation which was carried by means of artificial terraces, up the sides of their barest mountains. After all, they were compelled to look to the sea even for subsistence. Attica would have been little but for the position which it occupied, as the southeast foreland of Greece, with valleys opening on the coast, and ports inviting the commerce of Asia. From the top of its hills the eye surveys the whole circle of the islands, which form its maritime suburbs, and seem to point out its historical destination.

The isthmus connecting Attica with the Peloponnesus is not level. The roots of the Onean Mountains are continued along the eastern coast in a line of low cliffs, till they meet another range, which seems to have borne the same name, at the opposite extremity of the isthmus. This is an important feature in the face of the country: the isthmus at its narrowest part, between the inlets of Schœnus and Lechæum, is only between three and four miles broad; and along this line, hence called the Diolcus, or Draughtway, vessels were often transported from sea to sea, to avoid the delay and danger which attended the circumnavigation of the Peloponnesus. Yet it seems not to have been before the Macedonian period, that the narrowness of the intervening space suggested the project of uniting the two seas by means of a canal. It was entertained for a time by Demetrius Poliorcetes; but he is said to have been deterred by the reports of his engineers, who were persuaded that the surface of the Corinthian Gulf was so much higher than the Saronic, that a channel cut between them would be useless from the rapidity of the current, and might even endanger the safety of Ægina and the neighbouring isles. Three centuries later, the dictator Cæsar formed the same plan, and was perhaps only prevented from accomplishing it by his untimely death. The above-mentioned inequality of the ground would always render this undertaking very laborious and expensive. But the work was of a nature rather to shock than to interest genuine Greek feelings: it seems to have been viewed as an audacious Titanian effort of barbarian power; and when Nero actually began it, having opened the trench with his own hands, the belief of the country people may probably have concurred with the aversion of the[30] Prætorian workmen, to raise the rumour of howling spectres, and springs of blood, by which they are said to have been interrupted.

The face of the Peloponnesus presents outlines somewhat more intricate than those of northern Greece. At first sight the whole land appears one pile of mountains, which, toward the northwest, where it reaches its greatest height, forms a compact mass, pressing close upon the Gulf of Corinth. On the western coast it recedes farther from the sea; towards the centre is pierced more and more by little hollows; and on the south and east is broken by three great gulfs, and the valleys opening into them, which suggested to the ancients the form of a plane leaf, to illustrate that of the peninsula. On closer inspection, the highest summits of this pile, with their connecting ridges, may be observed to form an irregular ring, which separates the central region, Arcadia, from the rest.

The other great divisions of the Peloponnesus are Argolis, Laconia, Messenia, Elis, and Achaia. Argolis, when the name is taken in its largest sense, as the part of the Peloponnesus which is bounded on the land side by Arcadia, Achaia, and Laconia, comprehends several districts, which, during the period of the independence of Greece, were never united under one government, but were considered, for the purpose of description, as one region by the later geographers. It begins on the western side with the little territory of Sicyon, which, beside some inland valleys, shared with Corinth a small maritime plain, which was proverbial among the ancients for its luxuriant fertility. The dominions of Corinth, which also extended beyond the isthmus, meeting those of Megara a little south of the Scironian rocks, occupied a considerable portion of Argolis. The two cities, Sicyon and Corinth, were similarly situated—both commanding important passes into the interior of the peninsula. The lofty and precipitous rock, called the Acrocorinthus, on which stood the citadel of Corinth, though, being commanded by a neighbouring height, it is of no great value for the purposes of modern warfare, was in ancient times an impregnable fortress, and a point of the highest importance.

The plain of Argos, which is bounded on three sides by lofty mountains, but open to the sea, is, for Greece, and especially for the Peloponnesus, of considerable extent, being ten or twelve miles in length, and four or five in width. But the western side is lower than the eastern, and is watered by a number of streams, in which the upper side is singularly deficient. In very ancient times the lower level was injured by excess of moisture, as it is at this day: and hence, perhaps, Argos, which lay on the western side, notwithstanding its advantageous position, and the strength of its citadel, flourished less, for a time, than Mycenæ and Tiryns, which were situate to the east, where the plain is now barren through drought.

A long valley, running southward to the sea, and the mountains which border it on three sides, composed the territory of Laconia. It is to the middle region, the heart of Laconia, that most of the ancient epithets and descriptions relating to the general character of the country properly apply. The vale of Sparta is Homer’s “hollow Lacedæmon,” which Euripides further described as girt with mountains, rugged, and difficult of entrance for a hostile power. The epithet “hollow” fitly represents the aspect of a valley enclosed by the lofty cliffs in which the mountains here abruptly terminate on each side of the Eurotas. The character which the poet ascribes to Laconia,—that it is a country difficult of access to an enemy,—is one which most properly belongs to it, and is of great historical importance. On the northern and the eastern sides there are only two natural passes by which the plain of Sparta can be invaded.

[31]

At the northern foot of the Taygetus Mountains begins the Messenian plain, which, like the basin of the Eurotas below Sparta, is divided into two distinct districts, by a ridge which crosses nearly its whole width from the eastern side. The upper of these districts, which is separated from Arcadia by a part of the Lycæan chain, and is bounded towards the west by the ridge of Ithome, the scene of ever memorable struggles, was the plain of Stenyclarus, a tract not peculiarly rich, but very important for the protection and command of the country, as the principal passes, not only from the north, but from the east and west fall into it. The lower part of the Messenian plain, which spreads round the head of the gulf, was a region celebrated in poetry and history for its exuberant fertility; sometimes designated by the title of Macaria, or the Blessed, watered by many streams, among the rest by the clear and full Pamisus. It was, no doubt, of this delightful vale, that Euripides meant to be understood, when, contrasting Messenia with Laconia, he described the excellence of the Messenian soil as too great for words to reach.

The rich pastures on the banks of the Elean Peneus were celebrated in the earliest legends; and an ancient channel, which is still seen stretching across them to the sea, may be the same into which Hercules was believed to have turned the river, to cleanse the stable of Augeas.

When the necessary deduction has been made for the inequalities of its surface, Greece may perhaps be properly considered as a land, on the whole, not less rich than beautiful. And it probably had a better claim to this character in the days of its youthful freshness and vigour. Its productions were various as its aspect: and if other regions were more fertile in grain, and more favourable to the cultivation of the vine, few surpassed it in the growth of the olive, and of other valuable fruits. Its hills afforded abundant pastures: its waters and forests teemed with life. In the precious metals it was perhaps fortunately poor; the silver mines of Laurium were a singular exception; but the Peloponnesian Mountains, especially in Laconia and Argolis, as well as those of Eubœa, contained rich veins of iron and copper, as well as precious quarries. The marble of Pentelicus was nearly equalled in fineness by that of the isle of Paros, and that of Carystus in Eubœa. The Grecian woods still excite the admiration of travellers, as they did in the days of Pausanias,h by trees of extraordinary size. Even the hills of Attica are said to have been once clothed with forests; and the present scantiness of its streams may be owed in a great measure to the loss of the shade which once sheltered them. Herodotusi observes, that, of all countries in the world, Greece enjoyed the most happily tempered seasons. But it seems difficult to speak generally of the climate of a country, in which each district has its own, determined by an infinite variety of local circumstances. Both in northern Greece and the Peloponnesus the snow remains long on the higher ridges; and even in Attica the winters are often severe. On the other hand, the heat of the summer is tempered, in exposed situations, by the strong breezes from the northwest (the etesian winds), which prevail during that season in the Grecian seas; and it is possible that Herodotus may have had their refreshing influence chiefly in view.

Though no traces of volcanic eruptions appear to have been discovered in Greece, history is full of the effects produced there by volcanic agency; and permanent indications of its physical character were scattered over its surface, in the hot springs of Thermopylæ, Trœzen, Ædepsus, and other places. The sea between the Peloponnesus and Crete has been, down to modern times, the scene of surprising changes wrought by the same forces; and not long[32] before the Christian era, a new hill was thrown up on the coast near Trœzen, no less suddenly than the islands near Thera were raised out of the sea. Earthquakes, accompanied by the rending of mountains, the sinking of land into the sea, by temporary inundations, and other disasters, have in all ages been familiar to Greece, more especially to the Peloponnesus. And hence some attention seems to be due to the numerous legends and traditions which describe convulsions of the same kind as occurring still more frequently, and with still more important consequences, in a period preceding connected history; and which may be thought to point to a state of elemental warfare, which must have subsided before the region which was its theatre could have been fitted for the habitation of man. Such an origin we might be inclined to assign to that class of legends which related to struggles between Poseidon and other deities for the possession of several districts; as his contests with Athene (Minerva) for Athens and Trœzen; with the same goddess, or with Hera (Juno) for Argos—where he was said, according to one account, to have dried up the springs, and according to another, to have laid the plain under water; with Apollo for the isthmus of Corinth.b

THE NAME

It is a singular anomaly that a people who habitually called themselves Hellenes should be known to all the world beside as Greeks. This name was derived from the Graians, a small and obscure group. The Romans, chancing to come first in contact with this tribe, gave the name Greek to the whole people. In the course of time it became so fixed in the usage of other nations that it could never be shaken off. Such a change of a proper name was very unusual in antiquity. The almost invariable custom was, when it became necessary to use a proper name from a foreign language, to transcribe it as literally as might be with only such minor changes as a difference in the genius of the language made necessary. Thus the Greeks in speaking of their Persian enemies pronounced and wrote such words as “Cyrus” and “Darius” in as close imitation as possible of the native pronunciation of those names, and the Egyptians in turn, in accepting the domination of the Macedonian Ptolemies, spelled and no doubt pronounced the names of their conquerors with as little alteration as was possible in a language which made scant use of vowels. It was indeed this fact of transliteration rather than translation of foreign proper names which, as we have seen, furnished the clew to the nineteenth century scholars in their investigations of the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the cuneiform writing of Asia. Had not the engraver of the Rosetta stone spelled the word Ptolemy closely as the Greeks spelled it, Dr. Young, perhaps, never would have found the key to the interpretation of the hieroglyphics. And had not the eighty or ninety proper names of the great inscription at Behistun been interpreted by the same signs in the three different forms of writing that make up that inscription, it may well be doubted whether we should even now have any clear knowledge of the cuneiform character of the Babylonians and Assyrians. Indeed, so universal was this custom of retaining proper names in their original form that the failure of the Romans to apply to the Greeks the name which they themselves employed seems very extraordinary indeed. The custom which they thus inaugurated, however, has not been without imitators in modern times, as witness the translation “Angleterre” by which the French designate England, and the even stranger use by the same nation of the word “Allemagne”[33] to designate the land which its residents term “Deutschland” and which in English is spoken of as Germany.

Had the classical writings of Greece been more extensively read throughout Europe in the Middle Ages it is probable that the Roman name Greece would have been discarded in modern usage, and the name Hellas restored to its proper position. An effort to effect this change has indeed been made more recently by many classical scholars, and it is by no means unusual to meet the terms “Hellas” and “Hellenes” in modern books of almost every European language; but to make the substitution in the popular mind after the word Greece has been so closely linked with so wide a chain of associate ideas for so many generations would be utterly impossible, at least in our generation.

THE ORIGIN OF THE GREEKS

But whether known as Hellas or as Greece, the tiny peninsula designated by these names was inhabited by a people which by common consent was by far the most interesting of antiquity. It has been said that they constituted a race rather than a nation, for the most patent fact about them, to any one who gives even casual attention to their history, was that they lacked the political unity which lies at the foundation of true national existence. Yet the pride of race to a certain extent made up for this deficiency, and if the Greeks recognised no single ruler and were never bound together into a single state, they felt more keenly perhaps than any other nation that has lived at any other period of the world’s history—unless perhaps an exception be made of the modern Frenchman—the binding force of racial affinities and the full meaning of the old adage that blood is thicker than water.

All this of course implies that the Greeks were one race in the narrow sense of the term, sprung in relatively recent time from a single stock. Such was undoubtedly the fact, and the division into Ionians, Dorians, and various lesser branches, on which the historian naturally lays much stress, must be understood always as implying only a minor and later differentiation. One will hear much of the various dialects of the different Greek states, but one must not forget that these dialects represent only minor variations of speech which as compared with the fundamental unity of the language as a whole might almost be disregarded. To be a Greek was to be born of Greek parents, to the use of the Greek language as a mother tongue; for the most part, following the national custom, it was to eschew every other language and to look out upon all peoples who spoke another tongue as “barbarians”—people of an alien birth and an alien genius.

But whence came this people of the parent stock whose descendants made up the historic Greek race? No one knows. The Greeks themselves hardly dared to ask the question, and we are utterly without data for answering it if asked. Their traditions implied a migration from some unknown land to Greece, since those traditions told of a non-Hellenic people who inhabited the land before them. Yet in contradiction of this idea the Greek mind clung always to autocthony. Like most other nations, and in far greater measure than perhaps any other, the Hellenes loved their home—almost worshipped it. To be a Greek and yet to have no association with the mountains and valleys and estuaries and islands of Greece seems a contradiction of terms. True, a major part of the population at a later day lived in distant colonies as widely separated as Asia Minor and[34] Italy, but even here they thought of themselves only as more or less temporary invaders from the parent seat, and even kept up their association with it by considering all lands which Greeks colonised as a part of “Greater Greece.”

That the Greeks are of Aryan stock is of course made perfectly clear by their language. Some interesting conclusions as to the time when they branched from the parent stock are gained by philologists through observation of words which manifestly have the same root and meaning in the different Aryan languages. Thus, for example, the fact that such words as Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, Son, Daughter, and the like, are clearly of the same root in Sanskrit and Greek as well as in Latin and the Germanic speech, shows that a certain relatively advanced stage of family life had been attained while the primitive Aryans still formed but a single race. Again the resemblance between the Greek and the Latin languages goes to show that the people whose descendants became Greeks and Romans clung together till a relatively late period, after the splitting up of the primitive race had begun. Yet on the other hand the differences between the Greek and the Latin prove that the two races using these languages had been separated long before either of them is ushered into history.

From which direction the parent stock of the Greeks came into the land that was to be their future abiding place has long been a moot point with scholars, and is yet undetermined. So long as the original cradle of the Aryans was held to be central Asia, it was the unavoidable conclusion that the Aryans of Europe, including the Greeks, had come originally from the East. But when the theory was introduced that the real cradle of the primitive Aryan was not Asia but northwestern Europe all certainty from a priori considerations vanished, for it seemed at least as plausible that the parent Greeks might have dropped aside from the main swarm on its eastern journey to invade Asia as that they should have oscillated back to Greece after that invasion had been established. And more recently the question is still further complicated by the “Mediterranean Race” theory, which includes the Greeks as descendants of a hypothetical stock whose cradle was neither Asia nor Europe, but equatorial Africa.a

Some of the latest accounts of Greek origin are stated by Professor Bury who says:

“It is in the lands of Thessaly and Epirus that we first dimly descry the Greeks busy at the task for which destiny had chosen them, of creating and shaping the thought and civilisation of Europe. The oak wood of Dodona in Epirus is the earliest sanctuary, whereof we have any knowledge, of their supreme god, Zeus, the dweller of the sky. Thessaly has associations which still appeal intimately to men of European birth. The first Greek settlers in Thessaly were the Achæans; and in the plain of Argos, and in the mountains which gird it about, they fashioned legends which were to sink deeply into the imagination of Europe. We know that when the Greek conquerors came down to the coast of the Ægean they found a material civilisation more advanced than their own; and it was so chanced that we know more of this civilisation than we know of the conquerors before they came under its influence.

“In Greece as in the other two great peninsulas of the Mediterranean, we find, before the invader of Aryan speech entered in and took possession, a white folk not speaking an Aryan tongue. Corresponding to the Iberians in Spain and Gaul, to the Ligurians in Italy, we find in Greece a race which was also spread over the islands of the Ægean and along the coast of Asia[35] Minor. The men of this primeval race gave to many a hill and rock the name which was to abide with it forever. Corinth and Tiryns, Parnassus and Olympus, Arne and Larissa, are names which the Greeks received from the peoples whom they dispossessed. But this Ægean race, as we may call it for want of a common name, had developed, before the coming of the Greek, a civilisation of which we have only very lately come to know. This civilisation went hand in hand with an active trade, which in the third millennium spread its influence far beyond the borders of the Ægean, as far at least as the Danube and the Nile, and received in return gifts from all quarters of the world. The Ægean peoples therefore plied a busy trade by sea, and their maritime intercourse with the African continent can be traced back to even earlier times, since at the very beginning of Egyptian history we find in Egypt obsidian, which can have come only from the Ægean isles. The most notable remains of this civilisation have been found at Troy, in the little island of Amorgos, and in the great island of Crete.

“The conquest of the Greek peninsula by the Greeks lies a long way behind recorded history, and the Greeks themselves, when they began to reflect on their own past, had completely forgotten what their remote ancestors had done ages and ages before.

“The invaders spoke an Aryan speech, but it does not follow that they all came of Aryan stock. There was, indeed, an Aryan element among them, and some of them were descendants of men of Aryan race who had originally taught them their language and brought them some Aryan institutions and Aryan deities. But the infusion of the Aryan blood was probably small; and in describing the Greeks, as well as any other of the races who speak sister tongues, we must be careful to call them men of Aryan speech, and not men of Aryan stock.c”

Perhaps the very latest view of sterling authority is that of Professor William Ridgeway,d who, after marshalling a vast amount of argument and induction based upon the extant and newly discovered relics of early Grecian civilisations, sums up his theories briefly and definitely. He accepts the existence of a “Pelasgian” race, which many have scouted, and credits it with the art-work and commerce revealed at Mycenæ and elsewhere and called “Mycenæan.” This was a dark-skinned (or melanochroöus) race which “had dwelt in Greece from a remote antiquity and had at all times, in spite of conquests, remained a chief element in the population of all Greece, whilst in Arcadia and Attica it had never been subjugated.” The Mycenæan civilisation had its origin, he believes, in the mainland of Greece and spread thence outwards to the isles of the Ægean, Crete, Egypt, and north to the Euxine. This Mycenæan era differs widely from the Homeric,—as in the treatment of the dead, and in the use of metals,—and preceded the Homeric by a great distance, the Mycenæan period belonging to the Bronze Age, the Homeric to the Iron Age.

The Homeric people were not melanochroöus, but xanthochroöus (fair and blond), and were evidently a conquering race—the Achæans. These Achæans, according to Greek tradition, came from Epirus, and indeed a study of the relics and “the culture of the early Iron Age of Bosnia, Carniola, Styria, Salzburg, and upper Italy revealed armour, weapons, and ornaments exactly corresponding to those described in Homer. Moreover we found that a fair-haired race greater in stature than the melanochroöus Ægean people had there been domiciled for long ages, and that fresh bodies of tall, fair-haired people from the shores of the northern ocean continually through the ages had kept pressing down into the southern peninsulas. From this[36] it followed that the Achæans of Homer were one of these bodies of Celts, who had made their way down into Greece and had become masters of the indigenous race.”

The history of the round shield, the use of buckles and brooches, the custom of cremating the dead, and the distribution of iron in Europe, Asia, and Africa, seem to Professor Ridgeway to point still more sharply to a theory that these features of Greek civilisation previously existed in central Europe and were brought thence into Greece. A study of the dialect in which the Homeric poems are written indicates that the language and metre belonged to the earlier race, the Pelasgians, whom the Achæans conquered. The earliest Greeks spoke an Aryan or Indo-Germanic language of which the Arcadian dialect was the purest remnant, since the Achæans and Dorians never conquered Arcadia. The introduction of labialism into the Greek, Ridgeway believes to be a proof of the Celtic origin of the invaders who accepted, as conquerors usually do, the language of the conquered and yet modified it. “Labialism” is the changing of a hard consonant as “k” into a lip-consonant as “p”—as the older Greek word for horse was “hikkos,” which became “hippos.” The result, then, of Ridgeway’s erudite research is his belief that “the Achæans were a Celtic tribe who made their way into Greece,” and for this theory he asserts that “archæology, tradition, and language are all in harmony.”

The original source of this migration,—for it was rather migration than an invasion,—seems to have been in the northwest of the Balkan peninsula. Some extraordinary pressure must have been brought to bear on the Greeks by the Illyrians who may themselves have been forced out of their own homes by some unrecorded power. At the same time the people then living in Macedonia and Thrace were dispossessed and shoved into Phrygia and the regions of Troy in Asia Minor. The possession of Greece by the Greeks was doubtless very gradual and the Peloponnesus was the last to be visited, possibly by boat across the Corinthian Gulf. In some places the new-comers were doubtless compelled to fight, elsewhere they drifted in almost unnoticed and gradually asserted a sway. The new-comers imposed their speech eventually on the older people, but as usual they must have been themselves largely influenced by the older civilisation in the matter of customs and conditions.a

EARLY CONDITIONS AND MOVEMENTS

In the Pelasgic period we find the ancient Greeks in a primitive, but not really barbaric condition. There are settled peoples engaged in agriculture, as well as half nomadic pastoral tribes. The latter form, for a long time, a very unstable element of the population, ever ready under pressure of circumstances to leave their old homes and fight for new ones, bearing disturbance and anarchy into the civilised districts.

The life of these peasants and shepherds was very simple and patriarchal. The ox and the horse were known to them, and drew their wagons and their ploughs; the principal source of their wealth consisted in great herds of swine, sheep, and cattle. Fishermen already navigated the numerous arms of the seas that indented the land. Public life had perfectly patriarchal forms. “Kings” were to be found everywhere as ruling heads of the numerous small tribes. Religion appeared essentially as a cult of the mighty forces of nature. The deities were worshipped without temples and images, and were appealed to with prayers, with both bloody and bloodless sacrifices,—at[37] the head Zeus, the god of the sky; at his side Dione, the goddess of earth, who, however, was early replaced by the figure of Hera; Demeter, the earth mother, the patron of agriculture and of settled life; Hestia, the patron of the hearth fire and the altar fire; Hermes, the swift messenger of heaven, driver of the clouds and guardian of the herds; Poseidon, the god of the waters; and the chthonic [i.e. subterranean] divinity Aidoneus or Hades. The art of prophecy was developed early; the oracle of Dodona in Epirus was universally known.

We know not how long the ancient Greeks remained in the quiet Pelasgic conditions. But we can distinguish the causes that produced the internal movement and mighty ferment, from which the chivalrous nation of the Achæans finally came. Most important were the influences of the highly developed civilisation of the Orient upon the youthful, gifted Greek nation. The Phœnicians were the principal bearers of this influence. They had occupied many of the islands of the Ægean, and had planted colonies even on the mainland, as at Thebes and Acrocorinthus. The merchants exchanged the products of Phœnician and Babylonian industry for wool, hides, and slaves. They worked the copper mines of Cyprus and Argolis and the gold mines of Thasos and Thrace, but obtained even greater wealth from the purple shellfish of the Grecian waters.

For about a century the Phœnicians exerted a strong pressure on the coasts of Greece, and they left considerable traces in Grecian mythology and civilisation. The gifted Greeks, who in all periods of their history were quick to profit by foreign example, were deeply impressed by the superior civilisation of the Phœnicians. The activity and skill of the men of Sidon in navigation and fortification had a very permanent effect. For a long time the Greeks made the Phœnicians their masters in architecture, mining, and engineering; later they received from them the alphabet and the Babylonian system of weights and measures. The industry and the artistic skill of the Greeks also began to practice on the models brought into the land by the Sidonians.

Internal dissensions, raids of the rude pastoral tribes upon the settled peoples of the lowlands and the coast, and feuds between the nomads themselves, were, doubtless, also a powerful factor in the transition from the peaceful patriarchism of Pelasgic times to the more stirring and warlike period that followed. The necessity of protecting person and property from bold raiders by sea and land led to the erection of fortresses, massive walls of rough stones piled upon one another and held together only by the law of gravity. The best example of such “Cyclopean” remains is the well-preserved citadel of Tiryns in Argolis. Here on a hill only fifty feet high, the top of which is nine hundred feet long and three hundred feet wide, a wall without towers follows the edge of the rock. With an apparent thickness of twenty-five feet the real wall, as it appears to-day, cannot be estimated at more than fifteen feet. On each side of this run covered passages or galleries. By degrees the Greeks learned from Phœnician models to construct these fortresses better and finally to make real citadels of them. Little city communities were gradually formed at the foot of the hill, but until far into the Hellenic period the upper city, the “acropolis” remained the more important. Here were the sanctuaries and the council chamber, the residence of the king and often also the houses of the nobility.

The military nobility, the ancient Greek chivalry, also originated in pre-historic times. In the storms of the new time the patriarchal chieftains developed into powerful military princes who everywhere forced the[38] “Pelasgian” peasant to keep his sling or his sword, his lance or his javelin, always at hand. A class of lords also arose, consisting of families that supported themselves rather by the trade of arms than by the pursuit of agriculture. This new nobility, which gradually grew to great numerical strength, held a very important position down to the days of democracy.

This transition period was subsequently called by the Hellenes the Heroic Age. The myths and legends which the memory of the Greek tribes and their poets preserved of this period have a varied character. On the one hand, heroic figures are repeatedly developed from the local names or the surnames of divinities, or the mythical history of a god is transferred to a human being. On the other hand, this imaginative people loved to concentrate its historical recollections and to load the deeds and experiences of whole tribes and epochs upon one or another heroic personality, whose cycle of legends in the course of further development underwent new colourings and extensions through the mixture of fresh elements. This is the way in which the legends of Hercules and Theseus, of the Argonauts and the “Seven against Thebes” grew up. The most glorious poetical illumination is cast upon the alleged greatest deed of pre-Hellenic times, the ten years’ war waged by nearly the whole body of Achæan heroes against the Teucrian Troy or Ilion.

The warlike, chivalrous-romantic nation of poetry and legendary history at the close of the pre-Hellenic period we are accustomed to call the Achæans. It seems to us safe to accept the theory that the name Achæans means “the noble, excellent,” and belongs to the entire “hero-nation,” not to a single tribe after which the Greeks as a whole were afterwards called.

At least a few important remains of the tribal and state relations of this age passed over into the Hellenic period. The Dorians were at this time an insignificant mountain race in the mountains on the northern edge of the beautiful basin of northeastern Greece, which had not yet received the name of Thessaly, while the principal part was played there by the Lapithæ on Mount Ossa and the lower Peneus, the Bœotians in the southwest of the Peneus district, and especially the Minyæ, with one branch at Iolcus on the gulf of Pagasæ and another in the western part of the basin of the Copaïs, where they were in constant rivalry with the Cadmeans of Thebes. The Ionic race was spread over the northern coast of the Peloponnesus on the Gulf of Corinth, over a portion of the eastern coast of this peninsula on the Gulf of Saron, and over Megaris and Attica. Among the Ionic cantons Attica had already attained considerable importance. Here the so-called Theseus, or rather a family of warlike chieftains descended from the Ionic tribal hero Theseus, had succeeded in uniting the four different portions of this district.

Of greater importance than any of these in the pre-Doric period were the feudal states of the Peloponnesus. The strongest among these was the royal house of the Atridæ, upon whose glory terrible legends cast a dark and bloody shadow. From their capital at Mycenæ they ruled over the whole of Argolis; chieftains in Tiryns, in Argos and on the coast of the peninsula of Parnon acknowledged their authority. The remains of the citadel of this royal family are still preserved. The hill on which this citadel stood is surmounted by a small circular wall, and lower down is surrounded by a mighty wall which everywhere follows the edge of the cliff, and which in some places is built of rough layers of massive stones, elsewhere of carefully fitted polygonal blocks, but also for considerable stretches of rectangular blocks, in horizontal courses.

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On the southwestern side is the principal gate, the famous Gate of the Lions, which takes its name from the oldest extant remains of sculpture in Greece. In the triangular gap in the wall above the lintel an enormous slab of yellow limestone is fitted; it is divided in the middle by a perpendicular column, on either side of which stands a lioness. In this acropolis Schliemann found graves with human remains, with vessels of clay, alabaster, and gold, ornaments of rock-crystal, copper, silver, gold, and ivory.

Near the Gate of the Lions begin the walls of the lower city, which stood on the ridge extending from the western declivity of the citadel to the south. In this lower city are a number of remarkable subterranean buildings, sepulchres and treasure houses of the ancient monarchs. The best preserved and largest of these is the noteworthy round building known as the “treasure house of Atreus” (also as the “grave of Agamemnon”), which is especially interesting on account of its tholos, or interior circular vault.

So in a large part of the Greek world a not inconsiderable degree of civilisation had already begun to flourish. War, to be sure, was governed, even down to the period of the highest culture, by a “martial law” that recognised no right of the vanquished, delivered conquered cities to the flames, and gave the person and the family of the captured enemy to the victor as booty. The battle itself however, was conducted according to certain mutually recognised chivalrous forms. The Greek knights, rushing into battle in their chariots, hurled their terrible javelins at the enemy, but made less use of the sword, and still less of the bow, sought single combat with a foe of equal birth, and as a rule avoided slaughtering the common soldier. The development of a class of slaves in consequence of the incessant feuds was of great influence in determining the whole future character of the later Hellenic states. On the other hand, it is worthy of note that the ancient cruelty and bloodthirsty savagery disappeared more and more, although breaking out frightfully on occasion when the heat of Greek passion burst through all restraint. But murder and even simple homicide, as they are recorded with traces of blood in the older legendary history, ceased to be daily occurrences.

Tradition shows traces of a beautiful moral idealism. The tenderest friendship, respect of the Greek youth for age, conjugal loyalty of the women, ardent love of family, and the highest degree of receptivity for the good and the noble shine forth from the traditions of the Achæans with a charm that warms the heart.

The beginnings of common religious assemblages, or Amphictyons, also appear to belong to this time. So Greek life had already a quite complex structure when a last echo of the ancient movement of peoples on the Illyrian-Greek peninsula once more produced a general upheaval in all the lands between Olympus and Malea, between the Ionian Sea and the mountains of the coast of Asia Minor, after which Greece on either side of the Ægean Sea had acquired the ethnographic physiognomy that it retained until the invasion of the Slavs and Bulgarians.e

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER II. THE MYCENÆAN AGE

MYCENÆAN CIVILISATION[3]

“Mycenæan” is a convenient epithet for a certain phase of a prehistoric civilisation, which, as a whole, is often called “Ægean.” It owes its vogue to the fame of Henry Schliemann’sc discovery at Mycenæ in 1876, but is not intended to beg the open question as to the origin or principal seat of the Bronze Age culture of the Greek lands.

The site of Mycenæ itself was notorious for the singular and massive character of its ruins, long before Schliemann’s time. The great curtain wall and towers of the citadel, of mixed Cyclopean, polygonal, and ashlar construction, and unbroken except on the south cliff, and the main gate, crowned with a heraldic relief of lionesses, have never been hidden; and though much blocked with their own ruin, the larger dome-tombs outside the citadel have always been visible, and remarked by travellers. But since these remains were always referred vaguely to a “Heroic” or “proto-Hellenic” period, even Schliemann’s preliminary clearing of the gateway and two dome-tombs in 1876, which exposed the engaged columns of the façades, and suggested certain inferences as to external revetment and internal decoration, would not by itself have led any one to associate Mycenæ with an individual civilisation. It was his simultaneous attack on the unsearched area which was enclosed by the citadel walls, and in 1876 showed no remains above ground, that led to the recognition of a “Mycenæan civilisation.” Schliemann had published in 1868 his belief that the Heroic graves mentioned by Pausanias lay within the citadel of Mycenæ, and now he chose the deeply silted space just within the gate for his first sounding. About 10[41] feet below the surface his diggers exposed a double ring of upright slabs, once capped with cross slabs, and nearly 90 feet in diameter. Continuing downwards through earth full of sherds and other débris, whose singularity was not then recognised, the men found several sculptured limestone slabs showing subjects of war or the chase, and scroll and spiral ornament rudely treated in relief. When, after some delay, the work was resumed, some skeletons were uncovered lying loose, and at last, 30 feet from the original surface, an oblong pit-grave was found, paved with pebbles, and once roofed, which contained three female skeletons, according to Schliemann, “smothered in jewels.” A few feet to the west were presently revealed a circular altar, and beneath it another grave with five corpses, two probably female, and an even richer treasure of gold. Three more pits came to light to the northward, each adding its quota to the hoard, and then Schliemann, proclaiming that he had found Atreus and all his house, departed for Athens. But his Greek ephor, clearing out the rest of the precinct, came on yet another grave and some gold objects lying loose. Altogether there were nineteen corpses in six pits, buried, as the grave furniture showed, at different times, but all eventually included in a holy ring.

These sepulchres were richer in gold than any found elsewhere in the world, a fact which led to an absurd attempt to establish their kinship with the later and only less golden burials of Scythians or Celts. The metal was worked up into heavy death-masks and lighter breastplates, diadems, baldrics, pendants, and armlets, often made of mere foil, and also into goblets, hairpins, engraved with combats of men and beasts, miniature balances, and an immense number of thin circular plaques and buttons with bone, clay, or wooden cores. Special mention is due to the inlays of gold and niello on bronze dagger-blades, showing spiral ornament or scenes of the chase, Egyptian in motive, but non-Egyptian in style; and to little flat models of shrine-façades analogous to those devoted to Semitic pillar-worship. The ornament on these objects displayed a highly developed spiraliform system, and advanced adaptation of organic forms, especially octopods and butterflies, to decorative uses. The shrines, certain silhouette figurines, and one cup bear moulded doves, and plant forms appear inlaid in a silver vessel. The last-named metal was much rarer than gold, and used only in a few conspicuous objects, notably a great hollow ox-head with gilded horns and frontal rosette, a roughly modelled stag, and a cup, of which only small part remains, chased with a scene of nude warriors attacking a fort. Bronze swords and daggers and many great cauldrons were found, with arrow-heads of obsidian, and also a few stone vases, beads of amber, intaglio gems, sceptre heads of crystal, certain fittings and other fragments made of porcelain and paste, and remains of carved wood. Along with this went much pottery, mostly broken by the collapse of the roofs. It begins with a dull painted ware, which we now know as late “proto-Mycenæan”; and it develops into a highly glazed fabric, decorated with spiraliform and marine schemes in lustrous paint, and showing the typical forms, false-mouthed amphoræ and long-footed vases, now known as essentially Mycenæan. The loose objects found outside the circle include the best intaglio ring from this site, admirably engraved with a cult scene, in which women clad in flounced skirts are chiefly concerned, and the worship seems to be of a sacred tree.

This treasure as a whole was admitted at once to be far too highly developed in technique and ornament, and too individual in character, to belong, as the lionesses over the gate used to be said to belong, merely to a first stage in Hellenic art. It preceded in time the classical culture of the[42] same area; but, whether foreign or native, it was allowed to represent a civilisation that was at its acme and practically incapable of further development. So the bare fact of a great prehistoric art-production, not strictly Greek, in Greece came to be accepted without much difficulty. But before describing how its true relations were unfolded thereafter, it may be mentioned that the site of Mycenæ had yet much to reveal after Schliemann left it. Ten years later the Greek Archæological Society resumed exploration there, and M. Tsountas, probing the summit of the citadel, hit upon and opened out a fragment of a palace with hearth of stucco, painted with geometric design, and walls adorned with frescoes of figure subjects, armed men, and horses. An early Doric temple was found to have been built over this palace, a circumstance which disposed forever of the later dates proposed for Mycenæan objects. Subsequently many lesser structures were cleared in the east and southwest of the citadel area, which yielded commoner vessels of domestic use, in pottery, stone, and bronze, and some more painted objects, including a remarkable fragment of stucco, which shows human ass-headed figures in procession, a tattooed head, and a plaque apparently showing the worship of an aniconic deity. From the immense variety of these domestic objects more perhaps has been learned as to the affinities of Mycenæan civilisation than from the citadel graves. Lastly, a most important discovery was made of a cemetery west of the citadel. Its tombs are mostly rock-cut chambers, approached by sloping dromoi; but there are also pits, from one of which came a remarkable ivory mirror handle of oriental design. The chamber graves were found to be rich in trinkets of gold, engraved stones, usually opaque, vases in pottery and stone, bronze mirrors and weapons, terra-cottas and carved ivory; but neither they nor the houses have yielded iron except in very small quantity, and that not fashioned into articles of utility. The presence of fibulæ and razors supplied fresh evidence as to Mycenæan fashions of dress and wearing of the hair, and a silver bowl, with male profiles inlaid in gold, proved that the upper lip was sometimes shaved. All the great dome-tombs known have been cleared, but the process has added only to our architectural knowledge. The tomb furniture had been rifled long ago. Part of the circuit of a lower town has been traced, and narrow embanked roadways conducted over streams on Cyclopean bridges lead to it from various quarters.

The abundance and magnificence of the circle treasure had been needed to rivet the attention and convince the judgment of scholars, slow to reconstruct ex pede Herculem. But there had been a good deal of evidence available previous to 1876, which, had it been collated and seriously studied, might have greatly discounted the sensation that the Citadel graves eventually made. Although it was recognised that certain tributaries, represented, e.g., in the XVIIIth Dynasty tomb of Rekh-ma-Ra at Egyptian Thebes, as bearing vases of peculiar form, were of Mediterranean race, neither their precise habitat nor the degree of their civilisation could be determined while so few actual prehistoric remains were known in the Mediterranean lands. Nor did the Mycenæan objects which were lying obscurely in museums in 1870 or thereabouts provide a sufficient test of the real basis underlying the Hellenic myths of the Argolid, the Troad, and Crete, to cause these to be taken seriously.

Even Schliemann’s first excavations at Hissarlik in the Troad did not surprise those familiar equally with Neolithic settlements and Hellenistic remains. But the “Burnt City” of the second stratum, revealed in 1873, with its fortifications and vases, and the hoard of gold, silver, and bronze[43] objects, which the discoverer connected with it (though its relation to the stratification is doubtful still), made a stir, which was destined to spread far outside the narrow circle of scholars when in 1876 Schliemann lighted on the Mycenæ graves.

Like the “letting in of water,” light at once poured in from all sides on the prehistoric period of Greece. It was established that the character of both the fabric and the decoration of the Mycenæan objects was not that of any well-known art. A wide range in space was proved by the identification of the inselsteine and the Ialysos vases with the new style, and a wide range in time by collation of the earlier Theræan and Hissarlik discoveries. A relation between objects of art described by Homer and the Mycenæan treasure was generally recognised, and a correct opinion prevailed that, while certainly posterior, the civilisation of the Iliad was reminiscent of the great Mycenæan period. Schliemann got to work again at Hissarlik in 1878, and greatly increased knowledge of the lower strata, but did not recognise the Mycenæan remains in his “Lydian” city of the sixth stratum; but by laying bare in 1884 the upper remains on the rock of Tiryns, he made a contribution to the science of domestic life in the Mycenæan period, which was amplified two years later by Tsountas’ discovery of the Mycenæ palace. From 1886 dates the finding of Mycenæan sepulchres outside the Argolid, from which, and from the continuation of Tsountas’ exploration of the buildings and lesser graves at Mycenæ, a large treasure, independent of Schliemann’s princely gift, has been gathered into the National Museum at Athens. In that year were excavated dome-tombs, most already rifled, in Attica, in Thessaly, in Cephalonia, and Laconia. In 1890 and 1893 Stæs cleared out more homely dome-tombs at Thoricus in Attica; and other graves, either rock-cut “beehives” or chambers, were found at Spata and Aphidnæ in Attica, in Ægina and Salamis, at the Heræum and Nauplia in the Argolid, near Thebes and Delphi, and lastly not far from the Thessalian Larissa.

But discovery was far from being confined to the Greek mainland and its immediate dependencies. The limits of the prehistoric area were pushed out to the central Ægean islands, all of which are singularly rich in evidence of the pre-Mycenæan period. The series of Syran built graves, containing crouching corpses, is the best and most representative that is known in the Ægean. Melos, long marked as containing early objects, but not systematically excavated until taken in hand by the British School at Athens in 1896, shows remains of all the Ægean periods.

Crete has been proved by the tombs of Anoja and Egarnos, by the excavations on the site of Knossos begun in 1878 by M. Minos Kalokairinos and resumed with startling success in 1900 by Messrs. Evans and Hogarth, and by those in the Dictæan cave and at Phæstos, Gournia, Zakro, and Palæokastro, to be prolific of remains of the prehistoric periods out of all proportion to remains of classical Hellenic culture. A map of Cyprus in the later Bronze Age now shows more than five-and-twenty settlements in and about the Mesaorea district alone, of which one, that at Enkomi, near the site of later Salamis, has yielded the richest gold treasure found outside Mycenæ. Half round the outermost circle to which Greek influence attained in the classical period remains of the same prehistoric civilisation have been happened on. M. Chantre, in 1894, picked up lustreless ware, like that of Hissarlik, in central Phrygia, and the English archæological expeditions sent subsequently into northwestern Anatolia have never failed to bring back “Ægean” specimens from the valleys of the Rhyndacus and Sangarius, and even of the Halys.

[44]

In Egypt, Mr. Petrie found painted sherds of Cretan style at Kahun in the Fayum in 1887, and farther up the Nile, at Tel-el-Amarna, chanced on bits of not less than eight hundred Ægean vases in 1889. There have now been recognised in the collections at Gizeh, Florence, London, Paris, and Bologna several Egyptian or Phœnician imitations of the Mycenæan style to set off against the many debts which the centres of Mycenæan culture owed to Egypt. Two Mycenæan vases were found at Sidon in 1885, and many fragments of Ægean, and especially Cypriote, pottery have been turned up during the recent excavation of sites in Philistia by the Palestine Fund. Southeastern Sicily has proved, ever since Orsi excavated the Sicel cemetery near Lentini in 1877, a mine of early remains, among which appear in regular succession Ægean fabrics and motives of decoration from the period of the second stratum at Hissarlik down to the latest Mycenæan. Sardinia has Mycenæan sites, e.g., at Abini near Teti, and Spain has yielded objects recognised as Mycenæan from tombs near Cadiz, and from Saragossa.

The results of three excavations will especially serve as rallying points and supply a standard of comparison. After Schliemann’s death, Dörpfeld returned to Hissarlik, and recognised in the huge remains of the sixth stratum, on the southern skirts of the citadel mound, a city of the same period as Mycenæ at its acme. Thus we can study there remains of a later stage, in one process of development superposed on earlier remains, after an intervening period. The links there missing are, however, apparent at Phylakopi in Melos, excavated systematically from 1896 to 1899. Here buildings of three main periods appear one on another. The earliest overlie in one spot a deposit of sherds of the most primitive type known in the Ægean and found in the earliest cist-graves. The second and third cities rise one out of the other without evidence of long interval. A third and more important site than either, Knossos in Crete, awaits fuller publication. Here are ruins of a great palace, mainly of two periods. Originally constructed about 2000 B.C., it was almost entirely rebuilt at the acme of the Mycenæan Age, but substructures and other remains of the earlier palace underlie the later.

Since recent researches, some of whose results are not yet published, have demonstrated that in certain localities, for instance, Cyprus, Crete, and most of the Ægean islands where Mycenæan remains were not long ago supposed to be merely sporadic, they form in fact a stratum to be expected on the site[45] of almost every ancient Ægean settlement, we may safely assume that Mycenæan civilisation was a phase in the history of all the insular and peninsular territories of the east Mediterranean basin. Into the continents on the east and south we have no reason to suppose that its influence penetrated either very widely or very strongly.

The remains that especially concern us here belong to the later period illustrated by these discoveries, and have everywhere a certain uniformity. Some common influence spread at a certain era over the Ægean area and reduced almost to identity a number of local civilisations of similar origin but diverse development. Surviving influences of these, however, combined with the constant geographical conditions to reintroduce some local differentiation into the Mycenæan products.

The Neolithic Age in the Ægean has now been abundantly illustrated from the yellow bottom clay at Knossos, and its products do not differ materially from those implements and vessels with which man has everywhere sought to satisfy his first needs. The mass of the stone tools and weapons, and the coarse hand-made and burnished pottery, might well proceed from the spontaneous invention of each locality that possessed suitable stone and clay; but the common presence of flaked blades, arrow-heads, and blunt choppers of an obsidian, native, so far as is known, to Melos only, speaks of inter-communication even at this early period between many distant localities and the city whose remains have been unearthed at Phylakopi. The wide range of the peculiar cist-grave strengthens the belief that late Stone Age culture in the Ægean was not of sporadic development, and prepares us for the universality of a certain fiddle-shaped type of stone idol. Local divergence is, however, already apparent in the relative prevalence of certain forms: for example, a shallow bowl is common in Crete, but not in the Cyclades, while the pyxis, so common in the graves of Amorgos and Melos, has left little sign of itself in Crete; and from this point the further development of civilisation in the Ægean area results in increasing differentiation. The Greek mainland has produced as yet very little of the earlier periods (the excavators of the Heræum promise additions); but the primitive remains in the rest of the area may be divided into four classes of strong family likeness, but distinct development.

The pottery supplies the best criterion, and will suffice for our end. We have no such comprehensive and certain evidence from other classes of remains. Except for the Great Treasure of Hissarlik, and the weapons in Cycladic graves, there have been found as yet hardly any metal products of the period. Of the few stone products, one class, the “island idols,” already referred to, was obviously exported widely, and supplies an ill test either of place or date. There have not been discovered sufficiently numerous structures or graves to afford a basis of classification. Fortified towns have been explored in Melos, Siphnos, and the Troad, and a few houses in Ægina and Thera; but neither unaltered houses nor tombs of undoubted primitive character have appeared in Crete as yet, nor elsewhere than in the Cyclad isles.

Above the strata, however, which contain these remains of local divergent development, there lies in all districts of the Ægean area a rich layer of deposit, whose contents show a rapid and marked advance in civilisation, are essentially uniform, and have only subsidiary characteristics due to local influence or tradition. The civilisation there represented is not of an origin foreign to the area. The germs of all its characteristic fabrics, forms, and motives of decoration exist in the underlying strata, though not equally in all districts, and the change which Mycenæan art occasions is not always equally[46] abrupt. It is most reasonable to see in these remains the result of the action of some accidental influence which greatly increased the wealth and capacity of one locality in the area, and caused it to impose its rapidly developing culture on all the rest. The measure of the reaction that took place in divers localities thereafter depended naturally on the point to which local civilisations had respectively advanced in the pre-Mycenæan period.

As to the decorative motives in vogue, there is less uniformity. The earlier Mycenæan vessels have curvilinear and generally spiraliform geometric schemes. These pass into naturalistic vegetable forms, and finally become in the finest typical vases almost exclusively marine—algæ, octopods, molluscs, shells, in many combinations. Everywhere animal, bird, and human forms are but seldom found. Man certainly appears very late, and in company with the oriental motives which characterise the Spata objects. Insects, especially butterflies, become common, and when their antennæ terminate in exquisite spirals, decorative art is at the end of its progress.

Not only in the continuous and universal commentary of painted earthenware, but in many other media, we have evidence of “Mycenæan” art, but varying in character according to the local abundance or variety of particular materials. We have reached an age when the artist had at his disposal not only terra-cotta, hard and soft stone, and wood, but much metal, gold, silver, lead, copper, bronze containing about twelve per cent. of tin alloy, as well as bone and ivory, and various compositions from soft lime plaster up to opaque glass. If it were not for the magnificent stone utensils, in the guise of lioness heads, triton shells, palm and lotus capitals, with spirals in relief, miniature shields for handles, which have come to light at Knossos, we should have supposed stone to be a material used (except architecturally) only for such rude metallic-seeming reliefs as stood over the Mycenæ gate and circle graves, or for heavy commonplace vases and lamps.

We have discovered no large free statuary in the round in any material as yet, though part of a hand at Knossos speaks to its existence; but figurines in metal, painted terra-cotta, and ivory, replacing the earlier stone idols, are fairly abundant. For these bronze is by far the commonest medium, and two types prevail; a female with bell-like or flounced divided skirt, and hair coiled or hanging in tails, and a male, nude but for a loin-cloth. The position of the hands and legs varies with the skill of the artist, as in all archaic statuary. Knossos has revealed for the first time the Mycenæan artist’s skill in painted plaster-relief (gesso duro). The life-size bull’s head from the northern entrance of the palace and fragments of human busts challenge comparison triumphantly with the finest Egyptian work. And from the same site comes the fullest assurance of a high development of fresco-painting.

Tiryns had already shown us a galloping bull on its palace wall, Mycenæ smaller figures and patterns, and Phylakopi its panel of flying-fish; but Knossos is in advance of all with its processions of richly dressed vase-carriers,[47] stiff in general pose and incorrect in outline, but admirably painted in detail and noble in type; and its yet more novel scenes of small figures, in animated act of dance or ritual or war, irresistibly suggestive of early Attic vase-painting. Precious fragments of painted transparencies in rock-crystal have also survived, and both Mycenæ and Knossos have yielded stone with traces of painted design. Moulded glass of a cloudy blue-green texture seems to belong to the later period, at which carved ivory, previously rare, though found even in pre-Mycenæan strata, becomes common. The Spata tomb in Attica alone yielded 730 pieces of the latter material, helmeted heads in profile, mirror handles and sides of coffers of orientalising design, plaques with outlines of heraldic animals, and so forth. Articles in paste and porcelain of native manufacture, though often of exotic design, have been found most commonly where Eastern influence is to be expected; for instance, at Enkomi in Cyprus. But the glassy blue composition, known to Homer as κύανος, an imitation of lapis-lazuli, was used in architectural ornament at Tiryns.

But it is in precious metals, and in the kindred technique of gem-cutting, that Mycenæan art effects its most distinctive achievements. This is, as we have said, an age of metal. That stone implements had not entirely passed out of use is attested by the obsidian arrow-heads found in the circle graves, and the flint knives and basalt axes which lay beside vases of the full “Mycenæan” style at Cozzo del Pantano in Sicily. But they are survivals, unimportant beside the objects in copper, bronze, and precious metals. Iron has been found with remains of the period only as a great rarity. Some five rings, a shield boss, and formless lumps alone represent it at Mycenæ. In the fourth circle grave occurred thirty-four vessels of nearly pure copper. Silver makes its appearance before gold, and is found moulded into bracelets and bowls, and very rarely into figurines. Gold is more plentiful. Beaten, it makes face-masks, armlets, pendants, diadems, and all kinds of small votive objects; drawn, it makes rings whose bezels are engraved with the burin; riveted, it makes cups; and overlaid as leaf on bone, clay, wood, or bronze cores, it adorns hundreds of discs, buttons, and blades.

Next to Mycenæ in wealth of this metal ranks Enkomi in Cyprus, and pretty nearly all the tombs of the later period have yielded gold, conspicuously that of Vaphio. From the town sites, e.g., Phylakopi in Melos, and Knossos, it has disappeared almost entirely. Detached from the mass of golden objects which show primitive or tentative technique, are a few of such elaborate finish and fineness of handiwork, that it is hard to credit them to the same period and the same craftsmen. The Mycenæ inlaid dagger-blades are famous examples, and the technical skill, which beat out each of the Vaphio goblets in a single unriveted plate, has never been excelled.

We are fortunate in possessing very considerable remains of all kinds of construction and structural ornament of the Mycenæan period. The great walls of Mycenæ, of Tiryns (though perhaps due to an earlier epoch), and of the sixth layer at Hissarlik, show us the simple scheme of fortification—massive walls with short returns and corner towers, but no flank defences, approached by ramps or stairs from within and furnished with one great gate and a few small sally-ports. Chambers in the thickness of the wall seem to have served for the protection of stores rather than of men. The great palaces at Knossos and Phæstos, however, are of much more complicated plan. Remains of much architectural decoration have been found in these palaces—at Mycenæ, frescoes of men and animals; at Knossos, frescoes of men, fish, and sphinxes, vegetable designs, painted reliefs, and rich[48] conventional ornament, such as an admirably carved frieze in hard limestone; at Tiryns, traces of a frieze inlaid with lapis-lazuli glass, and also frescoes. The rough inner walls, that appear now on these sites, must once have looked very different.

Certain chambers at Knossos, paved and lined with gypsum, and two in Melos, have square central piers. These seem to have had a religious significance, and are possibly shrines devoted to pillar-worship. The houses of the great dead were hardly less elaborate. The “Treasury of Atreus” had a moulded façade with engaged columns in a sort of proto-Doric order and marble facing; and there is good reason to suppose that its magnificent vault was lined within with metal ornament or hanging draperies. The construction itself of this and the other masonry domes bespeaks skill of a high order. For lesser folk beehive excavations were made in the rock, and at the latest period a return was made apparently to the tetragonal chamber; but now it has a pitched or vaulted roof, and generally a short passage of approach whose walls converge overhead towards a pointed arch but do not actually meet. The corpses are laid on the floor, neither mummified nor cremated; but in certain cases they were possibly mutilated and “scarified,” and the limbs were then enclosed in chest urns. There is evidence for this both in Crete and Sicily. But the order of burial, which first made Mycenæan civilisation known to the modern world, continues singular. Similar shaft graves, whether contained within a circle of slabs or not, have never been found again.

The latest excavation has at last established beyond all cavil that the civilisation which was capable of such splendid artistic achievement was not without a system of written communication. Thousands of clay tablets (many being evidently labels) and a few inscriptions on pottery from the palace at Knossos have confirmed Mr. A. J. Evans’ previous deduction, based on gems, masons’ and potters’ marks, and one short inscription on stone found in the Dictæan cave, that more than one script was in use in the period. Most of the Knossos tablets are written in an upright linear alphabetic or syllabic character, often with the addition of ideographs, and showing an intelligible system of decimal numeration. Since many of the same characters have been found in use as potters’ marks on sherds in Melos, which are of earlier date than the Mycenæan period, the later civilisation cannot be credited with their invention. Other clay objects found at Knossos, as well as gems from the east of Crete, show a different system more strictly pictographic. This seems native to the island, and to have survived almost to historic times; but the origin of the linear system is more doubtful. No such tablets or sealings have yet been found outside Crete, and their writing remains undeciphered. The affinities of the linear script seem to be with the Asianic systems, Cypriote and Hittite, and perhaps with later Greek. The characters are obviously not derived from the Phœnician.

This Mycenæan civilisation, as we know it from its remains, belongs to the Ægean area (i.e., roughly the Greek), and to no other area with which we are at present acquainted. It is apparently not the product of any of the elder races which developed culture in the civilised areas to the east or southeast, much as it owed to those races. It would be easy to add to the singular vase-forms, script, lustrous paint, idols, gems, types of house and tomb, and so forth, already mentioned, a long list of Mycenæan decorative schemes which, even if their remote source lies in Egypt, Babylonia, or inner Anatolia, are absolutely peculiar in their treatment. But style is conclusive. From first to last the persistent influence of a true artistic ideal differentiates[49] Mycenæan objects from the hieratic or stylised products of Egypt or Phœnicia. A constant effort to attain symmetry and decorative effect for its own sake inspires the geometric designs. Those taken from organic life show continual reference to the model and a “naturalistic grasp of the whole situation,” which resists convention and often ignores decorative propriety. The human form is fearlessly subjected to experiment, the better to attain lightness, life, and movement in its portrayal. A foreign motive is handled with a breadth and vitality which renders its new expression practically independent. The conventional bull of an Assyrian relief was referred to the image of a living bull by the Knossian artist, and made to express his emotions of fear or wrath by the Vaphio goldsmith, the Cypriote worker in ivory mirror handles, or the “island-gem” cutter.

Since we have a continuous series of links by which the development of the characteristic Mycenæan products can be traced within the area back to very primitive forms, we can fearlessly assert that not only did the full flower of the Mycenæan civilisation proper belong to the Ægean area, but also its essential origin. That it came to have intimate relations with other contemporary civilisations, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, perhaps “Hittite,” and early began to contract a huge debt, especially to Egypt, is equally certain. Not to mention the certainly imported Nilotic objects found on Mycenæan sites, and bearing hieroglyphic inscriptions and cartouches of Pharaonic personages, the later Ægean culture is deeply indebted to the Nile for forms and decorative motives.

At what epoch did Ægean civilisation reach its full development? It is little use to ask when it arose. A terminus a quo in the Neolithic Age can be dated only less vaguely than a geological stratum. But it is known within fairly definite limits when it ceased to be a dominant civilisation. Nothing but derived products of sub-Mycenæan style falls within the full Iron Age in the Ægean. Bronze, among useful metals, accompanies almost alone the genuine Mycenæan objects, at Enkomi in Cyprus, as at Mycenæ. This fact supplies a terminus ad quem, to which a date may be assigned at least as precise as scholars assign to the Homeric lays. For these represent a civilisation spread over the same area and in process of transition from bronze to iron, and if they fall in the ninth century B.C., then the Mycenæan period proper ends a little earlier, at any rate in the West. It is possible, indeed probable, that in Asia Minor and Cyprus, where the descent of northern tribes about 1000 B.C., remembered by the Greeks as the “Dorian Invasion,” did not have any direct effect, the Mycenæan culture survived longer in something like purity, and passed by an uninterrupted process of development into the[50] Hellenic; and even in Crete, where there was certainly a cataclysm, and in the Argolid, where art was temporarily eclipsed about the tenth century, earlier influence survived and came once more to the surface when peace was restored. Persistence of artistic influence under a new order, and differences in the artistic history of different districts widely sundered, have to be taken into account. The appearance, e.g., of late Mycenæan objects in Cyprus, does not necessarily falsify the received Mycenæan dates in mainland Greece.

For the main fact, however, viz., the age of greatest florescence all over the area, a singular coincidence of testimony points to the period of the XVIIIth Pharaonic Dynasty in Egypt. To this dynasty refer all the scarabs or other objects inscribed with royal cartouches (except an alabaster lid from Knossos, bearing the name of the earlier “Shepherd King,” Khyan), as yet actually found with true Mycenæan objects, even in Cyprus. In a tomb of this period at Thebes was found a bronze patera of fine Mycenæan style. At Tel-el-Amarna, the site of a capital city which existed only in the reign of Amenhotep IV, have been unearthed by far the most numerous fragments of true “Ægean” pottery found in Egypt; and of that singular style which characterises Tel-el-Amarna art, the art of the Knossian frescoes is irresistibly suggestive. To the XVIIIth and two succeeding dynasties belong the tomb-paintings which represent vases of Ægean form; and to these same dynasties Mr. Petrie’s latest comparisons between the fabrics, forms, and decorative motives of Egypt and Mycenæ have led him. The lapse of time between the eighteenth and the tenth centuries is by no means too long, in the opinion of most competent authorities, to account for the changes which take place in Mycenæan art.

The question of race, which derives a special interest from the possibility of a family relation between the Mycenæan and the subsequent Hellenic stocks, is a controversial matter as yet. The light recently thrown on Mycenæan cult does not go far to settle the racial problem. The aniconic ritual, involving tree and pillar symbols of divinity, which prevailed at one period, also prevailed widely elsewhere than in the Ægean, and we are not sure of the divinity symbolised. Even if sure that it was the Father God, whose symbol alike in Crete and Caria is the labrys or double axe, we could not say if Caria or Crete were prior, and whether the Father be Aryan or Semitic or neither.

When it is remembered that, firstly, knowing not a word of the Mycenæan language, we are quite ignorant of its affinities; secondly, not enough Mycenæan skulls have yet been recovered to establish more than the bare fact that the race was mixed and not wholly Asiatic; and thirdly, since identity of civilisation in no sense necessarily entails identity of race, we may have to do not with one or two, but with many races—it will be conceded that it is more useful at present to attempt to narrow the issue by excluding certain claimants than to pronounce in favour of any one. The facial types represented not only on the Knossian frescoes, but by statuettes and gems, are distinctly non-Asiatic, and recall strongly the high-crowned brachycephalic type of the modern northern Albanians and Cretan hillmen. Of the elder civilised races about the Levantine area the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians may be dismissed at once. We know their art from beginning to end, and its character is not at any period the same as that of Ægean art. As for the Phœnicians, for whom on the strength of Homeric tradition a strong claim has been put forward, it cannot be said to be impossible that some objects thought to be Mycenæan are of Sidonian origin, since we know little or nothing of Sidonian art. But the presumption against this[51] Semitic people having had any serious share in Mycenæan development is strong, since facial types apart, the only scripts known to have been used in the Mycenæan area and period are in no way affiliated to the Phœnician alphabet, and neither the characteristic forms nor the characteristic style of Phœnician art, as we know it, appear in Mycenæan products. The one thing, of which recent research has assured us in this matter, is this, that the Keftiu, represented in XVIIIth Dynasty tombs at Thebes, were a “Mycenæan” folk, an island people of the northern sea. They came into intimate contact, both peaceful and warlike, with Egypt, and to them no doubt are owed the Ægean styles and products found on Nile sites. Exact parallels to their dress and products, as represented by Egyptian artists, appear in the work of Cretan artists; and it is now generally accepted that the Keftiu were “Mycenæans” of Crete at any rate, whatever other habitat they may have possessed.

As to place of origin, Central Europe or any western or northern part of the continent is out of the question. Mycenæan art is shown by various remains to have moved westwards and northwards, not vice versa. It arose within the Ægean area, in the Argolid as some, e.g., the Heræum excavators, seem to propose, or the Cyclades, or Rhodes; or, if outside, then the issue is narrowed for practical purposes to a region about which we know next to nothing as yet, northern Libya, and to Asia Minor. So far as the Mycenæan objects themselves testify, they point to a progress not from south or west, but from east. In the western localities, notably Crete and Mycenæ, we have more remains of highly developed Mycenæan civilisation, but less of its early stages than elsewhere. Nothing in the Argolid, but much in the Troad, prepares us for the Mycenæan metallurgy. The appearance of Mycenæan forms and patterns is abrupt in Crete, but graduated in other islands, especially Thera and Melos. The Cretan linear script seems to be of “Asianic” family, and to be inscribed in Melos on sherds of earlier date than its appearance at Knossos. Following Mycenæan development backwards in this manner, we seem to tend towards the Anatolian coasts of the Ægean, and especially the rich and little-known areas of Rhodes and Caria.

It does not advance seriously the solution of the racial problem to turn to Greek literary tradition. Now that we are assured of the wide range and the long continuance of the influence of Mycenæan civilisation, overlapping the rise of Hellenic art, we can hardly question that the early peoples whom the Greeks knew as Pelasgi, Minyæ, Leleges, Danai, Carians, and so forth, shared in it. But were they its authors? and who, after all, were they themselves? The Greeks believed them their own kin, but what value are we to attach to the belief of an age to which scientific ethnology and archæology were unknown? Nor is it useful to select traditions, e.g., to accept those about the Pelasgi, and to override those which connect the Achæans equally closely with Mycenæan centres. We are gradually learning that the classical Hellene was of no pure race, but the result of a blend of several racial stocks, into which those pre-existing in his land can hardly fail to have entered; and if we have been able to determine that Mycenæan art was distinguished by just that singular quality of idealism which is of the essence of the art which succeeded it in the same area (whatever be the racial connection), it can scarcely be doubted in reason that Mycenæan civilisation was in some sense the parent of the later civilisation of Hellas. In fact, now that the Mycenæan remains are no longer to be regarded as isolated phenomena on Greek soil, but are seen to be intimately connected on[52] the one hand with a large class of objects which carry the evolution of civilisation in the Ægean area itself back to the Stone Age, and on the other with the earlier products of Hellenic development, the problem is no longer purely one of antiquarian ethnology. We ask less what race was so greatly gifted, than what geographical or other circumstances will account for the persistence of a certain peculiar quality of civilisation in the Ægean area.b An eloquent summary of our Mycenæan knowledge and a lively description of life such as it may have been in Mycenæ has been drawn by Chrestos Tsountas and J. Irving Manatt in their work, The Mycenæan Age, from which we quote at length.

THE PROBLEM OF MYCENÆAN CHRONOLOGY

Whether or not the authors of this distinct and stately civilisation included among their achievements a knowledge of letters, their monuments thus far address us only in the universal language of form and action. Of their speech we have yet to read the first syllable. The vase handles of Mycenæ may have some message for us, if no more than a pair of heroic names; and the nine consecutive characters from the cave of Cretan Zeus must have still more to say when we find the key. We may hope, at least, if this ancient culture ever recovers its voice, to find it not altogether unfamiliar: we need not be startled if we catch the first lisping accent of what has grown full and strong in the Achæan epic.

But for the present we have to do with a dumb age, with a race whose artistic expression amazes us all the more in the dead silence of their history. So far as we yet know from their monuments, they have recorded not one fixed point in their career, they have never even written down their name as a people.

Now, a dateless era and a nameless race—particularly in the immediate background of the stage on which we see the forces of the world’s golden age deploying—are facts to be accepted only in the last resort. The student of human culture cannot look upon the massive walls, the solemn domes, the exquisite creations of what we call Mycenæan art, without[53] asking—When? By whom? In default of direct and positive evidence, he will make the most of the indirect and probable.

We have taken a provisional and approximate date for the meridian age of Mycenæan culture—namely, from the sixteenth to the twelfth century B.C. We have also assumed that the Island culture was already somewhat advanced as far back as the earlier centuries of the second millennium before our era. This latter datum is based immediately on geological calculations: M. Fouqué, namely, has computed a date circa 2000 B.C. for the upheaval which buried Thera, and thus preserved for us the primitive monuments of Ægean civilisation. Whatever be the value of Fouqué’s combinations—and they have been vigorously, if not victoriously, assailed—we may reach a like result by another way round. The Island culture is demonstrably older than the Mycenæan—it must have attained the stage upon which we find it at Thera a century or two at least before the bloom-time came in Argolis. If, then, we can date that bloom-time, we can control within limits the geologists’ results.

Here we call in the aid of Egyptology. In Greece we find datable Egyptian products in Mycenæan deposits, and conversely in datable Egyptian deposits we find Mycenæan products.

To take the first Mycenæan finds in Egypt. In a tomb of 1100 B.C., or within fifty years of that either way, at Kahun, Flinders Petrie found along with some dozens of bodies, “a great quantity of pottery, Egyptian, Phœnician, Cypriote, and Ægean”—notably an Ægean vase with an ivy leaf and stalk on each side, which he regards as the beginning of natural design. Further, at Gurob and elsewhere, the same untiring explorer has traced the Mycenæan false-necked vase or Bügelkanne through a series of dated stages, “a chain of examples in sequence showing that the earliest geometrical pottery of Mycenæ begins about 1400 B.C., and is succeeded by the beginning of natural designs about 1100 B.C.”

But long before these actual Mycenæan products came to light in Egypt, Egyptian art had told its story of relations with the Ægean folk. On the tomb-frescoes of Thebes we see pictured in four groups the tributaries of Tehutimes III (about 1500 B.C.), bringing their gifts to that great conqueror; among them, as we are told by the hieroglyphic text that runs with the painting, are “the princes of the land of Keftu [or Kefa] (Phœnicia) and of the islands in the great sea.” And the tribute in their hands includes vases of distinct Mycenæan style.

On the other hand, we find datable Egyptian products in Mycenæan deposits in Greece. From Mycenæ itself and from Ialysos in Rhodes we have scarabs bearing the cartouches of Amenhotep III and of his queen Thi; and fragments of Egyptian porcelain, also from Mycenæ, bear the cartouches of the same king, whose reign is dated to the latter half of the fifteenth century.

We have already noted the recurrence at Gurob, Kahun, and Tel-el-Amarna of the characters which were first found on the vase handles of Mycenæ; and this seemed at one time to have an important bearing on Mycenæan chronology. But in the wider view of the subject which has been opened up by Evans’ researches, this can no longer be insisted upon as an independent datum. However, the occurrence of these signs in a town demonstrably occupied by Ægean peoples at a given date has corroborative value.

While it can hardly be claimed that any or all of these facts amount to final proof, they certainly establish a strong probability that at least from the fifteenth century B.C. there was traffic between Egypt and the Mycenæan[54] world. Whatever be said for the tomb-frescoes of Tehutimes’ foreign tribute-bearers and the scarabs from Mycenæ and Rhodes, we cannot explain away Mr. Petrie’s finds in the Fayum. The revelations of Tel-Gurob can leave no doubt that the brief career of the ancient city on that spot—say from 1450 to 1200 B.C.—was contemporaneous with the bloom-time of Mycenæan civilisation.

Now most, if not all, of the “Ægean” pottery from Gurob, like that pictured in the tomb-frescoes, belongs to the later Mycenæan styles as we find them in the chamber-tombs and ruined houses—in the same deposits, in fact, with the scarabs and broken porcelain which carry the cartouches of Amenhotep and Queen Thi. The earlier period of Mycenæan art is thus shown to be anterior to the reign of Tehutimes III; and as that period cannot conceivably be limited to a few short generations, the sixteenth century is none too early for the upper limit of the Mycenæan Age. We should, perhaps, date it at least a century farther back. Thus we approximate the chronology to which M. Fouqué has been led by geological considerations; while, on the other hand, more recent inquirers are inclined to reduce by a century or two the antiquity of the convulsion in which Thera perished, and thus approximate our own datum.

For the lower limit of the Mycenæan Age we have taken the twelfth century, though certain archæologists and historians are inclined to a much more recent date—some even bringing it three or four centuries further down.

This is not only improbable on its face, but at variance with the facts. To take but one test, the Mycenæan Age hardly knew the use of iron; at Mycenæ itself it was so rare that we find it only in an occasional ornament such as a ring. No iron was found in the prehistoric settlements at Hissarlik until 1890, when Dr. Schliemann came across two lumps of the metal, one of which had possibly served as the handle of a staff. “It is therefore certain,” he says, “that iron was already known in the second or ‘burnt city’; but it was probably at that time rarer and more precious than gold.” In Egypt, on the other hand, iron was known as early as the middle of the second millennium B.C., and if the beehive and chamber-tombs at Mycenæ are to be assigned to a period as late as the ninth century, the rare occurrence of iron in them becomes quite inexplicable.

The Testimony of Art

From the seventeenth or sixteenth to the twelfth century B.C., then, we may regard as the bloom-time of Mycenæan culture, and of the race or races who wrought it out. But we need not assume that their arts perished with their political decline. Even when that gifted people succumbed to or blended with another conquering race, their art, especially in its minor phases, lived on, though under less favouring conditions. There were no more patrons like the rich and munificent princes of Tiryns and Mycenæ; and domed tombs with their wealth of decoration were no longer built. Still, certain types of architecture, definitively wrought out by the Mycenæans, became an enduring possession of Hellenic art, and so of the art of the civilised world; while from other Mycenæan types were derived new forms of equally far-reaching significance.

The correspondence of the gateways at Tiryns with the later Greek propylæa, and that of the Homeric with the prehistoric palaces, is noteworthy; so, too, is the obvious derivation of the typical form of the Greek[55] temple, consisting of vestibule and cella, from the Mycenæan magaron. That the Doric column is of the same lineage is a fact long ago recognised by the ablest authorities. In fact, the Mycenæan pillars known to us, whether in actual examples as embedded in the façades of the two beehive tombs or in art representations, as in the lion relief and certain ivory models, while varying in important details, exhibit now one, now another of the features of the Doric column. Thus, all have in common abacus, echinus, and cymatium—the last member adorned with ascending leaves just as in the earliest capitals of the Doric order. Again, the Doric fluting is anticipated in the actual pilasters of “Clytemnestra’s tomb,” and in an ivory model. And as the Doric column has no base, but rests directly on the stylobate, so the wooden pillars in the Mycenæan halls appear to rise directly from the ground in which their stone bases are almost entirely embedded.

That Mycenæan art outlasted the social régime under which it had attained its splendid bloom is sufficiently attested by the Homeric poems. Doubtless, the Achæan system, when it fell before the aggressive Dorian, must have left many an heirloom above ground, as well as those which its tombs and ruins had hidden down to our own day. And, again, the poems in their primitive strata undoubtedly reflect the older order, and offer us many a picture at first hand of a contemporary age. Thus the dove-cup of Mycenæ, or another from the same hand, may have been actually known to the poet who described old Nestor’s goblet in our eleventh Iliad; and the cyanos frieze of Tiryns may well have inspired the singer of the Phæacian tale, or at least helped out his fancy in decorating Alcinous’ palace. Still, it is in the more recent strata of the poems that we find the great transcripts of art-creations and the clearest indications of the very processes met with in the monuments. To take but one instance, there is the shield of Achilles forged at Thetis’ intercession by Hephæstus and emblazoned with a series of scenes from actual mundane life. (Iliad, XVIII. 468-613.) The subjects are at once Mycenæan and Homeric. On the central boss, for example, the Olympian smith “wrought the earth and the heavens and the sea and the unwearying sun,” very much as the Mycenæan artist sets sun, moon, and sky in the upper field of his great signet. Again, the city under siege, while “on the walls to guard it, stand their dear wives and infant children, and with these the old men,” appears to be almost a transcript of the scene which still stirs our blood as we gaze upon the beleaguered town on the silver cup. But it is less the subject than the technique that reveals artistic heredity, and when we find Homer’s Olympian craftsman employing the selfsame process in the forging of the shield which we can now see for ourselves in the inlaid swords of Mycenæ, we can hardly doubt that that process was still employed in the poet’s time.

In this sense of an aftermath of art, Mycenæan influence outlasted by centuries the overthrow of Mycenæan power; and the fact is one to be considered in establishing a chronology. We have taken as our lower limit the catastrophe in which the old order at Mycenæ and elsewhere obviously came to an end. But the old stock survived,—“scattered and peeled” though it must have been,—and carried on, if it did not teach the conqueror, their old arts. If we are to comprehend within the Mycenæan Age all the centuries through which we can trace this Mycenæan influence, then we shall bring that age down to the very dawn of historical Greece. In this view it is no misnomer to speak of the Æginetan gold find recently acquired by the British Museum as a Mycenæan treasure.

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THE PROBLEM OF THE MYCENÆAN RACE

We have seen that Mycenæan art was no exotic, transplanted full grown into Greece, but rather a native growth—influenced though it was by the earlier civilisations of the Cyclades and the East. This indigenous art, distinct and homogeneous in character, no matter whence came its germs and rudiments, must have been wrought out by a strong and gifted race. That it was of Hellenic stock we have assumed to be self-evident. But, as this premise is still in controversy, we have to inquire whether (aside from art) there are other considerations which make against the Hellenic origin of the Mycenæan peoples, and compel us to regard them as immigrants from the islands or the Orient.

In the first place, recalling the results of our discussion of domestic and sepulchral architecture, we observe that neither in the Ægean nor in Syria do we find the gable-roof which prevails at Mycenæ. Nor would the people of these warm and dry climates have occasion to winter their herds in their own huts—an ancestral custom to which we have traced the origin of the avenues to the beehive tombs.

Again, we have seen reason to refer the shaft-graves to a race or tribe other than that whose original dwelling we have recognised in the sunken hut. To this pit-burying stock we have assigned the upper-story habitations at Mycenæ. If we are right, now, in explaining this type of dwelling as a reminiscence of the pile-hut, it would follow that this stock, too, was of northern origin. The lake-dwelling habit, we know, prevailed throughout Northern Europe, an instance occurring, as we have seen, even in the Illyrian peninsula; while we have no reason to look for its origin to the Orient or the Ægean. It is indeed true that the island-folk were no strangers to the pile-dwelling, but this rather goes to show that they were colonists from the mainland.

But, apart from the evidence of the upper-story abodes, are there other indications of an element among the Mycenæan people which had once actually dwelt in lakes or marshes?

Monuments like the stone models from Melos and Amorgos have not indeed been found in the Peloponnesus, or on the mainland, but in default of such indirect testimony we have the immediate witness of actual settlements. Of the four most famous cities of the age, Mycenæ, Tiryns, Orchomenos, and Amyclæ, it is a singular fact that but one has a mountain-site, while the other three were once surrounded by marshes. The rock on which Tiryns is built, though it rises to a maximum elevation of some sixty feet above the plain, yet sinks so low on the north that the lower citadel is only a few feet[57] above the level of the sea. Now this plain, as Aristotle asserts, and as the nature of the ground still bears witness, was originally an extensive morass. The founders, therefore, must have chosen this rock for their settlement, not because it was a stronghold in itself, but because it was protected by the swamp out of which it rose.

What is true of Tiryns holds for Orchomenos as well. The original site was down in the plain until the periodic inundations of the lake forced the inhabitants to rebuild on the slopes of Mount Acontion; and Orchomenos was not the only primitive settlement in this great marsh. Tradition tells us also of Athenæ, Eleusis, Arne, Midea—cities which had long perished, and were but dimly remembered in historic times. To one of these, or to some other whose name has not come down to us, belong the remarkable remains on the Island of Goulas or Gha, which is connected with the shore by an ancient mole. During the Greek Revolution this island-fort was the refuge of the neighbouring population who found greater security there than in the mountains.

It is usually held that, when these Copaïc cities were founded, the region was in the main drained and arable, whereas afterwards, the natural outlets being choked up, the imprisoned waters flooded the plain, turned it into a lake, and so overwhelmed the towns. But, obviously, this is reversing the order of events. To have transformed the lake into a plain and kept it such would have demanded the co-operation of populous communities in the construction of costly embankments and perpetual vigilance in keeping them intact. Where were such organised forces to be found at a time anterior to the foundation of the cities themselves? Is it not more reasonable to believe that the builders of these cities—instead of finding Copaïs an arable plain, and failing to provide against its inundation—were induced by the very fact of its being a lake to establish themselves in it upon natural islands like the rock of Goulas, on artificial elevations, or even in pile-settlements? It is possible, indeed, that on some unusual rise of the waters, towns were submerged, but it is quite as probable that without any such catastrophe the inhabitants finally abandoned these of their own accord to settle in higher, healthier, and more convenient regions.

The case of Amyclæ is no exception. The prehistoric as well as the historic site is probably to be identified with that of the present village of Mahmud Bey, some five miles south of Sparta. The ground is low and wet, and in early times was undoubtedly a marsh.

In the plain of Thessaly, again, we may trace the same early order. There, where tradition (backed by the conclusions of modern science) tells us that the inflowing waters used to form stagnant lakes, we find low artificial mounds strewn with primitive potsherds. On these mounds, Lolling holds, the people pitched their settlements to secure them against overflow.

The choice of these marshy or insulated sites is all the more singular from the environment. Around Lake Copaïs, about Tiryns and Amyclæ, as well as in Thessaly, rise mountains which are nature’s own fastnesses and which would seem to invite primitive man to their shelter. The preference for these lowland or island settlements then, can only be explained in the first instance by immemorial custom, and, secondly, by consequent inexperience in military architecture. Naturally, a lake-dwelling people will be backward in learning to build stone walls strong enough to keep off a hostile force. And in default of such skill, instead of settling on the mountain slopes, they would in their migrations choose sites affording the best natural fortifications akin to their ancient environment of marsh or lake—reinforcing this on occasion by a moat, an embankment, or a pile-platform.

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That the people in question once actually followed this way of living is beyond a doubt. Amyclæ shows no trace of wall, and probably never had any beyond a mere earthwork. The Cyclopean wall of Tiryns, as it now stands, does not belong to the earliest settlement, nor is it of uniform date. Adler holds that the first fortress must have been built of wood and sun-dried bricks. This construction may possibly account for those remarkable galleries whose origin and function are not yet altogether clear. The mere utility of the chambers for storage—a purpose they did unquestionably serve—hardly answers to the enormous outlay involved in contriving them. May we not, then, recognise in them a reminiscence of the primitive palisade-earthwork? In the so-called Lower Citadel of Tiryns we find no such passages, possibly because its Cyclopean wall was built at a later date. Likewise no proper galleries have yet been found at Mycenæ, and it is highly improbable that any such ever existed there. What had long been taken for a gallery in the north wall proves to be nothing but a little chamber measuring less than seven by twelve feet. Obviously, then, the gallery was not an established thing in fortress-architecture, and this fact shows that it did not originate with the builders of stone walls, but came to them as a heritage from earlier times and a more primitive art.

In fact, we find in the terramare of Italy palisade and earthwork fortifications so constructed that they may be regarded as a first stage in the development which culminates in the Tiryns galleries. The construction of the wall at Casione near Parma is thus described:[4] “Piles arranged in two parallel rows are driven in the ground with an inward slant so as to meet at the top, and this Δ-shaped gallery is then covered with earth. Along the inside of this embankment is carried a continuous series of square pens, built of beams laid one upon another, filled with earth and brushwood, and finally covered with a close-packed layer of sand and pebbles. This arrangement not only strengthens the wall but provides a level platform for its defenders.” Thus the space between these palisades would closely resemble the “arched” corridors of Tiryns, while the square pens (if covered over without being filled up) would correspond to the chambers.

These facts strengthen the inferences to which we have been led by our study of the stone models and the upper-story dwellings. And they point to the region beyond Mount Olympus as the earlier seat of this lake-dwelling contingent of the Mycenæan people as well as of their kinsmen of the earth-huts. And we have other evidence that the Mycenæan cities, at least the four of chief importance, were founded by a people who were not dependent on the sea and in whose life the pursuits of the sea were originally of little moment. Mycenæ and Orchomenos are at a considerable remove from the coast, while Amyclæ is a whole day’s journey from the nearest salt-water. Tiryns alone lies close to the sea-board; and, indeed, the waves of the Argolic Gulf must have washed yet nearer when its walls were reared. But, obviously, it was not the nearness of the sea that drew the founders to this low rock. For it is a harbourless shore that neighbours it, while a little farther down lies the secure haven of Nauplia guarded by the impregnable height of Palamedes; and it is yet to be explained why the Tirynthians, if they were a sea-faring people, did not build their city there. Again, the principal entrance to Tiryns is not on the side towards the sea, but on the east or landward side. This goes to show that even when the Cyclopean wall was built, certainly long after the first settlement, the people must have[59] been still devoted mainly to tilling the soil and tending flocks, occupations to which the fertile plain and marshy feeding grounds would invite them. So in historic times, also, the town appears to have lain to the east of the citadel, not between it and the sea.

Even if it be granted that these Mycenæan cities were settled by immigrants who came by sea, it does not follow that they were originally a sea-faring folk. The primitive Dorians were hardly a maritime people, yet Grote has shown that their conquest of the Peloponnesus was in part effected by means of a fleet which launched from the Malian Gulf; and their kinsmen, who settled in Melos, Thera, and Crete, in all probability, sailed straight from the same northern port.

The Minyæ, who founded Orchomenos, Curtius regards as pre-eminently a seafaring race; and he seeks to account for their inland settlement by assuming that they were quick to realise the wealth to be won by draining and tilling the swamp. But this is hardly tenable. Whatever our estimate of Minyan shrewdness, they must have had their experience in reclaiming swamp land yet to acquire and on this ground. It was the outcome of age-long effort in winning new fields from the waters and guarding them when won. The region invited settlement because it offered the kind of security to which they were wonted; the winning of wealth was not the motive but the fortunate result.

Again, if the Mycenæans had been from the outset a maritime race we should expect to find the ship figuring freely in their art-representations. But this is far from being the case. We have, at last, one apparent instance of the kind on a terra-cotta fragment found in the acropolis at Mycenæ in 1892. On this we seem to have a boat, with oars and rudder, and curved fore and aft like the Homeric νῆες ἀμφιέλισσαι. Below appear what we may take to be dolphins. But this unique example can hardly establish the maritime character of the Mycenæans.

Along with this unfamiliarity with ships, we have to remark also their abstinence from fish. In the remains of Tiryns and Mycenæ we have found neither a fish-hook nor a fish-bone, though we do find oysters and other shellfish such as no doubt could be had in abundance along the adjacent shores. In the primitive remains of the Italian terramare there is the same absence of anything that would suggest fishing or fish-eating; and, indeed, linguistic evidence confirms these observations. Greek and Latin have no common term for fish; and we may fairly conclude that the Græco-Italic stock before the separation were neither fishermen or fish-eaters. That they were slow to acquire a taste for fish, even after the separation, is attested not only by the negative evidence of their remains in the Argolid and on the Po but by the curious reticence of Homer. His heroes never go fishing but once and then only in the last pinch of famine—“when the bread was all spent from out the ship and hunger gnawed at their belly.”

Now that we find in Greece, five or six centuries earlier than the poems, a people in all probability hailing from the same region whence came the ancestors of the Homeric Greeks, with the same ignorance of, or contempt for, a fish diet, and building their huts on piles like the primitive Italians whose earthworks further appear to have set the copy for the Tirynthian galleries—can we doubt that this people sprung from the same root with the historic Greeks and their kinsmen of Italy? The conclusion appears so natural and so logical, that it must require very serious and solid objections to shake it. But, instead of that, our study of Mycenæan manners and institutions—both civil and religious—affords strong confirmation. In the[60] matter of dress we find the historical Greeks the heirs of the Mycenæans, and the armour of the Homeric heroes—when we get behind the epic glamour of it—differs little from what we know in the Mycenæan monuments.

While our knowledge of Mycenæan religion is vague at the best, and we must recognise in the dove-idols and dove-temples the insignia of an imported Aphrodite-cult, we have beyond a reasonable doubt also to recognise a genuine Hellenic divinity with her historical attributes clearly foreshadowed in Artemis. Again, while the Homeric Greeks themselves are not presented to us as worshippers of the dead after the custom avouched by the altar-pits of Mycenæ and Tiryns, we do find in the poems an echo at least of this cult, and among the later Hellenes it resumes the power of a living belief. So, though Homer seems to know cremation only, and this has been taken for full proof that the Mycenæans were not Greeks, the traces of embalming in the poems clearly point to an earlier custom of simple burial as we find it uniformly attested by the Mycenæan tombs. And, here, again, historical Greece reverts to the earlier way. In Greece proper, at least in Attica, the dead were not burned,—not even in the age of the Dipylon vases,—and yet the Athenians of that day were Greeks. So, among the earlier Italians, burial was the only mode of dealing with the dead, and the usage was so rooted in their habits that even after cremation was introduced some member of the body (e.g., a finger) was always cut off and buried intact. We need not repeat what we have elsewhere said of the funeral banquet, the immolation of victims, the burning of raiment—all bearing on the same conclusion and cumulating the evidence that the Greeks of Homer, and so of the historic age, are the lineal heirs of Mycenæan culture.

If the proof of descent on these lines is strong, it is strengthened yet more by all we can make out regarding the political and social organisation. That monarchy was the Mycenæan form of government is sufficiently attested by the strong castles, each taken up in large part by a single princely mansion. But “the rule of one man” is too universal in early times to be a criterion of race. Far more significant is the evidence we have for a clan-system such as we afterwards find in full bloom among the Hellenes.

The clan, as we know it in historic times, and especially in Attica, was a factor of prime importance in civil, social, and religious life. It was composed of families which claim to be, and for the most part actually were, descended from a common ancestor. These originally lived together in clan-villages—of which we have clear reminiscences in the clan-names of certain Attic demes, as Boutadai, Perithoidai, Skanbonidai. Not only did the clan form a village by itself, but it held and cultivated its land in common. It built the clan-village on the clan-estate; and as the clansmen dwelt together in life, so in death they were not divided. Each clan had its burial-place in its own little territory, and there at the tomb it kept up the worship of its dead, and especially of its hero-founder.

That the Mycenæans lived under a like clan-system, the excavation of the tombs of the lower town has shown conclusively. The town was composed of villages more or less removed from one another, each the seat of a clan. We have no means of determining whether the land was held and tilled in common, but we do know that by each village lay the common clan-cemetery—a group of eight, ten, or more tombs, obviously answering to the number of families or branches of the clan. In the construction of the tombs, and in the offerings contained, we note at once differences between different cemeteries and uniformity in the tombs of the same group. The richest cemeteries lie nearer the acropolis, as the stronger clans would naturally[61] dwell nearer the king. Thus, for its population, Mycenæ covered a large area, but its limits were not sharply defined, and the transition from the citadel centre to the open country was not abrupt. The villages were linked together by graveyards, gardens and fields, highways and squares; thus the open settlement was indeed a πόλις εὐρυάγυια—a town of broad ways.

Somewhat such must have been the aspect in primitive days of Sparta and Athens, not to mention many other famous cities. Indeed, even in historic times, as we know from the ruins, Sparta was still made up of detached villages spread over a large territory for so small a population. So, primitive Athens was composed of the central settlement on the Acropolis, with the villages encircling it from Pnyx to Lycabettus and back again. When the city was subsequently walled in, some of these villages were included in the circuit, others were left outside, while still others (as the Ceramicus) were cut in two by the wall. The same thing happened at Mycenæ; the town wall was built simply because the fortress was an insufficient shelter for the populace as times grew threatening; but it could not, and did not, take in all the villages.

Such, briefly, is the objective evidence—the palpable facts—pointing to a race connection between the Mycenæans and the Greeks of history. We have, finally, to consider the testimony of the Homeric poems. Homer avowedly sings of heroes and peoples who had flourished in Greece long before his own day. Now it may be denied that these represent the civilisation known to us as Mycenæan; but it is certainly a marvellous coincidence (as Schuchhardth observes) that “excavations invariably confirm the former power and splendour of every city which is mentioned by Homer as conspicuous for its wealth or sovereignty.”

Of all the cities of Hellas, it is the now established centres of Mycenæan culture which the poet knows best and characterises with the surest hand. Mycenæ “rich in gold” is Agamemnon’s seat, and Agamemnon is lord of all Argos and many isles, and leader of the host at Troy. In Laconia, in the immediate neighbourhood of the tomb which has given us the famous Vaphio cups, is the royal seat of Menelaus, which is likened to the court of Olympian Zeus. Bœotian Orchomenos, whose wealth still speaks for itself in the Treasury of Minyas, is taken by the poet as a twin type of affluence with Egyptian Thebes, “where the treasure-houses are stored fullest.” Assuredly, no one can regard all this and many another true touch as mere coincidence. The poet knows whereof he affirms. He has exact knowledge of the greatness and bloom of certain peoples and cities at an epoch long anterior to his own, with which the poems have to do. And there is not one hint in either poem that these races and heroes were not of the poet’s own kin.

It might be assumed that there had once ruled in those cities an alien people, and that the monuments of Mycenæan culture were their legacy to us, but that the Achæans who came after them have entered into the inheritance of their fame. Such usurpations there have been in history; but the hypothesis is out of the question here. At Mycenæ, where exploration has been unusually thorough, the genuine Mycenæan Age is seen to have come to a sharp and sudden end—a catastrophe so overwhelming that we cannot conceive of any lingering bloom. Had the place passed to a people worthy to succeed to the glory of the race who reared its mighty walls and vaulted tombs, then we should look for remains of a different but not a contemptible civilisation. But, in fact, we find built directly on the ruins of[62] the Mycenæan palace mean and shabby huts which tell us how the once golden city was succeeded by a paltry village. Centuries were to pass before the Doric temple rose on the accumulated ruins of palace and hovels, and generations more before the brave little remnant returned with the laurels of Platæa and enough of the spoil (we may conjecture) to put the walls of the Atreidæ in repair.

If the structures peculiar to the Mycenæan age are the work of foreigners, what have we left for Agamemnon and his Achæans? Simply the hovels. Of the Dipylon pottery, with which it is proposed to endow them, there is none worth mentioning at Mycenæ, very little at Tiryns, hardly a trace at Amyclæ, or Orchomenos. In the Mycenæan acropolis, particularly, very few fragments of this pottery have been found, and that mainly in the huts already mentioned. Can these be the sole traces of the power and pride of the Atreidæ?

For us at least the larger problem of nationality is solved; but there is a further question. Can we determine the race or races among the Greeks known to history to whom the achievements of Mycenæan civilisation are to be ascribed? In this inquiry we may set aside the Dorians, although many scholars (especially among the Germans) still claim for them the marvellous remains of the Argolid. The Homeric poems, they say, describe a state of things subsequent to the Dorian migration into the Peloponnesus and consequent upon the revolution thereby effected. As the Dorians themselves hold sway at Mycenæ and Sparta, they must be the subjects of the poet’s song—the stately fabric of Mycenæan culture must be the work of their hands.

On the other hand, Beloch,i while accepting the Dorian theory of this civilisation, dismisses the traditional Dorian migration as a myth, and maintains that Dorian settlement in the Peloponnesus was as immemorial as the Arcadian. Just as the original advent of the Arcadians in the district which bears their name had faded out of memory and left no trace of a tradition, so the actual migration of the Dorians belonged to an immemorial past.

The first of these views which attributes the Mycenæan culture to the Dorians of the traditional migration, cannot stand the test of chronology. For tradition refers that migration to the end of the twelfth century B.C., whereas the Mycenæan people were established in the Argolid before the sixteenth, probably even before the twentieth century. While Beloch’s hypothesis is not beset with this chronological difficulty, it is otherwise quite untenable. For, as the excavations at Tiryns and Mycenæ abundantly prove, the Mycenæan civilisation perished in a great catastrophe. The palaces of both were destroyed by fire after being so thoroughly pillaged that scarcely a single bit of metal was left in the ruins. Further, they were never rebuilt; and the sumptuous halls of Mycenæ were succeeded by the shabby hovels of which we have spoken. The larger domes at Mycenæ, whose sites were known, were likewise plundered—in all probability by the same hands that fired the palace. This is evidenced by the pottery found in the hovels and before the doorways of two of the beehive tombs. A similar catastrophe appears to have cut short the career of this civilisation in the other centres where it had flourished.

How are we to account for this sudden and final overthrow otherwise than by assuming a great historic crisis, which left these mighty cities with their magnificent palaces only heaps of smoking ruins? And what other crisis can this have been than the irruption of the Dorians? And their descent into the Peloponnesus is traditionally dated at the very time which[63] other considerations have led us to fix as the lower limit of the Mycenæan Age. Had that migration never been recorded by the ancients nor attested by the state of the Peloponnesus in historic times, we should still be led to infer it from the facts now put in evidence by the archæologist’s spade.

Setting aside the Dorian claim as preposterous, we have nothing to do but follow the epic tradition. The Homeric poems consistently assume that prior to any Dorian occupation Argolis was inhabited by other peoples, and notably by Achæans whose position is so commanding that the whole body of Greeks before Troy usually go by their name. Their capital is Mycenæ, and their monarch Agamemnon, King of Men; although we find them also in Laconia under the rule of Menelaus. But the poet has other names, hardly less famous, applied now to the people of Argolis and now to the Greeks at large. One of these names (Ἀργεῖοι) is purely geographical, whether it be restricted to the narrow Argolid district or extended to the wider Argos, and has no special ethnological significance. But the other (Δαναοί) belonged to a people distinct from and, according to uniform tradition, more ancient than the Achæans. We find, then, two races in Argolis before the Dorian migration, each famous in song and story, and each so powerful that its name may stand for all the inhabitants of Greece. The Achæans occupy Mycenæ, that is to say, the northern mountain region of the district, while legend represents the Danaans as inseparably connected with Argos and the sea-board, and ascribes to them certain works of irrigation.

Whatever interpretation be put upon the myth, it seems clear that Argos could not feed its great cities without artificial irrigation, and this it owed to Danaus and his fifty daughters, “who were condemned perpetually to pour water in a tub full of holes,”—that is to say, into irrigation ditches which the thirsty soil kept draining dry.

Now our study of the Mycenæan remains has already constrained us to distinguish in the Argolid two strata of Mycenæan peoples, one of them originally dwelling on dry land in sunken huts, the other occupying pile settlements in lakes and swamps. And since tradition squares so remarkably with the facts in evidence, may we not venture to identify the marsh-folk with the Danaans and the landsmen with the Achæans?

But Achæans and Dorians were not alone in shaping and sharing Mycenæan culture; they had their congeners in other regions. Foremost among[64] these were the Minyan founders of Orchomenos. As lake-dwellers and hydraulic engineers they are assimilated to the Danaans, whose near kinsmen they may have been, as the primitive islanders, whose abode we have found copied in the stone vases, must have been related to them both. Tradition has, in fact, preserved an account of the colonisation of Thera by a people coming from Bœotia, although it is uncertain whether it refers to the original occupation or to a settlement subsequent to the great catastrophe.

From the Danao-Minyan stock, it would appear that the Achæans parted company at an early date and continuing for a time in a different—most probably a mountainous—country, there took on ways of living proper to such environment. Later than the Danaans, according to the consistent testimony of tradition, they came down into the Peloponnesus and by their superior vigour and prowess prevailed over the older stock.

To these two branches of the race we may refer the two classes of tombs. The beehive and chamber tombs, as we have seen, have their prototype in the sunken huts: they belong to the Achæans coming down from the colder north. The shaft-graves are proper to the Danaan marsh-men. At Tiryns we find a shaft-grave, but no beehive or chamber tomb. At Orchomenos the Treasury of Minyas stands alone in its kind against at least eight tholoi and sixty chamber-tombs at Mycenæ. Hence, wherever this type of tombs abounds we may infer that an Achæan stock had its seat, as at Pronoia, in Attica, Thessaly, and Crete. Against this it may be urged that precisely at the Achæan capital, and within its acropolis at that, we find the famous group of shaft-graves with their precious offerings, as well as humbler graves of the same type outside the circle. But this, in fact, confirms our view when we remember it was the Danaid Perseus who founded Mycenæ and that his posterity bore rule there until the sceptre passed to Achæan hands in the persons of the Pelopidæ.[5] We have noted the close correspondence of the original fortress at Mycenæ with that of Tiryns, and its subsequent enlargement. Coincident with this extension of the citadel, the new type of tomb makes its appearance in the great domes,—some of them certainly royal sepulchres,—although the grave-circle of the acropolis is but half occupied. That circle, however, ceases thenceforth to be used as a place of burial, while the humbler graves adjacent to it are abandoned and built over with dwellings. With the new type of tomb we note changes of burial customs, not to be accounted for on chronological grounds: in the beehive tombs the dead are never embalmed, nor do they wear masks, nor are they laid on pebble beds—a practice which may have owed its origin to the wet ground about Tiryns.

There is but one theory on which these facts can be fully explained. It is that of a change in the ruling race and dynasty, and it clears up the whole history of Mycenæ and the Argive Plain. The first Greek settlers occupied the marshy sea-board, where they established themselves at Tiryns and other points; later on, when they had learned to rear impregnable walls, many of them migrated to the mountains which dominated the plain and thus were founded the strongholds of Larissa, Midea, and Mycenæ.

But while the Danaans were thus making their slow march to the north the Achæans were advancing southward from Corinth—a base of great importance to them then and always, as we may infer from the network of Cyclopean highways between it and their new centre. At Mycenæ, already[65] a strong Perseid outpost, the two columns meet—when, we cannot say. But about 1500 B.C., or a little later, the Achæans had made themselves masters of the place and imposed upon it their own kings.

We have no tradition of any struggle in connection with this dynastic revolution, and it appears probable that the Achæans did not expel the older stock. On the contrary, they scrupulously respected the tombs of the Danaid dynasty—it may be, because they felt the claim of kindred blood. In manners and culture there could have been but little difference between them, for the Achæans had already entered the strong current of Mycenæan civilisation.

Indeed, we discern a reciprocal influence of the two peoples. Within certain of the Achæan tombs (as we may now term the beehives and rock chambers) we find separate shaft-graves, obviously recalling the Danaid mode of burial. On the other hand, it would appear that the typical Achæan tomb was adopted by the ruling classes among other Mycenæan peoples. Otherwise we cannot explain the existence of isolated tombs of this kind as at Amyclæ (Vaphio), Orchomenos, and Menidi—obviously the sepulchres of regal or opulent families; while the common people of these places—of non-Achæan stock—buried their dead in the ordinary oblong pits.

Achæan ascendency is so marked that the Achæan name prevails even where that stock forms but an inconsiderable element of the population. Notably this is true of Laconia, where the rare occurrence of the beehive tomb goes to show that the pre-Dorian inhabitants were mostly descended from the older stock, which we have encountered at Tiryns and at Orchomenos.d

FOOTNOTES

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[66]

CHAPTER III. THE HEROIC AGE

In thinking of the mythical period with its citations of fables about gods and goddesses galore and heroes unnumbered, one is apt to become the victim of a mental mirage. One can hardly escape imagining the period in question thus veiled in mystery and peopled with half mythical and altogether mystical figures as really having been a time when men and women lived an idyllic life. As one contemplates the period he intuitively falls into a day-dream in which there dance before him light-robed artistic figures moving in arcadian bowers, tenanted by nymphs and satyrs and centaurs. But when one awakes to a practical view he recognises of course that all this is an illusion. Reason tells him that this was a mythical age, simply because the people were not sufficiently civilised to make permanent historical records. They were half barbarians, living as pastoral peoples everywhere live, striving for food against wild beasts, protecting their herds, cultivating the soil, fighting their enemies. And yet, in a sense, their life was idyllic. Heroic elements were not altogether lacking; the men were trained athletes, whose developed muscles were a joy to look upon, and no doubt the women, despite a certain coarseness, shared something of that figure. Then the people themselves believed in the gods and nymphs and satyrs and centaurs of which we dream, and so in a sense their world was peopled with them: in a sense they did dwell in Arcady. Still one cannot disguise the fact that it was an Arcady which no modern, placed under similar restrictions, would care to enter.

In that early day writing was an unknown art in Hellas, and so the people as they emerged from their time of semi-civilisation brought with them no specific tangible records of the life of that period, but only fables and traditions to take the place of sober historical records. To the people themselves these fables and traditions bore, for a long time at any rate, a stamp of veritable truth. Even the most extravagant of their narratives of gods and godlike heroes were believed as implicitly, no doubt, by the major part of the people even at a comparatively late historical period, as we to-day believe the stories of an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a Napoleon. As time went on these fables became even more intimately fixed in the minds of the people through becoming embalmed in the verses of the poet and the lines of the tragedian. Here and there, to be sure, there was a man who questioned the authenticity of these tales as recitals of fact, but we may well believe that the generality of people, even of the most cultured class, preferred throughout the entire period of antiquity to accept the myths at their face value. Not only so, but for many generations later, throughout the period sometimes spoken of as the “Age of Faith” of the western world, a somewhat similar estimate[67] was put upon the Greek myths as recited by the classical authors. Even after the growth of scepticism and the development of the scientific spirit rendered the acceptance of the myths as recitals of fact impossible, for a long time it seemed little less than a sacrilege to think of severing them altogether from the realm of fact.

THE VALUE OF THE MYTHS

That, considered as historical narratives, they had been elaborated and their bald facts distorted by the creative imagination of a marvellous people, was clearly evident. No one, for example, in recent days would be expected to believe that the hero Achilles had been plunged into the river Styx by his mother and rendered thereby invulnerable except as to the heel by which he was held. But to doubt that the hero Achilles lived and accomplished such feats as were narrated in the Iliad would seem almost a blow at the existence of the most fascinating people of antiquity. There came a time, however, in comparatively recent generations when scepticism no longer hesitated to invade the ranks of the most time-honoured and best-beloved traditions, and when a warfare of words began between a set of critics, who would wipe the whole mass of Greek myths from the pages of history, and the champions of those myths who were but little disposed to give them up. Thus scepticism found an obvious measure of support in the clear fact that the mythical narratives could not possibly be received as authentic in their entirety. Further support was given to the sceptical party a little later by the study of comparative mythology, which showed to the surprise of many scholars that the Greek myths were by no means so unique in their character as had been supposed. It was shown that in the main they are closely paralleled by myths of other nations, and a theory was developed and advocated with much plausibility that they had been developed out of a superstitious regard of the sun and moon and elements, that most of them were, in short, what came to be called solar myths, and that they had no association whatever with the deeds of human historic personages.

Looking at the subject in the broadest way it, perhaps, does not greatly matter which view, as to the status of myths, is the true one. After all, the main purport of history in all its phases has value, not for what it tells us of the deeds of individual men or the conflicts of individual nations, but for what it can reveal of the process of the evolution of civilisation. Weighed by this standard, the beautiful myths of the Greeks are of value chiefly as revealing to us the essential status of the Greek mind in the early historical period, and the stage of evolution of that mind.

The beautiful myths of Greece cannot and must not be given up, and fortunately they need not. The view which Grote and the host of his followers maintained, practically solves the problem for the historian. He may retain the legend and gain from it the fullest measure of imaginative satisfaction; he may draw from it inferences of the greatest value as to the mental status of the Greek people at the time when the legends were crystallised into their final form; he may even believe that, in the main, the legends have been built upon a substructure of historical fact, and he may leave to specialists the controversy as to the exact relations which this substructure bears to the finished whole, content to accept the decision of the greatest critical historians of Greece that this question is insoluble.

From the period of myth pure and simple when the gods and goddesses themselves roved the earth achieving miracles, taking various shapes, slaying[68] pythons, titans, and other monsters, and exercising their amorous fancies among the men and women of earth—from this period we come to the semi-historical time of the activity of the demi-gods and the men who, superior to the ordinary clay, were called Heroes.

The term “Heroic Age” has passed into general use with the historian as applying to the period of Grecian history immediately preceding and including the Trojan wars. As there are very few reliable documents at hand relating to this period—there were none at all until recently—it is clear that this age is in reality only the latter part of that mythical period to which we have just referred. Recent historians tend to treat it much more sceptically than did the historians of an earlier epoch; some are even disposed practically to ignore it. But the term has passed far too generally into use to be altogether abandoned; and, indeed, it is not desirable that it should be quite given up, for, however vague the details of the history it connotes, it is after all the shadowy record of a real epoch of history. We shall, perhaps, do best, therefore, to view it through the eyes of a distinguished historian of an earlier generation, remembering only that what is here narrated is still only half history—that is to say, history only half emerged from the realm of legend.a

The real limits of this period cannot be exactly defined; but still, so far as its traditions admit of anything like a chronological connection, its duration may be estimated at six generations, or about two hundred years.[6] The history of the heroic age is the history of the most celebrated persons belonging to this class, who, in the language of poetry, are called heroes. The term “hero” is of doubtful origin, though it was clearly a title of honour; but in the poems of Homer, it is applied not only to the chiefs, but also to their followers. In later times its use was narrowed, and in some degree altered; it was restricted to persons, whether of the Heroic or of after ages, who were believed to be endowed with a superhuman, though not a divine, nature, and who were honoured with sacred rites, and were imagined to have the power of dispensing good or evil to their worshippers; and it was gradually combined with the notion of prodigious strength and gigantic stature. Here however we have only to do with the heroes as men. The history of their age is filled with their wars, expeditions, and adventures; and this is the great mine from which the materials of the Greek poetry were almost entirely drawn. But the richer a period is in poetical materials, the more difficult it usually is to extract from it any that are fit for the use of the historian; and this is especially true in the present instance. We must content ourselves with touching on some which appear most worthy of notice, either from their celebrity, or for the light they throw on the general character of the period, or their connection, real or supposed, with subsequent historical events.

THE EXPLOITS OF PERSEUS

We must pass very hastily over the exploits of Bellerophon and Perseus, and we mention them only for the sake of one remark. The scene of their principal adventures is laid out of Greece, in the East. The former, whose father Glaucus is the son of Sisyphus, having chanced to stain his hands with the blood of a kinsman, flies to Argos, where he excites the jealousy of Prœtus, and is sent by him to Lycia, the country where Prœtus himself had been[69] hospitably entertained in his exile. It is in the adjacent regions of Asia that the Corinthian hero proves his valour by vanquishing ferocious tribes and terrible monsters. Perseus too has been sent over the sea by his grandfather Acrisius, and his achievements follow the same direction, but take a wider range; he is carried along the coasts of Syria to Egypt, where Herodotus heard of him from the priests, and into the unknown lands of the South. There can be no doubt that these fables owed many of their leading features to the Argive colonies which were planted at a later period in Rhodes, and on the southwest coast of Asia. But still it is not improbable that the connection implied by them between Argolis and the nearest parts of Asia may not be wholly without foundation. We proceed however to a much more celebrated name, on which we must dwell a little longer—that of Hercules.

THE LABOURS OF HERCULES

It has been a subject of long dispute, whether Hercules was a real or a purely fictitious personage; but it seems clear that the question, according to the sense in which it is understood, may admit of two contrary answers, both equally true. When we survey the whole mass of the actions ascribed to him, we find that they fall under two classes. The one carries us back into the infancy of society, when it is engaged in its first struggles with nature for existence and security: we see him cleaving rocks, turning the course of rivers, opening or stopping the subterraneous outlets of lakes, clearing the earth of noxious animals, and, in a word, by his single arm effecting works which properly belong to the united labours of a young community. The other class exhibits a state of things comparatively settled and mature, when the first victory has been gained, and the contest is now between one tribe and another, for possession or dominion; we see him maintaining the cause of the weak against the strong, of the innocent against the oppressor, punishing wrong, and robbery, and sacrilege, subduing tyrants, exterminating his enemies, and bestowing kingdoms on his friends. It would be futile to inquire, who the person was to whom deeds of the former kind were attributed; but it is an interesting question, whether the first conception of such a being was formed in the mind of the Greeks by their own unassisted imagination, or was suggested to them by a different people.

It is sufficient to throw a single glance at the fabulous adventures called the “labours” of Hercules, to be convinced that a part of them at least belongs to the Phœnicians, and their wandering god, in whose honour they built temples in all their principal settlements along the coast of the Mediterranean. To him must be attributed all the journeys of Hercules round the shores of western Europe, which did not become known to the Greeks for many centuries after they had been explored by the Phœnician navigators. The number to which those labours are confined by the legend, is evidently an astronomical period, and thus itself points to the course of the sun which the Phœnician god represented. The event which closes the career of the Greek hero, who rises to immortality from the flames of the pile on which he lays himself, is a prominent feature in the same Eastern mythology, and may therefore be safely considered as borrowed from it. All these tales may indeed be regarded as additions made at a late period to the Greek legend, after it had sprung up independently at home. But it is at least a remarkable coincidence, that the birth of Hercules is assigned to the city of Cadmus; and the great works ascribed to him, so far as they were really[70] accomplished by human labour, may seem to correspond better with the art and industry of the Phœnicians, than with the skill and power of a less civilised race. But in whatever way the origin of the name and idea of Hercules may be explained, he appears, without any ambiguity, as a Greek hero; and here it may reasonably be asked, whether all or any part of the adventures they describe, really happened to a single person, who either properly bore the name of Hercules, or received it as a title of honour.

We must briefly mention the manner in which these adventures are linked together in the common story. Amphitryon, the reputed father of Hercules, was the son of Alcæus, who is named first among the children born to Perseus at Mycenæ. The hero’s mother, Alcmene, was the daughter of Electryon, another son of Perseus, who had succeeded to the kingdom. In his reign, the Taphians, a piratical people who inhabited the islands called Echinades, near the mouth of the Achelous, landed in Argolis, and carried off the king’s herds. While Electryon was preparing to avenge himself by invading their land, after he had committed his kingdom and his daughter to the charge of Amphitryon, a chance like that which caused the death of Acrisius stained the hands of the nephew with his uncle’s blood. Sthenelus, a third son of Perseus, laid hold of this pretext to force Amphitryon and Alcmene to quit the country, and they took refuge in Thebes: thus it happened that Hercules, though an Argive by descent, and, by his mortal parentage, legitimate heir to the throne of Mycenæ, was, as to his birthplace, a Theban. Hence Bœotia is the scene of his youthful exploits: bred up among the herdsmen of Cithæron, like Cyrus and Romulus, he delivers Thespiæ from the lion which made havoc among its cattle. He then frees Thebes from the yoke of its more powerful neighbour, Orchomenos: and here we find something which has more the look of a historical tradition, though it is no less poetical in its form. The king of Orchomenos had been killed, in the sanctuary of Poseidon at Onchestus, by a Theban. His successor, Erginus, imposes a tribute on Thebes; but Hercules mutilates his heralds when they come to exact it, and then marching against Orchomenos, slays Erginus, and forces the Minyans to pay twice the tribute which they had hitherto received. According to a Theban legend, it was on this occasion that he stopped the subterraneous outlet of the Cephisus, and thus formed the lake which covered the greater part of the plain of Orchomenos. In the meanwhile Sthenelus had been succeeded by his son Eurystheus, the destined enemy of Hercules and his race, at whose command the hero undertakes his labours. This voluntary subjection of the rightful prince to the weak and timid usurper is represented as an expiation, ordained by the Delphic oracle, for a fit of frenzy, in which Hercules had destroyed his wife and children.

This, as a poetical or religious fiction, is very happily conceived; but when we are seeking for a historical thread to connect the Bœotian legends of Hercules with those of the Peloponnesus, it must be set entirely aside; and yet it is not only the oldest form of the story, but no other has hitherto been found or devised to fill its place with a greater appearance of probability. The supposed right of Hercules to the throne of Mycenæ was, as we shall see, the ground on which the Dorians, some generations later, claimed the dominion of Peloponnesus. Yet, in any other than a poetical view, his enmity to Eurystheus is utterly inconsistent with the exploits ascribed to him in the peninsula. It is also remarkable, that while the adventures which he undertakes at the bidding of his rival are prodigious and supernatural, belonging to the first of the two classes above distinguished, he is described as during the same period engaged in expeditions which are only accidentally connected with[71] these marvellous labours, and which, if they stood alone, might be taken for traditional facts. In these he appears in the light of an independent prince, and a powerful conqueror. He leads an army against Augeas, king of Elis, and having slain him, bestows his kingdom on one of his sons, who had condemned his father’s injustice. So he invades Pylus to avenge an insult which he had received from Neleus, and puts him to death, with all his children, except Nestor, who was absent, or had escaped to Gerenia. Again he carries his conquering arms into Laconia, where he exterminates the family of the king Hippocoön, and places Tyndareus on the throne. Here, if anywhere in the legend of Hercules, we might seem to be reading an account of real events. Yet who can believe, that while he was overthrowing these hostile dynasties, and giving away sceptres, he suffered himself to be excluded from his own kingdom?

It was the fate of Hercules to be incessantly forced into dangerous and arduous enterprises; and hence every part of Greece is in its turn the scene of his achievements. Thus we have already seen him, in Thessaly, the ally of the Dorians, laying the foundation of a perpetual union between the people and his own descendants, as if he had either abandoned all hope of recovering the crown of Mycenæ, or had foreseen that his posterity would require the aid of the Dorians for that purpose. In Ætolia too he appears as a friend and a protector of the royal house, and fights its battles against the Thesprotians of Epirus. These perpetual wanderings, these successive alliances with so many different races, excite no surprise, so long as we view them in a poetical light, as issuing out of one source, the implacable hate with which Juno persecutes the son of Jove. They may also be understood as real events, if they are supposed to have been perfectly independent of each other, and connected only by being referred to one fabulous name. But when the poetical motive is rejected, it seems impossible to frame any rational scheme according to which they may be regarded as incidents in the life of one man, unless we imagine Hercules, in the purest spirit of knight-errantry, sallying forth in quest of adventures, without any definite object, or any impulse but that of disinterested benevolence. It will be safer, after rejecting those features in the legend which manifestly belong to Eastern religions, to distinguish the Theban Hercules from the Dorian, and the Peloponnesian hero. In the story of each some historical fragments have most probably been preserved, and perhaps least disfigured in the Theban and Dorian legends. In those of Peloponnesus it is difficult to say to what extent their original form may not have been distorted from political motives. If we might place any reliance on them, we should be inclined to conjecture that they contain traces of the struggles by which the kingdom of Mycenæ attained to that influence over the rest of the peninsula, which is attributed to it by Homer, and which we shall have occasion to notice when we come to speak of the Trojan war.

THE FEATS OF THESEUS

The name of Hercules immediately suggests that of Theseus, according to the mythical chronology his younger contemporary, and only second to him in renown. It was not without reason that Theseus was said to have given rise to the proverb, another Hercules; for not only is there a strong resemblance between them in many particular features, but it also seems clear that Theseus was to Attica what Hercules was to the rest of Greece, and that his career likewise represents the events of a period which cannot[72] have been exactly measured by any human life, and probably includes many centuries. His legend is chiefly interesting to us, so far as it may be regarded as a poetical outline of the early history of Attica [where it will be recounted in detail].

The legend of his Cretan expedition most probably preserves some genuine historical recollections. But the only fact which appears to be plainly indicated by it, is a temporary connection between Crete and Attica. Whether this intercourse was grounded solely on religion, or was the result of a partial dominion exercised by Crete over Athens, it would be useless to inquire; and still less can we pretend to determine the nature of the Athenian tribute, or that of the Cretan worship to which it related. That part of the legend which belongs to Naxos and Delos was probably introduced after these islands were occupied by the Ionians. A part is assigned in these traditions to Minos, who is represented by the general voice of antiquity as having raised Crete to a higher degree of prosperity and power than it ever reached at any subsequent period [and whom we shall also discuss later in connection with Cretan history].

THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

Our plan obliges us to pass over a great number of wars, expeditions, and achievements of these ages, which were highly celebrated in heroic song, not because we deem them to contain less of historical reality than others which we mention, but because they appear not to have been attended with any important or lasting consequences. We might otherwise have been induced to notice the quarrel which divided the royal house of Thebes, and led to a series of wars between Thebes and Argos, which terminated in the destruction of the former city, and the temporary expulsion of the Cadmeans, its ancient inhabitants. Hercules and Theseus undertook their adventures either alone, or with the aid of a single comrade; but in these Theban wars we find a union of seven chiefs; and such confederacies appear to have become frequent in the latter part of the heroic age. So a numerous band of heroes was combined in the enterprise, which, whatever may have been its real nature, became renowned as the chase of the Calydonian boar. Plassmanf suspects that this was in reality a military expedition against some of the savage Ætolian tribes, and that the name of one of them (the Aperantii) suggested the legend. We proceed to speak of two expeditions[73] much more celebrated, conducted like these by a league of independent chieftains, but directed, not to any part of Greece, but against distant lands; we mean the voyage of the Argonauts, and the siege of Troy, which will conclude our review of the mythical period of Grecian history.

THE ARGONAUTS

The Argonautic expedition, when viewed in the light in which it has usually been considered, is an event which a critical historian, if he feels himself compelled to believe it, may think it his duty to notice, but which he is glad to pass rapidly over as a perplexing and unprofitable riddle. For even when the ancient legend has been pared down into a historical form, and its marvellous and poetical features have been all effaced, so that nothing is left but what may appear to belong to its pith and substance, it becomes indeed dry and meagre enough, but not much more intelligible than before. It relates an adventure, incomprehensible in its design, astonishing in its execution, connected with no conceivable cause, and with no sensible effect. The narrative, reduced to the shape in which it has often been thought worthy of a place in history, runs as follows:

In the generation before the Trojan war, Jason, a young Thessalian prince, had incurred the jealousy of his kinsman Pelias, who reigned at Iolcus. The crafty king encouraged the adventurous youth to embark in a maritime expedition full of difficulty and danger. It was to be directed to a point far beyond the most remote which Greek navigation had hitherto reached in the same quarter; to the eastern corner of the sea, so celebrated in ancient times for the ferocity of the barbarians inhabiting its coasts, that it was commonly supposed to have derived from them the name of “Axenus,” the inhospitable, before it acquired the opposite name of the “Euxine,” from the civilisation which was at length introduced by Greek settlers. Here, in the land of the Colchians, lay the goal, because this contained the prize, from which the voyage has been frequently called the adventure of the golden fleece. Jason having built a vessel of uncommon size,—in more precise terms, the first 50-oared galley his countrymen had ever launched,—and having manned it with a band of heroes, who assembled from various parts of Greece to share the glory of the enterprise, sailed to Colchis, where he not only succeeded in the principal object of his expedition, whatever this may have been, but carried off Medea, the daughter of the Colchian king, Æetes.

Though this is an artificial statement, framed to reconcile the main incidents of a wonderful story with nature and probability, it still contains many points which can scarcely be explained or believed. It carries us back to a period when navigation was in its infancy among the Greeks; yet their first essay at maritime discovery is supposed at once to have reached the extreme limit, which was long after attained by the adventurers who gradually explored the same formidable sea, and gained a footing on its coasts. The success of the undertaking however is not so surprising as the project itself; for this implies a previous knowledge of the country to be explored, which it is very difficult to account for. But the end proposed is still more mysterious; and indeed can only be explained with the aid of a conjecture. Such an explanation was attempted by some of the later writers among the ancients, who perceived that the whole story turned on the Golden Fleece, the supposed motive of the voyage, and that this feature had not a[74] sufficiently historical appearance. But the mountain torrents of Colchis were said to sweep down particles of gold, which the natives used to detain by fleeces dipped in the streams.

This report suggested a mode of translating the fable into historical language. It was conjectured that the Argonauts had been attracted by the metallic treasures of the country, and that the Golden Fleece was a poetical description of the process which they had observed, or perhaps had practised: an interpretation certainly more ingenious, or at least less absurd, than those by which Diodorus transforms the fire-breathing bulls which Jason was said to have yoked at the bidding of Æetes, into a band of Taurians, who guarded the fleece, and the sleepless dragon which watched over it, into their commander Draco; but yet not more satisfactory; for it explains a casual, immaterial circumstance, while it leaves the essential point in the legend wholly untouched. The epithet “golden,” to which it relates, is merely poetical and ornamental, and signified nothing more as to the nature of the fleece than the epithets white or purple, which were also applied to it by early poets. According to the original and genuine tradition, the fleece was a sacred relic, and its importance arose entirely out of its connection with the tragical story of Phrixus, the main feature of which is the human sacrifice which the gods had required from the house of Athamas. His son Phrixus either offered himself, or was selected through the artifices of his stepmother Ino, as the victim; but at the critical moment, as he stood before the altar, the marvellous ram was sent for his deliverance, and transported him over the sea, according to the received account, to Colchis, where Phrixus, on his arrival, sacrificed the ram to Jupiter, as the god who had favoured his escape; the fleece was nailed to an oak in the grove of Mars, where it was kept by Æetes as a sacred treasure, or palladium.

But the tradition must have had a historical foundation in some real voyages and adventures, without which it could scarcely have arisen at all, and could never have become so generally current as to be little inferior in celebrity to the tale of Troy itself. If however the fleece had no existence but in popular belief, the land where it was to be sought was a circumstance of no moment. In the earlier form of the legend, it might not have been named at all, but only have been described as the distant, the unknown, land; and after it had been named, it might have been made to vary with the gradual enlargement of geographical information. But in this case the voyage of the Argonauts can no longer be considered as an isolated adventure, for which no adequate motive is left; but must be regarded, like the expedition of the Tyrian Hercules, as representing a succession of enterprises, which may have been the employment of several generations. And this is perfectly consistent with the manner in which the adventurers are most properly described. They are Minyans; a branch of the Greek nation, whose attention was very early drawn by their situation, not perhaps without some influence from the example and intercourse of the Phœnicians, to maritime pursuits. The form which the legend assumed was probably determined by the course of their earliest naval expeditions. They were naturally attracted towards the northeast, first by the islands that lay before the entrance of the Hellespont, and then by the shores of the Propontis and its two straits. Their successive colonies, or spots signalised either by hostilities or peaceful transactions with the natives, would become the landing-places of the Argonauts. That such a colony existed at Lemnos, seems unquestionable; though it does not follow that Euneus, the son of Jason, who is described in the Iliad as reigning there during the siege of Troy, was a historical personage.

[75]

If however it should be asked, in what light the hero and heroine of the legend are to be viewed on this hypothesis, it must be answered that both are most probably purely ideal personages, connected with the religion of the people to whose poetry they belong. Jason was perhaps no other than the Samothracian god or hero Jasion, whose name was sometimes written in the same manner, the favourite of Demeter, as his namesake was of Hera, and the protector of mariners as the Thessalian hero was the chief of the Argonauts. Medea seems to have been originally another form of Hera herself, and to have descended, by a common transition, from the rank of a goddess into that of a heroine, when an epithet had been mistaken for a distinct name. We have already seen that the Corinthian tradition claimed her as belonging properly to Corinth, one of the principal seats of the Minyan race. The tragical scenes which rendered her stay there so celebrated were commemorated by religious rites, which continued to be observed until the city was destroyed by the Romans. According to the local legend, she had not murdered her children; they had been killed by the Corinthians; and the public guilt was expiated by annual sacrifices offered to Hera, in whose temple fourteen boys, chosen every twelve-month from noble families, were appointed to spend a year in all the ceremonies of solemn mourning. But we cannot here pursue this part of the subject any further. The historical side of the legend seems to exhibit an opening intercourse between the opposite shores of the Ægean. If however it was begun by the northern Greeks, it was probably not long confined to them, but was early shared by those of the Peloponnesus. It would be inconsistent with the piratical habits of the early navigators, to suppose that this intercourse was always of a friendly nature; and it may therefore not have been without a real ground, that the Argonautic expedition was sometimes represented as the occasion of the first conflict between the Greeks and Trojans. We therefore pass by a natural transition out of the mythical circle we have just been tracing, into that of the Trojan war, and the light in which we have viewed the one may serve to guide us in forming a judgment on the historical import of the other.

We have already seen in what manner Eurystheus, the son of Sthenelus, had usurped the inheritance which belonged of right to Hercules, as the legitimate representative of Perseus. Sthenelus had reserved Mycenæ and Tiryns for himself; but he had bestowed the neighbouring town of Midea on Atreus and Thyestes, the sons of Pelops, and uncles of Eurystheus. On the death of Hercules, Eurystheus pursued his orphan children from one place of refuge to another, until they found an asylum in Attica. Theseus refused to surrender them, and Eurystheus then invaded Attica in person; but his army was routed, and he himself slain by Hyllus, the eldest son of Hercules, in his flight through the isthmus. Atreus succeeded to the throne of his nephew, whose children had been all cut off in this disastrous expedition; and thus, when his sceptre descended to his son Agamemnon, it conveyed the sovereignty of an ample realm. While the house of Pelops was here enriched with the spoils of Hercules, it enjoyed the fruits of his triumphant valour in another quarter. He had bestowed Laconia on Tyndareus, the father of Helen; and when Agamemnon’s brother, Menelaus, had been preferred to all the other suitors of this beautiful princess, Tyndareus resigned his dominions to his son-in-law. In the meanwhile a flourishing state had risen up on the eastern side of the Hellespont. Its capital, Troy, had been taken by Hercules, with the assistance of Telamon, son of Æacus, but had been restored to Priam, the son of its conquered king, Laomedon,[76] who reigned there in peace and prosperity over a number of little tribes, until his son Paris, attracted to Laconia by the fame of Helen’s beauty, abused the hospitality of Menelaus by carrying off his queen in his absence. All the chiefs of Greece combined their forces, under the command of Agamemnon, to avenge this outrage, and sailed with a great armament to Troy.c Their enterprise, famous for all time as the Trojan War, stands quite by itself in interest and importance among the traditions of the Heroic Age, and demands exceptional treatment here.

THE TROJAN WAR

Historic criticism is almost a pendulum in its motion. Nowhere has this been more vividly seen than in the attitude of prominent historians toward the Trojan War and the poetical chronicle of it known as Homer’s Iliad. Scholarly belief has passed through all imaginable grades of opinion ranging between a flat denial that there was ever such a place as Troy, such a war as the Trojan, or such a man as Homer, to an acceptance of them all with an unquestioning credulity matching that of the early Greeks.

It was textual criticism, the deadly work of the critical scalpel in the verbal form of the poems that first destroyed the good standing of the Homeric legend. It is the revivifying work of the pickaxe and shovel in the actual ground as wielded by the excavator and archæologist that have brought back the repute of Homer. A few years ago and a Gladstone arguing for the reality of a Homer and of an Homeric epic was dismissed by the professor as an old-fashioned ignoramus. To-day almost the same terms are applied to those who cling to the fashion of yesterday and claim that the Trojan War and Homer himself are myths. In the new swing of the pendulum, however, the cautious will still avoid extremes.

What has already been said about the status of Greek myth applies in the main to the Homeric poems. They are legends doubtless with some measure of historical foundation, but they cannot be accepted by the critical student of to-day as historical narratives in the narrow sense. But the Homeric poems have an interest of quite another kind which gives them a place apart among the legends of antiquity. This interest centres about the personality of the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. From the earliest historic periods of Grecian life the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey was unquestionably ascribed to a poet named Homer. If doubts ever arose in the mind of any sceptical or critical person as to the reality of Homer, such doubts were quite submerged by the popular verdict. It was not generally claimed that Homer himself had written the works ascribed to him,—it was long held, indeed, that he must have lived at a period prior to the introduction of writing into Greece,—but that the person whom tradition loved to speak of as the blind bard had invented and recited his narratives in toto, and that these, memorised by others, had been brought down through succeeding generations until they were finally given permanence in writing, were accepted as the most unequivocal of historical facts.

But in the latter half of the 18th century, these supposed historical facts began to be called in question, Wolfk leading the van and holding all scholarship in terror of his name for nearly a century. Critical students of Homer were struck with numerous anomalies in his writings that seemed to them inconsistent with the idea that the Iliad and Odyssey had been composed at one time and by one person. To cite but a single illustration, it[77] was noted that the various parts of these poems were not all written in the same dialect, and it seemed highly improbable that any one person should have employed different dialects in a single composition. Such a suggestion as this naturally led to bitter controversies—controversies which have by no means altogether subsided after the lapse of a century.a Later scholarship denies the “stratification of language” in the poems.b But the controversy did not confine itself to the mere question whether such a person as Homer had lived and written, it came presently to involve also the subject of the Homeric poems, in particular, of the Iliad.

Certain details aside, the Trojan War had been looked upon as an historical event, quite as fully credited by the modern historian as it had been by Alexander when he stopped to offer sacrifices at the site of Troy. But now the iconoclastic movement being under way there was a school of students who openly maintained that the whole recital, by whomsoever written, was nothing but a fable which the historian must utterly discard. It was even questioned whether such a place as Troy had ever existed. Such a scepticism as this seemed, naturally enough, a clear sacrilege to a large body of scholars, but for several generations no successful efforts were made to meet it with any weapons more tangible than words. Then came a champion of the historical verity of the Homeric narrative who set to work to prove his case in the most practical way. Curiously enough the man who thus championed the cause of the closet scholars and poets and visionaries was himself a practical man of affairs, no less experienced and no less successful in dealing with the affairs of an everyday business than had been the man from whom the iconoclastic movement had gained its chief support. This man was also a German, Heinrich Schliemann.l

Having amassed a fortune, the income from which was more than sufficient for all his needs, he retired from active business and devoted the remainder of his life to a self-imposed task, which had been an ambition with him all his life, the search, namely, for the site of Ancient Troy. How well he succeeded all the world knows. But in opposition to the opinions of many scholars he selected the hill of Hissarlik as the site of ancient Ilium, and his excavations there soon demonstrated that at least it had been the site not of one alone but of at least seven different cities in antiquity—one being built above the ruins of another at long intervals of time. One of these cities, the sixth from the top,—or to put it otherwise, the most ancient but one,—was, he became firmly convinced, Ilium itself.

The story of his achievements cannot be told here in detail, and it is necessary to point the warning that Dr. Schliemann’s excavations—wonderful as are their results—do not, perhaps, when critically viewed, demonstrate quite so much as might at first sight appear. There is, indeed, a high degree of probability that the city which he excavated was really the one intended in the Homeric descriptions, but it must be clear to any one who scrutinises the matter somewhat closely, that this fact goes but a little way towards substantiating the Homeric narrative as a whole. The city of Ilium may have existed without giving rise to any such series of events as that narrated in the Iliad. Dr. Schliemann himself was led to realise this fact, and to modify somewhat in later years the exact tenor of some of his more enthusiastic earlier views, yet the fact remains that the excavations at Hissarlik must be reckoned with by whoever in future discusses the status of the Homeric story.

This is not the place to enter into a statement of the multitudinous phases scepticism has taken in dealing with the Trojan legend. The story,[78] whether pure fancy, as some have thought it, or a dramatised and romantic version of actual history, is indispensable to any chronicle of Greece or of Grecian influence.a Taking Homer as a basis, it may be outlined as follows:

The Town of Troy

The origin of Dardanus, founder of the Trojan state, has been very variously related; but the testimony of Homer to the utter uncertainty of his birth and native country, delivered in the terms that he was the son of Jupiter, may seem best entitled to belief. Thus however it appears that the Greeks not unwillingly acknowledged consanguinity with the Trojans; for many, indeed most, of the Grecian heroes also claimed their descent from Jupiter. It is moreover remarkable that, among the many genealogies which Homer has transmitted, none is traced so far into antiquity as that of the royal family of Troy. Dardanus was ancestor in the sixth degree to Hector, and may thus have lived from a hundred and fifty to two hundred years before that hero. On one of the many ridges projecting from the foot of the lofty mountain of Ida in the northwestern part of Asia Minor, he founded a town, or perhaps rather a castle, which from his own name was called Dardania.

The situation commanded the narrow but highly fruitful plain, watered by the streams of Simois and Scamander, and stretching from the roots of Ida to the Hellespont northward, and the Ægean Sea westward. His son Erichthonius, who succeeded him in the sovereignty of this territory, had the reputation of being the richest man of his age. Much of his wealth seems to have been derived from a large stock of brood mares, to the number, according to the poet, of three thousand, which the fertility of his soil enabled him to maintain, and which by his care and judgment in the choice of stallions produced a breed of horses superior to any of the surrounding countries. Tros, son of Erichthonius, probably extended, or in some other way improved, the territory of Dardania; since the appellation by which it was known to posterity was derived from his name. With the riches the population of the state of course increased. Ilus, son of Tros, therefore, venturing to move his residence from the mountain, founded, on a rising ground beneath, that celebrated city called from his name Ilion [or Ilium], but more familiarly known in modern languages by the name of Troy, derived from his father.

Twice before that war which Homer has made so famous Troy is said to have been taken and plundered: and for its second capture by Hercules, in the reign of Laomedon, son of Ilus, we have Homer’s authority. The government however revived, and still advanced in power and splendour. Laomedon after his misfortune fortified the city in a manner so superior to what was common in his age that the walls of Troy were said to be a work of the gods. Under his son Priam, the Trojan state was very flourishing and of considerable extent; containing, under the name of Phrygia, the country afterwards called Troas, together with both shores of the Hellespont and the large and fertile island of Lesbos.

A frequent communication, sometimes friendly, but oftener hostile, was maintained between the eastern and western coasts of the Ægean Sea; each being an object of piracy more than of commerce to the inhabitants of the opposite country. Cattle and slaves constituting the principal riches of the times, men, women, and children, together with swine, sheep, goats, oxen, and horses, were principal objects of plunder. But scarcely was any crime[79] more common than rapes; and it seems to have been a kind of fashion, in consequence of which the leaders of piratical expeditions gratified their vanity in the highest degree when they could carry off a lady of superior rank. How usual these outrages were among the Greeks, may be gathered from the condition said to have been exacted by Tyndareus, king of Sparta, father of the celebrated Helen, from the chieftains who came to ask his daughter in marriage; he required of all, as a preliminary, to bind themselves by solemn oaths that, should she be stolen, they would assist with their utmost power to recover her. This tradition, with many other stories of Grecian rapes, on whatsoever founded, indicates with certainty the opinion of the later Greeks, among whom they were popular, concerning the manners of their ancestors. But it does not follow that the Greeks were more vicious than other people equally unhabituated to constant, vigorous, and well-regulated exertions of law and government. Equal licentiousness but a few centuries ago prevailed throughout western Europe. Hence those gloomy habitations of the ancient nobility, which excite the wonder of the traveller, particularly in the southern parts, where, in the midst of the finest countries, he often finds them in situations so very inconvenient and uncomfortable, except for what was then the one great object, security, that now the houseless peasant will scarcely go to them for shelter. From the licentiousness were derived the manners, and even the virtues, of the times; and hence knight-errantry with its whimsical consequences.

Paris and Helen

The expedition of Paris, son of Priam king of Troy, into Greece, appears to have been a marauding adventure, such as was then usual. It is said indeed that he was received very hospitably, and entertained very kindly, by Menelaus king of Sparta. But this also was consonant to the spirit of the times; for hospitality has always been the virtue of barbarous ages: it is at this day no less characteristical of the wild Arabs than their spirit of robbery; and in the Scottish highlands we know robbery and hospitality flourished together till very lately. Hospitality indeed will be generally found in different ages and countries very nearly in proportion to the need of it; that is, in proportion to the deficiency of jurisprudence, and the weakness of government. Paris concluded his visit at Sparta with carrying off Helen, wife of Menelaus, together with a considerable treasure: and whether this was effected by fraud, or as some have supposed, by open violence, it is probable enough that as Herodotus relates, it was first concerted, and afterward supported, in revenge for some similar injury done by the Greeks to the Trojans.

An outrage however so grossly injurious to one of the greatest princes of Greece, especially if attended with a breach of the rights of hospitality, might not unreasonably be urged as a cause requiring the united revenge of all the Grecian chieftains. But there were other motives to engage them in the quarrel. The hope of returning laden with the spoil of the richer provinces of Asia was a strong incentive to leaders poor at home, and bred to rapine. The authority and influence of Agamemnon, king of Argos, brother of Menelaus, were also weighty. The spirit of the age, his own temper, the extent of his power, the natural desire of exerting it on a splendid occasion, would all incite this prince eagerly to adopt his brother’s quarrel. He is besides represented by character qualified to create and command a powerful league; ambitious, active, brave, generous, humane; vain indeed and haughty, sometimes to his own injury; yet commonly repressing[80] those hurtful qualities, and watchful to cultivate popularity. Under this leader all the Grecian chieftains from the end of Peloponnesus to the end of Thessaly, together with Idomeneus from Crete, and other commanders from some of the smaller islands, assembled at Aulis, a seaport of Bœotia. The Acarnanians alone, separated from the rest of Greece by lofty mountains and a sea at that time little navigated, had no share in the expedition.

The Siege of Troy

A story acquired celebrity in aftertimes, that, the fleet being long detained at Aulis by contrary winds, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia as a propitiatory offering to obtain from the gods a safe and speedy passage to the Trojan coast. To the credit of his character however it is added that he submitted to this abominable cruelty with extreme reluctance, compelled by the clamours of the army, who were persuaded that the gods required the victim; nor were there wanting those who asserted that by a humane fraud the princess was at last saved, under favour of a report that a fawn was miraculously sent by the goddess Diana to be sacrificed in her stead. Indeed the story, though of such fame, and so warranted by early authorities, that some notice of it seemed requisite, wants, it must be confessed, wholly the best authentication for matters of that very early age; for neither Homer, though he enumerates Agamemnon’s daughters, nor Hesiod, who not only mentions the assembling of the Grecian forces under his command at Aulis, but specifies their detentions by bad weather, has left one word about so remarkable an event as this sacrifice.

The fleet at length had a prosperous voyage. It consisted of about twelve hundred open vessels, each carrying from fifty to a hundred and twenty men. The number of men in the whole armament, computed from the mean of those two numbers mentioned by Homer as the complement of different ships, would be something more than a hundred thousand; and Thucydides, whose opinion is of the highest authority, has reckoned this within the bounds of probability; though a poet, he adds, would go to the utmost of current reports. The army, landing on the Trojan coast, was immediately so superior to the enemy as to oblige them to seek shelter within the city walls: but here the operations were at a stand. The hazards to which unfortified and solitary dwellings were exposed from pirates and freebooters had driven the more peaceable of mankind to assemble in towns for mutual security. To erect lofty walls around those towns for defence was then an obvious resource, requiring little more than labour for the execution. More thought, more art, more experience were necessary for forcing the rudest fortification, if defended with vigilance and courage. But the Trojan walls were singularly strong: Agamemnon’s army could make no impression upon them. He was therefore reduced to the method most common for ages after, of turning the siege into a blockade, and patiently waiting till want of necessaries should force the enemy to quit their shelter. But neither did the policy of the times amount by many degrees to the art of subsisting so numerous an army for any length of time, nor would the revenues of Greece have been equal to it with more knowledge, nor indeed would the state of things have admitted it, scarcely with any wealth, or by any means. For in countries without commerce, the people providing for their own wants only, supplies cannot be found equal to the maintenance of a superadded army. No sooner therefore did the Trojans shut themselves within their walls than the Greeks were obliged to give their principal attention to the means of[81] subsisting their numerous forces. The common method of the times was to ravage the adjacent countries; and this was immediately put in practice. But such a resource soon destroys itself. To have therefore a more permanent and certain supply, a part of their army was sent to cultivate the vales of the Thracian Chersonesus, then abandoned by the inhabitants on account of the frequent and destructive incursions of the wild people who occupied the interior of that continent.

Large bodies being thus detached from the army, the remainder scarcely sufficed to deter the Trojans from taking the field again, and could not prevent succour and supplies from being carried into the town. Thus the siege was protracted to the enormous length of ten years. It was probably their success in marauding marches and pirating voyages that induced the Greeks to persevere so long. Achilles is said to have plundered no less than twelve maritime and eleven inland towns. Lesbos, then under the dominion of the monarch of Troy, was among his conquests; and the women of that island were apportioned to the victorious army as a part of the booty. But these circumstances alarming all neighbouring people contributed to procure numerous and powerful allies to the Trojans. Not only the Asiatic states, to a great extent eastward and southward, sent auxiliary troops, but also the European, westward, as far as the Pæonians of that country about the river Axius, which afterwards became Macedonia.

At length, in the tenth year of the war, after great exertions of valour and the slaughter of numbers on both sides, among whom were many of the highest rank, Troy yielded to its fate. Yet was it not then overcome by open force; stratagem is reported by Homer; fraud and treachery have been supposed by later writers. It was, however, taken and plundered: the venerable monarch was slain: the queen and her daughters, together with only one son remaining of a very numerous male progeny, were led into captivity. According to some, the city was totally destroyed, and the survivors of the people so dispersed that their very name was from that time lost. But the tradition supported by better authority, and in no small degree by that of Homer himself, whose words upon the occasion seem indeed scarcely doubtful, is, that Æneas and his posterity reigned over the Trojan country and people for some generations; the seat of government however being removed from Troy to Scepsis: and Xenophon has marked his respect for this tradition, ascribing the final ruin of the Trojan state and name to that following inundation of Greeks called the Æolic emigration.

Agamemnon’s Sad Home-coming

Agamemnon, we are told, triumphed over Troy; and the historical evidence to the fact is large. But the Grecian poets themselves universally acknowledge that it was a dear-bought, a mournful triumph. Few of the princes, who survived to partake of it, had any enjoyment of their hard-earned glory in their native country. None expecting that the war would detain them so long from home, had made due provision for the regular administration of their affairs during such an absence. It is indeed probable that the utmost wisdom and forethought would have been unequal to the purpose. For, in the half-formed governments of those days, the constant presence of the prince as supreme regulator was necessary towards keeping the whole from running presently into utter confusion. Seditions and revolutions accordingly remain recorded almost as numerous as the cities of Greece. Many of the princes on their return were compelled to embark[82] again with their adherents, to seek settlements in distant countries. A more tragical fate awaited Agamemnon. His queen, Clytemnestra, having given her affection to his kinsman Ægisthus, concurred in a plot against her husband, and the unfortunate monarch on his return to Argos was assassinated; those of his friends who escaped the massacre were compelled to fly with his son Orestes; and, so strong was the party which their long possession of the government had enabled the conspirators to form, the usurper obtained complete possession of the throne. Orestes found refuge at Athens; where alone among the Grecian states there seems to have been then a constitution capable of bearing both the absence and the return of the army and its commander without any essential derangement.

Such were the Trojan war and its consequences, according to the best of the unconnected and defective accounts remaining, among which those of Homer have always held the first rank. In modern times, as we have seen, the authority of the great poet as an historian has been more questioned. It is of highest importance to the history of the early ages that it should have its due weight; and it may therefore be proper to mention here some of the circumstances which principally establish its authority; others will occur hereafter. It should be observed then that in Homer’s age poets were the only historians; whence, though it does not at all follow that poets would so adhere to certain truth as not to introduce ornament, yet it necessarily follows that veracity in historical narration would make a large share of a poet’s merit in public opinion, a circumstance which the common use of written records and prose histories instantly and totally altered. The probability and the very remarkable consistency of Homer’s historical anecdotes, variously dispersed as they are among his poetical details and embellishments, form a second and powerful testimony. Indeed, the connection and the clearness of Grecian history, through the very early times of which Homer has treated, appear very extraordinary when compared with the darkness and uncertainty that begin in the instant of our losing his guidance, and continue through ages.h

CHARACTER AND SPIRIT OF THE HEROIC AGE

In the tales of Grecian mythology a great difference is apparent between the earlier and later centuries of the heroic age. They show us a considerable progress in culture during the course of the period. The legends of Perseus, Hercules, and Theseus, or of the battle of the Lapithæ and Centauri, depict the early Greeks as a half wild race tormented by fierce animals, robbers, and tyrants. Giants, fearful snakes, and other monsters, also adventures in the nether world, often appear in these legends, and the Grecians seem to be engaged in a battle with the wildness of nature and with their own crudity. The same land appears utterly different in the legends and poems of the Trojan war and the other events of the later heroic age. In these legends the manners of the Greeks are represented as friendlier and more peaceful, and, with a few exceptions, we find no more real miracles, but everything points to a quieter time and a more orderly state of affairs.

We have a poetical, yet essentially faithful, description of these last centuries in the Iliad and Odyssey, the two oldest extant Grecian literary works. Both poems are, besides the recital of a part of the heroic legends, a true picture of the customs, the conquering spirit, and the domestic as[83] well as public life of the Greeks at the time of the Trojan war and immediately after it. The Grecians at that time do not seem to have been a very numerous people. They lived in small states, with central cities in active intercourse with one another, not differing much in their ways of life, customs, and language. They were a rustic, warlike race, who rejoiced in simple customs and led a happy existence under a friendly sky. The similarity of religion, language, and customs made the Greeks of that time, as it were, members of a great organism, holding together although divided into many tribes and states. At the end of the heroic age some of the tribes were brought even closer together by near relationship and by means of temples and feasts in common. But the link that held them all together had not as yet become a clear conviction; therefore, so far there was no joint name for the Greek nation.

Agriculture and cattle raising were the principal occupations of the people. Besides this they had few industries. Other sources of wealth were the chase, fishing, and war. The agriculture consisted of corn and wine-growing and horticulture. The ox was the draught animal, donkeys and mules were used for transport, horses were but seldom used for riding, but they drew the chariots in time of war. The herds consisted principally of cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. Slaves were used for the lower work. These were purchased from sea-robbers, obtained in victorious wars, or born in the house. They had a knowledge of navigation, although their ships generally had no decks, and were worked more by means of oars than sails. There was no commerce on a large scale; war and piracy served instead as a means of obtaining riches. Many metals were known; they used iron, the working of which was still difficult. Coinage was not used at all, or, at all events, very little. Weaving was the work of women; the best woven stuffs, however, were obtained from the Phœnicians, who were the reigning commercial people of the Grecian seas. They made various kinds of arms, which were in part of artistic workmanship, ornaments and vessels of metal, ivory, clay, and wood. The descriptions of these objects show that the taste for plastic art, that is, the representation of beautiful forms, was already awakened among them. They possessed further a knowledge of architecture; towns and villages are mentioned, also walls with towers and gates. The houses of princes were built of stone; they contained large and lofty rooms, as well as gardens and halls.

Caste was unknown to the Grecians. The people in the heroic age, to be sure, consisted of nobles and commons, but the latter took part in all public affairs of importance, and the privileges of the former did not rest upon their birth alone; an acquisition of great strength, bravery, and adroitness was also necessary—virtues which are accessible to all. The difference between the two classes was, therefore, not grounded, like the oriental establishment of caste, on superstition and deception, but on the belief that certain families possessed bodily strength and warlike abilities, and were therefore appointed by the gods as protectors of the country; that their only right to superiority over others lay in their actual greater capacity for ruling and fighting.

The system of government was aristocratic monarchy, supported by the personal feelings and co-operative opinions of all free men. The state was thus merely a warlike assembly of vigorous men, consisting of nobles and freemen, having a leader at their head. The latter was bound to follow the decisions of the nobility, and in important affairs had to ask the consent of the people.

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The king was only the first of the nobility, and the only rights he possessed which were not shared by them was that of commander in battle and high priest. Therefore, if he wished to excel others as real ruler, everything depended on his personality; he had to surpass others in riches, bodily strength, bravery, discernment, and experience. The king brought the sacrifice to the gods for the totality and directed the religious ceremonies. He also sat in judgment, but mostly in company with experienced old men from the nobility, being really arbitrator and protector of the weak against the strong; for if no plaintiff appeared there was no trial at the public judgment-seat. It was the king’s duty to offer hospitality to the ambassadors of other states and to be hospitable to strangers generally. His revenues consisted only of the voluntary donations of his subjects, of a larger share in the spoils of war, and of the produce of certain lands assigned to him. The only signs of his royalty were the sceptre and the herald that went before him. He took the first place at all assemblies and feasts, and at the sacrificial repasts he received a double helping of food and drink. He was addressed in terms of veneration, but otherwise one associated with him as with any other noble, and there was no trace of the oriental forms of homage towards kings among the ancient Greeks.

The nobility was composed of men of certain families to whom especial strength and dexterity were attributed as hereditary prerogatives; they sought to keep these up by means of knightly practices and to prove them on the battle-field. As has already been said, they took part in the government of the country. The common people or free citizens of the second class were assembled on all important occasions, to give their votes for peace or war, or any other matter of importance. The assemblies of the people described in the Iliad and Odyssey show the same general participation in public affairs and that lively activity which later reached such a high development in the Grecian republics. Beside this, at that time bravery and strength showed what every man was worth, and still more than mere bodily strength, experience, eloquence, and a judicious insight into life and its circumstances brought to any one honour and importance.

In time of war the decision depended more upon the bravery of the kings and nobles than upon the fighting of the people, who arranged themselves in close masses on the battle-field. The chiefs were not trained to be generals or leaders, but rather brave and skilled fighters. Swiftness in running, strength and certainty in throw, and skill in wrestling as in the use of arms, of the lance and the sword, were the most important items. Every leader had his own chariot, with a young companion by his side to hold the reins, while he himself fought with a javelin. The fortifications of the towns consisted of a trench and a wall with towers. As yet they had no knowledge of how to conduct a siege. They knew of no implement which would serve in the taking of a town.

Music and poetry played an important part in the lives of these warlike people. These were inseparable from their meals, their feasts, and military expeditions. The lyre, the flute, and the pipe were the musical instruments in the heroic age; the trumpet was not used until the end of that time. Flute and pipe were the instruments of shepherds and peasants. The lyre, on the other hand, was played by poets and singers and even by many of the kings and nobles, and always served as the accompaniment of songs. The subjects of their songs were the deeds of living or past heroes. There were singers or bards who composed these songs and sang them while men stood round to listen and these bards were held in great esteem.

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Religion and politics were closely connected; but there was no trace of a priesthood with predominant influence. The king was the director of sacrifices, the presence of a priest not being required. There already existed, to be sure, besides the ancient oracle of Dodona, the oracle of Delphi in Phocis, which became so celebrated at a later period; but neither had any great influence in the heroic age. On the other hand, there were so-called soothsayers, who were supposed to possess much wisdom and at the same time a kind of association with the gods. For this reason they were consulted, so as to foretell the results of important undertakings, and to discover the cause of general misfortunes as well as a means of removing them.

The most renowned of these men were Orpheus, who played the part of prophet in the expedition of the Argonauts; Amphiaraus, who joined the expedition of the Seven against Thebes in the same character; Tiresias, who was the prophet of the Thebans both at that time and in the war of the Epigoni; and lastly Calchas, the soothsayer of the Greeks in the Trojan war. Even these men had no influence to be compared with the oriental priesthood.

They were really only looked upon as pacifiers of the outraged godhead and as advisers; their soothsayings were not always respected, and when their prophecies were unsatisfactory they had to face the anger of those in power.

The religious belief of the heroic age was the origin of the later national religion. It sprang probably from various sources. Therefore it cannot be distinguished by any special belief like that of the Indians and Egyptians. The religion of the Greeks was never a perfected system and therefore not free from contradictions, especially as oriental conceptions were introduced into it from ancient times. The Grecians of this time believed heaven, or rather the summit of the towering Mount Olympus, to be inhabited by beings, like the earth; they imagined that these beings resembled human beings in appearance and inner nature, but with the difference that they ascribed to them invisibility, greater strength, freedom from the barriers of mortality, and a powerful influence over earthly things. The life of the gods, according to the representation of the heroic age, only differed from that of men in the fact that it had a more beautiful colouring and higher pleasures. They therefore looked upon the gods as personal beings and had that form of religion known as anthropomorphism, the essential characteristic of which is the belief that the gods resemble men. But joined in an inexplicable manner with this view, was the idea that the gods were at the same time natural phenomena and powers of nature. For instance Zeus, the king and ruler in the kingdom of the gods, was also regarded as the god of the[86] atmosphere; Apollo of the sun; Poseidon the god of the sea; and the woods, wells, valleys, and hills were believed to be inhabited by divine beings called nymphs.

The king offered sacrifice for the people and every father for his house and family. The religious ceremonies consisted chiefly of sacrifices and prayers. There were but few temples, but on the other hand every town had a piece of land set apart, on which there was an altar. They did not feel bound to these holy places for the worship of the gods, but often built an altar on some spot in the open field for prayer and sacrifice. The sacrifice consisted in burning some pieces of flesh to the gods and the pouring of wine into the fire; while the rest was consumed at a general and merry feast. Even the appointed religious feast days had quite a festive colouring: they feasted, drank, joked, held tournaments, and listened while bards sang of the deeds of heroes. There was no trace to be found among the religious ceremonies of the heroic Greeks of that wild, intoxicating character which generally existed at the feasts of the oriental people.

This was how the character of the later Grecian heroic age was formed. They were a vigorous people, with warlike tastes and simple customs, living under a mild heaven. All took part in public affairs, all were free, and, in spite of a certain inequality among them, they were all connected; and divided by no great contrasts in education, the community felt no kind of oppression. The limited population of the country and the possession of slaves permitted a careless and merry way of life. Rough work was unknown to the greater part of the populace. They exercised their bodies and steeled their strength with warlike undertakings, hunting, practice with arms, and wrestling. Their mental intelligence was directed to higher things through religious customs and soothsayers, and developed rapidly by means of the merry association of the nobility, frequent consultations about public affairs, and mutual military expeditions; and, above all, by means of the poetical stories related by the bards, who put into pleasant form what all felt, and were the real teachers of a higher mental culture; and lastly by means of the elevating power of music.

The Greek, under his bright heaven, looked upon life in the kind sunlight of the upper world as a real life; but that of the lower regions seemed to him, even if he obtained the greatest honours, and reigned like Achilles “over the entire dead as king,” only a sombre picture as compared with the upper world: he loved life and did not throw it ostentatiously away, where there was no necessity. He did not look upon flying from a stronger foe as disgrace; swiftness of foot was regarded by him as a heroic merit, like cunning and a mighty arm.d

GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE

If we endeavour to ascertain the extent of Homer’s geographical knowledge, we find ourselves almost confined to Greece and the Ægean. Beyond this circle all is foreign and obscure: and the looseness with which he describes the more distant regions, especially when contrasted with his accurate delineation of those which were familiar to him, indicates that as to the others he was mostly left to depend on vague rumours, which he might mould at his pleasure. In the catalogue indeed of the Trojan auxiliaries, which probably comprises all the information which the Greeks had acquired concerning that part of the world at the time it was composed, the names of several nations in the interior of Asia Minor are enumerated. The remotest are probably[87] the Halizonians of Alyba, whose country may, as Strabo supposes, be that of the Chaldeans on the Euxine. On the southern side of the peninsula the Lycians appear as a very distant race, whose land is therefore a fit scene for fabulous adventures: on its confines are the haunts of the monstrous Chimæra, and the territory of the Amazons: farther eastward the mountains of the fierce Solymi, from which Poseidon, on his return from the Ethiopians, descries the bark of Ulysses sailing on the western sea. These Ethiopians are placed by the poet at the extremity of the earth; but as they are visited by Menelaus in the course of his wanderings, they must be supposed to reach across to the shores of the inner sea, and to border on the Phœnicians. Ulysses describes a voyage which he performed in five days, from Crete to Egypt: and the Taphians, though they inhabit the western side of Greece, are represented as engaged in piratical adventures on the coast of Phœnicia. But as to Egypt, it seems clear that the poet’s information was confined to what he had heard of a river Ægyptus, and a great city called Thebes.

On the western side of Europe, the compass of his knowledge seems to be bounded by a few points not very far distant from the coast of Greece. The northern part of the Adriatic he appears to have considered as a vast open sea. Farther westward, Sicily and the southern extremity of Italy are represented as the limits of all ordinary navigation. Beyond lies a vast sea, which spreads to the very confines of nature and space. Sicily itself, at least its more remote parts, is inhabited by various races of gigantic cannibals: whether, at the same time, any of the tribes who really preceded the Greeks in the occupation of the island were known to be settled on the eastern side, is not certain, though the Sicels and Sicania are mentioned in the Odyssey. Italy, as well as Greece, appears, according to the poet’s notions, to be bounded on the north by a formidable waste of waters.

When we proceed to inquire how the imagination of the people filled up the void of its experience, and determined the form of the unknown world, we find that the rudeness of its conceptions corresponds to the scantiness of its information. The part of the earth exposed to the beams of the sun was undoubtedly considered, not as a spherical, but as a plane surface, only varied by its heights and hollows; and, as little can it be doubted, that the form of this surface was determined by that of the visible horizon. The whole orb is girt by the ocean, not a larger sea, but a deep river, which, circulating with constant but gentle flux, separates the world of light and life from the realms of darkness, dreams, and death. No feature in the Homeric chart is more distinctly prominent than this: hence the divine artist terminates the shield of Achilles with a circular stripe, representing “the mighty strength of the river Ocean,” and all the epithets which the poet applies to it are such as belong exclusively to a river. Homer describes all the other rivers, all springs and wells, and the salt main itself, as issuing from the ocean stream, which might be supposed to feed them by subterraneous channels. Still it is very difficult to form a clear conception of this river, or to say how the poet supposed it to be bounded. Ulysses passes into it from the western sea; but whether the point at which he enters is a mouth or opening, or the two waters are only separated by an invisible line, admits of much doubt. On the farther side however is land: but a land of darkness, which the sun cannot pierce, a land of Cimmerians, the realm of Hades, inhabited by the shades of the departed, and by the family of dreams. As to the other dimensions of the earth, the poet affords us no information, and it would be difficult to decide whether a cylinder or a cone approaches nearest to the figure which he may have assigned to it: and as little does he intimate in what manner[88] he conceives it to be supported. But within it was hollowed another vast receptacle for departed spirits, perhaps the proper abode of Hades. Beneath this, and as far below the earth as heaven was above it, lay the still more murky pit of Tartarus, secured by its iron gates and brazen floor, the dungeon reserved by Jupiter for his implacable enemies.

Some of the epithets which Homer applies to the heaven, seem to imply that he considered it as a solid vault of metal. But it is not necessary to construe these epithets so literally, nor to draw any such inference from his description of Atlas, who “holds the lofty pillars which keep earth and heaven asunder.” Yet it would seem, from the manner in which the height of heaven is compared with the depth of Tartarus, that the region of light was thought to have certain bounds. The summit of the Thessalian Olympus was regarded as the highest point on the earth, and it is not always carefully distinguished from the aerian regions above. The idea of a seat of the gods,—perhaps derived from a more ancient tradition, in which it was not attached to any geographical site,—seems to be indistinctly blended in the poet’s mind with that of a real mountain. Hence Hephæstus, when hurled from the threshold of Jupiter’s palace, falls “from morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve,” before he drops on Lemnos; and Jupiter speaks of suspending the earth by a chain from the top of Olympus.

NAVIGATION AND ASTRONOMY

A wider compass of geographical knowledge, and more enlarged views of nature, would scarcely have been consistent with the state of navigation and commerce which the Homeric poems represent. The poet expresses the common feelings of an age when the voyages of the Greeks were mostly confined to the Ægean. The vessels of the heroes, and probably of the poet’s contemporaries, were slender half-decked boats: according to the calculation of Thucydides, who seems to suspect exaggeration, the largest contained one hundred and twenty men, the greatest number of rowers mentioned in the catalogue: but we find twenty rowers spoken of as a usual complement of a good ship. The mast was movable, and was only hoisted to take advantage of a fair wind, and at the end of a day’s voyage was again deposited in its appropriate receptacle. In the day-time, the Greek mariner commonly followed the windings of the coasts, or shot across from headland to headland, or from isle to isle: at night his vessel was usually put into port, or hauled up on the beach; for though on clear nights he might prosecute his voyage as well as by day, yet should the sky be overcast his course was inevitably lost. Engagements at sea are never mentioned by Homer, though he so frequently alludes to piratical excursions. They were probably of rare occurrence: but as they must sometimes have been inevitable, the galleys were provided with long poles for such occasions. The approach of winter put a stop to all ordinary navigation. Hesiod fixes the time for laying up the merchant ship, covering it with stones, taking out the rigging, and hanging the rudder up by the fire. According to him, the fair season lasts only fifty days: some indeed venture earlier to sea, but a prudent man will not then trust his substance to the waves.

The practical astronomy of the early Greeks consisted of a few observations on the heavenly bodies, the appearances of which were most conspicuously connected with the common occupations of life. The succession of light and darkness, the recurring phases of the moon, and the vicissitude of the[89] seasons, presented three regular periods of time, which, though all equally forced on the attention, were not all marked with equal distinctness by sensible limits. From the first, and down to the age of Solon, the Greeks seem to have measured their months in the natural way, by the interval between one appearance of the new moon and the next. Hence, their months were of unequal duration; yet they might be described in round numbers as consisting of thirty days. It was soon observed that the revolutions of the moon were far from affording an exact measure of the apparent annual revolution of the sun, and that if this were taken to be equal to twelve of the former, the seasons would pass in succession through all the months of the year. This in itself would have been no evil, and would have occasioned no disturbance in the business of life. Seen under the Greek sky, the stars were scarcely less conspicuous objects than the moon itself: some of the most striking groups were early observed and named, and served, by their risings and settings, to regulate the labours of the husbandman and the adventures of the seaman.

COMMERCE AND THE ARTS

Commerce appears in Homer’s descriptions to be familiar enough to the Greeks of the heroic age, but not to be held in great esteem. Yet in the Odyssey we find the goddess, who assumes the person of a Taphian chief, professing that she is on her way to Temesa with a cargo of iron to be exchanged for copper: and in the Iliad, Jason’s son, the prince of Lemnos, appears to carry on an active traffic with the Greeks before Troy. He sends a number of ships freighted with wine, for which the purchasers pay, some in copper, some in iron, some in hides, some in cattle, some in slaves. Of the use of money the poet gives no hint, either in this description or elsewhere. He speaks of the precious metals only as commodities, the value of which was in all cases determined by weight. The Odyssey represents Phœnician traders as regularly frequenting the Greek ports; but as Phœnician slaves are sometimes brought to Greece, so the Phœnicians do not scruple, even where they are received as friendly merchants, to carry away Greek children into slavery.

The general impression which the Homeric pictures of society leave on the reader is, that many of the useful arts,—that is, those subservient to the animal wants or enjoyments of life,—had already reached such a stage of refinement as enabled the affluent to live, not merely in rude plenty, but in a considerable degree of luxury and splendour. The dwellings, furniture, clothing, armour, and other such property of the chiefs, are commonly described as magnificent, costly, and elegant, both as to the materials and workmanship. We are struck, not only by the apparent profusion of the precious metals and other rare and dazzling objects in the houses of the great, but by the skill and ingenuity which seem to be exerted in working them up into convenient and graceful forms. Great caution, however, is evidently necessary in drawing inferences from these descriptions as to the state of the arts in the heroic ages. The poet has treasures at his disposal which, as they cost him nothing, he may scatter with an unsparing hand. The shield made by Hephæstus for Achilles cannot be considered as a specimen of the progress of art, since it is not only the work of a god, but is fabricated on an extraordinary occasion, to excite the admiration of men. It is clear that the poet attributes a superiority to several Eastern nations, more[90] especially to the Phœnicians, not only in wealth, but in knowledge and skill, that, compared with their progress, the arts of Greece seem to be in their infancy. The description of a Phœnician vessel, which comes to a Greek island freighted with trinkets, and of the manner in which a lady of the highest rank, and her servants, handle and gaze on one of the foreign ornaments, present the image of such a commerce as Europeans carry on with the islanders of the South Sea. It looks as if articles of this kind, at least, were eagerly coveted, and that there were no means of procuring them at home.

It is possible that Homer’s pictures of the heroic style of living may be too highly coloured, but there is reason to believe that they were drawn from the life. He may have been somewhat too lavish of the precious metals; but some of the others, particularly copper, were perhaps more abundant than in later times; beside copper and iron, we find steel and tin, which the Phœnicians appear already to have brought from the west of Europe, frequently mentioned. There can be no doubt that the industry of the Greeks had long been employed on these materials. We may therefore readily believe that, even in the heroic times, the works of Greek artisans already bore the stamp of the national genius. In some important points, the truth of Homer’s descriptions has been confirmed by monuments, brought to light within our own memory, of an architecture which was most probably contemporary with the events which he celebrated. The remains of Mycenæ and other ancient cities seem sufficiently to attest the fidelity with which he has represented the general character of that magnificence which the heroic chieftains loved to display. On the other hand, the same poems afford several strong indications that, though in the age which they describe such arts were, perhaps, rapidly advancing, they cannot then have been so long familiar to the Greeks as to be very commonly practised; and that a skilful artificer was rarely found, and was consequently viewed with great admiration, and occupied a high rank in society. Thus, the craft of the carpenter appears to be exceedingly honourable. He is classed with the soothsayer, the physician, and the bard, and like them is frequently sent for from a distance. The son of a person eminent in this craft is not mixed with the crowd on the field of battle, but comes forward among the most distinguished warriors. And as in itself it seems to confer a sort of nobility, so it is practised by the most illustrious chiefs. Ulysses is represented as a very skilful carpenter. He not only builds the boat in which he leaves the island of Calypso, but in his own palace carves a singular bedstead out of the trunk of a tree, which he inlays with gold, silver, and ivory. Another chief, Epeus, was celebrated as the builder of the wooden horse in which the heroes were concealed at the taking of Troy. The goddess Athene was held to preside over this, as over all manual arts, and to favour those who excelled in it with her inspiring counsels.

The chances of war give occasion, as might be expected, for frequent allusions to the healing art. The Greek army contains two chiefs who have inherited consummate skill in this art from their father Æsculapius; and Achilles has been so well instructed in it by Chiron, that Patroclus, to whom he has imparted his knowledge, is able to supply their place. But the processes described in this and other cases show that these might often be the least danger from the treatment of the most unpractised hands. The operation of extracting a weapon from the wound, with a knife, seems not to have been considered as one which demanded peculiar skill; the science of the physician was chiefly displayed in the application of medicinal herbs, by[91] which he stanched the blood, and eased the pain. When Ulysses has been gored by a wild boar, his friends first bind up the hurt, and then use a charm for stopping the flow of blood. The healing art, such as it was, was frequently and successfully practised by the women.

We have already seen that several of the arts which originally ministered only to physical wants, had been so far refined before the time of Homer, that their productions gratified the sense of beauty, and served for ornament as well as for use. Hence our curiosity is awakened to inquire to what extent those arts, which became in later times the highest glory of Greece, in which she yet stands unrivalled, were cultivated in the same period. Unfortunately, the information which the poet affords on this subject is so scanty and obscure, as to leave room on many points for a wide difference of opinion. If we begin with his own art, of which his own poetry is the most ancient specimen extant, we find several hints of its earlier condition. It was held in the highest honour among the heroes. The bard is one of those persons whom men send for to very distant parts; his presence is welcome at every feast; it seems as if one was attached to the service of every great family, and treated with an almost religious respect; Agamemnon, when he sets out on the expedition to Troy, reposes the most important of all trusts in the bard whom he leaves at home. It would even seem as if poetry and music were thought fit to form part of a princely education; for Achilles is found amusing himself with singing, while he touches the same instrument with which the bards constantly accompany their strains. The general character of this heroic poetry is also distinctly marked; it is of the narrative kind, and its subjects are drawn from the exploits or adventures of renowned men. Each song is described as a short extemporaneous effusion, but yet seems to have been rounded into a little whole, such as to satisfy the hearer’s immediate curiosity.

The Graphic Arts

An interesting and difficult question presents itself, as to the degree in which Homer and his contemporaries were conversant with the imitative arts, and particularly with representations of the human form. We find such representations, on a small scale, frequently described. The garment woven by Helen contained a number of battle scenes; as one presented by Penelope to Ulysses was embroidered with a picture of a chase, wrought with gold threads. The shield of Achilles was divided into compartments exhibiting many complicated groups of figures: and though this was a masterpiece of Hephæstus, it would lead us to believe that the poet must have seen many less elaborate and difficult works of a like nature. But throughout the Homeric poems there occurs only one distinct allusion to a statue, as a work of human art. The robe which the Trojan queen offers to Athene in her temple, is placed by the priestess on the knees of the goddess, who was therefore represented in a sitting posture. Even this, it may be said, proves nothing as to the Greeks. They can only be admitted as additional indications that the poet was not a stranger to such objects.

To pictures, or the art of painting, properly so called, the poet makes no allusion, though he speaks of the colouring of ivory, as an art in which the Carian and Mæonian women excelled. It must, however, be considered that there is only one passage in which he expressly mentions any kind of delineation, and there in a very obscure manner, though he has described so many works which imply a previous design.c

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THE ART OF WAR

The art of war is among the arts of necessity, which all people, the rudest equally and the most polished, must cultivate, or ruin will follow the neglect. The circumstances of Greece were in some respects peculiarly favourable to the improvement of this art. Divided into little states, the capital of each, with the greater part of the territory, generally within a day’s march of several neighbouring states which might be enemies and seldom were thoroughly to be trusted as friends, while from the establishment of slavery arose everywhere perpetual danger of a domestic foe, it was of peculiar necessity both for every individual to be a soldier, and for the community to pay unremitting attention to military affairs. Accordingly we find that so early as Homer’s time the Greeks had improved considerably upon that tumultuary warfare alone known to many barbarous nations, who yet have prided themselves in the practice of war for successive centuries. Several terms used by the poet, together with his descriptions of marches, indicate that orders of battle were in his time regularly formed in rank and file. Steadiness in the soldier, that foundation of all those powers which distinguish an army from a mob, and which to this day forms the highest praise of the best troops, we find in great perfection in the Iliad. “The Grecian phalanges,” says the poet, “marched in close order, the leaders directing each his own band. The rest were mute: insomuch that you would say in so great a multitude there was no voice. Such was the silence with which they respectfully watched for the word of command from their officers.”

Considering the deficiency of iron, the Grecian troops appear to have been very well armed both for offence and defence. Their defensive armour consisted of a helmet, a breastplate, and greaves, all of brass, and a shield, commonly of bull’s hide, but often strengthened with brass. The breastplate appears to have met the belt, which was a considerable defence to the belly and groin, and with an appendant skirt guarded also the thighs. All together covered the forepart of the soldier from the throat to the ankle; and the shield was a superadded protection for every part. The bulk of the Grecian troops were infantry thus heavily armed, and formed in close order many ranks deep. Any body formed in ranks and files, close and deep, without regard to a specific number of either ranks or files, was generally termed a phalanx. But the Locrians, under Oïlean Ajax, were all light-armed: bows were their principal weapons; and they never engaged in close fight.

Riding on horseback was yet little practised, though it appears to have been not unknown. Some centuries, however, passed before it was generally applied in Greece to military purposes; the mountainous ruggedness of the[93] country preventing any extensive use of cavalry, except among the Thessalians, whose territory was a large plain. But in the Homeric armies no chief was without his chariot, drawn generally by two, sometimes by three horses; and these chariots of war make a principal figure in Homer’s battles. Nestor, forming the army for action, composes the first line of chariots only. In the second he places that part of the infantry in which he has least confidence; and then forms a third line, or reserve, of the most approved troops. It seems extraordinary that chariots should have been so extensively used in war as we find they were in the early ages. In the wide plains of Asia, indeed, we may account for their introduction, as we may give them credit for utility: but how they should become so general among the inhabitants of rocky, mountainous Greece, how the distant Britons should arrive at that surprising perfection in the use of them which they possessed when the Roman legions first invaded this island, especially as the same mode of fighting was little if at all practised among the Gauls and Germans, is less obvious to conjecture.

The combat of the chiefs, so repeatedly described by Homer, advancing to engage singly in front of their line of battle, is apt to strike a modern reader with an appearance of absurdity perhaps much beyond the reality. Before the use of fire-arms, that practice was not uncommon when the art of war was at its greatest perfection. In Cæsar’s Commentaries we have a very particular account of an advanced combat, in which, not generals indeed, but two centurions of his army engaged. The Grecian chiefs of the heroic age, like the knights of the times of chivalry, had armour apparently very superior to that of the common soldiers; which, with the skill acquired by assiduous practice amid unbounded leisure, might enable them to obviate much of the seeming danger of such skirmishes. Nor might the effect be unimportant. Like the sharp-shooters of modern days, a few men of superior strength, activity, and skill, superior also by the excellence of their defensive armour, might prepare a victory by creating disorder in the close array of the enemy’s phalanx. They threw their weighty javelins from a distance, while none dared advance to meet them but chiefs equally well-armed with themselves: and from the soldiers in the ranks they had little to fear; because, in that close order, the dart could not be thrown with any advantage. Occasionally, indeed, we find some person of inferior name advancing to throw his javelin at a chief occupied against some other, but retreating again immediately into the ranks: a resource not disdained by the greatest heroes when danger pressed. Hector himself, having thrown his javelin ineffectually at Ajax, retires toward his phalanx, but is overtaken by a stone of enormous weight, which brings him to the ground. If from the death or wounds of chiefs, or slaughter in the foremost rank of soldiers, any confusion arose in the phalanx, the shock of the enemy’s phalanx, advancing in perfect order, must be irresistible.

Another practice common in Homer’s time is by no means equally defensible, but on the contrary marks great barbarism; that of stopping in the heat of action to strip the slain. Often this paltry passion for possessing the spoil of the enemy superseded all other, even the most important and most deeply interesting objects of battle. The poet himself was not unaware of the danger and inconveniency of the practice, and seems even to have aimed at a reformation of it. We find indeed in Homer’s warfare a remarkable mixture of barbarism with regularity. Though the art of forming an army in phalanx was known and commonly practised, yet the business of a general, in directing its operations, was lost in the passion, or we may call it fashion,[94] of the great men to signalise themselves by acts of personal courage and skill in arms. Achilles and Hector, the first heroes of the Iliad, excel only in the character of fighting soldiers: as generals and directors of the war, they are inferior to many. Excepting indeed in the single circumstance of forming the army in order of battle, so far from the general, we scarcely ever discover even the officer among Homer’s heroes. It is not till most of the principal Grecian leaders are disabled for the duty of soldiers that at length they so far take upon themselves that of officers as to endeavour to restore order among their broken phalanges.

We might, however, yet more wonder at another deficiency in Homer’s art of war, were it not still universal throughout those rich and populous countries where mankind was first civilised. Even among the Turks, who, far as they have spread over the finest part of Europe, retain pertinaciously every defect of their ancient Asiatic customs, the easy and apparently obvious precaution of posting and relieving sentries, so essential to the safety of armies, has never obtained. When, in the ill turn of the Grecian affairs, constant readiness for defence became more especially necessary, it is mentioned as an instance of soldiership in the active Diomedes, that he slept on his arms without his tent: but no kind of watch was kept; all his men were at the same time asleep around him: and the other leaders were yet less prepared against surprise. A guard indeed selected from the army was set, in the manner of a modern grand-guard or out-post; but though commanded by two officers high both in rank and reputation, yet the commander-in-chief expresses his fear that, overcome with fatigue, the whole might fall asleep and totally forget their duty. The Trojans, who at the same time, after their success, slept on the field of battle, had no guard appointed by authority, but depended wholly upon the interest which every one had in preventing a surprise; “They exhorted one another to be watchful,” says the poet. But the allies all slept; and he subjoins the reason, “For they had no children or wives at hand.” However, though Homer does not expressly blame the defect, or propose a remedy, yet he gives, in the surprise of Rhesus, an instance of the disasters to which armies are exposed by intermission of watching, that might admonish his fellow-countrymen to improve their practice.

The Greeks, and equally the Trojans and their allies, encamped with great regularity; and fortified, if in danger of an attack from a superior enemy. Indeed Homer ascribes no superiority in the art of war, or even in personal courage, to his fellow-countrymen. Even those inland Asiatics, afterwards so unwarlike, are put by him upon a level with the bravest people. Tents, like those now in use, seem to have been a late invention. The ancients, on desultory expeditions, and in marching through a country, slept with no shelter but their cloaks; as our light troops often carry none but a blanket—a practice which Bonaparte extended to his whole army, thereby providing a speedy and miserable death for thousands in his retreat from Russia. When the ancients remained long on a spot they hutted. Achilles’ tent or hut was built of fir, and thatched with reeds; and it seems to have had several apartments.h

TREATMENT OF ORPHANS, CRIMINALS, AND SLAVES

There are two special veins of estimable sentiment, on which it may be interesting to contrast heroic and historical Greece, and which exhibit the latter as an improvement on the former, not less in the affections than in the intellect.

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The law of Athens was peculiarly watchful and provident with respect both to the persons and the property of orphan minors; but the description given in the Iliad of the utter and hopeless destitution of the orphan boy, despoiled of his paternal inheritance and abandoned by all the friends of his father, whom he urgently supplicates, and who all harshly cast him off, is one of the most pathetic morsels in the whole poem. In reference again to the treatment of the dead body of an enemy, we find all the Greek chiefs who come near (not to mention the conduct of Achilles himself) piercing with their spears the corpse of the slain Hector, while some of them even pass disgusting taunts upon it. We may add, from the lost epics, the mutilation of the dead bodies of Paris and Deiphobus by the hand of Menelaus. But at the time of the Persian invasion, it was regarded as unworthy of a right-minded Greek to maltreat in any way the dead body of an enemy, even where such a deed might seem to be justified on the plea of retaliation.

The different manner of dealing with homicide presents a third test, perhaps more striking yet, of the change in Grecian feelings and manners during the three centuries preceding the Persian invasion. That which the murderer in the Homeric times had to dread, was, not public prosecution and punishment, but the personal vengeance of the kinsmen and friends of the deceased, who were stimulated by the keenest impulses of honour and obligation to avenge the deed, and were considered by the public as specially privileged to do so. To escape from this danger, he is obliged to flee the country, unless he can prevail upon the incensed kinsmen to accept of a valuable payment (we must not speak of coined money, in the days of Homer) as satisfaction for their slain comrade. They may, if they please, decline the offer, and persist in their right of revenge; but if they accept, they are bound to leave the offender unmolested, and he accordingly remains at home without further consequences. The chiefs in agora do not seem to interfere, except to insure payment of the stipulated sum.

In historical Athens, this right of private revenge was discountenanced and put out of sight, even so early as the Draconian legislation, and at last restricted to a few extreme and special cases; while the murderer came to be considered, first as having sinned against the gods, next as having deeply injured the society, and thus at once as requiring absolution and deserving punishment. On the first of these two grounds, he is interdicted from the agora and from all holy places, as well as from public functions, even while yet untried and simply a suspected person; for if this were not done, the wrath of the gods would manifest itself in bad crops and other national calamities. On the second ground, he is tried before the council of Areopagus, and if found guilty, is condemned to death, or perhaps to disfranchisement and banishment. The idea of a propitiatory payment to the relatives of the deceased has ceased altogether to be admitted: it is the protection of society which dictates, and the force of society which inflicts, a measure of punishment calculated to deter for the future.

The society of legendary Greece includes, besides the chiefs, the general mass of freemen (λαοὶ), among whom stand out by special names certain professional men, such as the carpenter, the smith, the leather-dresser, the leech, the prophet, the bard, and the fisherman. We have no means of appreciating their condition. Though lots of arable land were assigned in special property to individuals, with boundaries both carefully marked and jealously watched, yet the larger proportion of surface was devoted to pasture. Cattle formed both the chief item in the substance of a wealthy man, the chief means of making payments, and the common ground of quarrels—bread and meat, in[96] large quantities, being the constant food of every one. The estates of the owners were tilled, and their cattle tended, mostly by bought slaves, but to a certain degree also by poor freemen called thetes, working for hire and for stated periods. The principal slaves, who were entrusted with the care of large herds of oxen, swine, or goats, were of necessity men worthy of confidence, their duties placing them away from their master’s immediate eye. They had other slaves subordinate to them, and appear to have been well-treated: the deep and unshaken attachment of Eumæus the swineherd and Philœtius the neatherd to the family and affairs of the absent Ulysses, is among the most interesting points in the ancient epic. Slavery was a calamity, which in that period of insecurity might befall any one: the chief who conducted a freebooting expedition, if he succeeded, brought back with him a numerous troop of slaves, as many as he could seize—if he failed, became very likely a slave himself: so that the slave was often by birth of equal dignity with his master—Eumæus was himself the son of a chief, conveyed away when a child by his nurse, and sold by Phœnician kidnappers to Laertes. A slave of this character, if he conducted himself well, might often expect to be enfranchised by his master and placed in an independent holding.

On the whole, the slavery of legendary Greece does not present itself as existing under a peculiarly harsh form, especially if we consider that all the classes of society were then very much upon a level in point of taste, sentiment, and instruction. In the absence of legal security or an effective social sanction, it is probable that the condition of a slave under an average master, may have been as good as that of the free Thete. The class of slaves whose lot appears to have been the most pitiable were the females—more numerous than the males, and performing the principal work in the interior of the house. Not only do they seem to have been more harshly treated than the males, but they were charged with the hardest and most exhausting labour which the establishment of a Greek chief required; they brought in water from the spring, and turned by hand the house-mills, which ground the large quantity of flour consumed in his family. This oppressive task was performed generally by female slaves, in historical as well as in legendary Greece. Spinning and weaving was the constant occupation of women, whether free or slave, of every rank and station; all the garments worn both by men and women were fashioned at home, and Helen as well as Penelope is expert and assiduous at the occupation. The daughters of Celeus at Eleusis go to the well with their basins for water, and Nausicaa, daughter of Alcinous, joins her female slaves in the business of washing her garments in the river. If we are obliged to point out the fierceness and insecurity of an early society, we may at the same time note with pleasure its characteristic simplicity of manners: Rebecca, Rachel, and the daughters of Jethro, in the early Mosaic narrative, as well as the wife of the native Macedonian chief (with whom the Temenid Perdiccas, ancestor of Philip and Alexander, first took service on retiring from Argos), baking her own cakes on the hearth, exhibit a parallel in this respect to the Homeric pictures.

We obtain no particulars respecting either the common freemen generally, or the particular class of them called thetes. These latter, engaged for special jobs, or at the harvest and other busy seasons of field labour, seem to have given their labour in exchange for board and clothing: they are mentioned in the same line with the slaves, and were (as has been just observed) probably on the whole little better off. The condition of a poor freeman in those days, without a lot of land of his own, going about from one temporary job to another, and having no powerful family and no social[97] authority to look up to for protection, must have been sufficiently miserable. When Eumæus indulged his expectation of being manumitted by his masters, he thought at the same time that they would give him a wife, a house, and a lot of land near to themselves; without which collateral advantages simple manumission might perhaps have been no improvement in his condition. To be thete in the service of a very poor farmer is selected by Achilles as the maximum of human hardship.b

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS

The Trojan war gives a great shock to Greece and hurls it for the first time against Asia. Herodotus saw very well in this war, still mixed with fables, but certain in its principal events and in its issue, the first act of this long struggle between Greece and Asia, which will have for end the expedition of Alexander.

The Eastern armies are richer, the habits more slack, the spirit less active and less enterprising. Greece already lived its own life, it was conscious of itself and practised in its own centre that military and intellectual activity of which the Trojan War was the first development.

Marriage is no longer, as in the East, a sale, where the woman is considered as a thing; an exchange of presents between the two families seems to indicate a certain equality between the husband and wife. The legitimate wife, in this society where the scourge of polygamy has not passed, has a dignity and influence unknown in Greece. Penelope is the companion of Ulysses. The nobleness of her sorrow, her authority, are signs of the new destiny of women. The wife of Alcinous rules the domestic affairs. Helen herself, after her return to family life, will come and sit down, free and respected by the hearth of her spouse. Lastly, Andromache is the true companion of Hector, and seems worthy of sharing in all his fortune. But the woman is still far from being the equal of man. Favourite slaves frequently take from her her influence, and slavery, which the chances of war can bring down on the noblest, vilifies her at every instant. That tripod, given to a victor in a contest, is worth twelve oxen. We see the princes Iphitus and Ulysses, labourers and shepherds, Anchises, who is shepherd and hunter. The shield of Achilles shows us a king harvesting. Neleus gives his daughter in marriage for a flock; Andromache herself takes care of Hector’s horses; and Nausicaa, at a later and more civilised period than the Odyssey, is depicted to us washing the linen of the royal family.

The guest almost makes part of the family; it is the gods who send him, a touching and wholesome belief in that time of brigandage and of difficult communications. You are going to spurn this guest; take care! perhaps it is Jupiter himself. How many times have the gods not come thus to try mortals? Also hospitality formed a sacred link which united, in the most distant tribes, those who had received it to those who had given it. This gave rise to duties of gratitude and friendship that nothing could efface, and which kept their sway even to the encounters on the battle-field. Glaucus and Diomedes met in the midst of the conflict and exchanged weapons, which they would have a horror of staining with the blood of a guest. It is not in vain that Hercules and Theseus travelled over Greece, punishing the violators of hospitality. There were no castes in the Grecian society, but slavery from the most ancient times, with the right of life and death for sanction. War was the most ordinary cause of servitude. The enemy spared became[98] the slave of the victor; it is thus that Briseis fell to the power of Achilles. There was no town taken without slaves, and the inhabitants formed part of the booty. Hector predicted slavery for his wife and his sons, and depicts Andromache as fetching water from the fountain, and spinning wool in the house of a Greek. The carrying off of children by pirates, who made a regular trade of them, already maintained slavery; it is thus that Eumæus was sold at Ithaca. This custom of taking away children from the inhabitants of the coasts, lasted as long as the ancient world. The Greek comedy, and after it Roman comedy, made of this carrying off the most ordinary source of their intrigues. But if servitude was already rooted in Greek civilisation, it was at least then singularly softened by the simplicity of the customs, and above all by the rural and agricultural life, which brought together in common works master and slave.

Poetry was already a fashion in these rising societies, and in the middle of these hard wars the pleasures of the mind had their place. The warriors, seated in circles, listened with an eagerness, full of patience, to the interminable recitals of the ædes or singers. Competitions of music and religious poetry are already instituted in the small towns, which call the rising art to their ceremonies. These poetries were sung with the accompaniment of the lyre, and there was no king who had not his singer. Agamemnon treated his with honour, and in leaving, entrusted to him his wife and his treasures. This religious and heroic poetry preceded Homer, who found established rules and fixed types. As to the beauty of this primitive poetry, it must be judged by the immortal creations of its most illustrious representative. Certainly there were not many Homers, but he was not the only poet, and the imposing simplicity of his poetry could not be a unique fact in this age of chanted legends. Art and sciences were in infancy, but the curiosity and admiration that the poets testify for the still imperfect work of the artists, and for the fabulous tales of travellers, remind us that we see at its beginning the most industrious and the most inventive race of antiquity.i

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER IV. THE TRANSITION TO SECURE HISTORY

BELOCH’S VIEW OF THE CONVENTIONAL PRIMITIVE HISTORY[7]

The singers of the epic poems as well as their hearers were as yet wholly unconscious of the gap separating mythology from history. To them the Trojan War, the march of the Seven against Thebes, the wanderings of Ulysses and Menelaus, were historical realities and they believed just as firmly that Achilles, Diomedes, Agamemnon, and all the other heroes once really lived, as the Swiss until recently believed in the reality of their Tell and Winkelried. Indeed until the fourth century hardly any one in Greece dared to question the truth of these things. Even so critical a person as Thucydides is still wholly under the influence of epic tradition, so much so that he gives a statistical report of the strength of Agamemnon’s army and tries to answer the question as to how such masses of people could have been supported during the ten years’ siege of Troy.

But the world which the epic described belonged to an immeasurably distant past. The people of that time were much stronger than those “who live to-day”; the gods still used to descend upon the earth and did not consider it beneath them to generate sons with mortal women. In comparison with that great by-gone age, the present and that which oral tradition told of the immediate past seemed wholly without interest; and if the epic did occasionally seize upon historical recollections, the events were put back into the heroic age and became inseparably mingled with mythical occurrences. As to how the present had grown out of this heroic past, the poets and their contemporaries had not yet begun to ask.

The time came, however, when this question was put. People wanted to know why the Greece of historical times looked so different from Homer’s Greece; why for example Homer knows of no Thessaly; why he has Achæans instead of Dorians living in Argolis; why, according to him, descendants of Pelops instead of those of Hercules sit upon the thrones of Argos and Sparta.[100] It is the first awakening of the historical sense which finds expression in such questions. The answer, however, was already given with the question. It was clear that the Grecian tribes must have changed their abodes to a great extent after the Trojan War; Hellas must have been shaken by a real migration of peoples. But this single fact was not sufficient. People wanted to know the impelling cause of the migrations, and the particular circumstances under which they took place. The answer was not difficult for a people endowed with such a facility for speculation.

The very lack of colour in such accounts would be a sufficient proof for the fact that we are not dealing here with pure speculation, not with real tradition. Thus hardly anything more is told of the immigration of the Thessalians into the river basin of the Peneus beyond the bald fact, and that was sufficient to explain why Homer’s “Pelasgian Argos” was called Thessaly in historic times. Of course the incomers must have had a leader, consequently Thessalus, the eponymic hero of the people, was placed at their head, a point in the story which of itself is sufficient to stamp the whole narrative as a late invention. The Thessalians also must have come from somewhere; but since Homer already places the races south of Thermopylæ in the homes they actually occupied in history, and since they could not make a Grecian tribe immigrate from Thrace or Illyria, there was nothing else to do but to place the original home of the conquerors in Epirus. This was all the more plausible as the name Thessaly is really closely connected with Thessaliotis, the region about Pharsalia and Cierium on the borders of Epirus, and first spread from here to other parts of the country.

Even more characteristic perhaps is the account of the migration of the Bœotians. According to Homer, Cadmeans lived in Thebes, Minyæ in Orchomenos. Hence it followed that the Bœotians must have immigrated after the Trojan War, like the Thessalians. But a great many Thessalian names of places and religious practices occur in Bœotia. Hence nothing was more simple than to make the Bœotians immigrate from Thessaly, thus at the same time explaining what had become of the original inhabitants of Thessaly after the influx of Thessalians. To be sure this original population, as represented by the serfs (penestai) of the Thessalian nobles, presented a very different appearance; still these two views could very well be combined: one needed only to suppose that one part of the former population of the region had fallen into bondage, and that the other had emigrated. Moreover, Homer already mentions Bœotians in the region which they occupied in historic times. That made the further supposition necessary that a part of the people had already settled in Bœotia before the Trojan War; or else the opposite hypothesis was made, that the Bœotians had been driven out of Bœotia after the Trojan War by the Pelasgians and Thracians, and had returned thither after several generations. We see plainly from this example how all such suppositions were dependent on the epic poems.

The migration of the Eleans is a similar case. Elis is an old district name, consequently no Eleans can ever have existed outside of Elis. But Homer mentions the Epeans as being inhabitants of the country; consequently it was stated that the Eleans did not enter the Peloponnesus until after the Trojan War, and that they came from Ætolia, where Oxylus, the mythical ancestor of the Elean royal house, was also worshipped as a hero. According to an opposite version Ætolia was settled by emigrants from Elis; and these two views were then combined, and the Eleans were made first to move to Ætolia and then, after ten generations, to move back again. As a matter of fact the Homeric Epeans are nothing else than the inhabitants of Epea in Triphylia,[101] whose name was extended to include the inhabitants of the surrounding districts, like the name of the neighbouring Pylians, since the knowledge of the Ionic rhapsodists concerning the western part of the Peloponnesus is very scanty.

Further, since Homer knows of no Dorians in the Peloponnesus, it was clear that the peoples inhabiting Argolis and Laconia in historic times could have come in only after the Trojan War; it remained only to discover from whence. This was not difficult; there was in the middle part of Greece, between Œta and Parnassus, a small mountainous district whose inhabitants were called Dorians, quite like the Grecian colonists on the Carian coast. This is not at all remarkable, since in a widely extended linguistic territory the same local names must necessarily recur in different places, as may be seen from any topographical dictionary. Such homonyms by no means prove an especially close relationship between the inhabitants of such localities; in the formation of Greek racial tradition, however, they have played an important part.

The home of the Dorians was in this way established. People now wanted to know the reason which had led them to seek new abodes so far away. In close connection with this was the question as to how the descendants of Hercules had come to reign over Argos, Sparta, and Messene. The answer was given by the tradition of the return of the Heraclidæ. Hercules, it was related, had belonged to the royal family of Argos, but had been robbed of his rights to the throne and had died in exile; his sons, or grandsons as was stated later for chronological reasons, had made good their rights with the aid of the Dorians and had also established the claims which Hercules had to dominion over Laconia and Messenia. The regained lands were divided under the three brothers Temenus, Cresphontes, and Aristodemus, or between the twin sons of the latter, Procles and Eurysthenes. This was a tradition which could be put to admirable political use. Supported by this title, Argos could claim the hegemony over the whole of Argolis; Sparta could justify the subjection of the small cities of Laconia and Messenia. That was why this tradition, once come into existence, was quickly circulated and officially recognised.

But the mention of Messenia shows that we are here dealing with a comparatively recent stage in the growth of tradition, since this region could not be claimed as a heritage by the Heraclidæ until after the Spartan conquest between the eighth and seventh centuries.

Also the eponymi of the Spartan royal dynasties of Agis and Eurypon have no place in the tradition of the Doric migrations; a sure sign that they were first connected with Hercules artificially. And Temenus, from whom the Argive kings traced their descent, was, according to the Arcadian myth,—no doubt taken from Argos,—the son of Pelasgus, of Phegeus, or of the Argolian hero Phoroneus. It was also related that Temenus had been brought up by Hera—the goddess of the Argolian land. He was thus an old Argive hero who originally had nothing whatever to do with Hercules. Just as little was known about the Doric migration on the island of Cos at the time when the genealogy of its ruling dynasty was written, since the latter is not traced back to Temenus, but directly to Hercules through his son Thessalus. And anyway Hercules, as we have seen, is not a “Doric” divinity at all, but a Bœotian, whose cult was extended to the neighbouring countries of Bœotia, only after the colonisation of Asia Minor. The tradition concerning the return of the Heraclidæ is thus seen to have come into existence long after the immigration of the Dorians into the Peloponnesus,[102] with which it is inseparably connected. This tradition is first mentioned by Tyrtæus towards the end of the seventh century and in the epic poem Ægimios, ascribed to Hesiod, which may have been written at the same time, or a little later. That was the period when the Homeric poems became popular in European Greece; both Tyrtæus and Hesiod are wholly under their influence. Moreover it is clear that an immigration of Dorians from middle Greece into the Peloponnesus could be talked of only after the Doric name had been carried from the colonies of Asia Minor to the west coast of the Ægean Sea, which did not happen until post-Homeric times. In the same way the legend of the Thessalian migration could have grown up only after the inhabitants of the Peneus river basin had become conscious of their racial unity and had begun to designate themselves by the common name of Thessalians. This must have taken place early in the eighth or seventh centuries, since, as has already been stated, Homer is not as yet acquainted with this name, whereas the latest part of the Iliad, the catalogue of ships, mentions the eponymic hero of the people. Finally, the dependence of all these legendary migrations upon the epic poems is shown by the fact that they are connected only with regions which in Homer had a different population than in historic times. The Arcadians and Athenians, on the other hand, who already in Homer are found in the same districts they occupied in later times, considered themselves autochthonous. Thus we see that Homer had not only given the Greeks their gods, as Herodotus says, but their ancient history also. We, however, do not need to be told that traditions which did not grow up until the eighth or seventh century are entirely worthless as helping to an understanding of conditions in Greece at a time preceding the colonisation of Asia Minor.

After all this the question as to the internal evidence of the truth of these traditions is really superfluous. Even a well-invented myth is yet by no means history. Here, however, we are asked to believe the most improbable things. The Doris on the Œta is a wild mountain valley, measuring scarcely two hundred square kilometers in area, which could not have contained more than a few thousand inhabitants, since farming and grazing formed their sole means of support. In Homer’s time the eastern Locrians were still so lightly armed that they were wholly unfitted for fighting with the hoplites at close range; the Dorians who lived farther inland than these Locrians cannot have been much further advanced several centuries earlier. And a few hundreds or even thousands of such poorly armed soldiers are to have conquered the old highly civilised districts of the Peloponnesus with their numerous strongholds, and the superior armour of their inhabitants? The very idea is an absurdity. No more can we understand why the Dorians should have migrated precisely to Argolis, and Laconia, and even to Messenia—places situated so far from their home. The legend does indeed give a satisfactory answer to this question, but anyone who cannot recognise Hercules, with his sons and grandsons, as historical characters, is obliged to find some other motive for the migration of the Dorians.

In other respects, also, there is absolutely no proof to support the supposition of a migration of peoples upon the Grecian peninsula. The “Mycenæan” civilisation was not, as has been supposed, suddenly destroyed by an incursion of uncivilised tribes, but was gradually merged into the civilisation of the classic period. Even Attica, in connection with which there is no tradition of a migration, had its period of Mycenæan culture. The so-called “Doric” institutions are limited to Crete and Laconia, and in the latter country they are not older than the Spartan conquest in the eighth century;[103] hence they have nothing whatever to do with the Doric migration. In the same way the serfdom of the Thessalian peasants may very well have been the result of an economic development, like the colonia during the Roman empire or serfdom in Germany after the end of the Middle Ages. Also the differentiation of the Grecian dialects came about, as we saw, after the colonisation of Asia Minor, and hence should not be traced back to the migrations which took place within the Grecian peninsula at some time preceding this period. And, in any case, after the Dorians settled in the Peloponnesus they must have adopted the dialect of the original inhabitants of the country, who were so far superior to them in numbers and civilisation; just as no one doubts that the Thessalians did the same after their immigration into the Peneus river basin. A “religion of the Doric race,” however, exists only in the imagination of modern scholars; Hercules himself, the ancestral god of the Dorians, is of Bœotian origin. Finally, it is extremely doubtful if the Argives and Laconians were any more closely related to each other than to the other Grecian tribes—the so-called Doric Phyleans, at least, have until now been traced only in Argolis and in the Argolian colonies. But even if a closer relationship did exist between the two neighbouring tribes, it would by no means necessarily follow that the Argo-Laconian people first immigrated into the Peloponnesus at a time when the eastern part of the peninsula had already reached a comparatively high grade of civilisation. There is indeed no question but that the Peloponnesus got its Hellenic population from the north, that is directly from middle Greece; and it is very probable that, even after the Peloponnesus was already in the possession of the Greeks, tribal displacements still took place in Greece. But they occurred in so remote a period that they have left no distinguishable trace, even in tradition. If the Greeks of Asia Minor remembered only the bare fact of their immigration, how could a tradition have been maintained of tribal wanderings which took place long before this colonisation? It is an idle task to try to discover the direction of these migrations or the more particular circumstances under which they took place.

Hence it is a picture of the imagination which, since Herodotus,e has been accepted as primitive Grecian history. But the problem which gave rise to the traditions of mythical migrations still remains for us to solve—the question as to why the epics present us with a different picture of the distribution of Grecian tribes, from that found in historic times. The answer to-day will naturally be different from the one given two thousand years ago.

The epic poem designates Agamemnon’s followers, and indeed all the Greeks before Troy, as Argives, Achæans, or Danaans—terms which are used wholly synonymously even in the oldest parts of the Iliad. Now we know that not only in Homeric times, but already centuries earlier, before the colonisation of Crete and Asia Minor, Argolis was inhabited by the same people that we find there in historic times. It would not of itself be impossible to suppose that this people, who afterwards had no common tribal name, should have called themselves Achæans or Danaans, in prehistoric times, although it would be difficult to understand how this tribal name could have been lost. But as a matter of fact a tribe called Danaan never did exist. Danaus is an old Argive hero who is said to have transformed the waterless Argos into a well-watered country; his daughters, the Danaides, are water nymphs; Danæ also, the mother of the solar hero Perseus, and herself a goddess, cannot be separated from Danaus. The Danaans, accordingly, are the “people of Danaus”; they belong like him to tradition, and have been transposed from heaven to earth like the Cadmeans and Minyæ to[104] whom we shall return later on. The name Achæan, however, was applied in historic times to the inhabitants of the northern coast of the Peloponnesus and of the south of Thessaly, and it is hardly probable that it should have been more widely spread in historic times. Agamemnon seems rather, according to the oldest tradition, to have been a Thessalian prince, like Achilles, who continued to be regarded as such. At the time, however, when the epic was being formed in Ionia, the Peloponnesian Argos outshone all other parts of the Grecian peninsula, and the poets in consequence were obliged to transpose the governmental seat of the powerful ruler from Thessaly to the Peloponnesus. His Achæans of course migrated with him.

Since, now, in Homer the name Achæan includes all the Grecian tribes under Agamemnon’s command, it could no longer be used to designate the inhabitants of one single region. Consequently in the epic the name Achaia is not used for the northern coast of the Peloponnesus, but this region is simply called “coast-land,” or Ægialea. This then gave rise to the tradition—if we still call such combinations tradition—that the Achæans who were driven out of Laconia by the Dorians had settled in Ægialea and given their name to the country. Ionians were said to have lived there previously, a theory which was supported by the existence of a sanctuary of the Heliconian Poseidon on the promontory of Mycale.

Furthermore Homer mentions various peoples upon the Grecian peninsula and the surrounding islands, which in historic times no longer existed there; for example, the Abantes, who appear in the catalogue of ships as inhabitants of Eubœa, whereas in the rest of the Iliad they are not localised. It is possible that there has here been a preservation of the old tribal name of the Eubœans, which later must have been lost; but it is also just as possible, and more probable, that the Abantes had originally nothing whatever to do with Eubœa, but that they were the inhabitants of Abæ in Phocis, whose name then, for the sake of some theory, was transferred to the neighbouring island. The Caucones according to the Telemachus must have dwelt in the western part of the Peloponnesus, not far from Pylus, whereas the Iliad calls them allies of the Trojans; and in reality even in historic times Caucones are said to have been found on the Paphlagonian coast. The name was thus evidently transferred from Asia Minor to the Peloponnesus, for which the river Caucon near Dyme in Achaia may have given a reason. A comparatively late part of the Iliad tells of a war between the Curetes and the inhabitants of Calydon in Ætolia. In Hesiod, on the other hand, the Curetes are divine beings, related to the nymphs and satyrs. They appear also as beneficent dæmons in the Cretan folk-lore; they are said to have taught mankind all sorts of useful arts and also to have brought up the infant Zeus. They belong thus to mythology, not to history. They were probably located in Ætolia only because there was a mountain there called Curion; and as a matter of course it was said that they had immigrated from Crete. Since on the Ætolian coast at the foot of the Curion there was a city called Chalcis, they were further transferred to the Eubœan Chalcis.

There are also other cases in pre-Homeric times of mythical people having been transposed from heaven to earth—thus the Danaans of whom we have already spoken; furthermore, the Lapithæ, who are said to have lived in the northern part of Thessaly at the foot of Olympus and Ossa. Their close association with the centaurs leaves no doubt that they, like the latter, belong to the realm of mythology. Closely related to them are the Phlegyæ. The Iliad gives us a picture of Ares, as he advances to battle in their ranks, but leaves their dwelling-place indefinite; later authorities placed it in Thessaly[105] or in the valley of the Bœotian Cephisus. Coronis, the mother of Æsculapius, belonged to this tribe; also Ixion, who laid violent hands on Hera. Finally, the Phlegyæ are said to have burned the Delphic temple and in punishment therefor were destroyed by Apollo by lightning and an earthquake. The Minyæ also belong to this circle. They compose the crew of the ship Argo, which goes into the distant sun-land of the east to bring back from thence the Golden Fleece; the daughter of their tribal hero, Minyas, is Persephone, and no further proof is necessary to show that he himself is a god and his people mythical. Afterwards when the starting-point of the Argonauts was localised in the Pagasæan Gulf, the Minyæ also became a Thessalian race; from there, like their relatives the Phlegyæ, they were brought over to Bœotia, where Orchomenos in Homer is called “Minyean.” And since the Iliad furthermore mentions a river Minyos in the later Triphylia, the Minyæ were placed there also.

The Pelasgians play a much more important part in the conventional primitive history of Greece than the last-mentioned peoples. Throughout antiquity their name is connected with the western part of the great Thessalian plain, the “Pelasgic Argos” of Homer, the Pelasgiotis of historic times. The Iliad speaks of the Pelasgians, famed for their spears, who lived far from Troy in broad-furrowed Larissa, and probably intends thereby the Thessalian capital. Thessalian Achilles prays to the Pelasgian Zeus of Dodona before the departure of his friend Patroclus. But the Iliad as yet knows nothing of Pelasgian inhabitants of Dodona; on the contrary the catalogue of ships reckons this sacred city as belonging to the territory of the Ænianes and Perrhæbi, and it is Hesiod who first makes the temple to have been founded by Pelasgians. Elsewhere Pelasgians are mentioned by Homer only in Crete.

Otherwise the later accounts. Wherever within the circle of the Ægean Sea the name of Larissa occurs, there Pelasgians are said to have lived—in the Peloponnesian Argos, in Æolis of Asia Minor, on the island of Lesbos, on the Cayster near Ephesus. It is possibly for this reason that the Odyssey places Pelasgians in Crete, since there, also, there was a Larissæan field near Hierapytna, and Gortyn is said to have been called Larissa in ancient times. From Argos the Pelasgians also became woven into the myths of the neighbouring Arcadia, the ancestral hero of which, Lycaon, is called by Hesiod a son of Pelasgus.

Pelasgians were said to have lived once in Attica also. The wall which defended the approach to the citadel of Athens bore the name Pelargicon, and as no one knew what that meant, it was said that it had been corrupted out of Pelasgicon and that the citadel had been built by Pelasgians. These Pelasgians were then said to have been driven out by the Athenians and to have migrated to Lemnos. Why they went precisely to this place we do not know, nor why these Lemnian Pelasgians were called Tyrrhenians. Homer places the Sinties, that is a Thracian tribe, in Lemnos. Remnants of the original inhabitants of the island, who were driven out by the Athenians in about the year 500 B.C., were, a hundred years later, still living on the peninsula of Athos and on the Propontis near Placia and Scylace; they had preserved their old language, which was different from the Greek.

In consequence of this and similar traditions, the theory was brought forward in the sixth century that the Hellenes had been preceded in Greece by a Pelasgic race. Since, however, some of the Grecian tribes, as the Arcadians and Athenians, considered themselves to be autochthonous, there was nothing for it but to call the Pelasgians the ancestors of the later Hellenes,[106] and so the whole change was reduced to one of name only. This to be sure was in contradiction of the statements of Homer, who names the Pelasgians among the allies of Troy, and hence evidently considered them to be racially antagonistic to the Greeks. The genealogists and historians of antiquity never got around this contradiction, which was indeed inexplicable with the means at their command.

Moreover, even if a Pelasgian people ever had existed in the wide extent attributed to them by tradition, the Greeks of antiquity would no more have conceived of them as being a single nation, than they themselves became conscious of their national unity before the eighth century; they would have designated the several Pelasgian tribes by different names. This alone shows that we are not dealing here with real historical tradition, quite apart from the fact that there is no historical tradition from the time preceding the colonisation of Asia Minor. Here also it is a question of mere theorising, and the theories already presuppose the existence of the Iliad and Odyssey, even to their later songs, so that they cannot be older than the seventh or sixth century. Historically the Pelasgians can be traced only in Thessaly. Pelasgiotis is thus equivalent to Pelasgia, just as Thessaliotis is equivalent to Thessalia and Elimiotis to Elimea. The Pelasgiots, however, of historic times were of Grecian origin and we have not the slightest reason to suppose that the same was not true of prehistoric times. Indeed the Thessalian plain in all probability is the place in which the Hellenes first made permanent settlements.

A similar position to that of the Pelasgians is occupied by the Leleges in tradition. Homer speaks of them as inhabiting Pedasus in southern Troy and even Alcæus calls Antandrus, situated in this region, a Lelegean town. Later comers regarded the Leleges as the original inhabitants of Caria, where there was also a Pedasus; even in the Hellenistic period they were said to have formed a clan of serfs in this region, like the Heliots in Sparta. Old fortresses and tombstones, concerning the origin of which nothing was known, were ascribed to the Leleges, just as we speak of “Pelasgian” walls. It was also supposed that the whole Ionian coast and the islands near it were once inhabited by these people. It was natural to suppose a similar relationship for European Greece and here also to let a Lelegean population precede the Hellenic. Supports for this theory were found in a number of local names, such as Physcus and Larymna in Locris, Abæ in Phocis, Pedasus in Messenia, which occur in an identical or similar form in Caria. One of the two citadels of Megara was called Caria; and Zeus Carios was worshipped in various parts of Greece. Accordingly, Leleges or Carians were said to have lived in all these places. The supposition that the southern part of the Hellenic peninsula was occupied by a Carian population in a pre-Grecian period has, as we have seen, a great deal in its favour; only we should avoid trying to discover historical tradition in late suppositions, since Homer still knows nothing of all these myths and Hesiod is the first to make Locrus rule over the Leleges.

Nor does Homer know anything of Thracians outside of their historic abodes to the north of the Ægean Sea. Later tradition places them in Phocian Daulis and in Bœotia on the Helicon. The most direct cause for this was probably furnished by the race of Thracidæ, which attained a prominent position in Delphi and which had probably spread into other Phocian cities as well; another reason was the name of the Daulian king, Tereus, which had a Thracian sound, and lastly, the cult of the Muses which had a home on the Helicon, as also on Olympus in Thracian Pieria. Mysteries were[107] connected with this cult even at a comparatively early period, as is shown by the legends of Orpheus and Musæus. Hence Eumolpus, the mythical founder of the Eleusinian mysteries, was held to be a Thracian; his very name shows that he is connected with the worship of the Muses, even if he were not expressly said to be the son of Musæus. The historic value of this tradition is thus sufficiently demonstrated.

There were also traditions of immigrations from the Orient into Greece. These were based in part upon solar myths, which have given rise to similar legends among the most widely separated peoples; they also reflect the consciousness that the rudiments of a higher civilisation were brought to the Greeks from the East. In the form in which we have them, these myths are without exception late formations, which presuppose close relations between Greece and the old civilisations of Asia and Egypt. In Homer, accordingly, there is no trace of them.

Thus Pelops is said to have come from Lydia or Phrygia to the peninsula which has since borne his name. One might be tempted to regard him as the eponymic hero of the Peloponnesus; but Pelopia was also the name of a daughter of Pelias or of Niobe, and of the mother of Cycnus, a son of Ares. Pelops’ mother also is Euryanassa, a daughter of Dione; his paternal grandfather is Xanthus (the “shining one”); two of his sons are called Chrysippus and Alcathous. These names leave no doubt as to the fact that Pelops was originally a solar hero; hence also the story of his contest with Œnomaus for the possession of Hippodamia. The name Peloponnesus, which is also unknown to Homer, means accordingly “Island of the sun-god”; Helios, as is well known, had a celebrated temple at the most extreme southern point of the peninsula, on the promontory of Tænarum. Thus Pelops, originally, was not materially different from Hercules, who for the most part has crowded him out of cult and tradition; just as the genealogy of the Peloponnesian dynasties was traced back to Pelops in ancient times and to Hercules at a later period. Nevertheless Pelops has at least kept the first place in Olympia.

The tradition of the immigration of Danaus from Egypt is closely connected with the legend of the wanderings of Io, which could not have taken on its present form until after Egypt was opened up to the Hellenes, that is not before the end of the seventh century. The legend concerning the Egyptian origin of the old Attic national hero Cecrops grew up much later in the fourth or third century, and never attained general recognition.

We have already seen how Phœnix and his brother Cadmus became Phœnicians. Accordingly Phœnix’s daughter, or according to a later myth his sister, Europa, was carried off by Zeus from Phœnicia to Crete, where she gave birth to Minos. This alone makes it clear that Minos had nothing whatever to do with the Phœnicians, but is a good Grecian god, as are also Phœnix, Cadmus, Europa, his wife Pasiphaë (the “all enlightening”), his daughter Phædra (the “beaming”), and Ariadne the wife of Dionysus. Minos, also, afterwards fell to the rank of a hero; already in Homer he appears as the king of Knossos, and later the Cretans trace their laws back to him. The name Minoa occurs frequently in the islands and on the coast of the Ægean Sea; also in Crete itself, and in Amorgos, Siphnos, and on the coast of Megaris. Hence the conclusion was drawn that Minos had ruled in all these places and must therefore have been a great sea-king, whose dominion extended over the whole of the Cyclades and in fact over the whole Ægean Sea. But in Sicily there was also a Minoa, a daughter city of the Megarian colony of Selinus, and doubtless named after the small island of Minoa near the[108] Nisæan Megara. Thus the tradition arose that Minos had proceeded to Sicily and there found his death. Since Selinus was founded in the year 650 B.C., this myth cannot have come into existence before the sixth century.

At the beginning of the fifth century all these traditions were combined, and connected; on the one hand, with the myths which formed the substance of the epic poems; on the other, with the oldest historic recollections. The genealogies of the heroes as given in part by Homer and more completely by Hesiod served as a chronological basis. At the beginning were placed the Pelasgians, then the immigrations from the east, of Danaus, Pelops, Cadmus, and others. Then followed the expedition of the Argonauts, the march of the Seven against Thebes, the Trojan War, and whatever else of similar nature was related in the epics. Next came the age of the great migrations; first the incursion of the Thessalians into the plains of the Peneus, and the Bœotian migration caused thereby, then the march of the Dorians and their allies, the Eleans, into the Peloponnesus, which was followed by the colonisation of the islands and of the western coast of Asia Minor.

Thus was gained the misleading appearance of a pragmatic history of Grecian antiquity; and although even in ancient times occasional critical doubts were not wanting, this system as a whole was accepted by the Greeks as historical truth.c

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER V. THE DORIANS

From the earliest period there were two peoples of Greece who seem, at least in the eye of later generations, to have been pre-eminent—the Dorians and the Ionians. Of the former the leaders are the Spartans; of the latter, the Athenians. In the main, so preponderant are these two cities that, viewed retrospectively, Greek history comes to seem the history of Athens and Sparta. This appears a curious anomaly when one considers that these cities were not great world emporiums like Babylon and Nineveh and Rome, but at best only moderate-sized towns. Yet they influenced humanity for all time to come; and our study of Greek history perforce resolves itself largely into the doings of the citizens of these two little communities. We shall first consider the history of the Dorians, who, though in the long run the less important of the two, were the earlier to appear prominently on the stage of history.a

The Dorians derived their origin from those districts in which the Grecian nation bordered towards the north upon numerous and dissimilar races of barbarians. As to the tribes which dwelt beyond these boundaries we are indeed wholly destitute of information; nor is there the slightest trace of any memorial or tradition that the Greeks originally came from those quarters. On these frontiers, however, the events took place which effected an entire alteration in the internal condition of the whole Grecian nation, and here were given many of those impulses, of which the effects were so long and generally experienced. The prevailing character of the events alluded to, was a perpetual pressing forward of the barbarous races, particularly of the Illyrians, into more southern districts.

To begin then by laying down a boundary line, which may be afterwards modified for the sake of greater accuracy, we shall suppose this to be the mountain ridge, which stretches from Mount Olympus to the west as far as the Acroceraunian Mountains (comprehending the Cambunian ridge and Mount Lacmon), and in the middle comes in contact with the Pindus chain, which stretches in a direction from north to south. The western part of this chain separates the farthest Grecian tribes from the great Illyrian nation, which extended back as far as the Celts in the south of Germany.

[110]

In the fashion of wearing the mantle and dressing the hair, and also in their dialect, the Macedonians bore a great resemblance to the Illyrians, whence it is evident that the Macedonians belonged to the Illyrian nation. Notwithstanding which, there can be no doubt that the Greeks were aboriginal inhabitants of this district. The plains of Emathia, the most beautiful district of the country, were occupied by the Pelasgi, who, according to Herodotus, also possessed Creston above Chalcidice, to which place they had come from Thessaliotis. Hence the Macedonian dialect was full of primitive Greek words. And that these had not been introduced by the royal family (which was Hellenic by descent or adoption of manners) is evident from the fact, that many signs of the most simple ideas (which no language ever borrows from another) were the same in both, as well as from the circumstance that these words do not appear in their Greek form, but have been modified according to a native dialect. In the Macedonian dialect there occur grammatical forms which are commonly called Æolic, together with many Arcadian and Thessalian words: and what perhaps is still more decisive, several words, which, though not to be found in the Greek, have been preserved in the Latin language. There does not appear to be any peculiar connection with the Doric dialect: hence we do not give much credit to the otherwise unsupported assertion of Herodotus, of an original identity of the Dorian and Macednian (Macedonian) nations. In other authors Macednus is called the son of Lycaon, from whom the Arcadians were descended, or Macedon is the brother of Magnes, or a son of Æolus, according to Hesiod and Hellanicus, which are merely various attempts to form a genealogical connection between this semi-barbarian race and the rest of the Greek nation.

The Thessalians as well as the Macedonians were, as it appears, an Illyrian race, who subdued a native Greek population; but in this case the body of the interlopers was smaller, while the numbers and civilisation of the aboriginal inhabitants were considerable. Hence the Thessalians resembled the Greeks more than any of the northern races with which they were connected: hence their language in particular was almost purely Grecian, and indeed bore perhaps a greater affinity to the language of the ancient epic poets than any other dialect. But the chief peculiarities of this nation with which we are acquainted were not of a Grecian character. Of this their national dress, which consisted in part of the flat and broad-brimmed hat καυσία and the mantle (which last was common to both nations, but was unknown to the Greeks of Homer’s time, and indeed long afterwards, until adopted as the costume of the equestrian order at Athens), is a sufficient example. The Thessalians moreover were beyond a doubt the first to introduce into Greece the use of cavalry. More important distinctions however than that first alleged are perhaps to be found in their impetuous and passionate character, and the low and degraded state of their mental faculties. The taste for the arts shown by the rich family of the Scopadæ proves no more that such was the disposition of the whole people, than the existence of the same qualities in Archelaus argues their prevalence in Macedonia. This is sufficient to distinguish them from the race of the Greeks, so highly endowed by nature. We are therefore induced to conjecture that this nation, which a short time before the expedition of the Heraclidæ, migrated from Thesprotia, and indeed from the territory of Ephyra (Cichyrus) into the plain of the Peneus, had originally come from Illyria. On the other hand indeed, many points of similarity in the customs of the Thessalians and Dorians might be brought forward. Thus, for example, the love for the[111] male sex (that usage peculiar to the Dorians) was also common among the Illyrians, and the objects of affection were, as at Sparta, called ἀΐται; the women also, as amongst the Dorians, were addressed by the title of ladies (δέσποιναι), a title uncommon in Greece, and expressive of the estimation in which they were held. A great freedom in the manners of the female sex was nevertheless customary among the Illyrians, who in this respect bore a nearer resemblance to the northern nations. Upon the whole, however, these migrations from the north had the effect of disseminating among the Greeks manners and institutions which were entirely unknown to their ancestors, as represented by Homer.

We will now proceed to inquire what was the extent of territory gained by the Illyrians in the west of Greece. A great part of Epirus had in early times been inhabited by Pelasgi, to which race the inhabitants of Dodona are likewise affirmed by the best authorities to have belonged, as well as the whole nation of Thesprotians; also the Chaonians at the foot of the Acroceraunian Mountains, and the Chones, Œnotri, and Peucetii on the opposite coast of Italy, are said to have been of this race. The ancient buildings, institutions, and religious worship of the Epirotes are also manifestly of Pelasgic origin. We suppose always that the Pelasgi were Greeks, and spoke the Grecian language, an opinion however in support of which we will on this occasion only adduce a few arguments. It must then be borne in mind, that all the races whose migrations took place at a late period, such as the Achæans, Ionians, Dorians, were not (the last in particular) sufficiently powerful or numerous to effect a complete change in the customs of a barbarous population; that many districts, Arcadia and Perrhæbia for instance, remained entirely Pelasgic, without being inhabited by any nation not of Grecian origin; that the most ancient names, either of Grecian places or mentioned in their traditions, belonged indeed to a different era of the dialect, but not to another language; that finally, the great similarity between the Latin and Greek can only be explained by supposing the Pelasgic language to have formed the connecting link. Now the nations of Epirus were almost reduced to a complete state of barbarism by the operation of causes, which could only have had their origin in Illyria; and in the historic age, the Ambracian Bay was the boundary of Greece. In later times more than half of Ætolia ceased to be Grecian, and without doubt adopted the manners and language of the Illyrians, from which point the Athamanes, an Epirote and Illyrian nation, pressed into the south of Thessaly. Migrations and predatory expeditions, such as the Encheleans had undertaken in the fabulous times, continued without intermission to repress and keep down the genuine population of Greece.

The Illyrians were in these ancient times also bounded on the east by the Phrygians and Thracians, as well as by the Pelasgi. The Phrygians were at this time the immediate neighbours of the Macedonians in Lebæa, by whom they were called Brygians (Βρύγες, Βρύγοι, Βρίγες); they dwelt at the foot of the snowy Bermius, where the fabulous rose-gardens of King Midas were situated, while walking in which the wise Silenus was fabled to have been taken prisoner. They also fought from this place (as the Telegonia of Eugamon related) with the Thesprotians of Epirus. At no great distance from hence were the Mygdonians, the people nearest related to the Phrygians. According to Xanthus, this nation did not migrate to Asia until after the Trojan War. But, in the first place, the Cretan traditions begin with religious ceremonies and fables, which appear from the most ancient testimonies to have been derived from Phrygians of Asia; and secondly the[112] Armenians, who were beyond a doubt of a kindred race to the Phrygians, were considered as an aboriginal nation in their own territory. It will therefore be sufficient to recognise the same race of men in Armenia, Asia Minor, and at the foot of Mount Bermius, without supposing that all the Armenians and Phrygians emigrated from the latter settlement on the Macedonian coast. The intermediate space between Illyria and Asia, a district across which numerous nations migrated in ancient times, was peopled irregularly from so many sides, that the national uniformity which seems to have once existed in those parts was speedily deranged. The most important documents respecting the connection between the Phrygian and other nations are the traces that remain of its dialect. It was well known in Plato’s time that many primitive words of the Grecian language were to be recognised with a slight alteration in the Phrygian, such as πῦρ, ὕδωρ, κύων; and the great similarity of grammatical structure which the Armenian now displays with the Greek, must be referred to this original connection. The Phrygians in Asia have, however, been without doubt intermixed with Syrians, who not only established themselves on the right bank of the Halys, but on the left also in Lycaonia, and as far as Lycia, and accordingly adopted much of the Syrian language and religion. Their enthusiastic and frantic ceremonies, however, had doubtless always formed part of their religion; these they had in common with their immediate neighbours, the Thracians: but the ancient Greeks appear to have been almost entirely unacquainted with such rites.

The Thracians, who settled in Pieria at the foot of Mount Olympus, and from thence came down to Mount Helicon, as being the originators of the worship of Bacchus and the Muses, and the fathers of Grecian poetry, are a nation of the highest importance in the history of civilisation. We cannot but suppose that they spoke a dialect very similar to the Greek, since otherwise they could not have had any considerable influence upon the latter people. They were in all probability derived originally from the country called Thrace in later times, where the Bessi, a tribe of the nation of the Satræ, at the foot of Mount Pangæum, presided over the oracle of Bacchus. Whether the whole of the populous races of Edones, Odomantes, Odrysi, Treres, etc., are to be considered as identical with the Thracians in Pieria, or whether it is not more probable that these barbarous nations received from the Greeks their general name of Thracians, with which they had been familiar from early times, are questions which we shall not attempt to determine. Into these nations, however, a large number of Pæonians subsequently penetrated, who had passed over at the time of a very ancient migration of the Teucrians together with the Mysians. To this Pæonian race the Pelagonians, on the banks of the Axius, belonged; who also advanced into Thessaly, as will be shown hereafter. Of the Teucrians, however, we know nothing excepting that, in concert with (Pelasgic) Dardanians, they founded the city of Troy—where the language in use was probably allied to the Grecian, and distinct from the Phrygian.

Now it is within the mountainous barriers above described that we must look for the origin of the nations which in the heroic mythology are always represented as possessing dominion and power, and are always contrasted with an aboriginal population. These, in our opinion, were northern branches of the Grecian nation, which had overrun and subdued the Greeks who dwelt farther south. The most ancient abode of the Hellenes proper (who in mythology are merely a small nation in Phthia) was situated, according to Aristotle, in Epirus, near Dodona, to whose god Achilles prays,[113] as being the ancient protector of his family. In all probability the Achæans, the ruling nation both of Thessaly and of the Peloponnesus in fabulous times, were of the same race and origin as the Hellenes. The Minyans, Phlegyans, Lapithæ, and Æolians of Corinth and Salmone, came originally from the districts above Pieria, on the frontiers of Macedonia, where the very ancient Orchomenus, Minya, and Salmonia or Halmopia were situated. Nor is there less obscurity with regard to the northern settlements of the Ionians; they appear, as it were, to have fallen from heaven into Attica and Ægialea; they were not, however, by any means identical with the aboriginal inhabitants of these districts, and had perhaps detached themselves from some northern, probably Achæan, race. Lastly, the Dorians are mentioned in ancient legends and poems as established in one extremity of the great mountain chain of Upper Greece, viz. at the foot of Mount Olympus: there are, however, reasons for supposing that at an earlier period they had dwelt at its other northern extremity, at the farthest limit of the Grecian nation.

We now turn our attention to the singular nation of the Hylleans (Ὑλλεῖς, Ὕλλοι), which is supposed to have dwelt in Illyria, but is in many respects connected in a remarkable manner with the Dorians. The real place of its abode can hardly be laid down; as the Hylleans are never mentioned in any historical narrative, but always in mythological legends; and they appear to have been known to the geographers only from mythological writers. Yet they are generally placed in the islands of Melita and Black-Corcyra, to the south of Liburnia. Now the name of the Hylleans agrees strikingly with that of the first and most noble tribe of the Dorians. Besides which, it is stated, that though dwelling among Illyrian races, these Hylleans were nevertheless genuine Greeks. Moreover they, as well as the Doric Hylleans, were supposed to have sprung from Hyllus, a son of Hercules, whom that hero begot upon Melite, the daughter of Ægæus: here the name Ægæus refers to a river in Corcyra, Melite to the island just mentioned. Apollo was the chief god of the Dorians; and so likewise these Hylleans were said to have concealed under the earth, as the sign of inviolable sanctity, that instrument of such importance in the religion of Apollo, a tripod. The country of the Hylleans is described as a large peninsula, and compared to the Peloponnesus: it is said to have contained fifteen cities; which however had not a more real existence, than the peninsula as large as the Peloponnesus on the Illyrian coast. How all these statements are to be understood is hard to say. It appears however that they can only be reconciled as follows: the Doric Hylleans had a tradition, that they came originally from these northern districts, which then bordered on the Illyrians, and were afterwards occupied by that people; and there still remained in those parts some members of their tribe, some other Hylleans. This notion of Greek Hylleans in the very north of Greece, who also were descended from Hercules, and also worshipped Apollo, was taken up and embellished by the poets: although it is not likely that any one had really ever seen these Hylleans and visited their country. Like the Hyperboreans, they existed merely in tradition and imagination. It is possible also that the Corcyræans, in whose island there was an “Hyllæan” harbour, may have contributed to the formation of these legends, as is shown by some circumstances pointed out above; but it cannot be supposed that the whole tradition arose from Corcyræan colonies.

Here we might conclude our remarks on this subject, did not the following question (one indeed of great importance) deserve some consideration. What relation can we suppose to have existed between the races[114] which migrated into those northern districts, and the native tribes, and what between the different races of Greece itself? All inquiries on this subject lead us back to the Pelasgi, who although not found in every part of ancient Greece (for tradition makes so wide a distinction between them and many other nations, that no confusion ever takes place), yet occur almost universally wherever early civilisation, ancient settlements, and worships of peculiar sanctity and importance existed. And in fact there is no doubt that most of the ancient religions of Greece owed their origin to this race. The Jupiter and Dione of Dodona; Jupiter and Juno of Argos; Vulcan and Minerva of Athens; Ceres and Proserpine of Eleusis; Mercury and Diana of Arcadia, together with Cadmus and the Cabiri of Thebes, cannot, if properly examined, be referred to any other origin. We must therefore attribute to that nation an excessive readiness in creating and metamorphosing objects of religious worship, so that the same fundamental conceptions were variously developed in different places, a variety which was chiefly caused by the arbitrary neglect of, or adherence to, particular parts of the same legend. In many places also we may recognise the sameness of character which pervaded the different worships of the above gods; everywhere we see manifested in symbols, names, rites, and legends, an uniform character of ideas and feelings. The religions introduced from Phrygia and Thrace, such as that of the Cretan Jupiter and Dionysus or Bacchus, may be easily distinguished by their more enthusiastic character from the native Pelasgic worship. The Phœnician and Egyptian religions lay at a great distance from the early Greeks, were almost unknown even where they existed in the immediate neighbourhood, were almost unintelligible when the Greeks attempted to learn them, and repugnant to their nature when understood. On the whole, the Pelasgic worship appears to form part of a simple elementary religion, which easily represented the various forms produced by the changes of nature in different climates and seasons, and which abounded in expressive signs for all the shades of feeling which these phenomena awakened.

On the other hand, the religion of the northern races (who as being of Hellenic descent are put in contrast with the Pelasgi) had in early times taken a more moral turn, to which their political relations had doubtless contributed. The heroic life (which is no fable of the poets), the fondness for vigorous and active exertion, the disinclination to the harmless occupations of husbandry, which is so remarkably seen in the conquering race of the Hellenes, necessarily awakened and cherished an entirely different train of religious feeling. Hence the Jupiter Hellanius of Æacus, the Jupiter Laphystius of Athamas, and, finally, the Doric Jupiter, whose son is Apollo, the prophet and warrior, are rather representations of the moral order and harmony of the universe, after the ancient method, than of the creative powers of nature. We do not however deny, that there was a time when these different views had not as yet taken a separate direction. Thus it may be shown, that the Apollo Lyceus of the Dorians conveyed nearly the same notions as the Jupiter Lycæus of the Arcadians, although the worship of either deity was developed independently of that of the other. Thus also certain ancient Arcadian and Doric usages had, in their main features, a considerable affinity. The points of resemblance in these different worships can be only perceived by comparison: tradition presents, at the very first outset, an innumerable collection of discordant forms of worship belonging to the several races, but without explaining to us how they came to be thus separated. For these different rites were not united into a whole until they[115] had been first divided; and both by the connection of worships and by the influence of poetry new combinations were introduced, which differed essentially from those of an earlier date.

The language of the ancient Grecian race (which, together with its religion, forms the most ancient record of its history) must, if we may judge from the varieties of dialect and from a comparison with the Latin language, have been very perfect in its structure, and rich and expressive in its flexions and formations; though much of this was polished off by the Greeks of later ages: in early times, distinctness and precision in marking the primitive words and the inflections being more attended to than facility of utterance. Wherever the ancient forms had been preserved, they sounded foreign and uncouth to more modern ears; and the language of later times was greatly softened, in comparison with the Latin. But the peculiarities of the pure Doric dialect are (wherever they were not owing to a faithful preservation of archaic forms) actual deviations from the original dialect, and consequently they do not occur in Latin; they bear a northern character. The use of the article, which did not exist in the Latin language or in that of epic poetry, can be ascribed to no other cause than to immigrations of new tribes, and especially to that of the Dorians. Its introduction must, nearly as in the Roman languages, be considered as the sign of a great revolution. The peculiarities of the Doric dialect must have existed before the period of the migrations; since thus only can it be explained how peculiar forms of the Doric dialect were common to Crete, Argos, and Sparta: the same is also true of the dialects which are generally considered as subdivisions of the Æolic; the only reason for the resemblance of the language of Lesbos to that of Bœotia being, that Bœotians migrated at that period to Lesbos. The peculiarities of the Ionic dialect may, on the other hand, be viewed in great part as deviations caused by the genial climate of Asia; for the language of the Attic race, to which the latter were most nearly related, could hardly have differed so widely from that of the colonies of Athens, if the latter had not been greatly changed.b

THE MIGRATION—THE VIEW OF CURTIUS

It is with the advance of the Dorians that the power of the mountain peoples makes its appearance from the north to take its share in the history of nations. For centuries they had lagged behind the coast and maritime races, but now they stepped in with all the greater impress of sheer natural force, and all that was transformed and reformed as a consequence of their conquering march, had a durability which lasted throughout the whole period of Greek history. This is the reason that in contradistinction to the “Heroic Age” ancient historians begin the historical period with the first deeds of the Dorians.

But, for all that, the information concerning these deeds is none the less scanty. On the contrary: as this epoch approaches, the old sources dry up, and new ones are not opened. Homer knows nothing of the march of the Heraclidæ [i.e., descendants of Heracles or Hercules]. The Achæan emigrants lived entirely in the memory of past days, and cherished it beyond the sea in the faithful memorials of song. For those who remained behind, who had to submit themselves to a strange and powerful rule, it was no time for poetry. The Dorians themselves have always been sparing in the matter of tradition; it was not their way to use many words about what they had done;[116] they had not the soaring enthusiasm of the Achæan race, and still less were they capable of spinning out their experiences at a pleasing length, in the fashion of the Ionians. Their inclination and ability were directed to practical existence, to the fulfilment of definite tasks, to earnest occupations.

Thus, then, the great incidents of the Dorian emigration were left to chance tradition, of which all but a few faint traces have been lost, and this is why our whole information on the conquest of the peninsula is as poor in names as in facts. For it was only at a later date, when the national epos itself had long died out, that an attempt was made to recover the beginnings of Peloponnesian history.

But these later poets could no longer find any fresh and living fountain of tradition; nor is theirs that pure and unrestrained delight in the images of the olden time, which constitutes the very breath of life in the Homeric poem; but there is a conscious effort to fill out the gaps in tradition, and to join the torn threads connecting the Achæan and the Dorian period. They sought to unify the legends of various places, to restore the missing links, to reconcile contradictions; and thus arose a history of the march of the Heraclidæ, in which things that had come about gradually and in the course of centuries, were related together with dogmatic brevity.

The Dorians crossed over from the mainland in successive troops, accompanied by their wives and children; they spread slowly over the country; but wherever they gained a footing the result was a complete transformation of the conditions of life by their agency. They brought with them their household and tribal institutions; they clung with tenacious obstinacy to their peculiarities of speech and custom; proud and shy, they held aloof from the other Greeks, and instead of becoming absorbed, as the Ionians did, into the older population, they impressed on the new home the character of their own race. The peninsula became Dorian.

But this transmutation came about in a very varied fashion; it did not start from one point, but had three chief centres. The legend of the Peloponnesus has expressed it in this wise: three brothers, Temenus, Aristodemus, and Cresphontes, who were of the race of Heracles [Hercules], the old rightful heir to the dominion of Argos, asserted the claims of their ancestor. They offered common sacrifices on the three altars of Zeus Patrous and cast lots among themselves for the various lordships in the country. Argos was the principal lot, and it fell to Temenus; Lacedæmon, the second, came to the children of Aristodemus, who were minors, whilst the beautiful Messenia passed, by craft, into the third brother’s possession.

This tale of the drawing of lots by the Heraclidæ, arose in the Peloponnesus after the states had assumed their peculiar constitution. It contains the reasons, derived from the old heroic past, for the erection of the three metropolitan towns; the mythical authority for the Peloponnesian claims of the Heraclidæ, and for the new state organisation. The historical kernel of the legend is that, from the very beginning, the Dorians represented, not the interests of their own race, but the interests of their leaders, who were not Dorians, but Achæans; this is why the god, under whose authority the division of the land was made, was none other than the ancient god of the race of Æacidæ. Further, the foundation of the legend lies in the fact that the Dorians, in order to gain possession of the three chief plains of the peninsula, divided, soon after their arrival into three hosts.

Each had its Heraclid as leader of the people. Each was composed of three races, the Hylleans, Dymanes, and Pamphylians. Each host was an image of the entire race. Thus the whole subsequent development of Peloponnesian[117] history depended on the manner in which the different hosts now established themselves in the new regions; on the extent to which, in the midst of the ancient people of the country and in spite of the subservience of their forces to foreign leadership, they remained faithful to themselves and their native customs; and on the method by which mutual relations were established.

MESSENIA

The new states were in part, also new territories, as was, for instance, Messenia. For in the Homeric Peloponnesus there is no country of this name: its eastern portion where the waters of the Pamisus connect a higher and lower plain with one another, belongs to the lordship of Menelaus, and the western half to the kingdom of the Neleïdes which has its centre on the coast. The Dorians came from the north into the upper plain, and there obtained a footing in Stenyclarus. Thence they spread farther and drove the Thessalian Neleïdes towards the sea. The high, island-like ocean citadel of old Navarino, seems to have been the last spot on the coast where the latter maintained themselves, till finally, being more and more closely pressed, they forsook the land for the sea. The island-plain of Stenyclarus now became the kernel of the newly-formed district, and could thence be called Messene—that is, the middle or inner country.

With the exception of this great supplanting of one nation by another the change was effected more peacefully than in most other quarters. At least the native legend knows nothing of forcible conquest. A certain portion of arable land and pasture was to be given up to the Dorians; the remainder was to be left to the inhabitants in undisturbed possession. The victorious visitors laid claim to no special and favoured position; the new princes were by no means regarded as foreign conquerors, but were received with friendliness by the nation as relatives of the ancient Æolian kings, and on account of the dislike to the house of the Pelopidæ. With full confidence they and their following settled among the Messenians, and evidently with the idea that under their protection the old and new inhabitants might peacefully amalgamate into one community.

But after this their relations did not develop in the same harmless manner. The Dorians believed themselves betrayed by their leaders, and in consequence of a Dorian reaction Cresphontes found himself compelled to overthrow the old order of things; to abolish equality before the law; to unite the Dorians in one close society in Stenyclarus, and to make this place the capital of the country, while the rest of Messenia was reduced to the position of a conquered district. The disturbances went on. Cresphontes himself became the victim of a bloody insurrection; his family were overthrown and no Cresphontidæ followed. Æpytus succeeded. He is by name and race an Arcadian, brought up in Arcadia whence he penetrated into Messenia, then on the verge of dissolution. He gave order and direction to the development of the country, and hence its subsequent kings are called Æpytidæ. But the whole direction henceforth taken by the history of the country is different, non-Dorian, unwarlike. The Æpytidæ are no soldier-princes, but creators of order, and founders of forms of religious worship. And these forms are not those of the Dorians, but decidedly non-Dorian, old Peloponnesian, like those of Demeter, Æsculapius, the Æsculapidæ. The high festival of the country was a mystery-service of the so-called “great deities” and unknown to the Dorian race, while at Ithome,[118] the lofty citadel of the country, which raises its commanding height between the two plains of the district, ruled the Pelasgic Zeus, whose worship was considered the distinctive mark of the Messenian people.

Scanty as are the relics preserved of the history of the Messenian country, some very important facts undoubtedly underlie them. From the first a remarkable insecurity reigned in this Dorian foundation; a deep gulf between the commander of the army and the people, which had its origin in the king’s connection with the ancient pre-Achæan population. He did not succeed in founding a dynasty, for it is only in subsequent legend, which here, as in the case of all Greek pedigrees, seeks to disguise a violent break, that Æpytus is made to be the son of Cresphontes. But the warlike Dorian nation must have become so weakened by internal conflicts, that it was not in a position to assert itself; the transformation of Messenia into a Dorian country was not carried into effect, and thus the main lines of its history were determined. For rich though the district was in natural resources, uniting as it did two of the finest watersheds with a coast stretching between two seas and well provided with harbours; yet the development of the State was from the first unfortunate. There was here no complete renewal, no powerful Hellenic revival in the district.

It was with far different success that a second host of Dorian warriors pressed down the long valley of the Eurotas, which from a narrow gorge gradually widens to the smiling plain of cornfields at the foot of Taygetus, the “Hollow Lacedæmon.” There is no Greek territory in which one plain is so decidedly the very kernel of the whole as it is here. Sunk deep between rugged mountains and severed from the surrounding country by high passes, it holds in its lap all the means of comfort and well-being. Here on the hillocks on the Eurotas above Amyclæ the Dorians pitched their camp, from which grew up the town of Sparta, the youngest city of the plain.

If the Dorian Sparta and the Achæan Amyclæ existed for centuries side by side, it is manifest that no uninterrupted state of war continued during this period. Here, no more than in Messenia, can a thorough occupation of the whole district have taken place, but the relations between the old and new inhabitants must have been arranged by agreement. Here, too, the Dorians dispersed through different places and mingled with the foreign nation.

ARGOS

The third state has its kernel in the plain of the Inachus, which was regarded as the portion of the first-born of the Heraclidæ. For the fame of Atrides’ might, though it was chiefly fixed at Mycenæ, also extended over the state which was founded on the ruins of the Mycenæan kingdom. The nucleus of the Dorian Argos was on the coast, where between the sandy estuary of the Inachus, and that of the copious stream of the Erasinus, a tract of firm land rises in the swampy soil. Here the Dorians had their camp and their sanctuaries; here their commander Temenus had died and had been buried before he had seen his people in secure possession of the upper plain; and after him this coast town preserved the name of Temenium. Its situation shows that the citadels and passes farther inland were maintained by the Achæans with a more steadfast resistance, so that the Dorians were for a long time compelled to content themselves with a thoroughly disadvantageous situation. For it was only by degrees that the whole strip of shore was rendered habitable, and the swampy character of the soil was, according to[119] Aristotle, the main reason why the sovereign town of the Pelopidæ was placed so far back in the upper plain. Now by the advance of the Dorian might, the high rock citadel of Larissa also became the political centre of the district, and the Pelasgian Argos at its foot, which had been the oldest place of assembly for the population, was once more the capital. It came to be the seat of the reigning family of the line of Temenus, and the starting-point for the further extension of their power.

This extension did not result from the uniform conquest of the district and the annihilation of the earlier settlements, but from the despatch of Dorian bands which established themselves at the chief points between the Ionian and Achæan populations. This was also effected in different ways, more or less violent, and radiating in two directions, on the one side towards the Corinthian, on the other towards the Saronic Sea.

Low passes lead from Argos into the Asopus Valley. Rhegnidas the Temenid led Dorian armies into the upper valley, where, under the blessing of Dionysus, flourished the old Ionian Phlius, while Phalces chose the lower vale at whose entrance, Sicyon, the ancient capital of the coast district of Ægialea, spread itself over a stately plateau. At both places a peaceful division of the soil appears to have taken place; and the same was the case in the neighbourhood of the Phliasians, at Cleonæ.

It must be confessed that it is incredible that, in this narrow and thickly populated territory, lordless acres were to be found with which to satisfy the strangers’ desire for territory, and even more so that the former land-owners willingly vacated their hereditary possessions; but the sense of the tradition is that only certain wealthy families were compelled to give place in consequence of the Dorian immigration, whilst the rest of the population continued in their former situation and were exempted from political change. The passion for emigration which had taken possession of the Ionian families throughout the north of the peninsula softened the effects of the transfer. The hope of finding fairer homes and a wider future beyond the sea, drove them to a distance. Thus Hippasus the ancestor of Pythagoras, left the narrow valley of Phlius to find in Samos a new home for him and his.

In this way it came about that good arable lands were left unoccupied in all the coast districts, so that the governments of the small states, which either retained their power or entered upon it in the place of the emigrants, were able to portion out fields and hand them over to the members of the warrior race of Dorians. For the latter were not anxious to overthrow the ancient order and to assert new principles of government, but only required a sufficiency of landed property for themselves and their belongings, together with the civil rights that belonged to it. Therefore the similarities between their worship of gods and heroes were utilised as a means of forming peaceful bonds of union. Thus it is expressly declared of Sicyon that from ancient times the Heraclidæ had ruled in this very place: therefore Phalces, when he penetrated thither with his Dorians, had allowed the ruling family to retain its offices and titles and had come to an understanding with it by peaceful agreement.

Towards the coast of the Saronic Gulf marched two hosts from Argos, under Deïphontes and Agaios, who transformed the old Ionian Epidaurus and Trœzen into Dorian towns; but from Epidaurus the march was continued to the isthmus, where, in the strong and important city of Corinth, whose citadel was the key of the whole peninsula, the series of Temenid settlements found its limit.

[120]

These settlements unquestionably form the most brilliant part of the warlike march of the Dorians through the Peloponnesus. By the energy of these Dorians and their leaders of the race of Hercules, who must have joined in these undertakings in specially large numbers, all parts of the many sections into which the country was split up were successfully occupied, and the new Argos, stretching from the island of Cythera as far as the Attic frontiers, far exceeded the bounds of the modest settlements on the Pamisus and Eurotas. For even if the leaders of the armies had not everywhere founded new states, still those existing had all become homogeneous by the acceptance of a Dorian element, which formed the military and preponderating section of the population.

This transformation had started from Argos, and consequently all these settlements stood in a filial relation to the mother city, so that we may regard Argos, Phlius, Sicyon, Trœzen, Epidaurus, and Corinth as a Dorian hexapolis forming a confederation like that in Caria.

Moreover this organisation was not an entirely new one. In Achæan times Mycenæ had formed with Heræum the centre of the country; in the Heræum Agamemnon had received the oath of fealty from his vassals. This was why the goddess Hera [Juno] is said to have preceded the Temenidæ to Sicyon, when they sought to revive the union between the towns which had become estranged from one another. Thus here also the remodelling was connected with the ancient tradition.

But now a central point for the confederacy was found in the worship of Apollo, which the Dorians had found established in Argos and had merely reconstituted, in the guise of the Delphic or Pythian god, through whose influence they had become an active people and under whose auspices they had hitherto been led. The towns sent their yearly offerings to the temple of Apollo Pythæus, which stood in Argos at the foot of the Larissa, but the mother city possessed the rights of a chief town as well as the government of the sanctuary.

In the meantime the size of Argos and the splendour of her new foundations, constituted a dangerous superiority. For the extension of power implied its division, and this was in the highest degree increased by the natural peculiarities of the Argive territory, which is more broken than any other Peloponnesian country.

In regard to the internal relations of the different states, great complications prevailed from the time that the older and younger population had mutually arranged themselves. For where the victory of the Dorians had been decided by force of arms, the old occupants had been driven from rights and possessions; an Achæo-Dorian town was formed and none were citizens save those belonging to the three tribes.

But in most cases it was otherwise. For example where, as in Phlius and Sicyon, a prosperity founded on agriculture, industrial activity, and commerce already existed; there the population did not, at least for any length of time, submit to be oppressed and thrust on one side. They remained no nameless and insignificant mass, but were recognised as forming one or several tribes, side by side with the three Dorian divisions, though not with the same rights. Where, therefore, more than three phylæ or tribes are met with; where, besides the Hylleans, Dymanes and Pamphylians, there are also mentioned “Hyrnethians” as in Argos, or “Ægialæans” (shore people) as in Sicyon, or a “Chthonophyle” (which was perhaps the tribal name of the natives in Phlius), it may be concluded that the immigrants had not left the older people entirely outside the newly-founded[121] commonwealth, but had sooner or later given them a certain recognised standing. However insignificant the latter might be, it was still the germ of important developments, and the existence of such co-tribes suffices to indicate a peculiar history for those states in which they occur.

Originally the various tribes also occupied different localities. As the diverse sections of the army had been separated in the camp, so the Pamphylians, the Dymanes and the Hylleans had their special quarters in Argos, and these long subsisted as such; when the Hyrnethians were admitted into the municipal commonwealth, they formed a fourth quarter. How long a period generally elapsed before the various elements of the population became amalgamated, is most clearly shown by the fact that places like Mycenæ continued their quiet existence as Achæan communities. Here the ancient traditions of the age of the Pelopidæ lived on undisturbed on the very spot where they had been enacted; here the anniversary of Agamemnon’s death was celebrated year after year at the place of his burial, and even during the Persian War, we see the men of Mycenæ and Tiryns, mindful of their old hero kings, as they take their part in the national quarrel against Asia.

Thus under the Dorian influence three new states were founded in the south and east of the peninsula, namely Messenia, Laconia, and Argos, which differed greatly even at the outset, and early diverged upon separate lines.

ARCADIA

At the same time great changes were taking place on the remote west coast. The states north and south of the Alpheus with which Homer is acquainted, were overthrown and Ætolian families, who honoured Oxylus as their ancestor, founded new lordships on the territory of the Epeans and Pylæans. These foundations had no apparent connection with the marches of the Dorian armies, and it is only a legendary poem of later date which speaks of Oxylus as having stipulated for the western land as his share in reward for services rendered to the Dorians. This betrays that it was a subsequent invention, by the fact that the new settlements on the peninsula are represented in this and similar fables as a result of a great and carefully planned undertaking; a representation which stands in complete contradiction to the facts of history. And when it is further related that the Dorians were conducted by their crafty leader, not along the flat coast road but across country through Arcadia, so that they might not be roused to envy or tempted to break their compact altogether, by the sight of the tracts of land conceded to Oxylus; this is but a tale invented with the object of explaining the erection of a state in Elis independently of the Dorian immigration, and the grounds for it are to be sought in the circumstance that the whole west coast, from the straits by Rhium down to Navarino, is distinguished by easy tracts of level country, such as are scarcely found elsewhere in Greek territory.

The best cornland lies at the foot of the Erymanthus Mountains, a broad plain through which the Peneus flows and which is surrounded by vine-clad hills stretching towards the neighbouring groups of islands. At the spot where the Peneus issues from the Arcadian mountains and flows into the coast-plain there rises on the left bank a stately height which looks clear over land and island sea and on this account was called in the Middle Ages, Calascope, or Belvidere. This height was selected by the Ætolian immigrants[122] as their chief citadel; it became the royal fortress of the Oxylidæ and their following, into whose hands fell the best estates.

From here the Ætolian state, under the territorial name of Elis spread southward over the whole low country, where on the banks of the Alpheus the Epeans and Pylæans had once fought out those petty feuds of which Nestor was so fond of telling. On the decay of that maritime kingdom of the Neleidæ which was attacked on the south by the Messenian Dorians and on the north by the Epeans, Ætolian tribes pressed forward from the interior of the island; these were the Minyans who being expelled from Taygetus took possession of the mountains which run farthest in the direction of the Sicilian Sea from Arcadia. Here they settled themselves in six fortified towns, united by a common worship of Poseidon; Macistus and Lapreus, were the most distinguished. Thus between the Alpheus and the Neda, in what was afterwards the so-called Triphylia, or “country of three tribes,” a new Minyan state was formed.

Finally the nucleus of a new state was also planted in the valley of the Alpheus, where scattered families of Achæans under Agorius of Helice allied themselves with Ætolian houses, and founded the state of Pisa.

Thus on the western coast, partly through conquest by the northern tribes and partly by arrivals from other parts of the peninsula, three new states arose, namely Elis, Pisa, and Triphylia; and in this way the whole coast district of the Peloponnesus was gradually newly populated and partitioned out afresh. Only in the district in the heart of the peninsula, did the country remain undisturbed in its existing state.

Arcadia was regarded by the ancients as a pre-eminently Pelasgian country, and here it was thought the autochthonic condition of the aboriginal inhabitants had been longest preserved and had suffered the least disturbance. Nevertheless the native legends themselves distinctly indicate that here also immigrations took place, interrupting the uniform condition of Pelasgian life, and occasioning a fusion of races, of different character and origin. Here too there is no mistaking the epoch at which, as in all other Greek states, the historical movement began.

After Pelasgus and his sons, Arcas, as ancestor of the Arcadians, stands at the beginning of a new era in the prehistoric life of the country. But Arcadians were to be found in Phrygia and Bithynia as well as in Crete and Cyprus, and the fact that colonists from the islands and shores of the eastern sea ascended into the highlands of the Peloponnesus that they might settle there in the beautiful valleys, is manifested by many tokens. The Cretan myths about Zeus are repeated in the closest manner of the Arcadian Lycæum; Tegea and Gortys are Cretan as well as Arcadian towns, with identical forms of worship, ancient legends connect Tegea and Paphos and the Cyprian dialect, which has only very recently been learnt from the native monuments, shows a great likeness to the Arcadian. Arcadians were known as navigators both in the western and in the eastern sea, and Nauplius, the hero of the oldest Peloponnesian seaport town appears as the servant of the Tegeatic kings, to whose house Argonauts like Ancæus also belong.

There are remains of old traditions, which show that even the interior of the Peloponnesus was not so remote or isolated as is commonly supposed; that here too there were immigrations and that in consequence in the rural districts, and particularly in the fruitful ravines of the eastern side, a series of towns grew up, which, on account of the natural barriers of their frontiers, early formed isolated city domains; such as those of Pheneus, Stynphalus, Orchomenus, Cleitor and afterwards the towns of Mantinea, Alea, Caphyæ,[123] and Gortys. In the southwest portion of Arcadia, in the forest range of Lycæum, and in the valley of the Alpheus were also to be found ancient fortress towns, such as Lycosura; but these fortresses never became political centres of the districts. The mass of the people remained scattered and were only connected with the community by very slight bonds.

Thus the whole of Arcadia consisted of a numerous group of municipal and rural cantons. It was only the former which could attain historical importance, and among them especially Tegea, which lying as it did in the most fertile part of the great Arcadian plateau, must from the earliest times have assumed something of the position of a capital city. Thus it was a Tegeatic king, Echemus, the “steadfast,” who is said to have prevented the Dorians from entering the peninsula. Yet the Tegeatæ never succeeded in giving a unity to the whole island. Its natural conformation was too multi-form, too diversified, and too much cut up by high mountain ridges into numerous and sharply defined portions for it to be able to attain to a common territorial history. It was only certain forms of worship, with which customs and institutions were bound up, that were universal among the whole Arcadian people. These were, in the north country the worship of Artemis Hymnia, and in the south that of Zeus Lycæus, on the Lycæum, whose summit had been honoured as the holy mountain of Arcadia from primeval Pelasgian times.

The country was in this condition when the Pelopidæ founded their states; and so it still remained when the Dorians invaded the peninsula. A wild, impracticable mountain country, thickly populated by a sturdy people, Arcadia offered little prospect of easy success to races in search of territory, and could not detain them from their attempts on the river plains of the southern and western districts. According to the legend they were granted a free passage through the Arcadian fields. Nothing was changed except that the Arcadians were pushed farther and farther back from the sea, and therefore driven farther and farther from the advance Hellenic civilisation.

If we take a glance at the peninsula as a whole, and the political government which, in consequence of the immigration, it acquired for all time, we shall find, first, the interior persisting in its former condition unshaken, secondly, three districts, Lacedæmon, Messenia, and Argos, which had undergone a thorough metamorphosis directly due to the immigrating races; and finally the two strips of land along the north and west coasts, which had been left untouched by the Dorians, but in part were resettled by the ancient tribes whom the Dorians displaced, as was the case with Triphylia and Achæa, and in part transformed by arrivals of another kind, as happened at Elis.

Thus complicated were the results which followed the Dorian migration. They show sufficiently how little we have here to do with a transformation effected at one blow, like the result of a fortunate campaign. After the races had long wandered up and down in a varying series of territorial disputes and mutual agreements, the fate of the peninsula was gradually decided. Only when men had forgotten the tedious period of unrest and ferment, which memory can adorn with no incidents, could the reconstitution of the peninsula be regarded as a sudden turn of events by which the Peloponnesus had become Dorian.

Even in those districts which the invaders especially contended for and occupied, the transformation of the people into a Dorian population was only effected very gradually and in a very imperfect fashion. How could it[124] have been otherwise? Even the conquering hosts themselves were not of purely Dorian blood, but intermixed with people of all sorts of races. Nor was it as Dorians but as relatives of the Achæan princes that the leaders of their armies laid claim to power and rule. Thus Plato saw in the march of the Heraclids a union between Dorians and Achæans, dating from the times of the movement of the Greek peoples, and how little unity originally existed between the commander and his men is shown by a series of undoubted facts. For no sooner had the force of the warriors won a firm footing in the districts, than the interests of Heraclids and Dorians diverged and such dissensions broke out as either endangered or nullified the whole success of the colony.

The leaders sought to effect amalgamation of the old and new populations, that they might thus attain a broader foundation for their power and place themselves in a position independent of the influence of the Dorian warriors. Everywhere do we find the same phenomena, and most distinctly in Messenia. But in Laconia also, the Heraclids made themselves detested by their warriors, by trying to assimilate the non-Dorian to the Dorian people, and in Argolis we see the Heraclid Deïphontes, whose name is thoroughly Ionic, allied with Hyrnetho, who is the representative of the original population of the coast district. It is this same Deïphontes who helps to establish the throne of the Temenids in Argos, to the indignation of the other Heraclids and of the Dorians: here, therefore, their new kingdom undoubtedly rests on the support of the pre-Dorian population.

Thus the bonds between the Heraclids and the Dorians were loosened in all three countries, soon after their occupation. The political institutions were established in spite of the Dorians, and if the newly imported popular force was to have a fruitful and beneficial effect on the soil of the country, it required the art of a wise legislation to conciliate opposition and regulate the forces which threatened to destroy it. The first example of such legislation was given, as far as we know, on the island of Crete.

DORIANS IN CRETE

Dorians in considerable numbers had passed over into Crete from Argos and Laconia, and if in other cases islands and seacoast were not a soil on which the Dorian races felt at home, here it was otherwise.

Crete is rather a continent than an island. With the wealth of resources of every kind which distinguishes the country, the Cretan towns were able to preserve themselves from the restlessness belonging to the life of a seaport, and quietly to unfold the new germs of life which the Dorians brought to the island. Here, too, they came as invaders: massed in great hosts they overpowered the island people, whom no bonds of union held together. We find Dorian tribes in Cydonia, the first place in which the new arrivals from Cythera established themselves. Then Knossos, and especially Lyctus, whose Dorian people hailed from Laconia, became the chief towns of the new settlement.

The Dorians had here reached the land of an ancient civilisation, whose fertility was not yet exhausted. They found towns with definite constitutions and families well versed in the art of rule. State government and religious worship had here, under quieter conditions, retained their original connection and in especial the religion of Apollo, administered by the old priestly families, displayed its organising, civilising, and intellectual influence[125] in entirety. The Dorians brought nothing but their tempestuous courage and the strength of their spears; compared with the Cretan nobility they were the merest children in all that concerns the art of government and legislation. They demanded land and left it to others to find out the ways and means of satisfying their requirements, for the overthrow of the ancient government signified nothing to them. But that the Dorians nevertheless did not behave as reckless conquerors; that they did not overturn the ancient state and found new ones, is manifest from the mere fact that the organisation of Dorian Crete is nowhere referred to a Dorian originator.

On the contrary, Aristotle testifies that the inhabitants of the Cretan town of Lyctus, where the Dorian institutions were most completely developed, preserved the existing institutions of the country; according to unanimous tradition, there was no break, no gap between the Dorian and the pre-Dorian period; so that the name of Minos, the representative of Cretan civilisation, could be associated both with the old and the new.

Patrician houses whose rights had come down to them from the royal period, remained in possession of the government. Now as formerly it was from them that the ten chief rulers of the state, “the Kosmoi,” were taken in the different towns; from them that the senate was chosen, whose members retained their dignity for life and were answerable to none. These families held rule in the towns when the Dorians invaded them. They concluded treaties with them, which took account of the interests of both sides, they made themselves subservient to the foreign power, by assigning the immigrants a sufficient share of the land which the state had to dispose of, not without the accompanying obligation of military service and the right, as the fighting portion of the community, to a voice in all important decisions but especially when it was a question of war and peace.

The Dorians took their place as the fighting element in the state. For this reason, the boys as they grew up, were placed under state discipline; united in troops; trained according to regulation, in the public gymnasia, and schooled in the use of weapons; they were inured to hard living and prepared by warlike games for real combats. Thus, remote from all effeminate influences, the military qualities peculiar to the Dorian race were to be imparted; there was also, however, some intermixture of Cretan customs, as for instance, the use of the bow, which was previously unknown to the Dorian. The grown youths and men, even if they possessed households of their own, were expected to be sensible first of all of the fact that they were comrades in arms, and prepared to march at any moment as though in a camp. Accordingly at the men’s daily meal they sat together by troops, as they served in the army, and in the same way they slept in common dormitories. The costs were met through the state from a common chest, but this chest was supplied by each delivering the tenth part of the fruit of his possession to the fraternity to which he belonged, and this tithe was then handed over to the state chest. In return, the state undertook to support the warriors, as well as the women who had charge of the house with the children and servants, in times both of peace and war. I believe it is plain that we have here an arrangement agreed on by treaty between the older and newer members of the state.

In order, however, that the Dorian fighting element might be able to devote itself wholly to its calling, its members had to be entirely exempt from the necessity of personally cultivating their share of the soil; otherwise they would not only have been impoverished by its neglect in war-time, but in peace they would have been detained from military exercises, and the[126] equally valuable hunting excursions after the plentiful game of the Ida Mountains. Consequently the work of agriculture was imposed on a special class of men, who, by the chance of war, had fallen into the condition of servitude and were deprived of civil rights. When and how this element of serfdom was formed, is not indicated; but there were two classes of them. The one tilled those fields which had been preserved by the state as public property; these were the so-called Mnoetæ; the others, the Clarotæ dwelt on the lands which had passed by donation into the hereditary possession of the immigrants. The Dorian landowners were their masters and had the right to demand of them the fruit of the field at a fixed date, while it was their duty to see that the soil was properly improved, so that nothing might be lost to the state. Otherwise the military class lived without care, unconcerned for the maintenance of existence, and could say, as the proverbial lines of the Cretan Hybrias have it, “Here are my sword, spear and shield; my whole treasure; herewith I plough and gather the harvest.”

What they learned was the use of weapons and self-command; their art, discipline, and obedience, obedience of the younger to the older, of the soldier to his superior, of all to the state. Higher and more liberal culture appeared unnecessary and even dangerous, and we may suppose that the ruling families of Crete had intentionally laid down a one-sided and narrow education for the Dorian community, in order that they might not feel tempted to outstep their soldierly calling, and contest the guidance of the state with the native races.

Beside these however there remained on the peninsula a considerable part of the older population, whose position was entirely unaffected by the Dorian immigration; the people on the mountains and in the rural towns, who were dependent on the larger cities of the island and paid according to an ancient usage a yearly tax to their governments; and rural peasants and cattle-breeders, tradesmen, fishers, and sailors who had nothing to do with the State except willingly to submit to its ordinances, and to pursue their occupations in a peaceful fashion.

It is on the whole, an unmistakable fact that a Greek state organisation of a very remarkable character was here called into being, and formed a combination in which old and new, foreign and native, were amalgamated; an organization which Plato judged worthy to form the groundwork for the plan of his ideal state. For here we actually have the latter’s three classes: the class equipped with the wise foresight becoming the rulers of the state; the class of “guards,” in which the virtue of courage, with exclusion from a more liberal development by means of art and science, was the object to be attained; and, finally, the industrial class, the element which provided the necessaries of life, and to which a disproportionately larger amount of arbitrary freedom was permitted; it had but to provide for the physical support of itself and the community generally. The first and third classes might have formed the state by themselves, inasmuch as they sufficiently represented the mutual relations of governing and governed. Between the two the guards, or armed element, had thrust itself in, to the increase of stability and durability. On this wise it came to pass that Crete was the first country to succeed in assigning to the Dorian race a share in the ancient community, and thus for the second time the island of Minos became a typical starting-point for the Hellenic state organisation.

The later Crete is also better known to us by the effects which proceeded from it, than in its internal condition like a heavenly body the abundance of whose light is measured by its reflection on other objects. Crete became for[127] the Hellenes the cradle of a complicated civilisation. Thence sprang a series of men who founded the art of sculpture in the peculiar Hellenic form, and strewed its seeds in all Greek countries—for Dipœnus and Scyllis, the earliest masters in marble sculptures, derived their origin from Crete, the home of Dædalus. Other Cretans distinguished themselves as masters in the art of divination, and as singers and musicians who, educated in the service of Apollo, obtained such power over the human soul, that they were summoned by foreign states to interpose their aid in a disordered condition of the community and lay the foundations of a sound system of government. These Cretan masters, such as Thaletas and Epimenides, are not, however, sprung from the Dorian race any more than are the sculptors; the new shoots had sprouted from the old root of native culture, even if the admixture of various Greek races had essentially contributed to the impulse of new vital activity.

In spite of the fact that the population of Crete received such a reinforcement and that she had so well understood how to employ it to strengthen her states, none the less, after the time of Minos, she never again attained to a political influence extending over all her shores. The chief cause lies in the condition of the island which made the formation of a great state an impossibility. The territories of the various towns among which the Dorians were divided, Cydonia in the west, Knossos and Lyctus in the north and Gortys in the south of the island, held suspiciously aloof from one another, or were at open feud; thus the Dorian strength was squandered in the interests of petty towns. Added to this that the Dorians, when they immigrated across the sea, of course came only in small bands, and for the most part, unaccompanied by women, so that for this reason alone they could not retain their racial characteristics to the same extent as on the mainland. Finally, even in the seats of Dorian habitation across the sea, we sometimes find, that not all three races, but only one of them had settled in the same town; thus in Halicarnassus there were only Dymanes; in Cydonia, as it seems, only Hylleans. Thus a fresh dispersal and weakening of the Dorian strength must have supervened, and it is easy to understand why the continental settlements of the Dorians, especially those of the Peloponnesus, still remained the most important and the ones fraught with most consequence for history.

In the Peloponnesus, however, it was, once again, at a single point that a Dorian history of independent and far-reaching importance developed itself. And that point was Sparta.c

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CHAPTER VI. SPARTA AND LYCURGUS

The characteristic development of Sparta depends partly on the nature of the land and partly on the relations formed there by strange conquerors.

Sparta is a peninsular land, enclosed by an almost uninterrupted line of mountains, a hundred miles square in area, which opens itself out southwards towards the sea between two necks of land. On the west side are the steep walls of Taygetus, which before entering into the Tænarian promontory are penetrated by a pass which leads into Messenia; to the east on the coast is the chain of Parnon. Between these mountains, which enclose many cultivable valleys, the valley of the Eurotas runs from north to south and is narrow in its upper part to below the defile in which Sparta lies; south of this it extends itself in the shape of a trough into a fertile plain which again narrows itself towards the sea; there are no good ports. Therefore on all sides Sparta was not easily accessible to the enemy, or even to friends; and had produce enough for its inhabitants.

Sparta had three classes of inhabitants. They were:

(1) the Helots, those old inhabitants of the land who in consequence of their obstinate resistance were made slaves; and were not so much oppressed as hated and despised; they had to pay a “fixed and moderate rent” for the land on which they (bound to the soil) dwelt, nevertheless they were partly public and partly private slaves and could only go about in a special slave costume; the so-called crypteia[8] was a yearly campaign against them when they showed themselves refractory; it served as military exercise or manœuvres to the youthful conquerors.

(2) The Laconians stood under far more favourable relations; they were the populations of the hundred towns of the province; a portion of them were strangers who had joined the Dorians at the conquest, but, for the greater part, they were old inhabitants who early enough subjected themselves to the conquerors. They stood in the relation of subjects, and had no political rights, but were in no way oppressed; they had landed property for which they paid rent to the state; and they carried on trade and art.

(3) The Dorian conquerors, the real Spartans, dwelt in the capital, which remained an “open camp,” all the more so as they formed only a small part of the whole population and could keep the land in subjection only by arms. They were the ruling citizens, possessed the best lands[129] which were in the vicinity of the capital, and had these cultivated by slaves (helots) whilst they dedicated themselves to war and the affairs of state.

These relations certainly existed in the beginnings of the Dorian conquest, but they were only brought about by circumstances, without being regulated by law. Many errors must have arisen through this, and they seem to have given rise to the “Legislation of Lycurgus.”b

While modern criticism makes few inroads upon the accepted stories of the Spartan régime it assails the very existence of Lycurgus, the so-called creator of it. The earliest accounts of his legislation are three centuries later than the time of his alleged career. The old Spartan poet Tyrtæus does not seem to have mentioned him. Pindar credits his edicts to Ægimius the mythical ancestor of the Dorians. Hellanicus and Thucydides do not credit them to Lycurgus, and the “argument from silence” is strong against him. His name means “wolf-repeller,” and it is thought that from being originally a god of protection worshipped by the predecessors of the Dorians, he came to be accepted finally as a man and a lawgiver. But historical cities have denied the existence of other heroes of tradition only to restore them later to their old glory, and it is necessary to present here the Lycurgus of venerable story, as all the traditions of early Spartan communal life centre about his name; and their alleged ancient lawgiver becomes, therefore, one of the most important personages in Grecian history. As to his personality—accepting him for the nonce as a reality—opinions differ according to the bias of the individual historian. We shall perhaps be in best position to gain a judicious idea of the subject by first following the biography of Lycurgus by Plutarch, and afterward turning to modern investigators for an estimate of the man and his laws. Whatever our individual opinion as to the personality of the hero himself, we shall at least gain an insight into the actual customs of the Spartans; and it perhaps does not greatly matter if we are left in doubt as to the share which any single man—be his name Lycurgus or what not—had in shaping them.a

PLUTARCH’S ACCOUNT OF LYCURGUS

Of Lycurgus, the lawgiver, says Plutarch, we have nothing to relate that is certain and uncontroverted. For there are different accounts of his birth, his travels, his death, and especially of the laws and form of government[130] which he established. But least of all are the times agreed upon in which this great man lived. For some say he flourished at the same time with Iphitus, and joined with him in settling the cessation of arms during the Olympic Games. Among these is Aristotle the philosopher, who alleges for proof an Olympic quoit, on which was preserved the inscription of Lycurgus’ name. But others who, with Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, compute the time by the succession of the Spartan kings, place him much earlier than the first Olympiad. Timæus, however, supposes, that, as there were two Lycurguses in Sparta at different times, the actions of both are ascribed to one, on account of his particular renown; and that the more ancient of them lived not long after Homer: Nay, some say he had seen him. Xenophon, too, confirms the opinion of his antiquity, when he makes him contemporary with the Heraclidæ. It is true, the latest of the Lacedæmonian kings were of the lineage of the Heraclidæ; but Xenophon there seems to speak of the first and more immediate descendants of Hercules. As the history of those times is thus involved, in relating the circumstances of Lycurgus’ life, we shall endeavour to select such as are least controverted, and follow authors of the greatest credit.

For a long time anarchy and confusion prevailed in Sparta, by which one of its kings, the father of Lycurgus, lost his life. For while he was endeavouring to part some persons who were concerned in a fray, he received a wound by a kitchen knife, of which he died, leaving the kingdom to his eldest son Polydectes.

But he, too, dying soon after, the general voice gave it for Lycurgus to ascend the throne; and he actually did so, till it appeared that his brother’s widow was pregnant. As soon as he perceived this, he declared that the kingdom belonged to her issue, provided it were male, and he kept the administration in his hands only as his guardian. This he did with the title of Prodicos, which the Lacedæmonians give to the guardians of infant kings. Soon after, the queen made him a private overture, that she would destroy her child, upon condition that he would marry her when king of Sparta. Though he detested her wickedness, he said nothing against the proposal, but pretending to approve it, charged her not to take any drugs to procure an abortion, lest she should endanger her own health or life; for he would take care that the child, as soon as born, should be destroyed. Thus he artfully drew on the woman to her full time, and, when he heard she was in labour, he sent persons to attend and watch her delivery, with orders, if it were a girl, to give it to the women, but if a boy, to bring it to him, in whatever business he might be engaged. It happened that he was at supper with the magistrates when she was delivered of a boy, and his servants, who were present, carried the child to him. When he received it, he is reported to have said to the company, “Spartans, see here your new-born king.” He then laid him down upon the chair of state, and named him Charilaus, because of the joy and admiration of his magnanimity and justice testified by all present. Thus the reign of Lycurgus lasted only eight months. But the citizens had a great veneration for him on other accounts, and there were more that paid him their attentions, and were ready to execute his commands, out of regard to his virtues, than those that obeyed him as a guardian to the King, and director of the administration. There were not, however, wanting those that envied him, and opposed his advancement, as too high for so young a man; particularly the relations and friends of the queen-mother, who seemed to have been treated with contempt. Her brother Leonidas one day boldly attacked him with virulent language, and scrupled[131] not to tell him, that he was well assured he would soon be king. Insinuations of the same kind were likewise spread by the queen-mother. Moved with this ill treatment, and fearing some dark design, he determined to get clear of all suspicion, by travelling into other countries, till his nephew should be grown up, and have a son to succeed him in the kingdom.

He set sail, therefore, and landed in Crete. There having observed the forms of government, and conversed with the most illustrious personages, he was struck with admiration of some of their laws, and resolved at his return to make use of them in Sparta. Some others he rejected. From Crete Lycurgus passed to Asia, desirous, as is said, to compare the Ionian expense and luxury with the Cretan frugality and hard diet, so as to judge what effect each had on their several manners and governments. The Egyptians likewise suppose that he visited them; and as of all their institutions he was most pleased with their distinguishing the military men from the rest of the people, he took the same method at Sparta, and, by separating from these the mechanics and artificers, he rendered the constitution more noble and more of a piece.

Returning, he immediately applied himself to alter the whole frame of the constitution; sensible that a partial change, and the introducing of some new laws, would be of no sort of advantage, he applied to the nobility, and desired them to put their hands to the work; addressing himself privately at first to his friends, and afterwards, by degrees, trying the disposition of others, and preparing them to concur in the business. When matters were ripe, he ordered thirty of the principal citizens to appear armed in the market-place by break of day, to strike terror into such as might desire to oppose him. Upon the first alarm, King Charilaus, apprehending it to be a design against his person, took refuge in the Chalcioicos [brazen temple]. But he was soon satisfied, and accepted their oath, and joined in the undertaking.

The Institutions of Lycurgus

Among the many new institutions of Lycurgus, the first and most important was that of a senate; which sharing, as Plato says, in the power of the kings, too imperious and unrestrained before, and having equal authority with them, was the means of keeping them within the bounds of moderation, and highly contributed to the preservation of the state. For before, it had been veering and unsettled, sometimes inclining to arbitrary power, and sometimes towards a pure democracy; but this establishment of a senate, an intermediate body, like ballast, kept in it a just equilibrium, and put it in a safe posture: the twenty-eight senators adhering to the kings, whenever they saw the people too encroaching, and, on the other hand, supporting the people, when the kings attempted to make themselves absolute. This, according to Aristotle, was the number of senators fixed upon, because two of the thirty associates of Lycurgus deserted the business through fear.

He had this institution so much at heart, that he obtained from Delphi an oracle in its behalf called rhetra, or the decree.

Though the government was thus tempered by Lycurgus, yet soon after it degenerated into an oligarchy, whose power was exercised with such wantonness and violence, that it wanted indeed a bridle, as Plato expresses it. This curb they found in the authority of the ephori, about one hundred and thirty years after Lycurgus.

A second and bolder political enterprise of Lycurgus, was a new division of the lands. For he found a prodigious inequality, the city over-charged[132] with many indigent persons, who had no land, and the wealth centred in the hands of a few. Determined, therefore, to root out the evils of insolence, envy, avarice, and luxury, and those distempers of a state still more inveterate and fatal, I mean poverty and riches, he persuaded them to cancel all former divisions of land, and to make new ones, in such a manner that they might be perfectly equal in their possessions and way of living. Hence, if they were ambitious of distinction they might seek it in virtue, as no other difference was left between them, but that which arises from the dishonour of base actions and the praise of good ones. His proposal was put in practice.

After this, he attempted to divide also the movables, in order to take away all appearance of inequality; but he soon perceived that they could not bear to have their goods directly taken from them, and therefore took another method, counterworking their avarice by a stratagem. First he stopped the currency of the gold and silver coin, and ordered that they should make use of iron money only: then to a great quantity and weight of this he assigned but a small value; so that to lay up ten minæ [£30 or $150] a whole room was required, and to remove it nothing less than a yoke of oxen. When this became current, many kinds of injustice ceased in Lacedæmon. Who would steal or take a bribe, who would defraud or rob, when he could not conceal the booty? Their iron coin would not pass in the rest of Greece, but was ridiculed and despised; so that the Spartans had no means of purchasing any foreign or curious wares; nor did any merchant-ship unlade in their harbours. There were not even to be found in all their country either sophists, wandering fortune-tellers, keepers of infamous houses, or dealers in gold and silver trinkets, because there was no money. Thus luxury, losing by degrees the means that cherished and supported it, died away of itself: even they who had great possessions, had no advantage from them, since they could not be displayed in public, but must lie useless, in unregarded repositories.

Desirous to complete the conquest of luxury, and exterminate the love of riches, he introduced a third institution, which was wisely enough and ingeniously contrived. This was the use of public tables, where all were to eat in common of the same meat, and such kinds of it as were appointed by law. At the same time, they were forbidden to eat at home, upon expensive couches and tables, to call in the assistance of butchers and cooks, or to fatten like voracious animals in private. For so not only their manners would be corrupted, but their bodies disordered; abandoned to all manner of sensuality and dissoluteness, they would require long sleep, warm baths, and the same indulgence as in perpetual sickness. To effect this was certainly very great; but it was greater still, to secure riches from rapine and from envy, as Theophrastus expresses it, or rather by their eating in common, and by the frugality of their table, to take from riches their very being. For what use or enjoyment of them, what peculiar display of magnificence could there be, where the poor man went to the same refreshment with the rich?

The rich, therefore (we are told), were more offended with this regulation than with any other, and, rising in a body, they loudly expressed their indignation: nay, they proceeded so far as to assault Lycurgus with stones, so that he was forced to fly from the assembly and take refuge in a temple.

The public repasts were called by the Cretans andria; but the Lacedæmonians styled them phiditia, either from their tendency to friendship and mutual benevolence, phiditia being used instead of philitia; or else from their teaching frugality and parsimony, which the word pheido signifies. But it is not at all impossible, that the first letter might by some means or[133] other be added, and so phiditia take place of editia, which barely signifies eating. There were fifteen persons to a table, or a few more or less. Each of them was obliged to bring in monthly a bushel of meal, eight gallons of wine, five pounds of cheese, two pounds and a half of figs, and a little money to buy flesh and fish. If any of them happened to offer a sacrifice of first fruits, or to kill venison, he sent a part of it to the public table: for after a sacrifice or hunting, he was at liberty to sup at home: but the rest were to appear at the usual place. For a long time this eating in common was observed with great exactness: so that when King Agis returned from a successful expedition against the Athenians, and from a desire to sup with his wife, requested to have his portion at home, the polemarchs refused to send it: nay, when, through resentment, he neglected the day following to offer the sacrifice usual on occasion of victory, they set a fine upon him. Children were also introduced at these public tables, as so many schools of sobriety. There they heard discourses concerning government, and were instructed in the most liberal breeding. There they were allowed to jest without scurrility, and were not to take it ill when the raillery was returned. For it was reckoned worthy of a Lacedæmonian to bear a jest: but if any one’s patience failed, he had only to desire them to be quiet, and they left off immediately. After they had drunk moderately, they went home without lights. Indeed, they were forbidden to walk with a light either on this or any other occasion, that they might accustom themselves to march in the darkest night boldly and resolutely. Such was the order of their public repasts.

Lycurgus left none of his laws in writing; it was ordered in one of the rhetræ that none should be written. For what he thought most conducive to the virtue and happiness of a city, was principles interwoven with the manners and breeding of the people. As for smaller matters, it was better not to reduce these to a written form and unalterable method, but to suffer them to change with the times, and to admit of additions or retrenchments at the pleasure of persons so well educated. For he resolved the whole business of legislation into the bringing up of youth. And this, as we have observed, was the reason why one of his ordinances forbade them to have any written laws.

Another ordinance levelled against magnificence and expense, directed that the ceilings of houses should be wrought with no tool but the axe, and the doors with nothing but the saw.

Regulations Regarding Marriage and the Conduct of Women

As for the education of youth, which he looked upon as the greatest and most glorious work of a lawgiver, he began with it at the very source, taking into consideration their conception and birth, by regulating the marriages. For he did not (as Aristotle says) desist from his attempt to bring the women under sober rules. They had, indeed, assumed great liberty and power on account of the frequent expeditions of their husbands, during which they were left sole mistresses at home, and so gained an undue deference and improper titles; but notwithstanding this he took all possible care of them. He ordered the virgins to exercise themselves in running, wrestling, and throwing quoits and darts; that their bodies being strong and vigorous, the children afterwards produced from them might be the same; and that, thus fortified by exercise, they might the better support the pangs of childbirth, and be delivered with safety. In order to take away the excessive tenderness and delicacy of the sex, the consequence of a recluse life, he accustomed[134] the virgins occasionally to be seen naked as well as the young men, and to dance and sing in their presence on certain festivals. There they sometimes indulged in a little raillery upon those that had misbehaved themselves, and sometimes they sung encomiums on such as deserved them, thus exciting in the young men a useful emulation and love of glory. For he who was praised for his bravery and celebrated among the virgins, went away perfectly happy: while their satirical glances thrown out in sport, were no less cutting than serious admonitions; especially as the kings and senate went with the other citizens to see all that passed. As for the virgins appearing naked, there was nothing disgraceful in it, because everything was conducted with modesty, and without one indecent word or action. Nay, it caused a simplicity of manners and an emulation for the best habit of body; their ideas, too, were naturally enlarged, while they were not excluded from their share of bravery and honour. Hence they were furnished with sentiments and language, such as Gorgo the wife of Leonidas is said to have made use of. When a woman of another country said to her, “You of Lacedæmon are the only women in the world that rule the men:” she answered, “We are the only women that bring forth men.”

These public dances and other exercises of the young maidens naked, in sight of the young men, were, moreover, incentives to marriage; and, to use Plato’s expression, drew them almost as necessarily by the attractions of love, as a geometrical conclusion follows from the premises. To encourage it still more, some marks of infamy were set upon those that continued bachelors. For they were not permitted to see these exercises of the naked virgins; and the magistrates commanded them to march naked round the market-place in the winter, and to sing a song composed against themselves, which expressed how justly they were punished for their disobedience to the laws. They were also deprived of that honour and respect which the younger people paid to the old; so that nobody found fault with what was said to Dercyllidas, though an eminent commander. It seems, when he came one day into company, a young man, instead of rising up and giving place, told him, “You have no child to give place to me, when I am old.”

In their marriages the bridegroom carried off the bride by violence; and she was never chosen in a tender age, but when she had arrived at full maturity. Then the woman that had the direction of the wedding, cut the bride’s hair close to the skin, dressed her in man’s clothes, laid her upon a mattress, and left her in the dark. The bridegroom, neither oppressed with wine nor enervated with luxury, but perfectly sober, as having always supped at the common table, went in privately, untied her girdle, and carried her to another bed. Having stayed there a short time, he modestly retired to his usual apartment, to sleep with the other young men: and observed the same conduct afterwards, spending the day with his companions, and reposing himself with them in the night, nor even visiting his bride but with great caution and apprehensions of being discovered by the rest of the family; the bride at the same time exerted all her art to contrive convenient opportunities for their private meetings. And this they did not for a short time only, but some of them even had children before they had an interview with their wives in the day-time. This kind of commerce not only exercised their temperance and chastity, but kept their bodies fruitful, and the first ardour of their love fresh and unabated; for as they were not satiated like those that are always with their wives, there still was place for unextinguished desire.

When he had thus established a proper regard to modesty and decorum with respect to marriage, he was equally studious to drive from that state[135] the vain and womanish passion of jealousy; by making it quite as reputable to have children in common with persons of merit, as to avoid all offensive freedom in their own behaviour to their wives. He laughed at those who revenge with wars and bloodshed the communication of a married woman’s favours; and allowed, that if a man in years should have a young wife, he might introduce to her some handsome and honest young man, whom he most approved of, and when she had a child of this generous race, bring it up as his own. On the other hand, he allowed, if a man of character should entertain a passion for a married woman on account of her modesty and the beauty of her children, he might treat with her husband for admission to her company, that so planting in a beauty-bearing soil, he might produce excellent children, the congenial offspring of excellent parents.

For in the first place, Lycurgus considered children, not so much the property of their parents, as of the state; and therefore he would not have them begot by ordinary persons, but by the best men in it. In the next place, he observed the vanity and absurdity of other nations, where people study to have their horses and dogs of the finest breed they can procure, either by interest or money; and yet keep their wives shut up, that they may have children by none but themselves, though they may happen to be doting, decrepit, or infirm. As if children, when sprung from a bad stock, and consequently good for nothing, were no detriment to those whom they belong to, and who have the trouble of bringing them up, nor any advantage, when well descended and of a generous disposition. These regulations tending to secure a healthy offspring, and consequently beneficial to the state, were so far from encouraging that licentiousness of the women which prevailed afterwards, that adultery was not known amongst them.

The Rearing of Children

It was not left to the father to rear what children he pleased, but he was obliged to carry the child to a place called Lesche, to be examined by the most ancient men of the tribe, who were assembled there. If it was strong and well proportioned, they gave orders for its education, and assigned it one of the nine thousand shares of land; but if it was weakly and deformed, they ordered it to be thrown into the place called Apothetæ, which is a deep cavern near the mountain Taygetus: concluding that its life could be no advantage either to itself or to the public, since nature had not given it at first any strength or goodness of constitution. For the same reason the women did not wash their new-born infants with water, but with wine, thus making some trial of their habit of body; imagining that sickly and epileptic children sink and die under the experiment, while healthy became more vigorous and hardy. Great care and art was also exerted by the nurses; for, as they never swathed the infants, their limbs had a freer turn, and their countenances a more liberal air; besides, they used them to any sort of meat, to have no terrors in the dark, nor to be afraid of being alone, and to leave all ill humour and unmanly crying. Hence people of other countries purchased Lacedæmonian nurses for their children.

The Spartan children were not in that manner, under tutors purchased or hired with money, nor were the parents at liberty to educate them as they pleased: but as soon as they were seven years old, Lycurgus ordered them to be enrolled in companies, where they were all kept under the same order and discipline, and had their exercises and recreations in common. He who showed the most conduct and courage amongst them, was made[136] captain of the company. The rest kept their eyes upon him, obeyed his orders, and bore with patience the punishment he inflicted: so that their whole education was an exercise of obedience. The old men were present at their diversions, and often suggested some occasion of dispute or quarrel, that they might observe with exactness the spirit of each, and their firmness in battle.

As for learning, they had just what was absolutely necessary. All the rest of their education was calculated to make them subject to command, to endure labour, to fight and conquer. They added, therefore, to their discipline, as they advanced in age; cutting their hair very close, making them go barefoot, and play, for the most part, quite naked. At twelve years of age, their under garment was taken away, and but one upper one a year allowed them. Hence they were necessarily dirty in their persons, and not indulged the great favour of baths and oils, except on some particular days of the year. They slept in companies, on beds made of the tops of reeds, which they gathered with their own hands, without knives, and brought from the banks of the Eurotas. In winter they were permitted to add a little thistle-down, as that seemed to have some warmth in it.

They steal, too, whatever victuals they possibly can, ingeniously contriving to do it when persons are asleep, or keep but indifferent watch. If they are discovered, they are punished not only with whipping, but with hunger. Indeed, their supper is but slender at all times, that, to fence against want, they may be forced to exercise their courage and address. This is the first intention of their spare diet: a subordinate one is, to make them grow tall. For when the animal spirits are not too much oppressed by a great quantity of food, which stretches itself out in breadth and thickness, they mount upwards by their natural lightness, and the body easily and freely shoots up in height. This also contributes to make them handsome: for thin and slender habits yield more freely to nature, which then gives a fine proportion to the limbs; whilst the heavy and gross resist her by their weight.

The boys steal with so much caution, that one of them, having conveyed a young fox under his garment, suffered the creature to tear out his bowels with his teeth and claws, choosing rather to die than to be detected. Nor does this appear incredible, if we consider what their young men can endure to this day; for we have seen many of them expire under the lash at the altar of Diana Orthia.

The Famed Laconic Discourse; Spartan Discipline

The boys were also taught to use sharp repartee, seasoned with humour, and whatever they said was to be concise and pithy. For Lycurgus, as we have observed, fixed but a small value on a considerable quantity of his iron money; but on the contrary, the worth of speech was to consist in its being comprised in a few plain words, pregnant with a great deal of sense: and he contrived that by long silence they might learn to be sententious and acute in their replies. As debauchery often causes weakness and sterility in the body, so the intemperance of the tongue makes conversation empty and insipid. King Agis, therefore, when a certain Athenian laughed at the Lacedæmonian short swords and said, “The jugglers would swallow them with ease upon the stage,” answered in his laconic way, “And yet we can reach our enemies’ hearts with them.” Indeed, to me there seems to be something in this concise manner of speaking which immediately reaches the object aimed at, and forcibly strikes the mind of the hearer.

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Lycurgus himself was short and sententious in his discourse, if we may judge by some of his answers which are recorded: that, for instance, concerning the constitution. When one advised him to establish a popular government in Lacedæmon, “Go,” said he, “and first make a trial of it in thy own family.” That again, concerning sacrifices to the deity, when he was asked why he appointed them so trifling and of so little value, “That we may never be in want,” said he, “of something to offer him.” Once more, when they inquired of him, what sort of martial exercises he allowed of, he answered, “All, except those in which you stretch out your palms.” Several such like replies of his are said to be taken from the letters which he wrote to his countrymen: as to their question, “How shall we best guard against the invasion of an enemy?” “By continuing poor, and not desiring in your possessions to be one above another.” And to the question, whether they should enclose Sparta with walls, “That city is well fortified which has a wall of men instead of brick.” Whether these and some other letters ascribed to him are genuine or not, is no easy matter to determine.

Even when they indulged a vein of pleasantry, one might perceive, that they would not use one unnecessary word, nor let an expression escape them that had not some sense worth attending to. For one being asked to go and hear a person who imitated the nightingale to perfection, answered, “I have heard the nightingale herself.”

Nor were poetry and music less cultivated among them, than a concise dignity of expression. Their songs had a spirit, which could rouse the soul, and impel it in an enthusiastic manner to action. The language was plain and manly, the subject serious and moral. For they consisted chiefly of the praises of heroes that had died for Sparta, or else of expressions of detestation for such wretches as had declined the glorious opportunity, and rather chose to drag on life in misery and contempt. Nor did they forget to express an ambition for glory suitable to their respective ages.

Hippias the sophist tells us, that Lycurgus himself was a man of great personal valour, and an experienced commander. Philostephanus also ascribes to him the first division of cavalry into troops of fifty, who were drawn up in a square body. But Demetrius the Phalerean says, that he never had any military employment, and that there was the profoundest peace imaginable when he established the Constitution of Sparta. His providing for a cessation of arms during the Olympic Games is likewise a mark of the humane and peaceable man.

The discipline of the Lacedæmonians continued after they were arrived at years of maturity. For no man was at liberty to live as he pleased; the city being like one great camp, where all had their stated allowance, and knew their public charge, each man concluding that he was born, not for himself, but for his country. Hence, if they had no particular orders, they employed themselves in inspecting the boys, and teaching them something useful, or in learning of those that were older than themselves. One of the greatest privileges that Lycurgus procured his countrymen, was the enjoyment of leisure, the consequence of his forbidding them to exercise any mechanic trade. It was not worth their while to take great pains to raise a fortune, since riches there were of no account: and the helots, who tilled the ground, were answerable for the produce above-mentioned.

Lawsuits were banished from Lacedæmon with money. The Spartans knew neither riches nor poverty, but possessed an equal competency, and had a cheap and easy way of supplying their few wants. Hence, when they were not engaged in war, their time was taken up with dancing, feasting,[138] hunting, or meeting to exercise or converse. They went not to market under thirty years of age, all their necessary concerns being managed by their relations and adopters. Nor was it reckoned a credit to the old to be seen sauntering in the market-place; it was deemed more suitable for them to pass great part of the day in the schools of exercise, or places of conversation. Their discourse seldom turned upon money, or business, or trade, but upon the praise of the excellent, or the contempt of the worthless; and the last was expressed with that pleasantry and humour, which conveyed instruction and correction without seeming to intend it. Nor was Lycurgus himself immoderately severe in his manner; but, as Sosibius tells us, he dedicated a little statue to the god of laughter in each hall. He considered facetiousness as a seasoning of their hard exercise and diet, and therefore ordered it to take place on all proper occasions, in their common entertainments and parties of pleasures. Upon the whole, he taught his citizens to think nothing more disagreeable than to live by (or for) themselves.

The Senate; Burial Customs; Home-Staying; The Ambuscade

The Senate, as said before, consisted at first of those that were assistants to Lycurgus in his great enterprise. Afterwards, to fill up any vacancy that might happen, he ordered the most worthy men to be selected, of those that were full threescore years old. This was the most respectable dispute in the world, and the contest was truly glorious: for it was not who should be swiftest among the swift, or strongest of the strong, but who was the wisest and best among the good and wise. He who had the preference was to bear this mark of superior excellence through life, this great authority, which put into his hands the lives and honour of the citizens, and every other important affair. The manner of the election was this: When the people were assembled, some persons appointed for the purpose were shut up in a room near the place; where they could neither see nor be seen, and only hear the shouts of the constituents: for by them they decided this and most other affairs. Each candidate walked silently through the assembly, one after another according to lot. Those that were shut up had writing tables, in which they set down in different columns the number and loudness of the shouts, without knowing whom they were for; only they marked them as first, second, third, and so on, according to the number of the competitors. He that had the most and loudest acclamations, was declared duly elected. Then he was crowned with a garland, and went round to give thanks to the gods: a number of young men followed, striving which should extol him most, and the women celebrated his virtues in their songs, and blessed his worthy life and conduct. Each of his relations offered him a repast, and their address on the occasion was, “Sparta honours you with this collation.” When he had finished the procession, he went to the common table, and lived as before. Only two portions were set before him, one of which he carried away: and as all the women related to him attended at the gates of the public hall, he called her for whom he had the greatest esteem, and presented her with the portion, saying at the same time, “That which I received as a mark of honour, I give to you.” Then she was conducted home with great applause by the rest of the women.

Lycurgus likewise made good regulations with respect to burials. In the first place, to take away all superstition, he ordered the dead to be buried in the city, and even permitted their monuments to be erected near the temples; accustoming the youth to such sights from their infancy, that they[139] might have no uneasiness from them nor any horror for death, as if people were polluted with the touch of a dead body, or with treading upon a grave. In the next place, he suffered nothing to be buried with the corpse, except the red cloth and the olive leaves in which it was wrapped. Nor would he suffer the relations to inscribe any names upon the tombs, except of those men that fell in battle, or those women who died in some sacred office. He fixed eleven days for the time of mourning: on the twelfth they were to put an end to it, after offering sacrifice to Ceres. No part of life was left vacant and unimproved, but even with their necessary actions he interwove the praise of virtue and the contempt of vice: and he so filled the city with living examples, that it was next to impossible for persons who had these from their infancy before their eyes, not to be drawn and formed to honour.

For the same reason he would not permit all that desired to go abroad and see other countries, lest they should contract foreign manners, gain traces of a life of little discipline, and of a different form of government. He forbade strangers, too, to resort to Sparta, who could not assign a good reason for their coming; not, as Thucydides says, out of fear they should imitate the constitution of that city, and make improvements in virtue, but lest they should teach his own people some evil. For along with foreigners come new subjects of discourse; new discourse produces new opinions; and from these there necessarily spring new passions and desires, which, like discords in music, would disturb the established government. He, therefore, thought it more expedient for the city, to keep out of it corrupt customs and manners, than even to prevent the introduction of a pestilence.

Thus far, then, we can perceive no vestiges of a disregard to right and wrong, which is the fault some people find with the laws of Lycurgus, allowing them well enough calculated to produce valour, but not to promote justice. Perhaps it was the crypteia, as they called it, or ambuscade, if that was really one of this lawgiver’s institutions, as Aristotle says it was, which gave Plato so bad an impression both of Lycurgus and his laws. The governors of the youth ordered the shrewdest of them from time to time to disperse themselves in the country, provided only with daggers and some necessary provisions. In the day-time they hid themselves, and rested in the most private places they could find, but at night they sallied out into the roads, and killed all the helots they could meet with. Nay, sometimes by day, they fell upon them in the fields, and murdered the ablest and strongest of them. Thucydides relates, in his history of the Peloponnesian War, that the Spartans selected such of them as were distinguished for their courage, to the number of two thousand or more, declared them free, crowned them with garlands, and conducted them to the temples of the gods; but soon after they all disappeared; and no one could, either then or since, give account in what manner they were destroyed. Aristotle particularly says, that the ephori, as soon as they were invested in their office, declared war against the helots, that they might be massacred under pretence of law. In other respects they treated them with great inhumanity: sometimes they made them drink till they were intoxicated, and in that condition led them into the public halls, to show the young men what drunkenness was. They ordered them, too, to sing mean songs, and to dance ridiculous dances, but not to meddle with any that were genteel and graceful. Thus they tell us, that when the Thebans afterwards invaded Laconia, and took a great number of the helots prisoners, they ordered them to sing the odes of Terpander, Alcman, or Spendon the Lacedæmonian, but they excused themselves, alleging[140] that it was forbidden by their masters. Those who say, that a freeman in Sparta was most a freeman, and a slave most a slave, seem well to have considered the difference of states. But in my opinion, it was in aftertimes that these cruelties took place among the Lacedæmonians; chiefly after the great earthquake, when, as history informs us, the helots, joining the Messenians, attacked them, did infinite damage to the country, and brought the city to the greatest extremity. I can never ascribe to Lycurgus so abominable an act as that of the ambuscade. I would judge in this case by the mildness and justice which appeared in the rest of his conduct.

Lycurgus’ Subterfuge to Perpetuate His Laws

When his principal institutions had taken root in the manners of the people, and the government was come to such maturity as to be able to support and preserve itself, then, as Plato says of the Deity, that he rejoiced when he had created the world, and given it its first motion; so Lycurgus was charmed with the beauty and greatness of his political establishment, when he saw it exemplified in fact, and move on in due order. He was next desirous to make it immortal, so far as human wisdom could effect it, and to deliver it down unchanged to the latest times. For this purpose he assembled all the people, and told them, the provisions he had already made for the state were indeed sufficient for virtue and happiness, but the greatest and most important matter was still behind, which he could not disclose to them till he had consulted the oracle; that they must therefore inviolably observe his laws, without altering anything in them, till he returned from Delphi; and then he would acquaint them with the pleasure of Apollo. When they had promised to do so, he took an oath of the kings and senators, and afterwards of all the citizens, that they would abide by the present establishment till Lycurgus came back. He then took his journey to Delphi.

When he arrived there, he offered sacrifice to the gods, and consulted the oracle, whether his laws were sufficient to promote virtue, and secure the happiness of the state. Apollo answered, that the laws were excellent, and that the city which kept to the constitution he had established, would be the most glorious in the world. This oracle Lycurgus took down in writing, and sent it to Sparta. He then offered another sacrifice, and embraced his friends and his son, determined never to release his citizens from their oath, but voluntarily there to put a period to his life; while he was yet of an age when life was not a burden, when death was not desirable, and while he was not unhappy in any one circumstance. He, therefore, destroyed himself by abstaining from food, persuaded that the very death of lawgivers, should have its use, and their exit, so far from being insignificant, have its share of virtue, and be considered as a great action. To him, indeed, whose performances were so illustrious, the conclusion of life was the crown of happiness, and his death was left guardian of those invaluable blessings he had procured his countrymen through life, as they had taken an oath not to depart from his establishment till his return. Nor was he deceived in his expectations. Sparta continued superior to the rest of Greece, both in its government at home and reputation abroad, so long as it retained the institution of Lycurgus; and this it did during the space of five hundred years, and the reign of fourteen successive kings, down to Agis the son of Archidamus. As for the appointment of the ephors, it was so far from weakening the constitution, that it gave it additional vigour, and though it seemed to be established in favour of the people, it strengthened the aristocracy.c

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EFFECTS OF LYCURGUS’ SYSTEM

Thus far we have followed Plutarch; now let us see what modern authority will say of the influence of Lycurgus.

The best commentary on the laws of Lycurgus is the history of Sparta; let us read it and judge the tree by its fruits.

Lycurgus, if we unite under his name all the laws mentioned, without pausing to make sure that they are rightfully attributed, had operated with rare sagacity to render Sparta immutable and its constitution immortal. But there exists an arch-enemy to the things of this world that call themselves eternal—the old man with the white beard and denuded scalp that antiquity armed with a scythe. Legislators like, no better than poets, to take him into account; they are ready enough to declare that they have erected an edifice more solid than brass. Time advances and the whole structure crumbles to the earth. Sparta braved him through several centuries, by sacrificing the liberty of her citizens whom she kept bowed under the severest discipline. She lasted long, but never truly lived. As soon as her inflexible, and in some respects immoral, constitution, established outside the usual conditions under which society exists, was shaken, her decadence was rapid and irrevocable.

Lycurgus had desired to make fixed, population, lands, and the number and fortune of citizens; as it turned out never was there a city where property changed hands more frequently, where the condition of citizens was more unstable, or their number subject to more steady diminution. He had singularly restricted individual property rights to strengthen the power of the state; and Aristotle says: “In Sparta the state is poor, the individual rich and avaricious.” He had failed to recognise the laws of nature in the education and destiny of women; and Aristotle, charging the Spartan women with immorality, with greed, and even calling into question their courage, sees in the license they allowed themselves one of the causes of Lacedæmon’s downfall.

He made the helots tremble under his rule, and finally sent them back to their masters. He prohibited long wars; but he had made war attractive by freeing the soldiers from the heavy rules laid upon the citizen, and it was by war and victory that his republic perished. He withdrew from his fellow-citizens all power of initiative, assigning to each moment of their lives its particular duty; in a word, to speak with Rousseau, who was also a master of political paradox, “His laws completely changed the nature of man to make of him a citizen.” Yet Sparta, become a revolutionary city, perished for want of men. He proscribed gold and silver that there might be no corruption, and nowhere since the Median wars, was venality so pronounced and shameless.

He banished the arts, except for the adornment of his temple of Apollo at Amyclæ; and in this he succeeded. Pausanias makes note of some fifty temples in Lacedæmonia, but not a stone of them remains. Rustic piety and not art erected them. Save for a certain taste in music, the dance, and a severe style of poetry, Sparta stands alone as a barbarian city in the middle of Greece, a spot of darkness where all else is light; she did not even know thoroughly the only art she practised, that of war; at least she always remained ignorant of certain features of it.

As Aristotle says: “Trained for war, Lacedæmonia, like a sword in its scabbard, rests in peace.” All her institutions taught her to fight, not one to live the life of the spirit. Savage and egotistical, she satisfied the pride[142] of her children, and won the praise of those who admire power and success, but what did she do for the world? A war machine perfectly fitted to destroy but incapable of production, what has she left behind her? Not an artist nor a man of genius, not even a ruin that bears her name; she is dead in every part as Thucydides predicted, while Athens, calumniated by rhetoricians of all ages, still has to show the majestic ruins of her temples, source of inspiration to modern art in two worlds, as her poets and philosophers are the source of eternal beauty.

To sum up, and this is the lesson taught by this history: rigidly as Lycurgus might decree for Sparta equality of possessions, an end contrary to natural as to social conditions, nowhere in Greece was social inequality so marked. Something of her discipline subsisted longer, and it was this strange social ordonnance that won for Lacedæmon her power and renown, striking as it did all other populations with astonishment.

The Spartans have further set a noble example of sobriety, and of contempt for passion, pain, and death. They could obey and they could die. Law was for them, according to the felicitous expression of Pindarus and of Montaigne: “Queen and Empress of the World.” Let us accord to them one more virtue which does them honour, respect for those upon whose head Time has placed the crown of whitened locks.

The aristocratic poet of Bœotia who like another Dorian, Theognis of Megara hated the masses, admired the city where reigned under a line of hereditary kings, “The wisdom of old men, and the lances of young, the choirs of the Muse and sweet harmony.” Simonides more clearly recognises the true reason of Sparta’s greatness; he called Lacedæmon “the city which tames men.” Empire over oneself usually gives empire over others, and for a long time the Spartan possessed both.d

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER VII. THE MESSENIAN WARS OF SPARTA

That there were two long contests between the Lacedæmonians and Messenians, and that in both the former were completely victorious, is a fact sufficiently attested. And if we could trust the statements in Pausanias,—our chief and almost only authority on the subject,—we should be in a situation to recount the history of both these wars in considerable detail. But unfortunately, the incidents narrated in that writer have been gathered from sources which are, even by his own admission, undeserving of credit, from Rhianus, the poet of Bene in Crete, who had composed an epic poem on Aristomenes and the Second Messenian War, about B.C. 220, and from Myron of Priene, a prose author whose date is not exactly known, but belonging to the Alexandrine age, and not earlier than the third century before the Christian era.

The poet Tyrtæus was himself engaged on the side of the Spartans in the second war, and it is from him that we learn the few indisputable facts respecting both the first and the second. If the Messenians had never been re-established in Peloponnesus, we should probably never have heard any further details respecting these early contests. That re-establishment, and the first foundation of the city called Messene on Mount Ithome, was among the capital wounds inflicted on Sparta by Epaminondas, in the year B.C. 369,—between three hundred and two hundred and fifty years after the conclusion of the Second Messenian War. The descendants of the old Messenians, who had remained for so long a period without any fixed position in Greece, were incorporated in the new city, together with various helots and miscellaneous settlers who had no claim to a similar genealogy. The gods and heroes of the Messenian race were reverentially invoked at this great ceremony, especially the great hero Aristomenes; and the site of Mount Ithome, the ardour of the newly established citizens, the hatred and apprehension of Sparta, operating as a powerful stimulus to the creation and multiplication of what are called traditions, sufficed to expand the few facts known respecting the struggles of the old Messenians into a variety of details. In almost all these stories we discover a colouring unfavourable to Sparta, contrasting forcibly with the account given by Isocrates in his discourse called Archidamus, wherein we read the view which a Spartan might take of the ancient conquests of his forefathers. But a clear proof that these Messenian stories had no real basis of tradition, is shown in the contradictory statements respecting the prime hero Aristomenes. Wesseling thinks that there were two persons named Aristomenes, one in the first and one in the second war. This inextricable confusion respecting the greatest name in Messenian antiquity, shows how little any genuine stream of tradition can here be recognised.

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Pausanias states the First Messenian War as beginning in B.C. 743 and lasting till B.C. 724,—the Second, as beginning in B.C. 685 and lasting till B.C. 668. Neither of these dates rest upon any assignable positive authority; but the time assigned to the first war seems probable, that of the second is apparently too early. Tyrtæus authenticates both the duration of the first war, twenty years, and the eminent services rendered in it by the Spartan king Theopompus. He says, moreover, speaking during the second war, “the fathers of our fathers conquered Messene;” thus loosely indicating the relative dates of the two.

The Spartans (as we learn from Isocrates, whose words date from a time when the city of Messene was only a recent foundation) professed to have seized the territory, partly in revenge for the impiety of the Messenians in killing their king, the Heraclid Cresphontes, whose relative had appealed to them for aid,—partly by sentence of the Delphian oracle. Such were the causes which had induced them first to invade the country, and they had conquered it after a struggle of twenty years. The Lacedæmonian explanations, as given in Pausanias, seem for the most part to be counter-statements arranged after the time when the Messenian version, evidently the interesting and popular account, had become circulated.b

Within the limits of Messenia there was a temple of Diana Limnatis, which was alone common to the Messenians among the Dorians, and to the Lacedæmonians. The Lacedæmonians asserted, that the virgins whom they sent to the festival were violated by the Messenians; that their king, Teleclus, was slain through endeavouring to prevent the injury, and that the violated virgins slew themselves through shame.

The Messenians, however, relate this affair differently; that stratagems were raised by Teleclus against those persons of quality that came to the temple in Messene. For when the Lacedæmonians, on account of the goodness of the land desired to possess Messenia, Teleclus adorned the beardless youths after the manner of virgins, and so disposed them, that they might suddenly attack the Lacedæmonians with their daggers as they were sitting. The Messenians, however, running to their assistance, slew both Teleclus and all the beardless youths. But the Lacedæmonians, as they were conscious that this action was perpetrated by public consent, never attempted to revenge the death of their king. And such are the reports of each party, which every one believes, just as he is influenced by his attachment to each. After this event had taken place, and when one generation had passed away, a hatred commenced between the Lacedæmonians and Messenians.c

FIRST MESSENIAN WAR

In spite of the death of Teleclus, however, the war did not actually break out until some little time after, when Alcamenes and Theopompus were kings at Sparta, and Antiochus and Androcles, sons of Pintas, kings of Messenia. The immediate cause of it was a private altercation between the Messenian Polychares (victor at the fourth Olympiad, B.C. 764) and the Spartan Euæphnus. Polychares having been grossly injured by Euæphnus, and his claim for redress having been rejected at Sparta, took revenge by aggressions upon other Lacedæmonians; the Messenians refused to give him up, though one of the two kings, Androcles, strongly insisted upon doing so, and maintained his opinion so earnestly against the opposite sense of the majority and of his brother, Antiochus, that a tumult arose, and he was slain.

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The Lacedæmonians, now resolving upon war, struck the first blow without any formal declaration, by surprising the border town of Amphea, and putting its defenders to the sword. They further overran the Messenian territory, and attacked some other towns, but without success. Euphaes, who had now succeeded his father Antiochus as king of Messenia, summoned the forces of the country and carried on the war against them with energy and boldness. For the first four years of the war, the Lacedæmonians made no progress, and even incurred the ridicule of the old men of their nation as faint-hearted warriors: in the fifth year, they made a more vigorous invasion, under their two kings, Theopompus and Polydorus, who were met by Euphaes with the full force of the Messenians. A desperate battle ensued, in which it does not seem that either side gained much advantage: nevertheless the Messenians found themselves so much enfeebled by it, that they were forced to take refuge on the fortified mountain of Ithome, and to abandon the rest of the country.b

After this battle the affairs of the Messenians were in a calamitous situation. For, in the first place, through the great sums of money which they had expended in fortifying their cities, they had no longer the means of supplying their army. In the next place, their slaves had fled to the Lacedæmonians. And lastly, a disease resembling a pestilence, though it did not infest all their country, greatly embarrassed their affairs. In consequence, therefore, of consulting about their present situation, they thought proper to abandon all those cities which had the most inland situation, and to betake themselves to the mountain Ithome. In this mountain there was a city of no great magnitude, which, they say, is mentioned by Homer in his catalogue:

In this city, therefore, fixing their residence, they enlarged the ancient enclosure, so that it might be sufficient to defend the whole of its inhabitants. This place was in other respects well fortified: for Ithome is not inferior to any of the mountains within the isthmus in magnitude; and besides this, is most difficult of access.

When they were settled in this mountain, they determined to send to Delphos, and consult the oracle concerning the event of the war. Tisis, therefore, the son of Alcis, was employed on this errand; a man who, in nobility of birth, was not inferior to any one, and who was particularly given to divination. This Tisis, on his return from Delphos, was attacked by a band of Lacedæmonians belonging to the guard of Amphea, but defended himself so valiantly that they were not able to take him. It is certain, however, that they did not desist from wounding him, till a voice was heard, from an invisible cause, “Dismiss the bearer of the oracle.” And Tisis, indeed, as soon as he returned to his own people, repeated the oracle to the king, and not long after died of his wounds. But Euphaes, collecting the Messenians together, recited the oracle, which was as follows: “Sacrifice a pure virgin, who is allotted a descent from the blood of the Æpytidæ, to the infernal demons, by cutting her throat in the night: but if the virgin who is led to the altar descends from any other family, let her voluntarily offer herself to be sacrificed.” Such then being the declaration of the god, immediately all the virgins descended from the Æpytidæ awaited the decision of lots: when the lot fell upon the daughter of Lyciscus, the prophet Epebolus told them that it was not proper that she should be sacrificed, because she was not the genuine daughter of Lyciscus: but that the wife of Lyciscus, in[146] consequence of her barrenness, had falsely pretended that this was her daughter.

The Futile Sacrifice of the Daughter of Aristodemus

In the meantime, while the prophet was thus dissuading the people, Lyciscus privately took away the virgin and fled to Sparta. But the Messenians being greatly dejected as soon as they perceived that Lyciscus had fled, Aristodemus, a man descended from the Æpytidæ, and who was most illustrious in warlike concerns and other respects, offered his own daughter as a voluntary sacrifice. Destiny, however, no less absorbs the alacrity of mankind, than the mud of a river the pebbles which it contains. For the following circumstance became a hindrance to Aristodemus, who was then desirous of saving Messene by sacrificing his daughter: A Messenian citizen whose name is not transmitted to us happened to be in love with the daughter of Aristodemus, and was just on the point of making her his wife. This man from the first entered into a dispute with Aristodemus, asserting that the virgin was no longer in the power of her father, as she had been promised to him in marriage, but that all authority over her belonged to him as her intended husband. However, finding that this plea was ineffectual, he made use of a shameful lie in order to accomplish his purpose, and affirmed that he had lain with the girl, and that she was now with child by him. But in the end, Aristodemus was so exasperated by this lie, that he slew his daughter, and having cut open her womb, plainly evinced that she was not with child.

Upon this, Epebolus, who was present, exhorted them to sacrifice the daughter of some other person, because the daughter of Aristodemus, in consequence of having been slain by her father in a rage, could not be the sacrifice to those dæmons which the oracle commanded. In consequence of the prophet thus addressing the people, they immediately rushed forth in order to slay the suitor of the dead virgin, as he had been the means of Aristodemus becoming defiled with the blood of his offspring, and had rendered the hope of their preservation dubious. But this man was a particular friend of Euphaes; and in consequence of this, Euphaes persuaded the Messenians that the oracle was accomplished in the death of the virgin, and that they ought to be satisfied with what Aristodemus had accomplished. All the Æpytidæ, therefore, were of the opinion of Euphaes, because each was anxious to be liberated from the fear of sacrificing his daughter. In consequence of this, the advice of the king was generally received, and the assembly dissolved. And after this they turned their attentions to the sacrifices and festival of the gods.c

The war still continued, and in the thirteenth year of it another hard-fought battle took place, in which the brave Euphaes was slain, but the result was again indecisive. Aristodemus, being elected king in his place, prosecuted the war strenuously: the fifth year of his reign is signalised by a third general battle, wherein the Corinthians assist the Spartans, and the Arcadians and Sicyonians are on the side of Messenia; the victory is here decisive on the side of Aristodemus, and the Lacedæmonians are driven back into their own territory. It was now their turn to send envoys and ask advice from the Delphian oracle; and the remaining events of the war exhibit a series, partly of stratagems to fulfil the injunctions of the priestess, partly of prodigies in which the divine wrath is manifested against the Messenians. The king Aristodemus, agonised with the thought that he has slain his own daughter without saving his country, puts an end to his[147] own life. In the twentieth year of the war, the Messenians abandoned Ithome, which the Lacedæmonians razed to the ground: the rest of the country was speedily conquered, and such of the inhabitants as did not flee either to Arcadia or to Eleusis, were reduced to complete submission.

Such is the abridgement of what Pausanias gives as the narrative of the First Messenian War. Most of his details bear the evident stamp of mere late romance: and it will easily be seen that the sequence of events presents no plausible explanation of that which is really indubitable—the result. The twenty years’ war, and the final abandonment of Ithome, are attested by Tyrtæus, and beyond all doubt, as well as the harsh treatment of the conquered. “Like asses worn down by heavy burthens” (says the Spartan poet) “they were compelled to make over to their masters an entire half of the produce of their fields, and to come in the garb of woe to Sparta, themselves and their wives, as mourners at the decease of the kings and principal persons.” The revolt of their descendants, against a yoke so oppressive, goes by the name of the Second Messenian War.

The Hero Aristomenes and the Second Messenian War

Had we possessed the account of the First Messenian War as given by Myron and Diodorus, it would evidently have been very different from the above, because they included Aristomenes in it, and to him the leading parts would be assigned. As the narrative now stands in Pausanias, we are not introduced to that great Messenian hero,—the Achilles of the epic of Rhianus,—until the second war, in which his gigantic proportions stand prominently forward. He is the great champion of his country in the three battles which are represented as taking place during this war: the first, with indecisive result, at Deræ; the second, a signal victory on the part of the Messenians, at the Boar’s Grave; the third, an equally signal defeat, in consequence of the traitorous flight of Aristocrates, king of the Arcadian Orchomenus, who, ostensibly embracing the alliance of the Messenians, had received bribes from Sparta. Thrice did Aristomenes sacrifice to Zeus Ithomates the sacrifice called Hecatomphonia, reserved for those who had slain with their own hands a hundred enemies in battle. At the head of a chosen band he carried his incursions more than once into the heart of the Lacedæmonian territory, surprised Amyclæ and Pharis, and even penetrated by night into the unfortified precinct of Sparta itself, where he suspended his shield, as a token of defiance, in the temple of Athene Chalciœcus. Thrice was he taken prisoner, but on two occasions marvellously escaped before he could be conveyed to Sparta.b Pausanias thus describes one of his escapes:

“Aristomenes continued to plunder the Spartan land, nor did he cease his hostilities till, happening to meet with more than half of the Lacedæmonian forces, together with both the kings, among other wounds which he received in defending himself, he was struck so violently on the head with a stone, that his eyes were covered with darkness, and he fell to the ground. The Lacedæmonians, on seeing this, rushed in a collected body upon him, and took him alive, together with fifty of his men. They likewise determined to throw all of them into the Ceadas, or a deep chasm, into which the most criminal offenders were hurled. Indeed, the other Messenians perished after this manner; but some god who had so often preserved Aristomenes, delivered him at that time from the fury of the Spartans. And some who entertain the most magnificent idea of his character, say, that an eagle flying to him bore him on its wings to the bottom of the chasm, so that he sustained no injury by the fall.

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“Indeed, he had not long reached the bottom before a dæmon shewed him a passage, by which he might make his escape; for as he lay in this profound chasm wrapped in a robe, expecting nothing but death, he heard a noise on the third day, and uncovering his face (for he was now able to look through the darkness) he saw a fox touching one of the dead bodies. Considering, therefore, where the passage could be through which the beast had entered, he waited till the fox came nearer to him, and when this happened seized it with one of his hands, and with the other, as often as it turned to him, exposed his robe for the animal to seize. At length, the fox beginning to run away, he suffered himself to be drawn along by her, through places almost impervious, till he saw an opening just sufficient for the fox to pass through, and a light streaming through the hole. And the animal, indeed, as soon as she was freed from Aristomenes, betook herself to her usual place of retreat. But Aristomenes, as the opening was not large enough for him to pass through, enlarged it with his hands, and escaped safe to Ira. The fortune, indeed by which Aristomenes was taken, was wonderful, for his spirit and courage were so great, that no one could hope to take him; but his preservation at Ceadas is far more wonderful, and at the same time it is evident to all men that it did not take place without the interference of a divine power.”c

The fortified mountain of Ira on the banks of the river Nedon, and near the Ionian Sea, had been occupied by the Messenians, after the battle in which they had been betrayed by Aristocrates the Arcadian; it was there that they had concentrated their whole force, as in the former war at Ithome, abandoning the rest of the country. Under the conduct of Aristomenes, assisted by the prophet Theoclus, they maintained this strong position for eleven years. At length, they were compelled to abandon it; but, as in the case of Ithome, the final determining circumstances are represented to have been, not any superiority of bravery or organisation on the part of the Lacedæmonians, but treacherous betrayal and stratagem, seconding the fatal decree of the gods. Unable to maintain Ira longer, Aristomenes, with his sons, and a body of his countrymen, forced his way through the assailants, and quitted the country—some of them retiring to Arcadia and Elis, and finally migrating to Rhegium. He himself passed the remainder of his days in Rhodes, where he dwelt along with his son-in-law, Damagetus, the ancestor of the noble Rhodian family, called the Diagorids, celebrated for its numerous Olympic victories.

Such are the main features of what Pausanias calls the Second Messenian War, or of what ought rather to be called the Aristomeneïs of the poet Rhianus. That after the foundation of Messene, and the recall of the exiles by Epaminondas, favour and credence was found for many tales respecting the prowess of the ancient hero whom they invoked in their libations,—tales well-calculated to interest the fancy, to vivify the patriotism, and to inflame the anti-Spartan antipathies, of the new inhabitants,—there can be little doubt. And the Messenian maidens of that day may well have sung, in their public processional sacrifices, how “Aristomenes pursued the flying Lacedæmonians down to the mid-plain of Stenyclarus, and up to the very summit of the mountain.” From such stories, traditions they ought not to be denominated, Rhianus may doubtless have borrowed; but if proof were wanting to show how completely he looked at his materials from the point of view of the poet, and not from that of the historian, we should find it in the remarkable fact noticed by Pausanias: Rhianus represented Leotychides as having been king of Sparta during the Second Messenian War; now Leotychides, as Pausanias observes, did not reign until near a century and a half afterwards, during the Persian invasion.

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THE POET TYRTÆUS

To the great champion of Messenia, during this war, we may oppose, on the side of Sparta, another remarkable person, less striking as a character of romance, but more interesting, in many ways, to the historian—the poet Tyrtæus, a native of Aphidnæ in Attica, an inestimable ally of the Lacedæmonians during most part of this second struggle. According to a story—which however has the air partly of a boast of the later Attic orators—the Spartans, disheartened at the first successes of the Messenians, consulted the Delphian oracle, and were directed to ask for a leader from Athens.b “At the same time,” Pausanias writes, “the Lacedæmonians received an oracle from Delphos, which commanded them to make use of an Athenian for their counsellor. Hence, when by ambassadors they had informed the Athenians of the oracle, and at the same time required an Athenian as their adviser, the Athenians were by no means willing to comply: for they considered, that the Lacedæmonians could not without great danger to the Athenians take possession of the best part of Peloponnesus; and at the same time, they were unwilling to disobey the commands of the god.

“At last they adopted the following expedient: There was at Athens a certain teacher of grammar, whose name was Tyrtæus, who appeared to possess the smallest degree of intellect, and who was lame in one of his feet. This man they sent to Sparta, who at one time instructed the principal persons in what was necessary for them to do, and at another time instructed the common people by singing elegies to them, in which the praise of valour was contained, and verses called anapæsti.”c

This seems to be a colouring put upon the story by later writers, and the intervention of the Athenians in the matter in any way deserves little credit. It seems more probable that the legendary connection of the Dioscuri with Aphidnæ, celebrated at or near that time by the poet Alcman, brought about, through the Delphian oracle, the presence of the Aphidnæan poet at[150] Sparta. Respecting the lameness of Tyrtæus, we can say nothing: but that he was a schoolmaster (if we are constrained to employ an unsuitable term) is highly probable, for in that day, minstrels, who composed and sung poems, were the only persons from whom the youth received any mental training. Moreover, his sway over the youthful mind is particularly noted in the compliment paid to him, in after-days, by king Leonidas: “Tyrtæus was an adept in tickling the souls of youth.” We see enough to satisfy us that he was by birth a stranger, though he became a Spartan by the subsequent recompense of citizenship conferred upon him; that he was sent through the Delphian oracle; that he was an impressive and efficacious minstrel, and that he had, moreover, sagacity enough to employ his talents for present purposes and diverse needs; being able, not merely to reanimate the languishing courage of the baffled warrior, but also to soothe the discontents of the mutinous. That his strains, which long maintained undiminished popularity among the Spartans, contributed much to determine the ultimate issue of this war, there is no reason to doubt; nor is his name the only one to attest the susceptibility of the Spartan mind in that day towards music and poetry. The first establishment of the Carneian festival, with its musical competition, at Sparta, falls during the period assigned by Pausanias to the Second Messenian War: the Lesbian harper, Terpander, who gained the first recorded prize at this solemnity, is affirmed to have been sent for by the Spartans pursuant to a mandate from the Delphian oracle, and to have been the means of appeasing a sedition. In like manner, the Cretan Thaletas was invited thither during a pestilence, which his art, as it is pretended, contributed to heal (about 620 B.C.); and Aleman, Xenocritus, Polymnastus, and Sacadas, all foreigners by birth, found favourable reception, and acquired popularity, by their music and poetry. With the exception of Sacadas, who is a little later, all these names fall in the same century as Tyrtæus, between 660 B.C.-610 B.C. The fashion which the Spartan music continued for a long time to maintain, is ascribed chiefly to the genius of Terpander.

That the impression produced by Tyrtæus at Sparta, therefore, with his martial music, and emphatic exhortations to bravery in the field, as well as union at home, should have been very considerable, is perfectly consistent with the character both of the age and of the people; especially as he is represented to have appeared pursuant to the injunction of the Delphian oracle. From the scanty fragments remaining to us of his elegies and anapæsts, however, we can satisfy ourselves only of two facts: first, that the war was long, obstinately contested, and dangerous to Sparta as well as to the Messenians; next, that other parties in Peloponnesus took part on both sides, especially on the side of the Messenians. So frequent and harassing were the aggressions of the latter upon the Spartan territory, that a large portion of the border-land was left uncultivated: scarcity ensued, and the proprietors of the deserted farms, driven to despair, pressed for a redivision of the landed property in the state. It was in appeasing these discontents that the poem of Tyrtæus, called Eunomia, “Legal Order,” was found signally beneficial. It seems certain that a considerable portion of the Arcadians, together with the Pisatæ and the Triphylians, took part with the Messenians; there are also some statements numbering the Eleans among their allies, but this appears not probable. The state of the case rather seems to have been, that the old quarrel between the Eleans and the Pisatæ, respecting the right to preside at the Olympic games, which had already burst forth during the preceding century, in the reign of the Argeian[151] Pheidon, still continued. The Second Messenian War will thus stand as beginning somewhere about the 33rd Olympiad, or 648 B.C., between seventy and eighty years after the close of the first, and lasting, according to Pausanias, seventeen years; according to Plutarch, more than twenty years.

Many of the Messenians who abandoned their country after this second conquest are said to have found shelter and sympathy among the Arcadians, who admitted them to a new home and gave them their daughters in marriage; and who, moreover, punished severely the treason of Aristocrates, king of Orchomenos, in abandoning the Messenians at the battle of the Trench.

The Second Messenian War was thus terminated by the complete subjugation of the Messenians. Such of them as remained in the country were reduced to a servitude probably not less hard than that which Tyrtæus described them as having endured between the first war and the second. In after-times, the whole territory which figures on the map as Messenia,—south of the river Nedon, and westward of the summit of Taygetus,—appears as subject to Sparta, and as forming the western portion of Laconia. Nor do we hear of any serious revolt from Sparta in this territory until a hundred and fifty years afterwards, subsequent to the Persian invasion—a revolt which Sparta, after serious efforts, succeeded in crushing. So that the territory remained in her power until her defeat at Leuctra, which led to the foundation of Messene by Epaminondas.

Imperfectly as these two Messenian wars are known to us, we may see enough to warrant us in saying that both were tedious, protracted, and painful, showing how slowly the results of war were then gathered, and adding one additional illustration to prove how much the rapid and instantaneous conquest of Laconia and Messenia by the Dorians, which the Heraclid legend sets forth, is contradicted by historical analogy.

The relations of Pisa and Elis form a suitable counterpart and sequel to those of Messenia and Sparta. Unwilling subjects themselves, the Pisatæ had lent their aid to the Messenians, and their king Pantaleon, one of the leaders of this combined force, had gained so great a temporary success, as to dispossess the Eleans of the agonothesia or administration of the games for one Olympic ceremony, in the 34th Olympiad. Though again reduced to their condition of subjects, they manifested dispositions to renew their revolt. These incidents seem to have occurred about the 50th Olympiad, or B.C. 580; and the dominion of Elis over her Periœcid territory was thus as well assured as that of Sparta. The Lacedæmonians, after the close of the Peloponnesian War had left them undisputed heads of Greece, formally upheld the independence of the Triphylian towns against Elis, and seem to have countenanced their endeavours to attach themselves to the Arcadian aggregate, which, however, was never fully accomplished. Their dependence on Elis became loose and uncertain, but was never wholly shaken off.b

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CHAPTER VIII. THE IONIANS

The complete change in the map of Greece at the close of the Achæan period and the origin of the ethnographic system with which the history of Hellenic times begins, were always referred by Greek tradition to a last wandering of north Grecian tribes. The customary chronology places the beginning of this shifting at 1133 or 1124 B.C., i.e., less than three generations after the so-called conquest of Troy. Recent chronological investigations, however, have made it seem probable that a period at least a hundred years later should be chosen.

The first impulse was probably given by new movements of tribes in the north. The advance of the Illyrians caused the Thessalians, a part of the Epirot tribe of the Thesproti, to withdraw across Pindus into the valley of the Peneus, which was afterwards called Thessaly. While the preservation of the Greek character in Epirus was henceforth left to the brave Molossi, the Thessalians east of Pindus fell upon the settled Greeks of the lowlands and destroyed their states. The proudest and most vigorous elements of the old population that survived the war, determined to emigrate and found a new home. Thus, the Arnæ migrated to middle Greece, destroyed the old states of Thebes and Orchomenus in the basin of the Copaïs and united this whole district, which henceforth appears in history as Bœotia, under their rule.

While the Thessalians were making preparations to subjugate the warlike tribes of the highlands about the valley of the Peneus, one of these mountain races, the Dorians, carried the mighty movement on to the extreme south of the Peloponnesus. Within twenty years, according to tradition, they had crossed the narrow strait of Rhium and begun the conquest of the Peloponnesus. They ascended the valley of the Alpheus into southern Arcadia. From here one body of them descended into the Messenian valley of the Pamisus and overwhelmed the old kingdom of the Melidæ of Pylos. The other branch invaded the principal districts of the Achæans in the east and southeast of the Peloponnesus. In open battle the rude Dorian foot-soldiers easily defeated the Achæan knights. But they could not destroy the colossal walls of the Achæan fortresses or cities, and were themselves finally forced to build fortifications from which they could watch or invest the Achæan strongholds until the opportunity was presented of storming them or forcing their capitulation. It was in such a fortified camp that the Dorian capital Sparta had its origin.

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It was probably the tenacious resistance of the Achæans in Laconia that determined a large body of the Dorians to leave that district and turn to the east, where they completely subjugated Argolis and made Argos the centre of Dorian power in the eastern part of the Peloponnesus.

At the close of the Achæan period Attica was the canton which appeared to have the most settled and uniform structure. It now became a favourite refuge of migrant Greeks of many different tribes. This movement seems to have strengthened little Attica in a considerable degree, for tradition ascribes to these immigrants the successful resistance that Attica was able to make when the hordes of the conquerors finally approached her borders. But Attica was far too small and unproductive to retain the mass of fugitives as permanent settlers. So the movement was finally turned towards the islands of the Ægean and the coast of Asia Minor. According to tradition there had already been an Archæan (or Æolian) migration to Lesbos and Tenedos, from whence the Mysian coast and Troas were later colonised.

The most important Ionian colonies in the east were in the Cyclades, at Miletus, and at Ephesus. As their power continued to grow, the Ionians gradually Hellenised a broad strip of coast and in the river valleys pushed out a considerable distance to the eastward.

The Dorians also followed the movement of the other Greeks to the islands and to Asia. Their most important occupations were Crete, Rhodes, and a small portion of the southern coast of Caria, including the cities of Cnidus and Halicarnassus.

By the first half of the eighth century B.C., the Greek world had acquired the aspect which it retained for several centuries. The nation had greatly increased its territory by colonisation. But the district now called Thessaly was in possession of a race that showed little capacity to develop beyond a vigorous and pleasure-loving feudalism; and the Greeks of Epirus and the valley of the Achelous had been for several centuries shut out from the evolution into Hellenism. So apart from the newly risen power of the Bœotians, the future of Greece rested upon the two races that had been but little named in the Achæan period. The Dorians had become a great people. Argos had at first been the leading power of the Peloponnesus, both in religion and in politics. The Doric canton in the valley of the Upper Eurotas had made but slow and difficult progress, until, at the close of the ninth and beginning of the eighth century, that remarkable military and political consolidation was completed which is connected with the name of Lycurgus. This was the starting-point of a growth of Spartan power in consequence of which before the end of the eighth century the balance of Doric power was to pass from Argos to the south of the Peloponnesus.

Among the Ionians the Asiatic branch long remained the more important. The Ionian Greeks of the Ægean and of the Lydio-Carian coast, through their direct contact with the Orient, introduced to the Greek world new elements of culture of a varied character. Of a friendly and adaptable nature, they were specially fitted to be the traders and mariners of Greek nationality. Politically they became pre-eminently the democratic element of the nation, although there were powerful aristocratic groups among them. But with them the tendency appears stronger than among the other Greeks to allow full scope to personality, individual right, individual liberty, and individual activity beside, and even in opposition to the common interest.

The Asiatic Achæans appear in the historical period only under the name of Æolians. This name also came to be applied to those members of the Greek nation in Europe that could not be counted among either Dorians or Ionians.

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The common name borne by the Greeks after the completion of the migrations is that of Hellenes. All the members of the various branches exhibit the Hellenic character, though only a few communities developed it in so ideal a form as the Athenians at the height of their historical greatness. A beautiful heritage of all Hellenes was their appreciation and enjoyment of art—of poetry and music as well as the plastic arts. A warm feeling not only for the beautiful, but for the ideal and the noble,—among the best elements also for right and harmoniously developed life,—and a fine taste in art and in ethical perception have never been denied the Greeks.

They were, moreover, at all periods characterised by a quick intellectual receptivity and an incomparable union of glowing fancy, brilliant intelligence, and sharp understanding. But mighty passion was coupled with all this. Party spirit and furious party hatred ran through all Greek history. The proud Greek self-assertion often degenerates into boundless presumption. Cruelty in war, even towards Greeks themselves, cunning and treachery, harsh self-interest and reckless greed are traits that mar the brilliant figure of Hellenism long before the Roman and Byzantine times.b

ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF ATHENS

In that part of earth termed by the Greeks Hellas, and by the Romans Græcia, a small tract of land known by the name of Attica extends into the Ægean Sea—the southeast peninsula of Greece. In its greatest length it is about sixty, in its greatest breadth about twenty-four, geographical miles. In shape it is a rude triangle,—on two sides flows the sea—on the third, the mountain range of Parnes and Cithæron, divides the Attic from the Bœotian territory. It is intersected by frequent but not lofty hills, and compared with the rest of Greece, its soil, though propitious to the growth of the olive, is not fertile or abundant. In spite of painful and elaborate culture, the traces of which are yet visible, it never produced a sufficiency of corn to supply its population; and this, the comparative sterility of the land, may be ranked among the causes which conduced to the greatness of the people. The principal mountains of Attica are, the Cape of Sunium, Hymettus renowned for its honey, and Pentelicus for its marble; the principal streams which water the valleys are the capricious and uncertain rivulets of Cephisus and Ilissus—streams breaking into lesser brooks, deliciously pure and clear. The air is serene, the climate healthful, the seasons temperate. Along the hills yet breathe the wild thyme and the odorous plants which, everywhere prodigal in Greece, are more especially fragrant in that lucid sky—and still the atmosphere colours with peculiar and various tints the marble of the existent temples and the face of the mountain landscapes.

Even so early as the traditional appearance of Cecrops amongst the savages of Attica, the Pelasgians in Arcadia had probably advanced from the pastoral to the civil life; and this, indeed, is the date assigned by Pausanias to the foundation of that ancestral Lycosura, in whose rude remains (by the living fountain and the waving oaks of the modern Diaphorte) the antiquary yet traces the fortifications of “the first city which the sun beheld.” It is in their buildings that the Pelasgi have left the most indisputable record of their name. Their handwriting is yet upon their walls! A restless and various people—overrunning the whole of Greece, found northward in Dacia, Illyria, and the country of the Getæ, colonising the coasts of Ionia, and long the master-race of the fairest lands of Italy—they have passed[155] away amidst the revolutions of the elder earth, their ancestry and their descendants alike unknown.

The proofs upon which rest the reputed arrival of Egyptian colonisers, under Cecrops, in Attica, have been shown to be slender, the authorities for the assertion to be comparatively modern, the arguments against the probability of such an immigration in such an age, to be at least plausible and important. The traditions speak of them with gratitude as civilisers, not with hatred as conquerors. Assisting to civilise the Greeks, they then became Greeks; their posterity merged and lost amidst the native population.

Perhaps in all countries, the first step to social improvement is in the institution of marriage, and the second is the formation of cities. As Menes in Egypt, as Fohi in China, so Cecrops at Athens is said first to have reduced into sacred limits the irregular intercourse of the sexes, and reclaimed his barbarous subjects from a wandering and unprovidential life, subsisting on the spontaneous produce of no abundant soil. High above the plain, and fronting the sea, which, about three miles distant on that side, sweeps into a bay peculiarly adapted for the maritime enterprises of an earlier age, we still behold a cragged and nearly perpendicular rock. In length its superficies is about eight hundred, in breadth about four hundred, feet. Below, on either side, flow the immortal streams of the Ilissus and Cephisus. From its summit you may survey here the mountains of Hymettus, Pentelicus, and, far away, “the silver bearing Laurium”; below, the wide plain of Attica, broken by rocky hills—there, the islands of Salamis and Ægina, with the opposite shores of Argolis, rising above the waters of the Saronic Bay. On this rock the supposed Egyptian is said to have built a fortress, and founded a city; the fortress was in later times styled the Acropolis, and the place itself, when the buildings of Athens spread far and wide beneath its base, was still designated πόλις, or the City. By degrees we are told that he extended, from this impregnable castle and its adjacent plain, the limit of his realm, until it included the whole of Attica, and perhaps Bœotia. It is also related that he established eleven other towns or hamlets, and divided his people into twelve tribes, to each of which one of the towns was apportioned—a fortress against foreign invasion, and a court of justice in civil disputes.

If we may trust to the glimmering light which, resting for a moment, uncertain and confused, upon the reign of Cecrops, is swallowed up in all the darkness of fable during those of his reputed successors, it is to this apocryphal personage that we must refer the elements both of agriculture and law. He is said to have instructed the Athenians to till the land, and to watch the produce of the seasons; to have imported from Egypt the olive tree, for which the Attic soil was afterwards so celebrated, and even to have navigated to Sicily and to Africa for supplies of corn. That such advances, from a primitive and savage state, were not made in a single generation, is sufficiently clear. With more probability, Cecrops is reputed to have imposed upon the ignorance of his subjects and the license of his followers, the curb of impartial law, and to have founded a tribunal of justice (doubtless the sole one for all disputes), in which after-times imagined to trace the origin of the solemn Areopagus.c

KING ÆGEUS

The fortress, which Cecrops made his residence, was from his own name called Cecropia, and was peculiarly recommended to the patronage of the Egyptian goddess whom the Greeks worshipped by the name of Athene, and[156] the Latins of Minerva. Many, induced by the neighbourhood of the port, and expecting security both from the fortress and from its tutelary deity, erected their habitations around the foot of the rock; and thus arose early a considerable town, which, from the name of the goddess, was called Athenai, or, as we after the French have corrupted it, Athens.

This account of the rise of Athens, and of the origin of its government, though possibly a village and even a fortress may have existed there before Cecrops, is supported by a more general concurrence of traditional testimony, and more complete consonancy to the rest of history, than is often found for that remote age. The subsequent Attic annals are far less satisfactory. Strabo declines the endeavour to reconcile their inconsistencies; and Plutarch gives a strong picture of the uncertainties and voids which occurred to him in attempting to form a history from them. “As geographers,” he says, “in the outer parts of their maps distinguish those countries which lie beyond their knowledge with such remarks as these, All here is dry and desert sand, or marsh darkened with perpetual fog, or Scythian cold, or frozen sea; so of the earliest history we may say, All here is monstrous and tragical land, occupied only by poets and fabulists.” If such apology was reckoned necessary by Plutarch for such an account as could in his time be collected of the life of Theseus, none can now be wanting for omitting all disquisition concerning the four or seven kings, for even their number is not ascertained, who are said to have governed Attica from Cecrops to Ægeus, father of that hero. The name of Amphictyon, indeed, whose name is in the list, excites a reasonable curiosity: but as it is not in his government of Athens that he is particularly an object of history, farther mention of him may best be reserved for future opportunity.

Various, uncertain, and imperfect, then, as the accounts were which passed to posterity concerning the early Attic princes, yet the assurance of Thucydides may deserve respect, that Attica was the province of Greece in which population first became settled, and where the earliest progress was made toward civilisation. Being nearly peninsular, it lay out of the road of emigrants and wandering freebooters by land; and its rocky soil, supporting few cattle, afforded small temptation to either. The produce of tillage was of less easy removal; and the gains of commerce were secured within fortifications. Attica therefore grew populous, not only through the safety which the natives thus enjoyed, but by a confluence of strangers from other parts of Greece; for when either foreign invasion or intestine broil occasioned anywhere the necessity of emigration, Athens was the resort in highest estimation not only as a place of the most permanent security, but also as strangers of character, able by their wealth or their ingenuity to support themselves and benefit the community, were easily admitted to the privilege of citizens.

But, as population increased, the simple forms of government and jurisprudence established by Cecrops were no longer equal to their purpose. Civil wars arose; the country was invaded by sea: Erechtheus, called by later authors Erichthonius, and by the poets Son of the Earth, acquired the sovereignty, bringing, according to some not improbable reports, a second colony from Egypt.[9] Eumolpus, with a body of Thracians, about the same time established himself in Eleusis. When, a generation or two later,[157] Ægeus, contemporary with Minos, succeeded his father Pandion in the throne, the country seems to have been well peopled, but the government ill constituted and weak. Concerning this prince, however, and his immediate successor, tradition is more ample; and though abundantly mixed with fable, yet in many instances apparently more authentic than concerning any other persons of their remote age. Plutarch has thought a history of Theseus, son of Ægeus, not unfit to hold a place among his parallel lives of the great men of Greece and Rome; and his account appears warranted in many points by strong corresponding testimony from other ancient authors of various ages. The period also is so important in the annals of Attica, and the reports remaining altogether go so far to illustrate the manners and circumstances of the times, that it may be proper to allow them some scope in narration.

Ægeus, king of Athens, though an able and spirited prince, yet, in the divided and disorderly state of his country, with difficulty maintained his situation. When past the prime of life he had the misfortune to remain childless, though twice married; and a faction headed by his presumptive heirs, the numerous sons of Pallas his younger brother, gave him unceasing disturbance. Thus urged, he went to Delphi to implore information from the oracle how the blessing of children might be obtained. Receiving an answer which, like most of the oracular responses, was unintelligible, his next concern was to find some person capable of explaining to him the will of the deity thus mysteriously declared. Among the many establishments which Pelops had procured for his family throughout Peloponnesus was the small town and territory of Trœzen on the coast opposite to Athens, which he placed under the government of his son Pittheus. Ægeus applied to that prince; who was not only in his own age eminent for wisdom, but of reputation remaining even in the most flourishing period of Grecian philosophy; yet so little was he superior to the ridiculous, and often detestable superstition of his time that, in consequence of some fancied meaning in the oracle, which even the superstitious Plutarch confesses himself unable to comprehend, he introduced his own daughter Æthra to an illicit commerce with Ægeus. Perhaps it may be allowed to conjecture that the commerce was unknown to the Trœzenian prince till the consequence became evident, and that the interpretation of the oracle was an ensuing resource to obviate disgrace.

The affairs of Attica being in great confusion required the return of Ægeus. His departure from Trœzen is marked by an action which, to persons accustomed to consider modern manners only, may appear unfit to be related but in a fable, yet is so consonant to the manners of the times, and so characteristical of them, as to demand the notice of the historian. He led Æthra to a sequestered spot where was a small cavity in a rock. Depositing there a hunting-knife and a pair of sandals, he covered them with a marble fragment of enormous weight; and then addressing Æthra, “If,” said he, “the child you now bear should prove a boy, let the removal of this stone be one day the proof of his strength; when he can effect it, send him with the tokens underneath to Athens.”

Pittheus, well knowing the genius and the degree of information of his subjects and fellow-countrymen, thought it not too gross an imposition to report that his daughter was pregnant by the god Poseidon, or, as we usually call him with the Latins, Neptune, esteemed the tutelary deity of the Trœzenians. A similar expedient seems indeed to have been often successfully used to cover the disgrace which, even in those days, would otherwise attend such irregular amours in a lady of high rank, though women of[158] lower degree appear to have derived no dishonour from concubinage with their superiors. Theseus was the produce of the singular connection of Æthra with Ægeus. He is said to have been carefully educated under the inspection of his grandfather, and to have given early proofs of uncommon vigour both of body and mind. On his attaining manhood, his mother, in pursuance of the injunction of Ægeus, unfolded to him the reality of his parentage, and conducted him to the rock where his father’s tokens were deposited. He removed the stone which covered them, with a facility indicating that superior bodily strength so necessary in those days to support the pretensions of high birth; and thus encouraged she recommended to him to carry them to Ægeus at Athens. This proposal perfectly suited the temper and inclination of Theseus; but when he was farther advised to go by sea on account of the shortness and safety of the passage, piracy being about this time suppressed by the naval power of Minos, king of Crete, he positively refused.

THESEUS

The age of Theseus was the great era of those heroes, to whom the knights errant of the Gothic kingdoms afterwards bore a close resemblance. Hercules was his near kinsman. The actions of that extraordinary personage are reported to have been for some years the subject of universal conversation, and both an incentive and a direction to young Theseus in the road to fame. After having destroyed the most powerful and atrocious freebooters throughout Greece, Hercules, according to Plutarch, was gone into Asia; and those disturbers of civil order, whom his irresistible might and severe justice had driven to conceal themselves, took advantage of his absence to renew their violences. Being not obscure and vagabond thieves, but powerful chieftains, who openly defied law and government, the dangers to be expected from them were well known at Trœzen. Theseus however persevered in his resolution to go by land; alleging that it would be shameful, if, while Hercules was traversing earth and sea to repress the common disturbers of mankind, he should avoid those at his door, disgracing his reputed father by an ignominious flight over his own element, and carrying to his real father, for tokens, a bloodless weapon and sandals untrodden, instead of giving proofs of his high birth by actions worthy of it.

Proceeding in his journey he found every fastness occupied by men who, like many of the old barons of the Western European kingdoms, gave protection to their dependants, and disturbance to all beside within their reach, making booty of whatever they could master. His valour, however, and his good fortune procuring him the advantage in every contest carried him safe through all dangers; though he found nothing friendly till he arrived on the bank of the river Cephisus in the middle of Attica. Some people of the country meeting him there saluted him in the usual terms of friendship to strangers. Judging himself then past the perils of his journey, he requested to have the accustomed ceremony of purification from blood performed, that he might properly join in sacrifices and other religious rites. The courteous Atticans readily complied, and then entertained him at their houses. An ancient altar, said to have been erected in commemoration of this meeting, dedicated to Jupiter with the epithet of Meilichius, the friendly or kind, remained to the time of Pausanias.

When Theseus arrived at Athens, Ægeus, already approaching dotage, was governed by the Colchian princess Medea, so famous in poetry, who flying[159] from Corinth had prevailed on him to afford her protection. Theseus, as an illustrious stranger invited to a feast, on drawing his hunting-knife, as it seems was usual, to carve the meat before him, was recognised by Ægeus. The old king immediately rising embraced him, acknowledged him before the company for his son, and afterward summoning an assembly of the people presented Theseus as their prince. The fame of exploits suited, as those of Theseus, to acquire popularity in that age had already prepossessed the people in his favour; strong marks of general satisfaction followed. But the party of the sons of Pallas was powerful: their disappointment was equally great and unexpected; and no hope remaining to accomplish their wishes by other means, they withdrew from the city, collected their adherents, and returned in arms. The tide of popular inclination, however, now ran so strongly in favour of Theseus that some even of their confidants gave way to it. A design to surprise the city was discovered; part of their troops were in consequence cut off, the rest dispersed; and the faction was completely quelled.

Quiet being thus restored to Athens, Theseus was diligent to increase the popularity he had acquired. Military fame was the means to which his active spirit chiefly inclined him; but, as the state had now no enemies, he exercised his valour in the destruction of wild beasts, and, it is said, added not a little to his reputation by delivering the country from a savage bull, which had done great mischief in the neighbourhood of Marathon.

An opportunity however soon offered for Theseus to do his country more essential service, and to acquire more illustrious fame. The Athenians, in a war with Minos, king of Crete, had been reduced to purchase peace of that powerful monarch by a yearly tribute of seven youths and as many virgins. Coined money was not common till some centuries after his age; and slaves and cattle were not only the principal riches, but the most commodious and usual standards by which the value of other things was determined. A tribute of slaves therefore was perhaps the most convenient that Minos could impose; Attica maintaining few cattle, and those being less easily transported. The burden however could not but cause much uneasiness among the Athenians; so that the return of the Cretan ship at the usual time to demand the tribute excited fresh and loud murmurs against the government of Ægeus. Theseus took an extraordinary step, but perfectly suited to the heroic character which he affected, for appeasing the popular discontent. The tributary youths and virgins had been hitherto drawn by lot from the body of the people; who might however apparently send slaves, if they had or could procure them, instead of persons of their own family. But Theseus offered himself. Report went that those unfortunate victims were thrown into the famous labyrinth built by Dædalus, and there devoured by the Minotaur, a monster, half-man and half-bull. This fable was probably no invention of the poets who embellished it in more polished ages: it may have been devised at the time, and even have found credit among a people of an imagination so lively, and a judgment so uninformed, as were then the Athenians. The offer of Theseus therefore, really magnanimous, appeared an unparalleled effort of patriotic heroism.

Ancient writers, who have endeavoured to investigate truth among the intricacies of fabulous tradition, tell us that the labyrinth was a fortress where prisoners were usually kept, and that a Cretan general, its governor, named Taurus, which in Greek signifies a bull, gave rise to the fiction of the Minotaur. The better testimony from antiquity however asserts that Theseus was received by Minos more agreeably to the character of a great and generous prince than of a tyrant who gave his captives to be devoured[160] by monsters. But during this, the flourishing age of Crete, letters were, if at all known, little used in Greece. In after-times, when the Athenians bore the sway in literature, their tragedians, flattering vulgar prejudices, exhibited Minos in odious colours; and through the popularity of their ingenious works their calumnious misrepresentations, as Plutarch has observed, overbore the eulogies of the elder poets, even of Hesiod and Homer. Thus the particulars of the adventures of Theseus in Crete, and of his return to Athens, have been so disguised that even to guess at the truth is difficult. For these early ages Homer is our best guide; but he has mixed mythology with his short notice of the adventure of Theseus in Crete.

A rational interpretation nevertheless is obvious. Minos, surprised probably at the arrival of the Athenian prince among the tributary slaves, received him honourably, became partial to his merit, and after some experience of it gave him his daughter Ariadne in marriage. In the voyage toward Athens the princess being taken with sudden sickness was landed in the island of Naxos, where Bacchus was esteemed the tutelary deity; and she died there. If we add the supposition that Theseus, eager to communicate the news of his extraordinary success, or urged by public duty, proceeded on his voyage while the princess was yet living, no further foundation would be wanting for the fables which have made these names so familiar. Theseus however, according to what with most certainty may be gathered from Athenian tradition, freed his country from further payment of the ignominious and cruel tribute.

This achievement, by whatsoever means effected, was so bold in the undertaking, so complete in the success, so important and so interesting in the consequences, that it deservedly raised Theseus to the highest popularity among the Athenians. Sacrifices and processions were instituted in honour of it, and were continued while the Pagan religion had existence in Athens. The vessel in which he made his voyage was yearly sent in solemn pomp to the sacred island of Delos, where rites of thanksgiving were performed to Apollo. Through the extreme veneration in which it was held, it was so anxiously preserved that in Plato’s time it was said to be still the same vessel; though at length its frequent repairs gave occasion to the dispute, which became famous among the sophists, whether it was or was not still the same. On his father’s death the common voice supported his claim to the succession, and he showed himself not less capable of improving the state by his wisdom than of defending it by his valour.

The twelve districts into which Cecrops had divided Attica were become so many nearly independent commonwealths, with scarcely any bond of union but their acknowledgment of one chief, whose authority was not always sufficient to keep them from mutual hostilities. The inconveniences of such a constitution were great and obvious, but the remedy full of difficulty. Theseus, however, undertook it; and effected that change which laid the foundation of the following glory of Athens, while it ranks him among the most illustrious patriots that adorn the annals of mankind. Going through every district, with that judicial authority which in the early state of all monarchical governments has been attached to the kingly office, and with those powers of persuasion which he is said largely to have possessed, he put an end to civil contest. He proposed then the abolition of all the independent magistracies, councils, and courts of justice, and the substitution of one common council of legislation, and one common system of judicature. The lower people readily acceded to his measures. The rich and powerful, who shared among them the independent magistracies, were more inclined[161] to opposition. To satisfy these, therefore, he offered, with a disinterestedness of which history affords few examples, to give up much of his own power; and, appropriating to himself only the cares and dangers of royalty, to share with his people authority, honour, wealth, all that is commonly most valued in it. Few were inclined to resist so equitable and generous a proposal: the most selfish and most obstinate dared not. Theseus therefore proceeded quietly to new-model the commonwealth.[10]

The dissolution of all the independent councils and jurisdictions in the several towns and districts, and the removal of all the more important civil business to Athens, was his first measure. He wisely judged that the civil union, so happily effected, would be incomplete, or at least unstable, if he did not cement it by union in religion. He avoided however to shock rooted prejudices by any abolition of established religious ceremonies. Leaving those peculiar to each district as they stood, he instituted, or improved and laid open for all in common, one feast and sacrifice, in honour of the goddess Athene, or Minerva, for all inhabitants of Attica. This feast he called Panathenæa, the feast of all the Athenians or people of Minerva; and thenceforward apparently all the inhabitants of Attica, esteeming themselves unitedly under the particular protection of that goddess, uniformly distinguished themselves by a name formed from hers; for they were before variously called from their race, Ionians; from their country, Atticans; or from their princes, Cranaans, Cecropians, or Erechtidæ. To this scheme of union, conceived with a depth of judgment, and executed with a moderation of temper, rarely found in that age, the Athenians may well be said to owe all their after greatness. Otherwise Attica, like Bœotia and other provinces, whose circumstances will come hereafter under notice, would probably have contained several little republics, united only in name; each too weak to preserve dignity, or even to secure independency to its separate government; and possessing nothing so much in common as occasions for perpetual disagreement.

A share in the legislature, extended to all, insured civil freedom to all; and no distinction prevailed, as in other Grecian provinces, between the people of the capital and those of the inferior towns; but all were united under the Athenian name in the enjoyment of every privilege of Athenian citizens. When his improvements were completed, Theseus, according to the policy which became usual for giving authority to great innovations and all uncommon undertakings, is said to have procured a declaration of divine approbation from the prophetical shrine of Delphi.

Thus the province of Attica, containing a triangular tract of land with two sides about fifty miles long, and the third forty, was moulded into a well-united and well-regulated commonwealth, whose chief magistrate was yet hereditary, and retained the title of king. In consequence of so improved a state of things, the Athenians began the first of all the Greeks to acquire more civilised manners. Thucydides remarks that they were the first who dropped the practice, formerly general among the Greeks, of going constantly armed; and who introduced a civil dress in contradistinction to the military. This particularity, if not introduced by Theseus, appears to have been not less early, since it struck Homer, who marks the Athenians by the appellation of long-robed Ionians. If we may credit Plutarch, Theseus coined money; which was certainly rare in Greece two centuries after.

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The rest of the history of Theseus affords little worthy of notice. It is composed of a number of the wildest adventures, many of them consistent enough with the character of the times, but very little so with what is related of the former part of his life. It seems indeed as if historians had inverted the order of things; giving to his riper years the extravagance of youth, after having attributed to his earliest manhood what the maturest age seldom has equalled. Whether this should be attributed altogether, or in any part, to the fancy which afterward prevailed among philosophical writers to mix mythology with history, will be rather for the dissertator than the historian to inquire. Theseus however, it may be proper to observe, is said to have lost in the end all favour and all authority among the Athenians; and though his institutions remained in vigour, to have died in exile. After him, Menestheus, a person of the royal family, acquired the sovereignty, and commanded the Athenian troops in the Trojan War.d

According to some historians, Theseus, however explained, deserves no credit for the Athenian union, since at the time this union took place, Theseus was not even a national hero but only a local and minor god worshipped about Marathon.

RISE OF POPULAR LIBERTY

We may perhaps safely conclude from analogy, that, even while the power of the nobles was most absolute, a popular assembly was not unknown at Athens; and the example of Sparta may suggest a notion of the limitations which might prevent it from endangering the privileges of the ruling body. So long as the latter reserved to itself the office of making, or declaring, of interpreting, and administering the laws, as well as the ordinary functions of government, it might securely entrust many subjects to the decision of the popular voice. Its first contests were waged, not with the people, but with the kings.

Even in the reign of Theseus himself the legend exhibits the royal power as on the decline. Menestheus, a descendant of the ancient kings, is said to have engaged his brother nobles in a conspiracy against Theseus, which finally compelled him and his family to go into exile, and placed Menestheus on the throne. After the death of this usurper indeed the crown is restored to the line of Theseus for some generations. But his descendant Thymœtes is compelled to abdicate in favour of Melanthus, a stranger, who has no claim but his superior merit. After the death of Codrus, the nobles, taking advantage perhaps of the opportunity afforded by the dispute between his sons, are said to have abolished the title of king, and to have substituted for it that of archon. This change however seems to have been important, rather as it indicated the new, precarious tenure by which the royal power was held, than as it immediately affected the nature of the office. It was indeed still held for life; and Medon, the son of Codrus, transmitted it to his posterity, though it would appear that, within the house of the Medontids, the succession was determined by the choice of the nobles. It is added however, that the archon was deemed a responsible magistrate, which implies that those who elected had the power of deposing him; and consequently, though the range of his functions may not have been narrower than that of the king’s, he was more subject to control in the exercise of them. This indirect kind of sway, however, did not satisfy the more ambitious spirits; and we find them steadily, though gradually, advancing towards the accomplishment of their final object—a complete and equal participation of the sovereignty.

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After twelve reigns, ending with that of Alcmæon,[11] the duration of the office was limited to ten years; and through the guilt or calamity of Hippomenes, the fourth decennial archon,[12] the house of Medon was deprived of its privilege, and the supreme magistracy was thrown open to the whole body of the nobles. This change was speedily followed by one much more important. When Tlesias, the successor of Eryxias, had completed the term which his predecessor had left unfinished, the duration of the archonship was again reduced to a single year; and at the same time its branches were severed, and distributed among nine new magistrates.

Among these, the first in rank retained the distinguishing title of The Archon, and the year was marked by his name. He represented the majesty of the state, and exercised a peculiar jurisdiction—that which had belonged to the king as the common parent of his people, the protector of families, the guardian of orphans and heiresses, and of the general rights of inheritance. For the second archon the title of king, if it had been laid aside, was revived, as the functions assigned to him were those most associated with ancient recollections. He represented the king as the high priest of his people; he regulated the celebration of the mysteries and the most solemn festivals; decided all causes which affected the interests of religion, and was charged with the care of protecting the state from the pollution it might incur through the heedlessness or impiety of individuals. The third archon bore the title of polemarch, and filled the place of the king, as the leader of his people in war, and the guardian who watched over its security in time of peace. Connected with this character of his office was the jurisdiction he possessed over strangers who had settled in Attica under the protection of the state, and over freedmen. The remaining six archons received the common title of thesmothetes, which literally signifies legislators, and was probably applied to them, as the judges who determined the great variety of causes which did not fall under the cognisance of their colleagues; because, in the absence of a written code, those who declare and interpret the laws may be properly said to make them.

These successive encroachments on the royal prerogatives, and the final triumph of the nobles, are almost the only events that fill the meagre annals of Attica for several centuries. Here, as elsewhere, a wonderful stillness suddenly follows the varied stir of enterprise and adventure, and the throng of interesting characters, that present themselves to our view in the heroic age. Life seems no longer to offer anything for poetry to celebrate, or for history to record. Are we to consider this long period of apparent tranquillity, as one of public happiness, of pure and simple manners, of general harmony and content, which has only been rendered obscure by the absence of the crimes and the calamities which usually leave the deepest traces in the page of history? We should willingly believe this, if it were not that, so far as the veil is withdrawn which conceals the occurrences of this period from our sight, it affords us glimpses of a very different state of things. In the list of the magistrates who held the undivided sovereignty of the state, the only name with which any events are connected is that of Hippomenes, the last archon of the line of Codrus. It was made memorable by the shame of his daughter, and by the extraordinary punishment which he inflicted on her and her paramour. Tradition long continued to point out as accursed[164] ground the place where she was shut up to perish from hunger, or from the fury of a wild horse, the companion of her confinement. The nobles, glad perhaps to seize an opportunity so favourable to their views, deposed Hippomenes, and razed his house to the ground.

This story would seem indeed to indicate the austerity, as well as the hardness, of the ancient manners: but on the other hand we are informed, that the father had been urged to this excess of rigour by the reproach that had fallen upon his family from the effeminacy and dissoluteness of its members. Without however drawing any inference from this isolated story, we may proceed to observe, that the accounts transmitted to us of the legislation of Draco, the next epoch when a gleam of light breaks through the obscurity of the Attic history, do not lead us to suppose that the people had enjoyed any extraordinary measure of happiness under the aristocratical government, or that their manners were peculiarly innocent and mild.

DRACO, THE LAWGIVER

The immediate occasion which led to Draco’s legislation is not recorded, and even the motives which induced him to impress it with that character of severity to which it owes its chief celebrity, are not clearly ascertained. We know however that he was the author of the first written laws of Athens: and as this measure tended to limit the authority of the nobles, to which a customary law, of which they were the sole expounders, opposed a much feebler check, we may reasonably conclude that the innovation did not proceed from their wish, but was extorted from them by the growing discontent of the people. On the other hand, Draco undoubtedly framed his code as much as possible in conformity to the spirit and the interests of the ruling class, to which he himself belonged; and hence we may fairly infer that the extreme rigour of its penal enactments was designed to overawe and repress the popular movement which had produced it.

Aristotle observes that Draco made no change in the constitution; and that there was nothing remarkable in his laws, except the severity of the penalties by which they were enforced. It must however be remembered that the substitution of law for custom, of a written code for a fluctuating and flexible tradition, was itself a step of great importance; and we also learn that he introduced some changes in the administration of criminal justice, by transferring causes of murder, or of accidental homicide, from the cognisance of the archons to the magistrates called ephetes; though it was not clear whether he instituted, or only modified or enlarged, their jurisdiction. Demades was thought to have described the character of his laws very happily, when he said that they were written not in ink, but in blood. He himself is reported to have justified their severity, by observing that the least offences deserved death, and that he could devise no greater punishment for the worst. This sounds like the language of a man who proceeded on higher grounds than those of expediency, and who felt himself bound by his own convictions to disregard the opinions of his contemporaries. Yet it is difficult to believe, that Draco can have been led by any principles of abstract justice, to confound all gradations of guilt, or, as has been conjectured with somewhat greater probability, that, viewing them under a religious rather than a political aspect, he conceived that in every case alike they drew down the anger of the gods, which could only be appeased by the blood of the criminal.

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It seems much easier to understand how the ruling class, which adopted his enactments, might imagine that such a code was likely to be a convenient instrument in their hands, for striking terror into their subjects, and stifling the rising spirit of discontent, which their cupidity and oppression had provoked. We are however unable to form a well-grounded judgment on the degree in which equity may have been violated by his indiscriminate vigour; for though we read that he enacted the same capital punishment for petty thefts as for sacrilege and murder, still as there were some offences for which he provided a milder sentence, he must have framed a kind of scale, the wisdom and justice of which we have no means of estimating.

The danger which threatened the nobles at length showed itself from a side on which they probably deemed themselves most secure. Twelve years after Draco’s legislation, a conspiracy was formed by one of their own number for overthrowing the government. Cylon, the author of this plot, was eminent both in birth and riches. His reputation, and still more his confidence in his own fortune, had been greatly raised by a victory at the Olympic games; and he had further increased the lustre and influence of his family by an alliance with Theagenes, the tyrant of Megara, whose daughter he married. This extraordinary prosperity elated his presumption, and inflamed his ambition with hopes of a greatness, which could only be attained by a dangerous enterprise. He conceived the design of becoming master of Athens. He could reckon on the cordial assistance of his father-in-law, who, independently of their affinity, was deeply interested in establishing at Athens a form of government similar to that which he himself had founded at Megara; and he had also, by his personal influence, insured the support of numerous friends and adherents. Yet it is probable that he would not have relied on these resources, and that his scheme would never have suggested itself to his mind, if the general disaffection of the people toward their rulers, the impatience produced by the evils for which Draco had provided so inadequate a remedy, and by the irritating nature of the remedy itself, and the ordinary signs of an approaching change, the need of which began to be universally felt, had not appeared to favour his aims.

At this period scarcely any great enterprise was undertaken in Greece without the sanction of an oracle; yet we cannot but feel some surprise, when we are informed by Thucydides, that Cylon consulted the Delphic god on the means by which he might overthrow the government of his country, and still more at the answer he is said to have received: that he must seize the citadel of Athens during the principal festival of Zeus. Cylon naturally interpreted the oracle to mean the Olympic games, the scene of his glory; and Thucydides thinks it worth observing, that the great Attic festival in honour of the same god occurred at a different season. At the time however which appeared to be prescribed by his infallible counsellor, Cylon proceeded to carry his plan into effect. With the aid of a body of troops furnished by Theagenes, and of his partisans, he made himself master of the citadel. Cylon and his friends soon found themselves besieged by the forces which the government called in from all parts of the country. When the provisions were all spent, and some had died of hunger, the remainder abandoned the defence of the walls, and took refuge in the temple of Athene.

The archon Megacles and his colleagues, seeing them reduced to the last extremity of weakness, began to be alarmed lest the sanctuary should be profaned by their death. To avoid this danger, they induced them to surrender on condition that their lives should be spared. Thucydides simply[166] relates that the archons broke their promise, and put their prisoners to death when they had quitted their asylum, and that some were even killed at the altars of the “dread goddesses,” as the Eumenides, or Furies, were called, to which they had fled in the tumult. Plutarch adds a feature to the story, which seems too characteristic of the age to be considered as a later invention. More effectually to insure their safety, the suppliants, before they descended from the citadel, fastened a line to the statue of Minerva, and held it in their hands, as they passed through the midst of their enemies. But the line chancing to break as they were passing by the sanctuary of the Eumenides, Megacles, with the approbation of his colleagues, declared that they were no longer under the safeguard of the goddess, who had thus visibly rejected their supplication, and immediately proceeded to arrest them. His words were the signal of a general massacre, from which even the awful sanctity of the neighbouring altars did not screen the fugitives: none escaped but those who found means of imploring female compassion.

If the conduct of the principal actors in this bloody scene had been marked only by treachery and cruelty, it would never have exposed them to punishment, perhaps not even to reproach. But they had been guilty of a flagrant violation of religion; and Megacles and his whole house were viewed with horror, as men polluted with the stain of sacrilege. All public disasters and calamities were henceforth construed into signs of the divine displeasure: and the surviving partisans of Cylon did not fail to urge that the gods would never be appeased until vengeance should have been taken on the offenders. Yet if this had been the only question which agitated the public mind, it might have been hushed without producing any important consequences. But it was only one ingredient in the ferment which the conflict of parties, the grievances of the many, and the ambition of the few, now carried to a height that called for some extraordinary remedy. Hence Cylon’s conspiracy and its issue exercised an influence on the history of Athens, which has rendered it forever memorable, as the event which led the way to the legislation of Solon.e

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER IX. SOME CHARACTERISTIC INSTITUTIONS

Perpetual warfare, pushed to the last extremity of hostile rage, would in no long time have consumed or ruined the little tribes whose territories occupied only a few adjacent valleys, always open to invasion: the necessity of mutual forbearance for general safety would naturally suggest the prudence of entering into friendly associations, without any ulterior views, either of aggrandisement, or of protection against a common enemy. Such an association, formed among independent neighbouring tribes for the regulation of their mutual intercourse, and thus distinguished on the one hand from confederations for purposes offensive or defensive, and on the other, from the continued friendly relations subsisting among independent members of the same race, is the one properly described by the Greek term amphictyony.

This Greek word, which we shall be obliged to borrow, has been supposed by some ancient and modern writers to have been derived from the name of Amphictyon, the son of Deucalion, who is said to have founded the most celebrated of the Amphictyonic associations, that which is always to be understood under the title of the Amphictyonic Confederacy. There can, however, be scarcely any reasonable doubt that this Amphictyon is a merely fictitious person, invented to account for the institution attributed to him, the author of which, if it was the work of any individual, was probably no better known than those of the other amphictyonies, which did not happen to become so famous.

The term “amphictyony,” which has probably been adapted to the legend, and would be more properly written “amphictiony,” denotes a body referred to a local centre of union, and in itself does not imply any national affinity: and, in fact, the associations bearing this name include several tribes, which were but very remotely connected together by descent. But the local centre of union appears to have been always a religious one—a common sanctuary, the scene of periodical meetings for the celebration of a common worship. It is probable that many amphictyonies once existed in Greece, all trace of which has been lost: and even with regard to those which happen to have been rescued from total oblivion, our information is for the most part extremely defective.

Of all such institutions the most celebrated and important was the one known, without any other local distinction, as the Amphictyonic League or council. This last appellation refers to the fact that the affairs of the whole Amphictyonic body were transacted by a congress, composed of deputies sent by the several states according to rules established from time immemorial. One peculiar feature of this congress was, that its meetings were held at two different places. There were two regularly convened[168] every year; one in the spring, at Delphi, the other in the autumn, near the little town of Anthela, within the pass of Thermopylæ, at a temple of Demeter.

The confederate tribes are variously enumerated by different authors. A comparison of their lists enables us to ascertain the greater part of the names, and to form a probable conjecture as to the rest; but it also leads us to conclude that some changes took place at a remote period in the constitution of the council, as to which tradition is silent. The most authentic list of the Amphictyonic tribes contains the following names: Thessalians, Bœotians, Dorians, Ionians, Perrhæbians, Magnetes, Locrians, Œtæans or Enianians, Phthiots or Achæans of Phthia, Malians or Melians, and Phocians. The orator Æschines, who furnishes this list, shows, by mentioning the number twelve, that one name is wanting. The other lists supply two names to fill up the vacant place; the Dolopes, and the Delphians. It seems not improbable that the former were finally supplanted by the Delphians, who appear to have been a distinct race from the Phocians.

The mere inspection of this list is sufficient to prove at once the high antiquity of the institution and the imperfection of our knowledge with regard to its early history. It is clear that the Dorians must have become members of the Amphictyonic body before the conquest, which divided them into several states, each incomparably more powerful than most of the petty northern tribes, which possessed an equal number of votes in the council. It may however be doubted, whether they were among the original members, and did not rather take the place of one of the tribes which they had dislodged from their seats in the neighbourhood of Delphi, perhaps the Dryopes.

On the other hand the Thessalians were probably not received into the league, before they made their appearance in Thessaly, which is commonly believed to have taken place only twenty years before the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus. It is therefore highly probable that they were admitted in the room of some other tribe, which had lost its independence through the convulsions of this eventful period.

The constitution of the council rested on the supposition, once perhaps not very inconsistent with the fact, of a perfect equality among the tribes represented by it. Each tribe, however feeble, had two votes in the deliberation of the congress: none, however powerful, had more. The order in which the right of sending representatives to the council was exercised by the various states included in one Amphictyonic tribe was perhaps regulated by private agreement; but, unless one state usurped the whole right of its tribe, it is manifest that a petty tribe, which formed but one community, had greatly the advantage over Sparta, or Argos, which could only be represented in their turn, the more rarely in proportion to the magnitude of the tribe to which they belonged. Besides the council which held its sessions either in the temple, or in some adjacent building, there was an Amphictyonic assembly, which met in the open air, and was composed of persons residing in the place where the congress was held, and of the numerous strangers who were drawn to it by curiosity, business, or devotion.

It is evident that a constitution such as we have described could not have been suffered to last, if it had been supposed that any important political interests depended on the decision of the council. But, in fact, it was not commonly viewed as a national congress for such purposes; its ordinary functions were chiefly, if not altogether, connected with religion, and it was only by accident that it was ever made subservient to political ends. The original objects, or at least the essential character, of the institution, seem to[169] be faithfully expressed in the terms of the oath, preserved by Æschines, which bound the members of the league to refrain from utterly destroying any Amphictyonic city, and from cutting off its supply of water, even in war, and to defend the sanctuary and the treasures of the Delphic god from sacrilege. In this ancient and half-symbolical form we perceive two main functions assigned to the council; to guard the temple, and to restrain the violence of hostility among Amphictyonic states. There is no intimation of any confederacy against foreign enemies, except for the protection of the temple; nor of any right of interposing between members of the league, unless where one threatens the existence of another.

A review of the history of the council shows that it was almost powerless for good, except perhaps as a passive instrument, and that it was only active for purposes which were either unimportant or pernicious. In the great national struggles it lent no strength to the common cause; but it now and then threw a shade of sanctity over plans of ambition or revenge. It sometimes assumed a jurisdiction uncertain in its limits, over its members; but it seldom had the power of executing its sentences, and commonly committed them to the party most interested in exacting the penalty. Thus it punished the Dolopes of Scyros for piracy, by the hands of the Athenians, who coveted their island. But its most legitimate sphere of action lay in cases where the honour and safety of the Delphic sanctuary were concerned; and in these it might safely reckon on general co-operation from all the Greeks. Thus it could act with dignity and energy in a case where a procession, passing through the territory of Megara towards Delphi, was insulted by some Megarians, and could not obtain redress from the government; the Amphictyonic tribunal punished the offenders with death or banishment.

A much more celebrated and important instance of a similar intervention, was that which gave occasion to the war above alluded to, which is commonly called the Crissæan, or the First Sacred War. Crissa appears to be the same town which is sometimes named Cirrha. Situate on that part of the Corinthian Gulf which was called from it the Gulf of Crissa, it commanded a harbour, much frequented by pilgrims from the West, who came to Delphi by sea, and was also mistress of a fruitful tract, called the Cirrhæan Plain. It is possible that there may have been real ground for the charge which was brought against the Crissæans, of extortion and violence used towards the strangers who landed at their port, or passed through their territory: one ancient author, who however wrote nearly three centuries later, assigned as the immediate occasion of the war an outrage committed on some female pilgrims as they were returning from the oracle. It is however at least equally probable, that their neighbours of Delphi had long cast a jealous and a wishful eye on the customs by which Crissa was enriched, and considered all that was there exacted from the pilgrims as taken from the Delphic god, who might otherwise have received it as an offering.

A complaint, however founded, was in the end preferred against Crissa before the Amphictyons, who decreed a war against the refractory city. They called in the aid of the Thessalians, who sent a body of forces under Eurylochus; and their cause was also actively espoused by Clisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon: and, according to the Athenian tradition, Solon assisted them with important advice. They consulted the offended god, who enjoined, as the condition of success in the war, that they should cause the sea to beat upon his domain. In compliance with this oracle, at the suggestion of Solon, they vowed to dedicate the Crissæans and their territory to the god, by enslaving them, and making their land a waste forever. If the prospect of[170] such signal vengeance animated the assailants, the besieged were no doubt goaded to a more obstinate defence by the threat of extermination. The war is said to have lasted ten years, and at length to have been brought to a close by a stratagem, which we could wish not to have found imputed to Solon. He is reported to have poisoned the waters of the Plistus, from which the city was supplied, and thus to have reduced the garrison to a state in which they were easily overpowered. When the town had fallen, the vow of the conquerors was literally fulfilled. Crissa was razed to the ground, its harbour choked up, its fruitful plain turned into a wilderness. This triumph was commemorated by the institution of gymnastic games, called the Pythian, in the room of a more ancient and simple festival. The Amphictyons, who celebrated the new games with the spoils of Crissa, were appointed perpetual presidents.

THE ORACLE AT DELPHI

As the Delphic oracle was the object to which the principal duties of the Amphictyons related, it might have been imagined to have been under their control, and thus to have afforded them an engine by which they might, at least secretly, exert a very powerful influence over the affairs of Greece. But though this engine was not unfrequently wielded for political purposes, it appears not to have been under the management of the council, but of the leading citizens of Delphi, who had opportunity of constant and more efficacious access to the persons employed in revealing the supposed will of the god. In early times the oracle was often consulted, not merely for the sake of learning the unknown future, but for advice and direction, which, as it was implicitly followed, really determined the destiny of those who received it. The power conferred by such an instrument was unbounded; and it appears, on the whole, not to have been ill applied: but the honour of its beneficial effects must be ascribed almost entirely to the wisdom and patriotism of the ruling Delphians or of the foreigners who concerted with them in the use of the sacred machinery. But the authority of the oracle itself was gradually weakened, partly by the progress of new opinions, and partly by the abuse which was too frequently made of it. The organ of the prophetic god was a woman, of an age more open to bribery than to any other kind of seduction;[13] and, even before the Persian wars, several instances occurred in which she had notoriously sold her answers. The credulity of individuals might notwithstanding be little shaken: but a few such disclosures would be sufficient to deprive the oracle of the greater part of its political influence.

NATIONAL FESTIVALS

The character of a national institution, which the Amphictyonic council affected, but never really acquired, more truly belonged to the public festivals, which, though celebrated within certain districts, were not peculiar to any tribe, but were open to all who could prove their Hellenic blood.b

From very early times, it had been customary among the Greeks to hold numerous meetings for purposes of festivity and social amusement. A foot-race, a wrestling match, or some other rude trial of bodily strength and[171] activity, formed originally the principal entertainment, which seems to have been very similar in character to our country wakes. The almost ceaseless warfare among the little Grecian states gave especial value to military exercises, which were accordingly ordinary in those games. The connection of these games with the warlike character may have occasioned their introduction at funerals in honour of the dead; a custom which, we learn from Homer, was in his time ancient. But all the violence of the early ages was unable to repress that elegance of imagination which seems congenial to Greece. Very anciently a contention for a prize in poetry and music was a favourite entertainment of the Grecian people; and when connected, as it often was, with some ceremony of religion, drew together large assemblies of both sexes. A festival of this kind in the little island of Delos, at which Homer assisted, brought a numerous concourse from different parts by sea: and Hesiod informs us of a splendid meeting for the celebration of various games at Chalcis in Eubœa, where himself obtained the prize for poetry and song. The contest in music and poetry seems early to have been particularly connected with the worship of Apollo. When this was carried from the islands of the Ægean to Delphi, a prize for poetry was instituted; and thence appear to have arisen the Pythian games. But Homer shows that games, in which athletic exercises and music and dancing were alternately introduced, made a common amusement of the courts of princes; and before his time the manner of conducting them was so far reduced to a system that public judges of the games were of the established magistracy. Thus improved, the games greatly resembled the tilts and tournaments of the ages of chivalry. Only men of high rank presumed to engage in them; but a large concourse of all orders attended as spectators; and to keep regularity among these was perhaps the most necessary office of the judges. But the most solemn meetings, drawing together people of distinguished rank and character, often from distant parts, were at the funerals of eminent men. The paramount sovereigns of the Peloponnesus did not disdain to attend these, which were celebrated with every circumstance of magnificence and splendour that the age could afford. The funeral of Patroclus, described in the Iliad, may be considered as an example of what the poet could imagine in its kind most complete. The games, in which prizes were there contended for, were the chariot-race, the foot-race, boxing, wrestling, throwing the quoit and the javelin, shooting with the bow, and fencing with the spear. And in times when none could be rich or powerful but the strong and active, the expert at martial exercises, all those trials of skill appear to have been esteemed equally becoming men of the highest rank; though it may seem, from the prizes offered and the persons contending at the funeral of Patroclus, the poet himself saw, in the game of the cestus, some incongruity with exalted characters.

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Traditions are preserved of games celebrated in Elis, upon several great occasions, in very early times, with more than ordinary pomp, by assemblies of chiefs from different parts of Greece. Homer mentions such at Elis under King Augeas, contemporary with Hercules, and grandfather of one of the chiefs who commanded the Elean troops in the Trojan War; and again at Buprasium in Elis, for the funeral of Amarynceus, while Nestor was yet in the vigour of youth. But it does not at all appear from Homer that in his time, or ever before him, any periodical festival was established like that which afterward became so famous under the title of the Olympiad or the Olympian contest, or, as our writers, translating the Latin phrase, have commonly termed it, the Olympian Games. On the contrary, every mention of such games, in his extant works, shows them to have been only occasional solemnities; and Strabo has remarked that they were distinguished by a characteristical difference from the Olympian. In these the honour derived from receiving publicly a crown or chaplet, formed of a branch of oleaster, was the only reward of the victor; but in Homer’s games the prizes, not merely honorary, were intrinsically valuable, and the value was often very considerable.

After Homer’s age, through the long troubles ensuing from the Dorian conquest, and the great change made in the population of the country, the customs and institutions of the Peloponnesians were so altered that even memory of the ancient games was nearly lost.

THE OLYMPIAN GAMES

In this season of turbulence and returning barbarism, Iphitus, a descendant, probably grandson, of Oxylus (though so deficient were the means of transmitting information to posterity that we have no assurance even of his father’s name), succeeded to the throne of Elis. This prince was of a genius that might have produced a more brilliant character in a more enlightened age, but which was perhaps more beneficial to mankind in the rough times in which he lived. Active and enterprising, but not by inclination a warrior, he was anxious to find a remedy for the disorderly situation of his country. He sent a solemn embassy to Delphi to supplicate information from the deity of the place, “How the anger of the gods, which threatened total destruction to the Peloponnesus through endless hostilities among its people, might be averted.” He received for answer, what himself, as a judicious critic has observed, had probably suggested, “That the Olympic festival must be restored; for the neglect of that solemnity had brought on the Greeks the indignation of the god Jupiter, to whom it was dedicated, and of the hero Hercules, by whom it had been instituted: and that a cessation of arms must therefore immediately be proclaimed for all cities desirous of partaking in it.” This response of the god was promulgated throughout Greece; and Iphitus, in obedience to it, caused the armistice to be proclaimed. But the other Peloponnesians, full of respect for the authority of the oracle, yet uneasy at the ascendancy thus assumed by the Eleans, sent a common deputation to Delphi, to inquire concerning the authenticity of the divine mandate reported to them. The Pythoness however, seldom averse to authorise the schemes of kings and legislators, adhered to her former answer and commanded the Peloponnesians “to submit to the direction and authority of the Eleans, in ordering and establishing the ancient laws and customs of their forefathers.”

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Supported thus by the oracle, and encouraged by the ready acquiescence of all the Peloponnesians, Iphitus proceeded to model his institution. Jupiter, the chief of the gods, being now the acknowledged patron of the plan, and the prince himself, under Apollo, the promulgator of his will, it was ordained that a festival should be held at the temple of Jupiter at Olympia, near the town of Pisa in Elis, open to the whole Greek nation; and that it should be repeated at the termination of every fourth year: that this festival should consist in solemn sacrifices to Jupiter and Hercules, and in games celebrated to their honour; and as wars might often prevent not only individuals, but whole states, from partaking in the benefits with which the gods would reward those who properly shared in the solemnity, it was ordained under the same authority, that an armistice should take place throughout Greece for some time before the commencement of the festival, and continue for some time after its conclusion. For his own people, the Eleans, Iphitus procured an advantage never perhaps enjoyed in equal extent by any other people. A tradition was current that the Heraclidæ, on appointing Oxylus at the same time to the throne of Elis and to the guardianship of the temple of Olympian Jupiter, had consecrated all Elis to the god under sanction of an oath, and denounced the severest curses, not only on any who should invade it, but also on all who should not defend it against invaders. Iphitus procured universal acquiescence to the authority of this tradition; and the deference of the Grecian people towards it, during many ages, is not among the least remarkable circumstances of Grecian history. A reputation of sacredness became attached to the whole Elean people as the hereditary priesthood of Jupiter, and a pointed difference in character and pursuits arose between them and the other Greeks. Little disposed to ambition, and regardless even of the pleasures of a town-life, their general turn was to rural business and rural amusements. Elsewhere the country was left to hinds and herdsmen, who were mostly slaves; men of property, for security as well as for pursuits of ambition and pleasure, resided in fortified towns. But the towns of Elis, Elis itself the capital, remained unfortified. In republican governments however civil contention would arise. Within a narrow territory the implication of domestic party-politics with foreign interests could not be entirely obviated; and thus foreign wars would ensue. But to the time of Polybius, who saw the liberty of Greece expire, the Eleans maintained their general character, and in a great degree their ancient privileges; whence they were then the wealthiest people of the Peloponnesus, and yet the richest of them mostly resided upon their estates, and many, as that historian avers, without ever visiting Elis.

Character of the Games

At the Olympian festival, as established by Iphitus, the foot-race, distinguished by the name of stadion, is said to have been the only game exhibited; whether the various other exercises familiar in Homer’s age had fallen into oblivion, or the barbarism and poverty, superinduced by the violent and lasting troubles which followed the return of the Heraclidæ, forbade those of greater splendour.

Afterwards, as the growing importance of the meeting occasioned inquiry concerning what had been practised of old, or excited invention concerning what might be advantageously added new, the games were multiplied. The diaulos, a more complicated foot-race, was added at the fourteenth Olympiad; wrestling, and the pentathlon or game of five exercises, at the eighteenth; boxing at the twenty-third; the chariot-race was not restored till the twenty-fifth,[174] of course not till a hundred years after the institution of the festival; the pancration and the horse-race were added in the thirty-third.

So much Pausanias has asserted; apparently from the Olympian register, which on other occasions he has quoted. Originally the sacrifices, processions, and various religious ceremonies apparently formed the principal pageantry of the meeting. Afterwards perhaps the games became the greater inducement for the extraordinary resort of company to Olympia; though the religious ceremonies continued still to increase in magnificence as the festival gained importance. The temple, like that of Delphi, became an advantageous repository for treasure. A mart or fair was a natural consequence of a periodical assembly of multitudes in one place; and whatever required extensive publicity, whatever was important for all the scattered members of the Greek nation to know, would be most readily communicated, and most solemnly, by proclamation at the Olympian festival. Hence treaties by mutual agreement were often proclaimed at Olympia; and sometimes columns were erected there at the joint expense of the contracting parties, with the treaties engraved.

Thus the Olympian meeting to a not inconsiderable degree supplied the want of a common capital for the Greek nation; and, with a success far beyond what the worthy founder’s imagination, urged by his warmest wishes, could reach, contributed to the advancement of arts, particularly of the fine arts, of commerce, of science, of civilised manners, of liberal sentiments, and of friendly communication among all the Grecian people. Such was the common feeling of these various advantages, it became established as a divine law that, whatever wars were going forward among the republics, there should be a truce, not only during the festival, but also for some days before and after; so that persons from all parts of Greece might safely attend it.

The advantages and gratifications in which the whole nation thus became interested, and the particular benefits accruing to the Eleans, excited attempts to establish or improve other similar meetings in different parts of Greece. Three of these, the Delphian, Isthmian, and Nemean, though they never equalled the celebrity and splendour of the Olympian, acquired considerable fame and importance. Each was consecrated to a different deity. In the Delphic, next in consideration to the Olympic, Apollo was honoured; the Delphian people were esteemed his ministers; the Amphictyonic council were the allowed protectors and regulators of the institution. The Isthmian had its name from the Corinthian Isthmus, near the middle of which, overlooking the scene of the solemnity, stood a temple of the god Neptune, venerated by the Corinthian people, administrators of the ceremonies, as their patron.

At the Nemean, sacred to Juno, the Argives (who esteemed her the tutelary deity of their state) presided. All these meetings, like the Olympian, were, in war as in peace, open to all Grecian people; the faith of gods as well as of men being considered as plighted for protection of all, under certain rules, going to, staying at, and returning from them. All were also, like the Olympian, held at intervals of four years; so that, taking their years in turn, it was provided that in every summer, in the midst of the military season, there should be a respite of those hostilities among the republics which were otherwise so continually desolating Greece; and though this beneficial regulation was under some pretences occasionally overborne by powerful states, yet the sequel of history shows it to have been of very advantageous efficacy.c

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MONARCHIES AND OLIGARCHIES

The enterprises of the heroic age, as we see from the example of the Trojan War itself, often led to the extinction, or expulsion, of a royal family, or of its principal members; and no principle appears to have been generally recognised which rendered it necessary, in such cases, to fill a vacant throne or to establish a new dynasty, while every such calamity inevitably weakened the authority of the kings, and made them more dependent on the nobles, who, as an order, were not affected by any disasters to individuals. But the great convulsions which attended the Thessalian, Bœotian, and Dorian migrations, contributed still more effectually to the same end. In most parts of Greece they destroyed or dislodged the line of the ancient kings, who, when they were able to seek new seats, left behind them the treasures and the strongholds which formed the main supports of their power: and, though the conquerors were generally accustomed to a kingly government, it must commonly have lost something of its vigour when transplanted to a new country, where it was subject to new conditions, and where the prince was constantly reminded, by new dangers, of the obligations which he owed to his companions in arms. Yet, even this must be considered rather as the occasion which led to the abolition of the heroic monarchy, than as the cause: that undoubtedly lay much deeper, and is to be sought in the character of the people—in that same energy and versatility which prevented it from ever stiffening, even in its infancy, in the mould of oriental institutions, and from stopping short, in any career which it had once opened, before it had passed through every stage.

It seems to have been seldom, if ever, that royalty was abolished by a sudden and violent revolution; the title often long survived the substance, and this was extinguished only by slow successive steps. These consisted in dividing it among several persons, in destroying its inheritable quality, and making it elective, first in one family, then in more; first for life, then for a certain term; in separating its functions, and distributing them into several hands. In the course of these changes it became more and more responsible to the nobles, and frequently, at a very early stage, the name itself was exchanged for one simply equivalent to ruler, or chief magistrate. The form of government which thus ensued might, with equal propriety, be termed either aristocracy or oligarchy, but, in the use of the terms to which these correspond, the Greek political writers made a distinction, which may at first sight appear more arbitrary than it really is. They taught—not a very recondite truth—that the three forms of government, that of one, that of a few, and that of the many, are all alike right and good, so long as they are rightly administered, with a view, that is, to the welfare of the state, and not to the interest of an individual or of a particular class. But, when any of the three loses sight of its legitimate object, it degenerates into a vicious species, which requires to be marked by a peculiar name. Thus a monarchy, in which selfish aims predominate becomes a tyranny. The government of a few, conducted on like principles, is properly called an oligarchy. But to constitute an aristocracy, it is not sufficient that the ruling few should be animated by a desire to promote the public good: they must also be distinguished by a certain character; for aristocracy signifies the rule of the best men.

More distinctly to understand the peculiar nature of the Greek oligarchies, it is necessary to consider the variety of circumstances under which they arose. By the migrations which took place in the century following the[176] Trojan War, most parts of Greece were occupied by a new race of conquerors. Everywhere their first object was to secure a large portion of the conquered land; but the footing on which they placed themselves, with regard to the ancient inhabitants, was not everywhere the same; it varied according to the temper of the invaders, or of their chiefs, to their relative strength, means, and opportunities. In Sparta, and in most of the Dorian states, the invaders shunned all intermixture with the conquered, and deprived them, if not of personal freedom, of all political rights. But elsewhere, as in Elis, and probably in Bœotia, no such distinction appears to have been made; the old and the new people gradually melted into one.

An oligarchy, in the sense which we have assigned to the word, could only exist where there was an inferior body which felt itself aggrieved by being excluded from the political rights which were reserved to the privileged few. Such a feeling of discontent might be roused by the rapacity or insolence of the dominant order, as we shall find to have happened at Athens, and as was the case at Mytilene, where some members of the ruling house of the Penthilids went about with clubs, committing outrages like those which Nero practised for a short time in the streets of Rome. But, without any such provocation, disaffection might arise from the cause which we shall see producing a revolution at Corinth, where the aristocracy was originally established on a basis too narrow to be durable: as Aristotle relates of the Basilids at Erythræ, that, though they exercised their power well, they could not retain it, because the people would no longer endure that it should be lodged in so few hands. In general however it was a gradual, inevitable change in the relative position of the higher and lower orders, which converted the aristocracy into an oligarchical faction, and awakened an opposition which usually ended in its overthrow.

The precautions which were used by the ruling class, when it began to perceive its danger, were of various kinds, and it was more frequently found necessary to widen the oligarchy itself, by the admission of new families, and to change the principle of its constitution by substituting wealth for birth as the qualification of its members. The form of government in which the possession of a certain amount of property was the condition of all, or at least of the highest, political privileges, was sometimes called a timocracy, and its character varied according to the standard adopted. When this was high, and especially if it was fixed in the produce of land, the constitution differed little in effect from the aristocratical oligarchy, except as it opened a prospect to those who were excluded of raising themselves to a higher rank. But, when the standard was placed within reach of the middling class, the form of government was commonly termed a polity, and was considered as one of the best tempered and most durable modifications of democracy. The first stage however often afforded the means of an easy transition to the second, or might be reduced to it by a change in the value of the standard.

Another expedient, which seems to have been tried not unfrequently in early times, for preserving or restoring tranquillity, was to invest an individual with absolute power, under a peculiar title, which soon became obsolete: that of æsymnete. At Cumæ indeed, and in other cities, this was the title of an ordinary magistracy, probably of that which succeeded the hereditary monarchy; but, when applied to an extraordinary office, it was equivalent to the title of protector or dictator. It did not indicate any disposition to revive the heroic royalty, but only the need which was felt, either by the commonalty of protection against the nobles, or by all parties of a temporary compromise, which induced the adverse factions to acquiesce in a neutral government.[177] The office was conferred sometimes for life, sometimes only for a limited term, or for the accomplishment of a specific object, as the sage Pittacus was chosen by universal consent at Mytilene, when the city was threatened by a band of exiles, headed by the poet Alcæus and his brother Antimenidas [about 612 B.C.].

TYRANNIES

The fall of an oligarchy was sometimes accelerated by accidental and inevitable disasters, as by a protracted war, which at once exhausted its wealth and reduced its numbers, or by the loss of a battle, in which the flower of its youth might sometimes be cut off at one blow, and leave it to the mercy of its subjects; a case of which we shall find a signal instance in the history of Argos. But much more frequently the revolutions which overthrew the oligarchical governments arose out of the imprudence or misconduct, or the internal dissensions, of the ruling body, or out of the ambition of some of its members. The commonalty, even when really superior in strength, could not, all at once, shake off the awe with which it was impressed by ages of subjection. It needed a leader to animate, unite, and direct it.

Such was the origin of most of the governments which the Greeks described by the term “tyranny”—a term to which a notion has been attached, in modern languages, which did not enter into its original definition. A tyranny, in the Greek sense of the word, was the irresponsible dominion of a single person, not founded on hereditary right, like the monarchies of the heroic ages and of many barbarian nations; nor on a free election, like that of a dictator or æsymnete; but on force. It did not change its character when transmitted through several generations, nor was any other name invented to describe it when power which had been acquired by violence was used for the public good; though Aristotle makes it an element in the definition of tyranny, that it is exercised for selfish ends. But, according to the ordinary Greek notions, and the usage of the Greek historians, a mild and beneficent tyranny is an expression which involves no contradiction. On the other hand, a government, legitimate in its origin, might be converted into a tyranny, by an illegal forcible extension of its powers, or of its duration; and we are informed by Aristotle that this was frequently the case in early times, before the regal title was abolished, or while the chief magistrate, who succeeded under a different name to the functions of royalty, was still invested with prerogatives dangerous to liberty. Such was the basis on which one of the ancient tyrants, most infamous for his cruelty, Phalaris of Agrigentum [or Acragas], established his despotism.

But most of the tyrannies which sprang up before the Persian wars owed their existence to the cause above described, and derived their peculiar character from the occasion which gave them birth. It was usually by a mixture of violence and artifice that the demagogue accomplished his ends. A hackneyed stratagem, which however seems always to have been successful, was, to feign that his life was threatened, or had even been attacked by the fury of the nobles, and on this pretext to procure a guard for his person from the people. This band, though composed of citizens, he found it easy to attach to his interests, and with its aid made the first step towards absolute power by seizing the citadel: an act which might be considered as a formal assumption of the tyranny, and as declaring a resolution to maintain it by force. But in other respects the more politic tyrants set an example which Augustus might have studied with advantage. Like him, they as[178] carefully avoided the ostentation of power as they guarded its substance. They suffered the ancient forms of the government to remain in apparent vigour, and even in real operation, so far as they did not come into conflict with their own authority. They assumed no title, and were not distinguished from private citizens by any ensigns of superior rank. But they did not the less keep a jealous eye on all whom wealth, or character, or influence might render dangerous rivals; and commonly either forced them into exile or removed them by the stroke of an assassin. They exerted still greater vigilance in suppressing every kind of combination which might cover the germ of a conspiracy. The lowest class of the commonalty they restrained from license, and provided with employment. For this purpose, no less than to gratify their taste or display their magnificence, they frequently adorned their cities with costly buildings, which required years of labour from numerous hands: and, where this expedient did not suffice, they scrupled not to force a part of the population to quit the capital, and seek subsistence in rural occupations. On the same ground they were not reluctant to engage in wars, which afforded them opportunities of relieving themselves, in a less invidious manner, both from troublesome friends and from dangerous foes, as well as of strengthening and extending their dominion by conquest.

Such was the ordinary policy of the best tyrants; and by these arts they were frequently able to reign in peace, and to transmit their power to their children. But the maxims and character of the tyranny generally underwent a change under their successors, and scarcely an instance was known of a tyrannical dynasty that lasted beyond the third generation. But, even where the tyrant did not make himself universally odious, or provoke the vengeance of individuals by his wantonness or cruelty, he was constantly threatened by dangers, both from within and from without, which it required the utmost vigour and prudence to avert. The party which his usurpation had supplanted, though depressed, was still powerful, more exasperated than humbled by its defeat, and ever ready to take advantage of any opportunity of overthrowing him, either by private conspiracy, or by affecting to make common cause with the lower classes, or by calling in foreign aid. And in Greece itself such aid was always at hand: the tyrants indeed were partially leagued together for mutual support. But Sparta threw all her might into the opposite scale. She not only dreaded the contagion of an example which might endanger her own institutions, but was glad to extend her influence by taking an active part in revolutions, which would cause the states restored, by her intervention, to their old government to look up to her with gratitude and dependence as their natural protectress. And accordingly Thucydides ascribes the overthrow of most of the tyrannies which flourished in Greece before the Persian War to the exertions of Sparta.

The immediate effect produced by the fall of the tyrants depended on the hands by which it was accomplished. Where it was the work of Sparta, she would aim at introducing a constitution most in conformity to her own. But the example of Athens will show, that she was sometimes instrumental in promoting the triumph of principles more adverse to her views than those of the tyranny itself. When, however, the struggle which had been interrupted by the temporary usurpation was revived, the parties were no longer in exactly the same posture as at its outset. In general the commonalty was found to have gained, in strength and spirit, even more than the oligarchy had lost; and the prevalent leaning of the ensuing period was on the side of democracy. Indeed the decisive step was that by which the oligarchy[179] of wealth was substituted for the oligarchy of birth. This opened the door for all the subsequent innovations, by which the scale of the timocracy was gradually lowered, until it was wholly abolished.

DEMOCRACIES

The term “democracy” is used by Aristotle sometimes in a larger sense, so as to include several forms of government, which, notwithstanding their common character, were distinguished from each other by peculiar features; at other times in a narrower, to denote a form essentially vicious, which stands in the same relation to the happy temperament to which he gives the name of polity, as oligarchy to aristocracy, or tyranny to royalty. We shall not confine ourselves to the technical language of his system, but will endeavour to define the notion of democracy, as the word was commonly understood by the Greeks, so as to separate the essence of the thing from the various accidents which have sometimes been confounded with it by writers who have treated Greek history as a vehicle for conveying their views on questions of modern politics, which never arose in the Greek republics.

It must not be forgotten, that the body to which the terms oligarchy and democracy refer formed a comparatively small part of the population in most Greek states, since it did not include either slaves or resident free foreigners. The sovereign power resided wholly in the native freemen; and whether it was exercised by a part or by all of them, was the question which determined the nature of the government. When the barrier had been thrown down, by which all political rights were made the inheritance of certain families,—since every freeman, even when actually excluded from them by the want of sufficient property, was by law capable of acquiring them,—democracy might be said to have begun. It was advancing, as the legal condition of their enjoyment was brought within the reach of a more numerous class; but it could not be considered as complete, so long as any freeman was debarred from them by poverty. Since, however, the sovereignty included several attributes which might be separated, the character of the constitution depended on the way in which these were distributed. It was considered as partaking more of democracy than of oligarchy, when the most important of them were shared by all freemen without distinction, though a part was still appropriated to a number limited either by birth or fortune. Thus where the legislative, or, as it was anciently termed, the deliberative, branch of the sovereignty was lodged in an assembly open to every freeman, and where no other qualification than free birth was required for judicial functions, and for the election of magistrates, there the government was called democratical, though the highest offices of the state might be reserved to a privileged class. But a finished democracy, that which fully satisfied the Greek notion, was one in which every attribute of sovereignty might be shared, without respect to rank or property, by every freeman.

More than this was not implied in democracy; and little less than this was required, according to the views of the philosophers, to constitute the character of a citizen, which, in the opinion of Aristotle, could not exist without a voice in the legislative assembly, and such a share in the administration of justice as was necessary to secure the responsibility of the magistrates. But this equality of rights left room for a great diversity in the modes of exercising them, which determined the real nature of a democratical constitution. There were, indeed, certain rights, those which Aristotle[180] considers as essential to a citizen, which, according to the received Greek notions, could, in a democracy, only be exercised in person. The thought of delegating them to accountable representatives seems never to have occurred either to practical or speculative statesmen, except in the formation of confederacies, which rendered such an expedient necessary.

But the principle of legal equality, which was the basis of democracy, was gradually construed in a manner which inverted the wholesome order of nature, and led to a long train of pernicious consequences. The administration of the commonwealth came to be regarded, not as a service, in which all were interested, but for which some might be qualified better than others, but as a property, in which each was entitled to an equal share. The practical application of this view was the introduction of an expedient for levelling, as far as possible, the inequality of nature, by enabling the poorest to devote his time, without loss, or even with profit, to public affairs. This was done by giving him wages for his attendance on all occasions of exercising his franchise; and, as the sum which could be afforded for this purpose was necessarily small, it attracted precisely the persons whose presence was least desirable.

A further application of the same principle was, as much as possible, to increase the number, and abridge the duration and authority of public offices, and to transfer their power to the people in a mass. On the same ground, chance was substituted for election in the creation of all magistrates, whose duties did not actually demand either the security of a large fortune or peculiar abilities and experience. In proportion as the popular assembly, or large portions detached from it for the exercise of judicial functions, drew all the branches of the sovereignty more and more into their sphere, the character of their proceedings became more and more subject to the influence of the lower class of the citizens, which constituted a permanent majority. And thus the democracy, instead of the equality which was its supposed basis, in fact established the ascendancy of a faction, which, although greatly preponderant in numbers, no more represented the whole state than the oligarchy itself; and which, though not equally liable to fall into the mechanism of a vicious system, was more prone to yield to the impulse of the moment, more easily misled by blind or treacherous guides, and might thus, as frequently, though not so deliberately and methodically, trample, not only on law and custom, but on justice and humanity. This disease of a democracy was sometimes designated by the term “ochlocracy,” or the dominion of the rabble.

A democracy thus corrupted exhibited many features of a tyranny. It was jealous of all who were eminently distinguished by birth, fortune, or reputation; it encouraged flatterers and sycophants; was insatiable in its demands on the property of the rich, and readily listened to charges which exposed them to death or confiscation. The class which suffered such oppression, commonly ill satisfied with the principle of the constitution itself, was inflamed with the most furious animosity by the mode in which it was applied, and regarded the great mass of its fellow-citizens as its mortal enemies.b

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER X. THE SMALLER CITIES AND STATES

Aristotle’s survey of the Greek forms of government was founded on a vast store of information which he had collected on the history and constitution of more than a hundred and fifty states, in the mother country and the colonies, and which he had consigned to a great work now unfortunately lost. Our knowledge of the internal conditions and vicissitudes of almost all these states is very scanty and fragmentary: but some of the main facts concerning them, which have been saved from oblivion, will serve to throw light on several parts of the ensuing history.

ARCADIA, ELIS, AND ACHAIA

We have scarcely anything to say, during this period, of the state of parties, or even the forms of government, in Arcadia, Elis, and Achaia. If Arcadia was ever subject to a single king, which seems to be intimated by some accounts of its early history, it was probably only, as in Thessaly, by an occasional election, or a temporary usurpation. The title of king however appears not to have been everywhere abolished down to a much later time, as we find a hint that it was retained at Orchomenos even in the fifth century before our era. That the republican constitutions were long aristocratical can scarcely be doubted, as the two principal Arcadian cities, Tegea and Mantinea, were at first only the chief among several small hamlets, which were at length united in one capital. This, whenever it happened, was a step towards the subversion of aristocratical privileges; and it was no doubt with this view that the five Mantinean villages were incorporated by the Argives, as Strabo mentions without assigning the date of the event. But it is not probable that Argos thus interfered before her own institutions had undergone a like change, which, as we shall see, did not take place before a later period than our history has yet reached. Whether the union of the nine villages, which included Tegea as their chief, was effected earlier or later, does not appear. But, after she had once acknowledged the supremacy of Sparta, Tegea was sheltered by Spartan influence from popular innovations, and was always the less inclined to adopt them when they prevailed at[182] Mantinea: for as the position of the two Arcadian neighbours tended to connect the one with Sparta, and the other with Argos, so it supplied occasion for interminable feuds between them. But, in general, the history of the western states of Arcadia is wrapt in deep obscurity, which was only broken, in the fourth century B.C., by the foundation of a new Arcadian capital.

In Elis the monarchical form of government continued for some generations in the line of Oxylus, but appears to have ceased there earlier than at Pisa, which, at the time when it was conquered and destroyed by the Eleans, was ruled by chiefs, who were probably legitimate kings. Immediately after the conquest, in the fiftieth Olympiad, the dignity of hellanodicæ, which had been held by the kings of Elis, or shared by them with those of Pisa, was assigned to two Elean officers by lot, a proof that royalty was then extinct. The constitution by which it was replaced seems to have been rigidly aristocratical, perhaps no other than the narrow oligarchy described by Aristotle,—who observes that the whole number of citizens exercising any political functions was small—confined, perhaps to the six hundred mentioned by Thucydides; and that the senate, originally composed of ninety members, who held their office for life, and filled up vacancies at their pleasure, had been gradually reduced to a very few. Elis, the capital, remained in a condition like that of the above-mentioned Arcadian towns until the Persian War, when the inhabitants of many villages were collected in its precincts. This was probably attended by other changes of a democratical nature—perhaps by the limitation which one Phormis is said to have effected in the power of the senate—and henceforth the number of the hellanodicæ corresponded to that of the tribes or regions into which the Elean territory was divided; so that, whenever any of these regions was lost by the chance of war, the number of the hellanodicæ was proportionately reduced. So too the matrons who presided at the games in honour of Hera, in which the Elean virgins contended at Olympia, were chosen in equal number from each of the tribes.

In Achaia, the royal dignity was transmitted in the line of Tisamenus down to Ogyges, whose sons, affecting despotic power, were deposed, and the government was changed to a democracy, which is said to have possessed a high reputation. From Pausanias it would rather seem as if the title of king had been held by a number of petty chiefs at once. If so, the revolution must have had its origin in causes more general than those assigned to it by Polybius. It was probably accelerated by the number of Achæan emigrants who sought refuge in Achaia from other parts of the Peloponnesus, and who soon crowded the country, till it was relieved by its Italian colonies. What Polybius and Strabo term a democracy may however have been a polity, or a very liberal and well-tempered form of oligarchy. Of its details we know nothing; nor are we informed in what relation the twelve principal Achaian towns—a division adopted from the Ionians—stood to the hamlets, of which each had seven or eight in its territory, like those of Tegea and Mantinea. As little are we able to describe the constitution of the confederacy in which the twelve states were now united.

ARGOS, ÆGINA, AND EPIDAURUS

More light has been thrown by ancient authors on the history of the states in the northeast quarter of Peloponnesus, those of Argolis in the largest sense of the word. At Argos itself, regal government subsisted[183] down to the Persian wars, although the line of the Heraclid princes appears to have become extinct toward the middle of the preceding century. Pausanias remarks, that, from a very early period, the Argives were led by their peculiarly independent spirit to limit the prerogatives of their kings so narrowly as to leave them little more than the name. We cannot however place much reliance on such a general reflection of a late writer. But we have seen that Phidon, who, about the year 750 B.C., extended the power of Argos farther than any of his predecessors, also stretched the royal authority so much beyond its legitimate bounds, that he is sometimes called a tyrant, though he was rightful heir of Temenus. After his death, as his conquests appear to have been speedily lost, so it is probable that his successors were unable to maintain the ascendancy which he had gained over his Dorian subjects, and the royal dignity may henceforth have been, as Pausanias describes it, little more than a title. Hence, too, on the failure of the ancient line, about B.C. 560, Ægon, though of a different family, may have met with the less opposition in mounting the throne. The substance of power rested with the Dorian freemen: in what manner it was distributed among them we can only conjecture from analogy. Their lands were cultivated by a class of serfs, corresponding to the Spartan helots, who served in war as light-armed troops, whence they derived their peculiar name, “gymnesii.” They were also sovereigns of a few towns, the inhabitants of which, like the Laconians subject to Sparta, though personally free, were excluded from all share in their political privileges. The events which put an end to this state of things, and produced an entire change in the form of government at Argos, will be hereafter related.

Among the states of the Argolic acte, Epidaurus deserves notice, not so much for the few facts which are known of its internal history, as on account of its relation to Ægina. This island, destined to take no inconsiderable part in the affairs of Greece, was long subject to Epidaurus, which was so jealous of her sovereignty as to compel the Æginetans to resort to her tribunals for the trial of their causes. It seems to have been as a dependency of Epidaurus that Ægina fell under the dominion of the Argive Phidon. After recovering her own independence, Epidaurus still continued mistress of the island. Whether she had any subjects on the main land standing on the same footing, we are not expressly informed. But here likewise the ruling class was supported by the services of a population of bondsmen, distinguished by a peculiar name (conipodes, the dusty-footed), designating indeed their rural occupations, but certainly expressive of contempt. Towards the end of the seventh century B.C., and the beginning of the next, Epidaurus was subject to a ruler named Procles, who is styled a tyrant, and was allied with Periander the tyrant of Corinth. But nothing is known as to the origin and nature of his usurpation. He incurred the resentment of his son-in-law Periander, who made himself master of Procles and of Epidaurus. It was perhaps this event which afforded Ægina an opportunity of shaking off the Epidaurian yoke. But, had it been otherwise, the old relation between the two states could not have subsisted much longer. Ægina was rapidly outgrowing the mother country, was engaged in a flourishing commerce, strong in an enterprising and industrious population, enriched and adorned by the arts of peace, and skilled in those of war. The separation which soon after took place was embittered by mutual resentment; and the Æginetans, whose navy soon became the most powerful in Greece, retaliated on Epidaurus for the degradation they had suffered by a series of insults. But the same causes to which they owed their national[184] independence seem to have deprived the class which had been hitherto predominant in Ægina of its political privileges. The island was torn by the opposite claims and interests arising out of the old and the new order of things, and became the scene of a bloody struggle.

SICYON AND MEGARA

The history of Sicyon presents a series of revolutions, in many points resembling those of Corinth. At what time, or in whose person, royalty was there extinguished, and what form of government succeeded it, we are not expressly informed; but, as we know that there was a class of bondsmen at Sicyon, answering to the helots, and distinguished by peculiar names, derived from their rustic dress or occupation, there can be little doubt that other parts of the Dorian system were also introduced there, and subsisted until a fortunate adventurer, named Orthagoras, or Andreas, overthrew the old aristocracy, and founded a dynasty, which lasted a century: the longest period, Aristotle observes, of a Greek tyranny. Orthagoras is said to have risen from a very low station—that of a cook—and was, therefore, probably indebted for his elevation to the commonalty. The long duration of his dynasty is ascribed by Aristotle to the mildness and moderation with which he and his descendants exercised their power, submitting to the laws and taking pains to secure the good will of the people.

His successor, Myron, having gained a victory in the Olympic chariot-race in the thirty-third Olympiad, erected a treasury at Olympia, which was remarkable for its material, brass of Tartessus, which had not long been introduced into Greece; for its architecture, in which the Doric and Ionic orders were combined; and for its inscription, in which the name of Myron was coupled with that of the people of Sicyon. It may be collected, from an expression of Aristotle’s, that, though Myron was succeeded, either immediately or after a short interval, by his grandson Clisthenes, son of Aristonymus, this transmission of the tyranny did not take place without interruption or impediment; and, if this arose from the Dorian nobles, it would explain some points in which the government of Clisthenes differed from that of his predecessors.

He seems to have been the most able and enterprising prince of his house, and to have conducted many wars, beside that in which we have seen him engaged on the side of the Amphictyons, with skill and success: he was of a munificent temper, and displayed his love of splendour and of the arts both in the national games and in his native city, where, out of the spoils of Crissa, he built a colonnade, which long retained the name of the Clisthenean. The magnificence with which he entertained the suitors who came from all parts of Greece, and even from foreign lands, to vie with one another, after the ancient fashion, in manly exercises, for his daughter’s hand, was long so celebrated, that Herodotus gives a list of the competitors. It proves how much his alliance was coveted by the most distinguished families; and it is particularly remarkable, that one of the suitors was a son of Phidon, king of Argos, whom Herodotus seems to have confounded with the more ancient tyrant of the same name. Still Clisthenes appears not to have departed from the maxims by which his predecessors had regulated their government with regard to the commonalty, but, in the midst of his royal state, to have carefully preserved the appearance, at least, of equity and respect for the laws. On the other hand, towards his Dorian subjects he displayed a spirit[185] of hostility which seems to have been peculiar to himself, and to have been excited by some personal provocation. It was probably connected with a war in which he was engaged with Argos, and it impelled him to various political and religious innovations, the real nature of which can now be but very imperfectly understood.

One of the most celebrated was the change which he made in the names of the Dorian tribes, for which he substituted others, derived from the lowest kinds of domestic animals; while a fourth tribe, to which he himself belonged, was distinguished by the majestic title of the archelai (the princely). Herodotus supposes that he only meant to insult the Dorians; and we could sooner adopt this opinion than believe, with a modern author, that he took so strange a method of directing their attention to rural pursuits. But Herodotus adds, that the new names were retained for sixty years after the death of Clisthenes and the fall of his dynasty, when those of the Dorian tribes were restored, and, in the room of the fourth, a new one was created, called from a son of the Argive hero, Adrastus, the Ægialeans. When the Dorians resumed their old division, the commonalty was thrown into the single tribe (called not from the hero, but from the land), the Ægialeans.

We do not know how this dynasty ended, and can only pronounce it probable that it was overthrown at about the same time with that of the Cypselids (B.C. 580), by the intervention of Sparta, which must have been more alarmed and provoked by the innovations of Clisthenes than by the tyranny of Periander. It would seem, from the history of the tribes, that the Dorians recovered their predominance; but gradually, and not so completely as to deprive the commonalty of all share in political rights.

On the other side of the isthmus, the little state of Megara passed through vicissitudes similar to those of Corinth and Sicyon, but attended with more violent struggles. Before the Dorian conquest royalty is said to have been abolished there after the last king, Hyperion, son of Agamemnon, had fallen by the hand of an enemy, whom he had provoked by insolence and wrong: and a Megarian legend seems to indicate that the elective magistrates, who took the place of the kings, bore the title of æsymnetes. The Dorians of Corinth kept those of Megara, for a time, in the same kind of subjection to which Ægina was reduced by Epidaurus; and the Megarian peasantry were compelled to solemnise the obsequies of every Bacchiad with marks of respect, such as were exacted from the subjects of Sparta on the death of the king. This yoke however was cast off at an early period; and Argos assisted the Megarians in recovering their independence. Henceforth it is probable Megara assumed a more decided superiority over the hamlets of her territory, which had once been her rivals; and she must have made rapid progress in population and in power, as is proved by her flourishing colonies in the east and west, and by the wars which she carried on in defence of them. One of her most illustrious citizens, Orsippus, who, in the fifteenth Olympiad, set the example of dropping all incumbrances of dress in the Olympic foot-race, also conducted her arms with brilliant success against her neighbours—probably the Corinthians—and enlarged her territory to the utmost extent of her claims. But the government still remained in the hands of the great Dorian land-owners, who, when freed from the dominion of Corinth, became sovereigns at home; and they appear not to have administered it mildly or wisely. For they were not only deprived of their power by an insurrection of the commonalty, as at Corinth and Sicyon, but were evidently the objects of a bitter enmity, which cannot have been wholly unprovoked.

[186]

Theagenes, a bold and ambitious man, who put himself at the head of the popular cause, is said to have won the confidence of the people by an attack on the property of the wealthy citizens, whose cattle he destroyed in their pastures. The animosity provoked by such an outrage, which was probably not a solitary one, rendered it necessary to invest the demagogue with supreme authority. Theagenes, who assumed the tyranny about 620 B.C., followed the example of the other usurpers of his time. He adorned his city with splendid and useful buildings, and no doubt in other ways cherished industry and the arts, while he made them contribute to the lustre of his reign. He allied himself to one of the most eminent families of Athens, and aided his son-in-law, Cylon, in his enterprise, which, if it had succeeded, would have lent increased stability to his own power.

The victories which deprived the Athenians of Salamis, and made them at last despair of recovering it, were probably gained by Theagenes. Yet he was at length expelled from Megara; whether through the discontent of the commonalty, or by the efforts of the aristocratical party, which may have been encouraged by the failure of Cylon’s plot, we are not distinctly informed. Only it is said that, after his overthrow, a more moderate and peaceful spirit prevailed for a short time, until some turbulent leaders, who apparently wished to tread in his steps, but wanted his ability or his fortune, instigated the populace to new outrages against the wealthy, who were forced to throw open their houses, and to set luxurious entertainments before the rabble, or were exposed to personal insult and violence. But a much harder blow was aimed at their property by a measure called the palintocia,—which carried the principles of Solon’s seisachtheia to an iniquitous excess,—by which creditors were required to refund the interest which they had received from their debtors.

This transaction at the same time discloses one, at least, of the causes which had exasperated the commonalty against the nobles, who probably had exacted their debts no less harshly than the Athenian Eupatrids. But, in this period of anarchy, neither justice nor religion was held sacred: even temples were plundered; and a company of pilgrims, passing through the territory of Megara, on their way to Delphi, was grossly insulted; many lives even were lost, and the Amphictyonic council was compelled to interpose, to procure the punishment of the ringleaders. It is unquestionably of this period that Aristotle speaks, when he says that the Megarian demagogues procured the banishment of many of the notable citizens for the sake of confiscating their estates; and he adds, that these outrages and disorders ruined the democracy, for the exiles became so strong a body, that they were able to reinstate themselves by force, and to establish a very narrow oligarchy, including those only who had taken an active part in the revolution. Unfortunately we have no means of ascertaining the dates of these events, though the last-mentioned reaction cannot have taken place very long after 600 B.C.

During the following century, our information on the state of Megara is chiefly collected from the writings of the Megarian poet, Theognis, which however are interesting not so much for the historical facts contained in them, as for the light they throw on the character and feelings of the parties which divided his native city and so many others. Theognis appears to have been born about the fifty-fifth Olympiad, not long before the death of Solon; and to have lived down to the beginning of the Persian wars. He left some poems, of which considerable fragments remain, filled with moral and political maxims and reflections. We gather from them, that the oligarchy,[187] which followed the period of anarchy, had been unable to keep its ground; and that a new revolution had taken place, by which the poet, with others of the aristocratical party, had been stript of his fortune and driven into exile. But his complaints betray a fact which throws some doubt on the purity of his patriotism, and abates our sympathy for his misfortunes.

BŒOTIA, LOCRIS, PHOCIS, AND EUBŒA

The peculiar circumstances under which Bœotia was conquered, by a people who had quitted their native land to avoid slavery or subjection, would be sufficient to account for the fact that royalty was very early abolished there. It may indeed be doubted whether the chief named Xanthus, who is called king, sometimes of the Bœotians, sometimes of the Thebans, and who was slain by the Attic king Melanthus, was anything more than a temporary leader. The most sacred functions of the Theban kings seem to have been transferred to a magistrate, who bore the title of archon, and, like the archon-king at Athens, was invested rather with a priestly than a civil character.

From the death of Xanthus, down to about 500 B.C., the constitution of Thebes continued rigidly aristocratical, having probably been guarded from innovation as well by the inland position of the city as by the jealousy of the rulers; and the first change, of which we have any account, was one which threw the government into still fewer hands. But, about the thirteenth Olympiad, it seems as if discontent had arisen, among the members of the ruling caste itself, from the inequality in the division of property, which had perhaps been increased by lapse of time, until some of them were reduced to indigence. Not long after that Olympiad, Philolaus, one of the Corinthian Bacchiads, having been led by a private occurrence to take up his residence at Thebes, was invited to frame a new code of laws; and one of the main objects of his institutions was to prevent the accumulation of estates, and to fix forever the number of those into which the Theban territory, or at least the part of it occupied by the nobles, was divided. He too was perhaps the author of the law which excluded every Theban from public offices who had exercised any trade within the space of ten years. It is probable enough that his code also embraced regulations for the education of the higher class of citizens; and it may have been he who, with the view, as Plutarch supposes, of softening the harshness of the Bœotian character, or to counterbalance an excessive fondness for gymnastic exercises, to which the Thebans were prone, made music an essential part of the instruction of youth.

Our information on the other Bœotian towns is still scantier as to their internal condition; but we may safely presume that it did not differ very widely from that of Thebes, especially as we happen to know that at Thespiæ every kind of industrious occupation was deemed degrading to a freeman: an indication of aristocratical rigour which undoubtedly belongs to this period, and may be taken as a sample of the spirit prevailing in Bœotia. The Bœotian states were united in a confederacy which was represented by a congress of deputies, who met at the festival of the Pambœotia, in the temple of the Itonian Athene, near Coronea, more perhaps for religious than for political purposes. There were also other national councils, which deliberated on peace and war, and were perhaps of nearly equal antiquity, though they were first mentioned at a later period, when there were four of them.[188] It does not appear how they were constituted, or whether with reference to as many divisions of the country, of which we have no other trace. The chief magistrates of the league, called Bœotarchs, presided in these councils, and commanded the national forces. They were, in later times at least, elected annually, and rigidly restricted to their term of office.

As to the institutions of the Locrian tribes in Greece, very little is known, and they never took a prominent part in Greek history. Down to a late period the use of slaves was almost wholly unknown among them, as well as among the Phocians. This fact, which indicates a people of simple habits, strangers to luxury and commerce, and attached to ancient usages, may lead us to the further conclusion that their institutions were mostly aristocratical; and this conclusion is confirmed by all that we hear of them. Opus is celebrated, in the fifth century B.C., as a seat of law and order by Pindar.

Equally scanty is our information as to the general condition of the Phocians. Their land, though neither extensive nor fertile, was divided among between twenty and thirty little commonwealths, which were united like the Achæans and the Bœotians, and sent deputies at stated times to a congress which was held in a large building, called the Phocicum, on the road between Daulis and Delphi. But Delphi, though lying in Phocis, disclaimed all connection with the rest of the nation. Its government, as was to be expected under its peculiar circumstances, was strictly aristocratical, and was in the hands of the same families which had the management of the temple, on which the prosperity of the city and the subsistence of a great part of the inhabitants depended. In early times the chief magistrate bore the title of king, afterwards that of prytanis. But a council of five, who were dignified with a title marking their sanctity, and were chosen from families which traced their origin—possibly through Dorus—to Deucalion, and held their offices for life, conducted the affairs of the oracle.

In Eubœa an aristocracy or oligarchy of wealthy land-owners, who, from the cavalry which they maintained, were called hippobotæ, long prevailed in the two principal cities, Chalcis and Eretria. The great number of colonies which Chalcis sent out, and which attests its early importance, was probably the result of an oligarchical policy. Its constitution appears to have been, in proper terms, a timocracy: a certain amount of property was requisite for a share in the government. Eretria, once similarly governed, seems not to have been at all inferior in strength. She was[189] mistress of several islands, among the rest of Andros, Tenos, and Ceos; and, in the days of her prosperity, could exhibit 600 horsemen, 3000 heavy-armed infantry, and 60 chariots in a sacred procession. Chalcis and Eretria were long rivals, and a tract called the Lelantian plain, which contained valuable copper mines, afforded constant occasion for hostilities. These hostilities were distinguished from the ordinary wars between neighbouring cities by two peculiar features—the singular mode in which they were conducted, and the general interest which they excited throughout Greece. They were regulated, at least in early times, by a compact between the belligerents, which was recorded by a monument in a temple, to abstain from the use of missile weapons. But, while this agreement suggests the idea of a feud like those which we have seen carried on, in an equally mild spirit, between the Megarian townships, we learn with surprise from Thucydides that the war between Eretria and Chalcis divided the whole nation, and that all the Greek states took part with one or the other of the rivals.

It has been suspected that the cause which drew this universal attention to an object apparently of very slight moment was, that the quarrel turned upon political principles; that the oligarchy at Eretria had very early given way to democracy, while that of Chalcis, threatened by this new danger, engaged many states to espouse its cause. We are informed indeed that the Eretrian oligarchy was overthrown by a person named Diagoras, of whom we also hear that he died at Corinth while on his way to Sparta, and that he was honoured with a statue by his countrymen. It is also certain that the oligarchy at Chalcis, though more than once interrupted by a tyranny, was standing till within a few years of the Persian wars. But we do not know when Diagoras lived, and, without stronger evidence, it is difficult to believe that the revolution which he effected took place before the fall of the Athenian aristocracy, an epoch which appears to be too late for the war mentioned by Thucydides.

THESSALY

Thessaly seems, for some time after the conquest, to have been governed by kings of the race of Hercules, who however may have been only chiefs invested with a permanent military command, which ceased when it was no longer required by the state of the country. Under one of these princes, named Aleuas, it was divided into the four districts, Thessaliotis, Pelasgiotis, Pthiotis, and Hestiæotis. And, as this division was retained to the latest period of its political existence, we may conclude that it was not a merely nominal one, but that each district was united in itself, as well as distinct from the rest. As the four Bœotian councils seem to imply that a like division existed in Bœotia, so we may reasonably conjecture that each of the Thessalian districts regulated its internal affairs by some kind of provincial council. But all that we know with certainty is, that the principal cities exercised a dominion over several smaller towns, and that they were themselves the seat of noble families, sprung from the line of the ancient kings, which were generally able to draw the government of the whole nation into their hands. Thus Larissa was subject to the great house of the Aleuadæ, who were considered as descendants of the ancient Aleuas; Crannon and Pharsalus to the Scopadæ and the Creondæ, who were branches of the same stock. The vast estates of these nobles were[190] cultivated, and their countless flocks and herds fed, by their serfs, the Penests, who at their call were ready to follow them into the field on foot or on horseback. They maintained a princely state, drew poets and artists to their courts, and shone in the public games of Greece by their wealth and liberality.

We are not anywhere informed whether there were any institutions which provided for the union of the four districts, and afforded regular opportunities for consultation on their common interests. But, as often as an occasion appeared to require it, the great families were able to bring about the election of a chief magistrate, always of course taken from their own body, whose proper title was that of tagus, but who is sometimes called a king. We know little of the nature of his authority, except that it was probably rather military than civil; nor of its constitutional extent, which perhaps was never precisely ascertained, and depended on the personal character and the circumstances of the individual.

The population of Thessaly, beside the penests, whose condition was nearly that of the Laconian helots, included a large class of free subjects, in the districts not immediately occupied by the Thessalian invaders, who paid a certain tribute for their lands, but, though not admitted to the rights of citizens, preserved their personal liberty unmolested. But above this class stood a third, of the common Thessalians, who, though they could not boast, like the Aleuadæ and the Scopadæ, of a heroic descent, and had therefore received a much smaller portion of the conquered land, still, as the partners of their conquest, might think themselves entitled to some share in the administration of public affairs. Contests seem early to have arisen between this commonalty and the ruling families, and at Larissa the aristocracy of the Aleuadæ was tempered by some institutions of a popular tendency. We do not know indeed to what period Aristotle refers, when he speaks of certain magistrates at Larissa who bore the title of guardians of the freemen, and exercised a superintendence over the admission of citizens, but were themselves elected by the whole body of the people, out of the privileged order, and hence were led to pay their court to the multitude in a manner which proved dangerous to the interests of the oligarchy. It seems not improbable that the election of a tagus, like that of a dictator at Rome, was sometimes used as an expedient for keeping the commonalty under. But the power of the oligarchs was also shaken by intestine feuds; and, under the government of the Aleuadæ, such was the state of parties at Larissa, that, by common agreement, the city was committed to the care of an officer, who was chosen, perhaps from the commonalty, to mediate between the opposite factions; but, being entrusted with a body of troops, made himself master of both. This event took place two generations before the Persian War; but the usurpation appears to have been transitory, and not to have left any durable traces, while the factions of Larissa continue to appear from time to time throughout the whole course of Grecian history.

The western states of Greece are, during this period, shrouded in so complete obscurity, that we cannot pretend to give any account of their condition. With respect to the Ætolians indeed it is uncertain how far they are entitled to the name of Greeks. The Acarnanians, as soon as they begin to take a part in the affairs of Greece, distinguish themselves as a finer and more civilised people; and it is probable that the Corinthian colonies on the Ambracian Gulf may have exerted a beneficial influence on their social progress.b

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CORINTH UNDER PERIANDER

In the Isthmus of Corinth there is a pillar with a double inscription. On the side facing Peloponnesus is written “Here is Peloponnesus and not Ionia.” On the opposite side, which faced the territory of Megaris, was written, “This is not Peloponnesus but Ionia.” Between the hostile worlds of the Dorians and Ionians, Corinth was as between two stools. Originally, however, the Corinthians favoured the Dorians because they had been conquered by them when Peloponnesus was subjugated under the Heraclids. Corinth took the side of Lacedæmon in the internal quarrels of Greece.

The aristocratic genius of the Dorians without abolishing the ancient royalty, subordinated Corinth. One of the Heraclids was called king. He commanded the army and presided over the debates of this military aristocracy. Later, the oligarchy made this not very powerful king disappear, and kept for itself all the rights of sovereignty. This was at the time of the descendants of Bacchis, the Heraclid.

The Bacchiadæ numbered over two hundred, amongst them being other families with whom they were connected and who governed Corinth together. Each year, one of them, elected by his fellows, exercised under the name Prytanis, a power very much resembling royalty. One day this annual authority fell into the hands of an ambitious man Cypselus, who was not satisfied with his power, and became master, not only of the people but of his equals. This tyranny was followed by that of Periander, son of Cypselus. Periander’s first acts were popular, but a sad occurrence weighed upon his brain and made him cruel. This was found out in Corinth, and from that time Periander, thinking he had nothing more to hope for, gave way to all the bad traits of his character. He banished the most powerful citizens. He killed his wife, Melissa, by a kick in the stomach and then wishing by way of atonement to give her a splendid funeral, he assembled all the women of Corinth in Juno’s Temple, where his guards stripped them of their jewels and clothes which were burnt in honour of Melissa.

However, Periander kept down luxury. He forbade the citizens to keep many slaves, he ordered land-owners to live on their estates in order to cultivate them, he allowed no one to spend more than his income, and he established no new taxes. Last of all, he increased the Corinthian navy and he conceived the idea of piercing the isthmus. These acts were worthy of a statesman. He wrote and composed over two thousand verses with morals. He praised democratic government and said that he himself was a tyrant because he thought it too dangerous to give up being so. He recommended moderation in happiness and that friendship should not change with fortune.

Man’s heart is large enough to have good as well as bad qualities. Besides, to have supreme power over equals was a double spur exciting good as well as bad actions. If the intoxication of power inflamed the senses and passions of the usurper, and defiance had to be met by cruelty, it was in Periander’s interest to give his town all the advantages of good government. Also, as he was clever, he knew how to conciliate the people. Force is always admired and worshipped when it comes from the highest, and protects and spares the weak.

After Periander, who died in his bed, Corinth had an aristocratic government and knew no more the tyranny of a single ruler. The people had an assembly but the direction of the important affairs of state was in the hands of a senate. The aristocracy of Corinth which was rich and prudent in governing, watched with jealous care over maintaining its power and it is[192] due to the energy of one of its number that Corinth escaped from a new tyranny.

Of an illustrious family, Timophanes had become the idol of the people. His audacity, his prowess in warfare, his familiarity with the humblest citizens delighted the multitude and seemed to invite him to take the reins of government into his hands. But Timophanes had near him a severe judge in his brother. This brother, though loving him very much and having for a long time screened or excused his faults, ended by killing him in order that Corinth should not be reduced to servitude. The verses Virgil dedicated to the first of the Brutuses might be applied to Timoleon.

This republican fratricide had the misfortune of being cursed by his mother. He lived twenty years, not in repentance but in solitude, and we shall find him again at Syracuse. Corinth had not only founded that celebrated city in Sicily, she had founded other colonies besides, amongst them Corcyra, with which she was a long time at war, accusing the inhabitants of not paying the respect due to a capital. “Our other colonies love and respect us whilst the Corcyreans are arrogant and unjust, to such a point that they have seized Epidamnus, which belongs to us and which they intend to keep.” These were the complaints Corinth made through her deputies, at Athens, against her colonies. However, in spite of the complaints, the Athenians received the alliance of Epidamnus, which had a powerful navy, and which, in their eyes, had the great advantage of being situated on the way to Italy and Sicily.

This determination not to help Corinth, irritated the Corinthians, whose Dorian origin already made them Athens’ natural enemy, and was one of the decisive causes of the Peloponnesian War. It was at the instigation of Corinth that the Peloponnesians held a kind of congress at Sparta, in which they denounced the ambition and audacity of the Athenians who were born, they said, never to have rest and never to allow anybody else to have any.

Before Athens shone by her eloquence, poetry, and art, Corinth was the centre of Hellenic trade and was the sojourn of pleasure. All the merchandise of Europe and of Asia was imported on payment of duty, and all foreigners flocked there more than they did to any other town of Greece. People came from everywhere, from Egypt as well as from Sicily; but Corinth was a town essentially for rich men—it was the town of Venus. The courtesans were honoured. They had the privilege of offering the public vows to Venus, when the goddess was appealed to in a case of great danger. They it was who asked her to grant the salvation of Greece when that country was invaded by Xerxes. When private people had their prayers granted by the goddess they showed their gratitude by offering her a number of courtesans for her temple. All the countries which traded with Corinth provided these charming priestesses.

At Sparta the glory of women was their patriotism, at Athens their intellect, and at Corinth their beauty. Laïs was the queen of the courtesans and received homage from the most important and serious personages of Greece, from philosophers as well as from politicians. She was in reality a Sicilian, captured when a child by the Athenians and sold to Corinth. But the Corinthians idolised her, and always swore she was born amongst them.

Riches and pleasure! It was to the interest of the Corinthians not to get rid of these women, in order to enjoy life, and this was in itself a guarantee against the rule of a demagogue in the city of Periander and of Timoleon. Pindar can say with great truth in one of his Olympics, “Harmony and good legislation are found in Corinth, also justice and peace.[193] The daughters of the prudent Themis dispense happiness to mankind and watch over their cities.”

This prosperity had a tragic ending. When the Romans triumphed over the Achæan League, Corinth perished miserably. Such lamentable ruin was like the last day of Ilium. Everything condemned the town before the Roman tribunals: its admirable position, the key to the whole of Greece; its riches and works of art, which were placed in the Capitol at Rome.c

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CHAPTER XI. CRETE AND THE COLONIES

Crete was an island, which, from its position, should have dominated over the whole of Greece, as it had for its neighbours the coasts of the Peloponnesus and of Asia. The Cretans were remarkable amongst the Hellenic nations for their institutions, which bore a singular physiognomy. Diodorus describes all the legends relating to the Greek divinities of whom Crete boasted to be the cradle; he then adds that during the generations succeeding the birth of the gods, many heroes lived in the island, the most illustrious of whom were Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon. These heroes are not truly historic, and an exact place cannot be given to their genius and passions, but at any rate they indicate deeds and customs which have left strong impressions on the lives of men. Antiquity believed that Crete, even from the most ancient period, had good laws which were imitated by many of the peoples of Greece, and above all by the Lacedæmonians.

Before teaching Greece, Crete, for a short time, dominated over her. The Cretans, who were an insular and warlike nation made up chiefly of Pelasgians and Dorians, at an epoch made great by the name of Minos, had a navy with which they were able to take possession of the greater number of the islands belonging to Greece. They also reigned over part of the coast of Asia Minor. They were the guardians of the sea, suppressed the Athenian pirates and made them pay tribute. These pirates had their revenge according to the fable of the Minotaur. The Cretans pushed on as far as Sicily, and it was there, so goes the legend, that Minos was killed by the daughters of King Cocalus, who suffocated their father’s guest in a bath. A few generations later, Crete sent a fleet of eighty vessels against Priam, a new proof of maritime greatness. About the time when the Odyssey was written, this is how Greece imagined the island of Minos: “In the middle of the vast ocean is glorious Crete, a fertile island, where countless men live; there are eighty-six towns,[14] which have each a different language; they are inhabited by the Achæans, the autochthonous Cretans, high-minded heroes, the Cydonians, the Dorians, who are divided into three tribes, and the divine Pelasgi. In the midst of all these people is the beautiful town of Knossos, where Minos reigned, and every nine years had an audience with Jupiter.” Thus is the divine or religious type of legislator formed in the mind of the[195] Greeks and with the double help of time and poetry the name of Minos becomes great.

Crete was as little spared from the revolutions which Thucydides foretold would be one of the results of the Trojan War, as the peculiar state of her soil and customs warranted. The inhabitants, living in a mountainous and divided country, were separated into many cantons, jealous of one another’s independence. In Crete, as in Switzerland, nature prepared republics. For a long time royal power succeeded in preventing the germs of discord from bursting forth; this was in the time of Minos, of Rhadamanthus, and of Sarpedon, when the Cretans were conquerors and masters of the sea and possessed of a legislation inspired by the first of all the gods. Later, everything which had helped to make a sovereign authority gave way, the towns of Crete quarrelled internally and with one another for individual government. This spirit of independence was doubtless encouraged by the presence of the Greeks, who, on their return from Troy, founded colonies on the island. Little by little, royal power, weakened by the absence of the chiefs, who had joined the princes of the Peloponnesus in order to attack Asia, disappeared.

Through what shocks, compromises or transitions, Crete passed from government by kings, to an aristocratic federation, with Knossos, Gortyna, Cydonia, and Lyctus at the head, we know not. All we know is that several generations after the Trojan War the new government had entirely taken the place of the old, though still invoked in the sacred name of Minos. The Cretans thus began the great practice we so often find in ancient days, that of placing the young generations under the protection and genius of the ancients. Man, even with a long line of centuries behind him, is a weak creature, and when he separates from the ancients he adds to his nothingness.

In representing Crete with a federal and aristocratic government, these words must not be taken in their full meaning. It was not the entire establishment of a nation, but attempts at peace and order frequently interrupted by revolutions. This point has often escaped modern writers, especially Montesquieu.

Crete was a fertile chaos, from which Sparta took various principles. But Crete itself could not benefit from them. The reason for the outbreaks was the rivalry between the different towns. When one of them conquered the other, the result was despotism; when they strove one against the other without either getting a decisive advantage, the result was anarchy.

At the head of each town were ten magistrates called cosmes (or cosmoi), taking their name from order itself, and from the necessity of seeing it carried out, for in every town there was always an incorrigible inclination for plotting. The cosmes, who were the forerunners of the Spartan ephori, were chosen, not from all the citizens, but from a small number of families. As they succeeded royal authority they had its powers, they commanded the troops, concluded treaties, and ruled over people and things alike, with an arbitrary power. The Cretan customs were a strange contrast to this despotism, which was the unmistakable remains of sovereignty. When by their conduct the cosmes offended some of their colleagues, they were driven away. When they chose they could also abdicate. Law did not rule, but the will of man, which is not a sure rule. The Cretans had the habit, when they reached the highest point in their quarrels, of returning to a provisional monarchy, in order to facilitate war between them. They lived in the midst of periodical disputes which prevented them from ever forming a great nation.

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When the cosmes came to the end of their term of office, which lasted a year, they took a place in the assembly or senate formed of the old men of the city. This was always the custom in antiquity, as in all youthful nations. Thus, experience in life is called in to help govern. The old men who had been cosmes, or had been destined to be so, exercised an irresponsible and life-long authority, deciding all things, not according to written laws but according to their opinions. The decisions of the cosmes and senators were presented to a general assembly where all the citizens met; the assembly only confirmed by vote what was proposed. There were no discussions, a mute acquiescence was alone allowed. The senators and cosmes were the chiefs of that army which had warriors and labourers as body and force. This division into soldiers and labourers was common to the Egyptians and Cretans, according to Aristotle, who traces it back, for the former, to Sesostris and for the latter to Minos, and the ancient discipline, adds Alexander’s tutor, remained especially strong amongst the peasants. Like all ancient nations, the Cretans had slaves, those serving in the country were called chrysonetes and those in the towns amphamiotes. Their usual name was clarotes, because they were divided equally by lot, as they were prisoners of war. At Cydonia, one of the towns of Crete, the slaves had festivals during which they were free and powerful, and could even fight the citizens. Servitude has always provoked orgies.

All the instincts of civilisation began to develop in Crete with great energy. The Cretans did not like inaction, they liked hunting, wrestling, and every kind of exercise. They lived in common and divided the fruits of the earth. These customs and habits were at the bottom of Cretan institutions. The legislators confirmed these customs in certain cases and in others trained or suppressed them. The laws, called the laws of Minos, were never written down, and changed in the course of years.

Let us enter into Lyctus, a town of Crete, and see the everyday life of the people. Each person gave up the tenth of his productions or possessions to help support the society of which he was a member. These contributions were divided amongst all the families of the city by the magistrates. The citizens were divided into little societies; the care of the meals being in the hands of one of the women who directed the work of three or four of the public slaves, each of whom had a water-carrier. In each city there were two public edifices; one devoted to the serving of meals, the other to the shelter of foreigners and strangers. In the building for the meals were two tables, called hospitable tables, where strangers sat. The other tables were for the use of the citizens. An equal portion was given to each, except to the young people, who had only half a portion of meat and touched no other food. A pitcher of wine and water was on each table, from which everybody drank; after the meal another pitcher was placed on the table. The children had one pitcher in which the wine was measured, the old people and men had unlimited wine. The women who presided at the meals chose the choicest pieces for those who had distinguished themselves by their valour or their prudence. After the repast, public affairs were discussed, then great actions were related and those who had been courageous were praised and set up as models to the young.

Warfare was the object of all the institutions. On this point Plato and Aristotle agree. Clinias the Cretan, one of Plato’s interrogators, wished everything to be arranged for warfare; he took trouble to have it understood that without supremacy in battle, riches and culture in art will be of no use, since all the treasures of the defeated pass into the hands of the[197] conqueror. Aristotle remarked that in Crete as in Sparta, and among the Scythians, Persians, Thracians, and Celts, everything led up to warfare—education, laws, customs. In Crete, the men were soldiers living under the same discipline, eating the same food, sharing perils and pleasure, and always ready to march or to fight. They were respected only when they were hardy, vigorous, agile, and quick. Prudence and repose were for old age.

As soon as the children could read, they were taught poems in which the laws were explained, and the elements of music. They were very strictly treated, with a severity which was never changed, no matter what the season. Clothed in rough clothes, they ate on the ground, helping one another and waiting upon the men. When they became older, they formed part of different companies, each one being presided over by a youth chosen from the highest or most powerful families. These young chiefs led the companies out hunting and racing; they had an almost parental authority over their companions and punished the disobedient. On certain days the companies fought against each other; to the sound of the flute and lyre, they attacked each other with their hands or weapons. This drilled them in the art of warfare. The Cretan towns, like other Grecian cities, had public buildings and gymnasiums for corporal exercises, gymnasiums for the mind were added later.

There was a time when the disputes between the different towns were judged by a kind of federal arbitration, but it is doubtful whether the decisions of this tribunal were respected. However, after some civil wars between the towns, arrangements were made, and we find some curious remains in the principal clauses of a treaty between two towns, Hierapolis and Priansus. Each had rights of isopolity and of marriage, of acquiring possessions in each other’s territory, and of having an equal share in all things, divine and human. Those who wanted to reside in the other town could do so and could buy and sell there, lend or borrow money and make any kind of contract according to the laws of both.

Thus without unity and always at war with one another, the Cretans never left their island and took no part in the general affairs of Greece. They refused to enter into the league formed against Darius, giving the excuse that their assisting Menelaus had cost them misfortune, and recalling the conduct of the Greeks who had not hastened to avenge the death of Minos. These were pretexts, but the real cause was the feebleness of the Cretans, too weak and too few to take part in any great enterprise, a weakness which kept Crete always isolated, obscure and selfish. Polybius was indignant at Crete being compared to Lacedæmonia; he compared the equality of wealth and contempt of riches which reigned at Sparta to the avarice of the Cretans who were quite unscrupulous as to their means of becoming rich.

With the exception of the fact that the cosmes were elected yearly, we believe Polybius is wrong in esteeming Crete a democratic state. Power was in the hands of the senate, which was a regular oligarchy. As for the natural faults of the Cretans, which their government rather encouraged than corrected, time succeeded only in making them increase, and it is not astonishing that, at the time that Polybius wrote, they deserved the severe opinion of the historian. It would be unjust not to state with what disfavour the Greeks looked upon them. This insular race that helped no one and was ready to accept the pay of any nation, was hated by the Greeks. The Cretans were called treacherous liars, and it was proverbial that it was permitted to “cretise” with a Cretan.

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Crete was renowned for two causes; it was looked upon first as the cradle of the gods, then as the nest of sea-robbers and mercenaries. After having shone at the beginning of Greek civilisation, its development was interrupted before its time. Anarchy unnerved it. The bad reputation of the Cretans at Athens was also due to the jealousy of the Athenians who could never forgive Crete a short supremacy on the sea. When the poets wished to please the Athenians they abused Minos and the Cretans. Nothing is more dangerous to good fame with posterity than to have for enemy a witty nation.b

BELOCH’S ACCOUNT OF GREEK COLONISATION

The scene of Grecian primitive history is practically limited to the countries bordering the Ægean Sea. But in the period which gave rise to the great epic poems the geographical horizon had already begun to expand. In one of the later songs of the Iliad, Egyptian Thebes is mentioned; the songs relating the wanderings of Ulysses speak of the Cimmerians, the original inhabitants of the north coast of the Pontus, and the clear summer nights of the north, of which the Greeks could learn only on this coast. The Telemachus speaks of Libya, beside Egypt, and the latest songs of the Odyssey show an acquaintance with the Siculi and the land of the Sicani. No tradition has preserved the names of the bold explorers who first ventured out into the open sea which phantasy had peopled with all kinds of monsters and fabulous beings, and which, in reality, concealed countless terrors and dangers. Their deeds however lived on in the songs relating the expedition of the Argo and the home-coming of the heroes from Troy.

The settler soon followed the explorer. The need of land had once in a dim antiquity led the Hellenes to the islands of the Ægean Sea and to the western coast of Asia Minor; these regions were now occupied, and whoever found his home too narrow was obliged to seek out more distant lands. Commercial interests played no part in these migrations at first, because there was no industry in Greece to furnish articles for export. People were in search of fertile districts; whether or not good harbours were close at hand was wholly a question of secondary importance. The division of farm lands was consequently the first business of the new settlers; at the beginning of the fifth century the ancient citizens of Syracuse already style themselves “land owners” (γαμόροι). Herein lies the fundamental difference between Grecian and Phœnician colonisation. Every Phœnician settlement was primarily a commercial establishment, which under favourable circumstances might develop into an agricultural colony; the Grecian settlements were originally agricultural colonies out of which, however, in the course of time extensive commercial centres were developed.

The oldest colonial foundations of this time were like those unorganised expeditions which once poured out upon the islands and the shores of Asia Minor. Such were the settlements of the Achæans and Locrians in southern Italy. As the Greeks, however, were continually being forced out to more distant coasts, their colonisation had to take on a different character. The navigation of the islandless sea in the west, or even the journey to Libya and the stormy Pontus, necessitated a degree of seamanship greater than that possessed by the inhabitants of the agricultural coast districts of the Grecian peninsula, from among whom the settlers of the lands across the sea had until then gone forth. Hence Africa, Bœotia, and Argolis ceased to take an independent part in the colonisation movement. In their place arose cities,[199] hardly or not at all mentioned by Homer, which by their advantageous location had come to be centres of navigation; Chalcis and Eretria on the Euripus, the strait which furnishes the most convenient connection between southern Greece and Thessaly; Megara and Corinth on the isthmus, where the two seas which wash the shores of Greece come within a few miles of each other; Rhodes, Lesbos, and other islands of the Ægean Sea; finally the Ionian coast towns, especially Miletus. Not that all the colonists, who went out from here to seek new homes on distant shores were actually at home in these cities. On the contrary, these cities were only gathering places whither streamed the emigrants from the surrounding regions—all those who found no chance to advance in their old homes or who were driven abroad by love of adventure or by dissatisfaction with political conditions. But the cities, from which the colonising expeditions went out, organised the undertaking; they provided leaders and ships and their institutions served as models for the colonies.

Once founded, however, the colonies were, as a rule, wholly independent of the mother-city. The relation between them was like that between a father and his grown son in Grecian law. The citizen of the mother-city was always respected in the colony; and the colony, on the other hand, could always count on finding support with the mother-city in case of a difficult crisis. That the colony, moreover, remained in especially active intercourse with its mother-city lay in the nature of this colonial relationship; and in the course of time the colonies became the surest supports for the commerce of the mother-city and the best markets for the productions of its industrial activity.

In consequence the recollection of this relationship was kept alive for a long time. But the circumstances which gave rise to the foundation of all the colonies earlier than the sixth century, remain veiled in the darkness of tradition. Historical records were as yet far removed from this period, and the dates of foundations which have been handed down to us are based wholly upon calculations according to generations or upon suppositions of even less value. Such accounts can at the most give us only approximate clews and must in each single instance be compared with other traditions. Only so much is certain that in the first half of the seventh century the settlement of the southern coast of Thrace was in full progress and the Hellenes had already established themselves upon the gulf of Tarentum.

No other field offered the Grecian colonists such favourable conditions as the coasts of Italy and Sicily, beyond the Ionic Sea. Situated in the same latitude as the mother-land, these countries have a climate very similar to that of Greece.

Intercourse between the two shores existed at an early date. Fragments of vases in the Mycenæan style have been found in Messapia, and the pre-Hellenic necropolis in eastern Sicily shows traces of a civilisation which is partially under Mycenæan influence. It even appears that in pre-historic times immigrations from the Balkan peninsula into Italy already took place by way of Otranto. At least it is related that the Chones once dwelt on the western coast of the gulf of Tarentum; and the similarity of names between these people and the Epirot Chaones, the inhabitants of the region about the Acroceraunian promontory, can hardly be accidental. Perhaps this is connected with the fact that the Italici designate the Hellenes as Græci, since the Græci are said to have been an Epirot tribe, which in historic times had wholly disappeared.

Be that as it may, the Hellenes had at all events taken possession of the eastern coast of the present Calabria, during the course of the eighth, or at[200] latest at the beginning of the seventh century. The new settlers called themselves Achæans and thought they were descended from the Achæans in the Peloponnesus. As a matter of fact their dialect is closely related to the Argolian. The Chones of Italy have since disappeared from history, and have probably been merged into one people with the Achæans.

The new home was called Italia, after a branch of the original population which disappeared at an early date, and this name was gradually extended over the whole peninsula clear to the Alps. The land offered a boundless field for Hellenic activity, and the realisation of that fact found expression in the name Greater Hellas, which arose in the colonial territory across the Ionian Sea in about the sixth century, in contrast to the crowded condition of the too thickly populated mother-land. This may have been hyperbole, but it was in a sense justified by the brilliant development of the Achæan settlements. The coasts of the gulf of Tarentum became covered with a circle of flourishing cities. In the north at the mouth of the Bradanus was Metapontum, which bore on its armour the speaking device of an ear of corn; then came Siris in the fruitful plain at the mouth of the river of the same name, which, to the poet Archilochus appeared an ideal place for a colony; further south where Crathis empties into the sea, was Sybaris, whose wealth and luxury soon became proverbial. In close rivalry with Sybaris stood Croton, situated near the promontory of Lacinium, on the top of which the new settlers founded the temple of Hera, the queen of heaven, which became the chief sanctuary for the Greeks of Italy. One column of the building is still standing, a signal for ships, and can be seen from afar over the blue waters of the Ionian Sea. Finally, far to the south at Cape Stilo was Caulonia, the last of the Achæan settlements.

The Achæans soon penetrated also into the interior and through the narrow peninsula to the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Sybaris founded here the colonies of Scidrus and Laos, and, further north, on the lower Silarus, Posidonia [afterwards Pæstum], whose temple to-day arises in solemn majesty from out its desolate surroundings, the most beautiful monument of Grecian architecture which has been preserved on the western side of the Ionian Sea. Pyxus [afterwards Buxentum], between Posidonia and Laos, is probably a colony from Siris, which was directly opposite it on the Ionian Sea, and was later closely associated with it. Croton founded Pandosia in the upper valley of the Crathis, and Terina and Scylletium (Scylacium) on the isthmus of Catanzaro where the Ionian and Tyrrhenian seas approach to within a few miles of each other. The Achæans now controlled the whole region from the Bradanus and Silarus southward to the gulf of Terina and the gulf of Scylletium, an area of fifteen thousand square kilometres.

The Achæans were soon followed by the Locrians, who lived opposite them on the gulf of Corinth. They founded a new Locri, south of the Achæan settlements not far from the Zephyrian promontory. This city also soon became rich and powerful, so that its territory was extended to the west coast of the peninsula, where it established the colonies Hipponium and Medma.

In the meantime the inhabitants of eastern Greece had begun to direct their gaze to the newly discovered lands in the west—first of all the Chalcidians, the bravest men in Hellas, as they are called in an old proverb. Since the coast of the gulf of Tarentum was already occupied, they sailed further, to Sicily the land famed in fable as the home of the Cyclops and Læstrygones. These were no longer to be found there, but instead a people of Italic race, the Siceli, or the Sicani, as they were called in the western[201] part of the island, a brave and warlike people, but with no national unity so that they were unable successfully to oppose the invaders. Here, at the foot of the lofty snow pyramid of Ætna, the Chalcidians founded Naxos, their first settlement and the first Hellenic town on Sicilian soil. In gratitude to the god, Apollo Archegetes, who had brought them over the sea in safety, the settlers erected an altar. Later on, when Sicily had become an Hellenic land, all those who were setting sail to attend the festivals in the mother-land used to sacrifice at this place.

From Naxos the Chalcidians soon took possession of the surrounding region. In the south they founded Catane, Leontini, Callipolis, Eubœa; in the north, on the strait which separates Sicily from Italy, they built Zancle, the later Messana, or Messina, and opposite this on the mainland Rhegium was established. Here the wide Tyrrhenian Sea was open to the Hellenes. The precipitous western coast of the Calabria of to-day and the waterless Liparæan Islands were not indeed attractive to settlers, but on the small island Pithecusa (Ischia), off the coast of the Osci, was the most favourable spot a colonist could wish—the soil being luxuriantly fertile and at the same time secure from hostile attacks. Thus the Calcidians established themselves here at an early date, perhaps in the eighth century. Soon they ventured over to the near-lying continent, and on the steep trachyte cliff, upon the flat, wave-beaten shore of the gulf of Gæta, they founded Cumæ, so called from a place [Cyme] in the old Eubœan home-land.

Neapolis, the “new city” was colonised from here in about the year 600, while Samian fugitives settled at Dicæarchia [afterwards Puteoli], in close proximity to Cumæ (in 527). The second large island of the Neapolitan Bay, Capreæ must also have been settled by Chalcidians, since we find a Hellenic population there even in the period of the empire.

Cumæ is the most extreme westerly point of Italy which the Chalcidians, and indeed the Hellenes as a whole, ever possessed. It has always remained, as it was first established, the most advanced frontier post, and the continuous territory of Grecian colonisation in Italy ends at the Silarus. A similar position was occupied on the southern shore of the Tyrrhenian Sea by Himera, which was colonised from Messana in about the year 650, and was the only Grecian city on the northern coast of Sicily. Chalcidian colonisation in the west came to an end with this settlement.

The example given by Chalcis was soon imitated. The Corinthians in the eighth century still occupied the rich island of Corcyra and likewise turned their steps to Sicily. Since the region around Ætna and the strait was already occupied by Chalcidians, they went further south and established the colony of Syracuse upon the small island of Ortygia, in the most beautiful harbour on the eastern coast of Sicily. This colony was destined to become the metropolis of the Grecian west. The real colonising activity of Corinth, however, was directed chiefly towards the northwestern part of the Grecian peninsula. In the course of the eighth century a dense circle of Corinthian and Corintho-Corcyræan settlements grew up here: among them Chalcis and Molycrium in Ætolia at the entrance to the bay of Corinth.

Like Corinth, its neighbour city Megara began at an early date to take part in the colonisation of Sicily. A new Megara arose here, between Syracuse and the Chalcidian Leontini, professedly in the eighth century, at any rate before Syracuse had acquired much importance and had begun to found colonies of its own. Its powerful neighbours made it impossible for the city to expand towards the interior and thus the Megarians were obliged to go further west, when their territory became too cramped for them at home.[202] They founded Selinus, not far from the most western point of the island on the coast of the Libyan Sea, at about the same time that the Chalcidians laid out Himera on the opposite coast (about 650). On account of the fertility of the district the new colony soon reached a high grade of prosperity and established on its own account a number of settlements, such as Minoa, near the mouth of the Halycus (Platani) so called from the little island of like name in the old Grecian home.

Of the other states of the Grecian mother-land only Sparta took part in the settlement of the west. Inner disturbances which broke out after the conquest of Messenia are said to have caused a portion of the conquered party to leave their home. The emigrants set sail for Iapygia and established there, upon the only good harbour on the southeast coast of Italy, the colony of Tarentum (700 B.C.). Two centuries later, shortly before the Persian wars, the Spartans made an attempt to establish themselves in the west.

Sicily and Italy were too far out of the way for the Asiatic Greeks, and they consequently held almost entirely aloof from any colonising expeditions thither. Rhodes was an exception. At the beginning of the seventh century its citizens, together with the Cretans, established the colony of Gela, on the fertile depression at the mouth of the Gela, which was the first Grecian city on the south coast of Sicily. About a century later (in 580) this city colonised Agrigentum, which is situated farther to the west on a steep height commanding a broad outlook, not far from the sea. This filled the gap which had been left in the row of Grecian cities between Gela and Selinus. At about the same time Rhodians and Cnidians under the leadership of the Heraclid Pentathlus, tried to find a footing on the most extreme west point of Sicily, on the promontory of Lilybæum. But the Hellenes were here successfully opposed by the Elymi, the original inhabitants of this part of the island, and by the citizens of the neighbouring Phœnician colony of Motya. The new settlers and their Selinuntine allies were beaten; Pentathlus himself fell, and the remainder of his people were forced to take refuge on the barren Liparæan Islands, which were thus won for the Grecians.

The distant west had been opened up to Grecian commerce even before this. It is said to have been a Samian sailor, Colœus by name, who, on a journey to Egypt, being carried out of his way by a storm off the Libyan coast, was the first to reach Tartessus, the rich silver-land, lying near the Pillars of Hercules (600 B.C.) At about the same time Ionic Phocæans founded the colony of Massalia not far from the mouth of the Rhodanus. This soon became a centre for the commerce of these regions and extended its influence far into the Celtic interior. From here the Phocæans advanced along the Iberian coast to Tartessus, where they entered into friendly relations with the natives and established the colony of Mænaca, which was the most westerly point the Hellenes ever held. The Phocæans settled also on Cyrnus (Corsica). In 565 they founded Alalia on the east coast of the island. When Ionia was forced to succumb to the Persians after the fall of Sardis (545) a large portion of the citizens of Phocæa left their homes and turned to their tribal kinsmen in Alalia, which thus grew from a mere mercantile settlement into a powerful city.

These results, however, were for the most part of short duration. The Phœnicians reached the western Mediterranean at the same time with the Hellenes, perhaps somewhat earlier even. The northern coast of Libya from Syrtis Major to the Pillars of Hercules was covered with a line of their settlements, among which Carthage attained the first place in the course of time, owing to the advantage of its incomparable location. It was not long[203] before they crossed over to the islands lying opposite Africa. They occupied Melita (Malta) and Gaulos (Gozzo), and founded Motya, Panormus, and Solus in west Sicily, probably during the seventh century. Here the Greeks formed a barrier preventing their further expansion. The Phœnicians, however, could spread themselves upon Sardinia without hindrance, since the Greeks, although they may have planned to settle there, never went seriously about it. In this way a succession of Phœnician settlements grew up along the south and west coast of the island—Caralis, Nora, Sulci, Tharrus and others. The Pityusæ are said to have been colonised from Carthage in the year 654-653 B.C. The Phœnicians had already reached the silver-land of Tartessus in the eighth century. Their chief point of support in this region was Gades, situated on a small island beyond the Pillars of Hercules on the edge of the ocean.

A hostile encounter with the Hellenes could now no longer be avoided and it seems to have been the danger which threatened the Phœnicians from this side which led their scattered settlements to unite into a single state with Carthage as its centre, or at any rate materially assisted Carthage in her work of unification. Above all it was necessary to drive out the Phœnicians from their newly won position on Corsica. The Phœnicians were aided in their attempt by the Etruscans, who, as bold pirates, had long beforehand made themselves feared by the Greeks, and regarded the Phocæan settlements so near their coasts with no less anxiety than the Phœnicians themselves. The Phocæans could not withstand the attack of the two peoples, who were the most skilful navigators in the western Mediterranean. They were indeed victorious in an open sea fight, but they endured such severe losses that they were obliged to give up Alalia. They next turned to south Italy and established there the colony of Hyele, between Pyxus and Posidonia. Massalia was now isolated and thrown upon its own resources. The distant Mænaca could consequently be maintained no longer, and Carthage won undisputed possession of Tartessus. But within its narrow range of power Massalia victoriously resisted all attacks of the Phœnicians, and the final result was that a sort of dividing line was established between the two cities. Massaliot influence was preponderant north of the promontory of Artemisium (cape of Nao); Carthaginian, south of it, on the east coast of Iberia.

Cyrnus came under Etruscan influence after the withdrawal of the Phocæans. The Etruscans, it appears, had already taken possession of the fertile plain on the lower Vulturnus and had established there a number of settlements, whose centre was at Capua. They now proceeded to attack Hellenic Cumæ (presumably in 524). Here, however, the superior military skill of the Greeks won the victory, and the latter were able to defend the Latin cities, which were friendly to them, from being brought into subjection by the Etruscans. The strength of Cumæ, however, was not sufficient to keep up the unequal fight for long and it was due only to the intervention of the Syracusans that Hellenism maintained itself here until the end of the fifth century.

Nearly contemporaneously with the beginnings of colonisation in the west the Hellenes began to spread toward the north and southeast. The Chalcidians again took the first place. Opposite Eubœa a long peninsula projects from the north into the Ægean Sea, which, on account of the numerous indentations of its coast, as well as the fertility of its soil, invited settlement. A long succession of Grecian colonial towns grew up here, the most of which were founded from Chalcis; hence the name Chalcidice, which the peninsula bore in later times. The Corinthians followed the Chalcidians[204] here, just as they had done in the west. On the narrow isthmus joining the peninsula of Pallene with the main body of Chalcidice they founded the colony of Potidæa (in 600) which remained the most important city of this region until the time of the Peloponnesian War. The original Thracian population maintained itself only on the rugged slopes of Athos.

Further east, in the first half of the seventh century, the Parians took possession of the mountainous island of Thasos, which at that time was still covered with a thick primeval forest. The new settlers soon crossed over to the near-lying mainland, where they established a number of commercial stations, as Œsyma and Galepsus, which had to maintain themselves through long struggles with the warlike Thracian tribes. Opposite Thasos, on the fruitful plain between Nestus and Lake Bistonis, the Clazomenæans founded Abdera in 651, but they could not long maintain themselves against the attacks of the Thracians. Colonists from Teos, who emigrated after the conquest of Ionia by the Persians (545) and took possession of the deserted place, were more successful; Abdera now became the most important city on this whole coast and also took an active part in the intellectual life of the nation.

Lesbos and Tenedos were for a long time the most advanced posts of the Hellenic world toward the northeast. Not until the eighth century do the inhabitants of these islands appear to have succeeded in taking possession of the south of Troas, from the wooded slopes of Ida to the entrance to the Hellespont. None of the numerous settlements founded here, however, became very important. The Lesbians then went further and crossed over to the European shore of the Hellespont, where they built Sestus at the narrowest point of the strait and Alopeconnesus on the northern coast of the Thracian Chersonesus. Ænus, at the mouth of the mighty Hebrus, the principal river of Thrace, was also colonised by Mytileneans. The further expansion of the Greeks on this coast was arrested by the warlike tribes of Thrace.

The Lesbians were soon followed by the Milesians. In 670 they established Abydos, opposite Sestus, and at about the same time (675) founded Cyzicus on the isthmus connecting the mountainous peninsula of Arcotonnesus with the Asiatic mainland. Other Ionian cities also took part in the colonisation of these regions. Lampsacus was colonised from Phocæa (651); Elæus from Teos; Myrlea from Colophon; Perinthus from Samos (600).

The Milesians also advanced into the Pontus at an early date. It was due to them that this sea, which, with its inhospitable shores peopled by wild barbarians, had been the terror of Grecian mariners, became known as “the hospitable sea” (Pontos Euxinos), with which few other regions could compare in importance for Grecian commerce. Miletus is said to have founded in all no less than ninety colonies on the coasts of the Hellespont and Pontus. In 630 Milesians built Sinope not far from the mouth of the Halys, which soon grew to be the most important emporium in this region, and founded in its turn a number of colonies, as Cotyora, Trapezus, and Cerasus. The Milesians, however, turned their attention especially to the northwest and north coasts of the Pontus, which were to become the principal granaries of Greece. After the middle of the seventh century a large number of Milesian colonies grew up here. The first was Istrus south of the mouth of the Danube, said to have been founded in 656; a few years later (644) Olbia, at the mouth of the Borysthenes near its junction with the Hypanis (Bug); then in the first half of the sixth century on the east coast of Thrace, Apollonia, Odessus, and Tomis; further on Tyras at the[205] mouth of the river of like name (Dniester) and Theodosia on the south coast of the Crimea. The Hellenic settlements were especially frequent in the Cimmerian Bosporus, the highway uniting the Pontus with the sea of Mæotis. Nymphæum and the Milesian colony of Panticapæum, the later capital of the Bosporian kingdom, arose here on the western shore; opposite, on the Asiatic shore, was Phanagorea, founded from Teos. Finally, Tanais was founded at the mouth of the Don, the most northerly point ever occupied by the Greeks.

The Megarians had begun to establish themselves on the Propontis at about the same time with the Milesians. In 675 they founded Chalcedon at the entrance to the Thracian Bosporus, and seventeen years later, Byzantium, on the opposite European shore. Selymbria, neighbouring Byzantium on the west, and Astacus, at the most easterly point of the Propontis, not far from the site of the later Nicomedia, were Megarian colonies. The Megarians, however, penetrated into the Pontus itself, at a comparatively late date. Their first colony here was Heraclea, founded in association with Bœotian settlers in the year 550, in the land of the Mariandyni, about two hundred kilometres from the outlet of the Bosporus. From there Mesembria and Callatis were colonised on the east coast of Thrace, and Chersonesus, on the southern point of the Tauric peninsula, near the present Sebastopol.

All of these Grecian towns, however, remained with few exceptions isolated points in the midst of the original population of barbarians. An actual hellenising of the country as in Sicily and lower Italy was never accomplished. This was largely due to the configuration of the Pontine coast, which with the exception of the Crimea has no indentations, so that the Grecian colonies had no way to protect themselves against the attacks of the tribes from the interior. Besides, the winter climate of the regions north of the Pontus was very raw. The Greeks could not feel happy in a land where the vine and olive tree grew only in sheltered places, and only the bitterest necessity or the prospect of great commercial gain could cause them to leave their sunny home-land for such a country. Thus the Grecian cities on the Pontus never became very populous; there was not one among them to compare with Sybaris, Taras, Acragas, to say nothing of Syracuse. Condemned to a continual struggle for existence, the Greeks here had no leisure for the cultivation of higher interests. It is remarkable how poor the Pontine colonies have been in intellectual greatness. Their rôle in history has practically been confined to providing the mother-land with grain, salted fish, and other such raw products. Only once, when the rest of the nation had already fallen under foreign dominion, did they take an active part in great political events. The last battle for Grecian liberty was fought with their forces, but he who led the fight was a hellenised barbarian king.

Although the Hellenes had been able to expand on the Italian, Sicilian, and Pontine coasts with almost no hindrance, Grecian colonisation met an insurmountable obstacle in the old civilised lands on the southeastern shores of the Mediterranean, with their dense populations. In Syria the Hellenes did not attempt a settlement; they were not even able to drive the Phœnicians out of Cyprus. Indeed, when the Assyrian king Sargon conquered Syria at the end of the eighth century, the Greeks on Cyprus thought it advisable to recognise his supremacy, at least nominally, and this relation continued under his successors until Asshurbanapal. Later, after the fall of the Assyrian Empire, the island came under Egyptian rule. Sargon’s son Sennacherib (705-681) repulsed an attempt of the Greeks to settle on the[206] Cilician plain. The warlike tribes of rough Cilicia and Lycia also succeeded in keeping the Greeks at a distance from their coasts, or at least prevented their further expansion. Phaselis, founded by the Rhodians on the western shore of the gulf of Pamphylia in 700, remained the last Grecian colony in the south of Asia Minor.

The rich valley of the Nile attracted Grecian pirates at an early period, the more so as the political divisions of the country in the eighth and first half of the seventh century rendered an effective resistance impossible. The superior military ability of these pirates finally caused Psamthek, the ruler of Saïs, to hire them as mercenaries. With their aid he got the upper hand over the other sectional princes and freed Egypt from the Assyrian yoke (about 660-645). From that time forward, Greeks formed the kernel of the Egyptian army, and although the Nile valley was now closed to piracy, it was, on the other hand, open to Greek commerce. The Milesians founded a colony on the Bolbitinic mouth of the Nile, below Saïs; somewhat later a number of Greek mercantile settlements grew up at Naucratis, not far from the Canopic mouth of the Nile, to which King Aahmes granted rights of corporation. The city soon grew to be the chief commercial emporium of Egypt and in the sixth century occupied, on a small scale, a position like that of the later Alexandria. In the course of time the Greeks would without doubt have become rulers of the country, but the Persian conquest retarded their development for fully a century and put a limit to the further expansion of Hellenism.

The route from Greece to Egypt was usually by way of Crete in a southerly direction to the coast of Libya. This is the narrowest part of the eastern Mediterranean, and the stretch of open sea to be crossed measures hardly three hundred kilometers, about the same as the width of the Ægean Sea. The need soon began to be felt of having a station at the place where land was first touched again. Thus in 630 Greeks from Thera settled upon the small island of Platea, which is situated off the Libyan shore at precisely this point. After a few years the colonists felt strong enough to cross over to the mainland. At a short distance from the coast, where the high tableland of the interior slopes down to the sea, they founded the city of Cyrene. The fertility of the soil and the trade in the aromatic plant silphion, which is here indigenous and was highly prized by the Greeks, assured prosperity to the newcomers. The Libyan tribes living in the neighbourhood were subdued and an attack of the Egyptian king Apries [Uah-ab-Ra] was successfully repulsed (570). A short time later Barca was founded (550) on the heights of the plateau west of Cyrene, and Teuchira and Hesperides on the coast. Carthage prevented a further extension toward the west, and Egypt toward the east, and consequently Cerenaica remained the only district on the south coast of the Mediterranean, which was colonised by Hellenes.

Thus in the course of two centuries the Ionian Sea, the Propontis, and the Pontus had become Grecian seas, and Grecian colonies had arisen in Egypt as well as in Libya, on the west coast of Italy, and in the land of the Celts as far as distant Iberia. The nation had grown out of the narrow limits in which till then its history had been enacted. Greek influence was henceforth predominant within the entire circumference of the Mediterranean. The reaction of this on Grecian life was manifest in all its phases.c

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XII. SOLON THE LAWGIVER

It is on the occasion of Solon’s legislation that we obtain our first glimpse—only a glimpse, unfortunately—of the actual state of Attica and its inhabitants. It is a sad and repulsive picture, presenting to us political discord and private suffering combined.

Violent dissensions prevailed among the inhabitants of Attica, who were separated into three factions—the pedicis, or men of the plain, comprising Athens, Eleusis, and the neighbouring territory, among whom the greatest number of rich families were included; the mountaineers in the east and north of Attica, called diacrii, who were on the whole the poorest party; and the paralii in the southern portion of Attica from sea to sea, whose means and social position were intermediate between the two. Upon what particular points these intestine disputes turned we are not distinctly informed; they were not however peculiar to the period immediately preceding the archontate of Solon; they had prevailed before, and they reappear afterwards prior to the despotism of Pisistratus, the latter standing forward as the leader of the diacrii, and as champion, real or pretended, of the poorer population.

But in the time of Solon these intestine quarrels were aggravated by something much more difficult to deal with—a general mutiny of the poorer population against the rich, resulting from misery combined with oppression. The Thetes, whose condition we have already contemplated in the poems of Homer and Hesiod, are now presented to us as forming the bulk of the population of Attica—the cultivating tenants, metayers, and small proprietors of the country. They are exhibited as weighed down by debts and dependence, and driven in large numbers out of a state of freedom into slavery—the whole mass of them (we are told) being in debt to the rich, who were proprietors of the greater part of the soil. They had either borrowed money for their own necessities, or they tilled the lands of the rich as dependent tenants, paying a stipulated portion of the produce, and in this capacity they were largely in arrear.

All the calamitous effects were here seen of the old harsh law of debtor and creditor,—once prevalent in Greece, Italy, Asia, and a large portion of the world,—combined with the recognition of slavery as a legitimate status, and of the right of one man to sell himself as well as that of another man to buy him. Every debtor unable to fulfil his contract was liable to be adjudged as the slave of his creditor until he could find means either of paying or working it out; and not only he himself, but his minor sons and unmarried daughters and sisters also, whom the law gave him the power of selling. The poor man thus borrowed upon the security of his body, to translate literally the Greek phrase, and upon that of the persons in his family;[208] and so severely had these oppressive contracts been enforced, that many debtors had been reduced from freedom to slavery in Attica itself, many others had been sold for exportation, and some had only hitherto preserved their own freedom by selling their children. Moreover, a great number of the smaller properties in Attica were under mortgage, signified, according to the formality usual in the Attic law, and continued down throughout the historical times, by a stone pillar erected on the land, inscribed with the name of the lender and the amount of the loan. The proprietors of these mortgaged lands, in case of an unfavourable turn of events, had no other prospect except that of irremediable slavery for themselves and their families, either in their own native country, robbed of all its delights, or in some barbarian region where the Attic accent would never meet their ears. Some had fled the country to escape legal adjudication of their persons, and earned a miserable subsistence in foreign parts by degrading occupations. Upon several, too, this deplorable lot had fallen by unjust condemnation and corrupt judges; the conduct of the rich, in regard to money sacred and profane, in regard to matters public as well as private, being thoroughly unprincipled and rapacious.

The manifold and long-continued suffering of the poor under this system, plunged into a state of debasement not more tolerable than that of the Gallic plebs—and the injustices of the rich in whom all political power was then vested—are facts well attested by the poems of Solon himself, even in the short fragments preserved to us, and it appears that immediately preceding the time of his archonship, the evils had ripened to such a point and the determination of the mass of sufferers, to extort for themselves some mode of relief, had become so pronounced that the existing laws could no longer be enforced. According to the profound remark of Aristotle, that seditions are generated by great causes but out of small incidents, we may conceive that some recent events had occurred as immediate stimulants to the outbreak of the debtors—like those which lend so striking an interest to the early Roman annals, as the inflaming sparks of violent popular movements for which the train had long before been laid. Condemnations by the archons of insolvent debtors may have been unusually numerous, or the maltreatment of some particular debtor, once a respected freeman, in his condition of slavery, may have been brought to act vividly upon the public sympathies—like the case of the old plebeian centurion at Rome (first impoverished by the plunder of the enemy, then reduced to borrow, and lastly adjudged to his creditor as an insolvent), who claimed the protection of the people in the forum, rousing their feelings to the highest pitch by the marks of the slave-whip visible on his person. Some such incidents had probably happened, though we have no historians to recount them; moreover it is not unreasonable to imagine, that that public mental affliction which the purifier Epimenides had been invoked to appease, as it sprung in part from pestilence, so it had its cause partly in years of sterility, which must of course have aggravated the distress of the small cultivators. However this may be, such was the condition of things in 594 B.C., through mutiny of the poor freemen and Thetes, and uneasiness of the middling citizens, that the governing oligarchy, unable either to enforce their private debts or to maintain their political power, were obliged to invoke the well-known wisdom and integrity of Solon. Though his vigorous protest (which doubtless rendered him acceptable to the mass of the people) against the iniquity of the existing system, had already been proclaimed in his poems, they still hoped that he would serve as an auxiliary to help them over their difficulties, and[209] they therefore chose him, nominally as archon along with Philombrotus, but with power in substance dictatorial.b

For the life of Solon we can do no better than turn to Plutarch, keeping the very translation, by North, that Shakespeare read, but modernising the spelling.

THE LIFE AND LAWS OF SOLON ACCORDING TO PLUTARCH

He was of the noblest and most ancient house of the city of Athens. For of his father’s side, he was descended of King Codrus: and for his mother, Heraclides Ponticus writeth, she was cousin-german unto Pisistratus’ mother. For this cause even from the beginning there was great friendship between them, partly for their kindred, and partly also for the courtesy and beauty of Pisistratus, with whom it is reported Solon on a time was in love. But Solon’s father (as Hermippus writeth) having spent his goods in liberality, and deeds of courtesy, though he might easily have been relieved at divers men’s hands with money, he was yet ashamed to take any, because he came of a house which was wont rather to give and relieve others, than to take themselves: so being yet a young man, he devised to trade merchandise. Howbeit others say, that Solon travelled countries, rather to see the world, and to learn, than to traffic, or gain. For sure he was very desirous of knowledge, as appeareth manifestly: for that being now old, he commonly used to say this verse:

Also he was not covetously bent, nor loved riches too much: for he said in one place:

And in another place also he saith:

Solon learned to be lavish in expense, to fare delicately, and to speak wantonly of pleasures in his poems, somewhat more licentiously than became the gravity of a philosopher: only because he was brought up in the trade of merchandise, wherein for that men are marvellous subject to great losses and dangers, they seek other whiles good cheer to drive these cares away, and liberty to make much of themselves. Poetry at the beginning he used but for pleasure, and when he had leisure, writing no matter of importance in his verses. Afterwards he set out many grave matters of[210] philosophy, and the most part of such things as he had devised before, in the government of a commonweal, which he did not for history or memory’s sake, but only of a pleasure to discourse: for he showeth the reasons of that he did, and in some places he exhorteth, chideth, and reproveth the Athenians. And some affirm also he went about to write his laws and ordinances in verse, and do recite his preface, which was this:

He chiefly delighted in moral philosophy, which treated of government and commonweals: as the most part of the wise men did of those times. But for natural philosophy, he was very gross and simple. So in effect there was none but Thales alone of all the seven wise men of Greece, who searched further the contemplation of things in common use among men, than he. For setting him apart, all the others got the name of wisdom, only for their understanding in matters of State and government. It is reported that they met on a day all seven together in the city of Delphes, and another time in the city of Corinth, where Periander got them together at a feast that he made to the other six.

Anacharsis being arrived at Athens, went to knock at Solon’s gate, saying that he was a stranger which came of purpose to see him, and to desire his acquaintance and friendship. Solon answered him, that it was better to seek friendship in his own country. Anacharsis replied again: “Thou then that art at home, and in thine own country, begin to show me friendship.” Then Solon wondering at his bold ready wit, entertained him very courteously: and kept him a certain time in his house, and made him very good cheer, at the self-same time wherein he was most busy in governing the commonweal, and making laws for the state thereof. Which when Anacharsis understood, he laughed at it, to see that Solon imagined with written laws, to bridle men’s covetousness and injustice. “For such laws,” said he, “do rightly resemble the spider’s cobwebs: because they take hold of little flies and gnats which fall into them, but the rich and mighty will break and run through them at their will.” Solon answered him, that men do justly keep all covenants and bargains which one makes with another, because it is to the hindrance of either party to break them: and even so, he did so temper his laws, that he made his citizens know, it was more for their profit to obey law and justice, than to break it. Nevertheless afterwards, matters proved rather according to Anacharsis’ comparison, than agreeable to the hope that Solon had conceived. Anacharsis being by hap one day in a common assembly of the people at Athens, said that he marvelled much, why in the consultations and meetings of the Grecians, wise men propounded matters, and fools did decide them.

The Athenians, having sustained a long and troublesome war against the Megarians, for the possession of the isle of Salamis, were in the end weary of it, and made proclamation straightly commanding upon pain of death, that no man should presume to prefer any more to the counsel of the city, the title or question of the possession of the isle of Salamis. Solon could not bear this open shame, and seeing the most part of the lustiest youths desirous still of war, though their tongues were tied for fear of the proclamation; he feigned himself to be out of his wits, and caused it to be given out that Solon was become a fool; and secretly he had made certain[211] lamentable verses, which he had conned without book, to sing abroad the city. So one day he ran suddenly out of his house with a garland on his head, and got him to the market-place, where the people straight swarmed like bees about him: and getting him up upon the stone where all proclamations are usually made out he singeth the elegies he had made.

This elegy is entitled Salamis, and containeth an hundred verses, which are excellently well written. And these being sung openly by Solon at that time, his friends incontinently praised them beyond measure, and especially Pisistratus: and they went about persuading the people that were present, to credit that he spake. Hereupon the matter was so handled amongst them, that by and by the proclamation was revoked, and they began to follow the wars with greater fury than before, appointing Solon to be general in the same.

But the common tale and report is, that he went by sea with Pisistratus unto the temple of Venus, surnamed Colias: where he found all the women at a solemn feast and sacrifice, which they made of custom to the goddess. He taking occasion thereby, sent from thence a trusty man of his own unto the Megarians, which then had Salamis: whom he instructed to feign himself a revolted traitor, and that he came of purpose to tell them, that if they would but go with him, they might take all the chief ladies and gentlewomen of Athens on a sudden. The Megarians easily believed him, and shipped forthwith certain soldiers to go with him. But when Solon perceived the ship under sail coming from Salamis, he commanded the women to depart, and instead of them he put lusty beardless springalls into their apparel, and gave them little short daggers to convey under their clothes, commanding them to play and dance together upon the seaside, until their enemies were landed, and their ship at anchor; and so it came to pass. For the Megarians being deceived by that they saw afar off, as soon as ever they came to the shore side did land in heaps, one in another’s neck, even for greediness, to take these women: but not a man of them escaped, for they were slain every mother’s son. This stratagem being finely handled, and to good effect, the Athenians took sea straight, and coasted over to the isle of Salamis: which they took upon the sudden, and won it without much resistance.

Others say that it was not taken after this sort: By order of the oracle, Solon one night passed over to Salamis, and did sacrifice to Periphemus, and to Cychreus, demi-gods of the country. Which done, the Athenians delivered him five hundred men, who willingly offered themselves: and the city made an accord with them: that if they took the isle of Salamis, they should bear greatest authority in the commonweal. Solon embarked his soldiers into divers fisher boats, and appointed a galliot of thirty oars to come after him, and he anchored hard by the city of Salamis, under the point which looketh towards the isle of Negropont. The Megarians which were within Salamis, having by chance heard some inkling of it, but yet knew nothing of certainty: ran presently in hurly-burly to arm them, and manned out a ship to descry what it was. But they fondly coming within danger, were taken by Solon, who clapped the Megarians under hatches fast bound, and in their rooms put aboard in their ship the choicest soldiers he had of the Athenians, commanding them to set their course direct upon the city, and to keep themselves as close out of sight as could be. And he himself with all the rest of his soldiers landed presently, and marched to encounter with the Megarians, which were come out into the field. Now whilst they were fighting together, Solon’s men whom he had sent in the Megarians’ ship entered the haven and won the town. This is certainly true, and testified[212] by that which is showed yet at this day. For to keep a memorial hereof, a ship of Athens arriveth quietly at the first, and by and by those that are in the ship make a great shout, and a man armed leaping out of the ship, runneth shouting towards the rock called Sciradion, which is as they come from the firm land: and hard by the same is the temple of Mars, which Solon built there after he had overcome the Megarians in battle, from whence he sent back again those prisoners that he had taken (which were saved from the slaughter of the battle) without any ransom paying. Nevertheless, the Megarians were sharply bent still, to recover Salamis again. Much hurt being done and suffered on both sides: both parties in the end made the Lacedæmonians judges of the quarrel.

Solon undoubtedly won great glory and honour by this exploit, yet was he much more honoured and esteemed, for the oration he made in defence of the temple of Apollo, in the city of Delphes: declaring that it was not meet to be suffered, that the Cyrrhæans should at their pleasure abuse the sanctuary of the oracle, and that they should aid the Delphians in honour and reverence of Apollo. Whereupon the counsel of the Amphictyons, being moved with his words and persuasions, proclaimed wars against the Cyrrhæans.

Now that this sedition was utterly appeased in Athens, for that the excommunicates were banished the country, the city fell again into their old troubles and dissensions about the government of the commonweal: and they were divided into so diverse parties and factions, as there were people of sundry places and territories within the country of Attica. For there were the people of the mountains, the people of the valleys, and the people of the seacoast. Those of the mountains, took the common people’s part for their lives. Those of the valley, would a few of the best citizens should carry the sway. The coastmen would that neither of them should prevail, because they would have had a mean government and mingled of them both. Furthermore, the faction between the poor and rich, proceeding of their unequality, was at that time very great. By reason whereof the city was in great danger, and it seemed there was no way to pacify or take up these controversies, unless some tyrant happened to rise, that would take upon him to rule the whole. For all the common people were so sore indebted to the rich, that either they ploughed their lands, and yielded them the sixth part of their crop (for which cause they were called hectemorii and servants), or else they borrowed money of them at usury, upon gauge of their bodies to serve it out. And if they were not able to pay them, then were they by the law delivered to their creditors, who kept them as bondsmen and slaves in their houses, or else they sent them into strange countries to be sold: and many even for very poverty were forced to sell their own children (for there was no law to forbid the contrary) or else to forsake their city and country, for the extreme cruelty and hard dealings of these abominable usurers, their creditors. Insomuch that many of the lustiest and stoutest of them, banded together in companies, and encouraged one another, not to suffer and bear any longer such extremity, but to choose them a stout and trusty captain, that might set them at liberty, and redeem those out of captivity, which were judged to be bondsmen and servants, for lack of paying of their debts at their days appointed: and so to make again a new division of all lands and tenements, and wholly to change and turn up the whole state and government.

Then the wisest men of the city, who saw Solon only neither partner with the rich in their oppression, neither partaker with the poor in their necessity: made suit to him, that it would please him to take the matter in[213] hand, and to appease and pacify all these broils and sedition. Yet Phanias Lesbian writeth, that he used a subtilty, whereby he deceived both the one and the other side, concerning the commonweal. For he secretly promised the poor to divide the lands again: and the rich also, to confirm their covenants and bargains. Howsoever it fell out, it is very certain that Solon from the beginning made it a great matter, and was very scrupulous to deal between them, fearing the covetousness of the one, and arrogancy of the other. Howbeit in the end he was chosen governor after Philombrotus, and was made reformer of the rigour of the laws, and the temperer of the state and commonweal, by consent and agreement of both parties.

The rich accepted him, because he was no beggar: the poor did also like him, because he was an honest man. They say, moreover, that one word and sentence which he spake (which at that present was rife in every man’s mouth) that equality did breed no strife: did as well please the rich and wealthy, as the poor and needy. For the one sort conceived of this word equality, that he would measure all things according to the quality of the man: and the other took it for their purpose, that he would measure all things by the number, and by the poll only. Thus the captains of both sections persuaded and prayed him, boldly to take upon him that sovereign authority, since he had the whole city now at his commandment. The neuters also of every part, when they saw it very hard to pacify these things with law and reason, were well content that the wisest, and honestest man, should alone have the royal power in his hands. But his familiar friends above all rebuked him, saying he was to be accounted no better than a beast, if for fear of the name of tyrant, he would refuse to take upon him a kingdom: which is the most just and honourable state, if one take it upon him that is an honest man.

Now, notwithstanding he had refused the kingdom, yet he waxed nothing the more remiss or soft therefor in governing, neither would he bow for fear of the great, nor yet would frame his laws to their liking, that had chosen him their reformer. For where the mischief was tolerable, he did not straight pluck it up by the roots: neither did he so change the state, as he might have done, lest if he should have attempted to turn upside down the whole government, he might afterwards have been never able to settle and establish the same again. Therefore he only altered that which he thought by reason he could persuade his citizens unto, or else by force he ought to compel them to accept, mingling as he said, sour with sweet, and force with justice. And herewith agreeth his answer that he made afterwards unto one that asked him, if he had made the best laws he could for the Athenians? “Yea, sure,” saith he, “such as they were able to receive.” And this that followeth also, they have ever since observed in the Athenian tongue: to make certain things pleasant, that be hateful, finely conveying them under colour of pleasing names. As calling taxes, contributions: garrisons, guards: prisons, houses. And all this came up first by Solon’s invention, who called clearing of debts seisachtheia: in English, discharge.

The Law Concerning Debts

For the first change and reformation he made in government was this: he ordained that all manner of debts past should be clear, and nobody should ask his debtor anything for the time passed. That no man should thenceforth lend money out to usury upon covenants for the body to be bound, if it were not repaid. Howbeit some write (as Androtion among other) that[214] the poor were contented that the interest only for usury should be moderated, without taking away the whole debt: and that Solon called this easy and gentle discharge, seisachtheia, with crying up the value of money. For he raised the pound of silver, being before but threescore and thirteen drachmas, full up to an hundred: so they which were to pay great sums of money, paid by tale as much as they ought, but with less number of pieces than the debt could have been paid when it was borrowed. And so the debtors gained much, and the creditors lost nothing. Nevertheless the greater part of them which have written the same, say, that this crying up of money, was a general discharge of all debts, conditions, and covenants upon the same: whereto the very poems themselves, which Solon wrote, do seem to agree. For he glorieth, and breaketh forth in his verses, that he had taken away all marks that separated men’s lands through the country of Attica, and that now he had set at liberty, that which before was in bondage. And that of the citizens of Athens, which for lack of payment of their debts had been condemned for slaves to their creditors, he had brought many home again out of strange countries, where they had been so long, that they had forgotten to speak their natural tongue, and others which remained at home in captivity, he had now set them all at good liberty.

But while he was in doing this, men say a thing thwarted him, that troubled him marvellously. For having framed an edict for clearing of all debts, and lacking only a little to grace it with words, and to give it some pretty preface, that otherwise was ready to be proclaimed: he opened himself somewhat to certain of his familiars whom he trusted (as Conon, Clinias, and Hipponicus) and told them how he would not meddle with lands and possessions, but would only clear and cut off all manner of debts. These men, before the proclamation came out, went presently to the money-men, and borrowed great sums of money of them, and laid it out straight upon land. So when the proclamation came out, they kept the lands they had purchased, but restored not the money they had borrowed. This foul part of theirs made Solon very ill spoken of, and wrongfully blamed: as if he had not only suffered it, but had been partaker of this wrong and injustice. Notwithstanding he cleared himself of this slanderous report, losing five talents by his own law. For it was well known that so much was due unto him, and he was the first that, following his own proclamation, did clearly release his debtors of the same. Notwithstanding, they ever after called Solon’s friends Chreocopides, cutters of debts. This law neither liked the one nor the other sort. For it greatly offended the rich, for cancelling their bonds: and it much more misliked the poor, because all lands and possessions they gaped for, were not made again common, and everybody alike rich and wealthy, as Lycurgus had made the Lacedæmonians.

But Lycurgus was the eleventh descended of the right line from Hercules, and had many years been king of Lacedæmon, where he had gotten great authority, and made himself many friends: all which things together, did greatly help him to execute that, which he wisely had imagined for the order of his commonweal. Yet also, he used more persuasion than force, a good witness thereof the loss of his eye: preferring a law before his private injury, which hath power to preserve a city long in union and concord, and to make citizens to be neither poor nor rich.

Solon could not attain to this. Howbeit he did what he could possible, with the power he had, as one seeking to win no credit with his citizens, but only by his counsel. To begin withal, he first took away all Draco’s bloody laws, saving for murder and manslaughter.

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Class Legislation

Then Solon being desirous to have the chief offices of the city to remain in rich men’s hands, as already they did, and yet to mingle the authority of government in such sort, as the meaner people might bear a little sway, which they never could before: he made an estimate of the goods of every private citizen. And those which he found yearly worth five hundred bushels of corn, and other liquid fruits and upwards, he called pentacosiomedimni: as to say, five-hundred-bushel-men of revenue. And those that had three hundred bushels a year, and were able to keep a horse of service, he put in the second degree, and called them knights. They that might dispend but two hundred bushels a year, were put in the third place, and called zeugitæ. All other under those, were called thetes, as you would say, hirelings, or craftsmen living of their labour: whom he did not admit to bear any office in the city, neither were they taken as free citizens, saving they had voices in elections, and assemblies of the city, and in judgments, where the people wholly judged.

Furthermore because his laws were written somewhat obscurely, and might be diversely taken and interpreted, this did give a great deal more authority and power to the judges. For, considering all their controversies could not be ended, and judged by express law: they were driven of necessity always to run to the judges and debated their matters before them. Insomuch as the judges by this means came to be somewhat above the law: for they did even expound it as they would themselves.

Yet considering it was meet to provide for the poverty of the common sort of people: he suffered any man that would, to take upon him the defence of any poor man’s case that had the wrong. For if a man were hurt, beaten, forced, or otherwise wronged: any other man that would, might lawfully sue the offender, and prosecute law against him. And this was a wise law ordained of him, to accustom his citizens to be sorry for another’s hurt, and so to feel it, as if any part of his own body had been injured. And they say he made an answer on a time agreeable to this law. For, being asked what city he thought best governed, he answered: “That city where such as receive no wrong, do as earnestly defend wrong offered to others, as the very wrong and injury had been done unto themselves.” He erected also the council of the Areopagites, of those magistrates of the city, out of which they did yearly choose their governor: and he himself had been of that number, for that he had been governor for a year.

Wherefore perceiving now the people were grown to a stomach and haughtiness of mind because they were clear discharged of their debts: he set one up for matters of state, another council of an hundred chosen out of every tribe, whereof four hundred of them were to consult and debate of all matters, before they were propounded to the people: that when the great council of the people at large should be assembled, no matters should be put forth, unless it had been before well considered of, and digested, by the council of the four hundred. Moreover, he ordained the higher court should have the chief authority and power over all things, and chiefly to see the law executed and maintained: supposing that the commonweal being settled, and stayed with these two courts (as with two strong anchor-holds), it should be the less turmoiled and troubled, and the people also better pacified and quieted. The most part of writers hold this opinion, that it was Solon which erected the council of the Areopagites, as we have said, and it is very likely to be true, for that Draco in all his laws and ordinances made no[216] manner of mention of the Areopagites, but always speaketh to the ephetes (which were judges of life and death) when he spake of murder, or of any man’s death.

Notwithstanding, the eighth law of the thirteenth table of Solon saith thus, in these very words: All such as have been banished or detected of naughty life, before Solon made his laws, shall be restored again to their goods and good name, except those which were condemned by order of the council of the Areopagites, or by the ephetes, or by the kings in open court, for murder, and death of any man, or for aspiring to usurp tyranny. These words to the contrary seem to prove and testify, that the council of the Areopagites was, before Solon was chosen reformer of the laws. For how could offenders and wicked men be condemned by order of the council of the Areopagites before Solon, if Solon was the first that gave it authority to judge?

Miscellaneous Laws; the Rights of Women

Furthermore amongst the rest of his laws, one of them indeed was of his own device: for the like was never stablished elsewhere. And it is that law, that pronounceth him defamed, and dishonest, who in a civil uproar among the citizens, sitteth still a looker-on, and a neuter, and taketh part with neither side. Whereby his mind was as it should appear, that private men should not be only careful to put themselves and their causes in safety, nor yet should be careless for other men’s matters, or think it a virtue not to meddle with the miseries and misfortunes of their country, but from the beginning of every sedition that they should join with those that take the justest cause in hand, and rather to hazard themselves with such, than to tarry looking (without putting themselves in danger) which of the two should have the victory.

There is another law also, which at the first sight methinketh is very unhonest and fond. That if any man according to the law hath matched with a rich heir and inheritor, and of himself is impotent, and unable to do the office of a husband, she may lawfully lie with any whom she liketh, of her husband’s nearest kinsmen. Howbeit some affirm, that it is a wise made law for those, which knowing themselves unmeet to entertain wedlock, will for covetousness of lands, marry with rich heirs and possessioners, and mind to abuse poor gentlewomen under the colour of law: and will think to force and restrain nature. This also confirmeth the same, that such a new-married wife should be shut up with her husband, and eat a quince with him: and that he also which marrieth such an inheritor, should of duty see her thrice a month at the least. For although he get no children of her, yet it is an honour the husband doth to his wife, arguing that he taketh her for an honest woman, that he loveth her, and that he esteemeth of her. Besides, it taketh away many mislikings and displeasures which oftentimes happen in such cases, and keepeth love and good will waking, that it die not utterly between them.

Furthermore, he took away all jointures and dowries in other marriages, and willed that the wives should bring their husbands but three gowns only, with some other little movables of small value, and without any other thing as it were: utterly forbidding that they should buy their husbands, or that they should make merchandise of marriages, as of other trades to gain, but would that man and woman should marry together for issue, for pleasure, and for love, but in no case for money.

They greatly commend another law of Solon’s, which forbiddeth to speak ill of the dead. For it is a good and godly thing to think, that they ought[217] not to touch the dead, no more than to touch holy things; and men should take great heed to offend those that are departed out of this world; besides it is a token of wisdom and civility, to beware of immortal enemies. He commanded also in the self-same law, that no man should speak ill of the living, specially in churches, during divine service, or in council chamber of the city, nor in the theatres whilst games were a-playing: upon pain of three silver drachmæ to be paid to him that was injured, and two to the common treasury.

So he was marvellously well thought of, for the law that he made touching wills and testaments. For before, men might not lawfully make their heirs whom they would, but the goods came to the children or kindred of the testator. But he leaving it at liberty, to dispose their goods where they thought good, so they had no children of their own: did therein prefer friendship before kindred, and good will and favour before necessity and constraint, and so made every one lord and master of his own goods. Yet he did not simply and alike allow all sorts of gifts howsoever they were made: but those only which were made by men of sound memory, or by those whose wits failed them not by extreme sickness, or through drinks, medicines, poisonings, charms, or other such violence and extraordinary means, neither yet through the enticements and persuasions of women. As thinking very wisely, there was no difference at all between those that were evidently forced by constraint, and those that were compassed and wrought by subornation at length to do a thing against their will, taking fraud in this case equal with violence, and pleasure with sorrow, as passions with madness, which commonly have as much force the one as the other, to draw and drive men from reason.

He made another law also, in which he appointed women their times to go abroad into the fields, their mourning, their feasts and sacrifices, plucking from them all disorder and wilful liberty, which they used before. For he did forbid that they should carry out of the city with them above three gowns, and to take victuals with them above the value of a half-penny, neither basket nor pannier above a cubit high: and especially he did forbid them to go in the night other than in their coach, and that a torch should be carried before them. He did forbid them also at the burial of the dead, to tear and spoil themselves with blows, to make lamentations in verses, to weep at the funeral of a stranger not being their kinsman, to sacrifice an ox on the grave of the dead, to bury above three gowns with the corpse, to go to other men’s graves, but at the very time of burying the corpse.

Results of Solon’s Legislation

And perceiving that the city of Athens began to replenish daily more and more, by men’s repairing thither from all parts, and by reason of the great assured safety and liberty that they found there: and also considering how the greatest part of the realm became in manner heathy, and was very barren, and that men trafficking the seas, are not wont to bring any merchandise to those, which can give them nothing again in exchange: he began to practise that his citizens should give themselves unto crafts and occupations, and made a law, that the son should not be bound to relieve his father being old, unless he had set him in his youth to some occupation.

It was a wise part of Lycurgus (who dwelt in a city where was no resort for strangers, and had so great a territory, as could have furnished twice as many people, as Euripides saith, and moreover on all sides was environed[218] with a great number of slaves of the helots, whom it was needful to keep still in labour and work continually) to have his citizens always occupied in exercises of feats of arms, without making them to learn any other science, but discharge them of all other miserable occupations and handicrafts.

But Solon framing his laws unto things, and not things unto laws, when he saw the country of Attica so lean and barren, that it could hardly bring forth to sustain those that tilled the ground only, and therefore much more impossible to keep so great a multitude of idle people as were in Athens: thought it very requisite to set up occupations, and to give them countenance and estimation. Therefore he ordered, that the council of the Areopagites, should have full power and authority to inquire how every man lived in the city, and also to punish such as they found idle people, and did not labour. Yet to say truly, in Solon’s laws touching women, there are many absurdities, as they fall out ill-favouredly. For he maketh it lawful for any man to kill an adulterer taking him with the fact. But he that ravisheth or forcibly taketh away a free woman, is only condemned to pay a hundred silver drachmæ.

Of the fruits of the earth, he was contented they should transport and sell only oil out of the realm to strangers, but no other fruit or grain. He ordained that the governor of the city should yearly proclaim open curses against those that should do to the contrary, or else he himself making default therein, should be fined at a hundred drachmæ. This ordinance is in the first table of Solon’s laws, and therefore we may not altogether discredit those which say, they did forbid in the old time that men should carry figs out of the country of Attica, and that from hence it came that these pick-thanks, which bewray and accuse them that transported figs, were called sycophants. He made another law also against the hurt that beasts might do unto men. Wherein he ordained, that if a dog did bite any man, he that owned him should deliver to him that was bitten, his dog tied to a log of timber of four cubits long: and this was a very good device, to make men safe from dogs. But he was very straight in one law he made, that no stranger might be made denizen and free man of the city of Athens, unless he were a banished man forever out of his country, or else that he should come and dwell there with all his family, to exercise some craft or science. Notwithstanding, they say he made not this law so much to put strangers from their freedom there, as to draw them thither, assuring them by this ordinance, they might come and be free of the city: and he thought moreover, that both the one and the other would be more faithful to the commonweal of Athens.

This also was another of Solon’s laws, which he ordained for those that should feast certain days at the townhouse of the city, at other men’s cost. For he would not allow, that one man should come often to feasts there. And if any man were invited thither to the feast, and did refuse to come: he did set a fine on his head, as reproving the miserable niggardliness of the one and the presumptuous arrogancy of the other, to contemn and despise common order.

After he had made his laws, he did stablish them to continue for the space of one hundred years, and they were written in tables of wood called axones. So all the councils and magistrates together did swear, that they would keep Solon’s laws themselves, and also cause them to be observed of others thoroughly and particularly. Then every one of the thesmothetes (which were certain officers attendant on the council, and had special charge to see the laws observed) did solemnly swear in the open market-place, near the stone[219] where the proclamations are proclaimed: and every one of them both promised, and vowed openly to keep the same laws, and that if any of them did in any one point break the said ordinances, then they were content that such offender should pay to the temple of Apollo, at the city of Delphi, an image of fine gold, that should weigh as much as himself.

Now after his laws were proclaimed, there came some daily unto him, which either praised them, or misliked them: and prayed him either to take away, or to add something unto them. Many again came and asked him how he understood some sentence of his laws: and requested him to declare his meaning, and how it should be taken. Wherefore considering how it were to no purpose to refuse to do it, and again how it would get him much envy and ill will to yield thereunto: he determined (happen what would) to wind himself out of these briers, and to fly the groanings, complaints, and quarrels of his citizens. So, to convey himself awhile out of the way, he took upon him to be master of a ship in a certain voyage, and asked license for ten years of the Athenians to go beyond sea, hoping by that time the Athenians would be very well acquainted with his laws.

SOLON’S JOURNEY AND RETURN; PISISTRATUS

So went he to the seas, and the first place of his arrival was in Egypt, where he remained awhile. And as for the meeting and talk betwixt him and King Crœsus, I know there are that by distance of time will prove it but a fable, and devised of pleasure: but for my part I will not reject, nor condemn so famous a history, received and approved by so many grave testimonies. Moreover it is very agreeable to Solon’s manners and nature, and also not unlike to his wisdom and magnanimity: although in all points it agreeth not with certain tables (which they call Chronicles) where they have busily noted the order and course of times which even to this day, many have curiously sought to correct.[15]

But during the time of his absence, great seditions rose at Athens amongst the inhabitants, who had gotten them several heads amongst them: as those of the valley had made Lycurgus their head. The coast-men Megacles, the son of Alcmæon. And those of the mountains, Pisistratus; with whom all artificers and craftsmen living of their handy labour were joined, which were the stoutest against the rich. So that notwithstanding the city kept Solon’s laws and ordinances, yet was there not a man but gaped for a change, and desired to see things in another state.

The whole commonweal broiling thus with troubles, Solon arrived at Athens, where every man did honour and reverence him: howbeit he was no more able to speak aloud in open assembly to the people, nor to deal in matters as he had done before, because his age would not suffer him: and therefore he spake with every one of the heads of the several factions apart, trying if he could agree and reconcile them together again.

Whereupon Pisistratus seemed to be more willing than any of the rest, for he was courteous, and marvellous fair spoken, and showed himself besides very good and pitiful to the poor, and temperate also to his enemies: further, if any good quality were lacking in him, he did so finely counterfeit it, that men imagined it was more in him, than in those that naturally had it in them indeed. By this art and fine manner of his, he deceived the poor common[220] people. Howbeit Solon found him straight, and saw the mark he shot at: but yet hated him not at that time, and sought still to win him, and bring him to reason.

Shortly after Pisistratus having wounded himself, and bloodied all his body over, caused his men to carry him in his couch into the market-place, where he put the people in an uproar, and told them that they were his enemies that thus traitorously had handled and arrayed him, for that he stood with them about the governing of the commonweal: insomuch as many of them were marvellously offended, and mutinied by and by, crying out it was shamefully done. Then Solon drawing near said unto him: “O thou son of Hippocrates, thou dost ill-favouredly counterfeit the person of Homer’s Ulysses: for thou hast whipped thyself to deceive thy citizens, as he did tear and scratch himself, to deceive his enemies.” Notwithstanding this, the common people were still in uproar, being ready to take arms for Pisistratus: and there was a general council assembled, in the which one Ariston spake, that they should grant fifty men, to carry halberds and maces before Pisistratus for guard of his person.

But Solon going up into the pulpit for orations, stoutly inveighed against it. But in the end, seeing the poor people did tumult still, taking Pisistratus’ part, and that the rich fled here and there, he went his way also.

Wherefore he hied him home again, and took his weapons out of his house, and laid them before his gate in the midst of the street, saying: “For my part, I have done what I can possible, to help and defend the laws and liberties of my country.”

So from that time he betook himself unto his ease, and never after dealt any more in matters of state, or commonweal. His friends did counsel him to fly: but all they could not persuade him to it. For he kept his house, and gave himself to make verses, in which he sore reproved the Athenians’ faults. His friends hereupon did warn him to beware of such speeches, and to take heed what he said, lest if it came unto the tyrant’s ears, he might put him to death for it. And further, they asked him wherein he trusted, that he spake so boldly. He answered them, “In my age.”

Howbeit Pisistratus, after he had obtained his purpose, sending for him upon his word and faith, did honour and entertain him so well, that Solon in the end became one of his council, and approved many things which he did.

Solon lived a long time after Pisistratus had usurped the tyranny, as Heraclides Ponticus writeth. Howbeit Phanias Ephesian writeth, that he lived not above two years after.d

A MODERN VIEW OF SOLONIAN LAWS AND CONSTITUTION

As a recent summing up of Solon, we may quote Professor Bury:

“He was a poet, not because he was poetically inspired, like the Parian Archilochus of an earlier, or the Lesbian Sappho of his own, generation; but because at that time every man of letters was a poet; there was no prose literature. A hundred years later Solon would have used prose as the vehicle of his thought. We are fortunate enough to possess portions of poems—political pamphlets—which he published for the purpose of guiding public opinion; and thus we have his view of the situation in his own words.

“The character of the remedial measures of Solon is imperfectly known. His title to fame as one of the great statesmen of Europe rests upon his[221] reform of the constitution. He discovered a secret of democracy, and he used his discovery to build up the constitution on democratic foundations. The Athenian commonwealth did not actually become a democracy till many years later. The radical measure of Solon, which was the very corner-stone of the Athenian democracy, was his constitution of the courts of justice. He composed the law courts out of all the citizens, including the Thetes; and as the panels of judges were enrolled by lot, the poorest burgher might have his turn. The constitution of the judicial courts out of the whole people was the secret of democracy which Solon discovered.

“It was the fate of Solon to live long enough to see the establishment of the tyranny which he dreaded. We know not what part he had taken in the troubled world of politics since his return to Athens. The story was invented that he called upon the citizens to arm themselves against the tyrant, but called in vain; and that then, laying his arms outside the threshold of his house, he cried, ‘I have aided, so far as I could, my country and the constitution, and I appeal to others to do likewise.’ Nor has the story that he refused to live under a tyranny and sought refuge with his Cyprian friend the king of Soli, any good foundation. We know only that in his later years he enjoyed the pleasures of wine and love, and that he survived but a short time the seizure of the tyranny by Pisistratus, who at least treated the old man with respect.”e

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XIII. PISISTRATUS THE TYRANT

Pisistratus directed with admirable moderation the courses of the revolution he had produced. Many causes of success were combined in his favour. His enemies had been the supposed enemies of the people, and the multitude doubtless beheld the flight of the Alcmæonidæ (still odious in their eyes by the massacre of Cylon) as the defeat of a foe, while the triumph of the popular chief was recognised as the victory of the people. In all revolutions the man who has sided with the people is permitted by the people the greatest extent of license. It is easy to perceive, by the general desire which the Athenians had expressed for the elevation of Solon to the supreme authority, that the notion of regal authority was not yet hateful to them, and that they were scarcely prepared for the liberties with which they were entrusted. But although they submitted thus patiently to the ascendency of Pisistratus, it is evident that a less benevolent, or less artful tyrant would not have been equally successful. Raised above the law, that subtle genius governed only by the law; nay, he affected to consider its authority greater than his own. He assumed no title—no attribute of sovereignty. He was accused of murder, and he humbly appeared before the tribunal of the Areopagus—a proof not more of the moderation of the usurper than of the influence of public opinion. He enforced the laws of Solon, and compelled the unruly tempers of his faction to subscribe to their wholesome rigour. The one revolution did not, therefore, supplant, it confirmed, the other. “By these means,” says Herodotus, “Pisistratus mastered Athens, and yet his situation was far from secure.”

Although the heads of the more moderate party, under Megacles, had been expelled from Athens, yet the faction, equally powerful, and equally hostile, headed by Lycurgus, and embraced by the bulk of the nobles, still remained. For a time, extending perhaps to five or six years, Pisistratus retained his power; but at length, Lycurgus, uniting with the exiled Alcmæonidæ, succeeded in expelling him from the city. But the union that had led to his expulsion, ceased with that event. The contests between the lowlanders and the coastmen were only more inflamed by the defeat of the third party which had operated as a balance of power, and the broils of their several leaders were fed by personal ambition as by hereditary animosities. Megacles, therefore, unable to maintain equal ground with Lycurgus, turned his thoughts towards the enemy he had subdued, and sent proposals to Pisistratus, offering to unite their forces, and to support him in his pretensions to the tyranny, upon condition that the exiled chief should marry his daughter Cœsyra. Pisistratus readily acceded to the terms, and it was resolved by a theatrical pageant to reconcile his return to the people.b

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This was, according to Herodotus, “the most ridiculous project that was ever imagined.” “In the Pæanean tribe was a woman named Phya,” he says, “four cubits high, wanting three fingers, and in other respects handsome; having dressed this woman in a complete suit of armour, and placed her on a chariot, and having shown her beforehand how to assume the most becoming demeanour, they drove her to the city, having sent heralds before, who, on their arrival in the city, proclaimed what was ordered in these terms: ‘O Athenians, receive with kind wishes Pisistratus, whom Minerva herself, honouring above all men, now conducts back to her own citadel.’ They then went about proclaiming this; and a report was presently spread among the people that Minerva was bringing back Pisistratus; and the people in the city, believing this woman to be the goddess, both adored a human being, and received Pisistratus.”c

The sagacity of the Athenians was already so acute, and the artifice appeared to Herodotus so gross, that the simple Halicarnassian could scarcely credit the authenticity of this tale. But it is possible that the people viewed the procession as an ingenious allegory, to the adaptation of which they were already disposed; and that like the populace of a later and yet more civilised people, they hailed the goddess while they recognised the prostitute.[16] Be that as it may, the son of Hippocrates recovered his authority and fulfilled his treaty with Megacles by a marriage with his daughter. Between the commencement of his first tyranny and the date of his second return, there was probably an interval of twelve years. His sons were already adults. Partly from a desire not to increase his family, partly from some superstitious disinclination to the blood of the Alcmæonidæ, which the massacre of Cylon still stigmatised with contamination, Pisistratus conducted himself towards the fair Cœsyra with a chastity either unwelcome to her affection, or afflicting to her pride. The unwedded wife communicated the mortifying secret to her mother, from whose lips it soon travelled to the father. He did not view the purity of Pisistratus with charitable eyes. He thought it an affront to his own person that that of his daughter should be so tranquilly regarded. He entered into a league with his former opponents against the usurper, and so great was the danger, that Pisistratus (despite his habitual courage) betook himself hastily to flight—a strange instance of the caprice of human events, that a man could with a greater impunity subdue the freedom of his country, than affront the vanity of his wife!

Pisistratus, his sons and partisans, retired to Eretria in Eubœa: there they deliberated as to their future proceedings—should they submit to their exile, or attempt to retrieve their power? The counsels of his son Hippias, prevailed with Pisistratus; it was resolved once more to attempt the sovereignty of Athens. The neighbouring tribes assisted the exiles with forage and shelter. Many cities accorded the celebrated noble large sums of money, and the Thebans outdid the rest in pernicious liberality. A troop of Argive adventurers came from the Peloponnesus to tender to the baffled usurper the assistance of their swords, and Lygdamis, an individual of Naxos, himself ambitious of the government of his native state, increased his resources both by money and military force. At length, though after a long and tedious period of no less than eleven years, Pisistratus resolved to hazard the issue of open war. At the head of a foreign force he advanced to Marathon, and pitched his tents upon its immortal plain. Troops of the factious, or discontented, thronged from Athens to his camp, while the bulk[224] of the citizens, unaffected by such desertions, viewed his preparations with indifference. At length, when they heard that Pisistratus had broken up his encampment, and was on his march to the city, the Athenians awoke from their apathy, and collected their forces to oppose him. He continued to advance his troops, halted at the temple of Minerva, whose earthly representative had once so benignly assisted him, and pitched his tents opposite the fane. He took advantage of that time in which the Athenians, during the heat of the day, were at their entertainments, or indulging the noontide repose, still so grateful to the inhabitants of a warmer climate, to commence his attack. He soon scattered the foe, and ordered his sons to overtake them in their flight, to bid them return peaceably to their employments, and fear nothing from his vengeance. His clemency assisted the effect of his valour, and once more the son of Hippocrates became the master of the Athenian commonwealth.

Pisistratus lost no time in strengthening himself by formidable alliances. He retained many auxiliary troops, and provided large pecuniary resources. He spared the persons of his opponents, but sent their children as hostages to Naxos, which he first reduced and consigned to the tyranny of his auxiliary, Lygdamis. Many of his inveterate enemies had perished on the field—many fled from the fear of his revenge. He was undisturbed in the renewal of his sway, and having no motive for violence, pursued the natural bent of a mild and generous disposition, ruling as one who wishes men to forget the means by which his power has been attained.

It was in harmony with this part of his character that Pisistratus refined the taste and socialised the habits of the citizens, by the erection of buildings dedicated to the public worship, or the public uses, and laid out the stately gardens of the Lyceum—(in after-times the favourite haunt of Philosophy)—by the banks of the river dedicated to Song. Pisistratus thus did more than continue the laws of Solon—he inculcated the intellectual habits which the laws were designed to create. And as in the circle of human events the faults of one man often confirm what was begun by the virtues of another, so perhaps the usurpation of Pisistratus was necessary to establish the institutions of Solon. It is clear that the great lawgiver was not appreciated at the close of his life as his personal authority had ceased to have influence, so possibly might have soon ceased the authority of his code. The citizens required repose, to examine, to feel, to estimate the blessings of his laws—that repose they possessed under Pisistratus. Amidst the tumult of fierce and equipoised factions it might be fortunate that a single individual was raised above the rest, who, having the wisdom to appreciate the institutions of Solon, had the authority to enforce them. Silently they grew up under his usurped but benignant sway, pervading, penetrating, exalting the people, and fitting them by degrees to the liberty those institutions were intended to confer. If the disorders of the republic led to the ascendency of Pisistratus so the ascendency of Pisistratus paved the way for the renewal of the republic. As Cromwell was the representative of the very sentiments he appeared to subvert—as Napoleon in his own person incorporated the principles of the revolution of France, so the tyranny of Pisistratus concentrated and embodied the elements of that democracy he rather wielded than overthrew.

At home, time and tranquillity cemented the new laws; poetry set before the emulation of the Athenians its noblest monument in the epics of Homer; and tragedy put forth its first unmellowed fruits in the rude recitations of Thespis. Pisistratus sought also to counterbalance the growing[225] passion for commerce by peculiar attention to agriculture, in which it is not unlikely that he was considerably influenced by early prepossessions, for his party had been the mountaineers attached to rural pursuits, and his adversaries the coastmen engaged in traffic. We learn from Aristotle that his policy consisted much in subjecting and humbling the Pedieis, or wealthy nobles of the lowlands. But his very affection to agriculture must have tended to strengthen an aristocracy, and his humility to the Areopagus was a proof of his desire to conciliate the least democratic of the Athenian courts. He probably, therefore, acted only against such individual chiefs as had incurred his resentment, or as menaced his power; nor can we perceive in his measures the systematic and deliberate policy, common with other Greek tyrants, to break up an aristocracy and create a middle class.

Abroad, the ambition of Pisistratus, though not extensive, was successful. There was a town on the Hellespont, called Sigeum, which had long been a subject of contest between the Athenians and the Mytileneans. Some years before the legislation of Solon, the Athenian general, Phrynon, had been slain in single combat by Pittacus, one of the Seven Wise Men, who had come into the field armed like the Roman retiarius, with a net, a trident, and a dagger. This feud was terminated by the arbitration of Periander, tyrant of Corinth, who awarded Sigeum to the Athenians, which was then in their possession, by a wise and plausible decree, that each party should keep what it had got. This war was chiefly remarkable for an incident that introduces us somewhat unfavourably to the most animated of the lyric poets. Alcæus, an eminent citizen of Mytilene, and, according to ancient scandal, the unsuccessful lover of Sappho, conceived a passion for military fame: in his first engagement he seems to have discovered that his proper vocation was rather to sing of battles than to share them. He fled from the field, leaving his arms behind him, which the Athenians obtained, and suspended at Sigeum in the temple of Minerva. Although this single action, which Alcæus himself recorded, cannot be fairly held a sufficient proof of the poet’s cowardice, yet his character and patriotism are more equivocal than his genius. Of the last we have ample testimony,—though few remains save in the frigid grace of the imitations of Horace. The subsequent weakness and civil dissensions of Athens, were not favourable to the maintenance of this distant conquest—the Mytileneans regained Sigeum. Against this town Pisistratus now directed his arms—wrested it from the Mytileneans—and instead of annexing it to the republic of Athens, assigned its government to the tyranny of his natural son, Hegesistratus—a stormy dominion, which the valour of the bastard defended against repeated assaults.

But one incident, the full importance of which the reader must wait awhile to perceive, we shall in this place relate. Among the most powerful of the Athenians was a noble named Miltiades, son of Cypselus. By original descent, he was from the neighbouring island of Ægina, and of the heroic race of Æacus; but he dated the establishment of his house in Athens from no less distant a founder than the son of Ajax. Miltiades had added new lustre to his name by a victory at the Olympic Games. It was probably during the first tyranny of Pisistratus that an adventure, attended with vast results to Greece, befell this noble. His family were among the enemies of Pisistratus, and were regarded by that sagacious usurper with a jealous apprehension, which almost appears prophetic. Miltiades was, therefore, uneasy under the government of Pisistratus, and discontented with his position in Athens.

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In that narrow territory which, skirting the Hellespont, was called the Chersonesus, or Peninsula, dwelt the Doloncians, a Thracian tribe. Engaged in an obstinate war with the neighbouring Absinthians, the Doloncians had sent to the oracle of Delphi to learn the result of the contest.b

The Pythian answered them, “that they should take that man with them to their country to found a colony, who after their departure from the temple should first offer them hospitality.” Accordingly the Doloncians, going by the sacred way, went through the territories of the Phocians and Bœotians, and when no one invited them, turned out of the road towards Athens. Miltiades, being seated in his own portico, and seeing the Doloncians passing by, wearing a dress not belonging to the country, and carrying javelins, called out to them; and upon their coming to him, he offered them shelter and hospitality. They having accepted his invitation, and having been entertained by him, made known to him the whole oracle, and entreated him to obey his duty. Their words persuaded Miltiades as soon as he heard them, for he was troubled with the government of Pisistratus, and desired to get out of his way. He therefore immediately set out to Delphi to consult the oracle, whether he should do that which the Doloncians requested of him. The Pythian having bid him do so, thereupon Miltiades, taking with him all such Athenians as were willing to join in the expedition, set sail with the Doloncians, and took possession of the country; and they who introduced him appointed him tyrant.c

Miltiades (probably B.C. 559) first of all fortified a great part of the isthmus, as a barrier to the attacks of the Absinthians; but shortly afterwards, in a feud with the people of Lampsacus, he was taken prisoner by the enemy. Miltiades, however, had already secured the esteem and protection of Crœsus; and the Lydian monarch remonstrated with the Lampsacenes in so formidable a tone of menace, that the Athenian obtained his release, and regained his new principality. In the meanwhile, his brother Cimon, (who was chiefly remarkable for his success at the Olympic Games,) sharing the political sentiments of his house, had been driven into exile by Pisistratus. By a transfer to the brilliant tyrant of a victory in the Olympic chariot-race, he, however, propitiated Pisistratus, and returned to Athens.

Full of years, and in the serene enjoyment of power, Pisistratus died (B.C. 527). His character may already be gathered from his actions: crafty in the pursuit of power, but magnanimous in its possession, we have only, with some qualification, to repeat the eulogium on him ascribed to his greater kinsman Solon—“That he was the best of tyrants, and without a vice save that of ambition.”b

THE VIRTUES OF PISISTRATUS’ RULE

Pisistratus was far from overturning the constitution of Athens; rather did Solon’s ordinances remain in full force under him. The reasonable and necessary progress of development in the state which lay at the root of the movement which produced Greek tyrannies, had been in every way provided for by Solon, and consequently wise and temperate tyrants might govern in accordance with the Solonian laws. Pisistratus honoured the memory of his relative, with whose ideas their former intercourse had made him familiar, and he therefore fostered and forwarded his instructions, so far as they were consistent with his own supremacy. He himself submitted to the laws, and is said to have appeared in person before the Areopagus, to justify himself against a complaint, so that on the whole his government greatly contributed[227] to accustom the Athenians to the laws. It must be confessed, however, that he raised the money which he required for the maintenance of his troops, as well as for the buildings and public festivals, by the mere right of tyranny, and by levying a tenth on the real estate of the citizens.

His new measures and dispositions also exhibited the character of a wise moderation, and were in harmony with Solon. Thus he insisted on the obligation of the commonwealth to care for those who were wounded in the wars, as well as for the families of such as had fallen in battle. He especially took upon himself the charge of public morality, the fostering of those good manners which consist in the respect of youth for age and in reverence towards sacred things. He promulgated a law against idle loitering about the streets, and, although he had himself risen to greatness in the market through the agency of the people who had come in from the country, still he regarded the increasing mass of the townsfolk with anxiety. For this reason he sought to oppose a barrier to the tendency to constitute the life of a great city, which prevailed amongst the Ionic races, and following the precedent of Periander and the Orthagoridæ, he made entry into the capital more difficult. He endeavoured to raise the peasant class, which Solon had rescued, and to encourage the taste for agriculture.

With these important dispositions, whose spirit was pre-eminently that of Hipparchus to whom the whole civilisation of the country was so much indebted, were also connected the great aqueducts which brought the drinking-water from the mountains to the capital through rocky underground conduits. That these canals might be inspected and cleaned in every part, shafts were cut through the rock at stated intervals, and thus light and air were introduced into the dark channels. On the outskirts of the town the inflowing water was collected in great rock basins, where it clarified before disseminating itself into the town and feeding the public fountains. These wonderful works have continued in a state of efficiency down to our own day.

Pisistratus governed Athens, but he bore no sovereign title, on the strength of which to lay claim to unlimited supremacy. He had, in truth, grounded his rule on force; he retained in his service a standing army, which, dependent on him alone and uncontrolled by the vote of the citizens, could be all the more crushingly opposed to any attempt at a rising, since the greater part of the citizens were unarmed, the townsfolk diminished in number, and the public interest, from political circumstances, directed partly to rural economy, partly to the new town institutions. The order of the officers of state remained unaltered, only that one of them was always in the hands of a member of Pisistratus’ family, in which he managed to suppress every sign of disunion with great skill, so that to the people the ruling house appeared united in itself and animated by but one spirit. In this sense men spoke of the government of the Pisistratidæ, and could not refuse recognition to the manifold gifts which distinguished the house.

It was a wise counsel which the old state organisers gave the tyrants, that they should bestow on their rule as much as possible the character of ancient royalty, so that the usurping origin of their power might be forgotten. Thus Pisistratus did not, like the Cypselidæ and Orthagoridæ, desire to break with the past of the state, but rather to connect himself closely with the ancient and glorious history of the country, so that after all the evil which the party government of the nobility had brought on Attica, she might be restored the blessing of a united rule. Standing superior to the parties, as a relative to the ancient royal house, he believed himself especially chosen to accomplish this end. With this view, he lived on the citadel, near[228] the altar of Zeus Herceios, the family hearth of the ancient princes of the country, watching over the turbulent citizens from the summit of the rock, which, before the building of the Propylæa, was still more inaccessible than afterwards. The very position of his dwelling must have drawn him into a close relation with the goddess of the citadel and her priesthood.

The public life of the Athenians was awakened and transformed in every direction. Athens became a new town within and without. With her new highways and military roads, her town squares, gymnasia, fountains and aqueducts, her new altars, temples and temple festivals, she stood out prominently from the crowd of Greek towns, and the Pisistratidæ neglected nothing which might contribute to lend her new importance by means of numerous alliances with the islands and shores of the Ægean Sea.

To this end, it was not enough that the Athenians ruled in Delos, Naxos, and at the Hellespont, but they must also appropriate to themselves the intellectual treasures of the further coasts where the Hellenic spirit showed itself at its best, and thus enrich their own life. For this purpose Solon had already introduced the Homeric rhapsodies into Athens, and ordained their public recitation at the festivals. Pisistratus joined in these efforts, with a full appreciation of the importance of the matter, though not with the disinterestedness of the Solonian love for art, but designedly, and for his own advantage. For he ministered at once to the fame of his ancestors and the splendour of his house.

These songs had hitherto been passed down by word of mouth, and the noblest abilities of the nation had been dedicated to the preservation of this national treasure in widely disseminated schools of bards. Nevertheless, even with the utmost power of memory, it was unavoidable that all kinds of confusion should be introduced into the tradition, that the original should be disfigured, what was authentic be lost, spurious matter creep in, and the whole, the most important collection possessed by the Hellenic people, fall to pieces. The danger became the more threatening, the higher rose the turbulence of the times, and the more the individual states deviated in special directions and the interests of modern times gained primary importance. It became, therefore, a state obligation to meet this danger, and to take in hand the task which individual ability had not succeeded in accomplishing; and the state was all the more concerned in the matter since the recital of the Homeric poems had been prescribed in the ordinances for the public festivals.

It is to the great merit of Pisistratus to have clearly recognised that nothing could create for the Athenians a greater and more lasting renown than could be achieved by assuming this task. He therefore summoned a number of learned men, and commissioned them to collect and compare the texts of the rhapsodies, to cut out what did not belong, to unite what was scattered, and fix the Homeric epos as a whole, a great record of national life, in a standard form. Thus Onomacritus the Athenian, Zopyras of Heraclea, and Orpheus of Croton worked under the superintendence of the regent; they formed a scientific commission, which had an extensive sphere of labour; for not only were the Odyssey and Iliad revised, but also that later epos, that is to say the poetic writings of the so-called “cyclic poets,” which had come into existence as a sequel supplementary to the Iliad and Odyssey, together with the whole treasure of the Ionic epos, which was united under the name of Homer, besides Hesiod and the religious poems. Pisistratus took a personal interest in the work, and even here we can trace the character of a tyranny in that alterations, omissions, and interpolations were made according to his taste or policy. Thus, for example, in the catalogue[229] of ships the Salaminians were ranged among the Athenian levies, in order to supply a traditional authority for an ancient claim of Athens.

The end and aim of the proceeding was completely attained. The most important branch of the poetic art, which had developed amongst the Hellenes, namely, the epic of the Ionic and Bœotian schools, was transplanted to Athens. Here for the first time a Hellenic philology was founded: for, in the work of collecting, the critical faculty was first awakened, since the collecting involved the distinction of genuine from spurious, ancient from modern, and, though the scientific performance as such could not bear a very close scrutiny, yet still the treasure of the Homeric poems received from the Athenians the first appreciation of its national significance, and it was now that writing was for the first time employed to secure an irreplaceable national possession against the dangers of a merely verbal tradition. The poems were not, however, by any means alienated from ordinary life, but were raised to a higher position in the festivals of the town and the education of the young. The city of Pisistratus acquired an authoritative reputation in the domain of national poetry; through him a Homer and Hesiod came into existence which could be read in the same form to the ends of the Greek world.

The collection and investigation went back beyond Homer to the most ancient sources of Hellenic theology, of which the Thracian Orpheus was regarded as the founder, and which Onomacritus now worked up into a new system of mystic wisdom, while at the same time it was utilised to give enhanced importance to the favourite cult of the dynasty, the worship of Dionysus. With it was joined the collection of oracular sayings, upon which the Pisistratidæ placed a special value, as well as the arrangement of the historical records, especially the genealogies.

Thus Athens became a centre of scientific learning and labour. If any one wished to gain a sight of any poem worthy of remembrance which had been written in the Hellenic tongue, or of anything concerning the knowledge of the gods and of ethics which had been thought out by the ancients and handed down by tradition from former times, he must journey to Athens. Here, on the citadel of Pisistratus, the whole treasure was united; here the works of the nation’s poets and wise men were collected together, carefully inscribed in rolls, well arranged, and suitably disposed.

Yet it was not enough to garner what remained from ancient times; there was also a desire to encourage living art and to have its masters in Athens, and specially those in the lyric art, which had succeeded the epic, and during the age of the tyrants was in full vigour. The lyric poets were especially qualified to enhance the brilliance of courts, and to ennoble their feasts, and were consequently summoned from one place to another. Thus the Pisistratidæ sent out their state ships to fetch Anacreon of Teos, the joyous poet and comrade of Polycrates, to Athens, and thus Simonides of Ceos and Lasus of Hermione dwelt at the tyrant’s Court of the Muses.

But quite new germs of national poetry were also unfolded under them and by their means. For they were already the fosterers of the worship of Dionysus [or Bacchus], and at the latter’s festivals were developed not only the choral dance and choral song of the Dithyrambus, which Arion had invented and Lasus further improved, but mimic representations were added to them, in which masked choruses appeared, and singers who assumed a rule opposite the choruses, spoke to the latter and conducted conversations with them. Thus an action, a drama, developed itself, and after the thing had been invented it was freed from the bacchanalian material and changed[230] in contents as in masks; the whole cycle of heroic legends was gradually drawn on for dramatic treatment, and the founder of this Dionysian play was Thespis of Icaria.

Thus the Pisistratidæ collected the after-echoes of the epic, fostered the existing art of song in its full blossom, and called forth by their patronage a new and genuinely Attic branch of national art, that drama which united both lyric and epic. Besides this the best architects, Antistates, Callicrates, Antimachides, Porinus, and sculptors were busily employed on the Olympieum and Hecatompedon, and the best experts of their time at the great hydraulic constructions. The most eminent men of all faculties learnt to know each other and interchanged their experiences. But there was also no lack of friction and mutual jealousy, and Lasus did not shrink from publicly reproaching Onomacritus, who had attempted to serve his master by means of forged oracles, with abuse of the princely confidence, and thus to bring about his banishment.

Under such conditions, where everything depended on the ambitious whims of a self-seeking ruling family, how could it fail to happen that many underhand transactions should take place? Even in the arrangement of the Orphic teachings, the traces of wilful forgery were brought home to the sycophantic Onomacritus. Nevertheless the reputation of the Pisistratidæ still remains that of extreme integrity. They clearly recognised the vocation of Athens to unite and cultivate everything that was of national importance, and within a short time and by incredible industry they attained results which have never been effaced.

To the regent himself indeed, no more than to other tyrants was granted the peaceful enjoyment of his success; he continually felt that he trod on the brink of a volcano. Every popular commotion, every aspiring family, every unwonted stroke of fortune attained by an Athenian was pain and grief to him.

This is shown by the petty and superstitious means, which this powerful man employed to quiet his mind. He allowed himself to be pleased when Athenians who had conquered at Olympia caused the name of Pisistratus to be called out instead of their own, as was done by Cimon, called Coalemos, the half-brother of Miltiades, on the occasion of his second triumph (Ol. 63; 528 B.C.), when in recognition of this loyalty he was recalled from banishment. With anxious care inquiries were ceaselessly made after sayings of the gods which might give security of a long duration for the dynasty; and since the tyrant, being himself envious and jealous, felt that he was continually beset by the malevolence of strangers, he had the image of a locust fastened to the wall of his princely citadel, to serve as a defence against the evil glance of envy. Yet in advanced years, Pisistratus might confidently expect that his son and grandson, who were both gifted with talent for rule and took part in the government under him, would remain true to his policy to preserve the dynasty to which Athens was so much indebted at home and abroad. In this hope he died at a great age, surrounded by his family. (Ol. 63, 527 B.C.). Hippias succeeded to the power of the tyranny, in accordance with his father’s will; and the brothers, as they had promised their father, stood firmly by one another. To the gentle and refined Hipparchus there was no hardship in being second; he employed his position for the exercise of the peaceful side of power.d

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XIV. DEMOCRACY ESTABLISHED AT ATHENS

Pisistratus left three legitimate sons—Hippias, Hipparchus, and Thessalus: the general belief at Athens among the contemporaries of Thucydides was, that Hipparchus was the eldest of the three and had succeeded him; but the historian emphatically pronounces this to be a mistake, and certifies, upon his own responsibility, that Hippias was both eldest son and successor. Such an assurance from him, fortified by certain reasons in themselves not very conclusive, is sufficient ground for our belief, the more so as Herodotus countenances the same version. But we are surprised at such a degree of historical carelessness in the Athenian public, and seemingly even in Plato, about a matter both interesting and comparatively recent. In order to abate this surprise, and to explain how the name of Hipparchus came to supplant that of Hippias in the popular talk, Thucydides recounts the memorable story of Harmodius and Aristogiton.

Of these two Athenian citizens, both belonging to the ancient gens called Gephyræi, the former was a beautiful youth, attached to the latter by a mutual friendship and devoted intimacy which Grecian manners did not condemn. Hipparchus made repeated propositions to Harmodius, which were repelled, but which, on becoming known to Aristogiton, excited both his jealousy and his fears lest the disappointed suitor should employ force—fears justified by the proceedings not unusual with Grecian despots, and by the absence of all legal protection against outrage from such a quarter. Under these feelings, he began to look about, in the best way that he could, for some means of putting down the despotism. Meanwhile Hipparchus, though not entertaining any designs of violence, was so incensed at the refusal of Harmodius, that he could not be satisfied without doing something to insult or humiliate him. In order to conceal the motive from which the insult really proceeded, he offered it, not directly to Harmodius, but to his sister. He caused this young maiden to be one day summoned to take her station in a religious procession as one of the canephoræ, or basket-carriers, according to the practice usual at Athens; but when she arrived at the place where her fellow-maidens were assembled, she was dismissed with scorn as unworthy of so respectable a function, and the summons addressed to her was disavowed. An insult thus publicly offered filled Harmodius with indignation, and still further exasperated the feelings of Aristogiton: both of them, resolving at all hazards to put an end to the despotism, concerted means for aggression with a few select associates. They awaited the festival of the Great Panathenæa, wherein the body of the citizens were accustomed to march up in armed procession, with spear and shield, to the Acropolis; this being the only day on which an armed body could come together without suspicion. The conspirators appeared armed like the rest of the citizens, but carrying concealed daggers besides. Harmodius and[232] Aristogiton undertook with their own hands to kill the two Pisistratidæ, while the rest promised to stand forward immediately for their protection against the foreign mercenaries; and though the whole number of persons engaged was small, they counted upon the spontaneous sympathies of the armed bystanders in an effort to regain their liberties, so soon as the blow should once be struck. The day of the festival having arrived, Hippias, with his foreign bodyguard around him, was marshalling the armed citizens for procession, in the Ceramicus without the gates, when Harmodius and Aristogiton approached with concealed daggers to execute their purpose. On coming near, they were thunder-struck to behold one of their own fellow-conspirators talking familiarly with Hippias, who was of easy access to every man; and they immediately concluded that the plot was betrayed. Expecting to be seized, and wrought up to a state of desperation, they resolved at least not to die without having revenged themselves on Hipparchus, whom they found within the city gates near the chapel called the Leocorion, and immediately slew him. His attendant guards killed Harmodius on the spot; while Aristogiton, rescued for the moment by the surrounding crowd, was afterwards taken, and perished in the tortures applied to make him disclose his accomplices.

The news flew quickly to Hippias in the Ceramicus, who heard it earlier than the armed citizens near him, awaiting his order for the commencement of the procession. With extraordinary self-command, he took advantage of this precious instant of foreknowledge, and advanced towards them, commanding them to drop their arms for a short time, and assemble on an adjoining ground. They unsuspectingly obeyed, and he immediately directed his guards to take possession of the vacant arms. He was now undisputed master, and enabled to seize the persons of all those citizens whom he mistrusted, especially all those who had daggers about them, which it was not the practice to carry in the Panathenaic procession.

Such is the memorable narrative of Harmodius and Aristogiton, peculiarly valuable inasmuch as it all comes from Thucydides. To possess great power, to be above legal restraint, to inspire extraordinary fear, is a privilege so much coveted by the giants among mankind, that we may well take notice of those cases in which it brings misfortune even upon themselves. The fear inspired by Hipparchus—of designs which he did not really entertain, but was likely to entertain, and competent to execute without hindrance—was here the grand cause of his destruction.

The conspiracy here detailed happened in 514 B.C., during the thirteenth year of the reign of Hippias, which lasted four years longer, until 510 B.C. And these last four years, in the belief of the Athenian public, counted for his whole reign; nay, many of them made the still greater historical mistake of eliding these last four years altogether, and of supposing that the conspiracy of Harmodius and Aristogiton had deposed the Pisistratid government and liberated Athens. Both poets and philosophers shared this faith, which is distinctly put forth in the beautiful and popular scolion or song on the subject: the two friends are there celebrated as the authors of liberty at Athens—“they slew the despot and gave to Athens equal laws.” So inestimable a present was alone sufficient to enshrine in the minds of the subsequent democracy those who had sold their lives to purchase it: and we must further recollect that the intimate connection between the two, so repugnant to the modern reader, was regarded at Athens with sympathy, so that the story took hold of the Athenian mind by the vein of romance conjointly with that of patriotism. Harmodius and[233] Aristogiton were afterwards commemorated both as the winners and as the protomartyrs of Athenian liberty. Statues were erected in their honour shortly after the final expulsion of the Pisistratidæ; immunity from taxes and public burdens was granted to the descendants of their families; and the speaker who proposed the abolition of such immunities, at a time when the number had been abusively multiplied, made his only special exception in favour of this respected lineage. And since the name of Hipparchus was universally notorious as the person slain, we discover how it was that he came to be considered by an uncritical public as the predominant member of the Pisistratid family,—the eldest son and successor of Pisistratus, the reigning despot,—to the comparative neglect of Hippias. The same public probably cherished many other anecdotes, not the less eagerly believed because they could not be authenticated, respecting this eventful period.

Whatever may have been the moderation of Hippias before, indignation at the death of his brother and fear for his own safety, now induced him to drop it altogether. It is attested both by Thucydides and Herodotus, and admits of no doubt, that his power was now employed harshly and cruelly—that he put to death a considerable number of citizens. We find also a statement, noway improbable in itself, and affirmed both in Pausanias and in Plutarch,—inferior authorities, yet still in this case sufficiently credible,—that he caused Leæna, the mistress of Aristogiton, to be tortured to death, in order to extort from her a knowledge of the secrets and accomplices of the latter. But as he could not but be sensible that this system of terrorism was full of peril to himself, so he looked out for shelter and support in case of being expelled from Athens; and with this view he sought to connect himself with Darius, king of Persia—a connection full of consequences to be hereafter developed. Æantides, son of Hippoclus the despot of Lampsacus on the Hellespont, stood high at this time in the favour of the Persian monarch, which induced Hippias to give him his daughter Archedice in marriage; no small honour to the Lampsacene, in the estimation of Thucydides. To explain how Hippias came to fix upon this town, however, it is necessary to say a few words on the foreign policy of the Pisistratidæ.

The expedition of Miltiades to the Chersonesus, as described in the previous chapter, must have occurred early after the first usurpation of Pisistratus, since even his imprisonment by the Lampsacenes happened before the ruin of Crœsus (546 B.C.). But it was not till much later,—probably during the third and most powerful period of Pisistratus,—that the latter undertook his expedition against Sigeum in the Troad. This place appears to have fallen into the hands of the Mytileneans: Pisistratus retook it, and placed there his illegitimate son Hegesistratus as despot. The Mytileneans may have been enfeebled at this time (somewhere between 537-527 B.C.), not only by the strides of Persian conquest on the mainland, but also by the ruinous defeat which they suffered from Polycrates and the Samians. Hegesistratus maintained the place against various hostile attempts, throughout all the reign of Hippias, so that the Athenian possessions in those regions comprehended at this period both the Chersonesus and Sigeum. To the former of the two, Hippias sent out Miltiades, nephew of the first œcist, as governor, after the death of his brother Stesagoras. The new governor found much discontent in the peninsula, but succeeded in subduing it by entrapping and imprisoning the principal men in each town. He further took into his pay a regiment of five hundred mercenaries, and married Hegesipyle, daughter of the Thracian king Olorus. It appears to have been about 515 B.C. that this second Miltiades went out to the Chersonesus. He seems to have been[234] obliged to quit it for a time, after the Scythian expedition of Darius, in consequence of having incurred the hostility of the Persians; but he was there from the beginning of the Ionic revolt until about 493 B.C., or two or three years before the battle of Marathon, on which occasion we shall find him acting-commander of the Athenian army.

Both the Chersonesus and Sigeum, though Athenian possessions, were, however, now tributary and dependent on Persia. And it was to this quarter that Hippias, during his last years of alarm, looked for support in the event of being expelled from Athens: he calculated upon Sigeum as a shelter, and upon Æantides, as well as Darius, as an ally. Neither the one nor the other failed him.

The same circumstances which alarmed Hippias, and rendered his dominion in Attica at once more oppressive and more odious, tended of course to raise the hopes of his enemies, the Athenian exiles, with the powerful Alcmæonidæ at their head. Believing the favourable moment to be come, they even ventured upon an invasion of Attica, and occupied a post called Leipsydrion in the mountain range of Parnes, which separates Attica from Bœotia. But their schemes altogether failed: Hippias defeated and drove them out of the country. His dominion now seemed confirmed, for the Lacedæmonians were on terms of intimate friendship with him; and Amyntas, king of Macedon, as well as the Thessalians were his allies. Yet the exiles whom he had beaten in the open field succeeded in an unexpected manœuvre, which, favoured by circumstances, proved his ruin.

By an accident which had occurred in the year 548 B.C., the Delphian Temple was set on fire and burnt. To repair this grave loss was an object of solicitude to all Greece; but the outlay required was exceedingly heavy, and it appears to have been long before the money could be collected. The Amphictyons decreed that one-fourth of the cost should be borne by the Delphians themselves, who found themselves so heavily taxed by this assessment, that they sent envoys throughout all Greece to collect subscriptions in aid, and received, among other donations, from the Greek settlers in Egypt twenty minæ, besides a large present of alum from the Egyptian king Amasis [Aahmes II]: their munificent benefactor Crœsus fell a victim to the Persians in 546 B.C., so that his treasure was no longer open to them. The total sum required was three hundred talents, equal probably to about £115,000 sterling [or $575,000],—a prodigious amount to be collected from the dispersed Grecian cities, who acknowledged no common sovereign authority, and among whom the proportion reasonable to ask from each was so difficult to determine with satisfaction to all parties. At length, however, the money was collected, and the Amphictyons were in a situation to make a contract for the building of the temple. The Alcmæonidæ, who had been in exile ever since the third and final acquisition of power by Pisistratus, took the contract; and in executing it, they not only performed the work in the best manner, but even went much beyond the terms stipulated; employing Parian marble for the frontage, where the material prescribed to them was coarse stone. As was before remarked in the case of Pisistratus when he was in banishment, we are surprised to find exiles whose property had been confiscated so amply furnished with money—unless we are to suppose that Clisthenes the Alcmæonid, grandson of the Sicyonian Clisthenes, inherited through his mother wealth independent of Attica, and deposited it in the temple of the Samian Hera.

To the Delphians, especially, the rebuilding of their temple on so superior a scale was the most essential of all services, and their gratitude towards the[235] Alcmæonidæ was proportionally great. Partly through such a feeling, partly through pecuniary presents, Clisthenes was thus enabled to work the oracle for political purposes, and to call forth the powerful arm of Sparta against Hippias. Whenever any Spartan presented himself to consult the oracle, either on private or public business, the answer of the priestess was always in one strain, “Athens must be liberated.” The constant repetition of this mandate at length extorted from the piety of the Lacedæmonians a reluctant compliance. Reverence for the god overcame their strong feeling of friendship towards the Pisistratidæ, and Anchimolius son of Aster was despatched by sea to Athens, at the head of a Spartan force, to expel them. On landing at Phalerum, however, he found them already forewarned and prepared, as well as farther strengthened by one thousand horse specially demanded from their allies in Thessaly. Upon the plain of Phalerum, this latter force was found peculiarly effective, so that the division of Anchimolius was driven back to their ships with great loss and he himself slain. The defeated armament had probably been small, and its repulse only provoked the Lacedæmonians to send a larger, under the command of their king Cleomenes in person, who on this occasion marched into Attica by land. On reaching the plain of Athens, he was assailed by the Thessalian horse, but repelled them in so gallant a style, that they at once rode off and returned to their native country; abandoning their allies with a faithlessness not unfrequent in the Thessalian character. Cleomenes marched on to Athens without further resistance, and found himself, together with the Alcmæonids and the malcontent Athenians generally, in possession of the town. At that time there was no fortification except around the Acropolis, into which Hippias retired with his mercenaries and the citizens most faithful to him; having taken care to provision it well beforehand, so that it was not less secure against famine than against assault. He might have defied the besieging force, which was noway prepared for a long blockade; but, not altogether confiding in his position, he tried to send his children by stealth out of the country; and in this proceeding the children were taken prisoners. To procure their restoration, Hippias consented to all that was demanded of him, and withdrew from Attica to Sigeum in the Troad within the space of five days.

Thus fell the Pisistratid dynasty in 510 B.C., fifty years after the first usurpation of its founder. It was put down through the aid of foreigners, and those foreigners, too, wishing well to it in their hearts, though hostile from a mistaken feeling of divine injunction. Yet both the circumstances of its fall, and the course of events which followed, conspire to show that it possessed few attached friends in the country, and that the expulsion of Hippias was welcomed unanimously by the vast majority of Athenians. His family and chief partisans would accompany him into exile,—probably as a matter of course, without requiring any formal sentence of condemnation; and an altar was erected in the Acropolis, with a column hard by, commemorating both the past iniquity of the dethroned dynasty, and the names of all its members.

With Hippias disappeared the mercenary Thracian garrison, upon which he and his father before him had leaned for defence as well as for enforcement of authority; and Cleomenes with his Lacedæmonian forces retired also, after staying only long enough to establish a personal friendship, productive subsequently of important consequences, between the Spartan king and the Athenian Isagoras. The Athenians were thus left to themselves, without any foreign interference to constrain them in their political arrangements.

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It has been mentioned that the Pisistratidæ had for the most part respected the forms of the Solonian Constitution: the nine archons, and the probouleutic or preconsidering Senate of Four Hundred (both annually changed), still continued to subsist, together with occasional meetings of the people—or rather of such portion of the people as was comprised in the gentes, phratries, and four Ionic tribes. The timocratic classification of Solon (or quadruple scale of income and admeasurement of political franchises according to it) also continued to subsist—but all within the tether and subservient to the purposes of the ruling family, who always kept one of their number as real master, among the chief administrators, and always retained possession of the Acropolis as well as of the mercenary force.

That overawing pressure being now removed by the expulsion of Hippias, the enslaved forms became at once endued with freedom and reality. There appeared again what Attica had not known for thirty years, declared political parties, and pronounced opposition between two men as leaders,—on one side, Isagoras, son of Tisander, a person of illustrious descent,—on the other, Clisthenes the Alcmæonid, not less illustrious, and possessing at this moment a claim on the gratitude of his countrymen as the most persevering as well as the most effective foe of the dethroned despots. In what manner such opposition was carried on we are not told. It would seem to have been not altogether pacific; but at any rate, Clisthenes had the worst of it, and in consequence of this defeat, says the historian, “he took into partnership the people, who had been before excluded from everything.” His partnership with the people gave birth to the Athenian democracy: it was a real and important revolution.

GROTE’S ESTIMATE OF CLISTHENES THE REFORMER

The political franchise, or the character of an Athenian citizen, both before and since Solon, had been confined to the primitive four Ionic tribes, each of which was an aggregate of so many close corporations or quasi-families—the gentes and the phratries. None of the residents in Attica, therefore, except those included in some gens or phratry, had any part in the political franchise. Such non-privileged residents were probably at all times numerous, and became more and more so by means of fresh settlers: moreover, they tended most to multiply in Athens and Piræus, where emigrants would commonly establish themselves. Clisthenes broke down the existing wall of privilege, and imparted the political franchise to the excluded mass. But this could not be done by enrolling them in new gentes or phratries, created in addition to the old; for the gentile tie was founded upon old faith and feeling, which, in the existing state of the Greek mind, could not be suddenly conjured up as a bond of union for comparative strangers: it could only be done by disconnecting the franchise altogether from the Ionic tribes as well as from the gentes which constituted them, and by redistributing the population into new tribes with a character and purpose exclusively political. Accordingly, Clisthenes abolished the four Ionic tribes, and created in their place ten new tribes founded upon a different principle, independent of the gentes and phratries. Each of his new tribes comprised a certain number of demes or cantons, with the enrolled proprietors and residents in each of them. The demes taken altogether included the entire surface of Attica, so that the Clisthenean Constitution admitted to the political franchise all the free native Athenians; and not merely these, but[237] also many metics, and even some of the superior order of slaves. Putting out of sight the general body of slaves, and regarding only the free inhabitants, it was in point of fact a scheme approaching to universal suffrage, both political and judicial.

The slight and cursory manner in which Herodotus announces this memorable revolution tends to make us overlook its real importance. He dwells chiefly on the alteration in the number and names of the tribes: Clisthenes, he says, despised the Ionians so much, that he would not tolerate the continuance in Attica of the four tribes which prevailed in the Ionic cities, deriving their names from the four sons of Ion—just as his grandfather, the Sicyonian Clisthenes, hating the Dorians, had degraded and nicknamed the three Dorian tribes at Sicyon. Such is the representation of Herodotus, who seems himself to have entertained some contempt for the Ionians, and therefore to have suspected a similar feeling where it had no real existence. But the scope of Clisthenes was something far more extensive: he abolished the four ancient tribes, not because they were Ionic, but because they had become incommensurate with the existing condition of the Attic people, and because such abolition procured both for himself and for his political scheme new as well as hearty allies.

As soon as Hippias was expelled, the senate and the public assembly regained their efficiency. But had they been continued on the old footing, including none except members of the four tribes, these tribes would have been reinvested with a privilege which in reality they had so long lost, that its revival would have seemed an odious novelty, and the remaining population would probably not have submitted to it. If, in addition, we consider the political excitement of the moment, the restoration of one body of men from exile, and the departure of another body into exile, the outpouring of long-suppressed hatred, partly against these very forms, by the corruption of which the despot had reigned, we shall see that prudence as well as patriotism dictated the adoption of an enlarged scheme of government. Clisthenes had learned some wisdom during his long exile; and as he probably continued, for some time after the introduction of his new constitution, to be the chief adviser of his countrymen, we may consider their extraordinary success as a testimony to his prudence and skill not less than to their courage and unanimity. For, necessary as the change had become, it was not the less a shock to ancient Attic ideas. It radically altered the very idea of a tribe, which now became an aggregation of demes, not of gentes; and it thus broke up those associations, religious, social, and political, between the whole and the parts of the old system, which operated powerfully on the mind of every old-fashioned Athenian. The patricians at Rome, who composed the gentes and curiæ, and the plebs, who had no part in these corporations, formed for a long time two separate and opposing factions in the same city, each with its own separate organisation. It was only by slow degrees that the plebs gained ground.

So too in the Italian and German cities of the Middle Ages, the patrician families refused to part with their own separate political identity, when the guilds grew up by the side of them; even though forced to renounce a portion of their power, they continued to be a separate fraternity, and would not submit to be regimented anew, under an altered category and denomination, along with the traders who had grown into wealth and importance. But the reform of Clisthenes effected this change all at once, both as to the name and as to the reality. In some cases, indeed, that which had been the name of a gens was retained as the name of a deme, but even then the[238] old gentiles were ranked indiscriminately among the remaining demots; and the Athenian people, politically considered, thus became one homogeneous whole, distributed for convenience into parts, numerically, locally, and politically equal. It is, however, to be remembered, that while the four Ionic tribes were abolished, the gentes and phratries which compose them were left untouched, and continued to subsist as family and religious associations, though carrying with them no political privilege.

The ten newly created tribes, arranged in an established order of precedence, were called: Erechtheis, Ægeis, Pandionis, Leontis, Acamantis, Œneis, Cecropis, Hippothoöntis, Æantis, Antiochis—names borrowed chiefly from the respected heroes of Attic legend. This number remained unaltered until the year 305 B.C., when it was increased to twelve by the addition of two new tribes, Antigonias and Demetrias, afterwards designated anew by the names of Ptolemais and Attalis. The mere names of these last two, borrowed from living kings and not from legendary heroes, betray the change from freedom to subservience at Athens. Each tribe comprised a certain number of demes—cantons, parishes, or townships—in Attica. But the total number of these demes is not distinctly ascertained.

There is another point, however, which is at once more certain, and more important to notice. The demes which Clisthenes assigned to each tribe were in no case all adjacent to each other; and therefore, the tribe, as a whole, did not correspond with any continuous portion of the territory, nor could it have any peculiar local interest, separate from the entire community. Such systematic avoidance of the factions arising out of neighbourhood will appear to have been more especially necessary, when we recollect that the quarrels of the Paralii, the Diacrii, the Pedieis, during the preceding century, had all been generated from local feud, though doubtless artfully fomented by individual ambition. Moreover, it was only by this same precaution that the local predominance of the city, and the formation of a city-interest distinct from that of the country, was obviated; which could hardly have failed to arise had the city by itself constituted either one deme or one tribe. Clisthenes distributed the city (or found it already distributed) into several demes, and those demes among several tribes; while Piræus and Phalerum, each constituting a separate deme, were also assigned to different tribes; so that there were no local advantages either to bestow predominance, or to create a struggle for predominance, of one tribe over the rest. Each deme had its own local interests to watch over; but the tribe was a mere aggregate of demes for political, military, and religious purposes, with no separate hopes or fears apart from the whole state. Each tribe had a chapel, sacred rites and festivals, and a common fund for such meetings, in honour of its eponymous hero, administered by members of its own choice; and the statues of all the ten eponymous heroes, fraternal patrons of the democracy, were planted in the most conspicuous part of the agora of Athens. In the future working of the Athenian government we shall trace no symptom of disquieting local factions—a capital amendment compared with the disputes of the preceding century, and traceable, in part, to the absence of border-relations between demes of the same tribe.

The deme now became the primitive constituent element of the commonwealth, both as to persons and as to property. It had its own demarch, its register of enrolled citizens, its collective property, its public meetings and religious ceremonies, its taxes levied and administered by itself. The register of qualified citizens was kept by the demarch, and the inscription of new citizens took place at the assembly of the demots, whose legitimate[239] sons were enrolled on attaining the age of eighteen, and their adopted sons at any time when presented and sworn to by the adopting citizen. The citizenship could only be granted by a public vote of the people, but wealthy non-freemen were enabled sometimes to evade this law and purchase admission upon the register of some poor deme, probably by means of a fictitious adoption. At the meetings of the demots, the register was called over, and it sometimes happened that some names were expunged—in which case the party thus disfranchised had an appeal to the popular judicature. So great was the local administrative power, however, of these demes, that they are described as the substitute, under the Clisthenean system, for the naucraries under the Solonian and anti-Solonian. The trittyes and naucraries, though nominally preserved, and the latter (as some affirm) augmented in number from forty-eight to fifty, appear henceforward as of little public importance.

Clisthenes preserved, but at the same time modified and expanded, all the main features of Solon’s political constitution; the public assembly, or ecclesia,—the preconsidering senate, composed of members from all the tribes,—and the habit of annual election, as well as annual responsibility of magistrates, by and to the ecclesia. The full value must now have been felt of possessing such pre-existing institutions to build upon, at a moment of perplexity and dissension. But the Clisthenean ecclesia acquired new strength, and almost a new character, from the great increase of the number of citizens qualified to attend it; while the annually changed senate, instead of being composed of four hundred members taken in equal proportion from each of the old four tribes, was enlarged to five hundred, taken equally from each of the new ten tribes. It now comes before us, under the name of Senate of Five Hundred, as an active and indispensable body throughout the whole Athenian democracy: and the practice now seems to have begun (though the period of commencement cannot be decisively proved), of determining the names of the senators by lot. Both the senate thus constituted, and the public assembly, were far more popular and vigorous than they had been under the original arrangement of Solon.

The new constitution of the tribes, as it led to a change in the annual senate, so it transformed, no less directly, the military arrangements of the state, both as to soldiers and as to officers. The citizens called upon to serve in arms were now marshalled according to tribes—each tribe having its own taxiarchs as officers for the hoplites, and its own phylarch at the head of the horsemen. Moreover, there were now created for the first time ten strategi, or generals, one from each tribe; and two hipparchs, for the supreme command of the horsemen. Under the prior Athenian constitution it appears that the command of the military force had been vested in the third archon, or polemarch, no strategi then existing; and even after the latter had been created, under the Clisthenean constitution, the polemarch still retained a joint right of command along with them—as we are told at the battle of Marathon, where Callimachus the polemarch not only enjoyed an equal vote in the council of war along with the ten strategi, but even occupied the post of honour on the right wing. The ten generals, annually changed, are thus (like the ten tribes) a fruit of the Clisthenean constitution, which was at the same time powerfully strengthened and protected by such remodelling of the military force. The functions of the generals becoming more extensive as the democracy advanced, they seem to have acquired gradually not merely the direction of military and naval affairs, but also that of the foreign relations of the city generally,—while the nine archons,[240] including the polemarch, were by degrees lowered down from that full executive and judicial competence which they had once enjoyed, to the simple ministry of police and preparatory justice. Encroached upon by the strategi on one side, they were also restricted in efficiency by the rise of the popular dicasteries or numerous jury-courts, on the other. We may be very sure that these popular dicasteries had not been permitted to meet or to act under the despotism of the Pisistratidæ, and that the judicial business of the city must then have been conducted partly by the senate of Areopagus, partly by the archons; perhaps with a nominal responsibility of the latter at the end of their year of office to an acquiescent ecclesia. And if we even assume it to be true, as some writers contend, that the habit of direct popular judicature, over and above this annual trial of responsibility, had been partially introduced by Solon, it must have been discontinued during the long coercion exercised by the supervening dynasty. But the outburst of popular spirit, which lent force to Clisthenes, doubtless carried the people into direct action as jurors in the aggregate heliæa, not less than as voters in the ecclesia; and the change was thus begun which contributed to degrade the archons from their primitive character as judges, into the lower function of preliminary examiners and presidents of a jury. Such convocation of numerous juries, beginning first with the aggregate body of sworn citizens above thirty years of age, and subsequently dividing them into separate bodies or panels, for trying particular causes, became gradually more frequent and more systematised: until at length, in the time of Pericles, it was made to carry a small pay, and stood out as one of the most prominent features of Athenian life.

The financial affairs of the city underwent at this epoch as complete a change as the military: in fact, the appointment of magistrates and officers by tens, one from each tribe, seems to have become the ordinary practice. From this time forward, the senate of Five Hundred steps far beyond its original duty of preparing matters for the discussion of the ecclesia: it embraces, besides, a large circle of administrative and general superintendence, which hardly admits of any definition. Its sittings become constant, with the exception of special holidays, and the year is distributed into ten portions called prytanies—the fifty senators of each tribe taking by turns the duty of constant attendance during one prytany, and receiving during that time the title of the Prytanes: the order of precedence among the tribes in these duties was annually determined by lot.

During those later times known to us through the great orators, the ecclesia, or formal assembly of the citizens, was convoked four times regularly during each prytany, or oftener if necessity required—usually by the senate, though the strategi had also the power of convoking it by their own authority. How often the ancient ecclesia had been convoked during the interval between Solon and Pisistratus, we cannot exactly say—probably but seldom during the year. But under the Pisistratidæ, its convocation had dwindled down into an inoperative formality; and the re-establishment of it by Clisthenes, not merely with plenary determining powers, but also under full notice and preparation of matters beforehand, together with the best securities for orderly procedure, was in itself a revolution impressive to the mind of every Athenian citizen. To render the ecclesia efficient, it was indispensable that its meetings should be both frequent and free. Men thus became trained to the duty both of speakers and hearers, and each man, while he felt that he exercised his share of influence on the decision, identified his own safety and happiness with the vote of the majority, and became familiarised[241] with the notion of a sovereign authority which he neither could nor ought to resist. This is an idea new to the Athenian bosom; and with it came the feelings sanctifying free speech and equal law—words which no Athenian citizen ever afterwards heard unmoved: together with that sentiment of the entire commonwealth as one and indivisible, which always overruled, though it did not supplant, the local and cantonal specialties. It is not too much to say that these patriotic and ennobling impulses were a new product in the Athenian mind, to which nothing analogous occurs even in the time of Solon. They were kindled in part doubtless by the strong reaction against the Pisistratidæ, but still more by the fact that the opposing leader, Clisthenes, turned that transitory feeling to the best possible account, and gave to it a vigorous perpetuity, as well as a well-defined positive object, by the popular elements conspicuous in his constitution. His name makes less figure in history than we should expect, because he passed for the mere renovator of Solon’s scheme of government after it had been overthrown by Pisistratus. Probably he himself professed this object, since it would facilitate the success of his propositions: and if we confine ourselves to the letter of the case, the fact is in a great measure true, since the annual senate and the ecclesia are both Solonian—but both of them under his reform were clothed in totally new circumstances, and swelled into gigantic proportions. How vigorous was the burst of Athenian enthusiasm, altering instantaneously the position of Athens among the powers of Greece, we shall hear presently.

But it was not only the people formally installed in their ecclesia, who received from Clisthenes the real attributes of sovereignty; it was by him also that the people were first called into direct action as dicasts, or jurors. This custom may be said, in a certain limited sense, to have begun in the time of Solon, since that lawgiver invested the popular assembly with the power of pronouncing the judgment of accountability upon the archons after their year of office. Here, again, the building, afterwards so spacious and stately, was erected on a Solonian foundation, though it was not itself Solonian. That the popular dicasteries, in the elaborate forms in which they existed from Pericles downward, were introduced all at once by Clisthenes, it is impossible to believe; yet the steps by which they were gradually wrought out are not distinctly discoverable. It would rather seem, that at first only the aggregate body of citizens above thirty years of age exercised judicial functions, being specially convoked and sworn to try persons accused of public crimes, and when so employed bearing the name of the heliæa, or heliasts; private offences and disputes between man and man being still determined by individual magistrates in the city, and a considerable judicial power still residing in the senate of Areopagus. There is reason to believe that this was the state of things established by Clisthenes, and which afterwards came to be altered by the greater extent of judicial duty gradually accruing to the heliasts, so that it was necessary to subdivide the collective heliæa. According to the subdivision, as practised in the times best known, six thousand citizens above thirty years of age were annually selected by lot out of the whole number, six hundred from each of the ten tribes: five thousand of these citizens were arranged in ten panels or decuries of five hundred each, the remaining one thousand being reserved to fill up vacancies in case of death or absence among the former. The whole six thousand took a prescribed oath, couched in very striking words, and every man received a ticket inscribed with his own name as well as with a letter designating his decury. When there were causes or crimes ripe for trial, the thesmothets or six inferior archons, determined by lot, first, which decuries should sit, according to the number[242] wanted—next, in which court, or under the presidency of what magistrate, the decury B or E should sit, so that it could not be known beforehand in what cause each would be judge. Each of these decuries sitting in judicature was called the heliæa, a name which belongs properly to the collective assembly of the people; this collective assembly having been itself the original judicature. We conceive that the practice of distributing this collective assembly, or heliæa, into sections of jurors for judicial duty, may have begun under one form or another soon after the reform of Clisthenes, since the direct interference of the people in public affairs tended more and more to increase. But it could only have been matured by degrees into that constant and systematic service which the pay of Pericles called forth at last in completeness. Under the last mentioned system the judicial competence of the archons was annulled, and the third archon, or polemarch, withdrawn from all military functions. Still, this had not been yet done at the time of the battle of Marathon, in which Callimachus the polemarch not only commanded along with the strategi, but enjoyed a sort of pre-eminence over them: nor had it been done during the year after the battle of Marathon, in which Aristides was archon—for the magisterial decisions of Aristides formed one of the principal foundations of his honourable surname, the Just.

With this question, as to the comparative extent of judicial power vested by Clisthenes in the popular dicastery and the archons, are in reality connected two others in Athenian constitutional law; relating, first, to the admissibility of all citizens for the post of archon—next, to the choosing of archons by lot. It is well known that, in the time of Pericles, the archons, and various other individual functionaries, had come to be chosen by lot—moreover, all citizens were legally admissible, and might give in their names to be drawn for by lot, subject to what was called the docimasy, or legal examination into their status of citizen, and into various moral and religious qualifications, before they took office; while at the same time the function of the archon had become nothing higher than preliminary examination of parties and witnesses for the dicastery, and presidence over it when afterwards assembled, together with the power of imposing by authority a fine of small amount upon inferior offenders.

Now all these three political arrangements hang essentially together. The great value of the lot, according to Grecian democratical ideas, was that it equalised the chance of office between rich and poor. But so long as the poor citizens were legally inadmissible, choice by lot could have no recommendation either to the rich or to the poor; in fact, it would be less democratical than election by the general mass of citizens, because the poor citizen would under the latter system enjoy an important right of interference by means of his suffrage, though he could not be elected himself. Again, choice by lot could never under any circumstances be applied to those posts where special competence, and a certain measure of attributes possessed only by a few, could not be dispensed with without obvious peril; nor was it ever applied, throughout the whole history of democratical Athens, to the strategi, or generals, who were always elected by show of hands of the assembled citizens. Accordingly, we may regard it as certain that, at the time when the archons first came to be chosen by lot, the superior and responsible duties once attached to that office had been, or were in course of being, detached from it, and transferred either to the popular dicasts or to the ten elected strategi: so that there remained to these archons only a routine of police and administration, important indeed to the state, yet such as could be executed by any citizen of average probity, diligence, and capacity. At least[243] there was no obvious absurdity in thinking so; and the docimasy excluded from the office men of notoriously discreditable life, even after they might have drawn the successful lot. Pericles, though chosen strategus, year after year successively, was never archon; and it may even be doubted whether men of first-rate talents and ambition often gave in their names for the office. To those of smaller aspirations it was doubtless a source of importance, but it imposed troublesome labour, gave no pay, and entailed a certain degree of peril upon any archon who might have given offence to powerful men, when he came to pass through the trial of accountability which followed immediately upon his year of office. There was little to make the office acceptable either to very poor men, or to very rich and ambitious men; and between the middling persons who gave in their names, any one might be taken without great practical mischief, always assuming the two guarantees of the docimasy before, and accountability after, office. This was the conclusion—in our opinion a mistaken conclusion, and such as would find no favour at present—to which the democrats of Athens were conducted by their strenuous desire to equalise the chances of office for rich and poor. But their sentiment seems to have been satisfied by a partial enforcement of the lot to the choice of some offices,—especially the archons, as the primitive chief magistrates of the state,—without applying it to all, or to the most responsible and difficult. Nor would they have applied it to the archons, if it had been indispensably necessary that these magistrates should retain their original very serious duty of judging disputes and condemning offenders.

Now in regard to the eligibility of all Athenians indiscriminately to the office of archon, we find a clear and positive testimony as to the time when it was first introduced. Plutarch tells us that the oligarchical, but high-principled Aristides, was himself the proposer of this constitutional change—shortly after the battle of Platæa, with the consequent expulsion of the Persians from Greece, and the return of the refugee Athenians to their ruined city. Seldom has it happened in the history of mankind, that rich and poor have been so completely equalised as among the population of Athens in that memorable expatriation and heroic struggle. Nor are we at all surprised to hear that the mass of citizens, coming back with freshly kindled patriotism as well as with the consciousness that their country had only been recovered by the equal efforts of all, would no longer submit to be legally disqualified from any office of state. It was on this occasion that the constitution was first made really “common” to all, and that the archons, strategi, and all functionaries, first began to be chosen from all Athenians without any difference of legal eligibility. No mention is made of the lot in this important statement of Plutarch, which appears in every way worthy of credit, and which teaches us that, down to the invasion of Xerxes not only had the exclusive principle of the Solonian law of qualification continued in force (whereby the first three classes on the census were alone admitted to all individual offices, and the fourth or thetic class excluded), but also the archons had hitherto been elected by the citizens—not taken by lot.

Now for financial purposes, the quadruple census of Solon was retained long after this period, even beyond the Peloponnesian War and the oligarchy of Thirty. But we thus learn that Clisthenes in his constitution retained it for political purposes also, in part at least: he recognised the exclusion of the great mass of the citizens from all individual offices—such as the archon, the strategus, etc. In his time, probably, no complaints were raised on the subject. His constitution gave to the collective bodies—senate, ecclesia,[244] and heliæa, or dicastery—a degree of power and importance such as they had never before known or imagined: and we may well suppose that the Athenian people of that day had no objection even to the proclaimed system and theory of being exclusively governed by men of wealth and station as individual magistrates—especially since many of the newly enfranchised citizens had been previously metics and slaves. Indeed, it is to be added that, even under the full democracy of later Athens, though the people had then become passionately attached to the theory of equal admissibility of all citizens to office, yet, in practice, poor men seldom obtained offices which were elected by the general vote, as will appear more fully in the course of this history.[17]

The choice of the strategi remained ever afterwards upon the footing on which Aristides thus placed it. But the present is not the time to enter into the modifications which Athens underwent during the generation after the battle of Platæa. They have been here briefly noticed for the purpose of reasoning back, in the absence of direct evidence, to Athens as it stood in the generation before that memorable battle, after the reform of Clisthenes. His reform, though highly democratical, stopped short of the mature democracy which prevailed from Pericles to Demosthenes, in three ways especially, among various others; and it is therefore sometimes considered by the later writers as an aristocratical constitution: (1) It still recognised the archons as judges to a considerable extent, and the third archon, or polemarch, as joint military commander along with the strategi. (2) It retained them as elected annually by the body of citizens, not as chosen by lot. (3) It still excluded the fourth class of the Solonian census from all individual office, the archonship among the rest. The Solonian law of exclusion, however, though retained in principle, was mitigated in practice thus far—that whereas Solon had rendered none but members of the highest class on the census (the pentakosiomedimni) eligible to the archonship, Clisthenes opened that dignity to all the first three classes, shutting out only the fourth. That he did this may be inferred from the fact that Aristides, assuredly not a rich man, became archon.

We are also inclined to believe that the senate of Five Hundred, as constituted by Clisthenes, was taken, not by election, but by lot, from the ten tribes, and that every citizen became eligible to it. Election for this purpose—that is, the privilege of annually electing a batch of fifty senators, all at once, by each tribe—would probably be thought more troublesome than valuable; nor do we hear of separate meetings of each tribe for purposes of election. Moreover, the office of senator was a collective, not an individual office; the shock, therefore, to the feelings of semi-democratised Athens, from the unpleasant idea of a poor man sitting among the fifty prytanes, would be less than if they conceived him as polemarch at the head of the right wing of the army, or as an archon administering justice.

A further difference between the constitution of Solon and that of Clisthenes is to be found in the position of the senate of Areopagus. Under the former, that senate had been the principal body in the state, and he had even enlarged its powers; under the latter, it must have been treated[245] at first as an enemy, and kept down. For as it was composed only of all the past archons, and as, during the preceding thirty years, every archon had been a creature of the Pisistratidæ, the Areopagites collectively must have been both hostile and odious to Clisthenes and his partisans, perhaps a fraction of its members might even retire into exile with Hippias. Its influence must have been sensibly lessened by the change of party, until it came to be gradually filled by fresh archons springing from the bosom of the Clisthenean constitution. But during this important interval, the new-modelled senate of Five Hundred, and the popular assembly, stepped into that ascendency which they never afterwards lost. From the time of Clisthenes forward, the Areopagites cease to be the chief and prominent power in the state: yet they are still considerable; and when the second fill of the democratical tide took place, after the battle of Platæa, they became the focus of that which was then considered as the party of oligarchical resistance. We have already remarked that the archons, during the intermediate time (about 509-477 B.C.), were all elected by the ecclesia, not chosen by lot, and that the fourth (or poorest and most numerous) class on the census were by law then ineligible; while election at Athens, even when every citizen without exception was an elector and eligible, had a natural tendency to fall upon men of wealth and station. We thus see how it happened that the past archons, when united in the Senate of Areopagus, infused into that body the sympathies, prejudices, and interests of the richer classes. It was this which brought them into conflict with the more democratical party headed by Pericles and Ephialtes, in times when portions of the Clisthenean constitution had come to be discredited as too much imbued with oligarchy.

One other remarkable institution, distinctly ascribed to Clisthenes, yet remains to be noticed—the Ostracism. It is hardly too much to say that, without this protective process, none of the other institutions would have reached maturity.

OSTRACISM

By the ostracism, a citizen was banished without special accusation, trial, or defence, for a term of ten years—subsequently diminished to five. His property was not taken away, nor his reputation tainted; so that the penalty consisted solely in the banishment from his native city to some other Greek city. As to reputation, the ostracism was a compliment rather than otherwise; and so it was vividly felt to be, when, about ninety years after Clisthenes, the conspiracy between Nicias and Alcibiades fixed it upon Hyperbolus. The two former had both recommended the taking of an ostracising vote, each hoping to cause the banishment of the other; but before the day arrived, they accommodated the difference. To fire off the safety-gun of the republic against a person so little dangerous as Hyperbolus, was denounced as the prostitution of a great political ceremony: “It was not against such men as him,” said the comic writer, Plato, “that the oyster-shell (or potsherd) was intended to be used.” The process of ostracism was carried into effect by writing upon a shell, or potsherd, the name of the person whom a citizen thought it prudent for a time to banish; which shell, when deposited in the proper vessel, counted for a vote towards the sentence.

We have already observed that all the governments of the Grecian cities, when we compare them with that idea which a modern reader is apt to conceive of the measure of force belonging to a government, were essentially weak, the good as well as the bad—the democratical, the oligarchical, and[246] the despotic. The force in the hands of any government, to cope with conspirators or mutineers, was extremely small, with the single exception of a despot surrounded by his mercenary troop; so that no tolerably sustained conspiracy or usurper could be put down except by the direct aid of the people in support of the government; which amounted to a dissolution, for the time, of constitutional authority, and was pregnant with reactionary consequences such as no man could foresee. To prevent powerful men from attempting usurpation was, therefore, of the greatest possible moment; and a despot or an oligarchy might exercise preventive means at pleasure, much sharper than the ostracism, such as the assassination of Cimon, as directed by the Pisistratidæ. At the very least, they might send away any one, from whom they apprehended attack or danger, without incurring even so much as the imputation of severity. But in a democracy, where arbitrary action of the magistrate was the thing of all others most dreaded, and where fixed laws, with trial and defence as preliminaries to punishment, were conceived by the ordinary citizen as the guarantees of his personal security and as the pride of his social condition—the creation of such an exceptional power presented serious difficulty. If we transport ourselves to the times of Clisthenes, immediately after the expulsion of the Pisistratidæ, when the working of the democratical machinery was as yet untried, we shall find this difficulty at its maximum; but we shall also find the necessity of vesting such a power somewhere absolutely imperative. For the great Athenian nobles had yet to learn the lesson of respect for any constitution; their past history had exhibited continual struggles between the armed factions of Megacles, Lycurgus, and Pisistratus, put down after a time by the superior force and alliances of the latter. And though Clisthenes, the son of Megacles, might be firmly disposed to renounce the example of his father, and to act as the faithful citizen of a fixed constitution—he would know but too well that the sons of his father’s companions and rivals would follow out ambitious purposes without any regard to the limits imposed by law, if ever they acquired sufficient partisans to present a fair prospect of success. Moreover, when any two candidates for power, with such reckless dispositions, came into a bitter personal rivalry, the motives to each of them, arising as well out of fear as out of ambition, to put down his opponent at any cost to the constitution, might well become irresistible, unless some impartial and discerning interference could arrest the strife in time. “If the Athenians were wise (Aristides is reported to have said, in the height and peril of his parliamentary struggle with Themistocles), they would cast both Themistocles and me into the barathrum.” And whoever reads the sad narrative of the Corcyræan sedition, in the third book of Thucydides, together with the reflections of the historian upon it, will trace the gradual exasperation of these party feuds, beginning even under democratical forms, until at length they break down the barriers of public as well as of private morality.

Against this chance of internal assailants Clisthenes had to protect the democratical constitution—first, by throwing impediments in their way and rendering it difficult for them to procure the requisite support; next, by eliminating them before any violent projects were ripe for execution. To do either the one or the other, it was necessary to provide such a constitution as would not only conciliate the good will, but kindle the passionate attachment of the mass of citizens, insomuch that not even any considerable minority should be deliberately inclined to alter it by force. It was necessary to create in the multitude, and through them to force upon the leading ambitious men, that rare and difficult sentiment which we may term a[247] constitutional morality; a paramount reverence for the forms of the constitution, enforcing obedience to the authorities acting under and within those forms, yet combined with the habit of open speech, of action subject only to definite legal control, and unrestrained censure of those very authorities as to all their public acts—combined too with a perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the constitution will be not less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own. This coexistence of freedom and self-imposed restraint—of obedience to authority with unmeasured censure of the persons exercising it—may be found in the aristocracy of England (since about 1688) as well as in the democracy of the American United States: and because we are familiar with it, we are apt to suppose it a natural sentiment; though there seem to be few sentiments more difficult to establish and diffuse among a community, judging by the experience of history. We may see how imperfectly it exists at this day in the Swiss cantons; and the many violences of the first French Revolution illustrate, among various other lessons, the fatal effects arising from its absence, even among a people high in the scale of intelligence. Yet the diffusion of such constitutional morality, not merely among the majority of any community, but throughout the whole, is the indispensable condition of a government at once free and peaceable; since even any powerful and obstinate minority may render the working of free institutions impracticable, without being strong enough to conquer ascendency for themselves. Nothing less than unanimity, or so overwhelming a majority as to be tantamount to unanimity, on the cardinal point of respecting constitutional forms, even by those who do not wholly approve of them, can render the excitement of political passion bloodless, and yet expose all the authorities in the state to the full license of pacific criticism.

At the epoch of Clisthenes, which by a remarkable coincidence is the same as that of the regifugium at Rome, such constitutional morality, if it existed anywhere else, had certainly no place at Athens; and the first creation of it in any particular society must be esteemed an interesting historical fact. By the spirit of his reforms,—equal, popular, and comprehensive, far beyond the previous experience of Athenians,—he secured the hearty attachment of the body of citizens; but from the first generation of leading men, under the nascent democracy, and with such precedents as they had to look back upon, no self-imposed limits to ambition could be expected: and the problem required was to eliminate beforehand any one about to transgress these limits, so as to escape the necessity of putting him down afterwards, with all that bloodshed and reaction, in the midst of which the free working of the constitution would be suspended at least, if not irrevocably extinguished. To acquire such influence as would render him dangerous under democratical forms, a man must stand in evidence before the public, so as to afford some reasonable means of judging of his character and purposes; and the security which Clisthenes provided was, to call in the positive judgment of the citizens respecting his future promise purely and simply, so that they might not remain too long neutral between two formidable political rivals—pursuant in a certain way to the Solonian proclamation against neutrality in a sedition, as we have already remarked in a former chapter. He incorporated in the constitution itself the principle of privilegium (to employ the Roman phrase, which signifies, not a peculiar favour granted to any one, but a peculiar inconvenience imposed), yet only under circumstances solemn and well defined, with full notice and discussion beforehand, and by the positive secret vote of a large proportion of the citizens. “No law shall be made[248] against any single citizen, without the same being made against all Athenian citizens; unless it shall so seem good to six thousand citizens voting secretly.” Such was that general principle of the constitution, under which the ostracism was a particular case. Before the vote of ostracism could be taken, a case was to be made out in the senate and the public assembly to justify it. In the sixth prytany of the year, these two bodies debated and determined whether the state of the republic was menacing enough to call for such an exceptional measure. If they decided in the affirmative, a day was named, the agora was railed round, with ten entrances left for the citizens of each tribe, and ten separate casks or vessels for depositing the suffrages, which consisted of a shell, or a potsherd, with the name of the person written on it whom each citizen designed to banish. At the end of the day, the number of votes was summed up, and if six thousand votes were found to have been given against any one person, that person was ostracised; if not, the ceremony ended in nothing. Ten days were allowed to him for settling his affairs, after which he was required to depart from Attica for ten years, but retained his property, and suffered no other penalty.

It was not the maxim at Athens to escape the errors of the people, by calling in the different errors, and the sinister interest besides, of an extra-popular or privileged few; nor was any third course open, since the principles of representative government were not understood, nor indeed conveniently applicable to very small communities. Beyond the judgment of the people—so the Athenians felt—there was no appeal; and their grand study was to surround the delivery of that judgment with the best securities for rectitude and the best preservatives against haste, passion, or private corruption. Whatever measure of good government could not be obtained in that way, could not, in their opinion, be obtained at all. We shall illustrate the Athenian proceedings on this head more fully when we come to speak of the working of their mature democracy: meanwhile, in respect to this grand protection of the nascent democracy,—the vote of ostracism,—it will be found that the securities devised by Clisthenes, for making the sentence effectual against the really dangerous man, and against no one else, display not less foresight than patriotism. The main object was, to render the voting an expression of deliberate public feeling, as distinguished from mere factious antipathy: the large minimum of votes required, one-fourth of the entire citizen population, went far to insure this effect, the more so, since each vote, taken as it was in a secret manner, counted unequivocally for the expression of a genuine and independent sentiment, and could neither be coerced nor bought. Then again, Clisthenes did not permit the process of ostracising to be opened against any one citizen exclusively. If opened at all, every one without exception was exposed to the sentence; so that the friends of Themistocles could not invoke it against Aristides, nor those of the latter against the former, without exposing their own leader to the same chance of exile. It was not likely to be invoked at all, therefore, until exasperation had proceeded so far as to render both parties insensible to this chance—the precise index of that growing internecine hostility, which the ostracism prevented from coming to a head. Nor could it even then be ratified, unless a case was shown to convince the more neutral portion of the senate and the ecclesia: moreover, after all, the ecclesia did not itself ostracise, but a future day was named, and the whole body of the citizens were solemnly invited to vote. It was in this way that security was taken not only for making the ostracism effectual in protecting the constitution, but to hinder it from being employed for any other purpose. And we[249] must recollect that it exercised its tutelary influence, not merely on those occasions when it was actually employed, but by the mere knowledge that it might be employed, and by the restraining effect which that knowledge produced on the conduct of the great men. Again, the ostracism, though essentially of an exceptional nature, was yet an exception sanctified and limited by the constitution itself; so that the citizen, in giving his ostracising vote, did not in any way depart from the constitution or lose his reverence for it. The issue placed before him—“Is there any man whom you think vitally dangerous to the State? if so, whom?”—though vague, was yet raised directly and legally. Had there been no ostracism, it might probably have been raised both indirectly and illegally, on the occasion of some special imputed crime of a suspected political leader, when accused before a court of justice.

Care was taken to divest the ostracism of all painful consequence except what was inseparable from exile; and this is not one of the least proofs of the wisdom with which it was devised. Most certainly, it never deprived the public of candidates for political influence: and when we consider the small amount of individual evil which it inflicted,—evil too diminished, in the cases of Cimon and Aristides, by a reactionary sentiment which augmented their subsequent popularity after return,—two remarks will be quite sufficient to offer in the way of justification. First, it completely produced its intended effect; for the democracy grew up from infancy to manhood without a single attempt to overthrow it by force—a result, upon which no reflecting contemporary of Clisthenes could have ventured to calculate. Next, through such tranquil working of the democratical forms, a constitutional morality quite sufficiently complete was produced among the leading Athenians, to enable the people after a certain time to dispense with that exceptional security which the ostracism offered. To the nascent democracy, it was absolutely indispensable; to the growing yet militant democracy, it was salutary; but the full-grown democracy both could and did stand without it. The ostracism passed upon Hyperbolus, about ninety years after Clisthenes, was the last occasion of its employment. And even this can hardly be considered as a serious instance: it was a trick concerted between two distinguished Athenians (Nicias and Alcibiades), to turn to their own political account a process already coming to be antiquated. Nor would such a manœuvre have been possible, if the contemporary Athenian citizens had been penetrated with the same serious feeling of the value of ostracism as a safeguard of democracy, as had been once entertained by their fathers and grandfathers. Between Clisthenes and Hyperbolus, we hear of about ten different persons as having been banished by ostracism. First of all, Hipparchus of the deme Cholargus, the son of Charmus, a relative of the recently expelled Pisistratid despots; then Aristides, Themistocles, Cimon, and Thucydides son of Melesias, all of them renowned political leaders; also Alcibiades and Megacles (the paternal and maternal grandfathers of the distinguished Alcibiades), and Callias, belonging to another eminent family at Athens; lastly, Damon, the preceptor of Pericles in poetry and music, and eminent for his acquisitions in philosophy. In this last case comes out the vulgar side of humanity, aristocratical as well as democratical; for with both, the process of philosophy and the persons of philosophers are wont to be alike unpopular. Even Clisthenes himself is said to be ostracised under his own law, and Xanthippus; but both upon authority too weak to trust. Miltiades was not ostracised at all, but tried and punished for misconduct in his command.

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We should hardly have said so much about this memorable and peculiar institution of Clisthenes, if the erroneous accusations against the Athenian democracy—of envy, injustice, and ill-treatment of their superior men, had not been greatly founded upon it, and if such criticisms had not passed from ancient times to modern with little examination. In monarchical governments, a pretender to the throne, numbering a certain amount of supporters, is, as a matter of course, excluded from the country. No man treats this as any extravagant injustice, yet it is the parallel of the ostracism, with a stronger case in favour of the latter, inasmuch as the change from one regal dynasty to another does not of necessity overthrow all the collateral institutions and securities of the country. Plutarch has affirmed that the ostracism arose from the envy and jealousy inherent in a democracy, and not from justifiable fears—an observation often repeated, yet not the less demonstrably untrue. Not merely because ostracism so worked as often to increase the influence of that political leader whose rival it removed, but still more, because, if the fact had been as Plutarch says, this institution would have continued as long as the democracy; whereas it finished with the banishment of Hyperbolus, at a period when the government was more decisively democratical than it had been in the time of Clisthenes.

It was, in truth, a product altogether of fear and insecurity, on the part both of the democracy and its best friends—fear perfectly well-grounded, and only appearing needless because the precautions taken prevented attack. So soon as the diffusion of a constitutional morality had placed the mass of the citizens above all serious fear of an aggressive usurper the ostracism was discontinued. And doubtless the feeling, that it might safely be dispensed with, must have been strengthened by the long ascendancy of Pericles, by the spectacle of the greatest statesman whom Athens ever produced, acting steadily within the limits of the constitution; as well as by the ill-success of his two opponents, Cimon and Thucydides,—aided by numerous partisans and by the great comic writers, at a period when comedy was a power in the state such as it has never been before or since,—in their attempts to get him ostracised. They succeeded in fanning up the ordinary antipathy of the citizens towards philosophers, so far as to procure the ostracism of his friend and teacher Damon: but Pericles himself, to repeat the complaint of his bitter enemy, the comic poet Cratinus, “was out of the reach of the oyster-shell.” If Pericles was not conceived to be dangerous to the constitution, none of his successors were at all likely to be so regarded. Damon and Hyperbolus were the two last persons ostracised: both of them were cases, and the only cases, of an unequivocal abuse of the institution, because, whatever the grounds of displeasure against them may have been, it is impossible to conceive either of them as menacing to the state—whereas all the other known sufferers were men of such position and power, that the six or eight thousand citizens who inscribed each name on the shell, or at least a large proportion of them, may well have done so under the most conscientious belief that they were guarding the constitution against real danger. Such a change in the character of the persons ostracised plainly evinces that the ostracism had become dissevered from that genuine patriotic prudence which originally rendered it both legitimate and popular. It had served for two generations an inestimable tutelary purpose,—it lived to be twice dishonoured,—and then passed, by universal acquiescence, into matter of history.

A process analogous to the ostracism subsisted at Argos, at Syracuse, and in some other Grecian democracies. Aristotle states that it was abused for[251] factious purposes: and at Syracuse, where it was introduced after the expulsion of the Gelonian dynasty, Diodorus affirms that it was so unjustly and profusely applied, as to deter persons of wealth and station from taking any part in public affairs; for which reason it was speedily discontinued. We have no particulars to enable us to appreciate this general statement. But we cannot safely infer that because the ostracism worked on the whole well at Athens, it must necessarily have worked well in other states—the more so, as we do not know whether it was surrounded with the same precautionary formalities, nor whether it even required the same large minimum of votes to make it effective. This latter guarantee, so valuable in regard to an institution essentially easy to abuse, is not noticed by Diodorus in his brief account of the petalism—so the process was denominated at Syracuse.

THE DEMOCRACY ESTABLISHED

Such was the first Athenian democracy, engendered as well by the reaction against Hippias and his dynasty as by the memorable partnership, whether spontaneous or compulsory, between Clisthenes and the unfranchised multitude. It is to be distinguished, both from the mitigated oligarchy established by Solon before, and from the full-grown and symmetrical democracy which prevailed afterwards from the beginning of the Peloponnesian War towards the close of the career of Pericles. It was, indeed, a striking revolution, impressed upon the citizen not less by the sentiments to which it appealed than by the visible change which it made in political and social life. He saw himself marshalled in the ranks of hoplites, alongside of new companions in arms; he was enrolled in a new register, and his property in a new schedule, in his deme and by his demarch, an officer before unknown; he found the year distributed afresh, for all legal purposes, into ten parts bearing the name of prytanies, each marked by a solemn and free-spoken ecclesia, at which he had a right to be present; that ecclesia was convoked and presided by senators called prytanes, members of a senate novel both as to number and distribution; his political duties were now performed as member of a tribe, designated by a name not before pronounced in common Attic life, connected with one of ten heroes whose statues he now for the first time saw in the agora, and associating him with fellow-tribesmen from all parts of Attica. All these and many others were sensible novelties, felt in the daily proceedings of the citizen. But the great novelty of all was the authentic recognition of the ten new tribes as a sovereign demos, or people, apart from all specialties of phratric or gentile origin, with free speech and equal law; retaining no distinction except the four classes of the Solonian property-schedule with their gradations of eligibility. To a considerable proportion of citizens this great novelty was still further endeared by the fact that it had raised them out of the degraded position of metics and slaves; and to the large majority of all the citizens, it furnished a splendid political idea, profoundly impressive to the Greek mind, capable of calling forth the most ardent attachment as well as the most devoted sense of active obligation and obedience. We have now to see how their newly-created patriotism manifested itself.

Clisthenes and his new constitution carried with them so completely the popular favour, that Isagoras had no other way of opposing it except by calling in the interference of Cleomenes and the Lacedæmonians. Cleomenes listened the more readily to this call, as he was reported to have been[252] on an intimate footing with the wife of Isagoras. He prepared to come to Athens; but his first aim was to deprive the democracy of its great leader Clisthenes, who, as belonging to the Alcmæonid family, was supposed to be tainted with the inherited sin of his great-grandfather Megacles, the destroyer of the usurper Cylon. Cleomenes sent a herald to Athens, demanding the expulsion “of the accursed,”—so this family were called by their enemies, and so they continued to be called eighty years afterwards, when the same manœuvre was practised by the Lacedæmonians of that day against Pericles. This requisition had been recommended by Isagoras, and was so well-timed that Clisthenes, not venturing to disobey it, retired voluntarily, so that Cleomenes, though arriving at Athens only with a small force, found himself master of the city. At the instigation of Isagoras, he sent into exile seven hundred families, selected from the chief partisans of Clisthenes: his next attempt was to dissolve the new senate of Five Hundred and place the whole government in the hands of three hundred adherents of the chief whose cause he espoused. But now was seen the spirit infused into the people by their new constitution. At the time of the first usurpation of Pisistratus, the senate of that day had not only not resisted, but even lent themselves to the scheme. But the new senate of Clisthenes resolutely refused to submit to dissolution, and the citizens manifested themselves in a way at once so hostile and so determined, that Cleomenes and Isagoras were altogether baffled. They were compelled to retire into the Acropolis and stand upon the defensive; and this symptom of weakness was the signal for a general rising of the Athenians, who besieged the Spartan king on the holy rock. He had evidently come without any expectation of finding, or any means of overpowering, resistance; for at the end of two days his provisions were exhausted, and he was forced to capitulate. He and his Lacedæmonians, as well as Isagoras, were allowed to retire to Sparta; but the Athenians of the party captured along with him were imprisoned, condemned, and executed by the people.

Clisthenes, with the seven hundred exiled families, was immediately recalled, and his new constitution materially strengthened by this first success. Yet the prospect of renewed Spartan attack was sufficiently serious to induce him to send envoys to Artaphernes, the Persian satrap at Sardis, soliciting the admission of Athens into the Persian alliance: he probably feared the intrigues of the expelled Hippias in the same quarter. Artaphernes, having first informed himself who the Athenians were, and where they dwelt, replied that, if they chose to send earth and water to the king of Persia, they might be received as allies, but upon no other condition. Such were the feelings of alarm under which the envoys had quitted Athens, that they went the length of promising this unqualified token of submission. But their countrymen, on their return, disavowed them with scorn and indignation.

TROUBLE WITH THEBES

It was at this time that the first connection began between Athens and the little Bœotian town of Platæa, situated on the northern slope of the range of Cithæron, between that mountain and the river Asopus, on the road from Athens to Thebes; and it is upon this first occasion that we become acquainted with the Bœotians and their polities. The Bœotian federation has already been briefly described, as composed of some twelve or thirteen autonomous towns under the headship of Thebes, which was, or professed to have[253] been, their mother-city. Platæa had been, so the Thebans affirmed, their latest foundation; it was ill-used by them, and discontented with the alliance. Accordingly, as Cleomenes was on his way back from Athens, the Platæans took the opportunity of addressing themselves to him, craved the protection of Sparta against Thebes, and surrendered their town and territory without reserve. The Spartan king, having no motive to undertake a trust which promised nothing but trouble, advised them to solicit the protection of Athens, as nearer and more accessible for them in case of need. He foresaw that this would embroil the Athenians with Bœotia; and such anticipation was in fact his chief motive for giving the advice, which the Platæans followed.

Selecting an occasion of public sacrifice at Athens, they despatched thither envoys, who sat down as suppliants at the altar, surrendered their town to Athens, and implored protection against Thebes. Such an appeal was not to be resisted, and protection was promised; it was soon needed, for the Thebans invaded the Platæan territory, and an Athenian force marched to defend it. Battle was about to be joined, when the Corinthians interposed with their mediation, which was accepted by both parties. They decided altogether in favour of Platæa, pronouncing that the Thebans had no right to employ force against any seceding member of the Bœotian federation. But the Thebans, finding the decision against them, refused to abide by it, and, attacking the Athenians on their return, sustained a complete defeat: the latter avenged this breach of faith by joining to Platæa the portion of Theban territory south of the Asopus, and making that river the limit between the two. By such success, however, the Athenians gained nothing, except the enmity of Bœotia, as Cleomenes had foreseen. Their alliance with Platæa, long continued, and presenting in the course of this history several incidents touching to our sympathies, will be found, if we except one splendid occasion, productive only of burden to the one party, yet insufficient as a protection to the other.

Meanwhile Cleomenes had returned to Sparta full of resentment against the Athenians, and resolved on punishing them, as well as on establishing his friend Isagoras as despot over them. Having been taught, however, by humiliating experience, that this was no easy achievement, he would not make the attempt, without having assembled a considerable force; he summoned allies from all the various states of the Peloponnesus, yet without venturing to inform them what he was about to undertake. He at the same time concerted measures with the Bœotians, and with the Chalcidians of Eubœa, for a simultaneous invasion of Attica on all sides. It appears that he had greater confidence in their hostile dispositions towards Athens than in those of the Peloponnesians; he was not afraid to acquaint them with his design, and probably the Bœotians were incensed with the recent interference of Athens in the affair of Platæa. As soon as these preparations were completed, the two kings of Sparta, Cleomenes and Demaratus, put themselves at the head of the united Peloponnesian force, marched into Attica, and advanced as far as Eleusis on the way to Athens. But when the allies came to know the purpose for which they were to be employed, a spirit of dissatisfaction manifested itself among them. They had no unfriendly sentiment towards Athens; and the Corinthians especially, favourably disposed rather than otherwise towards that city, resolved to proceed no further, withdrew their contingent from the camp, and returned home. At the same time, king Demaratus, either sharing in the general dissatisfaction, or moved by some grudge against his colleague which had not before manifested itself,[254] renounced the undertaking also. And these two examples, operating upon the pre-existing sentiment of the allies generally, caused the whole camp to break up and return home without striking a blow.

We may here remark that this is the first instance known in which Sparta appears in act as recognised head of an obligatory Peloponnesian alliance, summoning contingents from the cities to be placed under the command of her king. Her headship, previously recognised in theory, passes now into act, but in an unsatisfactory manner, so as to prove the necessity of precaution and concert beforehand, which will be found not long wanting.

Pursuant to the scheme concerted, the Bœotians and Chalcidians attacked Attica at the same time that Cleomenes entered it. The former seized Œnoe and Hysiæ, the frontier demes of Attica on the side towards Platæa, while the latter assailed the northeastern frontier, which faces Eubœa. Invaded on three sides, the Athenians were in serious danger, and were compelled to concentrate all their forces at Eleusis against Cleomenes, leaving the Bœotians and Chalcidians unopposed. But the unexpected breaking up of the invading army from the Peloponnesus proved their rescue, and enabled them to turn the whole of their attention to the other frontier. They marched into Bœotia to the strait called Euripus, which separates it from Eubœa, intending to prevent the junction of the Bœotians and Chalcidians, and to attack the latter first apart. But the arrival of the Bœotians caused an alteration of their scheme; they attacked the Bœotians first, and gained a victory of the most complete character, killing a large number, and capturing seven hundred prisoners. On the very same day they crossed over to Eubœa, attacked the Chalcidians, and gained another victory so decisive that it at once terminated the war. Many Chalcidians were taken, as well as Bœotians, and conveyed in chains to Athens, where after a certain detention they were at last ransomed for two minæ per man; and the tenth of the sum thus raised was employed in the fabrication of a chariot and four horses in bronze, which was placed in the Acropolis to commemorate the victory. Herodotus saw this trophy when he was at Athens. He saw too, what was a still more speaking trophy, the actual chains in which the prisoners had been fettered, exhibiting in their appearance the damage undergone when the Acropolis was burnt by Xerxes: an inscription of four lines described the offerings and recorded the victory out of which they had sprung.

Another consequence of some moment arose out of this victory. The Athenians planted a body of four thousand of their citizens as cleruchs (lot-holders) or settlers upon the lands of the wealthy Chalcidian oligarchy called the hippobotæ—proprietors probably in the fertile plain of Lelantum, between Chalcis and Eretria. This is a system which we shall find hereafter extensively followed out by the Athenians in the days of their power; partly with the view of providing for their poorer citizens, partly to serve as garrison among a population either hostile or of doubtful fidelity. These Attic cleruchs (we can find no other name by which to speak of them) did not lose their birthright as Athenian citizens: they were not colonists in the Grecian sense, and they are known by a totally different name, but they corresponded very nearly to the colonies formally planted out on the conquered lands by Rome. The increase of the poorer population was always more or less painfully felt in every Grecian city. For though the aggregate population never seems to have increased very fast, yet the multiplication of children in poor families caused the subdivision of the smaller lots of land, until at last they became insufficient for a maintenance;[255] and the persons thus impoverished found it difficult to obtain subsistence in other ways, more especially as the labour for the richer classes was so much performed by imported slaves. The numerous cleruchies sent out by Athens, of which this to Eubœa was the first, arose in a great measure out of the multiplication of the poorer population, which her extended power was employed in providing for. Her subsequent proceedings with a view to the same object will not be always found so justifiable as this now before us, which grew naturally, according to the ideas of the time, out of her success against the Chalcidians.

The war between Athens, however, and Thebes with her Bœotian allies, still continued, to the great and repeated disadvantage of the latter, until at length the Thebans in despair sent to ask advice of the Delphian oracle, and were directed to “solicit aid from those nearest to them.” “How (they replied) are we to obey? Our nearest neighbours, of Tanagra, Coronea, and Thespiæ, are now, and have been from the beginning, lending us all the aid in their power.” An ingenious Theban, however, coming to the relief of his perplexed fellow-citizens, dived into the depths of legend and brought up a happy meaning. “Those nearest to us (he said) are the inhabitants of Ægina: for Thebe (the eponym of Thebes) and Ægina (the eponym of that island) were both sisters, daughters of Asopus: let us send to crave assistance from the Æginetans.” If his subtle interpretation (founded upon their descent from the same legendary progenitors) did not at once convince all who heard it, at least no one had any better to suggest; and envoys were at once sent to the Æginetans, who, in reply to a petition founded on legendary claims, sent to the help of the Thebans a reinforcement of legendary, but venerated, auxiliaries—the Æacid heroes. We are left to suppose that their effigies are here meant. It was in vain, however, that the glory and the supposed presence of the Æacids, Telamon and Peleus, were introduced into the Theban camp. Victory still continued on the side of Athens; and the discouraged Thebans again sent to Ægina, restoring the heroes, and praying for aid of a character more human and positive. Their request was granted, and the Æginetans commenced war against Athens without even the decent preliminary of a herald and declaration.

This remarkable embassy first brings us into acquaintance with the Dorians of Ægina,—oligarchical, wealthy, commercial, and powerful at sea, even in the earliest days; more analogous to Corinth than to any of the other cities called Dorian. The hostility which they now began without provocation against Athens,—repressed by Sparta at the critical moment of the battle of Marathon, and hushed for a while by the common dangers of the Persian invasion under Xerxes; then again breaking out,—was appeased only with the conquest of the island about twenty years after that event, and with the expulsion and destruction of its inhabitants some years later. There had been indeed, according to Herodotus, a feud of great antiquity between Athens and Ægina, of which he gives the account in a singular narrative, blending together religion, politics, exposition of ancient customs, etc.; but at the time when the Thebans solicited aid from Ægina, the latter was at peace with Athens. The Æginetans employed their fleet, powerful for that day, in ravaging Phalerum and the maritime demes of Attica; nor had the Athenians as yet any fleet to resist them. It is probable that the desired effect was produced, of diverting a portion of the Athenian force from the war against Bœotia, and thus partially relieving Thebes. But the war of Athens against both of them continued for a considerable time, though we have no information respecting its details.

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Meanwhile the attention of Athens was called off from these combined enemies by a more menacing cloud, which threatened to burst upon her from the side of Sparta. Cleomenes and his countrymen, full of resentment at the late inglorious desertion of Eleusis, were yet more incensed by the discovery, which appears to have been then recently made, that the injunctions of the Delphian priestess for the expulsion of Hippias from Athens had been fraudulently procured. Moreover, Cleomenes, when shut up in the Acropolis of Athens with Isagoras, had found there various prophecies previously treasured up by the Pisistratidæ, many of which foreshadowed events highly disastrous to Sparta. And while the recent brilliant manifestations of courage, and repeated victories, on the part of Athens, seemed to indicate that such prophecies might perhaps be realised, Sparta had to reproach herself, that, from the foolish and mischievous conduct of Cleomenes, she had undone the effect of her previous aid against the Pisistratidæ, and thus lost that return of gratitude which the Athenians would otherwise have testified. Under such impressions, the Spartan authorities took the remarkable step of sending for Hippias from his residence at Sigeum to the Peloponnesus, and of summoning deputies from all their allies to meet him at Sparta.

The convocation thus summoned deserves notice as the commencement of a new era in Grecian politics. The previous expedition of Cleomenes against Attica presents to us the first known example of Spartan headship passing from theory into act: that expedition miscarried because the allies, though willing to follow, would not follow blindly, nor be made the instruments of executing purposes repugnant to their feelings. Sparta had now learned the necessity, in order to insure their hearty concurrence, of letting them know what she contemplated, so as to ascertain at least that she had no decided opposition to apprehend. Here, then, is the third stage in the spontaneous movement of Greece towards a systematic conjunction, however imperfect, of its many autonomous units. First we have Spartan headship suggested in theory, from a concourse of circumstances which attract to her the admiration of all Greece,—power, unrivalled training, undisturbed antiquity, etc.; next, the theory passes into act, yet rude and shapeless; lastly, the act becomes clothed with formalities, and preceded by discussion and determination. The first convocation of the allies at Sparta, for the purpose of having a common object submitted to their consideration, may well be regarded as an important event in Grecian political history. The proceedings at the convocation are no less important, as an indication of the way in which the Greeks of that day felt and acted, and must be borne in mind as a contrast with times hereafter to be described.

Hippias having been presented to the assembled allies, the Spartans expressed their sorrow for having dethroned him, their resentment and alarm at the new born insolence of Athens, already tasted by her immediate neighbours, and menacing to every state represented in the convocation, and their anxiety to restore Hippias, not less as a reparation for past wrong, than as a means, through his rule, of keeping Athens low and dependent. But the proposition, though emanating from Sparta, was listened to by the allies with one common sentiment of repugnance. They had no sympathy for Hippias, no dislike, still less any fear, of Athens, and a profound detestation of the character of a despot. The spirit which had animated the armed contingents at Eleusis now reappeared among the deputies at Sparta, and the Corinthians again took the initiative. Their deputy Sosicles protested against the project in the fiercest and most indignant strain: no language can be stronger than that of the long harangue which Herodotus puts[257] into his mouth, wherein the bitter recollections prevalent at Corinth respecting Cypselus and Periander are poured forth. “Surely, heaven and earth are about to change places,—the fish are coming to dwell on dry land, and mankind going to inhabit the sea,—when you, Spartans, propose to subvert the popular governments, and to set up in the cities that wicked and bloody thing called a Despot. First try what it is, for yourselves at Sparta, and then force it upon others if you can: you have not tasted its calamities as we have, and you take very good care to keep it away from yourselves. We adjure you, by the common gods of Hellas,—plant not despots in her cities: if you persist in a scheme so wicked, know that the Corinthians will not second you.”

This animated appeal was received with a shout of approbation and sympathy on the part of the allies. All with one accord united with Sosicles in adjuring the Lacedæmonians “not to revolutionise any Hellenic city.” No one listened to Hippias when he replied, warning the Corinthians that the time would come, when they, more than any one else, would dread and abhor the Athenian democracy, and wish the Pisistratidæ back again. He knew well, says Herodotus, that this would be, for he was better acquainted with the prophecies than any man. But no one then believed him, and he was forced to take his departure back to Sigeum: the Spartans not venturing to espouse his cause against the determined sentiment of the allies.

That determined sentiment deserves notice, because it marks the present period of the Hellenic mind; fifty years later it will be found materially altered. Aversion to single-headed rule, and bitter recollection of men like Cypselus and Periander are now the chords which thrill in an assembly of Grecian deputies: the idea of a revolution, implying thereby a great and comprehensive change, of which the party using the word disapproves, consists in substituting a permanent One in place of those periodical magistrates and assemblies which were the common attribute of oligarchy and democracy: the antithesis between these last two is as yet in the background, nor does there prevail either fear of Athens or hatred of the Athenian democracy. But when we turn to the period immediately before the Peloponnesian War, we find the order of precedence between these two sentiments reversed. The anti-monarchical feeling has not perished, but has been overlaid by other and more recent political antipathies,—the antithesis between democracy and oligarchy having become, not indeed the only sentiment, but the uppermost sentiment, in the minds of Grecian politicians generally, and the soul of active party movement. Moreover, a hatred of the most deadly character has grown up against Athens and her democracy, especially in the grandsons of those very Corinthians who now stand forward as her sympathising friends. The remarkable change of feeling here mentioned is nowhere so strikingly exhibited as when we contrast the address of the Corinthian Sosicles, just narrated, with the speech of the Corinthian envoys at Sparta, immediately antecedent to the Peloponnesian War, as given to us in Thucydides. It will hereafter be fully explained by the intermediate events, by the growth of Athenian power, and by the still more miraculous development of Athenian energy.

Such development, the fruit of the fresh-planted democracy as well as the seed for its sustentation and aggrandisement, continued progressive during the whole period just adverted to. But the first unexpected burst of it, under the Clisthenean constitution, and after the expulsion of Hippias, is described by Herodotus in terms too emphatic to be omitted. After narrating the successive victories of the Athenians over both Bœotians and[258] Chalcidians, that historian proceeds: “Thus did the Athenians grow in strength. And we may find proof, not merely in this instance but everywhere else, how valuable a thing freedom is: since even the Athenians, while under a despot, were not superior in war to any of their surrounding neighbours, but, so soon as they got rid of their despots, became by far the first of all. These things show that while kept down by one man, they were slack and timid, like men working for a master; but when they were liberated, every single man became eager in exertions for his own benefit.” The same comparison reappears a short time afterwards, where he tells us, that “the Athenians when free, felt themselves a match for Sparta; but while kept down by any man under a despotism, were feeble and apt for submission.”

Stronger expressions cannot be found to depict the rapid improvement wrought in the Athenian people by their new democracy. Of course this did not arise merely from suspension of previous cruelties, or better laws, or better administration. These, indeed, were essential conditions, but the active transforming cause here was the principle and system of which such amendments formed the detail: the grand and new idea of the sovereign people, composed of free and equal citizens,—or liberty and equality, to use words which so profoundly moved the French nation half a century ago. It was this comprehensive political idea which acted with electric effect upon the Athenians, creating within them a host of sentiments, motives, sympathies, and capacities to which they had before been strangers. Democracy in Grecian antiquity possessed the privilege, not only of kindling an earnest and unanimous attachment to the constitution in the bosoms of the citizens, but also of creating an energy of public and private action, such as could never be obtained under an oligarchy, where the utmost that could be hoped for was a passive acquiescence and obedience. Mr. Burke has remarked that the mass of the people are generally very indifferent about theories of government; but such indifference—although improvements in the practical working of all governments tend to foster it—is hardly to be expected among any people who exhibit decided mental activity and spirit on other matters; and the reverse was unquestionably true, in the year 500 B.C., among the communities of ancient Greece. Theories of government were there anything but a dead letter; they were connected with emotions of the strongest as well as of the most opposite character. The theory of a permanent ruling One, for example, was universally odious: that of a ruling Few, though acquiesced in, was never positively attractive, unless either where it was associated with the maintenance of peculiar education and habits, as at Sparta, or where it presented itself as the only antithesis to democracy, the latter having by peculiar circumstances become an object of terror. But the theory of democracy was pre-eminently seductive; creating in the mass of the citizens an intense positive attachment, and disposing them to voluntary action and suffering on its behalf, such as no coercion on the part of other governments could extort.

Herodotus, in his comparison of the three sorts of government, puts in the front rank of the advantages of democracy, “its most splendid name and promise,”—its power of enlisting the hearts of the citizens in support of their constitution, and of providing for all a common bond of union and fraternity. This is what even democracy did not always do: but it was what no other government in Greece could do: a reason alone sufficient to stamp it as the best government, and presenting the greatest chance of beneficent results, for a Grecian community. Among the Athenian citizens, certainly, it produced a strength and unanimity of positive political sentiment, such as[259] has rarely been seen in the history of mankind, which excites our surprise and admiration the more when we compare it with the apathy which had preceded,—and which is even applied as the natural state of the public mind in Solon’s famous proclamation against neutrality in a sedition. Because democracy happens to be unpalatable to some modern readers, they have been accustomed to look upon the sentiment here described only in its least honourable manifestations,—in the caricatures of Aristophanes, or in the empty commonplaces of rhetorical declaimers. But it is not in this way that the force, the earnestness, or the binding value of democratical sentiment at Athens is to be measured. We must listen to it as it comes from the lips of Pericles, while he is strenuously enforcing upon the people those active duties for which it both implanted the stimulus and supplied the courage; or from the oligarchical Nicias in the harbour of Syracuse, when he is endeavouring to revive the courage of his despairing troops for one last death-struggle, and when he appeals to their democratical patriotism as to the only flame yet alive and burning even in that moment of agony. From the time of Clisthenes downward, the creation of this new mighty impulse makes an entire revolution in the Athenian character. And if the change still stood out in so prominent a manner before the eyes of Herodotus, much more must it have been felt by the contemporaries among whom it occurred.

The attachment of an Athenian citizen to his democratical constitution comprised two distinct veins of sentiment: first, his rights, protection, and advantages derived from it; next, his obligations of exertion and sacrifice towards it and with reference to it. Neither of these two veins of sentiment was ever wholly absent; but according as the one or the other was present at different times in varying proportions, the patriotism of the citizen was a very different feeling. That which Herodotus remarks is, the extraordinary efforts of heart and hand which the Athenians suddenly displayed,—the efficacy of the active sentiment throughout the bulk of the citizens; and we shall observe even more memorable evidences of the same phenomenon in tracing down the history from Clisthenes to the end of the Peloponnesian War: we shall trace a series of events and motives eminently calculated to stimulate that self-imposed labour and discipline which the early democracy had first called forth. But when we advance farther down, from the restoration of the democracy after the Thirty Tyrants to the time of Demosthenes, we venture upon this brief anticipation, in the conviction that one period of Grecian history can be thoroughly understood only by contrasting it with another,—we shall find a sensible change in Athenian patriotism. The active sentiment of obligation is comparatively inoperative, the citizen, it is true, has a keen sense of the value of the democracy as protecting him and insuring to him valuable rights, and he is, moreover, willing to perform his ordinary sphere of legal duties towards it; but he looks upon it as a thing established, and capable of maintaining itself in a due measure of foreign ascendency, without any such personal efforts as those which his forefathers cheerfully imposed upon themselves. The orations of Demosthenes contain melancholy proofs of such altered tone of patriotism,—of that languor, paralysis, and waiting for others to act, which preceded the catastrophe of Chæronea, notwithstanding an unabated attachment to the democracy as a source of protection and good government. That same preternatural activity which the allies of Sparta, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, both denounced and admired in the Athenians, is noted by the orator as now belonging to their enemy Philip.

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Such variations in the scale of national energy pervade history, modern as well as ancient, but in regard to Grecian history, especially, they can never be overlooked. For a certain measure, not only of positive political attachment, but also of active self-devotion, military readiness, and personal effort, was the indispensable condition of maintaining Hellenic autonomy, either in Athens or elsewhere; and became so more than ever when the Macedonians were once organised under an enterprising and semi-Hellenised prince. The democracy was the first creative cause of that astonishing personal and many-sided energy which marked the Athenian character, for a century downwards from Clisthenes.

That the same ultra-Hellenic activity did not longer continue, is referable to other causes, which will be hereafter in part explained. No system of government, even supposing it to be very much better and more faultless than the Athenian democracy, can ever pretend to accomplish its legitimate end apart from the personal character of the people, or to supersede the necessity of individual virtue and vigour.

During the half-century immediately preceding the battle of Chæronea, the Athenians had lost that remarkable energy which distinguished them during the first century of their democracy, and had fallen much more nearly to a level with the other Greeks, in common with whom they were obliged to yield to the pressure of a foreign enemy. We here briefly notice their last period of languor, in contrast with the first burst of democratical fervour under Clisthenes, now opening—a feeling which will be found, as we proceed, to continue for a longer period than could have been reasonably anticipated, but which was too high-strung to become a perpetual and inherent attribute of any community.b

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XV. THE FIRST FOREIGN INVASION

Curtius in the well-known passage which begins his celebrated history asks where is the division between Asia and Europe, pointing out that the islands of the Ægean Sea are practically stepping-stones between Asia Minor and Greece, and that from one point of view the intervening bits of water are rather connecting links than a severing barrier. This claim has much to support it in the view of a maritime people; yet from another point of view a very tangible barrier does exist between the two continents. The Persians, as is well known, having their native seat far inland had a standing dread of water. For them the Ægean Sea was unquestionably a barrier, not a bridge. It would probably have been long before they attempted to cross this barrier had not the initiative been taken from the other side. But while it was far from Asia to Europe, it was not far, in the point of view of the sea-faring Greek, from Europe to Asia. To him the sea was a bridge.

No one knows how early the Greeks themselves crossed the various “bridges” of the Ægean and began to make settlements in Asia Minor, but it is known that in a very early day these settlements on the eastern shore had come to play a most important part in Grecian life. It is supposed that in the early day the inhabitants of Asia Minor welcomed the Greek colonist who became valuable to them as a manufacturer, and, in particular, as a trader.

It was long before there seemed anything menacing in the growth of these scattered colonies, and, before the powers of Asia Minor had aroused to a right understanding of the political import of the colonisation that had gone on under their eyes, the whole coast had come practically under the control of these peaceful invaders from the West. Then indeed the Lydians, in particular, were aroused to a realisation of what they had permitted, and sought to make amends by subjecting the colonies that had hitherto been their own masters. The attempt was first made on a large scale by Crœsus, but, before he had completed the task, he was himself overthrown by Cyrus, and the standing broil with the Greek colonies of the coast was one of the perquisites of war which Crœsus handed over to the Persians.

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Cyrus himself seems to have thought the Greeks of small importance, as he left a subordinate to dispose of them, while he turned his personal attention to the more powerful Babylonians, but the Greeks were supported by the memory of some generations of freedom, and they did not prove the contemptible foe that they seemed. Cities once conquered were prone to revolt, and the indomitable spirit of the Greeks on this western border of the Persian territory proved a standing source of annoyance. At last Darius determined to put an end to the Grecians once for all, and it was his general who for the first time led a Persian host across the Hellespont and into the precincts of Greece itself. The repulse of this host by the Athenians on the field of Marathon was an event which the Greeks of a later time never tired of celebrating, and which has taken its place in later history as one of the half-dozen great decisive battles of the world. Subjected to a critical view this battle of Marathon, as we shall have occasion to see presently, was not quite so decisive an event as the Athenians were disposed to think it. Still it turned the Persian horde back from Greece for a decade. Then under Xerxes came that stupendous half-organised army that has been the wonder of all after-times; and the glorious events of Thermopylæ, Salamis, Platæa, and Mycale in rapid succession added to the glory of Greek prowess and saved the life of Greece as a nation—saved it from an outer foe that it might die by its own hand. The events of this memorable epoch are among the most important in all Grecian history, and we must view them in detail, drawing largely for our knowledge of them on the great original source, Herodotus, but noting also the impression which they have made upon many generations of historians of other times and other lands.a

THE ORIGIN OF ANIMOSITY

Herodotus, born 484, in the midst of the Median wars, wondered at this great conflict between the Greek and barbarian worlds and sought its causes in times more remote than the Trojan war, even in the mythological period.

“The most learned of the Persians,” he says, “assert that the Phœnicians were the original exciters of contention. This nation migrated from the borders of the Red Sea to the place of their present settlement, and soon distinguished themselves by their long and enterprising voyages. They exported to Argos, among other places, the produce of Egypt and Assyria. Argos, at that period, was the most famous of all those states which are now comprehended under the general appellation of Greece. On their arrival here, the Phœnicians exposed their merchandise to sale; after remaining about six days, and when they had almost disposed of their different articles of commerce, the king’s daughter, whom both nations agree in calling Io, came among a great number of other women, to visit them at their station. Whilst these females, standing near the stern of the vessel, amused themselves with bargaining for such things as attracted their curiosity, the Phœnicians, in conjunction, made an attempt to seize their persons. The greater part of them escaped, but Io, with many others, remained a captive. They carried them on board, and directed their course for Egypt.

“The relation of the Greeks differs essentially; but this, according to the Persians, was the cause of Io’s arrival in Egypt, and the first act of violence which was committed. In process of time, certain Grecians, concerning whose country writers disagree, but who were really of Crete, are reported to have touched at Tyre, and to have carried away Europa, the daughter of the[263] prince. Thus far the Greeks had only retaliated; but they were certainly guilty of the second provocation. They made a voyage in a vessel of war to Æa, a city of Colchis, near the river Phasis; and, after having accomplished the more immediate object of their expedition, they forcibly carried off the king’s daughter, Medea. The king of Colchis despatched a herald to demand satisfaction for the affront, and the restitution of the princess; but the Greeks replied, that they should make no reparation in the present instance, as the violence formerly offered to Io still remained unexpiated.

“In the age which followed, Alexander [Paris], the son of Priam, encouraged by the memory of these events, determined on obtaining a wife from Greece, by means of similar violence; fully persuaded that this, like former wrongs, would never be avenged.

“Upon the loss of Helen, the Greeks at first employed messengers to demand her person, as well as a compensation for the affront. All the satisfaction they received was reproach for the injury which had been offered to Medea; and they were further asked, how, under circumstances entirely alike, they could reasonably require what they themselves had denied.

“Hitherto the animosity betwixt the two nations extended no farther than to acts of private violence. But at this period, the Greeks certainly laid the foundation of subsequent contention; who, before the Persians invaded Europe, doubtless made military incursions into Asia. The Persians appear to be of opinion, that they who offer violence to women must be insensible to the impressions of justice, but that such provocations are as much beneath revenge, as the women themselves are undeserving of regard: it being obvious, that all females thus circumstanced must have been more or less accessary to the fact. They asserted also, that although women had been forcibly carried away from Asia, they had never resented the affront. The Greeks, on the contrary, to avenge the rape of a Lacedæmonian woman, had assembled a mighty fleet, entered Asia in a hostile manner, and had totally overthrown the empire of Priam. Since which event they had always considered the Greeks as the public enemies of their nation.”

Such were the causes of the animosity between Persians and Greeks as Herodotus conceived them. But the modern historian gives scant credence to these tales. In reality we do not have to go back to the abduction of Io and Helen by the Asiatics, and of Europa and Medea by the Greeks to explain this mutual hate. Equally trivial are such incidents as the flight of the physician Democedes, who deceived Darius that he might return to his native Croton; and the desire of the queen, Atossa, to include Spartan and Athenian women among her slaves. The appeals of Hippias to be reinstated in Athens, and of the Aleuadæ of Thessaly to be delivered from the enemies that oppressed them had, to be sure, a somewhat more serious influence. But the real cause was Persia’s power. This empire had at that time attained its natural limits. Being nearly surrounded by deserts, the sea, wide rivers, and high mountains, there was but one direction in which she could expand, the northwest; and on that side lay a famous country, Greece, whose independence affronted the pride of the Great King. Cyrus had conquered Asia; Cambyses a part of Africa, so Darius, not to be outdone by his predecessors, attacked Europe. The Sardian satrap, Artaphernes, had already replied to the overtures of Clisthenes by demanding that Athens should come under the rule of the Great King. Darius had reorganised his empire and restored in his provinces the order so rudely shaken by the usurpation of the Magian and the efforts of the conquered nations to regain their freedom; it was necessary moreover to furnish occupation for[264] the warlike ardour which still characterised the Persians. With this end in view he planned an important expedition. The Scythians had formerly invaded Asia; it was the recollection of that injury and the desire to subjugate Thrace which adjoined his own empire that pointed out to Darius the route he was to follow. He set out from Susa with a numerous army, crossed the Bosporus on a bridge of boats constructed by the Samian, Mandrocles, and entered Europe bringing seven or eight hundred thousand men in his train, among whom were some Asiatic Greeks commanded by the tyrants of the various cities. He traversed Thrace, crossed the Danube (Ister) on a bridge of boats which he left the Greeks to guard, then penetrated well into Scythia in pursuit of an enemy whom it was impossible to seize. Darius had told the Greeks not to expect him to return after the expiration of sixty days. This time having passed without news of him, the Athenian, Miltiades, tyrant of the Chersonesus, proposed to destroy the bridge that the way into Thrace might not be left open to the Scythians whom he supposed victorious, also that the Persian army might be destroyed by them should it still exist. Histiæus of Miletus opposed this plan, representing to the chiefs, who were all tyrants of Greek cities, that they would surely be overthrown the day they lost the support of their great leader. This reasoning saved Darius, who, returning from his vain pursuit, left with Megabyzus eighty thousand men to complete the subjugation of Thrace, and also to conquer Macedonia.

Megabyzus conquered Perinthus, that part of Thrace which still resisted, Pæonia, and called upon the king of Macedonia to render him homage of earth and water. Amyntas accorded this, and Megabyzus was able to report to his master that the Persian empire at last adjoined Greece in Europe. With this the expedition came to an end. Histiæus’ services were rewarded by the gift of a vast territory on the banks of the Strymon. The site had been well chosen, near the gold and silver mines of Mount Pangæ, at the foot of hills rich in building woods and near the mouth of a river that offered an excellent port on the Ægean Sea. Myrcinus, founded there by Histiæus, would soon have attained the growth and prosperity that were to signalise Amphipolis later on the same spot, had not Megabyzus, in alarm, warned the king of the necessity of preventing this Greek from carrying out the plans he meditated. Histiæus was summoned to Sardis on pretext of being needed for an important consultation, and once there, Darius told him simply that he could not do without his friendship and advice. Histiæus was obliged to accept these gilded chains.

THE IONIC REVOLT

Several years had passed in unbroken peace when a trivial matter and an obscure man threw all in disorder again. Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades, was powerful at that time, ruling over several islands, possessing a considerable navy and able to place in the field eight thousand hoplites. Unfortunately, like every other Grecian state, Naxos was divided into two factions, the popular and the aristocratic. This latter destroyed itself by an unpardonable crime, similar to that of which Lucretia was victim about the same time in Rome. Sent into exile, they proposed to Aristagoras, Histiæus’ son-in-law and, in his absence, tyrant of Miletus, to take them back to their island. He acceded readily, beholding in fancy the Cyclades, possibly also Eubœa as already under his dominion. But unable to accomplish such an enterprise without help, he succeeded in interesting the satrap of Sardis,[265] Artaphernes, who placed at his disposal a fleet of two hundred ships commanded by Megabates. This Persian rebelled at being under the orders of a Greek and to avenge a slight received in a quarrel that broke out between them, sent information to the Naxians. The success of the expedition depended on secrecy; this once destroyed, it was bound to fail. Aristagoras held to the project four months, spending his own treasure as well as that given him for the enterprise by the king. He feared being obliged to make good this loss, and decided that revolt offered a preferable alternative, in which choice he was aided by the secret instigations of Histiæus. The army he had led before Naxos was still united, and forming part of it were all the tyrants of the cities on the Asiatic coast. These he seized and sent back to their respective cities where they were placed under sentence of death or exile, then established democracy everywhere (499 B.C.). After these deeds, finding it necessary to attach some powerful ally to his cause, he visited Lacedæmon. Cleomenes, its king, questioned him as to the distance of the Persian capital from the sea. “A three months’ march,” replied Aristagoras. “In that case you will leave this place to-morrow,” said the king, “it would be folly to propose to Lacedæmonians to put a three months’ march between themselves and the sea.” Aristagoras tried to bribe him to consent; but for once Spartan virtue was incorruptible and the Ionian went on to Athens. Given permission to speak in the assembly, he described the riches of Persia, and laid stress on the advantage the Greeks would have over a foe to whom the use of spear and shield was unknown, and finally adduced the fact that Miletus was a colony of Athens. The Athenians had more than one grievance against the Persians—the refuge given to Hippias, and the order to recall the tyrant received as a reply to their remonstrances. Aristagoras had little difficulty in persuading them to assure their own safety by carrying the war with which they were menaced over into the enemy’s country, they also believing doubtless that the matter was but a private quarrel between the satrap and Aristagoras. They decreed to the envoy twenty vessels to which were added five triremes from Eretria, this state thus repaying the aid it had formerly received from Miletus in its war against Chalcis. The allies proceeded to Ephesus and thence to Sardis, which they took and pillaged. The houses were thatched with reeds, and, a soldier accidentally setting fire to one of the roofs, the entire city, with the exception of the citadel to which Artaphernes had retired, was consumed, together with the temple of Cybele, venerated as deeply by the Persians as by the Lydians (498). Artaphernes meanwhile had recalled the army that was besieging Miletus, and from all sides gathered the provincial troops; the Athenians began to think of retreat. A defeat they suffered near Ephesus, possibly also treason among themselves, completed their dissatisfaction. They boarded their ships and returned to Athens, leaving their allies to extricate themselves from the difficulty in which they were placed as best they could.

The Ionians continued the contest, drawing into their movement all the cities on the Hellespont and the Propontis, together with Chalcedonia and Byzantium, the Carians and the island of Cyprus. The Persians got together several armies; one, directed northward against the cities of the Hellespont, took several towns, then fell back towards the south against the Carians, who, after losing two battles, surrendered. Another attacked Cyprus with the Phœnician fleet that had been defeated by the Ionians, but the treachery of a Cypriote chief delivered the island over to the enemy. Acting jointly in the centre, Artaphernes and Otanes captured Clazomenæ and Cyme, and[266] then advanced with a considerable force against Miletus, the last bulwark of Ionia. Here Aristagoras was no longer chief; he had basely deserted and escaped to Myrcinus, and was later killed in an attack on a Thracian city. As regards Histiæus, Darius, deceived by his promises, had recently restored him to liberty, but the Milesians, having no liking for tyrants, refused to receive him. Getting together a small force of Mytilenæans he became a pirate and was killed in a descent on the Asiatic coast. The Ionians assembled at the Panionium, deliberated as to the best means of saving Miletus. It was decided to risk a naval battle; Chios furnished a hundred ships, Lesbos seventy, Samos sixty, and Miletus itself eighty, the fleet numbering in all three hundred and fifty-three ships. The Persians had six hundred.

In the Greek fleet was a very able man who would have saved Ionia had she been willing to be saved. This was Dionysius, a Phocæan, who demonstrated to the allies that strict discipline and constant practice in manœuvres would assure them success. For seven days he drilled the crews in all the movements of naval warfare, but at the end of this time the effeminate Ionians had had enough; they left the ships, pitched their tents on land, and forgot that the enemy existed. As was unavoidable after taking such a course, their moral fibre became relaxed and treachery began to show among them. When the day of battle arrived, the Samians, in the hottest of the action, deserted their post and made for their own island. The Ionians were defeated despite the splendid courage of the Chian sailors and of Dionysius, who himself took three of the enemy’s vessels. When he saw that the battle was lost he boldly pushed on to Tyre and sank several merchant ships, retiring to Sicily with the wealth obtained. The rest of his life was passed in pursuing on the open sea Phœnician, Carthaginian, and Tyrrhenian ships.

All hope was lost for Miletus; it was taken and its inhabitants transported to Ampe, at the mouth of the Tigris (494). Chios, Lesbos, Tenedos, shared Miletus’ fate, and several cities of the Hellespont were destroyed by fire. The inhabitants of Chalcedon and Byzantium abandoned these cities to seek a home on the northwest coast of the Pontus Euxinus, in Mesambria. Miltiades also deemed it prudent to leave the Chersonesus; he returned to Athens, where he was soon to find himself arrayed against those very Persians from whom he now sought flight. The news of Ionia’s downfall echoed sadly throughout Greece, Athens, in particular, being affected. Phrynichus presented a play entitled the Capture of Miletus at which the entire audience burst into tears, and the poet was sentenced to pay a fine of a thousand drachmæ “for having revived the memory of a great domestic misfortune.” Tears like these expiate many faults.

Meanwhile Darius had not forgotten that after the burning of Sardis he had sworn to be revenged on the Athenians. He gave to his son-in-law, Mardonius, command over a newly raised army that was to enter Europe by way of Thrace while the fleet followed along the coast. Mardonius, to conciliate the Greeks in Asia, restored to them a democratic government, bearing in mind that the authors of the recent revolt had been two of the tyrants that Persia supported.

Megabazus had already subdued all the nations between the Hellespont and Macedonia. Mardonius crossed the Strymon and gave his fleet rendezvous in the Thermaic Gulf. He took Thasos and was passing along the coast of Chalcidice when on doubling the promontory of Mount Athos, which rises nineteen hundred and fifty metres out of the sea, his fleet encountered a terrific gale that wrecked three hundred ships and destroyed twenty[267] thousand lives. About the same time Mardonius, attacked at night by the Thracians, lost many of his men and was himself wounded. He continued the expedition, but was so enfeebled after the subjugation of the Brygians that he felt himself obliged to return to Asia.

A more formidable armament was at once prepared. Before sending it forth Darius despatched heralds to Greece demanding homage of earth and water, and, in the case of maritime cities, a contingent of galleys. The greater part of the islands and several cities yielded to this demand, Ægina even anticipating the desire of the Great King. The indignation of Athens and Sparta was such that they forgot the respect due to envoys. “You want earth and water?” replied the Spartans, “very well, you shall have both,” and the unfortunate men were thrown into a well. The Greeks cast them into the barathrum, and if a not very authentic tale may be believed, condemned to death the interpreter who had defiled the Greek tongue by translating into it the orders of a barbarian.[18]

WAR WITH ÆGINA

Athens was constantly at war with the Æginetans, and she now seized an opportunity their conduct offered to accuse them to the Lacedæmonians of treachery to the common cause. This appeal to the Spartans was equivalent to acknowledging their claims to supremacy as the recognised chiefs of Hellas, the exigencies of the situation having silenced pride. Cleomenes shared the resentment of the Athenians, and proceeded to Ægina to seize the offenders. But his colleague Demaratus, who had already betrayed him in an expedition into Attica, informed the islanders and the enterprise fell through.

To put an end to his colleague’s vexatious opposition Cleomenes caused it to be declared by the Pythia, whom he had won over, that Demaratus was not of royal blood, thus obtaining his deposition. Leotychides, who had joined with him in this scheme, succeeded the deposed king, to whom he was next of kin, and by outrageous treatment drove him from Sparta. Demaratus sought out Hippias in his exile and, like him, begged hospitality of the great protector of kings.

Cleomenes next proceeded to Ægina and took thence ten hostages whom he delivered over to the Athenians. This was the last public act of the turbulent chief who later became insane and perished miserably by his own hand; Leotychides, convicted of having taken bribes from the enemy he should have stubbornly opposed, died in exile. “Thus,” says Herodotus, “did the gods punish the perjury of these two princes.” Meanwhile the Æginetans demanded the return of their hostages, and, Athens refusing to surrender them, they attacked and captured the sacred galley that was carrying to Cape Sunium many prominent citizens. War immediately broke out. An Æginetan attempted to overthrow, in his island, the oligarchical government. He got possession of the citadel, but reinforcements not reaching him in time, he left in the hands of the enemy seven hundred of his men, who were massacred without mercy. One of these poor creatures succeeded in escaping and made his way to the temple of Ceres where he expected to find safe refuge. The gates being closed, he clung with both[268] hands to the latch-ring, and all efforts to make him let go being unavailing, the butchers cut off his hands, which even in the convulsions of death still preserved their frenzied hold. Herodotus, accustomed as he was to civil war, raises not a word of protest against this slaughter of seven hundred citizens, he remarks only upon the sacrilege committed on account of one of them. “No sacrifice,” he says piously, “will be sufficient to appease the wrath of the goddess.” The nobles were all ejected from the island before they had expiated their act of sacrilege. This war did not close, in fact, until nine years after the second expedition of the Persians.d

THE FIRST INVASION

Whilst these two nations were thus engaged in hostilities, the domestic of the Persian monarch continued regularly to bid him “Remember the Athenians,” which incident was further enforced by the unremitting endeavours of the Pisistratidæ to criminate that people. The king himself was very glad of this pretext, effectually to reduce such of the Grecian states as had refused him “earth and water.” He accordingly removed from his command Mardonius, who had been unsuccessful in his naval undertakings; he appointed two other officers to commence an expedition against Eretria and Athens; these were Datis, a native of Media, and Artaphernes his nephew, who were commanded totally to subdue both the above places, and to bring the inhabitants captive before him.

These commanders, as soon as they had received their appointment, advanced to Aleum in Cilicia, with a large and well-provided body of infantry. Here, as soon as they encamped, they were joined by a numerous reinforcement of marines, agreeably to the orders which had been given. Not long afterwards, those vessels arrived to take the cavalry on board, which in the preceding year Darius had commanded his tributaries to supply. The horse and foot immediately embarked, and proceeded to Ionia, in a fleet of six hundred triremes. They did not, keeping along the coast, advance in a right line to Thrace and the Hellespont, but loosing from Samos, they passed through the midst of the islands, and the Icarian Sea, fearing, as we should suppose, to double the promontory of Athos, by which they had in a former year severely suffered. They were further induced to this course by the island of Naxos which before they had omitted to take.

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Proceeding therefore from the Icarian Sea to this island, which was the first object of their enterprise, they met with no resistance. The Naxians, remembering their former calamities, fled in alarm to the mountains. Those taken captive were made slaves, the sacred buildings and the city were burned. This done, the Persians sailed to the other islands.

At this juncture the inhabitants of Delos deserted their island and fled to Tenos. The Persian fleet was directing its course to Delos, when Datis, hastening to the van, obliged them to station themselves at Rhenea, which lies beyond it. As soon as he learned to what place the Delians had retired, he sent a herald to them with this message: “Why, oh sacred people, do you fly, thinking so injuriously of me? If I had not received particular directions from the king my master to this effect, I, of my own accord, would never have molested you, nor offered violence to a place in which two deities were born. Return therefore, and inhabit your island as before.” Having sent this message, he offered upon one of their altars incense to the amount of three hundred talents [£60,000 or $300,000].

After this measure, Datis led his whole army against Eretria, taking with him the Ionians and Æolians. The Delians say, that at the moment of his departure the island of Delos was affected by a tremulous motion, a circumstance which, as the Delians affirm, never happened before or since. The deity, as it should seem by this prodigy, forewarned mankind of the evils which were about to happen. Greece certainly suffered more and greater calamities during the reigns of Darius son of Hystaspes, Xerxes son of Darius, and Artaxerxes son of Xerxes, than in all the preceding twenty generations; these calamities arose partly from the Persians, and partly from the contentions for power among its own great men. It was not therefore without reason that Delos, immovable before, should then be shaken, which event indeed had been predicted by the oracle:

It is also worth observation, that, translated into the Greek tongue, Darius signifies one who compels, Xerxes, a warrior, Artaxerxes, a great warrior; and thus they would call them if they used the corresponding terms.

The barbarians, sailing from Delos to the other islands, took on board reinforcements from them all, together with the children of the inhabitants as hostages. Cruising round the different islands, they arrived off Carystus; but the people of this place positively refused either to give hostages, or to serve against their neighbours, Athens and Eretria. They were consequently besieged, and their lands wasted; and they were finally compelled to surrender themselves to the Persians.

The Eretrians, on the approach of the Persian army, applied to the Athenians for assistance; this the Athenians did not think proper to withhold; they accordingly sent them the four thousand men to whom those lands had been assigned which formerly belonged to the Chalcidian cavalry; but the Eretrians, notwithstanding their application to the Athenians, were far from being firm and determined. They were so divided in their resolutions, that whilst some of them advised the city to be deserted, and a retreat made to the rocks of Eubœa, others, expecting a reward from the Persians, prepared to betray their country. Æschines, the son of Nothon, an Eretrian of the highest rank, observing these different sentiments, informed the Athenians of the state of affairs, advising them to return home, lest they should be involved in the common ruin. The Athenians attended to this advice of Æschines, and by passing over to Oropus, escaped the impending danger.

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The Persians, arriving at Eretria, came near Tamynæ, Chærea, and Ægilia; making themselves masters of these places, they disembarked the horse, and prepared to attack the enemy. The Eretrians did not think proper to advance and engage them; the opinion for defending the city had prevailed, and their whole attention was occupied in preparing for a siege. The Persians endeavoured to storm the place, and a contest of six days was attended with very considerable loss on both sides. On the seventh, the city was betrayed to the enemy by two of the more eminent citizens, Euphorbus, son of Alcimachus, and Philager, son of Cyneas. As soon as the Persians got possession of the place, they pillaged and burned the temples to avenge the burning of their own temples at Sardis. The people, according to the orders of Darius, were made slaves.

After this victory at Eretria, the Persians stayed a few days, and then sailed to Attica, driving all before them, and thinking to treat the Athenians as they had done the Eretrians. There was a place in Attica called Marathon, not far from Eretria, well adapted for the motions of cavalry: to this place therefore they were conducted by Hippias, son of Pisistratus.

As soon as the Athenians heard this, they advanced to the same spot, under the conduct of ten leaders, with the view of repelling force by force. The last of these was Miltiades. His father Cimon, son of Stesagoras, had been formerly driven from Athens by the influence of Pisistratus, son of Hippocrates. During his exile, he had obtained the prize at the Olympic games, in the chariot-race of four horses. This honour, however, he transferred to Miltiades his uterine brother. At the Olympic games which next followed he was again victorious, and with the same mares. This honour he suffered to be assigned to Pisistratus, on condition of his being recalled; a reconciliation ensued, and he was permitted to return. Being victorious a third time, on the same occasion, and with the same mares, he was put to death by the sons of Pisistratus, Pisistratus himself being then dead. He was assassinated in the night, near the Prytaneum, by some villains sent for the purpose: he was buried in the approach to the city, near the hollow way; and in the same spot were interred the mares which had three times obtained the prize at the Olympic games. If we except the mares of Evagoras of Sparta, no other ever obtained a similar honour. At this period, Stesagoras, the eldest son of Cimon, resided in the Chersonesus with his uncle Miltiades; the youngest was brought up at Athens under Cimon himself, and named Miltiades, from the founder of the Chersonesus.

This Miltiades, the Athenian leader, in advancing from the Chersonesus, escaped from two incidents which alike threatened his life: he was pursued as far as Imbros by the Phœnicians, who were exceedingly desirous to take him alive, and present him to the King; on his return home, where he thought himself secure, his enemies accused, and brought him to a public trial, under pretence of his aiming at the sovereignty of the Chersonesus; from this also he escaped, and was afterwards chosen a general of the Athenians by the suffrages of the people.

The Athenian leaders, before they left the city, despatched Phidippides to Sparta: he was an Athenian by birth, and his daily employment was that of a courier. To this Phidippides, as he himself affirmed, and related to the Athenians, the god Pan appeared on Mount Parthenius, which is beyond Tegea. The deity called him by his name, and commanded him to ask the Athenians why they so entirely neglected him, who not only wished them well, but who had frequently rendered them service, and would do so again. All this the Athenians believed, and as soon as the state of their affairs[271] permitted, they erected a temple to Pan near the citadel: ever since the above period, they venerate the god by annual sacrifices, and the race of torches.

Phidippides, who was sent by the Athenian generals, and who related his having met with Pan, arrived at Sparta on the second day of his departure from Athens. He went immediately to the magistrates, and thus addressed them: “Men of Lacedæmon, the Athenians supplicate your assistance, and entreat you not to suffer the most ancient city of Greece to fall into the hands of the barbarians: Eretria is already subdued, and Greece weakened by the loss of that illustrious place.” After this speech of Phidippides, the Lacedæmonians resolved to assist the Athenians; but they were prevented from doing this immediately by the prejudice of an inveterate custom. This was the ninth day of the month, and it was a practice with them to undertake no enterprise before the moon was at the full: for this, therefore, they waited.

In the night before Hippias conducted the barbarians to the plains of Marathon, he saw this vision: he thought that he lay with his mother. The inference which he drew from this was, that he should again return to Athens, be restored to his authority, and die in his own house of old age: he was then executing the office of a general. The prisoners taken in Eretria he removed to Ægilia, an island belonging to the Styreans; the vessels which arrived at Marathon, he stationed in the port, and drew up the barbarians in order as they disembarked. Whilst he was thus employed, he was seized with a fit of sneezing, attended with a very unusual cough. The agitation into which he was thrown, being an old man, was so violent, that as his teeth were loose, one of them dropped out of his mouth upon the sand. Much pains were taken to find it, but in vain; upon which Hippias remarked with a sigh to those around him, “This country is not ours, nor shall we ever become masters of it—my lost tooth possesses all that belongs to me.”

Hippias conceived that he saw in the above incident, the accomplishment of his vision. In the meantime the Athenians, drawing themselves up in military order near the temple of Hercules, were joined by the whole force of the Platæans. The Athenians had formerly submitted to many difficulties on account of the Platæans, who now, to return the obligation, gave themselves up to their direction. The occasion was this: the Platæans being oppressed by the Thebans, solicited the protection of Cleomenes the son of Anaxandrides, and of such Lacedæmonians as were at hand; they disclaimed, however, any interference, for which they assigned this reason:

“From us,” said they, “situated at so great a distance, you can expect but little assistance; for before we can even receive intelligence of your danger, you may be effectually reduced to servitude; we would rather recommend you to apply to the Athenians, who are not only near, but able to protect you.”

The Lacedæmonians, in saying this, did not so much consider the interest of the Platæans, as they were desirous of seeing the Athenians harassed by a Bœotian war. The advice was nevertheless accepted, and the Platæans going to Athens, first offered a solemn sacrifice to the twelve deities, and then sitting near the altar, in the attitude of supplicants, they placed themselves formally under the protection of the Athenians. Upon this the Thebans led an army against Platæa, to defend which, the Athenians appeared with a body of forces. As the two armies were about to engage, the Corinthians interfered; their endeavours to reconcile them so far prevailed, that it was[272] agreed, on the part of both nations, to suffer such of the people of Bœotia as did not choose to be ranked as Bœotians, to follow their own inclinations. Having effected this, the Corinthians retired, and their example was followed by the Athenians; these latter were on their return attacked by the Bœotians, whom they defeated. Passing over the boundaries, which the Corinthians had marked out, they determined that Asopus and Hysiæ should be the future limits between the Thebans and Platæans. The Platæans having thus given themselves up to the Athenians, came to their assistance at Marathon.

The Athenian leaders were greatly divided in opinion; some thought that a battle was by no means to be hazarded, as they were so inferior to the Medes in point of number; others, among whom was Miltiades, were anxious to engage the enemy. Of these contradictory sentiments, the less politic appeared likely to prevail, when Miltiades addressed himself to the polemarch, whose name was Callimachus of Aphidna. This magistrate, elected into his office by vote, has the privilege of a casting voice: and, according to established customs, is equal in point of dignity and influence to the military leaders. Miltiades addressed him thus:

“Upon you, O Callimachus, it alone depends, whether Athens shall be enslaved, or whether, in the preservation of its liberties, it shall perpetuate your name even beyond the glory of Harmodius and Aristogiton. Our country is now reduced to a more delicate and dangerous predicament than it has ever before experienced; if conquered, we know our fate, and must prepare for the tyranny of Hippias; if we overcome, our city may be made the first in Greece. How this may be accomplished, and in what manner it depends on you, I will explain: the sentiments of our ten leaders are divided, some are desirous of an engagement, others the contrary. If we do not engage, some seditious tumult will probably arise, which may prompt many of our citizens to favour the cause of the Medes; if we come to a battle before any evil of this kind take place, we may, if the gods be not against us, reasonably hope for victory: all these things are submitted to your attention, and are suspended on your will. If you accede to my opinion, our country will be free, our city the first in Greece.”

These arguments of Miltiades produced the desired effect upon Callimachus, from whose interposition it was determined to fight. Those leaders, who from the first had been solicitous to engage the enemy, resigned to Miltiades the days of their respective command. This he accepted, but did not think proper to commence the attack till the day of his own particular command arrived in its course.

THE BATTLE OF MARATHON

When this happened, the Athenians were drawn up for battle in the following order: Callimachus, as polemarch, commanded the right wing, in conformity with the established custom of the Athenians; next followed the tribes, ranged in close order, according to their respective ranks; the Platæans, placed in the rear, formed the left wing. Ever since this battle, in those solemn and public sacrifices, which are celebrated every fifth year, the herald implores happiness for the Platæans, jointly with the Athenians. Thus the Athenians produced a front equal in extent to that of the Medes. The ranks in the centre were not very deep, which of course constituted their weakest part; but the two wings were more numerous and strong.

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The preparations for the attack being thus made, and the appearance of the victims favourable, the Athenians ran toward the barbarians. There was betwixt the two armies an interval of about eight furlongs. The Persians seeing them approach by running, prepared to receive them, and as they observed the Athenians to be few in number, destitute both of cavalry and archers, they considered them as mad, and rushing on certain destruction; but as soon as the Greeks mingled with the enemy, they behaved with the greatest gallantry. They were the first Greeks that we know of, who ran to attack an enemy; they were the first also who beheld without dismay the dress and armour of the Medes; for hitherto in Greece the very name of a Mede excited terror.

After a long and obstinate contest, the barbarians in the centre, composed of the Persians and the Sacæ, obliged the Greeks to give way, and pursued the flying foe into the middle of the country. At the same time the Athenians and Platæans, in the two wings, drove the barbarians before them; then making an inclination toward each other, by contracting themselves, they formed against that part of the enemy which had penetrated and defeated the Grecian centre, and obtained a complete victory, killing a prodigious number, and pursuing the rest to the sea, where they set fire to their vessels.

Callimachus the polemarch, after the most signal acts of valour, lost his life in this battle. Stesilaus also, the son of Thrasylas, and one of the Grecian leaders, was slain. Cynægirus, son of Euphorion, after seizing one of the vessels by the poop, had his hand cut off with an axe, and died of his wounds: with these many other eminent Athenians perished.

In addition to their victory, the Athenians obtained possession of seven of the enemy’s vessels. The barbarians retired with their fleet, and taking on board the Eretrian plunder, which they had left in the island, they passed the promontory of Sunium, thinking to circumvent the Athenians, and arrive at their city before them. The Athenians impute the prosecution of this measure to one of the Alcmæonidæ, who they say held up a shield as a signal to the Persians, when they were under sail.

While they were doubling the cape of Sunium, the Athenians lost no time in hastening to the defence of their city, and effectually prevented the designs of the enemy. Retiring from the temple of Hercules, on the plains of Marathon, they fixed their camp near another temple of the same deity, in Cynosarges. The barbarians anchoring off Phalerum, the Athenian harbour, remained there some time, and then retired to Asia.

The Persians lost in the battle of Marathon six thousand four hundred men, the Athenians one hundred and ninety-two. In the heat of the engagement a most remarkable incident occurred: an Athenian, the son of Cuphagoras, whose name was Epizelus, whilst valiantly fighting, was suddenly struck with blindness. He had received no wound, nor any kind of injury, notwithstanding which he continued blind for the remainder of his life. Epizelus, in relating this calamity, always declared, that during the battle he was opposed by a man of gigantic stature, completely armed, whose beard covered the whole of his shield: he added, that the spectre, passing him, killed the man who stood next him.c

Thus far we have followed the account of Herodotus. His high repute, for many years scoffed at, has had a sudden and cordial revival. Minute surveys of the Grecian battle-fields have recently been made by George Beardoe Grundy,f who finds Herodotus remarkably accurate in his topography and in his sifting of evidence and discarding of what he could not definitely substantiate. It is well to read, however, a typical account of the battle of[274] Marathon, by a German critic Busolt, whose cautious use of Herodotus has made the following account of this battle famous.a

At the head of the army marched Callimachus the polemarch, who in his capacity of military chief was entitled to important privileges and honours. Not only did he offer sacrifices and vows, and in the order of battle assume the place of honour at the head of the right wing, but he was also entitled to vote with the Strategi in the council of war, and it even appears that as president of the latter he registered his vote last. In spite of this the actual command of the army was in the hands of the leaders of the regiments of the phylæ, amongst whom the chief command alternated in daily rotation. The Strategi at that time included, so far as we know, Aristides, Stesilaus, and Miltiades, who had apparently been elected as the tenth by his phyle, the Œneis. The Athenian army is said to have marched out nine or ten thousand strong, but no confidence can be placed in these numbers as they rest on a later and unreliable authority.

Similarly, we have no decided, tangible information, as to what it was that induced the Athenians not to fortify themselves behind the walls of their city, but to venture into the open field to encounter an enemy, far superior in numbers and also, since the victory over the Ionians, evidently dreaded in Hellas. Perhaps the fate of Eretria may have exercised a decisive influence on the resolution of the Athenians. The town walls may not have been in the best condition, and, as in particular there was good cause to distrust the followers of the Pisistratidæ, there must have been some apprehension lest the latter should find occasion, while the Persian army lay before the town, to enter into relations with the enemy, as the Eretrian traitors had done. But if they decided for contest in the open field it was advisable to join battle in as favourable a position as possible; so that the country might be protected from plunder and foraging. It was therefore necessary to renounce the idea of barring the passes of Pentelicus and its outlying slopes,[275] since this position might be easily turned by way of the sea. Still less durst they risk a battle in the open plain, where the enemy would have all the advantage belonging to their overwhelming numbers, and the Persian cavalry would have full play.

The most favourable place to take up a position would be in one of the long narrow side valleys, which adjoin the plain of Marathon and in which a small army might safely encamp opposite a large one. In one of these side valleys and indeed in that of Avlon itself, was the temple precinct of the Heracleum, by which the Athenian army took up its position. The flanks were covered by the slopes of Argaliki (right) and of Kotroni (left) and secured against a turning movement. Whilst it was well calculated for an attack the position also afforded protection against an advancing enemy. The limited breadth of the entrance to the valley hindered the Persians from bringing forward the whole strength of their infantry and from using their cavalry effectively.[19] If they elected to make no attack but to slip past the Athenian army, two ways offered themselves for the march against Athens. One of these led by Marathon or Vrana to Cephisia, the other between the outlying slopes of Pentelicus towards Pallene and the Mesogæa. But it was only this last road that was practicable for vehicles and an army with cavalry and baggage. On the march by either of these two routes the Persians must expose their flank to the enemy. If they took ship, that they might make direct for Phalerum, they were liable to be attacked by the Athenian army before they could get away.

When the Athenians had taken up their stand at the Heracleum, the whole fighting force of the Platæans joined them. It appears from this that the armies had been encamped opposite one another for several days, since the Platæans could of course only start for Marathon after they had heard of the decisive resolution of the Athenians to go out to meet the enemy in that place. Since the Persians showed no signs of attacking the Attic position and since doubtful tidings had already arrived from Sparta, Miltiades decided to anticipate the attack himself, in order, as Herodotus says, to leave those who cherished projects of high treason no time to affect a wider circle of citizens and create discord. Yet half of his colleagues held the Athenian army to be too weak and declared against a battle. Under these circumstances the decision lay with the vote of the polemarch Callimachus, and the latter sided with Miltiades. Thereupon, each of the Strategi, who had voted for the battle, surrendered his command for the day on which it was his turn to assume it to Miltiades. The latter did indeed accept it, but it is nevertheless said that he did not advance to the attack until the day arrived on which he held the command-in-chief himself in his own right. This statement is very doubtful, but shows that Herodotus was unacquainted with the tradition that Miltiades advanced to the attack when he received the news that the Persians were embarking and that the cavalry were on the sea-shore. If the battle-day was selected in this way, Miltiades could not certainly have voluntarily waited for his day. Now it is principally Herodotus whom we have to go upon, as the oldest authority and the one on which later writers have generally preferred to draw, and, moreover, the tradition of the embarkation of the cavalry is a completely unreliable one; all hypotheses therefore which are built upon it and on the circumstance of the display of the shield on the height of Pentelicus are to be regarded as of no value.

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In the order of battle the Athenians placed themselves according to the official order of the phylæ. At their head as leader of the right wing, stood the polemarch Callimachus, with the phyle Æantis, to which he himself, as an Aphidnæan, belonged. The Platæans received a place on the extreme left. The front of the Athenians was turned to the northeast. The left wing was covered by the slope of Kotroni and the trees which fringed it; the right was not very far from the shore. The ground permitted Miltiades to make the line of battle the same length as that of the enemy, in order to protect himself from a flank movement. The wings had to be strong enough both to repel an attempt to surround them and to effect a charge; he therefore ranged the centre only a few lines deep, whilst the wings were relatively strong. The attack was not unexpected by the Persians; they had time to form in order of battle with a centre including their picked troops, Persians and Sacæ, while the cavalry seem to have been kept in reserve behind the hills. They were, however, astounded by the manner of the attack. According to Herodotus the space between the two lines of battle amounted to eight stadia. The serried ranks of the Athenians covered this distance at a run (in some nine minutes) chiefly to avoid the chance that the cavalry might fall upon them by the way, and in order to get as quickly as possible past the hail of Persian arrows and come to a hand-to-hand combat. For the Persians began their battles with a fight at a distance, and their army was essentially a defensive army, to which Hellenic hoplites were superior in a struggle of man against man. Moreover the speed of the forward movement must have added force to the charge of the heavy-armed infantry. The shock of meeting probably took place between the Charadra and the Brexisa; the Persian foot stood firm and the fight lasted a long time. Finally the Athenians and Platæans with great force threw back the enemy, on either wing, although their centre was pierced by the Persians and Sacæ and pursued inland. In consequence, the victorious wings left the vanquished to fly, wheeled inwards and turned their united front against the Persians and Sacæ. A new fight ensued, which ended in the total defeat of the barbarians. Many of them were driven, in their flight, into the great swamp of Kato Suli, and there perished.

In the meantime, the Persian wings which had been vanquished in the onset, had had some time in which to launch a number of ships and get first on board. In especial, the embarkation of the cavalry, which had probably remained behind the wings, must have been effected. This cannot have required very much time, since the horse-transports were flat-built vessels. When the Athenians wished to follow up the pursuit of the Persians and Sacæ by the shore, they attempted to take or set fire to such ships as were still within reach. Thereupon there ensued a hot fight in which fell many men of name, such as polemarch Callimachus, the strategus Stesilaus, and Cynægirus, brother of the poet Æschylus. The Athenians succeeded in gaining possession of only seven ships; with the others the Persians got away and then made for the islet of Ægilia, to take on board the Eretrians they had left there.

The Persians were already in their ships, when it was noticed in the Athenian camps that a signal had been made by a shield, set up apparently upon the height of Pentelicus. It was believed that it had been given by the traitors in the town. Apparently on the morning after the battle the Persian fleet left Ægilia and steered its course for Cape Sunium. As soon as the Athenians observed the direction taken, the strategi could no longer doubt that it was the town which was aimed at. Forthwith they started with the[277] army, and, by a rapid forced march, succeeded in reaching Athens before the enemy, and there set up a camp on the Heracleum, at the southern foot of Lycabettus, in Cynosarges. The Persian fleet soon showed itself above the height of Phalerum, yet made no attack, but only anchored for a time and then sailed back to Asia.

Presumably Datis did not venture on a landing in sight of the Athenian army after the experience of Marathon. The defeat was not indeed a crushing one, but had been by no means insignificant, for the Persians had lost 6400 killed, to which a considerable number of wounded is to be added. Of the Athenians, 192 citizens had fallen in the battle. The town bestowed on them the peculiar honour of a common burial on the battle-field itself. Close by, a tropæum of white marble and a monument to Miltiades were erected. With the tithe of the spoil, the Athenians erected, amongst other things, a bronze group at Delphi. Every year, on the sixth of Bœdromion, the festival of Artemis Agrotera, a great goat sacrifice was offered to that goddess for the crowd of defeated enemies, in fulfilment of a vow of the polemarch, before the battle.

Pan, who had thrown his terror amongst the barbarians, received a sanctuary in the grotto on the northwest side of the rock-citadel. To him also an annual sacrifice was offered and a torch-race instituted. The memory of the victory which the Athenians, as advance guard of the Hellenes, had achieved always filled them with special pride. Poets and orators could not refer to it often enough.

The day of the battle cannot be determined with precision. Only this much is certain, that the fight took place at the time of the full moon, in one of the last months of the summer of the year 490. For after the full moon two thousand Lacedæmonians marched hastily from Sparta and made every effort to reach Athens in time. On the third day they arrived in Attica, but the battle had already been fought. After having viewed the scene of the Persian overthrow they started on their return march spreading eulogies on the Athenians.g

In an article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies (1898), J. A. R. Munroh declares that the reason the Persians chose so disadvantageous a field as Marathon, was purely to lure Miltiades and the troops out of Athens while the plot was maturing by which the supporters of Hippias should open the gates and admit the Persians by way of Phalerum. But as usually happens, something hung fire, the Spartans approached and, before the signal of the shield could be raised, Miltiades had routed the land forces with undreamed success and was hastening back to Athens.

In this view, the strategy of the Persians becomes somewhat less contemptible and the march of the Spartans seems not so useless.a

ON THE COURAGE OF THE GREEKS

Modern history will never cease to ring with grateful praises of the Athenians and Platæans for their defence of Greece against Persia. They were the bulwark of the Occident against the Orient, of Europe against Asia. The Persian scholar can see many ways in which, to his mind at least, it would have been best if the Asiatic conquest of Greece had not thus been postponed for centuries. We of to-day shall always be glad that events fashioned themselves as they did until Europe was ready to resist any general enforcement of Asiatic ideals and customs.

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Granting the importance, then, of the victory to its fullest extent, it cannot but make for truth to realise how little the Greeks knew all they were doing, how selfish and mutually jealous they were, and in what a humble manner they accomplished so much more than they dreamed or desired.a The realism of this glorious feat could not be more vividly phrased than by Prof. J. P. Mahaffy in his Rambles and Studies in Greece:

“Byron may well be excused for raving about the liberty of the Greeks, for truly their old conflict at Marathon where a thousand ill-disciplined men repulsed a larger number of still worse disciplined Orientals, without any recondite tactics,—perhaps even without any very extraordinary heroism,—how is it that this conflict has maintained a celebrity which has not been equalled by all the great battles of the world, from that day down to our own? The courage of the Greeks was not of the first order. Herodotus praises the Athenians in this very battle for being the first Greeks that dared to look the Persians in the face. Their generals all through history seem never to feel sure of victory, and always endeavour to harangue their soldiers into a fury. Instead of advising coolness, they specially incite to rage—ὀργῇ προσμίξωμεν, says one of them in Thucydides—as if any man not in this state would be sure to estimate the danger fully, and run away.

“It is, indeed, true that the ancient battles were hand to hand, and therefore parallel to our charges of bayonets, which are said to be very seldom carried out by two opposing lines, as one of them almost always gives way before the actual collision takes place. This must often have taken place in Greek battles, for, at Amphipolis, Brasidas in a battle lost seven men; at a battle of Corinth, mentioned by Xenophon—an important battle, too—the slain amounted to eight; and these battles were fought before the days when whole armies were composed of mercenaries, who spared one another, as Ordericus Vitalis says, ‘for the love of God, and out of good feeling for the fraternity of arms.’ So, then, the loss of 192 Athenians, including some distinguished men, was rather a severe one. As to the loss of the Persians, I so totally disbelieve the Greek accounts of such things, that it is better to pass it by in silence.

“Perhaps most readers will be astonished to hear of the Athenian army as undisciplined, and of the science of war as undeveloped, in those times. Yet I firmly believe this was so. The accounts of battles by almost all the historians are so utterly vague, and so childishly conventional, that it is evident these gentlemen were not only quite ignorant of the science of war, but could not easily find any one to explain it to them. We know that the Spartans, the most admired of all Greek warriors, were chiefly so admired because they devised the system of subordinating officers to one another within the same detachment, like our gradation from colonel to corporal. So orders were passed down from officer to officer, instead of being bawled out by a herald to a whole army.

“But this superiority of the Spartans who were really disciplined, and went into battle coolly, like brave men, certainly did not extend to strategy, but was merely a question of better drill. As soon as any real strategist met them, they were helpless. Thus Iphicrates, when he devised Wellington’s plan of meeting their attacking column in line, and using missiles, succeeded against them, even without firearms. Thus Epaminondas, when he devised Napoleon’s plan of massing troops on a single point, while keeping his enemy’s line occupied, defeated them without any considerable struggle. As for that general’s great battle of Mantinea, which seems really to have been introduced by some complicated strategical movements, it is a mere[279] hopeless jumble in our histories. But these men were in the distant future when the battle of Marathon was being fought.

“Yet what signifies all this criticism? In spite of all scepticism, in spite of all contempt, the battle of Marathon, whether badly or well fought, and the troops at Marathon, whether well or ill trained, will ever be more famous than any other battle or army, however important or gigantic its dimensions. Even in this very war, the battles of Salamis and Platæa were vastly more important and more hotly contested. The losses were greater, the results were more enduring, yet thousands have heard of Marathon to whom the other names are unknown. So much for literary ability—so much for the power of talking well about one’s deeds. Marathon was fought by Athenians; the Athenians eclipsed the other Greeks as far as the other Greeks eclipsed the rest of the world in literary power. This battle became the literary property of the city, hymned by poet, cited by orator, told by aged nurse, lisped by stammering infant; and so it has taken its position, above all criticism, as one of the great decisive battles which assured the liberty of the West against oriental despotism.”j

IF DARIUS HAD INVADED GREECE EARLIER

Had the first aggressive expedition of Darius, with his own personal command and fresh appetite for conquest, been directed against Greece instead of against Scythia (between 516-514 B.C.), Grecian independence would have perished almost infallibly. For Athens was then still governed by the Pisistratidæ. She had then no courage for energetic self-defence, and probably Hippias himself, far from offering resistance, would have found it advantageous to accept Persian dominion as a means of strengthening his own rule, like the Ionian despots: moreover the Grecian habit of co-operation was then only just commencing. But fortunately the Persian invader did not touch the shore of Greece until more than twenty years afterwards, in 490 B.C.; and during that precious interval, the Athenian character had undergone the memorable revolution which has been before described. Their energy and their organisation had been alike improved and their force of resistance had become decupled; moreover, their conduct had so provoked the Persians that resistance was then a matter of necessity with them and submission on tolerable terms an impossibility. When we come to the grand Persian invasion of Greece, we shall see that Athens was the life and soul of all the opposition offered. We shall see further, that with all the efforts of Athens, the success of the defence was more than once doubtful; and would have been converted into a very different result, if Xerxes had listened to the best of his own counsellors. But had Darius, at the head of the very same force which he conducted into Scythia, or even an inferior force, landed at Marathon in 514 B.C., instead of sending Datis in 490 B.C.—he would have found no men like the victors of Marathon to meet him. As far as we can appreciate the probabilities, he would have met with little resistance, except from the Spartans singly, who would have maintained their own very defensible territory against all his effort—like the Mysians and Pisidians in Asia Minor, or like the Mainots of Laconia in later days; but Hellas generally would have become a Persian satrapy.k

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XVI. MILTIADES AND THE ALLEGED FICKLENESS OF REPUBLICS

Happy would it have been for Miltiades if he had shared the honourable death of the polemarch Callimachus, in seeking to fire the ships of the defeated Persians at Marathon. The short sequel of his history will be found in melancholy contrast with the Marathonian heroism.

His reputation had been great before the battle, and after it the admiration and confidence of his countrymen knew no bounds: it appears, indeed, to have reached such a pitch that his head was turned, and he lost both his patriotism and his prudence. He proposed to his countrymen to incur the cost of equipping an armament of seventy ships, with an adequate armed force, and to place it altogether at his discretion; giving them no intimation whither he intended to go, but merely assuring them that, if they would follow him, he would conduct them to a land where gold was abundant, and thus enrich them. Such a promise from the lips of the recent victor of Marathon was sufficient, and the armament was granted, no man except Miltiades knowing what was its destination. He sailed immediately to the island of Paros, laid siege to the town, and sent in a herald to require from the inhabitants a contribution of one hundred talents [£20,000 or $100,000], on pain of entire destruction. His pretence for this attack was, that the Parians had furnished a trireme to Datis for the Persian fleet at Marathon; but his real motive, so Herodotus assures us, was vindictive animosity against a Parian citizen named Lysagoras, who had exasperated the Persian general Hydarnes against him. The Parians amused him at first with evasions, until they had procured a little delay to repair the defective portions of their wall, after which they set him at defiance; and Miltiades in vain prosecuted hostilities against them for the space of twenty-six days: he ravaged the island, but his attacks made no impression upon the town. Beginning to despair of success in his military operations, he entered into some negotiation—such at least was the tale of the Parians themselves—with a Parian woman named Timo, priestess or attendant in the temple of Demeter, near the town gates. This woman, promising to reveal to him a secret which would place Paros in his power, induced him to visit by night a temple to which no male person was admissible. He leaped the exterior fence, and approached the sanctuary; but on coming near, was seized with a panic terror and ran away, almost out of his senses: on leaping the same fence to get back, he strained or bruised his thigh badly, and became utterly disabled. In this melancholy state he was placed on shipboard, the siege being raised, and the whole armament returning to Athens.

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Vehement was the indignation both of the armament and of the remaining Athenians against Miltiades on his return; and Xanthippus, father of the great Pericles, became the spokesman of this feeling. He impeached Miltiades before the popular judicature as having been guilty of deceiving the people, and as having deserved the penalty of death. The accused himself, disabled by his injured thigh, which even began to show symptoms of gangrene, was unable to stand, or to say a word in his own defence: he lay on his couch before the assembled judges, while his friends made the best case they could in his behalf. Defence, it appears, there was none; all they could do, was to appeal to his previous services: they reminded the people largely and emphatically of the inestimable exploit at Marathon, coming in addition to his previous conquest of Lemnos. The assembled dicasts, or jurors, showed their sense of these powerful appeals by rejecting the proposition of his accuser to condemn him to death: but they imposed on him the penalty of fifty talents [£10,000 or $50,000] “for his iniquity.”

Cornelius Nepos affirms that these fifty talents represented the expenses incurred by the state in fitting out the armament; but we may more probably believe, looking to the practice of the Athenian dicastery in criminal cases, that fifty talents was the minor penalty actually proposed by the defenders of Miltiades themselves, as a substitute for the punishment of death. In those penal cases at Athens, where the punishment was not fixed beforehand by the terms of the law, if the person accused was found guilty, it was customary to submit to the jurors, subsequently and separately, the question as to amount of punishment: first, the accuser named the penalty which he thought suitable; next, the accused person was called upon to name an amount of penalty for himself, and the jurors were constrained to take their choice between these two—no third gradation of penalty being admissible for consideration. Of course, under such circumstances, it was the interest of the accused party to name, even in his own case, some real and serious penalty—something which the jurors might be likely to deem not wholly inadequate to his crime just proved; for if he proposed some penalty only trifling, he drove them to prefer the heavier sentence recommended by his opponent. Accordingly, in the case of Miltiades, his friends, desirous of inducing the jurors to refuse their assent to the punishment of death, proposed a fine of fifty talents as the self-assessed penalty of the defendant; and perhaps they may have stated, as an argument in the case, that such a sum would suffice to defray the costs of the expedition. The fine was imposed, but Miltiades did not live to pay it: his injured limb mortified, and he died, leaving the fine to be paid by his son Cimon.

According to Cornelius Nepos, Diodorus, and Plutarch, he was put in prison, after having been fined, and there died. But Herodotus does not mention this imprisonment, and the fact appears improbable: he would hardly have omitted to notice it, had it come to his knowledge.

Thus closed the life of the conqueror of Marathon. The last act of it produces an impression so mournful, and even shocking—his descent from the pinnacle of glory to defeat, mean tampering with a temple-servant, mortal bodily hurt, undefended ignominy, and death under a sentence of heavy fine, is so abrupt and unprepared—that readers, ancient and modern, have not been satisfied without finding some one to blame for it: we must except Herodotus, our original authority, who recounts the transaction without dropping a single hint of blame against any one. To speak ill of the people, as Machiavelli has long ago observed, is a strain in which every one at all times, even under a democratical government, indulges with impunity[282] and without provoking any opponent to reply; and in this instance, the hard fate of Miltiades has been imputed to the vices of the Athenians and their democracy—it has been cited in proof, partly of their fickleness, partly of their ingratitude. But however such blame may serve to lighten the mental sadness arising from a series of painful facts, it will not be found justified if we apply to those facts a reasonable criticism.

What is called the fickleness of the Athenians on this occasion is nothing more than a rapid and decisive change in their estimation of Miltiades; unbounded admiration passing at once into extreme wrath. To censure them for fickleness is here an abuse of terms; such a change in their opinion was the unavoidable result of his conduct. His behaviour in the expedition of Paros was as reprehensible as at Marathon it had been meritorious, and the one succeeded immediately after the other: what else could ensue except an entire revolution in the Athenian feelings? He had employed his prodigious ascendency over their minds to induce them to follow him without knowing whither, in the confidence of an unknown booty; he had exposed their lives and wasted their substance in wreaking a private grudge; in addition to the shame of an unprincipled project, comes the constructive shame of not having succeeded in it. Without doubt, such behaviour, coming from a man whom they admired to excess, must have produced a violent and painful revulsion in the feelings of his countrymen. The idea of having lavished praise and confidence upon a person who forthwith turns it to an unworthy purpose, is one of the greatest torments of the human bosom; and we may well understand that the intensity of the subsequent displeasure would be aggravated by this reactionary sentiment, without accusing the Athenians of fickleness.

In regard to the charge of ingratitude against the Athenians, this last-mentioned point—sufficiency of reason—stands tacitly admitted. It is conceded that Miltiades deserved punishment for his conduct in reference to the Parian expedition, but it is nevertheless maintained that gratitude for his previous services at Marathon ought to have exempted him from punishment. But the sentiment upon which, after all, this exculpation rests, will not bear to be drawn out and stated in the form of a cogent or justifying reason. For will any one really contend, that a man who has rendered great services to the public, is to receive in return a license of unpunished misconduct for the future? Is the general, who has earned applause by eminent skill and important victories, to be recompensed by being allowed the liberty of betraying his trust afterwards, and exposing his country to peril, without censure or penalty? This is what no one intends to vindicate deliberately; yet a man must be prepared to vindicate it, when he blames the Athenians for ingratitude towards Miltiades. It will be recollected that the death of Miltiades arose neither from his trial nor his fine, but from the hurt in his thigh.

The charge of ingratitude against the Athenian popular juries really amounts to this—that, in trying a person accused of present crime or fault, they were apt to confine themselves too strictly and exclusively to the particular matter of charge, either forgetting or making too little account of past services which he might have rendered. Whoever imagines that such was the habit of Athenian dicasts, must have studied the orators to very little purpose. Their real defect was the very opposite: they were too much disposed to wander from the special issue before them, and to be affected by appeals to previous services and conduct.

This defect is one which we should naturally expect from a body of private, non-professional citizens assembled for the occasion, and which belongs[283] more or less to the system of jury-trial everywhere; but it is the direct reverse of that ingratitude, or habitual insensibility to prior services, for which they have been so often denounced.

The fate of Miltiades, then, so far from illustrating either the fickleness or the ingratitude of his countrymen, attests their just appreciation of deserts. It also illustrates another moral, of no small importance to the right comprehension of Grecian affairs; it teaches us the painful lesson, how perfectly maddening were the effects of a copious draught of glory on the temperament of an enterprising and ambitious Greek. There can be no doubt, that the rapid transition, in the course of about one week, from Athenian terror before the battle to Athenian exultation after it, must have produced demonstrations towards Miltiades such as were never paid towards any other man in the whole history of the commonwealth. Such unmeasured admiration unseated his rational judgment, so that his mind became abandoned to the reckless impulses of insolence, and antipathy, and rapacity—that distempered state, for which (according to Grecian morality) the retributive Nemesis was ever on the watch, and which, in his case, she visited with a judgment startling in its rapidity, as well as terrible in its amount. Had Miltiades been the same man before the battle of Marathon as he became after it, the battle might probably have turned out a defeat instead of a victory. We shall presently be called upon to observe the same tendency in the case of the Spartan Pausanias, and even in that of the Athenian Themistocles.

It is, indeed, fortunate that the reckless aspirations of Miltiades did not take a turn more noxious to Athens than the comparatively unimportant enterprise against Paros. For had he sought to acquire dominion and gratify antipathies against enemies at home, instead of directing his blow against a Parian enemy, the peace and security of his country might have been seriously endangered.

Of the despots who gained power in Greece, a considerable proportion began by popular conduct, and by rendering good service to their fellow-citizens: having first earned public gratitude, they abused it for purposes of their own ambition. There was far greater danger, in a Grecian community, of dangerous excess of gratitude towards a victorious soldier, than of deficiency in that sentiment: hence the person thus exalted acquired a position such that the community found it difficult afterwards to shake him off. Now there is a disposition almost universal among writers and readers to side with an individual, especially an eminent individual, against the multitude; and accordingly those who under such circumstances suspect the probable abuse of an exalted position, are denounced as if they harboured an unworthy jealousy of superior abilities. But the truth is, that the largest analogies of the Grecian character justified that suspicion, and required the community to take precautions against the corrupting effects of their own enthusiasm. There is no feature which more largely pervades the impressible Grecian character, than a liability to be intoxicated and demoralised by success: there was no fault from which so few eminent Greeks were free: there was hardly any danger, against which it was at once so necessary and so difficult for the Grecian governments to take security—especially the democracies, where the manifestations of enthusiasm were always the loudest. Such is the real explanation of those charges which have been urged against the Grecian democracies, that they came to hate and ill-treat previous benefactors; and the history of Miltiades illustrates it in a manner no less pointed than painful.

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If we are to predicate any attribute of the multitude, it will rather be that of undue tenacity than undue fickleness; and there will occur nothing in the course of this history to prove that the Athenian people changed their opinions on insufficient grounds more frequently than an unresponsible one or few would have changed.

But there were two circumstances in the working of the Athenian democracy which imparted to it an appearance of greater fickleness, without the reality: First, that the manifestations and changes of opinion were all open, undisguised, and noisy: the people gave utterance to their present impression, whatever it was, with perfect frankness; if their opinions were really changed, they had no shame or scruple in avowing it. Secondly,—and this is a point of capital importance in the working of democracy generally,—the present impression, whatever it might be, was not merely undisguised in its manifestations, but also had a tendency to be exaggerated in its intensity. This arose from their habit of treating public affairs in multitudinous assemblages, the well-known effect of which is, to inflame sentiment in every man’s bosom by mere contact with a sympathising circle of neighbours. Whatever the sentiment might be,—fear, ambition, cupidity, wrath, compassion, piety, patriotic devotion, etc.,—and whether well-founded or ill-founded, it was constantly influenced more or less by such intensifying cause. This is a defect which of course belongs in a certain degree to all exercise of power by numerous bodies, even though they be representative bodies, especially when the character of the people, instead of being comparatively sedate and slow to move, like the English, is quick, impressible, and fiery, like Greeks or Italians; but it operated far more powerfully on the self-acting Demos assembled in the Pnyx. It was in fact the constitutional malady of the democracy, of which the people were themselves perfectly sensible,—as we shall show hereafter from the securities which they tried to provide against it,—but which no securities could ever wholly eradicate. Frequency of public assemblies, far from aggravating the evil, had a tendency to lighten it. The people thus became accustomed to hear and balance many different views as a preliminary to ultimate judgment; they contracted personal interest and esteem for a numerous class of dissentient speakers; and they even acquired a certain practical consciousness of their own liability to error.

These two attributes, then, belonged to the Athenian democracy; first, their sentiments of every kind were manifested loudly and openly; next, their sentiments tended to a pitch of great present intensity. Of course, therefore, when they changed, the change of sentiment stood prominent, and forced itself upon every one’s notice—being a transition from one strong sentiment past to another strong sentiment present. And it was because such alterations, when they did take place, stood out so palpably to remark, that the Athenian people have drawn upon themselves the imputation of fickleness: for it is not at all true that changes of sentiment were more frequently produced in them by frivolous or insufficient causes, than changes of sentiment in other governments.b

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CHAPTER XVII. THE PLANS OF XERXES

What follows is one of the most interesting parts of Herodotus. It exhibits the most circumstantial detail of the expedition of Xerxes against Greece, by a writer almost contemporary. It is also impressed with the character of authenticity, for it was recited to a multitude of Greeks assembled at Olympia, among whom doubtless there were many who had fought both at Salamis and Platæa.f

When the news of the battle of Marathon was communicated to Darius, he, who was before incensed against the Athenians, on account of their invasion of Sardis, became still more exasperated, and more inclined to invade Greece. He instantly therefore sent emissaries to the different cities under his power, to provide a still greater number of transports, horses, corn, and provisions. In the interval which this business employed, Asia experienced three years of confusion; her most able men being enrolled for the Greek expedition, and making preparation for it. In the fourth, the Egyptians, who had been reduced by Cambyses, revolted from the Persians: but this only induced Darius to accelerate his preparations against both nations. At this juncture there arose a violent dispute among the sons of Darius, concerning the succession to the throne, the Persian customs forbidding the sovereign to undertake any expedition without naming his heir. Darius had three sons before he ascended the throne, by the daughter of Gobryas; he had four afterwards by Atossa, daughter of Cyrus: Artabazanes was the eldest of the former, Xerxes of the latter. Not being of the same mother, a dispute arose between them; Artabazanes asserted his pretensions from being the eldest of all his father’s sons, a claim which mankind in general consent to acknowledge. Xerxes claimed the throne because he was the grandson of Cyrus, to whom the Persians were indebted for their liberties.

Darius having declared Xerxes his heir, prepared to march; but in the year which succeeded the Egyptian revolt, he died; having reigned thirty-six years, without being able to gratify his resentment against the Egyptians and Athenians who had opposed his power. On his death, Xerxes immediately succeeded to the throne, and from the first, seemed wholly inclined to the Egyptian rather than the Athenian War. But Mardonius, who was his cousin, being the son of Gobryas, by a sister of Darius, thus addressed him:

“I should think, Sir, that the Athenians, who have so grievously injured the Persians, ought not to escape with impunity. I would nevertheless have you execute what you immediately propose; but when you shall have chastised the insolence of Egypt, resume the expedition against Athens. Thus will your reputation be established, and others in future be deterred from molesting your dominions.” What he said was further enforced by[286] representing the beauties of Europe, that it was exceedingly fertile, abounded with all kinds of trees, and deserved to be possessed by the king alone.

Mardonius said this, being desirous of new enterprises, and ambitious of the government of Greece. Xerxes at length acceded to his counsel, to which he was also urged by other considerations. Some messengers came from Thessaly on the part of the Aleuadæ, imploring the king to invade Greece; to accomplish which, they used the most earnest endeavours. These Aleuadæ were the princes of Thessaly: their solicitations were strengthened by the Pisistratidæ, who had taken refuge at Susa, and who to the arguments before adduced, added others. They had among them Onomacritus, an Athenian, a famous priest, who sold the oracles of Musæus; with him they had been reconciled previous to their arrival at Susa. This man had been formerly banished from Athens by the son of Pisistratus; for Lasus of Hermione had detected him in the fact of introducing a pretended oracle, among the verses of Musæus, intimating that the islands contiguous to Lemnos should be overwhelmed in the ocean. Hipparchus for this expelled him, though he had been very intimate with him before. He accompanied the Pisistratidæ to Susa, who always spoke of him in terms highly honourable; upon which account, whenever he appeared in the royal presence, he recited certain oracular verses. He omitted whatever predicted anything unfortunate to the barbarians, selecting only what promised them auspiciously; among other things he said the fates decreed that a Persian should throw a bridge over the Hellespont.

Thus was the mind of Xerxes assailed by the predictions of the priest, and the opinions of the Pisistratidæ. In the year which followed the death of Darius, he determined on an expedition against Greece, but commenced hostilities with those who had revolted from the Persians. These being subdued, and the whole of Egypt more effectually reduced than it had been by Darius, he confided the government of it to Achæmenes, his own brother, son of Darius. Achæmenes was afterwards slain by Inarus, a Libyan, the son of Psammetichus. After the subjection of Egypt, Xerxes prepared to lead an army against Athens, but first of all he called an assembly of the principal Persians, to hear their sentiments, and to deliver, without reserve, his own. He addressed them to the following purport:

“You will remember, O Persians, that I am not about to execute any new project of my own; I only pursue the path which has been previously marked out for me. I have learned from my ancestors, that ever since we recovered this empire from the Medes, after the depression of Astyages by Cyrus, we have never been in a state of inactivity. A deity is our guide, and auspiciously conducts us to prosperity. It must be unnecessary for me to relate the exploits of Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius, and the nations they added to our empire. For my own part, ever since my accession to the throne, it has been my careful endeavour not to reflect any disgrace upon my forefathers, by suffering the Persian power to diminish. My deliberations on this matter have presented me with a prospect full of glory; they have pointed out to me a region not inferior to our own in extent, and far exceeding it in fertility, which incitements are further promoted by the expectation of honourable revenge; I have therefore assembled you to explain what I intend:

“I have resolved, by throwing a bridge over the Hellespont, to lead my forces through Europe into Greece, and to inflict vengeance on the Athenians for the injuries offered to my father and Persia. You well know that this war was intended by Darius, though death deprived him of the means of vengeance. Considering what is due to him and to Persia, it is my determination[287] not to remit my exertions, till Athens shall be taken and burned. The Athenians, unprovoked, first insulted me and my father; under the conduct of Aristagoras of Miletus, our dependent and slave, they attacked Sardis, and consumed with fire our groves and temples. What they perpetrated against you, when, led by Datis and Artaphernes, you penetrated into their country, you know by fatal experience. Such are my inducements to proceed against them: but I have also additional motives.

“If we reduce these and their neighbours who inhabit the country of Pelops the Phrygian, to our power, the Persian empire will be limited by the heavens alone; the sun will illuminate no country contiguous to ours; I shall overrun all Europe, and with your assistance possess unlimited dominion. For if I am properly informed, there exists no race of men, nor can any city or nation be found, which if these be reduced, can possibly resist our arms: we shall thus subject, as well those who have, as those who have not, injured us. I call therefore for your assistance, which I shall thankfully accept and acknowledge; I trust that with cheerfulness and activity you will all assemble at the place I shall appoint. To him who shall appear with the greatest number of well-provided troops, I will present those gifts which in our country are thought to confer the highest honour. That I may not appear to dictate my own wishes in an arbitrary manner, I commit the matter to your reflection, permitting every one to deliver his sentiments with freedom.”

When Xerxes had finished, Mardonius made the following reply:

“Sir, you are not only the most illustrious of all the Persians who have hitherto appeared, but you may securely defy the competition of posterity. Among other things which you have advanced, alike excellent and just, you are entitled to our particular admiration for not suffering the people of Ionia, contemptible as they are, to insult us with impunity. It would indeed be preposterous, if after reducing to our power the Sacæ, the Indians, the Ethiopians, and the Assyrians, with many other great and illustrious nations, not in revenge of injuries received, but solely from the honourable desire of dominion, we should not inflict vengeance on these Greeks who, without provocation, have molested us.

“There can be nothing to excite our alarm; no multitude of troops, no extraordinary wealth; we have tried their mode of fighting, and know their weakness. Their descendants, who under the names of Ionians, Æolians, and Dorians, reside within our dominions, we first subdued, and now govern. Their prowess I myself have known, when at the command of your father I prosecuted a war against them. I penetrated Macedonia, advanced almost to Athens, and found no enemy to encounter.

“Beside this, I am informed that in all their military undertakings, the Greeks betray the extremest ignorance and folly. As soon as they commence hostilities among themselves, their first care is to find a large and beautiful plain,[20] where they appear and give battle: the consequence is, that even the victors suffer severe loss; of the vanquished I say nothing, for they are totally destroyed. As they use one common language, they ought in policy to terminate all disputes by the mediation of ambassadors, and above all things to avoid a war among themselves: or, if this should prove unavoidable, they should mutually endeavour to find a place of great natural strength, and[288] then try the issue of a battle. By pursuing as absurd a conduct as I have described, the Greeks suffered me to advance as far as Macedonia without resistance. But who, Sir, shall oppose you, at the head of the forces and the fleet of Asia? The Greeks, I think, never can be so audacious. If however I should be deceived, and they shall be so mad as to engage us, they will soon find to their cost that in the art of war we are the first of mankind. Let us however adopt various modes of proceeding, for perfection and success can only be the result of frequent experiment.”

In this manner, Mardonius seconded the speech of Xerxes.

A total silence prevailed in the assembly, no one daring to oppose what had been said; till at length Artabanus, son of Hystaspes, and uncle to Xerxes, deriving confidence from his relationship, thus delivered his sentiments: “Unless, O King, different sentiments be submitted to the judgment, no alternative of choice remains, the one introduced is of necessity adopted. The purity of gold cannot be ascertained by a single specimen; it is known and approved by comparing it with others. It was my advice to Darius, your father and my brother, that he should by no means undertake an expedition against the Scythians, a people without towns and cities. Allured by his hopes of subduing them, he disregarded my admonitions; and proceeding to execute his purpose was obliged to return, having lost numbers of his best troops. The men, O King, whom you are preparing to attack, are far superior to the Scythians, and alike formidable by land and sea. I deem it therefore my duty to forewarn you of the dangers you will have to encounter.

“You say that, throwing a bridge over the Hellespont, you will lead your forces through Europe into Greece; but it may possibly happen, that either on land or by sea, or perhaps by both, you may sustain a defeat, for our enemies are reported to be valiant. Of this indeed we have had sufficient testimony; for if the Athenians by themselves routed the numerous armies of Datis and Artaphernes, it proves that we are not, either by land or sea, perfectly invincible. If, preparing their fleet, they shall be victorious by sea, and afterwards sailing to the Hellespont, shall destroy your bridge, we may dread all that is bad. I do not argue in this respect from my own private conjecture; we can all of us remember how very narrowly we escaped destruction, when your father, throwing bridges over the Thracian Bosporus and the Ister, passed into Scythia. The guard of this pass was entrusted to the Ionians, whom the Scythians urged to break it down, by the most earnest importunity. If at this period Histiæus of Miletus had not opposed the sentiments of the rest, there would have been an end of the Persian name.

“It is painful to repeat, and afflicting to remember, that the safety of our prince and his dominions depended on a single man. Listen therefore to my advice, and where no necessity demands it, do not involve yourself in danger. For the present, dismiss this meeting; revolve the matter more seriously in your mind, and at a future and seasonable time make known your determination. For my own part, I have found from experience, that deliberation produces the happiest effects. In such a case, if the event does not answer our wishes, we still merit the praise of discretion, and fortune is alone to be blamed. He who is rash and inconsiderate, although fortune may be kind, and anticipate his desires, is not the less to be censured for temerity. You may have observed how the thunderbolt of heaven chastises the insolence of the more enormous animals, whilst it passes over without injury the weak and insignificant: before these weapons of the gods you must have seen how the proudest palaces and the loftiest trees fall and perish. The most conspicuous things are those which are chiefly singled out[289] as objects of the divine displeasure. From the same principle it is that a mighty army is sometimes overthrown by one that is contemptible: for the Deity in his anger sends his terrors among them, and makes them perish in a manner unworthy of their former glory. Perfect wisdom is the prerogative of Heaven alone, and every measure undertaken with temerity is liable to be perplexed with error, and punished by misfortune. Discreet caution, on the contrary, has many and peculiar advantages, which if not apparent at the moment, reveal themselves in time.

“Such, O King, is my advice; and little does it become you, O son of Gobryas, to speak of the Greeks in a language foolish as well as false. By calumniating Greece, you excite your sovereign to war, the great object of all your zeal: but I entreat you to forbear. Calumny is a restless vice, where it is indulged there are always two who offer injury. The calumniator himself is injurious, because he traduces an absent person; he is also injurious who suffers himself to be persuaded without investigating the truth. The person traduced is doubly injured, first by him who propagates, and secondly by him who receives the calumny. If this war be a measure of necessity, let it be prosecuted; but let the king remain at home with his subjects. Suffer the children of us two to remain in his power, as the test of our different opinions; and do you, Mardonius, conduct the war with whatever forces you shall think expedient. If, agreeably to your representations, the designs of the king shall be successful, let me and my children perish; but if what I predict shall be accomplished, let your children die, and yourself too, in case you shall return. If you refuse these conditions, and are still resolved to lead an army into Greece, I do not hesitate to declare, that all those who shall be left behind will hear that Mardonius, after having involved the Persians in some conspicuous calamity, became a prey to dogs and ravenous birds, in the territories either of Athens or Lacedæmon, or probably during his march thither. Thus you will know, by fatal experience, what those men are, against whom you endeavour to persuade the king to prosecute a war.”

When Artabanus had finished, Xerxes thus angrily replied: “Artabanus, you are my father’s brother, which alone prevents your receiving the chastisement due to your foolish speech. This mark of ignominy shall however adhere to you—as you are so dastardly and mean, you shall not accompany me to Greece, but remain at home, the companion of our women. Without your assistance, I shall proceed in the accomplishment of my designs; for I should ill deserve to be esteemed the son of Darius, who was the son of Hystaspes, and reckoned among his ancestors Arsames, Ariaramnes, Teispes, Cyrus, Cambyses, Teispes, and Achæmenes, if I did not gratify my revenge upon the Athenians. I am well assured, that if we on our parts were tranquil, they would not be, but would invade and ravage our country. This we may reasonably conclude from their burning of Sardis, and their incursions into Asia. Neither party can therefore recede; we must advance to the attack of the Greeks, or we must prepare to sustain theirs; we must either submit to them, or they to us; in enmities like these there can be no medium. Injured as we have been, it becomes us to seek for revenge; for I am determined to know what evil is to be dreaded from those whom Pelops the Phrygian, the slave of my ancestors, so effectually subdued, that even to this day they, as well as their country, are distinguished by his name.”

On the approach of evening the sentiments of Artabanus gave great disquietude to Xerxes, and after more serious deliberation with himself in the night, he found himself still less inclined to the Grecian war. Having decided on the subject, he fell asleep, when, as the Persians relate, the following vision[290] appeared to him:—He dreamed that he saw before him a man of unusual size and beauty, who thus addressed him: “Are you then determined, O Persian, contrary to your former resolutions, not to lead an army against Greece, although you have ordered your subjects to prepare their forces? This change in your sentiments is absurd in itself, and will certainly be censured by the world. Resume therefore, and persist in what you had resolved by day.” Having said this, the vision disappeared.

The impression made by the vision vanished with the morning. Xerxes a second time convoked the former meeting, and again addressed them:

“Men of Persia,” said he, “you will forgive me, if my former sentiments are changed. I am not yet arrived at the full maturity of my judgment; and they who wish me to prosecute the measures which I before seemed to approve, do not remit their importunities. When I first heard the opinion of Artabanus, I yielded to the emotions of youth, and expressed myself more petulantly than was becoming, to a man of his years. To prove that I see my indiscretion, I am resolved to follow his advice. It is not my intention to undertake an expedition against Greece; remain therefore in tranquillity.”

The Persians hearing these sentiments, prostrated themselves with joy before the king. On the following night the same phantom appeared a second time to Xerxes in his sleep, and spake to him as follows: “Son of Darius, disregarding my admonitions as of no weight or value, you have publicly renounced all thoughts of war. Hear what I say: unless you immediately undertake that which I recommend, the same short period of time which has seen you great and powerful, shall behold you reduced and abject.”

Terrified at the vision, the king leaped from his couch, and sent for Artabanus. As soon as he approached, “Artabanus,” exclaimed Xerxes, “in return for your salutary counsel, I reproached and insulted you; but as soon as I became master of myself I endeavoured to prove my repentance by adopting what you proposed. This however, whatever may be my wishes, I am unable to do. As soon as my former determinations were changed, I beheld in my sleep a vision, which first endeavoured to dissuade me, and has this moment left me with threats. If what I have seen proceed from the interference of some deity, who is solicitous that I should make war on Greece, it will doubtless appear to you, and give you a similar mandate. This will I think be the case, if you will assume my habit, and after sitting on my throne retire to rest in my apartment.”

Artabanus was at first unwilling to comply, alleging that he was not worthy to sit on the throne of the king. But being urged, he finally acquiesced, after thus expressing his sentiments: “I am of opinion, O King, that to think well, and to follow what is well-advised, is alike commendable: both these qualities are yours; but the artifice of evil counsellors misleads you. Thus, the ocean is of itself most useful to mankind, but the stormy winds render it injurious, by disturbing its natural surface. Your reproaches gave me less uneasiness than to see that when two opinions were submitted to public deliberation, the one aiming to restrain, the other to countenance the pride of Persia, you preferred that which was full of danger to yourself and your country, rejecting the wiser counsel, which pointed out the evil tendency of ambition. Now that you have changed your resolution with respect to Greece, a phantom has appeared, and, as you say, by some divine interposition, has forbidden your present purpose of dismissing your forces. But, my son, I dispute the divinity of this interposition, for of the fallacy of dreams I, who am more experienced than yourself, can produce sufficient testimonies. Dreams in general originate from those incidents which have most occupied[291] the thoughts during the day. Two days since, you will remember that this expedition was the object of much warm discussion: but if this vision be really sent from heaven, your reasoning upon it is just, and it will certainly appear to me as it has done to you, expressing itself to a similar effect; but it will not show itself to me dressed in your robes, and reclining on your couch, sooner than if I were in my own habit and my own apartment. No change of dress will induce the phantom, if it does appear, to mistake me for you. If it shall hold me in contempt, it will not appear to me, however I may be clothed. It unquestionably however merits attention; its repeated appearance I myself must acknowledge to be a proof of its divinity. If you are determined in your purpose, I am ready to go to rest in your apartment: but till I see the phantom myself I shall retain my former opinions.”

Artabanus, expecting to find the king’s dream of no importance, did as he was ordered. He accordingly put on the robe of Xerxes, seated himself on the royal throne, and afterward retired to the king’s apartment. The same phantom which had disturbed Xerxes appeared to him,[21] and thus addressed him: “Art thou the man who, pretending to watch over the conduct of Xerxes, art endeavouring to restrain his designs against Greece? Your perverseness shall be punished both now and in future; and as for Xerxes himself, he has been forewarned of the evils he will suffer, if disobedient to my will.”

Such were the threats which Artabanus heard from the spectre, which at the same time made an effort to burn out his eyes with a hot iron. Alarmed at his danger, Artabanus leaped from his couch, and uttering a loud cry, went instantly to Xerxes. After relating his vision, he thus spake to him: “Being a man, O King, of much experience, and having seen the undertakings of the powerful foiled by the efforts of the weak, I was unwilling that you should indulge the fervour of your age. Of the ill effects of inordinate ambition, I had seen a fatal proof, in the expedition which Cyrus undertook against the Massagetæ; I knew also what became of the army of Cambyses in their attack of Ethiopia; and lastly, I myself witnessed the misfortunes of Darius, in his hostilities with the Scythians. The remembrance of these incidents induced me to believe that if you continued a peaceful reign, you would beyond all men deserve the character of happy: but as your present inclination seems directed by some supernatural influence, and as the Greeks seem marked out by heaven for destruction, I acknowledge that my sentiments are changed; do you therefore make known to the Persians the extraordinary intimations you have received, and direct your dependents to hasten the preparations you had before commanded. Be careful, in what relates to yourself, to second the intentions of the gods.”

The vision indeed had so powerfully impressed the minds of both, that as soon as the morning appeared, Xerxes communicated his intentions to the Persians; which Artabanus, in opposition to his former sentiments, now openly and warmly approved.

Whilst everything was making ready for his departure, Xerxes saw a third vision. The magi to whom it was related were of opinion that it portended to Xerxes unlimited and universal empire. The king conceived himself to be crowned with the wreath of an olive tree, whose branches covered all the earth, but that this wreath suddenly and totally disappeared. After the above interpretation of the magi had been made known in the[292] national assembly of the Persians, the governors departed to their several provinces, eager to execute the commands they had received, in expectation of the promised reward. Xerxes was so anxious to complete his levies that no part of the continent was left without being ransacked for this purpose. After the reduction of Egypt, four entire years were employed in assembling the army and collecting provisions; but in the beginning of the fifth he began his march with an immense body of forces.b

Darius was three years in preparing for an expedition against Greece; in the fourth Egypt revolted, and in the following year Darius died; this therefore was the fifth year after the battle of Marathon. Xerxes employed four years in making preparations for the same purpose; in the fifth he began his march, he advanced to Sardis, and there wintered; in the beginning of the following spring he entered Greece. This therefore was in the eleventh year after the battle of Marathon; which account agrees with that given by Thucydides.f

Of all the military expeditions, the fame of which has come down to us, this was far the greatest, much exceeding that which Darius undertook against Scythia, as well as the incursion made by the Scythians, who, pursuing the Cimmerians, entered Media, and made themselves entire masters of almost all the higher parts of Asia; an incursion which afforded Darius the pretence for his attack on Scythia. It surpasses also the famous expedition of the sons of Atreus against Troy, as well as that of the Mysians and Teucrians before the Trojan War. These nations, passing over the Bosporus into Europe, reduced all the inhabitants of Thrace, advancing to the Ionian Sea, and thence as far as the southern part of the river Peneus.

None of the expeditions already mentioned, nor indeed any other, may at all be compared with this of Xerxes. It would be difficult to specify any nation of Asia, which did not accompany the Persian monarch against Greece, or any waters, except great rivers, which were not exhausted by his armies. Some supplied ships, some a body of infantry, others of horse; some provided transports for the cavalry and the troops; others brought long ships to serve as bridges; many also brought vessels laden with corn, all which preparations were made for three years, to guard against a repetition of the calamities which the Persian fleet had formerly sustained, in their attempts to double the promontory of Mount Athos. The place of rendezvous for the triremes was at Elæus of the Chersonesus, from whence detachments from the army were sent, and by force of blows compelled to dig a passage through Mount Athos, with orders to relieve each other at certain regular intervals. The undertaking was assisted by those who inhabited the mountain, and the conduct of the work was confided to Bubares, the son of Megabazus, and Antachæus, son of Artæus, both of whom were Persians.b

This incident Richardson conceives to be utterly incredible. The promontory was, as he justly remarks, no more than two hundred miles from Athens, and yet Xerxes is said to have employed a number of men, three years before his crossing the Hellespont, to separate it from the continent, and make a canal for his shipping. Themistocles, also, who from the time of the battle of Marathon had been incessantly alarming the Athenians with another Persian invasion, never endeavoured to support his opinion by any allusion to this canal, the very digging of which must have filled all Greece with astonishment, and been the subject of every public conversation. Pococke, who visited Mount Athos, also deems the event highly improbable, and says that he could not perceive the smallest vestige of any such undertaking.f

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Bury thinks that the canal was actually dug, the reason being not that which Herodotus later suggests, a mere desire for display, but an obedience to the axiom of Persian strategy that the army and the fleet should not lose touch with each other. But leaving the riddle unsolved, as needs we must, let us proceed with the narrative, Herodotus acting as guide.a

Athos is a large and noble mountain projecting into the sea, and inhabited; where it terminates on the land side, it has the appearance of a peninsula, and forms an isthmus of about twelve stadia in breadth: the surface of this is interspersed with several small hills, reaching from the Acanthian Sea to that of Torone, which is opposite. Where Mount Athos terminates, stands a Grecian city, called Sane; in the interior parts, betwixt Sane and the elevation of Athos, are situated the towns of Dium, Olophyxus, Acrothoum, Thyssus, and Cleonæ, inhabited by Greeks. It was the object of the Persians to detach these from the continent.

They proceeded to dig in this manner: the barbarians marked out the ground in the vicinity of Sane with a rope, assigning to each nation their particular station; then sinking a deep trench, whilst they at the bottom continued digging, the nearest to them handed the earth to others standing immediately above them upon ladders; it was thus progressively elevated, till it came to the summit, where they who stood received and carried it away. The brink of the trench giving way, except in that part where the Phœnicians were employed, occasioned a double labour; and this, as the trench was no wider at top than at bottom, was unavoidable. But in this, as in other instances, the Phœnicians discovered their superior sagacity, for in the part allotted to them they commenced by making the breadth of the trench twice as large as was necessary; and thus proceeding in an inclined direction, they made their work at the bottom of the prescribed dimensions. In this part was a meadow, which was their public place for business and for commerce, and where a vast quantity of corn was imported from Asia.b

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Plutarch, in his treatise De Ira cohibenda, has preserved a ridiculous letter, supposed to have been written by Xerxes to Mount Athos. It was to this effect: “O thou miserable Athos, whose top now reaches to the heavens, I give thee in charge not to throw any great stones in my way, which may impede my work; if thou shalt do this, I will cut thee in pieces and cast thee into the sea.” This threat to the mountain is however at least as sensible as the chastisement inflicted upon the Hellespont; so that if one anecdote be true, the other may also obtain credit.f

The motive of Xerxes in this work was, as far as we are able to conjecture, the vain desire of exhibiting his power, and of leaving a monument to posterity. When with very little trouble he might have transported his vessels over the isthmus, he chose rather to unite the two seas by a canal, of sufficient diameter to admit two triremes abreast. Those employed in this business were also ordered to throw bridges over the river Strymon.

For these bridges Xerxes provided cordage made of the bark of the biblos, and of white flax. The care of transporting provisions for the army was committed jointly to the Egyptians and Phœnicians, that the troops, as well as the beasts of burden, in this expedition to Greece, might not suffer from famine. After examining into the nature of the country, he directed stores to be deposited in every convenient situation, which were supplied by transports and vessels of burden, from the different parts of Asia. Of these, the greater number were carried to that part of Thrace which is called the “White Coast”; others to Tyrodiza of the Perinthians; the remainder were severally distributed at Doriscus, at Eion on the banks of the Strymon, and in Macedonia.

Whilst these things were carrying on, Xerxes, at the head of all his land forces, left Critalla in Cappadocia, and marched towards Sardis: it was at Critalla that all those troops were appointed to assemble who were to attend the king by land; who the commander was, that received from the king the promised gifts, on account of the number and goodness of his troops, we are unable to decide, nor indeed can we say whether there was any competition on the subject. Passing the river Halys, they came to Phrygia, and continuing to advance, arrived at Celænæ, where are the fountains of the Mæander, as well as those of another river of equal size with the Mæander, called Catarrhactes, which rising in the public square of Celænæ, empties itself into the Mæander. In the forum of this city is suspended the skin of Marsyas, which the Phrygians say was placed there after he had been flayed by Apollo.

In this city lived a man named Pythius, son of Atys, a native of Lydia, who entertained Xerxes and all his army with great magnificence: he further engaged to supply the king with money for the war. Xerxes was on this induced to inquire of his Persian attendants who this Pythius was, and what were the resources which enabled him to make these offers: “It is the same,” they replied, “who presented your father Darius with a plane-tree and a vine of gold, and who, next to yourself, is the richest of mankind.”[22]

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These last words filled Xerxes with astonishment; and he could not refrain from asking Pythius himself the amount of his wealth: “Sir,” he replied, “I conceal nothing from you, nor affect ignorance; but as I am able I will fairly tell you.—As soon as I heard of your approach to the Grecian sea, I was desirous of giving you money for the war; on examining into the state of my affairs, I found that I was possessed of two thousand talents of silver, and four millions, wanting only seven thousand, of gold staters of Darius; all this I give you—my slaves and my farms will be sufficient to maintain me.”

“My Lydian friend,” returned Xerxes, much delighted, “since I first left Persia, you are the only person who has treated my army with hospitality, or who, appearing in my presence, has voluntarily offered me a supply for the war; you have done both; in acknowledgment for which I offer you my friendship; you shall be my host, and I will give you the seven thousand staters, which are wanting to make your sum of four millions complete.—Retain, therefore, and enjoy your property; persevere in your present mode of conduct, which will invariably operate to your happiness.”

Xerxes having performed what he promised, proceeded on his march; passing by a Phrygian city, called Anava, and a lake from which salt is made, he came to Colossæ. This also is a city of Phrygia, and of considerable eminence; here the Lycus disappears, entering abruptly a chasm in the earth, but at the distance of seven stadia it again emerges, and continues its course to the Mæander. The Persian army, advancing from Colossæ, came to Cydrara, a place on the confines of Phrygia and Lydia; here a pillar had been erected by Crœsus, with an inscription defining the boundaries of the two countries.

On entering Lydia from Phrygia they came to a place where two roads met, the one on the left leading to Caria, the other on the right to Sardis: to those who go by the latter it is necessary to cross the Mæander, and to pass Callatebus, a city where honey is made of the tamarisk and wheat. Xerxes here found a plane tree, so very beautiful, that he adorned it with chains of gold, and assigned the guard of it to one of the immortal band; the next day he came to the principal city of the Lydians.

When arrived at Sardis, his first step was to send heralds into Greece, demanding earth and water, and commanding that preparations should be made to entertain him. He did not, however, send either to Athens or Lacedæmon: his motive for repeating the demand to the other cities, was the expectation that they who had before refused earth and water to Darius would, from their alarm at his approach, send it now; this he wished positively to know.

XERXES BRIDGES THE HELLESPONT

Whilst he was preparing to go to Abydos, numbers were employed in throwing a bridge over the Hellespont, from Asia to Europe; betwixt Sestos and Madytus, in the Chersonesus of the Hellespont, the coast toward the sea[296] from Abydos is rough and woody. After this period, and at no remote interval of time, Xanthippus, son of Ariphron, and commander of the Athenians, in this place took Antayctes, a Persian, and governor of Sestos, prisoner; he was crucified alive: he had formerly carried some females to the temple of Protesilaus in Elæus, and perpetrated what is detestable.

They on whom the office was imposed proceeded in the work of the bridge, commencing at the side next Abydos. The Phœnicians used a cordage made of linen, the Egyptians the bark of the biblos: from Abydos to the opposite continent is a space of seven stadia. The bridge was no sooner completed, than a great tempest arose, which tore in pieces and destroyed the whole of their labour.

When Xerxes heard of what had happened, he was so enraged, that he ordered three hundred lashes to be inflicted on the Hellespont, and a pair of fetters to be thrown into the sea. We are told that he even sent some executioners to brand the Hellespont with marks of ignominy; but it is certain, that he ordered those who inflicted the lashes to use these barbarous and mad expressions: “Thou ungracious water, thy master condemns thee to this punishment for having injured him without provocation. Xerxes the king will pass over thee, whether thou consentest or not: just is it that no man honours thee with sacrifice, for thou art insidious, and of an ungrateful flavour.” After thus treating the sea, the king commanded those who presided over the construction of the bridge to be beheaded.

These commands were executed by those on whom that unpleasing office was conferred. A bridge was then constructed by a different set of architects, who performed it in the following manner: they connected together ships of different kinds, some long vessels of fifty oars, others three-banked galleys, to the number of three hundred and sixty on the side towards the Euxine Sea, and three hundred and thirteen on that of the Hellespont.[23]

When these vessels were firmly connected to each other, they were secured on each side by anchors of great length; on the upper side, because of the winds which set in from the Euxine; on the lower, toward the Ægean Sea, on account of the south and southeast winds. They left however openings in three places, sufficient to afford a passage for light vessels, which might have occasion to sail into the Euxine or from it: having performed this, they extended cables from the shore, stretching them upon large capstans of wood; for this purpose they did not employ a number of separate cables, but united two of white flax with four of biblos. These were alike in thickness, and apparently so in goodness, but those of flax were in proportion much the more solid, weighing not less than a talent to every cubit.[297] When the pass was thus secured, they sawed out rafters of wood, making their length equal to the space required for the bridge; these they laid in order across upon the extended cables, and then bound them fast together. They next brought unwrought wood, which they placed very regularly upon the rafters; over all they threw earth, which they raised to a proper height, and finished all by a fence on each side, that the horses and other beasts of burden might not be terrified by looking down upon the sea.

The bridges were at length completed, and the work at Mount Athos finished: to prevent the canal at this last place being choked up by the flow of the tides, deep trenches were sunk at its mouth. The army had wintered at Sardis, but on receiving intelligence of the above, they marched at the commencement of the spring for Abydos. At the moment of their departure, the sun, which before gave his full light, in a bright unclouded atmosphere, withdrew his beams, and the darkest night succeeded. Xerxes, alarmed at this incident, consulted the magi upon what it might portend. They replied, that the protection of Heaven was withdrawn from the Greeks; the sun, they observed, was the tutelar divinity of Greece, as the moon was of Persia. The answer was so satisfactory to Xerxes, that he proceeded with increased alacrity. During the march, Pythius the Lydian, who was much intimidated by the prodigy which had appeared, went to the king; deriving confidence from the liberality he had shown and received, he thus addressed him: “Sir, I entreat a favour no less trifling to you, than important to myself.”

Xerxes, not imagining what he was about to ask, promised to grant it, and desired to know what he would have. Pythius on this became still more bold: “Sir,” he returned, “I have five sons, who are all with you in this Grecian expedition; I would entreat you to pity my age, and dispense with the presence of the eldest. Take with you the four others, but leave one to manage my affairs; so may you return in safety, after the accomplishment of your wishes.”

Xerxes, in great indignation, made this reply: “Infamous man! you see me embark my all in this Grecian war; myself, my children, my brothers, my domestics, and my friends, how dare you then presume to mention your son, you who are my slave, and whose duty it is to accompany me on this occasion, with all your family, and even your wife? Remember this, the spirit of a man resides in his ears; when he hears what is agreeable to him, the pleasure diffuses itself over all his body; but when the contrary happens, he is anxious and uneasy. If your former conduct was good, and your promises yet better, you still cannot boast of having surpassed the king in liberality. Although your present behaviour is base and insolent, you shall be punished less severely than you deserve: your former hospitality preserves yourself and four of your children; the fifth, whom you most regard, shall pay the penalty of your crime.”

As soon as he had finished, the king commanded the proper officers to find the eldest son of Pythius, and divide his body in two; he then ordered one part of the body thrown on the right side of the road, the other on the left, whilst the army continued their march betwixt them.

HOW THE HOST MARCHED

The march was conducted in the following order: first of all went those who had the care of the baggage; they were followed by a promiscuous body of strangers of all nations, without any regularity, but to the amount of more[298] than half the army; after these was a considerable interval, for these did not join the troops where the king was; next came a thousand horse, the flower of the Persian army, who were followed by the same number of spear-men, in like manner selected, trailing their pikes upon the ground; behind these were ten sacred horses called Nisæan, with very superb trappings (they take their name from a certain district in Media, called Nisæus, remarkable for producing horses of an extraordinary size); the sacred car of Jupiter was next in the procession, it was drawn by eight white horses, behind which, on foot, was the charioteer, with the reins in his hands, for no mortal is permitted to sit in this car; then came Xerxes himself, in a chariot drawn by Nisæan horses; by his side sat his charioteer, whose name was Patiramphes, son of Otanes the Persian.

Such was the order in which Xerxes departed from Sardis; but as often as occasion required, he left his chariot for a common carriage. A thousand of the first and noblest Persians attended his person, bearing their spears according to the custom of their country; and a thousand horse, selected like the former, immediately succeeded. A body of ten thousand chosen infantry came next; a thousand of these had at the extremity of their spears a pomegranate of gold, the remaining nine thousand, whom the former enclosed, had in the same manner pomegranates of silver. They who preceded Xerxes, and trailed their spears, had their arms decorated with gold: they who followed him had, as we have described, golden pomegranates: these ten thousand foot were followed by an equal number of Persian cavalry; at an interval of about two furlongs, followed a numerous, irregular, and promiscuous multitude.

From Lydia the army continued its march along the banks of the Caicus, to Mysia, and leaving Mount Canæ on the left, proceeded through Atarnis to the city Carina. Moving hence over the plains of Thebe, and passing by Adramyttium and Antandros, a Pelasgian city, they left Mount Ida to the left, and entered the district of Ilium. In the very first night which they passed under Ida, a furious storm of thunder and lightning arose, which destroyed numbers of the troops. From hence they advanced to the Scamander; this river first of all, after their departure from Sardis, failed in supplying them with a quantity of water sufficient for their troops and beasts of burden. On his arrival at this river, Xerxes ascended the citadel of Priam, desirous of examining the place. Having surveyed it attentively, and satisfied himself concerning it, he ordered a thousand oxen to be sacrificed to the Trojan Minerva, at the same time the magi directed libations to be offered to the manes of the heroes; when this was done, a panic spread itself in the night through the army. At the dawn of morning they moved forwards, leaving to the left the towns of Rhœteum, Ophryneum, and Dardanus, which last is very near Abydos: the Gergithæ and Teucri were to their right.

On their arrival at Abydos, Xerxes desired to take a survey of all his army: the inhabitants had, at his previous desire, constructed for him, on an eminence, a seat of white marble; upon this he sat, and directing his eyes to the shore, beheld at one view, his land and sea forces. He next wished to see a naval combat; one was accordingly exhibited before him, in which the Phœnicians of Sidon were victorious. The view of this contest, as well as of the number of his forces, delighted Xerxes exceedingly.

When the king beheld all the Hellespont crowded with ships, and all the shore, with the plains of Abydos, covered with his troops, he at first congratulated himself as happy, but he afterward burst into tears.

Artabanus, the uncle of Xerxes, who with so much freedom had at first opposed the expedition against Greece, observed the king’s emotion: “How[299] different, Sir,” said he, addressing him, “is your present behaviour, from what it was a few minutes since! you then esteemed yourself happy, you now are dissolved in tears.”

“My reflection,” answered Xerxes, “on the transitory period of human life, excited my compassion for this vast multitude, not one of whom will complete the term of an hundred years! But tell me, has the vision which you saw impressed full conviction on your mind, or do your former sentiments incline you to dissuade me from this Grecian war?—speak without reserve.”

“May the vision, O King,” replied Artabanus, “which we have mutually seen, succeed to both our wishes! For my own part I am still so full of apprehensions, as not at all to be master of myself: after reflecting seriously on the subject, I discern two important things, exceedingly hostile to your views.”

“What, my good friend, can these two things possibly be?” replied Xerxes; “do you think unfavourably of our land army, as not being sufficiently numerous? Do you imagine the Greeks will be able to collect one more powerful? Can you conceive our fleet inferior to that of our enemies?—or do both these considerations together distress you? If our force does not seem to you sufficiently effective, reinforcements may soon be provided.”

“No one, Sir,” answered Artabanus, “in his proper senses, could object either to your army, or to the multitude of your fleet: should you increase their number, the more hostile would the two things be of which I speak; I allude to the land and the sea. In case of any sudden tempest, you will find no harbour, as I conjecture, sufficiently capacious or convenient for the protection of your fleet; no one port would answer this purpose, you must have the whole extent of the continent; your being without a resource of this kind, should induce you to remember that fortune commands men, and not men fortune. This is one of the calamities which threaten you; I will now explain the other. The land is also your enemy; your meeting with no resistance will render it more so, as you will be thus seduced imperceptibly to advance; it is the nature of man, never to be satisfied with success: thus, having no enemy to encounter every moment of time, and addition to your progress, will be gradually introductive of famine. He, therefore, who is truly wise, will as carefully deliberate about the possible event of things, as he will be bold and intrepid in action.”

Xerxes made this reply: “What you allege, Artabanus, is certainly reasonable; but you should not so much give way to fear, as to see everything in the worst point of view: if in consulting upon any matter we were to be influenced by the consideration of every possible contingency, we should execute nothing. It is better to submit to half of the evil which may be the result of any measure, than to remain in inactivity from the fear of what may eventually occur. You are sensible to what a height the power of Persia has arrived, which would never have been the case, if my predecessors had either been biassed by such sentiments as yours, or listened to such advisers: it was their contempt of danger which promoted their country’s glory, for great exploits are always attended with proportionable danger. We, therefore, emulous of their reputation, have selected the best season of the year for our enterprise; and having effectually conquered Europe, we shall return without experience of famine or any other calamity: we have with us abundance of provisions, and the nations among which we arrive will supply us with corn, for they against whom we advance are not shepherds, but husbandmen.”

“Since, Sir,” returned Artabanus, “you will suffer no mention to be made of fear, at least listen to my advice: where a number of things are to[300] be discussed, prolixity is unavoidable. Cyrus, son of Cambyses, made all Ionia tributary to Persia, Athens excepted; do not, therefore, I entreat you, lead these men against those from whom they are immediately descended: without the Ionians, we are more than a sufficient match for our opponents. They must either be most base, by assisting to reduce the principal city of their country; or, by contributing to its freedom, will do what is most just. If they shall prove the former, they can render us no material service; if the latter, they may bring destruction on your army. Remember, therefore, the truth of the ancient proverb, When we commence a thing we cannot always tell how it will end.”

“Artabanus,” interrupted Xerxes, “your suspicions of the fidelity of the Ionians must be false and injurious; we have had sufficient testimony of their constancy, as you yourself must be convinced, as well as all those who served under Darius against the Scythians. It was in their power to save or to destroy all the forces of Persia, but they preserved their faith, their honour, and their gratitude; add to this, they have left their wives, their children, and their wealth, in our dominions, and therefore dare not meditate anything against us. Indulge, therefore, no apprehensions, but cheerfully watch over my family and preserve my authority: to you, I commit the exercise of my power.”

Xerxes after this interview dismissed Artabanus to Susa, and a second time called an assembly of the most illustrious Persians. As soon as they were met, he thus addressed them: “My motive, Persians, for thus convoking you, is to entreat you to behave like men, and not dishonour the many great exploits of our ancestors: let us individually and collectively exert ourselves. We are engaged in a common cause; and I the rather call upon you to display your valour, because I understand we are advancing against a warlike people, whom if we overcome, no one will in future dare oppose us. Let us, therefore, proceed, having first implored the aid of the gods of Persia.”

On the same day they prepared to pass the bridge: the next morning, whilst they waited for the rising of the sun, they burned on the bridge all manner of perfumes, and strewed the way with branches of myrtle. When the sun appeared, Xerxes poured into the sea a libation from a golden vessel, and then addressing the sun, he implored him to avert from the Persians every calamity, till they should totally have vanquished Europe, arriving at its extremest limits.

Xerxes then threw the cup into the Hellespont, together with a golden goblet, and a Persian scimitar. We are not able to determine whether the king, by throwing these things into the Hellespont, intended to make an offering to the sun, or whether he wished thus to make compensation to the sea, for having formerly chastised it.

When this was done, all the infantry and the horse were made to pass over that part of the bridge which was toward the Euxine; over that to the Ægean, went the servants of the camp, and the beasts of burden. They were preceded by ten thousand Persians, having garlands on their heads; and these were followed by a promiscuous multitude of all nations—these passed on the first day. The first who went over the next day were the knights, and they who trailed their spears; these also had garlands on their heads: next came the sacred horses, and the sacred car; afterwards Xerxes himself, who was followed by a body of spear-men, and a thousand horse. The remainder of the army closed the procession, and at the same time the fleet moved to the opposite shore: it is said that the king himself was the last who passed the bridge.

[301]

As soon as Xerxes had set foot in Europe, he saw his troops driven over the bridge by the force of blows; and seven whole days and as many nights were consumed in the passage of his army. [Later authorities than Herodotus say that the crossing took two days and that the term seven days and nights was based first on the greatly exaggerated estimate of Xerxes’ host, and secondly on the peculiar sanctity of the number seven.]

When Xerxes had passed the Hellespont, an inhabitant of the country is said to have exclaimed: “Why, O Jupiter, under the appearance of a Persian, and for the name of Jupiter taking that of Xerxes, art thou come to distract and persecute Greece? or why bring so vast a multitude, when able to accomplish thy purpose without them?”

When all were gone over, and were proceeding on their march, a wonderful prodigy appeared, which, though disregarded by Xerxes, had an obvious meaning—a mare brought forth a hare[24]: from this it might have been inferred, that Xerxes, who had led an army into Greece with much ostentation and insolence, should be involved in personal danger, and compelled to return with dishonour. Whilst yet at Sardis, he had seen another prodigy—a mule produced a young one, which had the marks of both sexes those of the male being beneath.

Neither of these incidents made any impression on his mind, and he continued to advance with his army by land, whilst his fleet, passing beyond the Hellespont, coasted along the shore in an opposite direction. The latter sailed toward the west, to the promontory of Sarpedon, where they were commanded to remain; the former proceeded eastward through the Chersonesus, having on their right the tomb of Helle, the daughter of Athamas; on their left the city of Cardia. Moving onward, through the midst of a city called Agora, they turned aside to the Gulf of Melas, and a river of the same name, the waters of which were not sufficient for the troops. Having passed this river, which gives its name to the above-mentioned gulf, they directed their march westward, and passing Ænos, a city of Æolis, and the lake Stentoris, they came to Doriscus.

Doriscus is on the coast, and is a spacious plain of Thrace, through which the great river Hebrus flows. Here was a royal fort called Doriscus, in which Darius, in his expedition against Scythia, had placed a Persian garrison. This appearing a proper place for the purpose, Xerxes gave orders to have his army here marshalled and numbered. The fleet being all arrived off the shore near Doriscus, their officers arranged them in order near where Sale, a Samothracian town, and Zone are situated. At the extremity of this shore is the celebrated promontory of Serrhium, which formerly belonged to the Ciconians. The crews having brought their vessels to shore, enjoyed an interval of repose, whilst Xerxes was drawing up his troops on the plain of Doriscus.b

THE SIZE OF XERXES’ ARMY

A curious instance of extreme critical scepticism is the opinion of the English lexicographer, Charles Richardson: “I remain still in doubt,” says he, “whether any such expedition was ever undertaken by the paramount sovereign of Persia. Disguised in name by some Greek corruption, Xerxes may possibly have been a feudatory prince or viceroy of the western districts; and that an invasion of Greece may have possibly taken place under this[302] prince, I shall readily believe, but upon a scale I must also believe infinitely narrower than the least exaggerated description of the Greek historians.”

In Herodotus the reputed followers of Xerxes amount to 5,283,220; Isocrates, in his Panathenaicos, estimates the land army in round numbers at five million. And with them Plutarch in general agrees; but such myriads appeared to Diodorus, Pliny, Ælianus, and other later writers, so much stretched beyond all belief, that they at once cut off about four-fifths, to bring them within the line of possibility. Yet what is this, but a singular and very unauthorised liberty in one of the most consequential points of the expedition? What circumstance in the whole narration is more explicit in Herodotus, or by its frequent repetition, not in figures, but in words at length, seems less liable to the mistake of copiers?

Upon this subject, Larcherd, who probably had never seen Richardson’s book, writes as follows:

“This immense army astonishes the imagination, but still is not incredible. All the people dependent on Persia were slaves; they were compelled to march, without distinction of birth or profession. Extreme youth or advanced age were probably the only reasons which excused them from bearing arms. The only reasonable objection to be made to this recital of Herodotus is that which Voltaire has omitted to make—where were provisions to be had for so numerous an army? But Herodotus has anticipated this objection: ‘We have with us,’ says Xerxes, ‘abundance of provisions, and all the nations among which we shall come, not being shepherds, but husbandmen, we shall find corn in their country, which we shall appropriate to our own use.’ Subsequent writers have, it is true, differed from Herodotus, and diminished the number of the army of Xerxes; but Herodotus, who was in some measure a contemporary, and who recited his history to Greeks assembled at Olympia, where were many who fought at Salamis and Platæa, is more deserving of credit than later historians.”

The truth perhaps may lie betwixt the two different opinions of Richardson and Larcher. It is not likely, as there were many exiles from Greece at the court of Persia, that Xerxes should be ignorant of the numbers and resources of Greece. To lead there so many millions seems at first sight not only unnecessary but preposterous. Admitting that so vast an army had marched against Greece, no one of common-sense would have thought of making an attack by the way of Thermopylæ, where the passage must have been so tedious, and any resistance, as so few in proportion could possibly be brought to act, might be made almost on equal terms: whilst, on the contrary, to make a descent, they had the whole range of coast before them. With respect to provisions, the difficulty appears still greater, and almost insurmountable. We cannot think, with Larcher, that the numbers recorded by Herodotus are consistent with probability.

Rennelle says, that the Persians may be compared, in respect to the rest of the army of Xerxes, with the Europeans in a British army in India, composed chiefly of sepoys and native troops.

Probably Xerxes had not many more actual soldiers than the Greeks; the rest were desultory hordes fit only for plunder, and four-fifths of the whole were followers of the camp with rice, provisions, etc. The army that marched under Lord Cornwallis at the siege of Seringapatam, in the first campaign, consisted of twenty thousand troops, but the followers were more than one hundred thousand. This is the case in all Eastern countries.f

But let us hear what Herodotus has to say concerning the size of Xerxes’ horde, for after all the modern critics have only his account as a basis:

[303]

We are not able to specify what number of men each nation supplied, as no one has recorded it. The whole amount of the land forces was seventeen hundred thousand. Their mode of ascertaining the number was this: they drew up in one place a body of ten thousand men; making these stand together as compactly as possible, they drew a circle round them. Dismissing these, they enclosed the circle with a wall breast high; into this they introduced another and another ten thousand, till they thus obtained the precise number of the whole. They afterwards ranged each nation apart.

The generals in chief of all the infantry were Mardonius, son of Gobryas; Tritantæchmes, son of Artabanus, who had given his opinion against the Grecian war; and Smerdomenes, son of Otanes, which last two were sons of two brothers of Darius, the uncles of Xerxes. To the above may be added Masistes, son of Darius by Atossa; Gergis, son of Arinus; and Megabyzus, son of Zopyrus.

These were the commanders of all the infantry, except of the ten thousand chosen Persians, who were led by Hydarnes, son of Hydarnes. These were called the Immortal Band, and for this reason, if any of them died in battle, or by any disease, his place was immediately supplied. They were thus never more nor less than ten thousand. The Persians surpassed all the rest of the army, not only in magnificence but valour; they were also remarkable for the quantity of gold which adorned them: they had with them carriages for their women, and a vast number of attendants splendidly provided. They had also camels and beasts of burden to carry their provisions, beside those for the common occasions of the army. The Persian horse, except a small number, whose casques were ornamented with brass and iron, were habited like the infantry.

There appeared of the Sagartii a body of eight thousand horse. These people lead a pastoral life, were originally of Persian descent, and used the Persian language: their dress is something betwixt the Persian and the Pactyan; they have no offensive weapons, either of iron or brass, except their daggers: their principal dependence in action is upon cords made of twisted leather, which they use in this manner: when they engage an enemy they throw out these cords, having a noose at the extremity; if they entangle in them either horse or man, they without difficulty put them to death. These forces were embodied with the Persians. The cavalry of the Medes, and also of the Cissians, are accoutred like their infantry. The Indian horse likewise were armed like their foot; but beside led horses they had chariots of war, drawn by horses and wild asses. The armour of the Bactrian and Caspian horse and foot were alike. This was also the case with the Africans, only it is to be observed that these last all fought from chariots. The Paricanian horse were also equipped like their foot, as were the Arabians, all of whom had camels, by no means inferior to the horse in swiftness.

These were the cavalry, who formed a body of eighty thousand, exclusive of camels and chariots. They were drawn up in regular order, and the Arabians were disposed in the rear, that the horses might not be terrified, as a horse cannot endure a camel. Harmamithres and Tithæus, the sons of Datis, commanded the cavalry; they had shared this command with Pharnuches, but he had been left at Sardis indisposed. As the troops were marching from Sardis he met with an unfortunate accident: a dog ran under the feet of his horse, which being terrified reared up and threw his rider. Pharnuches was in consequence seized with a vomiting of blood, which finally terminated in a consumption. His servants, in compliance with the orders of their master, led the horse to the place where the accident[304] happened, and there cut off his legs at the knees. Thus was Pharnuches deprived of his command.b

We give the account of the Persian fleet as stated by Herodotus, that the reader may compare it with that which follows of Diodorus Siculus:

Phœnicians	300
Egyptians	200
Cyprians	150
Cilicians	100
Pamphylians	30
Lycians	50
Dorians	30
Carians	70
Ionians	100
Islanders	17
Æolians	60
People of the Hellespont	100
	1207

According to Diodorus Siculus,

Dorians	40
Æolians	40
Ionians	100
Hellespontians	80
Islanders	50
Egyptians	200
Phœnicians	300
Cilicians	80
Carians	80
Pamphylians	40
Lycians	40
Cyprians	150
	1200f

The commanders-in-chief of the sea forces were Ariabignes, son of Darius, Prexaspes, son of Aspathines, and Megabazus, son of Megabates, together with Achæmenes, another son of Darius. The other leaders we forbear to specify, it not appearing necessary; but it is impossible not to speak, and with admiration, of Artemisia, who, though a female, served in this Grecian expedition. On the death of her husband she enjoyed the supreme authority, for her son was not yet grown up, and her great spirit and vigour of mind alone induced her to exert herself on this occasion. She was the daughter of Lygdamis, by her father’s side of Halicarnassus, by her mother of Cretan descent. She had the conduct of those of Halicarnassus, Cos, Nisyros, and Calynda. She furnished five ships, which next to those of the Sidonians, were the best in the fleet. She was also distinguished among all the allies for the salutary counsels which she gave the king. Such were the maritime forces.b Leaving this vast armament on its prosperous course towards Greece, let us see what has been happening meanwhile in that busy little nation.

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XVIII. PROCEEDINGS IN GREECE FROM MARATHON TO THERMOPYLÆ

Our information respecting the affairs of Greece immediately after the repulse of the Persians from Marathon, is very scanty.

Cleomenes and Leotychides, the two kings of Sparta (the former belonging to the elder or Eurysthenid, the latter to the younger or the Proclid, race), had conspired for the purpose of dethroning the former Proclid king Demaratus: and Cleomenes had even gone so far as to tamper with the Delphian priestess for this purpose. His manœuvre being betrayed shortly afterwards, he was so alarmed at the displeasure of the Spartans, that he retired into Thessaly, and from thence into Arcadia, where he employed the powerful influence of his regal character and heroic lineage to arm the Arcadian people against his country. The Spartans, alarmed in their turn, voluntarily invited him back with a promise of amnesty. But his renewed lease did not last long: his habitual violence of character became aggravated into decided insanity, insomuch that he struck with his stick whomsoever he met; and his relatives were forced to confine him in chains under a helot sentinel. By severe menaces, he one day constrained this man to give him his sword, with which he mangled himself dreadfully and perished.

But what surprises us most is, to hear that the Spartans, usually more disposed than other Greeks to refer every striking phenomenon to divine agency, recognised on this occasion nothing but a vulgar physical cause: Cleomenes had gone mad (they affirmed) through habits of intoxication, learnt from some Scythian envoys who had come to Sparta.

The general course of the war with Ægina, and especially the failure of the enterprise concerted with Nicodromus in consequence of delay in borrowing ships from Corinth, were well calculated to impress upon the Athenians the necessity of enlarging their naval force. And it is from the present time that we trace among them the first growth of that decided tendency towards maritime activity which coincided so happily with the expansion of their democracy, and opened a new phase in Grecian history as well as a new career for themselves.

The exciting effect produced upon them by the repulse of the Persians at Marathon has been dwelt upon. Miltiades, the victor in that field, having been removed from the scene under circumstances already described, Aristides and Themistocles became the chief men at Athens: and the former[306] was chosen archon during the succeeding year. His exemplary uprightness in magisterial functions ensured to him lofty esteem from the general public, not without a certain proportion of active enemies, some of them sufferers by his justice. These enemies naturally became partisans of his rival Themistocles, who had all the talents necessary for bringing them into co-operation: and the rivalry between the two chiefs became so bitter and menacing, that even Aristides himself is reported to have said, “If the Athenians were wise, they would cast both of us into the barathrum.”

THEMISTOCLES AND ARISTIDES

Of the particular points on which their rivalry turned, we are unfortunately little informed. But it is highly probable that one of them was the important change of policy above alluded to,—the conversion of Athens from a land-power into a sea-power; the development of this new and stirring element in the minds of the people. By all authorities, this change of policy is ascribed principally and specially to Themistocles. On that account, if for no other reason, Aristides would probably be found opposed to it: but it was moreover a change not in harmony with that old-fashioned Hellenism, undisturbed uniformity of life, and narrow range of active duty and experience which Aristides seems to have approved in common with the subsequent philosophers. The seaman was naturally more of a wanderer and cosmopolite than the heavy-armed soldier: the modern Greek seaman even at this moment is so to a remarkable degree, distinguished for the variety of his ideas, and the quickness of his intelligence: the land-service was a type of steadiness and inflexible ranks, the sea-service that of mutability and adventure. Such was the idea strongly entertained by Plato and other philosophers: though we may remark that they do not render justice to the Athenian seaman, whose training was far more perfect and laborious, and his habits of obedience far more complete, than that of the Athenian hoplite or horseman: a training beginning with Themistocles, and reaching its full perfection about the commencement of the Peloponnesian War.

In recommending extraordinary efforts to create a navy as well as to acquire nautical practice, Themistocles displayed all that sagacious appreciation of the circumstances and dangers of the time for which Thucydides gives him credit: and there can be no doubt that Aristides, though the honester politician of the two, was at this particular crisis the less essential to his country. Not only was there the struggle with Ægina, a maritime power equal or more than equal, and within sight of the Athenian harbour, but there was also in the distance a still more formidable contingency to guard against. The Persian armament had been driven with disgrace from Attica back to Asia; but the Persian monarch still remained with undiminished means of aggression as well as increased thirst for revenge; and Themistocles knew well that the danger from that quarter would recur greater than ever. He believed that it would recur again in the same way, by an expedition across the Ægean like that of Datis to Marathon; against which the best defence would be found in a numerous and well-trained fleet.[307] Nor could the large preparations of Darius for renewing the attack remain unknown to a vigilant observer, extending as they did over so many Greeks subject to the Persian empire. Such positive warning was more than enough to stimulate the active genius of Themistocles, who now prevailed upon his countrymen to begin with energy the work of maritime preparation, as well against Ægina as against Persia. Not only were two hundred new ships built, and citizens trained as seamen, but the important work was commenced, during the year when Themistocles was either archon or general, of forming and fortifying a new harbour for Athens at Piræus, instead of the ancient open bay of Phalerum. The latter was indeed somewhat nearer to the city, but Piræus with its three separate natural ports, admitting of being closed and fortified, was incomparably superior in safety as well as in convenience. It is not too much to say with Herodotus, that the Æginetan war was “the salvation of Greece, by constraining the Athenians to make themselves a maritime power.” The whole efficiency of the resistance subsequently made to Xerxes turned upon this new movement in the organisation of Athens, allowed as it was to attain tolerable completeness through a fortunate concurrence of accidents; for the important delay of ten years between the defeat of Marathon and the fresh invasion by which it was to be avenged was, in truth, the result of accident. First, the revolt of Egypt; next, the death of Darius; thirdly, the indifference of Xerxes at his first accession towards Hellenic matters—postponing until 480 B.C., an invasion which would naturally have been undertaken in 487 or 486 B.C., and which would have found Athens at that time without her wooden walls—the great engine of her subsequent salvation.

Another accidental help, without which the new fleet could not have been built—a considerable amount of public money—was also by good fortune now available to the Athenians. It is first in an emphatic passage of the poet Æschylus, and next from Herodotus on the present occasion, that we hear of the silver mines of Laurium in Attica, and the valuable produce which they rendered to the state. At what time they first began to be worked, we have no information; but it seems hardly possible that they could have been worked with any spirit or profitable result, until after the expulsion of Hippias and the establishment of the democratical constitution of Clisthenes. Neither the strong local factions, by which different portions of Attica were set against each other before the time of Pisistratus—nor the rule of that despot succeeded by his two sons—were likely to afford confidence and encouragement. But when the democracy of Clisthenes first brought Attica into one systematic and comprehensive whole, with equal rights assigned to each part, and with a common centre at Athens—the power of that central government over the mineral wealth of the country, and its means of binding the whole people to respect agreements concluded with individual undertakers, would give a new stimulus to private speculation in the district of Laurium. It was the practice of the Athenian government either to sell, or to let for a long term of years, particular districts of this productive region to individuals or companies; on consideration partly of a sum or fine paid down, partly of a reserved rent equal to one twenty-fourth part of the gross produce.

We are told by Herodotus that there was in the Athenian treasury, at the time when Themistocles made his proposition to enlarge the naval force, a great sum arising from the Laurian mines, out of which a distribution was on the point of being made among the citizens—ten drachmæ [about 8 shillings or $2] to each man. Themistocles availed himself of this precious[308] opportunity—set forth the necessities of the war with Ægina, and the still more formidable menace from the great enemy in Asia—and prevailed upon the people to forego the promised distribution for the purpose of obtaining an efficient navy. One cannot doubt that there must have been many speakers who would try to make themselves popular by opposing this proposition and supporting the distribution; insomuch that the power of the people generally to feel the force of a distant motive as predominant over a present gain, deserves notice as an earnest of their approaching greatness.

Immense indeed was the recompense reaped for this self-denial, not merely by Athens but by Greece generally, when the preparations of Xerxes came to be matured, and his armament was understood to be approaching. The orders for equipment of ships and laying in of provisions, issued by the Great King to his subject Greeks in Asia, the Ægean, and Thrace, would of course become known throughout Greece proper; especially the vast labour bestowed on the canal of Mount Athos, which would be the theme of wondering talk with every Thasian or Acanthian citizen who visited the festival games in the Peloponnesus. All these premonitory evidences were public enough, without any need of that elaborate stratagem whereby the exiled Demaratus is alleged to have secretly transmitted, from Susa to Sparta, intelligence of the approaching expedition. The formal announcements of Xerxes all designated Athens as the special object of his wrath and vengeance. Other Grecian cities might thus hope to escape without mischief: so that the prospect of the great invasion did not at first provoke among them any unanimous disposition to resist. Accordingly, when the first heralds despatched by Xerxes from Sardis in the autumn of 481 B.C., a little before his march to the Hellespont, addressed themselves to the different cities with demand of earth and water, many were disposed to comply. Neither to Athens, nor to Sparta, were any heralds sent; and these two cities were thus from the beginning identified in interest and in the necessity of defence. Both of them sent, in this trying moment, to consult the Delphian oracle; while both at the same time joined to convene a Panhellenic congress at the Isthmus of Corinth, for the purpose of organising resistance against the expected invader.

CONGRESS AT CORINTH

We have pointed out the various steps whereby the separate states of Greece were gradually brought, even against their own natural instincts, into something approaching more nearly to political union. The present congress, assembled under the influence of common fear from Persia, has more of a Panhellenic character than any political event which has yet occurred in Grecian history. It extends far beyond the range of those Peloponnesian states which constitute the immediate allies of Sparta: it comprehends Athens, and is even summoned in part by her strenuous instigation: moreover it seeks to combine every city of Hellenic race and language, however distant, which can be induced to take part in it—even the Cretans, Corcyræans, and Sicilians. It is true that all these states do not actually come, but earnest efforts are made to induce them to come: the dispersed brethren of the Hellenic family are entreated to marshal themselves in the same ranks for a joint political purpose—the defence of the common hearth and metropolis of the race. This is a new fact in Grecian history, opening scenes and ideas unlike to anything which has gone before—enlarging prodigiously the functions and duties[309] connected with that headship of Greece which had hitherto been in the hands of Sparta, but which is about to become too comprehensive for her to manage—and thus introducing increased habits of co-operation among the subordinate states, as well as rival hopes of aggrandisement among the leaders. The congress at the Isthmus of Corinth marks such further advance in the centralising tendencies of Greece, and seems at first to promise an onward march in the same direction: but the promise will not be found realised.

Its first step was indeed one of inestimable value. While most of the deputies present came prepared, in the name of their respective cities, to swear reciprocal fidelity and brotherhood, they also addressed all their efforts to appease the feuds and dissensions which reigned among particular members of their own meeting. Of these the most prominent, as well as the most dangerous, was the war still subsisting between Athens and Ægina. The latter was not exempt, even now, from suspicions of medising (i.e., embracing the cause of the Persians), which had been raised by her giving earth and water ten years before to Darius. But her present conduct afforded no countenance to such suspicions: she took earnest part in the congress as well as in the joint measures of defence, and willingly consented to accommodate her difference with Athens. In this work of reconciling feuds, so essential to the safety of Greece, the Athenian Themistocles took a prominent part, as well as Cheileus of Tegea in Arcadia. The congress proceeded to send envoys and solicit co-operation from such cities as were yet either equivocal or indifferent, especially Argos, Corcyra, and the Cretan and Sicilian Greeks; and at the same time to despatch spies across to Sardis, for the purpose of learning the state and prospects of the assembled army.

These spies presently returned, having been detected, and condemned to death by the Persian generals, but released by express order of Xerxes, who directed that the full strength of his assembled armament should be shown to them, in order that the terror of the Greeks might be thus magnified. The step was well calculated for such a purpose: but the discouragement throughout Greece was already extreme, at this critical period when the storm was about to burst upon them. Even to intelligent and well-meaning Greeks, much more to the careless, the timid, or the treacherous—Xerxes with his countless host appeared irresistible, and indeed something more than human. Of course such an impression would be encouraged by the large number of Greeks already his tributaries: and we may even trace the manifestation of a wish to get rid of the Athenians altogether, as the chief objects of Persian vengeance and chief hindrance to tranquil submission. This despair of the very continuance of Hellenic life and autonomy breaks forth even from the sanctuary of Hellenic religion, the Delphian temple; when the Athenians, in their distress and uncertainty, sent to consult the oracle. Hardly had their two envoys performed the customary sacrifices, and sat down in the inner chamber near the priestess Aristonice, when she at once exclaimed: “Wretched men, why sit ye there? Quit your land and city, and flee afar! Head, body, feet, and hands are alike rotten: fire and sword, in the train of the Syrian chariot, shall overwhelm you: nor only your city, but other cities also, as well as many even of the temples of the gods—which are now sweating and trembling with fear, and foreshadow, by drops of blood on their roofs, the hard calamities impending. Get ye away from the sanctuary, with your souls steeped in sorrow.”

So terrific a reply had rarely escaped from the lips of the priestess. The envoys were struck to the earth by it, and durst not carry it back to Athens.[310] In their sorrow they were encouraged yet to hope by an influential Delphian citizen named Timon (we trace here as elsewhere the underhand working of these leading Delphians on the priestess), who advised them to provide themselves with the characteristic marks of supplication, and to approach the oracle a second time in that imploring guise: “O lord, we pray thee (they said), have compassion on these boughs of supplication, and deliver to us something more comfortable concerning our country; else we quit not thy sanctuary, but remain here until death.” Upon which the priestess replied: “Athene with all her prayers and all her sagacity cannot propitiate Olympian Zeus. But this assurance I will give you, firm as adamant. When everything else in the land of Cecrops shall be taken, Zeus grants to Athene that the wooden wall alone shall remain unconquered, to defend you and your children. Stand not to await the assailing horse and foot from the continent, but turn your backs and retire: you shall yet live to fight another day. O divine Salamis, thou too shalt destroy the children of women, either at the seed-time or at the harvest.”

This second answer was a sensible mitigation of the first. It left open some hope of escape, though faint, dark, and unintelligible: and the envoys wrote it down to carry back to Athens, not concealing probably the terrific sentence which had preceded it. When read to the people, the obscurity of the meaning provoked many different interpretations. What was meant by “the wooden wall”? Some supposed that the Acropolis itself, which had originally been surrounded with a wooden palisade, was the refuge pointed out; but the greater number, and among them most of those who were by profession expositors of prophecy, maintained that the wooden wall indicated the fleet. But these professional expositors, while declaring that the god bade them go on shipboard, deprecated all idea of a naval battle, and insisted on the necessity of abandoning Attica forever: the last lines of the oracle, wherein it was said that Salamis would destroy the children of women, appeared to them to portend nothing but disaster in the event of a naval combat. Such was the opinion of those who passed for the best expositors of the divine will. It harmonised completely with the despairing temper then prevalent, heightened by the terrible sentence pronounced in the first oracle; and emigration to some foreign land presented itself as the only hope of safety even for their persons. The fate of Athens—and of Greece generally, which would have been helpless without Athens—now hung upon a thread, when Themistocles, the great originator of the fleet, interposed with equal steadfastness of heart and ingenuity, to insure the proper use of it. He contended that if the god had intended to designate Salamis as the scene of a naval disaster to the Greeks, that island would have been called in the oracle by some such epithet as “wretched Salamis:” but the fact that it was termed “divine Salamis,” indicated that the parties, destined to perish there, were the enemies of Greece, not the Greeks themselves. He encouraged his countrymen therefore to abandon their city and country, and to trust themselves to the fleet as the wooden wall recommended by the god, but with full determination to fight and conquer on board. Great indeed were the consequences which turned upon this bold stretch of exegetical conjecture. Unless the Athenians had been persuaded, by some plausible show of interpretation, that the sense of the oracle encouraged instead of forbidding a naval combat, they would in their existing depression have abandoned all thought of resistance.

Even with the help of an encouraging interpretation, however, nothing less than the most unconquerable resolution and patriotism could have[311] enabled the Athenians to bear up against such terrific denunciations from the Delphian god, and persist in resistance in place of seeking safety by emigration. Herodotus emphatically impresses this truth upon his readers: nay, he even steps out of his way to do so, proclaiming Athens as the real saviour of Greece. Writing as he did about the beginning of the Peloponnesian War—at a time when Athens, having attained the maximum of her empire, was alike feared, hated, and admired, by most of the Grecian states—he knows that the opinion which he is giving will be unpopular with his hearers generally, and he apologises for it as something wrung from him against his will by the force of the evidence. Nor was it only that the Athenians dared to stay and fight against immense odds: they, and they alone, threw into the cause that energy and forwardness whereby it was enabled to succeed, as will appear further in the sequel.

But there was also a third way, not less deserving of notice, in which they contributed to the result. As soon as the congress of deputies met at the Isthmus of Corinth, it became essential to recognise some one commanding state: and with regard to the land-force, no one dreamt of contesting the pre-eminence of Sparta. But in respect to the fleet, her pretensions were more disputable, since she furnished at most only sixteen ships, and little or no nautical skill; while Athens brought two-thirds of the entire naval force, with the best ships and seamen. Upon these grounds the idea was at first started, that Athens should command at sea and Sparta on land: but the majority of the allies manifested a decided repugnance, announcing that they would follow no one but a Spartan. To the honour of the Athenians, they at once waived their pretensions, as soon as they saw that the unity of the confederate force at this moment of peril would be compromised. To appreciate this generous abnegation of a claim in itself so reasonable, we must recollect that the love of pre-eminence was among the most prominent attributes of the Hellenic character; a prolific source of their greatness and excellence, but producing also no small amount both of their follies and their crimes. To renounce at the call of public obligation a claim to personal honour and glory, is perhaps the rarest of all virtues in a son of Hellen.

We find thus the Athenians nerved up to the pitch of resistance, prepared to see their country wasted, and to live as well as to fight on shipboard, when the necessity should arrive; furnishing two-thirds of the whole fleet, and yet prosecuting the building of fresh ships until the last moment; sending forth the ablest and most forward leader in the common cause, while content themselves to serve like other states under the leadership of Sparta. During the winter preceding the march of Xerxes from Sardis, the congress at the isthmus was trying, with little success, to bring the Grecian cities into united action. Among the cities north of Attica and the Peloponnesus, the greater number were either inclined to submit, like Thebes and the greater part of Bœotia, or were at least lukewarm in the cause of independence: so rare at this trying moment (to use the language of the unfortunate Platæans fifty-three years afterwards) was the exertion of resolute Hellenic patriotism against the invader. Even in the interior of the Peloponnesus, the powerful Argos maintained an ambiguous neutrality. It was one of the first steps of the congress to send special envoys to Argos, setting forth the common danger and soliciting co-operation. The result is certain, that no co-operation was obtained—the Argives did nothing throughout the struggle; but as to their real position, or the grounds of their refusal, contradictory statements had reached the ears of Herodotus. They themselves affirmed that they[312] were ready to have joined the Hellenic cause, in spite of dissuasion from the Delphian oracle—exacting only as conditions that the Spartans should conclude a truce with them for thirty years, and should equally divide the honours of headship with Argos.

Such was the story told by the Argives themselves, but seemingly not credited either by any other Greeks, or by Herodotus himself. The prevalent opinion was, that the Argives had a secret understanding with Xerxes, and some even affirmed that they had been the parties who invited him into Greece, as a means both of protection and of vengeance to themselves against Sparta after their defeat by Cleomenes. And Herodotus himself evidently believed that they medised, though he is half afraid to say so, and disguises his opinion in a cloud of words which betray the angry polemics going on about the matter, even fifty years afterwards. It is certain that in act the Argives were neutral.

The Cretans declined to take any part, on the ground of prohibitory injunctions from the oracle; the Corcyræans promised without performing, and even without any intention to perform. Their neutrality was a serious loss to the Greeks, since they could fit out a naval force of sixty triremes, second only to that of Athens. With this important contingent they engaged to join the Grecian fleet, and actually set sail from Corcyra; but they took care not to sail round Cape Malea, or to reach the scene of action.

The envoys who visited Corcyra proceeded onward on their mission to Gelo the despot of Syracuse. Of that potentate, regarded by Herodotus as more powerful than any state in Greece, we shall speak more fully in a subsequent chapter: it is sufficient to mention now, that he rendered no aid against Xerxes. Nor was it in his power to do so, whatever might have been his inclinations; for the same year which brought the Persian monarch against Greece, was also selected by the Carthaginians for a formidable invasion of Sicily, which kept the Sicilian Greeks to the defence of their own island. It seems even probable that this simultaneous invasion had been concerted between the Persians and Carthaginians.

The endeavours of the deputies of Greeks at the isthmus had thus produced no other reinforcement to their cause except some fair words from the Corcyræans. It was about the time when Xerxes was about to pass the Hellespont, in the beginning of 480 B.C., that the first actual step for resistance was taken, at the instigation of the Thessalians. Though the great Thessalian family of the Aleuadæ were among the companions of Xerxes, and the most forward in inviting him into Greece, with every promise of ready submission from their countrymen—yet it seems that these promises were in reality unwarranted. The Aleuadæ were at the head only of a minority, and perhaps were even in exile, like the Pisistratidæ: while most of the Thessalians were disposed to resist Xerxes—for which purpose they now sent envoys to the isthmus, intimating the necessity of guarding the passes of Olympus, the northernmost entrance of Greece. They offered their own cordial aid in this defence, adding that they should be under the necessity of making their own separate submission, if this demand were not complied with. Accordingly a body of ten thousand Grecian heavy-armed infantry, under the command of the Spartan Euænetus and the Athenian Themistocles, were despatched by sea to Alus in Achaia Phthiotis, where they disembarked and marched by land across Achaia and Thessaly. Being joined by the Thessalian horse, they occupied the defile of Tempe, through which the river Peneus makes its way to the sea, by a cleft between the mountains Olympus and Ossa.

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THE VALE OF TEMPE

The long, narrow, and winding defile of Tempe formed then, and forms still, the single entrance, open throughout winter as well as summer, from lower or maritime Macedonia into Thessaly. The lofty mountain precipices approach so closely as to leave hardly room enough in some places for a road: it is thus eminently defensible, and a few resolute men would be sufficient to arrest in it the progress of the most numerous host. But the Greeks soon discovered that the position was such as they could not hold—first, because the powerful fleet of Xerxes would be able to land troops in their rear; secondly, because there was also a second entrance passable in summer, from upper Macedonia into Thessaly, by the mountain passes over the range of Olympus. It was in fact by this second pass, evading the insurmountable difficulties of Tempe, that the advancing march of the Persians was destined to be made, under the auspices of Alexander, king of Macedon, tributary to them and active in their service. That prince sent a communication of the fact to the Greeks at Tempe, admonishing them that they would be trodden under foot by the countless host approaching, and urging them to renounce their hopeless position. He passed for a friend, and probably believed himself to be acting as such, in dissuading the Greeks from unavailing resistance to Persia: but he was in reality a very dangerous mediator; and as such the Spartans had good reason to dread him, in a second intervention of which we shall hear more hereafter. On the present occasion, the Grecian commanders were quite ignorant of the existence of any other entrance into Thessaly, besides Tempe, until their arrival in that region. Perhaps it might have been possible to defend both entrances at once, and considering the immense importance of arresting the march of the Persians at the frontiers of Hellas, the attempt would have been worth some risk. So great was the alarm, however, produced by the unexpected discovery, justifying or seeming to justify the friendly advice of Alexander, that they remained only a few days at Tempe, then at once retired back to their ships, and returned by sea to the Isthmus of Corinth—about the time when Xerxes was crossing the Hellespont.

This precipitate retreat produced consequences highly disastrous and discouraging. It appeared to leave all Hellas north of Mount Cithæron and of the Megarid territory without defence, and it served either as reason or pretext for the majority of the Grecian states, north of that boundary, to make their submission to Xerxes, which some of them had already begun to do before. When Xerxes in the course of his march reached the Thermaic Gulf, within sight of Olympus and Ossa, the heralds whom he had sent from Sardis brought him tokens of submission from a third portion of the Hellenic name—the Thessalians, Dolopes, Ænianes, Perrhæbians,[314] Magnetes, Locrians, Dorians, Melians, Phthiotic Achæans, and Bœotians. Among the latter is included Thebes, but not Thespiæ or Platæa. The Thessalians, especially, not only submitted, but manifested active zeal and rendered much service in the cause of Xerxes, under the stimulus of the Aleuadæ, whose party now became predominant: they were probably indignant at the hasty retreat of those who had come to defend them.

Had the Greeks been able to maintain the passes of Olympus and Ossa, all this northern fraction might probably have been induced to partake in the resistance instead of becoming auxiliaries to the invader. During the six weeks or two months which elapsed between the retreat of the Greeks from Tempe and the arrival of Xerxes at Therma, no new plan of defence was yet thoroughly organised; for it was not until that arrival became known at the isthmus, that the Greek army and fleet made its forward movement to occupy Thermopylæ and Artemisium.b

XERXES REVIEWS HIS HOST

Xerxes having ranged and numbered his armament, was desirous to take a survey of them all. Mounted in his car, he examined each nation in its turn. To all of them he proposed certain questions, the replies to which were noted down by his secretaries. In this manner he proceeded from first to last through all the ranks, both of horse and foot. When this was done, the fleet also was pushed off from land, whilst the monarch, exchanging his chariot for a Sidonian vessel, on the deck of which he sat beneath a golden canopy, passed slowly the heads of the ships, proposing in like manner questions to each, and noting down the answers. The commanders had severally moored their vessels at about four plethra from shore, in one uniform line, with their sterns out to sea, and their crews under arms, as if prepared for battle. Xerxes viewed them, passing betwixt their prows and the shore.

When he had finished his survey, he went on shore; and sending for Demaratus, the son of Ariston, who accompanied him in this expedition against Greece, he thus addressed him: “From you, Demaratus, who are a Greek, and, as I understand from yourself and others, of no mean or contemptible city, I am desirous of obtaining information: do you think that the Greeks will presume to make any resistance against me? For my own part, not to mention their want of unanimity, I cannot think that all the Greeks, joined to all the inhabitants of the west, would be able to withstand my power: what is your opinion on this subject?” “Sir,” said Demaratus, in reply, “shall I say what is true, or only what is agreeable?” Xerxes commanded him to speak the truth.

“Since,” answered Demaratus, “you command me to speak the truth, it shall be my care to deliver myself in such a manner that no one hereafter, speaking as I do, shall be convicted of falsehood. Greece has ever been the child of poverty; for its virtue it is indebted to the severe wisdom and discipline, by which it has tempered its poverty, and repelled its oppressors. To this praise all the Dorian Greeks are entitled; but I shall now speak of the Lacedæmonians only. You may depend upon it that your propositions, which threaten Greece with servitude, will be rejected; and if all the other Greeks side with you against them, the Lacedæmonians will engage you in battle. Make no inquiries as to their number, for if they shall have but a thousand men, or even fewer, they will fight you.”

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“What, Demaratus,” answered Xerxes, smiling, “think you that a thousand men will engage so vast a host? Tell me, you who, as you say, have been their prince, would you now willingly engage with ten opponents? If your countrymen be what you describe them, according to your own principles you, who are their prince, should be equal to two of them. If, therefore, one of them be able to contend with ten of my soldiers, you may be reasonably expected to contend with twenty: such ought to be the test of your assertions. But if your countrymen really resemble in form and size you, and such other Greeks as appear in my presence, it should seem that what you say is dictated by pride and insolence; for how can it be shown that a thousand, or ten thousand, or even fifty thousand men, all equally free, and not subject to the will of an individual, could oppose so great an army? Granting them to have five thousand men, we have still a majority of a thousand to one; they who like us are under the command of one person, from the fear of their leader, and under the immediate impression of the lash, are animated with a spirit contrary to their nature, and are made to attack a number greater than their own; but they who are urged by no constraint will not do this. If these Greeks were even equal to us in number, I cannot think they would dare to encounter Persians. The virtue to which you allude, is to be found among ourselves, though the examples are certainly not numerous; there are of my Persian guards men who will singly contend with three Greeks. The preposterous language which you use can only, therefore, proceed from your ignorance.”

“I knew, my lord, from the first,” returned Demaratus, “that by speaking truth I should offend you. I was induced to give you this representation of the Spartans, from your urging me to speak without reserve. You may judge, sir, what my attachment must be to those who, not content with depriving me of my paternal dignities, drove me ignominiously into exile. Your father received, protected, and supported me: no prudent man will treat with ingratitude the kindness of his benefactor. I will never presume to engage in fight with ten men, nor even with two, nor indeed willingly with one; but if necessity demanded, or danger provoked me, I would not hesitate to fight with any one of those, who is said to be a match for three Greeks. The Lacedæmonians, when they engage in single combat, are certainly not inferior to other men, but in a body they are not to be equalled. Although free, they are not so without some reserve; the law is their superior, of which they stand in greater awe than your subjects do of you: they are obedient to what it commands, and it commands them always not to fly from the field of battle, whatever may be the number of their adversaries. It is their duty to preserve their ranks, to conquer or to die. If what I say seem to you absurd, I am willing in future to be silent. I have spoken what I think, because the king commanded me, to whom may all he desires be accomplished.”

Xerxes smiled at these words of Demaratus, whom he dismissed without anger, civilly from his presence. After the above conference, he removed from Doriscus the governor who had been placed there by Darius, and promoted in his room Mascames, son of Megadostes. He then passed through Thrace with his army, towards Greece.

To this Mascames, as to the bravest of all the governors appointed either by himself or by Darius, Xerxes sent presents every year, and Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes continued to do the same to his descendants. Before this expedition against Greece, there had constantly been governors both in Thrace and the Hellespont, all of whom, except Mascames, the Greeks afterwards expelled:[316] he alone retained Doriscus in his subjection, in defiance of the many and repeated exertions made to remove him. It was in remembrance of these services, that he and all his descendants received presents from the kings of Persia.

The only one of all those expelled by the Greeks, who enjoyed the good opinion of Xerxes, was Boges, the governor of Eion; he always mentioned this man in terms of esteem, and all his descendants were honourably regarded in Persia. Boges was not undeserving his great reputation: when he was besieged by the Athenians, under the conduct of Cimon, son of Miltiades, he might, if he had thought proper, have retired into Asia; this he refused, and defended himself to the last extremity, from apprehensions that the king might ascribe his conduct to fear. When no provisions were left, he caused a large pile to be raised; he then slew his children, his wife, his concubines, and all his family and threw them into the fire; he next cast all the gold and silver of the place from the walls into the Strymon; lastly, he leaped himself into the flames. This man is, therefore, very deservedly extolled by the Persians.

Xerxes, in his progress from Doriscus to Greece, compelled all the people among whom he came to join his army. All this tract of country, as far as Thessaly, as we have before remarked, had been made tributary to the king, first by Megabazus, and finally by Mardonius.

Xerxes having passed the exhausted bed of the Lissus, continued his march beyond the Grecian cities of Maronea, Dicæa, and Abdera. He proceeded onward through the more midland cities, in one of which is a lake almost of thirty stadia in circumference, full of fish, but remarkably salt: the waters of this proved only sufficient for the beasts of burden. The name of the city is Pistyrus. These Grecian and maritime cities were to the left of Xerxes as he passed them.

The nations of Thrace, through which he marched are these: the Pæti, Cicones, Bistones, Sapæi, Dersæi, Edoni, and the Satræ. The inhabitants of the maritime towns followed by sea; those inland were, except the Satræ, compelled to accompany the army by land. The Satræ, as far as we know, never were subdued.

Xerxes continued to advance, and passed by two Pierian cities, one called Phagra, the other Pergamus; to his right he left the mountain Pangæus, keeping a westward direction, till he came to the river Strymon. To this river the magi offered a sacrifice of white horses. After performing these and many other religious rites to the Strymon, they proceeded through the Edonian district of the Nine Ways, to where they found bridges thrown over the Strymon: when they heard that this place was named the Nine Ways, they buried there alive nine youths and as many virgins, natives of the country. This custom of burying alive was common in Persia; and Amestris, the wife of Xerxes, when she was of an advanced age, commanded fourteen Persian children of illustrious birth to be interred alive in honour of that deity, who, as they suppose, exists under the earth.

On his arrival at Acanthus, the Persian monarch interchanged the rites of hospitality with the people, and presented each with a Median vest: he was prompted to this conduct by the particular zeal which they discovered towards the war, and from their having completed the work of the canal.

As soon as the royal will was made known by the heralds, the inhabitants of the several cities divided the corn which they possessed, and employed many months in reducing it to meal and flour. Some there were, who purchased at a great price the finest cattle they could procure, for the purpose of fattening[317] them: others, with the same view of entertaining the army, provided birds both of the land and the water, which they preserved in cages and in ponds. Many employed themselves in making cups and goblets of gold and silver, with other utensils of the table: these last-mentioned articles were intended only for the king himself, and his more immediate attendants; with respect to the army in general, it was thought sufficient to furnish them with provision. On the approach of the main body, a pavilion was erected, and properly prepared for the residence of the monarch, the rest of the troops remained in the open air. From the commencement of the feast to its conclusion, the fatigue of those who provided it is hardly to be expressed. The guests, after satisfying their appetite, passed the night on the place; the next morning, after tearing up the pavilion, and plundering its contents, they departed, without leaving anything behind them.

Upon this occasion the witty remark of Megacreon of Abdera, has been handed down to posterity. If the Abderites, he observed, had been required to furnish a dinner as well as a supper, they must either have prevented the visit of the king by flight, or have been the most miserable of human beings.

These people, severe as was the burden, fulfilled what had been enjoined them. From Acanthus, Xerxes dismissed the commanders of his fleet, requiring them to wait his orders at Therma. Therma is situated near the Thermæan Gulf, to which it gives its name. He had been taught to suppose this the most convenient road; by the command of Xerxes, the army had marched from Doriscus to Acanthus, in three separate bodies: one went by the seacoast, moving with the fleet, and was commanded by Mardonius and Masistes; a second proceeded through the midst of the continent, under the conduct of Tritantæchmes and Gergis; betwixt these went the third detachment, with whom was Xerxes himself, and who were led by Smerdomenes and Megabyzus.

As soon as the royal mandate was issued, the navy entered the canal which had been cut at Mount Athos, and which was continued to the gulf. Taking on board a supply of troops from these places, the fleet advanced towards the Thermæan Gulf, and doubling the Toronean promontory of Ampelos, they proceeded by a short cut to the Canastrean cape, the point, which of all the districts of Pallene, projects farthest into the sea. Coasting onward to the station appointed, they supplied themselves with troops from the cities in the vicinity of Pallene, and the Thermæan Gulf. From Ænea the fleet went in a straight direction to the Thermæan Gulf, and the coast of Mygdonia; it ultimately arrived at Therma, where they waited for the king. Directing his march this way, Xerxes, with all his forces, left Acanthus, and proceeded over the continent through Pæonia and Crestonia. In the course of this march, the camels, which carried the provisions, were attacked by lions: in the darkness of the night they left their accustomed abode, and without molesting man or beast, fell upon the camels only. That the lions should attack the camels alone, animals they had never been known before to devour, or even by mistake to have seen, is a fact which we are totally unable to explain.

On his arrival at Therma, Xerxes halted with his army, which occupied the whole of the coast from Therma and Mygdonia, as far as the rivers Lydias and Haliacmon, which forming the limits of Bottiæis and Macedonia, meet at last in the same channel. Here the barbarians encamped. Xerxes, viewing from Therma, Olympus and Ossa, Thessalian mountains of an extraordinary height, betwixt which was a narrow passage where the Peneus poured its stream, and where was an entrance to Thessaly, he was[318] desirous of sailing to the mouth of this river. For the way he had determined to march as the safest was through the high country of Macedonia, by the Perrhæbi, and the town of Gonnus. He instantly however set about the accomplishment of his wish. He accordingly went on board a Sidonian vessel, for on such occasions he always preferred the ships of that country; leaving here his land forces, he gave the signal for all the fleet to prepare to set sail. Arriving at the mouth of the Peneus, he observed it with particular admiration, and desired to know of his guides if it would not be possible to turn the stream, and make it empty itself into the sea in some other place.

Thessaly is said to have been formerly a marsh, on all sides surrounded by lofty mountains[25]; to the east by Pelion and Ossa, whose bases meet each other; to the north by Olympus, to the west by Pindus; to the south by Othrys. The space betwixt these is Thessaly, into which depressed region many rivers pour their waters.

Xerxes inquiring of his guides whether the Peneus might be conducted to the sea by any other channel, received from them, who were well acquainted with the situation of the country, this reply: “As Thessaly, O King, is on every side encircled by mountains, the Peneus can have no other communication with the sea.” “The Thessalians,” Xerxes is said to have answered, “are a sagacious people. They have been careful to decline a contest for many reasons, and particularly as they must have discerned that their country would afford an easy conquest to an invader. All that would be necessary to deluge the whole of Thessaly, except the mountainous parts, would be to stop up the mouth of the river, and thus throw back its waters upon the country.” This observation referred to the sons of Aleuas, who were Thessalians, and the first Greeks who submitted to the king. He presumed that their conduct declared the general sentiments of the nation in his favour. After surveying the place he returned to Therma.

He remained a few days in the neighbourhood of Pieria, during which interval a detachment of the third of his army was employed in clearing the Macedonian mountain, to facilitate the passage of the troops into the country of the Perrhæbi. The messengers who had been sent to require earth and water of the Greeks returned, some with and some without it. Xerxes sent no messengers either to Athens or to Sparta, for when Darius had before sent to these places, the Athenians threw his people into their pit of punishment, the Lacedæmonians into wells, telling them to get the earth and water thence, and carry it to their king. A long time after the incident we have related, the entrails of the victims continued at Sparta to bear an unfavourable appearance, till the people, reduced to despondency, called a general assembly, in which they inquired by their heralds, if any Lacedæmonian would die for his country. Upon this Sperthies, son of Aneristus, and Bulis, son of Nicolaus, Spartans of great accomplishments and distinction, offered themselves to undergo whatever punishment Xerxes the son of Darius should think proper to inflict on account of the murder of his ambassadors. These men therefore the Spartans sent to the Medes, as to certain death.

The magnanimity of these two men, as well as the words which they used, deserve admiration. On their way to Susa they came to Hydarnes, a native of Persia, and governor of the vanquished places in Asia near the sea: he entertained them with much liberality and kindness, and addressed them as follows: “Why, O Lacedæmonians, will you reject the friendship of the king? From me, and from my condition, you may learn how well he[319] knows to reward merit. He already thinks highly of your virtue, and if you will but enter into his service, he will doubtless assign to each of you some government in Greece.” “Hydarnes,” they replied, “your advice with respect to us is inconsistent: you speak from the experience of your own but with an entire ignorance of our situation. To you servitude is familiar; but how sweet a thing liberty is, you have never known, if you had, you yourself would have advised us to make all possible exertions to preserve it.”

When introduced, on their arrival at Susa, to the royal presence, they were first ordered by the guards to fall prostrate, and adore the king, and some force was used to compel them. But this they refused to do, even if they should dash their heads against the ground. They were not, they said, accustomed to adore a man, nor was it for this purpose that they came. After persevering in such conduct, they addressed Xerxes himself in these and similar expressions: “King of the Medes, we are sent by our countrymen to make atonement for those ambassadors who perished at Sparta.” Xerxes with great magnanimity said he would not imitate the example of the Lacedæmonians. They in killing his ambassadors had violated the laws of nations; he would not be guilty of that with which he reproached them, nor, by destroying their messengers, indirectly justify their crime.c

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XIX. THERMOPYLÆ

THE FAMOUS STORY AS TOLD BY HERODOTUS

Xerxes encamped in Trachinia at Melis; the Greeks, in the straits. These straits the Greeks in general call Thermopylæ; the people of the country Pylæ only. Here then were the two armies stationed, Xerxes occupying all the northern region as far as Trachinia, the Greeks that of the south. The Grecian army, which here waited the approach of the Persian, was composed of three hundred Spartans in complete armour; five hundred Tegeatæ, and as many Mantineans; one hundred and twenty men from Orchomenos of Arcadia, a thousand men from the rest of Arcadia, four hundred Corinthians, two hundred from Phlius, and eighty from Mycenæ. The above came from the Peloponnesus: from Bœotia there were seven hundred Thespians and four hundred Thebans.

In addition to the above, the aid of all the Opuntian Locrians had been solicited, together with a thousand Phocians. To obtain the assistance of these the Greeks had previously sent emissaries among them, saying, that they were the forerunners only of another and more numerous body, whose arrival was every day expected. They added, that the defence of the sea was confided to the people of Athens and Ægina, in conjunction with the rest of the fleet; that there was no occasion for alarm, as the invader of Greece was not a god, but a mere human being; that there never was nor could be any mortal superior to the vicissitudes of fortune; that the most exalted characters were exposed to the greatest evils; he therefore, a mortal, now advancing to attack them, would suffer for his temerity. These arguments proved effectual, and they accordingly marched to Trachis to join their allies.

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Leonidas and His Allies

These troops were commanded by different officers of their respective countries: but the man most regarded, and entrusted with the chief command, was Leonidas of Sparta. His ancestors were traced back to Hercules. An accident had placed him on the throne of Sparta; for, as he had two brothers older than himself, Cleomenes and Dorieus, he had entertained no thoughts of the government; but Cleomenes dying without male issue, and Dorieus not surviving (for he ended his days in Sicily) the crown came to Leonidas, who was older than Cleombrotus, the youngest of the sons of Anaxandrides, and who had married the daughter of Cleomenes. On the present occasion he took with him to Thermopylæ a body of three hundred chosen men, all of whom had children. To these he added the Theban troops who were conducted by Leontiades, son of Eurymachus.[26] Leonidas had selected the Thebans to accompany him, because a suspicion generally prevailed that they were secretly attached to the Medes. These therefore he summoned to attend him, to ascertain whether they would actually contribute their aid, or openly withdraw themselves from the Grecian league. With hostile sentiments they nevertheless sent the assistance required.[27]

The march of this body under Leonidas was accelerated by the Spartans, that their example might stimulate their allies to action, and that they might not make their delay a pretence for going over to the Medes. The celebration of the Carnean festival[28] protracted the march of their main body; but it was their intention to follow with all imaginable expedition, leaving only a small detachment for the defence of Sparta. The rest of the allies were actuated by similar motives, for the Olympic games happened to recur at this period; and as they did not expect an engagement would immediately take place at Thermopylæ, they sent only a detachment before them.

Such were the motives of the confederate body. The Greeks who were already assembled at Thermopylæ were seized with so much terror on the approach of the Persians that they consulted about a retreat. Those of the Peloponnesus were in general of opinion that they should return and guard[322] the isthmus; but as the Phocians and Locrians were exceedingly averse to this measure, Leonidas prevailed on them to continue on their post. He resolved however to send messengers round to all the states, requiring supplies, stating that their number was much too small to oppose the Medes with any effect.

Whilst they thus deliberated, Xerxes sent a horseman to examine their number and their motions. He had before heard, in Thessaly, that a small band was collected at this passage, that they were led by Lacedæmonians, and by Leonidas of the race of Hercules. The person employed performed his duty: all those who were without the entrenchment he was able to reconnoitre; those who were within for the purpose of defending it, eluded his observation. The Lacedæmonians were at that period stationed without; of these some were performing gymnastic exercises, whilst others were employed in combing their hair. He was greatly astonished, but he leisurely surveyed their number and employments, and returned without molestation, for they despised him too much to pursue him. He related to Xerxes all that he had seen.

Xerxes, on hearing the above, was little aware of what was really the case, that this people were preparing themselves either to conquer or to die. The thing appeared to him so ridiculous, that he sent for Demaratus the son of Ariston, who was then with the army. On his appearing, the king questioned him on this behaviour of the Spartans, expressing his desire to know what it might intimate. “I have before, Sir,” said Demaratus, “spoken to you of this people, at the commencement of this expedition; and as I remember, when I related to you what I knew you would have occasion to observe, you treated me with contempt. I am conscious of the danger of declaring the truth, in opposition to your prejudices; but I will nevertheless do so. It is the determination of these men to dispute this pass with us, and they are preparing themselves accordingly. It is their custom before any enterprise of danger to adorn their hair. Of this you may be assured, that if you vanquish these, and their countrymen in Sparta, no other nation will presume to take up arms against you: you are now advancing to attack a people whose realms and city are the fairest, and whose troops are the bravest of Greece.” These words seemed to Xerxes preposterous enough; but he demanded a second time, how so small a number could contend with his army. “Sir,” said Demaratus, “I will submit to suffer the punishment of falsehood, if what I say does not happen.”

Xerxes Assails the Pass

Xerxes was still incredulous; he accordingly kept his position without any movement for four days, in expectation of seeing them retreat. On the fifth day, observing that they continued on their post, merely as he supposed from the most impudent rashness, he became much exasperated, and sent against them a detachment of Medes and Cissians, with a command to bring them alive to his presence. The Medes in consequence attacked them, and lost a considerable number. A reinforcement arrived; but though the onset was severe, no impression was made. It now became universally conspicuous, and no less so to the king himself, that he had many troops, but few men.[29] The above engagement continued all day.

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The Medes, after being very roughly treated, retired, and were succeeded by the band of Persians called by the king “the Immortal,” and commanded by Hydarnes. These it was supposed would succeed without the smallest difficulty. They commenced the attack, but made no greater impression than the Medes: their superior numbers were of no advantage, on account of the narrowness of the place; and their spears also were shorter than those of the Greeks. The Lacedæmonians fought in a manner which deserves to be recorded; their own excellent discipline, and the unskilfulness of their adversaries, were in many instances remarkable, and not the least so when in close ranks they affected to retreat. The barbarians seeing them retire, pursued them with a great and clamorous shout; but on their near approach the Greeks faced about to receive them. The loss of the Persians was prodigious, and a few also of the Spartans fell. The Persians, after successive efforts made with great bodies of their troops to gain the pass, were unable to accomplish it and obliged to retire.

It is said of Xerxes himself that, being a spectator of the contest, he was so greatly alarmed for the safety of his men, that he leaped thrice from his throne. On the following day, the barbarians succeeded no better than before. They went to the onset as against a contemptible number, whose wounds they supposed would hardly permit them to renew the combat: but the Greeks, drawn up in regular divisions, fought each nation on its respective post, except the Phocians, who were stationed on the summit of the mountain to defend the pass. The Persians, experiencing a repetition of the same treatment, a second time retired.

The Treachery of Ephialtes

Whilst the king was exceedingly perplexed what conduct to pursue in the present emergence, Ephialtes, the son of Eurydemus, a Malian, demanded an audience: he expected to receive some great recompense for showing him the path which led over the mountain to Thermopylæ: and he indeed it was who thus rendered ineffectual the valour of those Greeks who perished on this station. This man, through fear of the Lacedæmonians, fled afterwards into Thessaly; but the Pylagoræ, calling a council of the Amphictyons at Pylæ for this express purpose, set a price upon his head, and he was afterwards slain by Athenades, a Trachinian, at Anticyra, to which place he had returned.

The intelligence of Ephialtes gave the king infinite satisfaction, and he instantly detached Hydarnes, with the forces under his command, to avail himself of it. They left the camp at the first approach of evening; the Malians, the natives of the country, discovered this path, and by it conducted the Thessalians against the Phocians, who had defended it by an entrenchment, and deemed themselves secure. It had never, however, proved of any advantage to the Malians.

The path of which we are speaking commences at the river Asopus. This stream flows through an aperture of the mountain called Anopæa, which is also the name of the path. This is continued through the whole length of the mountain, and terminates near the town of Alpenus. Following the track which has been described, the Persians passed the Asopus, and marched all night, keeping the Œtean Mountains on the right, and the Trachinian on the left. At the dawn of morning they found themselves at the summit, where a band of a thousand Phocians in arms was stationed, both to defend their own country and this pass.

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The approach of the Persians was discovered to the Phocians in this manner: whilst they were ascending the mountain they were totally concealed by the thick groves of oak; but from the stillness of the air they were discovered by the noise they made by trampling on the leaves, a thing which might naturally happen. The Phocians ran to arms, and in a moment the barbarians appeared, who, seeing a number of men precipitately arming themselves, were at first struck with astonishment. They did not expect an adversary; and they had fallen in among armed troops. Hydarnes, apprehending that the Phocians might prove to be Lacedæmonians, inquired of Ephialtes who they were. When he was informed, he drew up the Persians in order of battle. The Phocians, not able to sustain the heavy flight of arrows, retreated up the mountain, imagining themselves the objects of this attack, and expecting certain destruction: but the troops with Hydarnes and Ephialtes did not think it worth their while to pursue them, and descended rapidly down the opposite side of the mountain.

To those Greeks stationed in the straits of Thermopylæ, Megistias the soothsayer had previously, from inspection of the entrails, predicted that death awaited them in the morning. Some deserters had also informed them of the circuit the Persians had taken; and this intelligence was in the course of the night circulated through the camp. All this was confirmed by their sentinels, who early in the morning fled down the sides of the mountain. In this predicament, the Greeks called a council, who were greatly[325] divided in their opinions: some were for remaining on their station, others advised a retreat. In consequence of their not agreeing, many of them dispersed to their respective cities; a part resolved to continue with Leonidas.

It is said, that those who retired only did so in compliance with the wishes of Leonidas, who was desirous to preserve them: but he thought that he himself, with his Spartans, could not without the greatest ignominy forsake the post they had come to defend. Obedient to the direction of their leader, the confederates retired. The Thespians and Thebans[30] alone remained with the Spartans, the Thebans indeed very reluctantly, but they were detained by Leonidas as hostages. The Thespians were very zealous in the cause, and refusing to abandon their friends, perished with them. The leader of the Thespians was Demophilus, son of Diadromas.

The Final Assault

Xerxes early in the morning offered a solemn libation, then waiting till the hour of full forum, he advanced from his camp: to the above measure he had been advised by Ephialtes. The descent from the mountain is much shorter than the circuitous ascent. The barbarians with Xerxes approached; Leonidas and his Greeks proceeded, as to inevitable death, a much greater space from the defile than they had yet done. Till now they had defended themselves behind their entrenchment, fighting in the most contracted part of the passage; but on this day they engaged on a wider space, and a multitude of their opponents fell. Behind each troop of Persians, officers were stationed with whips in their hands, compelling with blows their men to advance. Many of them fell into the sea, where they perished; many were trodden under foot by their own troops, without exciting the smallest pity or regard. The Greeks, conscious that their destruction was at hand from those who had taken the circuit of the mountain, exerted themselves with the most desperate valour against their barbarian assailants.

Their spears being broken in pieces, they had recourse to their swords. Leonidas fell in the engagement, having greatly signalised himself; and with him, many Spartans of distinction, as well as others of inferior note. Many illustrious Persians also were slain, among whom were Abrocomes and Hyperanthes, sons of Darius.

These two brothers of Xerxes fell as they were contending for the body of Leonidas: here the conflict was the most severe, till at length the Greeks by their superior valour four times repelled the Persians, and drew aside the body of their prince. In this situation they continued till Ephialtes and his party approached. As soon as the Greeks perceived them at hand, the scene was changed, and they retreated to the narrowest part of the pass. Having repassed their entrenchment, they posted themselves, all except the Thebans, in a compact body, upon a hill, which is at the entrance of the straits, and where a lion of stone has been erected in honour of Leonidas. In this situation, they who had swords left, used them against the enemy, the rest exerted themselves with their hands and their teeth. The barbarians rushing upon them, some in front, after overturning their wall, others surrounding and pressing them in all directions, finally overpowered them.

Such was the conduct of the Lacedæmonians and Thespians; but none[326] of them distinguished themselves so much as Dieneces the Spartan. A speech of his is recorded, which he made before they came to any engagement. A certain Trachinian having observed that the barbarians would send forth such a shower of arrows that their multitude would obscure the sun; he replied, like a man ignorant of fear, and despising the numbers of the Medes, “our Trachinian friend promises us great advantages; if the Medes obscure the sun’s light, we shall fight them in the shade, and be protected from the heat.” Many other sayings have been handed down as monuments of this man’s fame. Next to him, the most distinguished of the Spartans were, Alpheus and Maron, two brothers, the sons of Orisiphantus; of the Thespians, the most conspicuous was Dithyrambus, son of Harmatidas. All these were interred in the place where they fell, together with such of the confederates as were slain before the separation of the forces by Leonidas. Upon their tomb was this inscription:

This was applied to them all collectively. The Spartans were thus distinguished:

There was one also appropriated to the prophet Megistias:

All these ornaments and inscriptions, that of Megistias alone excepted, were here placed by the Amphictyons.

Of these three hundred, there were two named Eurytus and Aristodemus; both of them, consistently with the discipline of their country, might have secured themselves by retiring to Sparta, for Leonidas had permitted them to leave the camp; but they continued at Alpenus, being both afflicted by a violent disorder of the eyes: or, if they had not thought proper to return home, they had the alternative of meeting death in the field with their fellow-soldiers. In this situation, they differed in opinion what conduct to pursue. Eurytus having heard of the circuit made by the Persians, called for his arms, and putting them on, commanded his helot to conduct him to the battle. The slave did so, and immediately fled, whilst his master died fighting valiantly. Aristodemus pusillanimously stayed where he was. If either Aristodemus, being individually diseased, had retired home, or if they had returned together, we cannot think that the Spartans could have shown any resentment against them; but as one of them died in the field, which the other, who was precisely in the same circumstances, refused to do, it was impossible not to be greatly incensed against Aristodemus.

Aristodemus, on his return, was branded with disgrace and infamy; no one would speak with him; no one would supply him with fire; and the opprobrious term of trembler was annexed to his name; but he afterwards, at the battle of Platæa, effectually atoned for his former conduct. It is also said that another of the three hundred survived; his name was Pantites, and he had been sent on some business to Thessaly. Returning to Sparta, he felt himself in disgrace, and put an end to his life.

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The Thebans, under the command of Leontiades, hitherto constrained by force, had fought with the Greeks against the Persians; but as soon as they saw that the Persians were victorious, when Leonidas and his party retired to the hill, they separated themselves from the Greeks. In the attitude of suppliants they approached the barbarians, assuring them, what was really the truth, that they were attached to the Medes; that they had been among the first to render earth and water; that they had only come to Thermopylæ on compulsion, and could not be considered as accessory to the slaughter of the king’s troops. The Thessalians confirming the truth of what they had asserted, their lives were preserved. Some of them however were slain; for as they approached, the barbarians put several to the sword; but the greater part, by the order of Xerxes, had the royal marks impressed upon them, beginning with Leontiades himself. Eurymachus his son was afterwards slain at the head of four hundred Thebans, by the people of Platæa, whilst he was making an attempt upon their city. In this manner the Greeks fought at Thermopylæ.b

DISCREPANT ACCOUNTS OF THE DEATH OF LEONIDAS

Such is the story of this memorable contest as Herodotus tells it. He is our most important source by far, and his simple words give a more realistic picture than is conveyed by any modern paraphrase. It is well to recall, however, that there are discrepant accounts of the death of Leonidas. None of these is so plausible as the description just given, but two of them are worth citing, to illustrate the historical uncertainties that attach to the subject.a Plutarch, in his parallels between the Romans and Greeks, thus describes the death of Leonidas: “Whilst they were at dinner, the barbarians fell upon them: upon which Leonidas desired them to eat heartily, for they were to sup with Pluto. Leonidas charged at the head of his troops, and after receiving a multitude of wounds, got up to Xerxes himself, and snatched the crown from his head. He lost his life in the attempt; and Xerxes, causing his body to be opened, found his heart hairy. So says Aristides, in his first book of his Persian History.” This fiction seems to have been taken from the λασιόν κῆρ of Homer.

Diodorus Siculus tells us that Leonidas, when he knew that he was circumvented, made a bold attempt by night to penetrate to the tent of Xerxes; but this the Persian king had forsaken on the first alarm. The Greeks however proceeded in search of him from one side to the other, and slew a prodigious multitude. When morning approached, the Persians perceiving the Greeks so few in number, held them in contempt; but they still did not dare to attack them in front; encompassing them on both sides, and behind, they slew them all with their spears. Such was the end of Leonidas and his party.c

AFTER THERMOPYLÆ

Where the Spartans fell, they were afterwards buried: their tomb, as Simonides sang, was an altar; a sanctuary, in which Greece revered the memory of her second founders.

The inscription of the monument raised over the slain, who died from first to last in defence of the pass, recorded that four thousand men from the Peloponnesus had fought at Thermopylæ with three hundred myriads.[328] We ought not to expect accuracy in these numbers: the list in Herodotus, if the Locrian force is only supposed equal to the Phocian, exceeds six thousand men: the Phocians, it must be remembered, were not engaged. But it is not easy to reconcile either account with the historian’s statement, that the Grecian dead amounted to four thousand, unless we suppose that the helots, though not numbered, formed a large part of the army of Leonidas. The lustre of his achievement is not diminished by their presence. He himself and his Spartans no doubt considered their persevering stand in the post entrusted to them, not as an act of high and heroic devotion, but of simple and indispensable duty. Their spirit spoke in the lines inscribed upon their monument, which bade the passenger tell their countrymen, that they had fallen in obedience to their laws.

The Persians are said to have lost twenty thousand men: among them were several of royal blood. To console himself for this loss, and to reap the utmost advantage from his victory, Xerxes sent over to the fleet, which, having heard of the departure of the Greeks, was now stationed on the north coast of Eubœa, and by public notice invited all who were curious, to see the chastisement he had inflicted on the men who had dared to defy his power. That he had previously buried the greater part of his own dead seems natural enough, and such an artifice, so slightly differing from the universal practice of both ancient and modern belligerents, scarcely deserved the name of a stratagem. He is said also to have mutilated the body of Leonidas, and as this was one of the foremost he found on a field which had cost him so dear, we are not at liberty to reject the tradition on the ground that such ferocity was not consistent with the respect usually paid by the Persians to a gallant enemy.

At Thermopylæ Xerxes learnt a lesson which he had refused to receive from the warnings of Demaratus; and he inquired, with altered spirit, whether he had to expect many such obstacles in the conquest of Greece. The Spartan told him that there were eight thousand of his countrymen, who would all be ready to do what Leonidas had done, and that at the isthmus he would meet with a resistance more powerful and obstinate than at Thermopylæ. But if, instead of attacking the Peloponnesus on this side, where he would find its whole force collected to withstand him, he sent a detachment of his fleet to seize the island of Cythera, and to infest the coast of Laconia, the confederacy would be distracted, and its members, deprived of their head and perhaps disunited, would successively yield to his arms. The plan, whether Demaratus or Herodotus was the author, found no supporters in the Persian council.

He had now the key of northern Greece in his hands, and it only remained to determine towards which side he should first turn his arms. The Thessalians, who ever since his arrival in their country had been zealous in his service, now resolved to make use of their influence, and to direct the course of the storm to their own advantage. These Thessalians, who are mentioned on this occasion by Herodotus without any more precise description, were probably the same nobles who, against the wishes of their nation, had invited and forwarded the invasion. They had now an opportunity of gratifying either their cupidity or their revenge; and they sent to the Phocians to demand a bribe of fifty talents, as the price at which they would consent to avert the destruction which was impending over Phocis. The Phocians however either did not trust their faith, or would not buy their safety of a hated rival. The Thessalians then persuaded Xerxes to cross that part of the Œtean chain which separates the vale of the Sperchius from[329] the little valley of Doris. The Dorians were spared, as friends. Those of the Phocians who had the means of escaping took refuge on the high plains that lie under the topmost peaks of Parnassus, or at Amphissa. But on all that remained in their homes, on the fields, the cities, the temples of the devoted land, the fury of the invader, directed and stimulated by the malice of the Thessalians, poured undistinguishing ruin. Fire and sword, the cruelty and the lust of irritated spoilers, ravaged the vale of the Cephisus down to the borders of Bœotia. The rich sanctuary of Apollo at Abæ was sacked and burnt, and fourteen towns shared its fate. At Panopeus, Xerxes divided his forces; or rather detached a small body round the foot of Parnassus to Delphi, with orders to strip the temple of its treasures, and lay them at his feet. He had learnt their value from the best authority at Sardis. The great army turned off toward the lower vale of the Cephisus, to pursue its march through Bœotia to Athens.h

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XX. THE BATTLES OF ARTEMISIUM AND SALAMIS

The days of battle at Thermopylæ had been not less actively employed by the fleets at Aphetæ and Artemisium. It has already been mentioned that the Greek ships, having abandoned their station at the latter place and retired to Chalcis, were induced to return, by the news that the Persian fleet had been nearly ruined by the recent storm, and that, on returning to Artemisium, the Grecian commanders felt renewed alarm on seeing the enemy’s fleet, in spite of the damage just sustained, still mustering in overwhelming number at the opposite station of Aphetæ. Such was the effect of this spectacle, and the impression of their own inferiority, that they again resolved to retire without fighting, leaving the strait open and undefended. Great consternation was caused by the news of their determination among the inhabitants of Eubœa, who entreated Eurybiades to maintain his position for a few days, until they could have time to remove their families and their property. But even such postponement was thought unsafe, and refused: and he was on the point of giving orders for retreat, when the Eubœans sent their envoy, Pelagon, to Themistocles, with the offer of thirty talents, on condition that the fleet should keep its station and hazard an engagement in defence of the island. Themistocles employed the money adroitly and successfully, giving five talents to Eurybiades, with large presents besides to the other leading chiefs: the most unmanageable among them was the Corinthian Adimantus, who at first threatened to depart with his own squadron alone, if the remaining Greeks were mad enough to remain. His alarm was silenced, if not tranquillised, by a present of three talents.

However Plutarch may be scandalised at such inglorious revelations preserved to us by Herodotus respecting the underhand agencies of this memorable struggle, there is no reason to call in question the bribery here described. But Themistocles doubtless was only tempted to do, and enabled to do, by means of the Eubœan money, that which he would have wished and had probably tried to accomplish without the money—to bring on a naval engagement at Artemisium. It was absolutely essential to the maintenance of Thermopylæ, and to the general plan of defence, that the Eubœan strait should be defended against the Persian fleet, nor could the Greeks expect a more favourable position to fight in. We may reasonably presume that Themistocles, distinguished not less by daring than by sagacity, and the great originator of maritime energies[331] in his country, concurred unwillingly in the projected abandonment of Artemisium: but his high mental capacity did not exclude that pecuniary corruption which rendered the presents of the Eubœans both admissible and welcome—yet still more welcome to him perhaps, as they supplied means of bringing over the other opposing chiefs and the Spartan admiral. It was finally determined, therefore, to remain, and if necessary, to hazard an engagement in the Eubœan strait: but at any rate to procure for the inhabitants of the island a short interval to remove their families. Had these Eubœans heeded the oracles, says Herodotus, they would have packed up and removed long before; for a text of Bacis gave them express warning; but, having neglected the sacred writings as unworthy of credit, they were now severely punished for such presumption.

Among the Persian fleet at Aphetæ, on the other hand, the feeling prevalent was one of sanguine hope and confidence in their superior numbers, forming a strong contrast with the discouragement of the Greeks at Artemisium. Had they attacked the latter immediately, when both fleets first saw each other from their opposite stations, they would have gained an easy victory, for the Greek fleet would have fled, as the admiral was on the point of ordering, even without an attack. But this was not sufficient for the Persians, who wished to cut off every ship among their enemies even from flight and escape. Accordingly, they detached two hundred ships to circumnavigate the island of Eubœa, and to sail up the Eubœan strait from the south, in the rear of the Greeks,—and postponing their own attack in front until this squadron should be in position to intercept the retreating Greeks. But though the manœuvre was concealed by sending the squadron round outside of the island of Sciathus, it became known immediately among the Greeks, through a deserter—Scyllias of Scione. This man, the best swimmer and diver of his time, and now engaged like other Thracian Greeks in the Persian service, passed over to Artemisium, and communicated to the Greek commanders both the particulars of the late destructive storm and the despatch of the intercepting squadron.

BATTLE OF ARTEMISIUM

It appears that his communications, respecting the effects of the storm and the condition of the Persian fleet, somewhat reassured the Greeks, who resolved during the ensuing night to sail from their station at Artemisium for the purpose of surprising the detached squadron of two hundred ships, and who even became bold enough, under the inspirations of Themistocles, to go out and offer battle to the main fleet near Aphetæ. Wanting to acquire some practical experience, which neither leaders nor soldiers as yet possessed, of the manner in which Phœnicians and others in the Persian fleet handled and manœuvred their ships, they waited till a late hour of the afternoon, when little daylight remained. Their boldness in thus advancing out, with inferior numbers and even inferior ships, astonished the Persian admirals, and distressed the Ionians and other subject Greeks who were serving them as unwilling auxiliaries: to both it seemed that the victory of the Persian fleet, which was speedily brought forth to battle, and was numerous enough to encompass the Greeks, would be certain as well as complete. The Greek ships were at first marshalled in a circle, with the sterns in the interior, and presenting their prows in front at all points of the circumference; in this position, compressed into a narrow space, they seemed to be[332] awaiting the attack of the enemy, who formed a larger circle around them: but on a second signal given, their ships assumed the aggressive, rowed out from the inner circle in direct impact against the hostile ships around, and took or disabled no less than thirty of them; in one of which Philaon, brother of Gorgus, despot of Salamis in Cyprus, was made prisoner. Such unexpected forwardness at first disconcerted the Persians, who however rallied and inflicted considerable damage and loss on the Greeks: but the near approach of night put an end to the combat, and each fleet retired to its former station—the Persians to Aphetæ, the Greeks to Artemisium.

The result of this first day’s combat, though indecisive in itself, surprised both parties and did much to exalt the confidence of the Greeks. But the events of the ensuing night did yet more. Another tremendous storm was sent by the gods to aid them. Though it was the middle of summer,—a season when rain rarely falls in the climate of Greece,—the most violent wind, rain, and thunder prevailed during the whole night, blowing right on shore against the Persians at Aphetæ, and thus but little troublesome to the Greeks on the opposite side of the strait. The seamen of the Persian fleet, scarcely recovered from the former storm at Sepias Acte, were almost driven to despair by this repetition of the same peril: the more so when they found the prows of their ships surrounded, and the play of their oars impeded, by the dead bodies and the spars from the recent battle, which the current drove towards their shore. If this storm was injurious to the main fleet at Aphetæ, it proved the entire ruin of the squadron detached to circumnavigate Eubœa, who, overtaken by it near the dangerous eastern coast of that island, called the Hollows of Eubœa, were driven upon the rocks and wrecked. The news of this second conspiracy of the elements, or intervention of the gods, against the schemes of the invaders, was highly encouraging to the Greeks; and the seasonable arrival of fifty-three fresh Athenian ships, which reinforced them the next day, raised them to a still higher pitch of confidence. In the afternoon of the same day, they sailed out against the Persian fleet at Aphetæ, and attacked and destroyed some Cilician ships even at their moorings; the fleet having been too much damaged by the storm of the preceding night to come out and fight.

But the Persian admirals were not of a temper to endure such insults,—still less to let their master hear of them. About noon on the ensuing day, they sailed with their entire fleet near to the Greek station at Artemisium, and formed themselves into a half moon; while the Greeks kept near to the shore, so that they could not be surrounded, nor could the Persians bring their entire fleet into action; the ships running foul of each other, and not finding space to attack. The battle raged fiercely all day, and with great loss and damage on both sides: the Egyptians bore off the palm of valour among the Persians, the Athenians among the Greeks. Though the positive loss sustained by the Persians was by far the greater, and though the Greeks, being near their own shore, became masters of the dead bodies as well as of the disabled ships and floating fragments, still, they were themselves hurt and crippled in greater proportion with reference to their inferior total: and the Athenian vessels especially, foremost in the preceding combat, found one-half of their number out of condition to renew it. The Egyptians alone had captured five Grecian ships with their entire crews.

Under these circumstances, the Greek leaders—and Themistocles, as it seems, among them—determined that they could no longer venture to hold the position of Artemisium, but must withdraw the naval force farther[333] into Greece: though this was in fact a surrender of the pass of Thermopylæ, and though the removal which the Eubœans were hastening was still unfinished. These unfortunate men were forced to be satisfied with the promise of Themistocles to give them convoy for their boats and their persons; abandoning their sheep and cattle for the consumption of the fleet, as better than leaving them to become booty for the enemy. While the Greeks were thus employed in organising their retreat, they received news which rendered retreat doubly necessary. The Athenian Abronychus, stationed with his ship near Thermopylæ, in order to keep up communication between the army and fleet, brought the disastrous intelligence that Xerxes was already master of the pass, and that the division of Leonidas was either destroyed or in flight. Upon this the fleet abandoned Artemisium forthwith, and sailed up the Eubœan strait; the Corinthian ships in the van, the Athenians bringing up the rear. Themistocles, conducting the latter, stayed long enough at the various watering-stations and landing-places to inscribe on some neighbouring stones invitations to the Ionian contingents serving under Xerxes: whereby the latter were conjured not to serve against their fathers, but to desert, if possible—or at least, to fight as little and as backwardly as they could. Themistocles hoped by this stratagem perhaps to detach some of the Ionians from the Persian side, or, at any rate, to render them objects of mistrust, and thus to diminish their efficiency. With no longer delay than was requisite for such inscriptions, he followed the remaining fleet, which sailed round the coast of Attica, not stopping until it reached the island of Salamis.

The news of the retreat of the Greek fleet was speedily conveyed by a citizen of Histiæa to the Persians at Aphetæ, who at first disbelieved it, and detained the messenger until they had sent to ascertain the fact. On the next day, their fleet passed across to the north of Eubœa, and became master of Histiæa and the neighbouring territory: from whence many of them, by permission and even invitation of Xerxes, crossed over to Thermopylæ to survey the field of battle and the dead. Respecting the number of the dead, Xerxes is asserted to have deliberately imposed upon the spectators: he buried all his own dead, except one thousand, whose bodies were left out—while the total number of Greeks who had perished at Thermopylæ, four thousand in number, were all left exposed, and in one heap, so as to create an impression that their loss had been much more severe than their own. Moreover, the bodies of the slain helots were included in the heap, all of them passing for Spartans or Thespians in the estimation of the spectators. We are not surprised to hear, however, that this trick, gross and public as it must have been, really deceived very few.

The sentiment, alike durable and unanimous, with which the Greeks of after-times looked back on the battle of Thermopylæ, and which they have communicated to all subsequent readers, was that of just admiration for the courage and patriotism of Leonidas and his band. But among the contemporary Greeks that sentiment, though doubtless sincerely felt, was by no means predominant: it was overpowered by the more pressing emotions of disappointment and terror. So confident were the Spartans and Peloponnesians in the defensibility of Thermopylæ and Artemisium, that when the news of the disaster reached them, not a single soldier had yet been put in motion: the season of the festival games had passed, but no active step had yet been taken. Meanwhile the invading force, army, and fleet, was in its progress towards Attica and the Peloponnesus, without the least preparations—and,[334] what was still worse, without any combined and concerted plan—for defending the heart of Greece. The loss sustained by Xerxes at Thermopylæ, insignificant in proportion to his vast total, was more than compensated by the fresh Grecian auxiliaries which he now acquired. Not merely the Malians, Locrians, and Dorians, but also the great mass of the Bœotians, with their chief town Thebes, all except Thespiæ and Platæa, now joined him. Demaratus, his Spartan companion, moved forward to Thebes to renew an ancient tie of hospitality with the Theban oligarchical leader, Attaginus, while small garrisons were sent by Alexander of Macedon to most of the Bœotian towns, as well to protect them from plunder as to insure their fidelity. The Thespians, on the other hand, abandoned their city, and fled into the Peloponnesus; while the Platæans, who had been serving aboard the Athenian ships at Artemisium, were disembarked at Chalcis as the fleet retreated, for the purpose of marching by land to their city, and removing their families. Nor was it only the land-force of Xerxes which had been thus strengthened; his fleet also had received some accessions from Carystus in Eubœa, and from several of the Cyclades—so that the losses sustained by the storm at Sepias and the fights at Artemisium, if not wholly made up, were at least in part repaired, while the fleet remained still prodigiously superior in number to that of the Greeks.

At the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, near fifty years after these events, the Corinthian envoys reminded Sparta that she had allowed Xerxes time to arrive from the extremity of the earth at the threshold of the Peloponnesus, before she took any adequate precautions against him; a reproach true almost to the letter. It was only when roused and terrified by the news of the death of Leonidas, that the Lacedæmonians and the other Peloponnesians began to put forth their full strength. But it was then too late to perform the promise made to Athens, of taking up a position in Bœotia so as to protect Attica. To defend the isthmus of Corinth was all that they now thought of, and seemingly all that was now open to them: thither they rushed with all their available population under the conduct of Cleombrotus, king of Sparta (brother of Leonidas), and began to draw fortifications across it, as well as to break up the Scironian road from Megara to Corinth, with every mark of anxious energy. The Lacedæmonians, Arcadians, Eleans, Corinthians, Sicyonians, Epidaurians, Phliasians, Trœzenians, and Hermionians, were all present here in full numbers; many myriads of men (bodies of ten thousand each) working and bringing materials night and day. As a defence to themselves against attack by land, this was an excellent position: they considered it as their last chance, abandoning all hope of successful resistance at sea. But they forgot that a fortified isthmus was no protection even to themselves against the navy of Xerxes, while it professedly threw out not only Attica, but also Megara and Ægina. And thus rose a new peril to Greece from the loss of Thermopylæ: no other position could be found which, like that memorable strait, comprehended and protected at once all the separate cities. The disunion thus produced brought them within a hair’s breadth of ruin.

ATHENS ABANDONED

If the causes of alarm were great for the Peloponnesians, yet more desperate did the position of the Athenians appear. Expecting, according to agreement, to find a Peloponnesian army in Bœotia ready to sustain Leonidas,[335] or at any rate to co-operate in the defence of Attica, they had taken no measures to remove their families or property: but they saw with indignant disappointment as well as dismay, on retreating from Artemisium, that the conqueror was in full march from Thermopylæ, that the road to Attica was open to him, and that the Peloponnesians were absorbed exclusively in the defence of their own isthmus and their own separate existence. The fleet from Artemisium had been directed to muster at the harbour of Trœzen, there to await such reinforcements as could be got together: but the Athenians entreated Eurybiades to halt at Salamis, so as to allow them a short time for consultation in the critical state of their affairs, and to aid them in the transport of their families. While Eurybiades was thus staying at Salamis, several new ships which had reached Trœzen came over to join him; and in this way Salamis became for a time the naval station of the Greeks, without any deliberate intention beforehand.

Meanwhile Themistocles and the Athenian seamen landed at Phalerum, and made their mournful entry into Athens. Gloomy as the prospect appeared, there was little room for difference of opinion, and still less room for delay. The authorities and the public assembly at once issued a proclamation, enjoining every Athenian to remove his family out of the country in the best way he could. We may conceive the state of tumult and terror which followed on this unexpected proclamation, when we reflect that it had to be circulated and acted upon throughout all Attica, from Sunium to Oropus, within the narrow space of less than six days; for no longer interval elapsed before Xerxes actually arrived at Athens, where indeed he might have arrived even sooner.

The whole Grecian fleet was doubtless employed in carrying out the helpless exiles; mostly to Trœzen, where a kind reception and generous support were provided for them,—the Trœzenian population being seemingly semi-Ionic, and having ancient relations of religion as well as of traffic with Athens,—but in part also to Ægina: there were, however, many who could not, or would not, go farther than Salamis. Themistocles impressed upon the sufferers that they were only obeying the oracle, which had directed them to abandon the city and to take refuge behind the wooden walls; and either his policy, or the mental depression of the time, gave circulation to other stories, intimating that even the divine inmates of the Acropolis were for a while deserting it. In the ancient temple of Athene Polias on that rock, there dwelt, or was believed to dwell, as guardian to the sanctuary and familiar attendant of the goddess, a sacred serpent, for whose nourishment a honey cake was placed once in the month. The honey cake had been hitherto regularly consumed; but at this fatal moment the priestess announced that it remained untouched: the sacred guardian had thus set the example of quitting the acropolis, and it behooved the citizens to follow the example, confiding in the goddess herself for future return and restitution.

The migration of so many ancient men, women, and children, was a scene of tears and misery inferior only to that which would have ensued on the actual capture of the city.[31] Some few individuals, too poor to hope for[336] maintenance, or too old to care for life elsewhere,—confiding, moreover, in their own interpretation of the wooden wall which the Pythian priestess had pronounced to be inexpugnable,—shut themselves up in the Acropolis along with the administrators of the temple, obstructing the entrance or western front with wooden doors and palisades. When we read how great were the sufferings of the population of Attica near half a century afterwards, compressed for refuge within the spacious fortifications of Athens at the first outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, we may form some faint idea of the incalculably greater misery which overwhelmed an emigrant population, hurrying, they knew not whither, to escape the long arm of Xerxes. Little chance did there seem that they would ever revisit their homes except as his slaves.

In the midst of circumstances thus calamitous and threatening, neither the warriors nor the leaders of Athens lost their energy—arm as well as mind was strung to the loftiest pitch of human resolution. Political dissensions were suspended: Themistocles proposed to the people a decree, and obtained their sanction, inviting home all who were under sentence of temporary banishment: moreover, he not only included but even specially designated among them his own great opponent Aristides, now in the third year of ostracism. Xanthippus the accuser, and Cimon, the son of Miltiades, were partners in the same emigration: the latter, enrolled by his scale of fortune among the horsemen of the state, was seen with his companions cheerfully marching through the Ceramicus to dedicate their bridles in the Acropolis, and to bring away in exchange some of the sacred arms there suspended, thus setting an example of ready service on shipboard, instead of on horseback. It was absolutely essential to obtain supplies of money, partly for the aid of the poorer exiles, but still more for the equipment of the fleet; there were no funds in the public treasury—but the senate of Areopagus, then composed in large proportion of men from the wealthier classes, put forth all its public authority as well as its private contributions and example to others, and thus succeeded in raising the sum of eight drachmæ for every soldier serving.

This timely help was indeed partly obtained by the inexhaustible resource of Themistocles, who, in the hurry of embarkation, either discovered or pretended that the Gorgon’s head from the statue of Athene was lost, and directing upon this ground every man’s baggage to be searched, rendered any treasures, which private citizens might be carrying out, available to the public service. By the most strenuous efforts, these few important days were made to suffice for removing the whole population of Attica,—those of military competence to the fleet at Salamis,—the rest to some place of refuge,—together with as much property as the case admitted. So complete was the desertion of the country, that the host of Xerxes, when it became master, could not seize and carry off more than five hundred prisoners. Moreover, the fleet itself, which had been brought home from Artemisium partially disabled, was quickly repaired, so that, by the time the Persian fleet arrived, it was again in something like fighting condition.

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THE FLEET AT SALAMIS

The combined fleet which had now got together at Salamis consisted of three hundred and sixty-six ships,—a force far greater than at Artemisium. Of these, no less than two hundred were Athenian; twenty among which, however, were lent to the Chalcidians, and manned by them. Forty Corinthian ships, thirty Æginetan, twenty Megarian, sixteen Lacedæmonian, fifteen Sicyonian, ten Epidaurian, seven from Ambracia, and as many from Eretria, five from Trœzen, three from Hermione, and the same number from Leucas; two from Ceos, two from Styra, and one from Cythnos; four from Naxos, despatched as a contingent to the Persian fleet, but brought by the choice of their captains and seamen to Salamis;—all these triremes, together with a small squadron of the inferior vessels called penteconters, made up the total. From the great Grecian cities in Italy there appeared only one trireme, a volunteer, equipped and commanded by an eminent citizen named Phaÿllus, thrice victor at the Pythian games. The entire fleet was thus a trifle larger than the combined force, three hundred and fifty-eight ships, collected by the Asiatic Greeks at Lade, fifteen years earlier, during the Ionic revolt. We may doubt, however, whether this total, borrowed from Herodotus, be not larger than that which actually fought a little afterwards at the battle of Salamis, and which Æschylus gives decidedly as consisting of three hundred sail, in addition to ten prime and chosen ships. That great poet, himself one of the combatants, and speaking in a drama represented only seven years after the battle, is better authority on the point even than Herodotus.

Hardly was the fleet mustered at Salamis, and the Athenian population removed, when Xerxes and his host overran the deserted country, his fleet occupying the roadstead of Phalerum with the coast adjoining. His land force had been put in motion under the guidance of the Thessalians, two or three days after the battle of Thermopylæ, and he was assured by some Arcadians who came to seek service, that the Peloponnesians were, even at that moment, occupied with the celebration of the Olympic games. “What prize does the victor receive?” he asked. Upon the reply made, that the prize was a wreath of the wild olive, Tritantæchmes, son of the monarch’s uncle Artabanus, is said to have burst forth, notwithstanding the displeasure both of the monarch himself and of the bystanders: “Heavens, Mardonius, what manner of men are these against whom thou hast brought us to fight! men who contend not for money, but for honour!” Whether this be a remark really delivered, or a dramatic illustration imagined by some contemporary of Herodotus, it is not the less interesting as bringing to view a characteristic of Hellenic life, which contrasts not merely with the manners of contemporary Orientals, but even with those of the earlier Greeks themselves during the Homeric times.

Among all the various Greeks between Thermopylæ and the borders of Attica, there were none except the Phocians disposed to refuse submission: and they refused only because the paramount influence of their bitter enemies the Thessalians made them despair of obtaining favourable terms. Nor would they even listen to a proposition of the Thessalians, who, boasting that it was in their power to guide as they pleased the terrors of the Persian host, offered to insure lenient treatment to the territory of Phocis, provided a sum of fifty talents were paid to them. The proposition being indignantly refused, they conducted Xerxes through the little territory of Doris, which medised and escaped plunder, into the upper valley of the[338] Cephisus, among the towns of the inflexible Phocians. All of them were found deserted; the inhabitants having previously escaped either to the wide-spreading summit of Parnassus, called Tithorea, or even still farther, across that mountain into the territory of the Ozolian Locrians. Ten or a dozen small Phocian towns, the most considerable of which were Elatea and Hyampolis, were sacked and destroyed by the invaders, nor was the holy temple and oracle of Apollo at Abæ better treated than the rest: all its treasures were pillaged, and it was then burnt. From Panopeus Xerxes detached a body of men to plunder Delphi, marching with his main army through Bœotia, in which country he found all the towns submissive and willing, except Thespiæ and Platæa: both were deserted by their citizens, and both were now burnt. From hence he conducted his army into the abandoned territory of Attica, reaching without resistance the foot of the Acropolis at Athens.

XERXES AT DELPHI

Very different was the fate of that division which he had detached from Panopeus against Delphi: Apollo defended his temple here more vigorously than at Abæ. The cupidity of the Persian king was stimulated by accounts of the boundless wealth accumulated at Delphi, especially the profuse donations of Crœsus. The Delphians, in the extreme of alarm, while they sought safety for themselves on the heights of Parnassus, and for their families by transport across the gulf into Achaia, consulted the oracle whether they should carry away or bury the sacred treasures. Apollo directed them to leave the treasures untouched, saying that he was competent himself to take care of his own property. Sixty Delphians alone ventured to remain, together with Aceratus, the religious superior: but evidences of superhuman aid soon appeared to encourage them. The sacred arms suspended in the interior cell, which no mortal hand was ever permitted to touch, were seen lying before the door of the temple; and when the Persians, marching along the road called Schiste, up that rugged path under the steep cliffs of Parnassus which conducts to Delphi, had reached the temple of Athene Pronœa, on a sudden, dreadful thunder was heard, two vast mountain crags detached themselves and rushed down with deafening noise among them, crushing many to death, the war shout was also heard from the interior of the temple of Athene. Seized with a panic terror, the invaders turned round and fled; pursued not only by the Delphians, but also, as they themselves affirmed, by two armed warriors of superhuman stature and destructive arm. The triumphant Delphians confirmed this report, adding that the two auxiliaries were the heroes Phylacus and Autonoüs, whose sacred precincts were close adjoining: and Herodotus himself when he visited Delphi, saw in the sacred ground of Athene the identical masses of rock which had overwhelmed the Persians.[32] Thus did the god repel these invaders from his Delphian sanctuary and treasures, which remained[339] inviolate until one hundred and thirty years afterwards, when they were rifled by the sacrilegious hands of the Phocian Philomelus. On this occasion, as will be seen presently, the real protectors of the treasures were the conquerors at Salamis and Platæa.

ATHENS TAKEN

Four months had elapsed since the departure from Asia when Xerxes reached Athens, the last term of his advance. He brought with him the members of the Pisistratid family, who doubtless thought their restoration already certain, and a few Athenian exiles attached to their interest. Though the country was altogether deserted, the handful of men collected in the Acropolis ventured to defy him: nor could all the persuasions of the Pisistratids, eager to preserve the holy place from pillage, induce them to surrender.

The Athenian Acropolis—a craggy rock rising abruptly about one hundred and fifty feet, with a flat summit of about one thousand feet long from east to west, by five hundred feet broad from north to south—had no practicable access except on the western side: moreover, in all parts where there seemed any possibility of climbing up, it was defended by the ancient fortification called the Pelasgic wall. Obliged to take the place by force, the Persian army was posted around the northern and western sides, and commenced their operations from the eminence immediately adjoining on the northwest, called Areopagus: from whence they bombarded, if we may venture upon the expression, with hot missiles, the woodwork before the gates; that is, they poured upon it multitudes of arrows with burning tow attached to them. The wooden palisades and boarding presently took fire and were consumed: but when the Persians tried to mount to the assault by the western road leading up to the gate, the undaunted little garrison still kept them at bay, having provided vast stones, which they rolled down upon them in the ascent.

For a time the Great King seemed likely to be driven to the slow process of blockade; but at length some adventurous men among the besiegers tried to scale the precipitous rock before them on its northern side, hard by the temple or chapel of Aglaurus, which lay nearly in front of the Persian position, but behind the gates and the western ascent. Here the rock was naturally so inaccessible, that it was altogether unguarded, and seemingly even unfortified: moreover, the attention of the little garrison was all concentrated on the host which fronted the gates. Hence the separate escalading party was enabled to accomplish their object unobserved, and to reach the summit in the rear of the garrison; who, deprived of their last hope, either cast themselves headlong from the walls, or fled for safety to the inner temple. The successful escaladers opened the gates to the entire Persian host, and the whole Acropolis was presently in their hands. Its defenders were slain, its temples pillaged, and all its dwellings and buildings, sacred as well as profane, consigned to the flames. The citadel of Athens fell into the hands of Xerxes by a surprise, very much the same as that which had placed Sardis in those of Cyrus.

Thus was divine prophecy fulfilled: Attica passed entirely into the hands of the Persians, and the conflagration of Sardis was retaliated upon the home and citadel of its captors, as it also was upon their sacred temple of Eleusis. Xerxes immediately despatched to Susa intelligence of the fact,[340] which is said to have excited unmeasured demonstrations of joy, confuting, seemingly, the gloomy predictions of his uncle Artabanus. On the next day but one, the Athenian exiles in his suite received his orders, or perhaps obtained his permission, to go and offer sacrifice amidst the ruins of the Acropolis, and atone, if possible, for the desecration of the ground: they discovered that the sacred olive tree near the chapel of Erechtheus, the special gift of the goddess Athene, though burnt to the ground by the recent flames, had already thrown out a fresh shoot of one cubit long,—at least the piety of restored Athens afterwards believed this encouraging portent, as well as that which was said to have been seen by Dicæus, an Athenian companion of the Pisistratids, in the Thriasian plain.

It was now the day set apart for the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries; and though in this sorrowful year there was no celebration, nor any Athenians in the territory, Dicæus still fancied that he beheld the dust and heard the loud multitudinous chant, which was wont to accompany in ordinary times the processional march from Athens to Eleusis. He would even have revealed the fact to Xerxes himself, had not Demaratus deterred him from doing so: but he as well as Herodotus construed it as an evidence that the goddesses themselves were passing over from Eleusis to help the Athenians at Salamis. But whatever may have been received in after times, on that day certainly no man could believe in the speedy resurrection of conquered Athens as a free city: not even if he had witnessed the portent of the burnt olive tree suddenly sprouting afresh with preternatural vigour. So hopeless did the circumstances of the Athenians then appear, not less to their confederates assembled at Salamis than to the victorious Persians.

About the time of the capture of the Acropolis, the Persian fleet also arrived safely in the Bay of Phalerum, reinforced by ships from Carystus as well as from various islands of the Cyclades, so that Herodotus reckons it to have been as strong as before the terrible storm at Sepias Acte—an estimate certainly not admissible.

XERXES INSPECTS HIS FLEET

Soon after their arrival, Xerxes himself descended to the shore to inspect the fleet, as well as to take counsel with the various naval leaders about the expediency of attacking the hostile fleet, now so near him in the narrow strait between Salamis and the coasts of Attica. He invited them all to take their seats in an assembly, wherein the king of Sidon occupied the first place and the king of Tyre the second. The question was put to each of them separately by Mardonius, and when we learn that all pronounced in favour of immediate fighting, we may be satisfied that the decided opinion of Xerxes himself must have been well known to them beforehand. One exception alone was found to this unanimity,—Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus in Caria; into whose mouth Herodotus puts a speech of some length, deprecating all idea of fighting in the narrow strait of Salamis, predicting that if the land-force were moved forwards to attack the Peloponnesus, the Peloponnesians in the fleet at Salamis would return for the protection of their own homes, and thus the fleet would disperse, the rather as there was little or no food in the island, and intimating, besides, unmeasured contempt for the efficacy of the Persian fleet and seamen as compared with the Greek, as well as for the subject contingents of Xerxes generally. That Queen Artemisia gave this prudent counsel, there is no reason to question; and the historian of Halicarnassus[341] may have had means of hearing the grounds on which her opinion rested: but we find a difficulty in believing that she can have publicly delivered any such estimate of the maritime subjects of Persia—an estimate not merely insulting to all who heard it, but at the time not just, though it had come to be nearer the truth at the time when Herodotus wrote, and though Artemisia herself may have lived to entertain the conviction afterwards. Whatever may have been her reasons, the historian tells us that friends as well as rivals were astonished at her rashness in dissuading the monarch from a naval battle, and expected that she would be put to death. But Xerxes heard the advice with perfect good temper, and even esteemed the Carian queen the more highly: though he resolved that the opinion of the majority, or his own opinion, should be acted upon: and orders were accordingly issued for attacking the next day, while the land-force should move forwards towards the Peloponnesus.

Whilst, on the shore of Phalerum, an omnipotent will compelled seeming unanimity and precluded all real deliberation, great, indeed, was the contrast presented by the neighbouring Greek armament at Salamis, among the members of which unmeasured dissension had been reigning. It has already been stated that the Greek fleet had originally got together at that island, not with any view of making it a naval station, but simply in order to cover and assist the emigration of the Athenians. This object being accomplished, and Xerxes being already in Attica, Eurybiades convoked the chiefs to consider what position was the fittest for a naval engagement. Most of them, especially those from the Peloponnesus, were averse to remaining at Salamis, and proposed that the fleet should be transferred to the isthmus of Corinth, where it would be in immediate communication with the Peloponnesian land-force, so that in case of defeat at sea, the ships would find protection on shore, and the men would join in the land service—while if worsted in a naval action near Salamis, they would be inclosed in an island from whence there were no hopes of escape. In the midst of the debate, a messenger arrived with news of the capture and conflagration of Athens and her Acropolis by the Persians: and such was the terror produced by this intelligence, that some of the chiefs, without even awaiting the conclusion of the debate and the final vote, quitted the council forthwith, and began to hoist sail, or prepare their rowers, for departure. The majority came to a vote for removing to the isthmus, but as night was approaching, actual removal was deferred until the next morning.

Now was felt the want of a position like that of Thermopylæ, which had served as a protection to all the Greeks at once, so as to check the growth of separate fears and interests. We can hardly wonder that the Peloponnesian chiefs—the Corinthian in particular, who furnished so large a naval contingent, and within whose territory the land-battle at the isthmus seemed about to take place—should manifest such an obstinate reluctance to fight at Salamis, and should insist on removing to a position where, in case of naval defeat, they could assist, and be assisted by, their own soldiers on land. On the other hand, Salamis was not only the most favourable position, in consequence of its narrow strait, for the inferior numbers of the Greeks, but could not be abandoned without breaking up the unity of the allied fleet; since Megara and Ægina would thus be left uncovered, and the contingents of each would immediately retire for the defence of their homes, while the Athenians also, a large portion of whose expatriated families were in Salamis and Ægina, would be in like manner distracted from combined maritime efforts at the isthmus. If transferred to the latter place, probably not even[342] the Peloponnesians themselves would have remained in one body; for the squadrons of Epidaurus, Trœzen, Hermione, etc., each fearing that the Persian fleet might make a descent on one or other of these separate ports, would go home to repel such a contingency, in spite of the efforts of Eurybiades to keep them together. Hence the order for quitting Salamis and repairing to the isthmus was nothing less than a sentence of extinction for all combined maritime defence; and it thus became doubly abhorrent to all those who, like the Athenians, Æginetans, and Megarians, were also led by their own separate safety to cling to the defence of Salamis. In spite of all such opposition, however, and in spite of the protest of Themistocles, the obstinate determination of the Peloponnesian leaders carried the vote for retreat, and each of them went to his ship to prepare for it on the following morning.

SCHEMES OF THEMISTOCLES

When Themistocles returned to his ship, with the gloom of this melancholy resolution full upon his mind, and with the necessity of providing for removal of the expatriated Athenian families in the island as well as for that of the squadron, he found an Athenian friend named Mnesiphilus, who asked him what the synod of chiefs had determined. Concerning this Mnesiphilus, who is mentioned generally as a sagacious practical politician, we unfortunately have no particulars: but it must have been no common man whom fame selected, truly or falsely, as the inspiring genius of Themistocles. On learning what had been resolved, Mnesiphilus burst out into remonstrance on the utter ruin which its execution would entail: there would presently be neither any united fleet to fight, nor any aggregate cause and country to fight for. He vehemently urged Themistocles again to open the question, and to press by every means in his power for a recall of the vote for retreat, as well as for a resolution to stay and fight at Salamis.

Themistocles had already in vain tried to enforce the same view: but disheartened as he was by ill success, the remonstrances of a respected friend struck him so forcibly as to induce him to renew his efforts. He went instantly to the ship of Eurybiades, asked permission to speak with him, and being invited aboard, reopened with him alone the whole subject of the past discussion, enforcing his own views as emphatically as he could. In this private communication, all the arguments bearing upon the case were more unsparingly laid open than it had been possible to do in an assembly of the chiefs, who would have been insulted if openly told that they were likely to desert the fleet when once removed from Salamis. Speaking thus freely and confidentially, and speaking to Eurybiades alone, Themistocles was enabled to bring him partially round, and even prevailed upon him to convene a fresh synod. So soon as this synod had assembled, even before Eurybiades had explained the object and formally opened the discussion, Themistocles addressed himself to each of the chiefs separately, pouring forth at large his fears and anxiety as to the abandonment of Salamis: insomuch that the Corinthian Adimantus rebuked him by saying, “Themistocles, those who in the public festival-matches rise up before the proper signal, are scourged.” “True,” rejoined the Athenian, “but those who lag behind the signal win no crowns.”

Eurybiades then explained to the synod that doubts had arisen in his mind, and that he called them together to reconsider the previous resolve: upon which Themistocles began the debate, and vehemently enforced the[343] necessity of fighting in the narrow sea of Salamis and not in the open waters at the isthmus, as well as of preserving Megara and Ægina: contending that a naval victory at Salamis would be not less effective for the defence of the Peloponnesus than if it took place at the isthmus, whereas, if the fleet were withdrawn to the latter point, they would only draw the Persians after them. Nor did he omit to add, that the Athenians had a prophecy assuring to them victory in this, their own island. But his speech made little impression on the Peloponnesian chiefs, who were even exasperated at being again summoned to reopen a debate already concluded, and concluded in a way which they deemed essential to their safety. In the bosom of the Corinthian Adimantus, especially, this feeling of anger burst all bounds. He sharply denounced the presumption of Themistocles, and bade him be silent as a man who had now no free Grecian city to represent, Athens being in the power of the enemy: nay, he went so far as to contend that Eurybiades had no right to count the vote of Themistocles, until the latter could produce some free city as accrediting him to the synod.

Such an attack, alike ungenerous and insane, upon the leader of more than half of the whole fleet, demonstrates the ungovernable impatience of the Corinthians to carry away the fleet to their isthmus: it provoked a bitter retort against them from Themistocles, who reminded them that while he had around him two hundred well-manned ships, he could procure for himself anywhere both city and territory as good or better than Corinth. But he now saw clearly that it was hopeless to think of enforcing his policy by argument, and that nothing would succeed except the direct language of intimidation. Turning to Eurybiades, and addressing him personally, he said: “If thou wilt stay here, and fight bravely here, all will turn out well: but if thou wilt not stay, thou wilt bring Hellas to ruin. For with us, all our means of war are contained in our ships. Be thou yet persuaded by me. If not, we Athenians shall migrate with our families on board, just as we are, to Siris in Italy, which is ours from of old, and which the prophecies announce that we are one day to colonise. You chiefs then, when bereft of allies like us, will hereafter recollect what I am now saying.”

Eurybiades had before been nearly convinced by the impressive pleading of Themistocles. But this last downright menace clenched his determination, and probably struck dumb even the Corinthian and Peloponnesian opponents: for it was but too plain, that without the Athenians the fleet was powerless. He did not, however, put the question again to vote, but took upon himself to rescind the previous resolution and to issue orders for staying at Salamis to fight. In this order all acquiesced, willing or unwilling; the succeeding dawn saw them preparing for fight instead of for retreat, and invoking the protection and companionship of the Æacid heroes of Salamis,—Telamon and Ajax: they even sent a trireme to Ægina to implore Æacus himself and the remaining Æacids. It seems to have been on this same day, also, that the resolution of fighting at Salamis was taken by Xerxes, whose fleet was seen in motion, towards the close of the day, preparing for attack the next morning.

But the Peloponnesians, though not venturing to disobey the orders of the Spartan admiral, still retained unabated their former fears and reluctance, which began again after a short interval to prevail over the formidable menace of Themistocles, and were further strengthened by the advices from the isthmus. The messengers from that quarter depicted the trepidation and affright of their absent brethren while constructing their cross wall at that point, to resist the impending land invasion. Why were they not there also,[344] to join hands and to help in the defence,—even if worsted at sea,—at least on land, instead of wasting their efforts in defence of Attica, already in the hands of the enemy? Such were the complaints which passed from man to man, with many a bitter exclamation against the insanity of Eurybiades: at length the common feeling broke out in public and mutinous manifestation, and a fresh synod of the chiefs was demanded and convoked. Here the same angry debate, and the same irreconcilable difference, was again renewed; the Peloponnesian chiefs clamouring for immediate departure, while the Athenians, Æginetans, and Megarians were equally urgent in favour of staying to fight. It was evident to Themistocles that the majority of votes among the chiefs would be against him, in spite of the orders of Eurybiades; and the disastrous crisis, destined to deprive Greece of all united maritime defence, appeared imminent, when he resorted to one last stratagem to meet the desperate emergency, by rendering flight impossible. Contriving a pretext for stealing away from the synod, he despatched a trusty messenger across the strait with a secret communication to the Persian generals. Sicinnus his slave—seemingly an Asiatic Greek, who understood Persian, and had perhaps been sold during the late Ionic revolt, but whose superior qualities are marked by the fact that he had the care and teaching of the children of his master—was instructed to acquaint them privately and in the name of Themistocles, who was represented as wishing success at heart to the Persians, that the Greek fleet was not only in the utmost alarm, meditating immediate flight, but that the various portions of it were in such violent dissension, that they were more likely to fight against each other than against any common enemy. A splendid opportunity, it was added, was thus opened to the Persians, if they chose to avail themselves of it without delay, first, to inclose and prevent their flight, and then to attack a disunited body, many of whom would, when the combat began, openly espouse the Persian cause.

Such was the important communication despatched by Themistocles across the narrow strait, only a quarter of a mile in breadth at the narrowest part, which divides Salamis from the neighbouring continent on which the enemy were posted. It was delivered with so much address as to produce the exact impression which he intended, and the glorious success which followed caused it to pass for a splendid stratagem: had defeat ensued, his name would have been covered with infamy. What surprises us the most is, that after having reaped signal honour from it in the eyes of the Greeks, as a stratagem, he lived to take credit for it, during the exile of his latter days, as a capital service rendered to the Persian monarch: nor is it improbable, when we reflect upon the desperate condition of Grecian affairs at the moment, that such facility of double interpretation was in part his inducement for sending the message.

It appears to have been delivered to Xerxes shortly after he had issued his orders for fighting on the next morning: and he entered so greedily into the scheme, as to direct his generals to close up the strait of Salamis on both sides during the night, to the north as well as to the south of the town of Salamis, at the risk of their heads if any opening were left for the Greeks to escape. The station of the numerous Persian fleet was along the coast of Attica,—its headquarters were in the Bay of Phalerum, but doubtless parts of it would occupy those three natural harbours, as yet unimproved by art, which belonged to the deme of Piræus,—and would perhaps extend besides to other portions of the western coast southward of Phalerum: while the Greek fleet was in the harbour of the town called Salamis, in the portion of the island facing Mount Ægaleos, in Attica.

[345]

During the night, a portion of the Persian fleet, sailing from Piræus northward along the western coast of Attica, closed round to the north of the town and harbour of Salamis, so as to shut up the northern issue from the strait on the side of Eleusis: while another portion blocked up the other issue between Piræus and the southeastern corner of the island, landing a detachment of troops on the desert island of Psyttalea, near to that corner. These measures were all taken during the night, to prevent the anticipated flight of the Greeks, and then to attack them in the narrow strait close on their own harbour the next morning.

Meanwhile, that angry controversy among the Grecian chiefs, in the midst of which Themistocles had sent over his secret envoy, continued without abatement and without decision. It was the interest of the Athenian general to prolong the debate, and to prevent any concluding vote until the effect of his stratagem should have rendered retreat impossible: nor was prolongation difficult in a case so critical, where the majority of chiefs was on one side and that of naval force on the other—especially as Eurybiades himself was favourable to the view of Themistocles. Accordingly, the debate was still unfinished at nightfall, and either continued all night, or was adjourned to an hour before daybreak on the following morning, when an incident, interesting as well as important, gave to it a new turn.

The ostracised Aristides arrived at Salamis from Ægina. Since the revocation of his sentence, proposed by Themistocles himself, he had had no opportunity of revisiting Athens, and he now for the first time rejoined his countrymen in their exile at Salamis; not uninformed of the dissensions raging, and of the impatience of the Peloponnesians to retire to the isthmus. He was the first to bring the news that such retirement had become impracticable from the position of the Persian fleet, which his own vessel, in coming from Ægina, had only eluded under favour of night. He caused Themistocles to be invited out from the assembled synod of chiefs, and after a generous exordium, wherein he expressed his hope that their rivalry would for the future be only a competition in doing good to their common country, apprised him that the new movement of the Persians excluded all hope of now reaching the isthmus and rendered farther debate useless. Themistocles expressed his joy at the intelligence, and communicated his own secret message whereby he had himself brought the movement about, in order that the Peloponnesian chiefs might be forced to fight at Salamis, even against their own consent. He moreover desired Aristides to go himself into the synod, and communicate the news: for if it came from the lips of Themistocles, the Peloponnesians would treat it as a fabrication. So obstinate indeed was their incredulity, that they refused to accept it as truth even on the assertion of Aristides: nor was it until the arrival of a Tenian vessel, deserting from the Persian fleet, that they at last brought themselves to credit the actual posture of affairs and the entire impossibility of retreat. Once satisfied of this fact, they prepared themselves at dawn for the impending battle.

THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS

Having caused his land-force to be drawn up along the shore opposite to Salamis, Xerxes had erected for himself a lofty seat, or throne, upon one of the projecting declivities of Mount Ægaleos, near the Heracleum, and immediately overhanging the sea, from whence he could plainly review all the phases of the combat and the conduct of his subject troops. He was[346] persuaded himself that they had not done their best at Artemisium, in consequence of his absence, and that his presence would inspire them with fresh valour: moreover, his royal scribes stood ready by his side to take the names both of the brave and of the backward combatants. On the right wing of his fleet—which approached Salamis on the side of Eleusis, and was opposed to the Athenians on the Grecian left—were placed the Phœnicians and Egyptians; on his left wing the Ionians, approaching from the side of Piræus, and opposed to the Lacedæmonians, Æginetans, and Megarians. The seamen of the Persian fleet, however, had been on shipboard all night, in making that movement which had brought them into their actual position: while the Greek seamen now began without previous fatigue, fresh from the animated harangues of Themistocles and the other leaders: moreover, just as they were getting on board, they were joined by the triremes which had been sent to Ægina to bring to their aid Æacus, with the other Æacid heroes. Honoured with this precious heroic aid, which tended so much to raise the spirits of the Greeks, the Æginetan trireme now arrived just in time to take her post in the line, having eluded pursuit from the intervening enemy.

The Greeks rowed forward from the shore to attack with the usual pæan, or war-shout, which was confidently returned by the Persians; and the latter were the most forward of the two to begin the fight: for the Greek seamen, on gradually nearing the enemy, became at first disposed to hesitate, and even backed water for a space, so that some of them touched ground on their own shore: until the retrograde movement was arrested by a supernatural feminine figure hovering over them, who exclaimed, with a voice that rang through the whole fleet, “Ye worthies, how much farther are ye going to back water?” The very circulation of this fable attests the dubious courage of the Greeks at the commencement of the battle. The brave Athenian captains Aminias and Lycomedes (the former, brother of the poet Æschylus) were the first to obey either the feminine voice or the inspirations of their own ardour: though according to the version current at Ægina, it was the Æginetan ship, the carrier of the Æacid heroes, which first set this honourable example. The Naxian Democritus was celebrated by Simonides as the third ship in action. Aminias, darting forth from the line, charged with the beak of his ship full against a Phœnician, and the two became entangled so that he could not again get clear; other ships came in aid on both sides, and the action thus became general. Herodotus, with his usual candour, tells us that he could procure few details about the action, except as to what concerned Artemisia, the queen of his own city: so that we know hardly anything beyond the general facts. But it appears that, with the exception of the Ionic Greeks, many of whom—apparently a greater number than Herodotus likes to acknowledge—were lukewarm, and some even averse, the subjects of Xerxes conducted themselves generally with great bravery: Phœnicians, Cyprians, Cilicians, Egyptians, vied with the Persians and Medes, serving as soldiers on shipboard, in trying to satisfy the exigent monarch who sat on shore watching their behaviour.

Their signal defeat was not owing to any want of courage, but, first, to the narrow space which rendered their superior number a hindrance rather than a benefit: next, to their want of orderly line and discipline as compared with the Greeks: thirdly, to the fact that, when once fortune seemed to turn against them, they had no fidelity or reciprocal attachment, and each ally was willing to sacrifice or even to run down others, in order to effect his own escape. Their numbers and absence of concert threw them into confusion, and caused them to run foul of each other: those in the front could not recede,[347] nor could those in the rear advance: the oar blades were broken by collision, the steersmen lost control of their ships, and could no longer adjust the ship’s course so as to strike that direct blow with the beak which was essential in ancient warfare. After some time of combat, the whole Persian fleet was driven back and became thoroughly unmanageable, so that the issue was no longer doubtful, and nothing remained except the efforts of individual bravery to protract the struggle.

While the Athenian squadron on the left, which had the greatest resistance to surmount, broke up and drove before them the Persian right, the Æginetans on the right intercepted the flight of the fugitives to Phalerum: Democritus, the Naxian captain, was said to have captured five ships of the Persians with his own single trireme. The chief admiral, Ariabignes, brother of Xerxes, attacked at once by two Athenian triremes, fell, gallantly trying to board one of them, and the number of distinguished Persians and Medes who shared his fate was great: the more so, as few of them knew how to swim, while among the Greek seamen who were cast into the sea, the greater number were swimmers, and had the friendly shore of Salamis near at hand. It appears that the Phœnician seamen of the fleet threw the blame of defeat upon the Ionic Greeks; and some of them, driven ashore during the heat of the battle under the immediate throne of Xerxes, excused themselves by denouncing the others as traitors. The heads of the Ionic leaders might have been endangered if the monarch had not seen with his own eyes an act of surprising gallantry by one of their number. An Ionic trireme from Samothrace charged and disabled an Attic trireme, but was herself almost immediately run down by an Æginetan. The Samothracian crew, as their vessel lay disabled on the water, made such excellent use of their missile weapons, that they cleared the decks of the Æginetan, sprung on board, and became masters of her. This exploit, passing under the eyes of Xerxes himself, induced him to treat the Phœnicians as dastardly calumniators, and to direct their heads to be cut off: his wrath and vexation, Herodotus tells us, were boundless, and he scarcely knew on whom to vent it.

In this disastrous battle itself, as in the debate before the battle, the conduct of Artemisia of Halicarnassus was such as to give him full satisfaction. It appears that this queen maintained her full part in the battle until the disorder had become irretrievable; she then sought to escape, pursued by the Athenian trierarch, Aminias, but found her progress obstructed by the number of fugitive or embarrassed comrades before her. In this dilemma, she preserved herself from pursuit by attacking one of her own comrades; she charged the trireme of the Carian prince, Damasithymus of Calynda, ran it down and sunk it, so that the prince with all his crew perished. Had Aminias been aware that the vessel which he was following was that of Artemisia, nothing would have induced him to relax in the pursuit, for the Athenian captains were all indignant at the idea of a female invader assailing their city; but knowing her ship only as one among the enemy, and seeing her thus charge and destroy another enemy’s ship, he concluded her to be a deserter, turned his pursuit elsewhere, and suffered her to escape. At the same time, it so happened that the destruction of the ship of Damasithymus happened under the eyes of Xerxes and of the persons around him on shore, who recognised the ship of Artemisia, but supposed the ship destroyed to be a Greek. Accordingly they remarked to him, “Master, seest thou not how well Artemisia fights, and how she has just sunk an enemy’s ship?” Assured that it was really her deed, Xerxes is said to have replied, “My men have become women; my women, men.” Thus was Artemisia[348] not only preserved, but exalted to a higher place in the esteem of Xerxes by the destruction of one of his own ships, among the crew of which not a man survived to tell the true story.

Of the total loss of either fleet, Herodotus gives us no estimate; but Diodorus states the number of ships destroyed on the Grecian side as forty, on the Persian side as two hundred; independent of those which were made prisoners with all their crews. To the Persian loss is to be added the destruction of all those troops whom they had landed before the battle in the island of Psyttalea: as soon as the Persian fleet was put to flight, Aristides carried over some Grecian hoplites to that island, overpowered the enemy, and put them to death to a man. This loss appears to have been much deplored, as they were choice troops; in great proportion the native Persian guards.

THE RETREAT OF XERXES

Great and capital as the victory was, there yet remained after it a sufficient portion of the Persian fleet to maintain even maritime war vigorously, not to mention the powerful land-force, as yet unshaken. And the Greeks themselves, immediately after they had collected in their island, as well as could be done, the fragments of shipping and the dead bodies, made themselves ready for a second engagement. But they were relieved from this necessity by the pusillanimity of the invading monarch, in whom the defeat had occasioned a sudden revulsion from contemptuous confidence, not only to rage and disappointment, but to the extreme of alarm for his own personal safety. He was possessed with a feeling of mingled wrath and mistrust against his naval force, which consisted entirely of subject nations—Phœnicians, Egyptians, Cilicians, Cyprians, Pamphylians, Ionic Greeks, etc., with a few Persians and Medes serving on board, in a capacity probably not well suited to them. None of these subjects had any interest in the success of the invasion, or any other motive for service except fear, while the sympathies of the Ionic Greeks were even decidedly against it. Xerxes now came to suspect the fidelity, or undervalue the courage, of all these naval subjects; he fancied that they could make no resistance to the Greek fleet, and dreaded lest the latter should sail forthwith to the Hellespont, so as to break down the bridge and intercept his personal retreat; for, upon the maintenance of that bridge he conceived his own safety to turn, not less than that of his father Darius, when retreating from Scythia, upon the preservation of the bridge over the Danube. Against the Phœnicians, from whom he had expected most, his rage broke out in such fierce threats, that they stole away from the fleet in the night, and departed homeward. Such a capital desertion made future naval struggle still more hopeless, and Xerxes, though at first breathing revenge, and talking about a vast mole or bridge to be thrown across the strait to Salamis, speedily ended by giving orders to the whole fleet to leave Phalerum in the night, not without disembarking, however, the best soldiers who served on board. They were to make straight for the Hellespont, and there to guard the bridge against his arrival.

This resolution was prompted by Mardonius, who saw the real terror which beset his master, and read therein sufficient evidence of danger to himself. When Xerxes despatched to Susa intelligence of his disastrous overthrow, the feeling at home was not simply that of violent grief for the calamity, and fear for the personal safety of the monarch—it was farther embittered by anger against Mardonius, as the instigator of this ruinous[349] enterprise. That general knew full well that there was no safety for him in returning to Persia with the shame of failure on his head: it was better for him to take upon himself the chance of subduing Greece, which he had good hopes of being yet able to do, and to advise the return of Xerxes himself to a safe and easy residence in Asia. Such counsel was eminently palatable to the present alarm of the monarch, while it opened to Mardonius himself a fresh chance not only of safety, but of increased power and glory. Accordingly, he began to reassure his master, by representing that the recent blow was after all not serious—that it had only fallen upon the inferior part of his force, and upon worthless foreign slaves, like Phœnicians, Egyptians, etc., while the native Persian troops yet remained unconquered and unconquerable, fully adequate to execute the monarch’s revenge upon Hellas; that Xerxes might now very well retire with the bulk of his army if he were disposed; and that he, Mardonius, would pledge himself to complete the conquest, at the head of three hundred thousand chosen troops.

This proposition afforded at the same time consolation for the monarch’s wounded vanity, and safety for his person: his confidential Persians, and Artemisia herself, on being consulted, approved of the step. The latter had acquired his confidence by the dissuasive advice which she had given before the recent deplorable engagement, and she had every motive now to encourage a proposition indicating solicitude for his person, as well as relieving herself from the obligation of further service. “If Mardonius desires to remain (she remarked, contemptuously), by all means let him have the troops: should he succeed, thou wilt be the gainer: should he even perish, the loss of some of thy slaves is trifling, so long as thou remainest safe, and thy house in power. Thou hast already accomplished the purpose of thy expedition, in burning Athens.” Xerxes, while adopting this counsel, and directing the return of his fleet, showed his satisfaction with the Halicarnassian queen, by entrusting her with some of his children, directing her to transport them to Ephesus.

The Greeks at Salamis learned with surprise and joy the departure of the hostile fleet from the Bay of Phalerum, and immediately put themselves in pursuit; following as far as the island of Andros without success. Themistocles and the Athenians are even said to have been anxious to push on forthwith to the Hellespont, and there break down the bridge of boats, in order to prevent the escape of Xerxes, had they not been restrained by the caution of Eurybiades and the Peloponnesians, who represented that it was dangerous to detain the Persian monarch in the heart of Greece. Themistocles readily suffered himself to be persuaded, and contributed much to divert his countrymen from the idea; while he at the same time sent the faithful Sicinnus a second time to Xerxes, with the intimation that he, Themistocles, had restrained the impatience of the Greeks to proceed without delay and burn the Hellespontine bridge, and that he had thus, from personal friendship to the monarch, secured for him a safe retreat. Though this is the story related by Herodotus, we can hardly believe that, with the great Persian land-force in the heart of Attica, there could have been any serious idea of so distant an operation as that of attacking the bridge at the Hellespont. It seems more probable that Themistocles fabricated the intention, with a view of frightening Xerxes away, as well as of establishing a personal claim upon his gratitude in reserve for future contingencies.

Such crafty manœuvres and long-sighted calculations of possibility, seem extraordinary: but the facts are sufficiently attested—since Themistocles lived to claim as well as to receive fulfilment of the obligation thus conferred—and[350] though extraordinary, they will not appear inexplicable, if we reflect, first, that the Persian game, even now, after the defeat of Salamis, was not only not desperate, but might perfectly well have succeeded, if it had been played with reasonable prudence: next, that there existed in the mind of this eminent man an almost unparalleled combination of splendid patriotism, long-sighted cunning, and selfish rapacity. Themistocles knew better than any one else that the cause of Greece had appeared utterly desperate, only a few hours before the late battle; moreover, a clever man, tainted with such constant guilt, might naturally calculate on being one day detected and punished, even if the Greeks proved successful.

He now employed the fleet among the islands of the Cyclades, for the purpose of levying fines upon them as a punishment for adherence to the Persian. He first laid siege to Andros, telling the inhabitants that he came to demand their money, bringing with him two great gods—Persuasion and Necessity. To which the Andrians replied, that “Athens was a great city, and blest with excellent gods: but that they were miserably poor, and that there were two unkind gods who always stayed with them and would never quit the island—Poverty and Helplessness. In these gods the Andrians put their trust, refusing to deliver the money required; for the power of Athens could never overcome their inability.” While the fleet was engaged in contending against the Andrians with their sad protecting deities, Themistocles sent round to various other cities, demanding from them private sums of money on condition of securing them from attack. From Carystus, Paros, and other places, he thus extorted bribes for himself apart from the other generals, but it appears that Andros was found unproductive, and after no very long absence the fleet was brought back to Salamis.

The intimation sent by Themistocles perhaps had the effect of hastening the departure of Xerxes, who remained in Attica only a few days after the battle of Salamis, and then withdrew his army through Bœotia into Thessaly, where Mardonius made choice of the troops to be retained for his future operations. He retained all the Persians, Medes, Sacæ, Bactrians, and Indians, horse as well as foot, together with select detachments of the remaining contingents: making in all, according to Herodotus, three hundred thousand men. But as it was now the beginning of September, and as sixty thousand out of his forces, under Artabazus, were destined to escort Xerxes himself to the Hellespont, Mardonius proposed to winter in Thessaly, and to postpone further military operations until the ensuing spring.

Having left most of these troops under the orders of Mardonius in Thessaly, Xerxes marched away with the rest to the Hellespont, by the same road as he had taken in his advance a few months before. Respecting his retreat, a plentiful stock of stories were circulated, inconsistent with each other, fanciful, and even incredible: Grecian imagination, in the contemporary poet Æschylus, as well as in the Latin moralisers Seneca or Juvenal, delighted in handling this invasion with the maximum of light and shadow, magnifying the destructive misery and humiliation of the retreat so as to form an impressive contrast with the superhuman pride of the advance, and illustrating the antithesis with unbounded license of detail. The sufferings from want of provision were doubtless severe, and are described as frightful and death-dealing: the magazines stored up for the advancing march had been exhausted, so that the retiring army were now forced to seize upon the corn of the country through which they passed—an insufficient maintenance, eked out by leaves, grass, the bark of trees, and other wretched substitutes for food. Plague and dysentery aggravated their misery, and occasioned[351] many to be left behind among the cities through whose territory the retreat was carried; strict orders being left by Xerxes that these cities should maintain and tend them. After forty-five days’ march from Attica, he at length found himself at the Hellespont, whither his fleet, retreating from Salamis, had arrived long before him. But the short-lived bridge had already been knocked to pieces by a storm, so that the army was transported on shipboard across to Asia, where it first obtained comfort and abundance, and where the change from privation to excess engendered new maladies. In the time of Herodotus, the citizens of Abdera still showed the gilt scimitar and tiara, which Xerxes had presented to them when he halted there in his retreat, in token of hospitality and satisfaction: and they even went the length of affirming that never, since his departure from Attica, had he loosened his girdle until he reached their city. So fertile was Grecian fancy in magnifying the terror of the repulsed invader—who re-entered Sardis, with a broken army and humbled spirit, only eight months after he had left it as the presumed conqueror of the western world.

THE SPOILS OF VICTORY

Meanwhile the Athenians and Peloponnesians, liberated from the immediate presence of the enemy either on land or sea, and passing from the extreme of terror to sudden ease and security, indulged in the full delight and self-congratulation of unexpected victory. On the day before the battle, Greece had seemed irretrievably lost: she was now saved even against all reasonable hope, and the terrific cloud impending over her was dispersed. In the division of the booty, the Æginetans were adjudged to have distinguished themselves most in the action, and to be entitled to the choice lot; while various tributes of gratitude were also set apart for the gods. Among them were three Phœnician triremes, which were offered in dedication to Ajax at Salamis, to Athene at Sunium, and to Poseidon at the Isthmus of Corinth; further presents were sent to Apollo at Delphi, who, on being asked whether he was satisfied, replied, that all had done their duty to him except the Æginetans: from them he required additional munificence on account of the prize awarded to them, and they were constrained to dedicate in the temple four golden stars upon a staff of brass, which Herodotus himself saw there. Next to the Æginetans, the second place of honour was awarded to the Athenians; the Æginetan Polycritus, and the Athenians Eumenes and Aminias, being ranked first among the individual combatants.

Besides the first and second prizes of valour, the chiefs at the isthmus tried to adjudicate among themselves the first and second prizes of skill and wisdom. Each of them deposited two names on the altar of Poseidon: and when these votes came to be looked at, it was found that each man had voted for himself as deserving the first prize, but that Themistocles had a large majority of votes for the second. The result of such voting allowed no man to claim the first prize, nor could the chiefs give a second prize without it; so that Themistocles was disappointed of his reward, though exalted so much the higher, perhaps, through that very disappointment, in general renown. He went shortly afterwards to Sparta, where he received from the Lacedæmonians honours such as were never paid before or afterwards to any foreigner. A crown of olive was indeed given to Eurybiades as the first prize, but a like crown was at the same time conferred on Themistocles as a special reward for unparalleled sagacity; together with a chariot, the finest which the city[352] afforded. Moreover, on his departure, the three hundred select youths called hippeis, who formed the active guard and police of the country, all accompanied him in a body as escort of honour to the frontiers of Tegea. Such demonstrations were so astonishing, from the haughty and immovable Spartans, that they were ascribed by some authors to their fear lest Themistocles should be offended by being deprived of the general prize.b

SYRACUSAN VICTORY OVER CARTHAGE

On the very same day on which the Persians were defeated at Salamis, another portion of the Hellenic race, the Sicilian Greeks, also obtained a victory over an immense barbarian force. There is reason to believe that the invasion of Sicily by the Carthaginians was concerted with Xerxes, and that the simultaneous attack on two distinct Grecian peoples, by two immense armaments, was not merely the result of chance. It was, however, in the internal affairs of Sicily that the Carthaginians sought the pretext and the opportunity for their invasion. About the year 481 B.C., Theron, despot of Agrigentum, a relative of Gelo, the powerful ruler of Syracuse, expelled Terillus from Himera, and took possession of that town. Terillus, backed by some Sicilian cities which formed a kind of Carthaginian party, applied to the Carthaginians to restore him. The Carthaginians complied with the invitation; and in the year 480 B.C., Hamilcar landed at Panormus with a force composed of various nations, which is said to have amounted to the enormous sum of three hundred thousand men. Having drawn up his vessels on the beach, and protected them with a rampart, Hamilcar proceeded to besiege the Himeræans, who on their part prepared for an obstinate defence. At the instance of Theron, Gelo marched to the relief of the town with fifty thousand foot and five thousand horse. An obstinate and bloody engagement ensued, which, by a stratagem of Gelo’s, was at length determined in his favour. The ships of the Carthaginians were fired, and Hamilcar himself slain. According to the statement of Diodorus, one hundred and fifty thousand Carthaginians fell in the engagement, while the greater part of the remainder surrendered at discretion, twenty ships alone escaping with a few fugitives. This account may justly be regarded as an exaggeration; yet it cannot be doubted that the victory was a decisive one, and the number very great of the prisoners and slain.

In Sicily, Greek taste made the sinews of the prisoners subserve the purposes of art; and many of the public structures which adorned and distinguished Agrigentum rose by the labour of the captive Carthaginians. Thus were the arms of Greece victorious on all sides, and the outposts of Europe maintained against the incursions of the semi-barbarous hordes of Asia and Africa.f

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XXI. FROM SALAMIS TO MYCALE

The battle of Salamis is a watchword of Greek triumph, and yet it by no means solved the problem of independence, for a great army was still in the country, enjoying the confidence and aid of many Greek allies. The defeated Persian fleet itself was still of sufficient power to be a lively danger.

The remainder of the fleet of Xerxes, which, flying from Salamis, arrived in Asia, after transporting the king and his forces from the Chersonesus to Abydos, wintered at Cyme. In the commencement of the spring it assembled at Samos, where some other vessels had continued during the winter. This armament was principally manned by Persians and Medes, and was under the conduct of Mardontes, the son of Bagæus, and Artayntes, son of Artachæus, whose uncle Amitres had been joined to him as his colleague. As the alarm of their former defeat was not yet subsided, they did not attempt to advance farther west, nor indeed did any one impel them to do so. Their vessels, with those of the Ionians, amounted to three hundred, and they stationed themselves at Samos, to secure the fidelity of Ionia. They did not think it probable that the Greeks would penetrate into Ionia, but would be satisfied with defending their country. They were confirmed in this opinion, as the Greeks, after the battle of Salamis, never attempted to pursue them, but were themselves content to retire also.

With respect to their affairs at sea, the Persians were sufficiently depressed; but they expected that Mardonius would do great things by land. Remaining on their station at Samos, they consulted how they might annoy the enemy, and they anxiously attended to the progress and affairs of Mardonius.

The approach of the spring, and the appearance of Mardonius in Thessaly, roused the Greeks. Their land army was not yet got together, but their fleet, consisting of a hundred and ten ships, was already at Ægina, under the command of Leotychides. He was descended in a right line from Hercules. He was of the second royal family, and all his ancestors, except the two named after Leotychides, had been kings of Sparta. The Athenians were commanded by Xanthippus, son of Ariphron.

When the fleet of the Greeks had arrived at Ægina, the same individuals who had before been at Sparta to entreat the assistance of that people to deliver Ionia, arrived among the Greeks. Herodotus, the son of Basilides, was with them; they were in all seven, and had together concerted the death of Strattis, tyrant of Chios. Their plot having been discovered by one of the accomplices, the other six had withdrawn themselves to Sparta, and now came to Ægina to persuade the Greeks to enter Ionia: they were induced, though not without difficulty, to advance as far as Delos. All beyond this, the Greeks viewed as full of danger, as well because they were ignorant of the country, as because they supposed the enemy’s forces were in[354] all these parts strong and numerous: Samos they considered as not less remote than the pillars of Hercules. Thus the barbarians were kept by their apprehensions from advancing beyond Samos, and the Greeks, notwithstanding the solicitations of the Chians, would not move farther eastward than Delos. Their mutual alarm thus kept the two parties at a distance from each other.

Whilst the Greeks thus moved to Delos, Mardonius, who had wintered in Thessaly, began to break up his quarters. His first step was to send an European, whose name was Mys, to the different oracles, ordering him to use his endeavours, and consult them all.

MARDONIUS MAKES OVERTURES TO ATHENS

As soon as the oracular declarations had been conveyed to Mardonius, he sent Alexander the Macedonian, son of Amyntas, ambassador to Athens. His choice of him was directed from his being connected with the Persians by ties of consanguinity and from his being a man of munificent and hospitable spirit. For these reasons he deemed him the most likely to conciliate the Athenians, who were represented to him as a valiant and numerous people, and who had principally contributed to the defeats which the Persians had sustained by sea. He reasonably presumed, that if he could prevail on them to unite their forces with his own, he might easily become master of the sea. His power by land was in his opinion superior to all resistance, and as the oracles had probably advised him to make an alliance with the Athenians, he hoped by these means effectually to subdue the Greeks.

When Alexander arrived at Athens, as deputed by Mardonius, he delivered the following speech: “Men of Athens, Mardonius informs you by me, that he has received a commission from the king of the following import: ‘Whatever injuries the Athenians may have done me, I willingly forgive: return them therefore their country; let them add to it from any other they may prefer, and let them enjoy their own laws. If they will consent to enter into an alliance with me, you have my orders to rebuild all their temples which I have burned.’

“It will be my business to do all this unless you prevent me. I will now give you my own sentiments: What infatuation can induce you to continue your hostilities against a king to whom you can never be superior, and whom you cannot always resist: you already know the forces and exploits of Xerxes: neither can you be ignorant of the army under me. If you should even repel and conquer us, of which if you be wise you can indulge no hope, another army not inferior in strength will soon succeed ours. Do not, therefore, by endeavouring to render yourselves equal to so great a king, risk not only the loss of your native country, but the security of your persons: accept, therefore, of our friendship, and avail yourselves of the present honourable opportunity of averting the indignation of Xerxes. Be free, and let us mutually enter into a solemn alliance without fraud or treachery. Let, then, my offers prevail with you as their importance merits, for to you alone of all the Greeks, the king forgives the injuries he has sustained, wishing to become your friend.”

The Lacedæmonians having heard that this prince was gone to Athens to invite the Athenians to an alliance with the Persians, were exceedingly alarmed. They could not forget the oracle which foretold that they, with the rest of the Dorians, should be driven from the Peloponnesus by a junction[355] of the Medes with the Athenians, to whom therefore they lost no time in sending ambassadors. These were present at the Athenian council, for the Athenians had endeavoured to gain time, well knowing that the Lacedæmonians would learn that an ambassador was come to invite them to a confederacy with the Persians, and would consequently send deputies to be present on the occasion; they therefore deferred the meeting, that the Lacedæmonians might be present at the declaration of their sentiments.

When Alexander had finished speaking, the Spartan envoys made this immediate reply: “We have been deputed by the Spartans, to entreat you not to engage in anything which may operate to the injury of our common country, nor listen to any propositions of Xerxes; such a conduct would not be equitable in itself, and would be particularly base in you from various reasons: you were the first promoters of this war, in opposition to our opinion; it was first of all commenced in vindication of your liberties, though all Greece was afterwards drawn into the contest. It will be most of all intolerable, that the Athenians should become the instruments of enslaving Greece, who, from times the most remote, have restored their liberties to many. Your present condition does not fail to excite in us sentiments of the sincerest pity, who, for two successive seasons, have been deprived of the produce of your lands, and have so long seen your mansions in ruin. From reflecting on your situation, we Spartans, in conjunction with your other allies, undertake to maintain, as long as the war shall continue, not only your wives, but such other parts of your families as are incapable of military service. Let not, therefore, this Macedonian Alexander, softening the sentiments of Mardonius, seduce you: the part he acts is consistent; a tyrant himself, he espouses the interests of a tyrant. If you are wise you will always remember, that the barbarians are invariably false and faithless.”

After the above address of the Spartans, the Athenians made this reply to Alexander: “It was not at all necessary for you to inform us, that the power of the Persians was superior to our own: nevertheless, in defence of our liberties, we will continue our resistance to the utmost of our abilities. You may be assured that your endeavours to persuade us into an alliance with the barbarians never will succeed: tell, therefore, Mardonius, on the part of the Athenians, that as long as the sun shall continue its ordinary course, so long will we avoid any friendship with Xerxes, and so long will we continue to resist him. Tell him, we shall always look with confidence to the protecting assistance of those gods and heroes whose shrines and temples he has contemptuously destroyed. Hereafter do not you presume to enter an Athenian assembly with overtures of this kind, lest whilst you appear to mean us well, you prompt us to do what is abominable. We are unwilling that you should receive any injury from us, having been our guest and our friend.”

The above was the answer given to Alexander; after which the Athenians thus spoke to the Lacedæmonians: “That the Spartans should fear our entering into an alliance with the barbarians seems natural enough; but in doing this, as you have had sufficient testimonies of Athenian firmness, you certainly did us injury. There is not upon earth a quantity of gold, nor any country so rich or so beautiful, as to seduce us to take part with the Medes, or to act injuriously to the liberties of Greece.

“If of ourselves we were so inclined, there still exist many important circumstances to deter us: in the first place, what is of all motives the most powerful, the shrines and temples of our deities, consumed by fire, and levelled with the ground, prompt us to the prosecution of a just revenge, and[356] manifestly compel us to reject every idea of forming an alliance with him who perpetrated these impieties. In the next place, our common consanguinity, our using the same language, our worship of the same divinities, and our practice of the same religious ceremonies, render it impossible that the Athenians should prove perfidious. If you knew it not before, be satisfied now, that as long as one Athenian shall survive, we will not be friends with Xerxes; in the mean time, your interest in our fortunes, your concern for the ruin of our mansions, and your offers to provide for the maintenance of our families, demand our gratitude, and may be considered as the perfection of generosity. We will, however, bear our misfortunes as we may be able, and not be troublesome to you; be it your care to bring your forces into the field as expeditiously as possible; it is not probable that the barbarian will long defer his invasion of our country, he will be upon us as soon as he shall be informed that we have rejected his proposals: before he shall be able to penetrate into Attica, it becomes us to advance to the assistance of Bœotia.”

MARDONIUS MOVES ON ATHENS

On receiving this answer from the Athenians, the ambassadors returned to Sparta. As soon as Mardonius heard from Alexander the determination of the Athenians, he moved from Thessaly, directing by rapid marches his course towards Athens. Wherever he came, he furnished himself with supplies of troops. The princes of Thessaly were so far from repenting of the part they had taken, that they endeavoured still more to animate Mardonius. Of these, Thorax of Larissa, who had attended Xerxes in his flight, now openly conducted Mardonius into Greece.

As soon as the army in its progress arrived at Bœotia, the Thebans received Mardonius. They endeavoured to persuade him to fix his station where he was, assuring him that a place more convenient for a camp, or better adapted for the accomplishment of his purpose, could not be found. They told him that by staying here he might subdue the Greeks without a battle. He might be satisfied, they added, from his former experience, that as long as the Greeks were united, it would be impossible for any body of men to subdue them. “If,” said they, “you will be directed by our advice, you will be able, without difficulty, to counteract their wisest counsels. Send a sum of money to the most powerful men in each city: you will thus create anarchy in Greece, and by the assistance of your partisans, easily overcome all opposition.”

This was the advice of the Thebans, which Mardonius was prevented from following, partly by his earnest desire of becoming a second time master of Athens, and partly by his pride. He was also anxious to inform the king at Sardis, by means of fires disposed at certain distances along the islands, that he had taken Athens. Proceeding therefore to Attica, he found it totally deserted; the inhabitants, as he was informed, being either at Salamis or on board the fleet. He then took possession of Athens a second time, ten months after its capture by Xerxes. Whilst he continued at Athens, he despatched to Salamis, Murichides, a native of the Hellespont, with the same propositions that Alexander the Macedonian had before made to the Athenians.

Murichides went to the council, and delivered the sentiments of Mardonius. A senator named Lycidas gave his opinion, that the terms offered by Murichides were such as it became them to listen to, and communicate to[357] the people; he said this, either from conviction, or seduced by the gold of Mardonius; but he had no sooner thus expressed himself, than both the Athenians who heard him, and those who were without, rushed with indignation upon him, and stoned him to death.[33] They dismissed Murichides without injury. The Athenian women soon heard of the tumult which had been excited at Salamis on account of Lycidas, when, in a body mutually stimulating each other, they ran impetuously to his house, and stoned his wife and his children.

ATHENS APPEALS TO SPARTA

These were the inducements with the Athenians for returning to Salamis: as long as they entertained any expectation of assistance from the Peloponnesus, they stayed in Attica; but when they found their allies careless and inactive, and that Mardonius was already in Bœotia, they removed with all their effects to Salamis. At the same time they sent envoys to Lacedæmon, to complain that the Spartans, instead of advancing with them to meet the barbarian in Bœotia, had suffered him to enter Attica. They told them by what liberal offers the Persian had invited them to his friendship; and they forewarned them, that if they were not speedy in their communication of assistance, the Athenians must seek some other remedy. The Lacedæmonians were then celebrating what are called the hyacinthia, which solemnity, they deem of the highest importance; they were also at work upon the wall of the isthmus, the battlements of which were already erected.

The ephori heard the deputies, but deferred answering them till the next day; when the morrow came, they put them off till the day following, and this they did for ten days successively. In this interval, the Peloponnesians prosecuted with great ardour on the isthmus, their work of the wall, which they nearly completed. Why the Spartans discovered so great an anxiety on the arrival of Alexander at Athens, lest the Athenians should come to terms with the Medes, and why now they did not seem to concern themselves about them, is more than we are able to explain, unless it was that the wall of the Isthmus was unfinished, after which they did not want the aid of the Athenians: but when Alexander arrived at Athens, this work was not completed, although from terror of the Persians they eagerly pursued it.

The answer and motions of the Spartans were finally these: on the day preceding that which was last appointed, a man of Tegea, named Chileus, who enjoyed at Lacedæmon greater reputation than any other foreigner, inquired from one of the ephori what the Athenians had said; which when he knew, he thus addressed them: “Things, O ephori, are thus circumstanced. If the Athenians, withdrawing from our alliance, shall unite with the Persian, strong as our wall on the isthmus may be, the enemy will still find an easy entrance into the Peloponnesus. Let us therefore hear them, before they do anything which may involve Greece in ruin.”

The ephori were so impressed by what Chileus had said, that without communicating with the deputies of the different states, whilst it was yet night, they sent away a detachment of five thousand Spartans, each accompanied by seven helots, under the conduct of Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus.

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With these forces Pausanias left Sparta: the deputies, ignorant of the matter, when the morning came went to the ephori, having previously resolved to return to their respective cities: “You, O Lacedæmonians,” they exclaimed, “lingering here, solemnise the hyacinthia, and are busy in your public games, basely deserting your allies. The Athenians, injured by you, and but little assisted by any, will make their peace with the Persians on the best terms they can obtain. When the enmity betwixt us shall have ceased, and we shall become the king’s allies, we shall fight with him wherever he may choose to lead us: you may know therefore what consequences you have to expect.”

In answer to this declaration of the ambassadors, the ephori protested, upon oath, that they believed their troops were already in Oresteum, on their march against the strangers; by which expression they meant the barbarians. The deputies, not understanding them, requested an explanation. When the matter was properly represented to them, they departed with astonishment to overtake them, accompanied by five thousand armed troops from the neighbourhood of Sparta.

Whilst these were hastening to the isthmus, the Argives, as soon as they heard of the departure of Pausanias at the head of a body of troops from Sparta, sent one of their fleetest messengers to Mardonius in Attica. They had before undertaken to prevent the Lacedæmonians from taking the field. When the herald arrived at Athens, “I am sent,” said he to Mardonius, “by the Argives, to inform you that the forces of Sparta are already on their march, and we have not been able to prevent them; avail yourself therefore of this information.” Saying this, he returned.

MARDONIUS DESTROYS ATHENS AND WITHDRAWS

Mardonius, hearing this, determined to stay no longer in Attica. He had continued until this time, willing to see what measures the Athenians would take; and he had refrained from offering any kind of injury to the Athenian lands, hoping they would still make peace with him. When it was evident that this was not to be expected, he withdrew his army, before Pausanias and his detachment arrived at the isthmus. He did not however depart without setting fire to Athens,[34] and levelling with the ground whatever of the walls, buildings, or temples, still remained entire. He was induced to quit his station, because the country of Attica was ill adapted for cavalry, and because in case of defeat he had no other means of escape but through straits where a handful of men might cut off his retreat. He therefore determined to remove to Thebes, that he might have the advantage of fighting near a confederate city and in a country convenient for his cavalry.

Mardonius was already on his march, when another courier came in haste to inform him, that a second body of a thousand Spartans was moving towards Megara. He accordingly deliberated how he might intercept this latter party. Turning aside towards Megara, he sent on his cavalry to ravage the Megarian lands. These were the extreme limits on the western parts of Europe, to which the Persian army penetrated.

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Another messenger now came to tell him, that the Greeks were assembled with great strength at the isthmus; he therefore turned back through Decelea. The Bœotian chiefs had employed their Asopian neighbours as guides, who conducted Mardonius first to Sphendaleas, and thence to Tanagra. At Tanagra, Mardonius passed the night, and the next day came to Scolos, in the Theban territory. Here the lands of the Thebans, though the friends and allies of the Medes, were laid waste, not from any enmity, but from the urgent necessities of the army. The general was desirous to fortify his camp, and to have some place of refuge in case of defeat. His camp extended from Erythræ, by Hysiæ, as far as Platæa, on the banks of the Asopus. It was protected by a wall, which did not continue the whole extent of the camp, but which occupied a space of ten stadia in each of the four fronts.

Whilst Mardonius was stationed in Bœotia, all the Greeks who were attached to the Persians supplied him with troops, and joined him in his attack on Athens; the Phocians alone did not; these had indeed, and with apparent ardour, favoured the Medes, not from inclination but necessity. A few days after the entertainment given at Thebes, they arrived with a thousand well-armed troops under the command of Harmocydes, one of their most popular citizens. Mardonius, on their following him to Thebes, sent some horsemen, commanding them to halt by themselves in the plain where they were: at the same moment, all the Persian cavalry appeared in sight. A rumour instantly circulated among those Greeks who were in the Persian camp, that the Phocians were going to be put to death by the cavalry. The same also spread through the Phocians, on which account their leader Harmocydes thus addressed them:

“My friends, I am convinced that we are destined to perish by the swords of these men, and from the accusations of the Thessalians. Let each man therefore prove his valour. It is better to die like men, exerting ourselves in our own defence, than to suffer ourselves to be slain tamely and without resistance: let these barbarians know, that the men whose deaths they meditate are Greeks.”

With these words Harmocydes animated his countrymen. When the cavalry had surrounded them, they rode up as if to destroy them: they made a show of hurling their weapons, which some of them probably did. The Phocians upon this closed their ranks, and on every part fronted the enemy. The Persians seeing this, faced about and retired. We are not able to decide whether, at the instigation of the Thessalians, the Phocians were actually doomed to death; or whether, observing them determined to defend themselves, the Persians retired from the fear of receiving some injury themselves, and as if they had been so ordered by Mardonius, merely to make experiment of their valour. After the cavalry were withdrawn, a herald came to them on the part of Mardonius: “Men of Phocis,” he exclaimed, “be not alarmed; you have given a proof of resolution which Mardonius had been taught not to expect; assist us therefore in the war with alacrity, for you shall neither outdo me nor the king in generosity.”

The Lacedæmonians arriving at the isthmus, fortified their camp. As soon as this was known to the rest of the Peloponnesians, all were unwilling to be surpassed by the Spartans, as well they who were actuated by a love of their country, as they who had seen the Lacedæmonians proceed on their march. The victims which were sacrificed having a favourable appearance, they left the isthmus in a body, and came to Eleusis. The sacrifices at this place being again auspicious, they continued to advance, having been joined[360] at Eleusis by the Athenians, who had passed over from Salamis. On their arrival at Erythræ, in Bœotia, they learned that the barbarians were encamped near the Asopus; then they marched to the foot of Mount Cithæron.

A PRELIMINARY SKIRMISH

As they did not descend into the plain[35] Mardonius sent the whole of his cavalry against them, under the command of Masistius, called by the Greeks Macistius. He was a Persian of distinction, and was on this occasion mounted on a Nisæan horse, decorated with a bridle of gold, and other splendid trappings. When they came near the Greeks, they attacked them in squadrons, did them considerable injury, and by way of insult called them women. The situation of the Megarians being most easy of access, was most exposed to the enemy’s attack. Being hardly pressed by the barbarians, they sent a herald, who thus addressed the Grecian commanders: “We Megarians, O allies, are unable to stand the shock of the enemy’s cavalry in our present position: if you are not speedy in relieving us, we shall be compelled to quit the field.”

After this report of the heralds, Pausanias wished to see if any of the Greeks would voluntarily offer themselves to take the post of the Megarians. All refused, except a chosen band of three hundred Athenians, commanded by Olympiodorus, the son of Lampon.

This body, which took upon itself the defence of a post declined by all the other Greeks encamped at Erythræ, brought with them a band of archers. The engagement, after an obstinate dispute, terminated thus: The enemies’ horse attacked in squadrons; the steed of Masistius, being conspicuous above the rest, was wounded in the side by an arrow; it reared, and becoming unruly from the pain of the wound, threw its rider. The Athenians rushed upon him, seized the horse, and notwithstanding his resistance, killed Masistius. In doing this, however, they had some difficulty, on account of his armour. Over a purple tunic he wore a breastplate covered with plates of gold. This repelled all their blows, which some person perceiving, killed him by wounding him in the eye. The death of Masistius was unknown to the rest of his troops; they did not see him fall from his horse, and were ignorant of his fate, their attention being entirely occupied by succeeding in regular squadrons to the charge. At length making a stand, they perceived themselves without a leader. Upon this they rushed in with united force to bring off the body of Masistius.

The Athenians seeing them advance in a collected body, called out for relief. While the infantry were moving to their support, the body of[361] Masistius was vigorously disputed. While the three hundred were alone, they were compelled to give ground, and recede from the body; but other forces coming to their relief, the cavalry in their turn gave way, and, with the body of their leader, lost a great number of their men. Retiring for the space of two stadia, they held a consultation, and being without a commander, determined to return to Mardonius. On their arrival at the camp, the death of Masistius spread a general sorrow through the army, and greatly afflicted Mardonius himself. They cut off the hair from themselves, their horses, and their beasts of burden, and all Bœotia resounded with their cries and lamentations. The man they had lost, was, next to Mardonius, most esteemed by the Persians and the king.

The Greeks having not only sustained but repelled the attacks of the cavalry, were inspired with increasing resolution. The body of Masistius, which from its beauty and size deserved admiration, they placed on a carriage, and passed through the ranks, while all quitted their stations to view it. They afterwards determined to remove to Platæa; they thought this a more commodious place for a camp than Erythræ, as well for other reasons as because there was plenty of water. To this place, near which is the fountain of Gargaphia, they resolved to go and pitch a regularly fortified camp. Taking their arms, they proceeded by the foot of Cithæron, and passing Hysiæ, came to Platæa. They drew themselves up in regular divisions of the different nations, near the fountain of Gargaphia and the shrine of the hero Androcrates, some on a gently rising ground, others on the plain.

In the arrangement of the several nations, a violent dispute arose betwixt the Tegeatæ and Athenians, each asserting their claim to one of the wings, in vindication of which they appealed to their former as well as more recent exploits. The Tegeatæ spoke to this effect:

“The post which we now claim has ever been given us by the joint consent of the allies, in all the expeditions made beyond the Peloponnesus: we not only speak of ancient but of less distant periods. After the death of Eurystheus, when the Heraclidæ made an attempt to return to the Peloponnesus, the rank we now vindicate was allowed us. With you, O Lacedæmonians, we do not enter into competition, we are willing that you should take your post in which wing you think proper; the command of the other, which has so long been allowed us, we now claim. Not to dwell upon the action we have recited, we are certainly more worthy of this post than the Athenians. On your account, O Spartans, as well as for the benefit of others, we have fought again and again with success and glory. Let not then the Athenians be on this occasion preferred to us; for they have never in an equal manner distinguished themselves in past or in more recent periods.”

The Athenians made this reply: “We are well aware, that the motive of our assembling here is not to spend our time in altercations, but to fight the barbarians; but since it has been thought necessary to urge on the part of the Tegeatæ their ancient as well as more recent exploits, we feel ourselves obliged to assert that right, which we receive from our ancestors, to be preferred to the Arcadians as long as we shall conduct ourselves well. Those Heraclidæ, whose leader they boast to have slain at the isthmus, after being rejected by all the Greeks with whom they wished to take refuge from the servitude of the people of Mycenæ, found a secure retreat with us alone. In conjunction with them we chastised the insolence of Eurystheus, and obtained a complete victory over those possessing the Peloponnesus. The Argives, who under Polynices fought against Thebes, remaining unburied,[362] we undertook an expedition against the Cadmeans, recovered the bodies, and interred them in our country at Eleusis. A further instance of our prowess was exhibited in our repulsion of the Amazons, who advanced from the river Thermodon to invade Attica. We were no less conspicuous at the siege of Troy.

“But this recital is vain and useless; the people who were then illustrious might now be base, or dastards then, might now be heroes. Enough therefore of the examples of our former glory, though we are still able to introduce more and greater; for if any of the Greeks at the battle of Marathon merited renown, we may claim this, and more also. On that day we alone contended with the Persian, and after a glorious and successful contest were victorious over an army of forty-six different nations; which action must confessedly entitle us to the post we claim; but in the present state of affairs, all dispute about rank is unseasonable; we are ready, O Lacedæmonians, to oppose the enemy wherever you shall choose to station us. Wherever we may be, we shall endeavour to behave like men. Lead us on therefore, we are ready to obey you.”

When the Athenians had thus delivered their sentiments, the Lacedæmonians were unanimous in declaring that the Arcadians must yield to the people of Athens the command of one of the wings. They accordingly took their station in preference to the Tegeatæ.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE BATTLE OF PLATÆA

The Greeks who came afterwards, with those who were present before, were thus disposed. The Lacedæmonians, to the number of ten thousand, occupied the right wing; of these, five thousand were Spartans, who were followed by thirty-five thousand helots lightly armed, allowing seven helots to each Spartan. The Tegeatæ, to the number of fifteen hundred, were placed by the Spartans next themselves, in consideration of their valour, and as a mark of honour. Nearest the Tegeatæ were five thousand Corinthians, who, in consequence of their request to Pausanias, had contiguous to them three hundred Potidæans of Pallene. Next in order were six hundred Arcadians of Orchomnene, three thousand Sicyonians, eight hundred Epidaurians, and a thousand Trœzenians. Contiguous to these last were two hundred Lepreatæ; next to whom were four hundred Mycenæans and Tirynthians. Stationed by the Tirynthians were, in regular succession, a thousand Phliasians, three hundred Hermionians, six hundred Eretrians and Styrians; next came four hundred Chalcidians, five hundred Ambracians, eight hundred Leucadians and Anactorians; to whom two hundred Paleans of Cephallenia, and five hundred Æginetæ, successively joined. Three thousand Megarians and six hundred Platæans[363] were contiguous to the Athenians, who to the number of eight thousand, under the command of Aristides, son of Lysimachus, occupied the left wing at the other extremity of the army.

The amount of this army, independent of the seven helots to each Spartan, was thirty-eight thousand seven hundred men, all of them completely armed and drawn together to repel the barbarian. Of the light-armed troops were the thirty-five thousand helots, each well prepared for battle, and thirty-four thousand five hundred attendant on the Lacedæmonians and other Greeks,[36] reckoning a light-armed soldier to every man; the whole of these therefore amounted to sixty-nine thousand five hundred.

Thus the whole of the Grecian army assembled at Platæa, including both the heavy-and light-armed troops, was one hundred and eight thousand two hundred men; adding to these one thousand and eight hundred Thespians, who were with the Greeks, but without arms, the complete number was one hundred and ten thousand. These were encamped on the banks of the Asopus.

The barbarian army having ceased to lament Masistius, as soon as they knew that the Greeks were advanced to Platæa, marched also to that part of the Asopus nearest to it; where they were thus disposed by Mardonius. Opposed to the Lacedæmonians were the Persians, who, as they were superior in number, fronted the Tegeatæ also. Of this body the select part was opposed to the Lacedæmonians, the less effective to the Tegeatæ. In making which arrangement, Mardonius followed the advice of the Thebans. Next to the Persians were the Medes, opposed to the Corinthians, Potidæans, Orchomenians, and Sicyonians. The Bactrians were placed next, to encounter the Epidaurians, Trœzenians, Lepreatæ, Tirynthians, Mycenæans, and Phliasians. Contiguous to the Bactrians the Indians were disposed, in opposition to the Hermionians, Eretrians, Styrians, and Chalcidians. The Sacæ, next in order, fronted the Ambracians, Anactorians, Leucadians, Paleans, and Æginetæ. The Athenians, Platæans, and Megarians were ultimately faced by the Bœotians, Locrians, Melians, Thessalians, and a thousand Phocians. All the Phocians did not assist the Medes; some of them, about Parnassus, favoured the Greeks, and from that station attacked and harassed both the troops of Mardonius and those of the Greeks who were with him. The Macedonians and Thessalians were also opposed to the Athenians.

In this manner Mardonius arranged those nations who were the most numerous and the most illustrious; with these were promiscuously mixed bodies of Phrygians, Thracians, Mysians, Pæonians, and others. To the above might be added the Ethiopians, and those Egyptians named Hermotybians and Calasirians, who alone of that country follow the profession of arms. These had formerly served on board the fleet, whence they had been removed to the land-forces by Mardonius when at Phalerum: the Egyptians had not been reckoned with those forces which Xerxes led against Athens. We have before remarked, that the barbarian army consisted of three hundred thousand men; the number of the Greek confederates of Mardonius, as it was never taken, cannot be ascertained; but as far as conjecture may determine, they amounted to about fifty thousand men. Such was the arrangement of the infantry; the cavalry were posted apart by themselves.

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Both armies being thus ranged in nations and squadrons, on the following day offered sacrifices. The sacrifices promised victory to the Greeks if they acted on the defensive, but the contrary if, passing the Asopus, they began the fight. Mardonius, though anxious to engage, had nothing to hope from the entrails, unless he acted on the defensive only. He had also sacrificed according to the Grecian rites, using as his soothsayer Hegesistratus, an Elean, and the most illustrious of the Telliadæ. The Spartans had formerly seized this man, thrown him into prison, and menaced him with death, as one from whom they had received many and atrocious injuries. In this distress, alarmed not merely for his life, but with the idea of having previously to suffer many severities, he accomplished a thing which can hardly be told. He was confined in some stocks bound with iron, but accidentally obtaining a knife, he perpetrated the boldest thing which has ever been recorded.

Calculating what part of the remainder he should be able to draw out, he cut off the extremity of his foot; this done, notwithstanding he was guarded, he dug a hole under the wall, and escaped to Tegea, travelling only by night, and concealing himself in the woods during the day. Eluding the strictest search of the Lacedæmonians, he came on the third night to Tegea, his keepers being astonished at his resolution, for they saw the half of his foot, but could not find the man. In this manner Hegesistratus escaped to Tegea, which was not at that period in amity with Sparta. When his wound was healed he procured himself a wooden foot, and became an avowed enemy to Sparta. His animosity against the Lacedæmonians proved ultimately of no advantage to himself; he was taken in the exercise of his office at Zacynthus, and put to death. The fate of Hegesistratus was subsequent to the battle of Platæa: at the time of which we were speaking, Mardonius, for a considerable sum, had prevailed with him to sacrifice, which he eagerly did, as well from his hatred of the Lacedæmonians, as from the desire of reward; but the appearance of the entrails gave no encouragement to fight, either to the Persians or their confederate Greeks, who also had their own appropriate soothsayer, Hippomachus of Leucadia. As the Grecian army continually increased, Timagenidas of Thebes, son of Herpys, advised Mardonius to guard the pass of Cithæron, representing that he might thus intercept great bodies, who were every day thronging to the allied army of the Greeks.

The hostile armies had already remained eight days encamped opposite to each other, when the above counsel was given to Mardonius. He acknowledged its propriety, and immediately on the approach of night detached some cavalry to that part of Cithæron leading to Platæa, a place called by the Bœotians the “Three Heads,” by the Athenians the “Heads of Oak.” This measure had its effect, and they took a convoy of five hundred beasts of burden, carrying a supply of provisions from the Peloponnesus to the army: with the carriages, they took also all the men who conducted them. Masters of this booty, the Persians, with the most unrelenting barbarity, put both men and beasts to death: when their cruelty was satiated, they returned with what they had taken to Mardonius.

After this event two days more passed, neither army being willing to engage. The barbarians, to irritate the Greeks, advanced as far as the Asopus, but neither army would pass the stream. The cavalry of Mardonius greatly and constantly harassed the Greeks. The Thebans, who were very zealous in their attachment to the Medes, prosecuted the war with ardour, and did everything but join battle; the Persians and Medes supported them and performed many illustrious actions.

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In this situation things remained for the space of ten days: on the eleventh, the armies retaining the same position with respect to each other, and the Greeks having received considerable reinforcements, Mardonius became disgusted with their inactivity. He accordingly held a conference with Artabazus, the son of Pharnaces, who was one of the few Persians whom Xerxes honoured with his esteem: it was the opinion of Artabazus that they should immediately break up their camp, and withdraw beneath the walls of Thebes, where was already prepared a magazine of provisions for themselves, and corn for their cavalry: here they might at their leisure terminate the war by the following measures. They had in their possession a great quantity of coined and uncoined gold, with an abundance of silver and plate: it was recommended to send these with no sparing hand to the Greeks, and particularly to those of greatest authority in their respective cities. It was urged, that if this were done, the Greeks would soon surrender their liberties, nor again risk the hazard of a battle. This opinion was seconded by the Thebans, who thought that it would operate successfully. Mardonius was of a contrary opinion, fierce, obstinate, and unyielding. His own army he thought superior to that of the Greeks, and that they should by all means fight before the Greeks received further supplies; that they should give no importance to the declarations of Hegesistratus, but without violating the laws of Persia, commence a battle in their usual manner. This opinion of Mardonius nobody thought proper to oppose, for to him, and not to Artabazus, the king had confided the supreme command of the army. He therefore ordered that everything should be properly disposed to commence the attack early in the morning.

When the night was far advanced, and the strictest silence prevailed through the army, which was buried in sleep, Alexander, son of Amyntas, general and prince of the Macedonians, rode up to the Athenian outposts, and earnestly desired to speak with their commanders. On hearing this, the greater number continued on their posts, while some hastened to their officers, whom they informed that a horseman was arrived from the enemy’s army, who, naming the principal Greeks, would say nothing more than that he desired to speak with them.

The commanders lost no time in repairing to the advanced guard, where, on their arrival, they were thus addressed by Alexander: “I am come, O Athenians, to inform you of a secret which you must impart to Pausanias only, lest my ruin ensue. Nor would I speak now, were not I anxious for the safety of Greece. I from remote antiquity am of Grecian origin, and I would not willingly see you exchange freedom for servitude: I have therefore to inform you, that if Mardonius and his army could have drawn favourable omens from their victims, a battle would long since have taken place: intending to pay no further attention to these, it is his determination to attack you early in the morning, being afraid, as I suppose, that your forces will be yet more numerous. Be, therefore, on your guard; but if he still defer his purpose of an engagement, do you remain where you are, for he has provisions but for a few days more. If the event of this war shall be agreeable to your wishes, it will become you to make some efforts to restore my independence, who, on account of my partiality to the Greeks, have exposed myself to so much danger in thus acquainting you with the intention of Mardonius, to prevent the barbarians attacking you by surprise. I am Alexander of Macedon.”

When he had thus spoken, he returned to his station in the Persian camp.

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The Athenian chiefs went to the right wing, and informed Pausanias of what they had learned from Alexander. Pausanias, who stood in much awe of the Persians, addressed them thus in reply:

“As a battle is to take place in the morning, I think it advisable that you, Athenians, should front the Persians, and we, those Bœotians and Greeks who are now posted opposite to you. You have before contended with the Medes, and know their mode of fighting by experience at Marathon; we have never had this opportunity; but we have before fought the Bœotians, and Thessalians; take, therefore, your arms, and let us exchange situations.”

“From the first,” answered the Athenians, “when we observed the Persians opposed to you, we wished to make the proposal we now hear from you; we have been only deterred by our fear of offending you: as the overture comes from you, we are ready to comply with it.”

This being agreeable to both, as soon as the morning dawned they changed situations; this the Bœotians observed, and communicated to Mardonius. The Persian general immediately exerted himself to oppose the Lacedæmonians with his troops. Pausanias, on seeing his scheme thus detected, again removed the Spartans to the right wing, as did Mardonius instantly his Persians to the left.

THE BATTLE OF PLATÆA

When the troops had thus resumed their former posts, Mardonius sent a herald with this message to the Spartans: “Your character, O Lacedæmonians, is highly celebrated among all these nations, as men who disdain to fly; who never desert your ranks, determined either to slay your enemies or die. Nothing of this is true: we perceive you in the act of retreating, and of deserting your posts before a battle is commenced: we see you delegating to[367] the Athenians the more dangerous attempt of opposing us, and placing yourselves against our slaves, neither of which actions is consistent with bravery. We are, therefore, greatly deceived in our opinion of you; we expected, that from a love of glory you would have despatched a herald to us, expressing yourselves desirous to combat with the Persians alone. Instead of this we find you alarmed and terrified; but as you have offered no challenge to us, we propose one to you. As you are esteemed the most illustrious of your army, why may not an equal number of you on the part of the Greeks, and of us on the part of the barbarians, contend for victory? If it be agreeable to you, the rest of our common forces may afterwards engage; if this be unnecessary, we will alone engage; and whichever conquers shall be esteemed victorious over the whole of the adverse army.”

The herald, after delivering his commission, waited some time for an answer; not receiving any, he returned to Mardonius. He was exceedingly delighted, and already anticipating a victory, sent his cavalry to attack the Greeks; these with their lances and arrows materially distressed the Grecian army, and forbade any near approach. Advancing to the Gargaphian fountain, which furnished the Greeks with water, they disturbed and stopped it up. The Lacedæmonians alone were stationed near this fountain, the other Greeks, according to their different stations, were more or less distant, but all of them in the vicinity of the Asopus; but as they were debarred from watering here, by the missile weapons of the cavalry, they all came to the fountain. In this predicament the leaders of the Greeks, seeing the army cut off from the water, and harassed by the cavalry, came in crowds to Pausanias on the right wing, to deliberate about these and other emergencies. Unpleasant as the present incident might be, they were still more distressed from their want of provision; their servants, who had been despatched to bring this from the Peloponnesus, were prevented by the cavalry from returning to the camp.

The Grecian leaders, after deliberating upon the subject, determined, if the Persians should for one day more defer coming to an engagement, to pass to the island opposite to Platæa, and about ten stadia from the Asopus and the fountain Gargaphia, where they were at present encamped. This island is thus connected with the continent: the river, descending from Cithæron to the plain, divides itself into two streams, which, after flowing separately for about the distance of three stadia, again unite, thus forming the island which is called Oëroë, who, according to the natives, is the daughter of Asopus.

The Greeks by this measure proposed to themselves two advantages; first to be secure of water, and secondly to guard against being further annoyed by the enemy’s cavalry. They resolved to decamp at the time of the second watch by night, lest the Persians, perceiving them, should pursue and harass them with their cavalry. It was also their intention, when arrived at the spot where the Asopian Oëroë is formed by the division of the waters flowing from Cithæron, to detach one-half of their army to the mountain to relieve a body of their servants, who, with a convoy of provisions, were there encompassed.

After taking the above resolutions, they remained all that day much incommoded by the enemy’s horse: when these, at the approach of evening, retired, and the appointed hour was arrived, the greater part of the Greeks began to move with their baggage, but without any design of proceeding to the place before resolved on. The moment they began to march, occupied with no idea but that of escaping the cavalry, they retired towards Platæa, and fixed themselves near the temple of Juno, which is opposite to the city,[368] and at the distance of twenty stadia from the fountain of Gargaphia: in this place they encamped.

Pausanias, observing them in motion, gave orders to the Lacedæmonians to take their arms, and follow their route, presuming they were proceeding to the appointed station. The officers all showed themselves disposed to obey the orders of Pausanias, except Amompharetus, the son of Poliadas, captain of the band of Pitanatæ, who asserted that he would not fly before the barbarians, and thus be accessory to the dishonour of Sparta: he had not been present at the previous consultation, and knew not what was intended. Pausanias and Euryanax, though indignant at his refusal to obey the orders which had been issued, were still but little inclined to abandon the Pitanatæ, on the account of their leader’s obstinacy; thinking, that by their prosecuting the measure which the Greeks in general had adopted, Amompharetus and his party must unavoidably perish. With these sentiments the Lacedæmonians were commanded to halt, and pains were taken to dissuade the man from his purpose, who alone, of all the Lacedæmonians and Tegeatæ, was determined not to quit his post.

At this crisis the Athenians determined to remain quietly on their posts, knowing it to be the genius of the Lacedæmonians to say one thing and think another. But as soon as they observed the troops in motion, they despatched a horseman to learn whether the Lacedæmonians intended to remove, and to inquire of Pausanias what was to be done. When the messenger arrived, he found the men in their ranks, but their leaders in violent altercation. Pausanias and Euryanax were unsuccessfully attempting to persuade Amompharetus not to involve the Lacedæmonians alone in danger by remaining behind, when the Athenian messenger came up to them. At this moment, in the violence of dispute, Amompharetus took up a stone with both his hands, and throwing it at the feet of Pausanias, exclaimed: “There is my vote for not flying before the foreigners!”

Pausanias, after telling him that he could be only actuated by frenzy, turned to the Athenian, who delivered his commission. He afterwards desired him to return, and communicate to the Athenians the state in which he found them, and to entreat them immediately to join their forces, and act in concert, as should be deemed expedient.

The messenger accordingly returned to the Athenians, whilst the Spartan chiefs continued their disputes till the morning. Thus far Pausanias remained indecisive, but thinking, as the event proved, that Amompharetus would certainly not stay behind, if the Lacedæmonians actually advanced, he gave orders to all the forces to march forward by the heights, in which they were followed by the Tegeans. The Athenians, keeping close to their ranks, pursued a route opposite to that of the Lacedæmonians; these last, who were in great awe of the cavalry, advanced by the steep paths which led to the foot of Mount Cithæron; the Athenians marched over the plain.

Amompharetus, never imagining that Pausanias would venture to abandon them, made great exertions to keep his men on their posts; but when he saw Pausanias advancing with his troops, he concluded himself effectually given up; taking therefore his arms, he with his band proceeded slowly after the rest of the army. These continuing their march for a space of ten stadia, came to a place called Agriopius, near the river Moloës, where is a temple of the Eleusinian Ceres, and there halted, waiting for Amompharetus and his party. The motive of Pausanias in doing this was, that he might have the opportunity of returning to the support of Amompharetus, if he should be still determined not to quit his post. Here Amompharetus and his band[369] joined them; the whole force of the enemy’s horse continuing as usual to harass them. As soon as the Barbarians discovered that the spot where the Greeks had before encamped was deserted, they put themselves in motion, overtook, and materially distressed them.

Mardonius being informed that the Greeks had decamped by night, and seeing their former station unoccupied, led the Persians over the Asopus, and pursued the path which the Greeks had taken, whom he considered as flying from his arms. The Lacedæmonians and Tegeatæ were the sole objects of his attack, for the Athenians, who had marched over the plain, were concealed by the hills from his view. The other Persian leaders seeing the troops moving, as if in pursuit of the Greeks, raised their standards, and followed the rout with great impetuosity, but without regularity or discipline; they hurried on with tumultuous shouts, considering the Greeks as absolutely in their power.

When Pausanias found himself thus pressed by the cavalry, he sent a horseman with the following message to the Athenians: “We are menaced, O Athenians, by a battle, the event of which will determine the freedom or slavery of Greece; and in this perplexity you, as well as ourselves, have, in the preceding night, been deserted by our allies. It is nevertheless our determination to defend ourselves to the last, and to render you such assistance as we may be able. If the enemy’s horse had attacked you, we should have thought it our duty to have marched with the Tegeatæ, who are in our rear, and still faithful to Greece, to your support. As the whole operation of the enemy seems directed against us, it becomes you to give us the relief we materially want; but if you yourselves are so circumstanced, as to be unable to advance to our assistance, at least send us a body of archers. We confess, that in this war your activity has been far the most conspicuous, and we therefore presume on your compliance with our request.”

The Athenians, without hesitation, and with determined bravery, advanced to communicate the relief which had been required. When they were already on their march, the confederate Greeks, in the service of the king, intercepted and attacked them: they were thus prevented from assisting the Lacedæmonians, a circumstance which gave them extreme uneasiness. In this situation the Spartans, to the amount of fifty thousand light-armed troops, with three thousand Tegeatæ,[37] who on no occasion were separated from them, offered a solemn sacrifice, with the resolution of encountering Mardonius.

The victims, however, were not auspicious, and in the mean time many of them were slain, and more wounded. The Persians, under the protection of their bucklers, showered their arrows upon the Spartans with prodigious effect. At this moment Pausanias, observing the entrails still unfavourable, looked earnestly towards the temple of Juno at Platæa, imploring the interposition of the goddess, and entreating her to prevent their disgrace and defeat.

Whilst he was in the act of supplicating the goddess, the Tegeatæ advanced against the barbarians: at the same moment the sacrifices became favourable, and Pausanias, at the head of his Spartans, went up boldly to the[370] enemy. The Persians, throwing aside their bows, prepared to receive them. The engagement commenced before the barricade: when this was thrown down, a conflict took place near the temple of Ceres, which was continued with unremitted obstinacy till the fortune of the day was decided.

The barbarians, seizing their adversaries’ lances, broke them in pieces, and discovered no inferiority either in strength or courage; but their armour was inefficient, their attack without skill, and their inferiority, with respect to discipline, conspicuous. In whatever manner they rushed upon the enemy, from one to ten at a time, they were cut in pieces by the Spartans.

Mardonius Falls and the Day is Won

The Greeks were most severely pressed where Mardonius himself, on a white horse, at the head of a thousand chosen Persians, directed his attack. As long as he lived, the Persians, both in their attack and defence, conducted themselves well, and slew great numbers of the Spartans; but as soon as Mardonius was slain, and the band which fought near his person, and which was the flower of the army, was destroyed, all the rest turned their backs and fled. They were much oppressed and encumbered by their long dresses, besides which, being lightly armed, they had to oppose men in full and complete armour.

On this day, as the oracle had before predicted, the death of Leonidas was amply revenged upon Mardonius, and the most glorious victory which has ever been recorded, was then obtained by Pausanias. Mardonius was slain by Æmnestus, a Spartan of distinguished reputation. Æmnestus long after this Persian war, together with three hundred men, was killed in an engagement at Stenyclarus, in which he opposed the united force of the Messenians.

The Persians, routed by the Spartans at Platæa, fled in the greatest confusion towards their camp, and to the wooden entrenchment which they had constructed in the Theban territories. It seems somewhat surprising that although the battle was fought near the grove of Ceres, not a single Persian took refuge in the temple, nor was slain near it; but the greater part of them perished beyond the limits of the sacred ground. Such was the issue of the battle of Platæa.

Artabazus, the son of Pharnaces, who had from the first disapproved of the king’s leaving Mardonius behind him, and who had warmly, though unsuccessfully, endeavoured to prevent a battle, determined on the following measures. He was at the head of no small body of troops; they amounted to forty thousand men: being much averse to the conduct of Mardonius, and foreseeing what the event of an engagement must be, he prepared and commanded his men to follow him wherever he should go, and to remit or increase their speed by his example. He then drew out his army, as if to attack the enemy; but he soon met the Persians flying from them: he then immediately and precipitately fled with all his troops in disorder, not directing his course to the entrenchment or to Thebes, but towards Phocis, intending to gain the Hellespont with all possible speed.

Of those Greeks who were in the royal army, all except the Bœotians, from a preconcerted design, behaved themselves ill. The Bœotians fought the Athenians with obstinate resolution: those Thebans who were attached to the Medes made very considerable exertions, fighting with such courage, that three hundred of their first and boldest citizens fell by the swords of the Athenians. They fled at length, and pursued their way to Thebes, avoiding[371] the route which the Persians had taken with the immense multitude of confederates, who, so far from making any exertions, had never struck a blow.

In the midst of all this tumult, intelligence was conveyed to those Greeks posted near the temple of Juno, and remote from the battle, that the event was decided, and Pausanias victorious. The Corinthians instantly, without any regularity, hurried over the hills which lay at the foot of the mountain, to arrive at the temple of Ceres. The Megarians and Phliasians, with the same intentions, posted over the plain, the more direct and obvious road. As they approached the enemy, they were observed by the Theban horse, commanded by Asopodorus, son of Timander, who, taking advantage of their want of order, rushed upon them and slew six hundred, driving the rest towards Mount Cithæron. Thus did these perish ingloriously.

The Persians, and a promiscuous multitude along with them, as soon as they arrived at the entrenchment, endeavoured to climb the turrets before the Lacedæmonians should come up with them. Having effected this, they endeavoured to defend themselves as well as they could. The Lacedæmonians soon arrived, and a severe engagement commenced.

Before the Athenians came up, the Persians not only defended themselves well, but had the advantage, as the Lacedæmonians were ignorant of the proper method of attack; but as soon as the Athenians advanced to their support, the battle was renewed with greater fierceness, and was long continued. The valour and firmness of the Athenians finally prevailed. Having made a breach they rushed into the camp: the Tegeatæ were the first Greeks that entered, and were they who plundered the tent of Mardonius, taking from thence, among other things, the manger from which his horses were fed, made entirely of brass, and very curious. This was afterwards deposited by the Tegeatæ in the temple of the Alean Minerva: the rest of the booty was carried to the spot where the common plunder was collected. As soon as their entrenchment was thrown down, the barbarians dispersed themselves different ways, without exhibiting any proof of their former bravery; they were, indeed, in a state of stupefaction and terror, from seeing their immense multitude overpowered in so short a period.

AFTER THE BATTLE

So great was the slaughter made by the Greeks, that of this army, which consisted of three hundred thousand men, not three thousand escaped, if we except the forty thousand who fled with Artabazus. The Lacedæmonians of Sparta lost ninety-one men; the Tegeatæ sixteen; the Athenians fifty-two.[38]

Of those who most distinguished themselves on the part of the barbarians, are to be reckoned the Persian infantry, the Sacian cavalry, and lastly, Mardonius himself. Of the Greeks, the Tegeatæ and Athenians were eminently conspicuous; they were, nevertheless, inferior to the Lacedæmonians. The most daring of the Spartans, was Aristodemus; the same who alone returning from Thermopylæ fell into disgrace and infamy; next to him, Posidonius, Phylocyon, and Amompharetus the Spartan, behaved the best. Nevertheless, when it was disputed in conversation what individual had on that day most distinguished himself, the Spartans who were present said, that[372] Aristodemus, being anxious to die conspicuously, as an expiation of his former crime, in an emotion of fury had burst from his rank, and performed extraordinary exploits; but that Posidonius had no desire to lose his life, and therefore his behaviour was the more glorious: but this remark might have proceeded from envy. All those slain on this day, were highly honoured, except Aristodemus. To him, for the reason above mentioned, no respect was paid, as having voluntarily sought death.

Among the troops of the Æginetæ, assembled at Platæa, was Lampon, one of their principal citizens, and son of Pytheas. This man went to Pausanias, giving him the following most impious counsel: “Son of Cleombrotus, what you have done is beyond comparison splendid, and deserving admiration. The deity, in making you the instrument of Greece’s freedom, has placed you far above all your predecessors in glory: in concluding this business so conduct yourself that your reputation may be still increased, and that no barbarian may ever again attempt to perpetrate atrocious actions against Greece. When Leonidas was slain at Thermopylæ, Mardonius and Xerxes cut off his head, and suspended his body from a cross. Do the same with respect to Mardonius, and you will deserve the applause of Sparta and of Greece, and avenge the cause of your uncle Leonidas.” Thus spake Lampon, thinking he should please Pausanias.

“Friend of Ægina,” replied Pausanias, “I thank you for your good intentions, and commend your foresight; but what you say violates every principle of equity.[39] After elevating me, my country, and this recent victory, to the summit of fame, you again depress us to infamy, in recommending me to inflict vengeance on the dead. You say, indeed, that by such an action I shall exalt my character; but I think it is more consistent with the conduct of barbarians than of Greeks, as it is one of those things for which we reproach them. I must therefore dissent from the Æginetæ, and all those who approve their sentiments. For me, it is sufficient to merit the esteem of Sparta, by attending to the rules of honour, both in my words and actions: Leonidas, whom you wish me to avenge, has, I think, received the amplest vengeance. The deaths of this immense multitude must sufficiently have atoned for him, and for those who fell with him at Thermopylæ. I would advise you in future, having these sentiments, to avoid my presence; and I would have you think it a favour, that I do not punish you.”

Pausanias afterwards proclaimed by a herald, that no person should touch any of the booty; and he ordered the helots to collect the money into one place. They, as they dispersed themselves over the camp, found tents decorated with gold and silver, couches of the same, goblets, cups, and drinking vessels of gold, besides sacks of gold, and silver cauldrons placed on carriages. The dead bodies they stripped of bracelets, chains, and scimitars of gold; to their habits of various colours they paid no attention. Many things of value the helots secreted, and sold to the Æginetæ; others, unable to conceal, they were obliged to produce. The Æginetæ from this became exceedingly rich; for they purchased gold of the helots at the price of brass.

From the wealth thus collected, a tenth part was selected for sacred purposes. To the deity of Delphi was presented a golden tripod, resting on a three-headed snake of brass: it was placed near the altar. To the Olympian god they erected a Jupiter, ten cubits high: to the god of the isthmus, the figure of Neptune, in brass, seven cubits high. When this was done, the remainder of the plunder was divided among the army, according to their[373] merits; it consisted of Persian concubines, gold, silver, beasts of burden, with various riches. What choice things were given to those who most distinguished themselves at Platæa, has never been mentioned, though certain presents were made them. It is certain, that a tenth part of the whole was given to Pausanias, consisting among other things of women, horses, talents, and camels.

It is further recorded, that when Xerxes fled from Greece, he left all his equipage to Mardonius: Pausanias seeing this composed of gold, silver, and cloth of the richest embroidery, gave orders to the cooks and domestics to prepare an entertainment for him, as for Mardonius. His commands were executed, and he beheld couches of gold and silver, tables of the same, and everything that was splendid and magnificent. Astonished at the spectacle, he again with a smile directed his servants to prepare a Lacedæmonian repast. When this was ready the contrast was so striking, that he laughing sent for the Grecian leaders: when they were assembled, he showed them the two entertainments. “Men of Greece,” said he, “I have called you together to bear testimony to the king of Persia’s folly, who forsook all this luxury to plunder us who live in so much poverty.” These were the words which Pausanias is said to have used to the Grecian leaders.

In succeeding times, many of the Platæans found on the field of battle, chests of gold, silver, and other riches. This thing also happened: when the flesh had fallen from the bones of the dead bodies, the Platæans, in removing them to some other spot, discovered a skull as one entire bone, without any suture. Two jaw bones also were found with their teeth, which though divided were of one entire bone, the grinders as well as the rest. The body of Mardonius was removed the day after the battle; but it is not known by whom.

The Greeks, after the division of the plunder at Platæa, proceeded to inter their dead, each nation by themselves. The Lacedæmonians sunk three trenches: in the one they deposited the bodies of their priests; in the second were interred the other Spartans; in the third, the helots. The Tegeatæ were buried by themselves, but with no distinction: the Athenians in like manner, and also the Megarians and Phliasians who were slain by the cavalry. Mounds of earth were raised over the bodies of all these people. With respect to the others shown at Platæa, they were raised by those, who being ashamed of their absence from the battle, wished to secure the esteem of posterity.

THE GREEKS ATTACK THEBES

Having buried their dead on the plain of Platæa, the Greeks, after serious deliberation, resolved to attack Thebes, and demand the persons of those who had taken part with the Medes. Of these the most distinguished were[374] Timagenidas and Attaginus, the leaders of the faction. They determined, unless these were given up, not to leave Thebes without utterly destroying it.

On the eleventh day after the battle, they besieged the Thebans, demanding the men whom we have named. They refused to surrender them, in consequence of which their lands were laid waste and their walls attacked. This violence being continued, Timagenidas, on the twentieth day, thus addressed the Thebans: “Men of Thebes, since the Greeks are resolved not to retire from Thebes till they shall either have destroyed it, or you shall deliver us into their power, let not Bœotia on our account be farther distressed. If their demand of our persons be merely a pretence to obtain money, let us satisfy them from the wealth of the public, as not we alone but all of us have been equally and openly active on the part of the Medes; if their real object in besieging Thebes is to obtain our persons, we are ready to go ourselves, and confer with them.” The Thebans approving his advice, sent immediately a herald to Pausanias, saying they were ready to deliver up the men. As soon as this measure was determined, Attaginus fled, but his children were delivered to Pausanias, who immediately dismissed them, urging that infants could not possibly have any part in the faction of the Medes. The other Thebans who were given up, imagined they should have the liberty of pleading for themselves, and by the means of money hoped to escape. Pausanias suspecting that such a thing might happen, as soon as he got them in his power, dismissed all the forces of the allies; then removing the Thebans to Corinth, he there put them to death.

THE FLIGHT OF THE PERSIAN REMNANT

Artabazus son of Pharnaces fled from Platæa to the Thessalians. They received him with great hospitality, and entirely ignorant of what had happened, inquired after the remainder of the army. The Persian was fearful that if he disclosed the whole truth, he might draw upon him the attack of all who knew it, and consequently involve himself and army in the extremest danger. This reflection had before prevented his communication of the matter to the Phocians: and on the present occasion he thus addressed the Thessalians:

“I am hastening, as you perceive, with great expedition to Thrace, being despatched thither from our camp with this detachment, on some important business. Mardonius with his troops follows me at no great distance: show him the rights of hospitality and every suitable attention. You will finally have no occasion to repent of your kindness.”

He then proceeded through Thessaly and Macedonia, immediately to Thrace, with evident marks of being in haste. Directing his march through the midst of the country, he arrived at Byzantium, with the loss of great numbers of his men, who were either cut in pieces by the Thracians, or quite worn out by fatigue and hunger. From Byzantium, he passed over his army in transports, and thus effected his return to Asia.

CONTEMPORARY AFFAIRS IN IONIA

On the very day[40] of the battle of Platæa, a victory was gained at Mycale in Ionia. Whilst the Grecian fleet was yet at Delos, under the command of Leotychides the Lacedæmonian, ambassadors came to them from Samos.[375] On their arrival, they sought the Grecian leaders, whom Hegesistratus (one of the ambassadors) addressed with various arguments. He urged that as soon as they should show themselves, all the Ionians would shake off their dependence, and revolt from the Persians; he told them that they might wait in vain for the prospect of a richer booty. He implored also their common deities, that being Greeks, they would deliver those who also were Greeks from servitude, and avenge them on the barbarian. He concluded by saying, that this might be easily accomplished, as the ships of the enemy were slow sailers, and by no means equal to those of the Greeks.

The Samians, with an oath, engaged to become the confederates of the Greeks. Leotychides then dismissed them all excepting Hegesistratus, who, on account of his name, he chose to take along with him. The Greeks, after remaining that day on their station, on the next sacrificed with favourable omens; Deiphonus, son of Evenius of Apollonia, in the Ionian Gulf, being their minister.

The Greeks having sacrificed favourably, set sail from Delos towards Samos. On their arrival at Calami of Samos, they drew themselves up near the temple of Juno, and prepared for a naval engagement. When the Persians heard of their approach, they moved with the residue of their fleet towards the continent, having previously permitted the Phœnicians to retire. They had determined, after a consultation, not to risk an engagement, as they did not think themselves a match for their opponents. They therefore made towards the continent, that they might be covered by their land forces at Mycale, to whom Xerxes had intrusted the defence of Ionia. These, to the amount of sixty thousand, were under the command of Tigranes the Persian, one of the handsomest and tallest of his countrymen. To these troops the commanders of the fleet resolved to retire: it was also their intention to draw their vessels on shore, and to throw up an intrenchment round them, which might equally serve as a protection to their vessels and themselves. After this resolution, they proceeded on their course, and were carried near the temple of the Eumenidæ at Mycale. Here the Persians drew their ships to land, defending them with an intrenchment formed of stones, branches of fruit trees cut down upon the spot, and pieces of timber closely fitted together. In this position they were ready to sustain a blockade, and with hopes of victory, being prepared for either event.

When the Greeks received intelligence that the barbarians were retired to the continent, they considered them as escaped out of their hands. They were exceedingly exasperated, and in great perplexity whether they should return or proceed towards the Hellespont. Their ultimate determination was to follow the enemy towards the continent. Getting therefore all things ready for an engagement by sea, and providing themselves with scaling ladders, and such other things as were necessary, they sailed to Mycale. When they approached the enemy’s station, they perceived no one advancing to meet them; but beheld the ships drawn on shore, secured within an intrenchment, and a considerable body of infantry ranged along the coast. Leotychides upon this advanced before all the rest in his ship, and coming as near the shore as he could, thus addressed the Ionians by a herald:

“Men of Ionia, all you who hear me, listen to what I say, for the Persians will understand nothing of what I tell you. When the engagement shall commence, remember first of all our common liberties; in the next place take notice, our watch-word is Hebe. Let those who hear me, inform all who do not.”

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The motive of this conduct was the same with that of Themistocles at Artemisium. These expressions, if not intelligible to the barbarians, might make the desired impression on the Ionians; or if explained to the former, might render the fidelity of the latter suspected.

When Leotychides had done this, the Greeks approached the shore, disembarked, and prepared for battle. The Persians observing this, and knowing the purport of the enemy’s address to the Ionians, took their arms from the Samians, suspecting them of a secret attachment to the Greeks. The Samians had purchased the freedom of five hundred Athenians, and sent them back with provisions to their country, who having been left in Attica, had been taken prisoners by the Persians, and brought away in the barbarian fleet. The circumstance of their thus releasing five hundred of the enemies of Xerxes, made them greatly suspected. To the Milesians, under pretence of their knowledge of the country, the Persians confided the guard of the paths to the heights of Mycale: their real motive was to remove them to a distance. By these steps the Persians endeavoured to guard against those Ionians, who might wish, if they had the opportunity, to effect a revolt. They next heaped their bucklers upon each other, to make a temporary rampart.

THE BATTLE OF MYCALE

The Greeks being drawn up, advanced to attack the barbarians: as they were proceeding, a herald’s wand was discovered on the beach, and a rumour circulated through the ranks, that the Greeks had obtained a victory over the forces of Mardonius and Bœotia.[41] On the same day that their enemies were slaughtered at Platæa, and were about to be defeated at Mycale, the rumour of the former victory being circulated to this distance, rendered the Greeks more bold, and animated them against every danger. It appears farther worthy of observation, that both battles took place near the temple of the Eleusinian Ceres. The battle of Platæa, as we have before remarked, was in the vicinity of the temple of Ceres; the one at Mycale was in a similar situation.

The Athenians, who with those that accompanied them, constituted one-half of the army, advanced by the coast, and along the plain: the Lacedæmonians and their auxiliaries made their way by the more woody and mountainous places.

Whilst the Lacedæmonians were making a circuit, the Athenians in the other wing were already engaged. The Persians, as long as their entrenchment remained uninjured, defended themselves well, and without any inferiority; but when the Athenians, with those who supported them, increased their exertions, mutually exhorting one another, that they and not the Lacedæmonians might have the glory of the day, the face of things was changed; the rampart was thrown down, and a sensible advantage was obtained over the Persians. They sustained the shock for a considerable time, but finally gave way, and retreated behind their entrenchments. The Athenians, Corinthians, Sicyonians, and Trœzenians, rushed in with them; for this part of the army was composed of these different nations.

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When the wall was carried, the barbarians gave no testimony of their former prowess, but, except the Persians, indiscriminately fled. These last, though few in number, vigorously resisted the Greeks, who poured in upon them in crowds. Artayntes and Ithamitres, the commanders of the fleet, saved themselves by flight: but Mardontes, and Tigranes the general of the land-forces, were slain. Whilst the Persians still refused to give ground, the Lacedæmonians and their party arrived, and put all who survived to the sword. Upon this occasion many of the Greeks were slain, and among a number of the Sicyonians, Perilaus their leader. The Samians, who were in the Persian army, and from whom their weapons had been taken, no sooner saw victory incline to the side of the Greeks, than they assisted them with all their power. The other Ionians seeing this, revolted also, and turned their arms against the barbarians. The Milesians had been ordered, the better to provide for the safety of the Persians, to guard the paths to the heights, so that in case of accident the barbarians, under their guidance, might take refuge on the summits of Mycale; with this view, as well as to remove them to a distance, and thus guard against their perfidy, the Milesians had been so disposed; but they acted in direct contradiction to their orders. Those who fled, they introduced directly into the midst of their enemies, and finally were active beyond all the rest in putting them to the sword. In this manner did Ionia a second time revolt from the Persian power.

AFTER MYCALE

In this battle the Athenians most distinguished themselves, and next to the Athenians, they who obtained the greatest reputation were the Corinthians, Trœzenians, and Sicyonians. The greater number of the barbarians being slain, either in the battle or in the pursuit, the Greeks burned their ships, and totally destroyed their wall: the plunder they collected upon the shore, among which was a considerable quantity of money. Having done this, they sailed from the coast. When they came to Samos, they deliberated on the propriety of removing the Ionians to some other place, wishing to place them in some part of Greece where their authority was secure; but they determined to abandon Ionia to the barbarians. They were well aware both of the impossibility of defending the Ionians on every emergency, and of the danger which these would incur from the Persians, if they did not. The Peloponnesian magistrates were of opinion, that those nations who had embraced the cause of the Medes should be expelled, and their lands given to the Ionians. The Athenians would not consent that the Ionians should be transported from their country, nor would they allow the Peloponnesians to decide on the destruction of Athenian colonies. Seeing them tenacious of this opinion, the Peloponnesians no longer opposed them. Afterwards the people of Samos, Chios, Lesbos, and the other islands who had assisted with their arms in the present exigence, were received into the general confederacy, having by an oath, promised constant and inviolable fidelity. This ceremony performed, they sailed towards the Hellespont, meaning to destroy the bridge, which they expected to find in its original state.

The barbarians who saved themselves by flight, came to the heights of Mycale, and thence escaped in no great numbers to Sardis. During the retreat, Masistes, son of Darius, who had been present at the late unfortunate engagement, severely reproached Artayntes the commander-in-chief: among other things, he said, that in the execution of his duty he had behaved more[378] like a woman than a man, and had materially injured the interests of his master. To say that a man is more dastardly than a woman is with the Persians the most infamous of all reproaches. Artayntes, after bearing the insult for some time, became at length so exasperated, that he drew his scimitar, intending to kill Masistes. He was prevented by Xenagoras, son of Praxilaus, a native of Halicarnassus, who happening to be behind Artayntes, seized him by the middle, and threw him to the ground: at the same time the guards of Masistes came up. Xenagoras by this action not only obtained the favour of Masistes, but so much obliged Xerxes, by thus preserving his brother, that he was honoured with the government of all Cilicia. Nothing further of consequence occurred on their way to Sardis, where they found the king, who after his retreat from Athens, and his ill success at sea, had there resided.

The Greeks, sailing from Mycale towards the Hellespont, were obliged by contrary winds to put in at Lectum: thence they proceeded to Abydos. Here they found the bridge, which they imagined was entire, and which was the principal object of their voyage, effectually broken down. They on this held a consultation; Leotychides, and the Lacedæmonians with him, were for returning to Greece; the Athenians, with their leader Xanthippus, advised them to continue where they were, and make an attempt on the Chersonesus. The Peloponnesians returned; but the Athenians, passing from Abydos to the Chersonesus, laid siege to Sestus. To this place, as by far the strongest in all that district, great numbers had retired from the neighbouring towns, as soon as it was known that the Greeks were in the Hellespont: among others was Œobazus of Cardia, a Persian who had previously collected here all that remained of the bridge. The town itself was possessed by the native Æolians, but they had with them a great number of Persians and other allies. The governor of this place, under Xerxes, was Artayctes, a Persian, of a cruel and profligate character.

Whilst they were prosecuting the siege, the autumn arrived. The Athenians, unable to make themselves masters of the place, and uneasy at being engaged in an expedition so far from their country, entreated their leaders to conduct them home. They refused to do this, till they should either succeed in their enterprise, or be recalled by the people of Athens, so intent were they on the business before them.

The besieged, under Artayctes, were reduced to such extremity of wretchedness, that they were obliged to boil for food the cords of which their beds were composed. When these also were consumed, Artayctes, Œobazus, and some other Persians, fled, under cover of the night, escaping by an avenue behind the town, which happened not to be blockaded by the enemy.

When the morning came, the people of the Chersonesus made signals to the Athenians from the turrets, and opened to them the gates. The greater part commenced a pursuit of the Persians, the remainder took possession of the town. Œobazus fled into Thrace; but he was here seized by the Absinthians, and sacrificed, according to their rites, to their god Plistorus: his followers were put to death in some other manner. Artayctes and his adherents, who fled the last, were overtaken near the waters of Ægos, where, after a vigorous defence, part were slain, and part taken prisoners. The Greeks put them all in chains, Artayctes and his son with the rest, and carried them to Sestus. Conducting him therefore to the shore where the bridge of Xerxes had been constructed, they there crucified him; though some say this was done upon an eminence near the city of Madytus. The son was stoned in his father’s presence.

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The Athenians, after the above transactions, returned to Greece, carrying with them, besides vast quantities of money, the fragments of the bridge, to be suspended in their temples.b

A REVIEW OF RESULTS

The disproportion between the immense host assembled by Xerxes, and the little which he accomplished, naturally provokes both contempt for Persian force and an admiration for the comparative handful of men by whom they were so ignominiously beaten. Both these sentiments are just, but both are often exaggerated beyond the point which attentive contemplation of the facts will justify. The Persian mode of making war (which we may liken to that of the modern Turks, now that the period of their energetic fanaticism has passed away) was in a high degree disorderly and inefficient: the men indeed, individually taken, especially the native Persians, were not deficient in the qualities of soldiers, but their arms and their organisation were wretched—and their leaders yet worse. On the other hand, the Greeks, equal, if not superior, in individual bravery, were incomparably superior in soldier-like order as well as in arms: but here too the leadership was defective, and the disunion a constant source of peril. Those who, like Plutarch (or rather the Pseudo-Plutarch) in his treatise on the malignity of Herodotus, insist on acknowledging nothing but magnanimity and heroism in the proceedings of the Greeks throughout these critical years, are forced to deal very harshly with the inestimable witness on whom our knowledge of the facts depends, and who intimates plainly that, in spite of the devoted courage displayed, not less by the vanquished at Thermopylæ than by the victors at Salamis, Greece owed her salvation chiefly to the imbecility, cowardice, and credulous rashness of Xerxes. Had he indeed possessed either the personal energy of Cyrus or the judgment of Artemisia, it may be doubted whether any excellence of management, or any intimacy of union, could have preserved the Greeks against so great a superiority of force; but it is certain that all their courage as soldiers in line would have been unavailing for that purpose, without a higher degree of generalship, and a more hearty spirit of co-operation, than that which they actually manifested.

A GLANCE FORWARD

One hundred and fifty years after this eventful period, we shall see the tables turned, and the united forces of Greece under Alexander of Macedon becoming invaders of Persia. We shall find that in Persia no improvement has taken place during this long interval, that the scheme of defence under Darius Codomannus labours under the same defects as that of attack under Xerxes, that there is the same blind and exclusive confidence in pitched battles with superior numbers, that the advice of Mentor the Rhodian, and of Charidemus, is despised like that of Demaratus and Artemisia, that Darius Codomannus, essentially of the same stamp as Xerxes, is hurried into the battle of Issus by the same ruinous temerity as that which threw away the Persian fleet at Salamis, and that the Persian native infantry (not the cavalry) even appear to have lost that individual gallantry which they displayed so conspicuously at Platæa. But on the Grecian side, the improvement in every way is very great: the orderly courage of the soldier has been[380] sustained and even augmented, while the generalship and power of military combination has reached a point unexampled in the previous history of mankind. Military science may be esteemed a sort of creation during this interval, and will be found to go through various stages: Demosthenes and Brasidas, the Cyreian army and Xenophon, Agesilaus, Iphicrates, Epaminondas, Philip of Macedon, Alexander: for the Macedonian princes are borrowers of Greek tactics, though extending and applying them with a personal energy peculiar to themselves, and with advantages of position such as no Athenian or Spartan ever enjoyed. In this comparison between the invasion of Xerxes and that of Alexander we contrast the progressive spirit of Greece, serving as herald and stimulus to the like spirit in Europe, with the stationary mind of Asia, occasionally roused by some splendid individual, but never appropriating to itself new social ideas or powers, either for war or for peace.

It is out of the invasion of Xerxes that those new powers of combination, political as well as military, which lighten up Grecian history during the next two centuries, take their rise. They are brought into agency through the altered position and character of the Athenians—improvers, to a certain extent, of military operations on land, but the great creators of marine tactics and manœuvring in Greece, and the earliest of all Greeks who showed themselves capable of organising and directing the joint action of numerous allies and dependents, thus uniting the two distinctive qualities of the Homeric Agamemnon—ability in command, with vigour in execution.

In the general Hellenic confederacy, which had acted against Persia under the presidency of Sparta, Athens could hardly be said to occupy any ostensible rank above that of an ordinary member: the post of second dignity in the line at Platæa had indeed been adjudged to her, but only after a contending claim from Tegea. But without any difference in ostensible rank, she was in the eye and feeling of Greece no longer the same power as before. She had suffered more, and at sea had certainly done more, than all the other allies put together: even on land at Platæa, her hoplites had manifested a combination of bravery, discipline, and efficiency against the formidable Persian cavalry superior even to the Spartans: nor had any Athenian officer committed so perilous an act of disobedience as the Spartan Amompharetus. After the victory of Mycale, when the Peloponnesians all hastened home to enjoy their triumph, the Athenian forces did not shrink from prolonged service for the important object of clearing the Hellespont, thus standing forth as the willing and forward champions of the Asiatic Greeks against Persia. Besides these exploits of Athens collectively, the only two individuals gifted with any talents for command, whom this momentous conquest had thrown up, were both of them Athenians: first, Themistocles; next, Aristides. From the beginning to the end of the struggle, Athens had displayed an unreserved Panhellenic patriotism, which had been most ungenerously requited by the Peloponnesians; who had kept within their isthmian walls, and betrayed Attica twice to hostile ravage; the first time, perhaps, unavoidably, but the second time a culpable neglect, in postponing their outward march against Mardonius. And the Peloponnesians could not but feel, that while they had left Attica unprotected, they owed their own salvation at Salamis altogether to the dexterity of Themistocles and the imposing Athenian naval force.

Considering that the Peloponnesians had sustained little or no mischief by the invasion, while the Athenians had lost for the time even their city and country, with a large proportion of their movable property irrecoverably destroyed, we might naturally expect to find the former, if not lending[381] their grateful and active aid to repair the damage in Attica, at least cordially welcoming the restoration of the ruined city by its former inhabitants. Instead of this, we find the same selfishness again prevalent among them; ill-will and mistrust for the future, aggravated by an admiration which they could not help feeling, overlays all their gratitude and sympathy.g

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XXII. THE AFTERMATH OF THE WAR

When the Persians had retreated from Europe after being conquered both by sea and land by the Greeks, and those of them had been destroyed who had fled with their ships to Mycale, Leotychides, king of the Lacedæmonians, returned home with the allies that were from the Peloponnesus, as we have already noted; while the Athenians, and the allies from Ionia and the Hellespont, who had now revolted from the king, stayed behind, and laid siege to Sestus, of which the Medes were in possession. Having spent the winter before it, they took it, after the barbarians had evacuated it; and then sailed away from the Hellespont, each to his own city. And the people of Athens, when they found the barbarians had departed from their country, proceeded immediately to carry over their children and wives, and the remnant of their furniture, from where they had put them out of the way; and were preparing to rebuild their city and their walls. For short spaces of the enclosure were standing, and, though the majority of the houses had fallen, a few remained in which the grandees of the Persians had themselves taken up their quarters.

ATHENS REBUILDS HER WALLS

The Lacedæmonians, perceiving what they were about to do, sent an embassy to them; partly because they themselves would have been more pleased to see neither them nor any one else in possession of a wall; but still more because the allies instigated them, and were afraid of their numerous fleet, which before they had not had, and of the bravery they had shown in the Persian War. And they begged them not to build their walls, but rather to join them in throwing down those of the cities out of the Peloponnesus; not betraying their real wishes, and their suspicious feelings towards the Athenians; but representing that the barbarian, if he should again come against them, would not then be able to make his advances from any stronghold, as in the present instance he had done from Thebes; and the Peloponnesus, they said, was sufficient for all, as a place to retreat into and sally forth from. When the Lacedæmonians had thus spoken, the Athenians, by the advice of Themistocles, answered that they would send ambassadors to them concerning what they spoke of; and they immediately[383] dismissed them. And Themistocles advised them to send himself as quickly as possible to Lacedæmon, and having chosen other ambassadors besides himself, not to despatch them immediately, but to wait till such time as they should have raised their wall to the height most absolutely necessary for fighting from; and that the whole population in the city, men, women, and children, should build it, sparing neither private nor public edifice, from which any assistance towards the work would be gained, but throwing down everything. After giving these instructions, and suggesting that he would himself manage all other matters there, he took his departure. On his arrival at Lacedæmon he did not apply to the authorities, but kept putting off and making excuses. And whenever any of those who were in office asked him why he did not come before the assembly, he said that he was waiting for his colleagues; that owing to some engagement they had been left behind; he expected, however, that they would shortly come, and wondered that they were not already there.

When they heard this, they believed Themistocles through their friendship for him; but when every one else came and distinctly informed them that the walls were building, and already advancing to some height, they did not know how to discredit it. When he found this, he told them not to be led away by tales, but rather to send men of their own body who were of good character, and would bring back a credible report after inspection. They despatched them therefore; and Themistocles secretly sent directions about them to the Athenians, to detain them, with as little appearance of it as possible, and not to let them go until they themselves had returned back; (for by this time his colleagues, Abronychus, the son of Lysicles, and Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, had also come to him with the news that the wall was sufficiently advanced) for he was afraid that the Lacedæmonians, when they heard the truth, might not then let them go. So the Athenians detained the ambassadors, as was told them; and Themistocles, having come to an audience of the Lacedæmonians, then indeed told them plainly that their city was already walled, so as to be capable of defending its inhabitants; and if the Lacedæmonians or the allies wished to send any embassy to them, they should in future go as to men who could discern what were their own and the general interests. For when they thought it better to abandon their city and to go on board their ships, they said that they had made up their minds, and had the courage to do it, without consulting them; and again, on whatever matters they had deliberated with them, they had shown themselves inferior to none in judgment. And so at the present time, likewise, they thought it was better that their city should have a wall, and that it would be more expedient for their citizens in particular, as well as for the allies in general; for it was not possible for any one without equal resources to give any equal or fair advice for the common good. Either all therefore, he said, should join the confederacy without walls, or they should consider that the present case also was as it ought to be.

The Lacedæmonians, on hearing this, did not let their anger appear to the Athenians; for they had not sent their embassy to obstruct their designs, but to offer counsel, they said, to their state; and besides, they were at that time on very friendly terms with them owing to their zeal against the Mede; in secret, however, they were annoyed at failing in their wish. So the ambassadors of each state returned home without any complaint being made.

In this way, Thucydides continues, the Athenians walled their city in a short time. And the building shows even now that it was executed in[384] haste; for the foundations are laid with stones of all kinds, and in some places not wrought together, but as the several parties at any time brought them to the spot: and many columns from tombs, and wrought stones, were worked up in them.b

THE NEW ATHENS

The first indispensable step, in the renovation of Athens after her temporary extinction, was now happily accomplished: the city was made secure against external enemies. But Themistocles, to whom the Athenians owed the late successful stratagem, and whose influence must have been much strengthened by its success, had conceived plans of a wider and more ambitious range. He had been the original adviser of the great maritime start taken by his countrymen, as well as of the powerful naval force which they had created during the last few years, and which had so recently proved their salvation. He saw in that force both the only chance of salvation for the future, in case the Persians should renew their attack by sea,—a contingency at that time seemingly probable,—and boundless prospects of future ascendency over the Grecian coasts and islands: it was the great engine of defence, of offence, and of ambition. To continue this movement required much less foresight and genius than to begin it, and Themistocles, the moment that the walls of the city had been finished, brought back the attention of his countrymen to those wooden walls which had served them as a refuge against the Persian monarch. He prevailed upon them to provide harbour-room at once safe and adequate, by the enlargement and fortification of the Piræus. This again was only the prosecution of an enterprise previously begun: for he had already, while in office two or three years before, made his countrymen sensible that the open roadstead of Phalerum was thoroughly insecure, and had prevailed upon them to improve and employ in part the more spacious harbours of Piræus and Munychia—three natural basins, all capable of being closed and defended. Something had then been done towards the enlargement of this port, though it had probably been subsequently ruined by the Persian invaders: but Themistocles now resumed the scheme on a scale far grander than he could then have ventured to propose—a scale which demonstrates the vast auguries present to his mind respecting the destinies of Athens.

Piræus and Munychia, in his new plan, constituted a fortified space as large as the enlarged Athens, and with a wall far more elaborate and unassailable. The wall which surrounded them, sixty stadia in circuit [about seven and a half miles], was intended by him to be so stupendous, both in height and thickness, as to render assault hopeless, and to enable the whole military population to act on shipboard, leaving only old men and boys as a garrison. We may judge how vast his project was, when we learn that the wall, though in practice always found sufficient, was only carried up to half the height which he had contemplated. In respect to thickness, however, his ideas were exactly followed: two carts meeting one another brought stones which were laid together right and left on the outer side of each, and thus formed two primary parallel walls, between which the interior space—of course, at least as broad as the joint breadth of the two carts—was filled up, “not with rubble, in the usual manner of the Greeks, but constructed, throughout the whole thickness, of squared stones, cramped together with metal.” The result was a solid wall, probably not less than fourteen or fifteen feet thick, since it was intended to carry so very unusual a height. In the[385] exhortations whereby he animated the people to this fatiguing and costly work, he laboured to impress upon them that Piræus was of more value to them than Athens itself, and that it afforded a shelter into which, if their territory should be again overwhelmed by a superior land-force, they might securely retire, with full liberty of that maritime action in which they were a match for all the world. We may even suspect that if Themistocles could have followed his own feelings, he would have altered the site of the city from Athens to Piræus: the attachment of the people to their ancient and holy rock doubtless prevented any such proposition. Nor did he at that time, probably, contemplate the possibility of those long walls which in a few years afterwards consolidated the two cities into one.

Forty-five years afterwards, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, we shall hear from Pericles, who espoused and carried out the large ideas of Themistocles, this same language about the capacity of Athens to sustain a great power exclusively or chiefly upon maritime action. But the Athenian empire was then an established reality, whereas in the time of Themistocles it was yet a dream, and his bold predictions, surpassed as they were by the future reality, mark that extraordinary power of practical divination which Thucydides so emphatically extols in him. And it proves the exuberant hope which had now passed into the temper of the Athenian people, when we find them, on the faith of these predictions, undertaking a new enterprise of so much toil and expense; and that too when just returned from exile into a desolated country, at a moment of private distress and public impoverishment. However, Piræus served other purposes besides its direct use as a dockyard for military marine: its secure fortifications and the protection of the Athenian navy, were well calculated to call back those metics, or resident foreigners, who had been driven away by the invasion of Xerxes, and who might feel themselves insecure in returning, unless some new and conspicuous means of protection were exhibited.

To invite them back, and to attract new residents of a similar description, Themistocles proposed to exempt them from the metoikion, or non-freeman’s annual tax: but this exemption can only have lasted for a time, and the great temptation for them to return must have consisted in the new securities and facilities for trade, which Athens, with her fortified ports and navy, now afforded. The presence of numerous metics was profitable to the Athenians, both privately and publicly: much of the trading, professional, and handicraft business was in their hands: and the Athenian legislation, while it excluded them from the political franchise, was in other respects equitable and protective to them.

We are further told that Themistocles prevailed on the Athenians to build every year twenty new ships of the line—so we may designate the trireme. Whether this number was always strictly adhered to, it is impossible to say; but to repair the ships, as well as to keep up their numbers, was always regarded among the most indispensable obligations of the executive government. It does not appear that the Spartans offered any opposition to the fortification of the Piræus, though it was an enterprise greater, more novel, and more menacing, than that of Athens. But Diodorus tells us, probably enough, that Themistocles thought it necessary to send an embassy to Sparta, intimating that his scheme was to provide a safe harbour for the collective navy of Greece, in the event of future Persian attack.

Works on so vast a scale must have taken a considerable time, and absorbed much of the Athenian force; yet they did not prevent Athens from lending active aid towards the expedition which, in the year after the battle[386] of Platæa (478 B.C.), set sail for Asia under the Spartan Pausanias. Twenty ships from the various cities of the Peloponnesus were under his command: the Athenians alone furnished thirty, under the orders of Aristides and Cimon: other triremes also came from the Ionian and insular allies. They first sailed to Cyprus, in which island they liberated most of the Grecian cities from the Persian government: next, they turned to the Bosporus of Thrace, and undertook the siege of Byzantium, which, like Sestus in the Chersonesus, was a post of great moment, as well as of great strength—occupied by a considerable Persian force, with several leading Persians and even kinsmen of the monarch. The place was captured, seemingly after a prolonged siege: it might probably hold out even longer than Sestus, as being taken less unprepared. The line of communication between the Euxine Sea and Greece was thus cleared of obstruction.

THE MISCONDUCT OF PAUSANIAS

The capture of Byzantium proved the signal for a capital and unexpected change in the relations of the various Grecian cities; a change, of which the proximate cause lay in the misconduct of Pausanias, but towards which other causes, deep-seated as well as various, also tended. In recounting the history of Miltiades, we noticed the deplorable liability of the Grecian leading men to be spoiled by success: this distemper worked with singular rapidity on Pausanias. As conqueror of Platæa, he had acquired a renown unparalleled in Grecian experience, together with a prodigious share of the plunder: the concubines, horses, camels, and gold plate, which had thus passed into his possession, were well calculated to make the sobriety and discipline of Spartan life irksome, while his power also, though great on foreign command, became subordinate to that of the ephors when he returned home. His newly acquired insolence was manifested immediately after the battle, in the commemorative tripod dedicated by his order at Delphi, which proclaimed himself by name and singly, as commander of the Greeks and destroyer of the Persians: an unseemly boast, of which the Lacedæmonians themselves were the first to mark their disapprobation, by causing the inscription to be erased, and the names of the cities who had taken part in the combat to be all enumerated on the tripod. Nevertheless, he was still sent on the command against Cyprus and Byzantium, and it was on the capture of this latter place that his ambition and discontent first ripened into distinct treason. He entered into correspondence with Gongylus the Eretrian exile (now a subject of Persia, and invested with the property and government of a district in Mysia), to whom he entrusted his new acquisition of Byzantium, and the care of the valuable prisoners taken in it. These prisoners were presently suffered to escape, or rather sent away underhand to Xerxes; together with a letter from the hand of Pausanias, himself, to the following effect: “Pausanias, the Spartan commander, having taken these captives, sends them back, in his anxiety to oblige thee. I am minded, if it so please thee, to marry thy daughter, and to bring under thy dominion both Sparta and the rest of Greece: with thy aid, I think myself competent to achieve this. If my proposition be acceptable, send some confidential person down to the sea-board, through whom we may hereafter correspond.”

Xerxes, highly pleased with the opening thus held out, immediately sent down Artabazus (the same who had been second in command in Bœotia)[387] to supersede Megabates in the satrapy of Dascylium; the new satrap, furnished with a letter of reply bearing the regal seal, was instructed to further actively the projects of Pausanias. The letter was to this purport: “Thus saith King Xerxes to Pausanias. Thy name stands forever recorded in my house as a well-doer, on account of the men whom thou hast saved for me beyond sea at Byzantium: and thy propositions now received are acceptable to me. Relax not either night or day in accomplishing that which thou promisest, nor let thyself be held back by cost, either gold or silver, or numbers of men, if thou standest in need of them, but transact in confidence thy business and mine jointly with Artabazus, the good man whom I have now sent, in such manner as may be best for both of us.”

Throughout the whole of this expedition, Pausanias had been insolent and domineering, degrading the allies at quarters and watering-places in the most offensive manner as compared with the Spartans, and treating the whole armament in a manner which Greek warriors could not tolerate, even in a Spartan Heraclid, and a victorious general. But when he received the letter from Xerxes, and found himself in immediate communication with Artabazus, as well as supplied with funds for corruption, his insane hopes knew no bounds, and he already fancied himself son-in-law of the Great King, as well as despot of Hellas. Fortunately for Greece, his treasonable plans were not deliberately laid and veiled until ripe for execution, but manifested with childish impatience. He clothed himself in Persian attire—(a proceeding which the Macedonian army, a century and a half afterwards, could not tolerate, even in Alexander the Great),—he traversed Thrace with a body of Median and Egyptian guards,—he copied the Persian chiefs, both in the luxury of his table and in his conduct towards the free women of Byzantium. Cleonice, a Byzantine maiden of conspicuous family, having been ravished from her parents by his order, was brought to his chamber at night: he happened to be asleep, and being suddenly awakened, knew not at first who was the person approaching his bed, but seized his sword and slew her. Moreover, his haughty reserve, with uncontrolled bursts of wrath, rendered him unapproachable; and the allies at length came to regard him as a despot rather than a general. The news of such outrageous behaviour, and the manifest evidences of his alliance with the Persians, were soon transmitted to the Spartans, who recalled him to answer for his conduct, and seemingly the Spartan vessels along with him.

In spite of the flagrant conduct of Pausanias, the Lacedæmonians acquitted him on the allegations of positive and individual wrong; yet, mistrusting his conduct in reference to collusion with the enemy, they sent out Dorcis to supersede him as commander. But a revolution, of immense importance for Greece, had taken place in the minds of the allies. The headship, or hegemony, was in the hands of Athens, and Dorcis the Spartan found the allies not disposed to recognise his authority.

Even before the battle of Salamis, the question had been raised, whether Athens was not entitled to the command at sea, in consequence of the preponderance of her naval contingent. The repugnance of the allies to any command except that of Sparta, either on land or water, had induced the Athenians to waive their pretensions at that critical moment. But the subsequent victories had materially exalted the latter in the eyes of Greece: while the armament now serving, differently composed from that which had fought at Salamis, contained a large proportion of the newly enfranchised Ionic Greeks, who not only had no preference for Spartan command, but were attached to the Athenians on every ground—as well from kindred race, as[388] from the certainty that Athens with her superior fleet was the only protector upon whom they could rely against the Persians. Moreover, it happened that the Athenian generals on this expedition, Aristides and Cimon, were personally just and conciliating, forming a striking contrast with Pausanias. Hence the Ionic Greeks in the fleet, when they found that the behaviour of the latter was not only oppressive towards themselves but also revolting to Grecian sentiment generally, addressed themselves to the Athenian commanders for protection and redress, on the plausible ground of kindred race; entreating to be allowed to serve under Athens as leader instead of Sparta. The Spartan government about this time recalled Pausanias to undergo an examination, in consequence of the universal complaints against him which had reached them. He seems to have left no Spartan authority behind him,—even the small Spartan squadron accompanied him home: so that the Athenian generals had the best opportunity for insuring to themselves and exercising that command which the allies besought them to undertake. So effectually did they improve the moment, that when Dorcis arrived to replace Pausanias, they were already in full supremacy; while Dorcis, having only a small force, and being in no condition to employ constraint, found himself obliged to return home.

ATHENS TAKES THE LEADERSHIP

This incident, though not a declaration of war against Sparta, was the first open renunciation of her authority as presiding state among the Greeks; the first avowed manifestation of a competitor for that dignity, with numerous and willing followers; the first separation of Greece—considered in herself alone and apart from foreign solicitations, such as the Persian invasion—into two distinct organised camps, each with collective interests and projects of its own. In spite of mortified pride, Sparta was constrained, and even in some points of view not indisposed, to patient acquiescence. The example of their king Leotychides, too, near about this time, was a second illustration of the same tendency. At the same time, apparently, that Pausanias embarked for Asia to carry on the war against the Persians, Leotychides was sent with an army into Thessaly to put down the Aleuadæ and those Thessalian parties who had sided with Xerxes and Mardonius. Successful in this expedition, he suffered himself to be bribed, and was even detected with a large sum of money actually on his person: in consequence of which the Lacedæmonians condemned him to banishment, and razed his house to the ground; he died afterwards in exile at Tegea. Two such instances were well calculated to make the Lacedæmonians distrust the conduct of their Heraclid leaders when on foreign service, and this feeling weighed much in inducing them to abandon the Asiatic headship in favour of Athens. It appears that their Peloponnesian allies retired from this contest at the same time as they did, so that the prosecution of the war was thus left to Athens as chief of the newly emancipated Greeks.

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It was from these considerations that the Spartans were induced to submit to that loss of command which the misconduct of Pausanias had brought upon them. Their acquiescence facilitated the immense change about to take place in Grecian politics. According to the tendencies in progress prior to the Persian invasion, Sparta had become gradually more and more the president of something like a Panhellenic union, comprising the greater part of the Grecian states. Such at least was the point towards which things seemed to be tending; and if many separate states stood aloof from this union, none of them at least sought to form any counter-union, if we except the obsolete and impotent pretensions of Argos.

But the sympathies of the Peloponnesians still clung to Sparta, while those of the Ionian Greeks had turned to Athens: and thus not only the short-lived symptoms of an established Panhellenic union, but even all tendencies towards it from this time disappear. There now stands out a manifest schism, with two pronounced parties, towards one of which nearly all the constituent atoms of the Grecian world gravitate: the maritime states, newly enfranchised from Persia, towards Athens—the land-states, which had formed most part of the confederate army at Platæa, towards Sparta. Along with this national schism and called into action by it, appears the internal political schism in each separate city between oligarchy and democracy. Of course, the germ of these parties had already previously existed in the separate states, but the energetic democracy of Athens, and the pronounced tendency of Sparta to rest upon the native oligarchies in each separate city as her chief support, now began to bestow, on the conflict of internal political parties, an Hellenic importance, and an aggravated bitterness, which had never before belonged to it.

THE CONFEDERACY OF DELOS

The general conditions of the confederacy of Delos were regulated in a common synod of the members appointed to meet periodically for deliberative purposes, in the temple of Apollo and Artemis at Delos—of old, the venerated spot for the religious festivals of the Ionic cities, and at the same time a convenient centre for the members. A definite obligation, either in equipped ships of war or in money, was imposed upon every separate city; and the Athenians, as leaders, determined in which form contribution should be made by each: their assessment must of course have been reviewed by the synod, nor had they at this time power to enforce any regulation not approved by that body. It had been the good fortune of Athens to profit by the genius of Themistocles on two recent critical occasions (the battle of Salamis and the rebuilding of her walls), where sagacity, craft, and decision were required in extraordinary measure, and where pecuniary probity was of less necessity: it was no less her good fortune now—in the delicate business of assessing a new tax and determining how much each state should bear, without precedents to guide them, when unimpeachable honesty in the assessor was the first of all qualities—not to have Themistocles; but to employ in his stead the well-known, we might almost say the ostentatious probity of Aristides. This must be accounted good fortune, since at the moment when Aristides was sent out, the Athenians could not have anticipated that any such duty would devolve upon him. His assessment not only found favour at the time of its original proposition, when it must have been freely canvassed by the assembled allies, but also maintained its place in general esteem, after Athens had degenerated into an unpopular empire.

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Respecting this first assessment, we scarcely know more than one single fact—the aggregate in money was four hundred and sixty talents [equal to about £106,000 or $530,000].

Of the items composing such aggregate, of the individual cities which paid it, of the distribution of obligations to furnish ships and money, we are entirely ignorant: the little information which we possess on these points relates to a period considerably later, shortly before the Peloponnesian War, under the uncontrolled empire then exercised by Athens. Thucydides, in his brief sketch, makes us clearly understand the difference between presiding Athens, with her autonomous and regularly assembled allies in 476 B.C., and imperial Athens, with her subject allies in 432 B.C.; the Greek word equivalent to ally left either of these epithets to be understood, by an ambiguity exceedingly convenient to the powerful states,—and he indicates the general causes of the change: but he gives us few particulars as to the modifying circumstances, and none at all as to the first start. He tells us only that the Athenians appointed a peculiar board of officers, called the hellenotamiæ, to receive and administer the common fund,—that Delos was constituted the general treasury, where the money was to be kept,—and that the payment thus levied was called the phorus; a name which appears then to have been first put into circulation, though afterwards usual, and to have conveyed at first no degrading import, though it afterwards became so odious as to be exchanged for a more innocent synonym.

The public import of the name hellenotamiæ, coined for the occasion, the selection of Delos as a centre, and the provision for regular meetings of the members, demonstrate the patriotic and fraternal purpose which the league was destined to serve. In truth, the protection of the Ægean Sea against foreign maritime force and lawless piracy, as well as that of the Hellespont and Bosporus against the transit of a Persian force, was a purpose essentially public, for which all the parties interested were bound in equity to provide by way of common contribution: any island or seaport which might refrain from contributing, was a gainer at the cost of others: and we cannot doubt that the general feeling of this common danger as well as equitable obligation, at a moment when the fear of Persia was yet serious, was the real cause which brought together so many contributing members, and enabled the forward parties to shame into concurrence such as were more backward.

How it was that the confederacy came to be turned afterwards to the purposes of Athenian ambition, we shall see at the proper time: but in its origin it was an equal alliance, in so far as alliance between the strong and the weak can ever be equal, not an Athenian empire: nay, it was an alliance in which every individual member was more exposed, more defenceless, and more essentially benefited in the way of protection, than Athens.

We have here in truth one of the few moments in Grecian history wherein a purpose at once common, equal, useful, and innocent, brought together spontaneously many fragments of this disunited race, and overlaid for a time that exclusive bent towards petty and isolated autonomy which ultimately made slaves of them all. It was a proceeding equitable and prudent, in principle as well as in detail; promising at the time the most beneficent consequences, not merely protection against the Persians, but a standing police of the Ægean Sea, regulated by a common superintending authority. And if such promise was not realised, we shall find that the inherent defects of the allies, indisposing them to the hearty appreciation and steady performance of their duties as equal confederates, are at least as much chargeable[391] with the failure as the ambition of Athens. We may add that, in selecting Delos as a centre, the Ionic allies were conciliated by a renovation of the solemnities which their fathers, in the days of former freedom, had crowded to witness in that sacred island.

At the time when this alliance was formed, the Persians still held not only the important posts of Eion on the Strymon and Doriscus in Thrace, but also several other posts in that country, which are not specified to us. We may thus understand why the Greek cities on and near the Chalcidic peninsula,—Argilus, Stagiras, Acanthus, Scolus, Olynthus, Spartolus, etc.,—which we know to have joined under the first assessment of Aristides, were not less anxious to seek protection in the bosom of the new confederacy, than the Dorian islands of Rhodes and Cos, the Ionic islands of Samos and Chios, the Æolic Lesbos and Tenedos, or continental towns such as Miletus and Byzantium: by all of whom adhesion to this alliance must have been contemplated, in 477 or 476 B.C., as the sole condition of emancipation from Persia. Nothing more was required for the success of a foreign enemy against Greece generally than complete autonomy of every Grecian city, small as well as great—such as the Persian monarch prescribed and tried to enforce ninety years afterwards, through the Lacedæmonian Antalcidas, in the pacification which bears the name of the latter. Some sort of union, organised and obligatory upon each city, was indispensable to the safety of all. Nor was it by any means certain, at the time when the confederacy of Delos was first formed, that, even with that aid, the Asiatic enemy would be effectually kept out; especially as the Persians were strong, not merely from their own force, but also from the aid of internal parties in many of the Grecian states—traitors within, as well as exiles without.

THE TREASON OF PAUSANIAS

Among these, the first in rank as well as the most formidable, was the Spartan Pausanias. Summoned home from Byzantium to Sparta, in order that the loud complaints against him might be examined, he had been acquitted of the charges of wrong and oppression against individuals; yet the presumptions of medism, or treacherous correspondence with the Persians, appeared so strong that, though not found guilty, he was still not reappointed to the command. Such treatment seems to have only emboldened him in the prosecution of his designs against Greece, and he came out with this view to Byzantium in a trireme belonging to Hermione, under pretence of aiding as a volunteer without any formal authority in the war. He there resumed his negotiations with Artabazus: his great station and celebrity still gave him a strong hold on men’s opinions, and he appears to have established a sort of mastery in Byzantium, from whence the Athenians, already recognised heads of the confederacy, were constrained to expel him by force: and we may be very sure that the terror excited by his presence as well as by his known designs tended materially to accelerate the organisation of the confederacy under Athens. He then retired to Colonæ in the Troad, where he continued for some time in the farther prosecution of his schemes, trying to form a Persian party, despatching emissaries to distribute Persian gold among various cities of Greece, and probably employing the name of Sparta to impede the formation of the new confederacy: until at length the Spartan authorities, apprised of his proceedings, sent a herald out to him, with peremptory orders that he should come home immediately along with the herald:[392] if he disobeyed, “the Spartans would declare war against him,” or constitute him a public enemy.

As the execution of this threat would have frustrated all the ulterior schemes of Pausanias, he thought it prudent to obey; the rather, as he felt entire confidence of escaping all the charges against him at Sparta by the employment of bribes, the means for which were abundantly furnished to him through Artabazus. He accordingly returned along with the herald, and was, in the first moments of indignation, imprisoned by order of the ephors; who, it seems, were legally competent to imprison him, even had he been king instead of regent. But he was soon let out, on his own requisition, and under a private arrangement with friends and partisans, to take his trial against all accusers. Even to stand forth as accuser against so powerful a man was a serious peril: to undertake the proof of specific matter of treason against him was yet more serious: nor does it appear that any Spartan ventured to do either. It was known that nothing short of the most manifest and invincible proof would be held to justify his condemnation, and amidst a long chain of acts carrying conviction when taken in the aggregate, there was no single treason sufficiently demonstrable for the purpose. Accordingly, Pausanias remained not only at large but unaccused, still audaciously persisting both in his intrigues at home and his correspondence abroad with Artabazus. He ventured to assail the unshielded side of Sparta by opening negotiations with the helots, and instigating them to revolt; promising them both liberation and admission to political privilege; with a view, first, to destroy the board of ephors, and render himself despot in his own country, next, to acquire through Persian help the supremacy of Greece. Some of those helots to whom he addressed himself revealed the plot to the ephors, who, nevertheless, in spite of such grave peril, did not choose to take measures against Pausanias upon no better information—so imposing was still his name and position. But though some few helots might inform, probably, many others, both gladly heard the proposition and faithfully kept the secret: we shall find, by what happened a few years afterwards, that there were a large number of them who had their spears in readiness for revolt. Suspected as Pausanias was, yet by the fears of some and the connivance of others, he was allowed to bring his plans to the very brink of consummation: and his last letters to Artabazus, intimating that he was ready for action, and bespeaking immediate performance of the engagements concerted between them, were actually in the hands of the messenger. Sparta was saved from an outbreak of the most formidable kind, not by the prudence of her authorities, but by a mere accident, or rather by the fact that Pausanias was not only a traitor to his country, but also base and cruel in his private relations.

The messenger to whom these last letters were entrusted was a native of Argilus in Thrace, a favourite and faithful slave of Pausanias; once connected with him by that intimate relation which Grecian manners tolerated, and admitted even to the full confidence of his treasonable projects. It was by no means the intention of this Argilian to betray his master; but, on receiving the letter to carry, he recollected, with some uneasiness, that none of the previous messengers had ever come back. Accordingly he broke the seal and read it, with the full view of carrying it forward to its destination, if he found nothing inconsistent with his own personal safety: he had further taken the precaution to counterfeit his master’s seal, so that he could easily reclose the letter. On reading it, he found his suspicions confirmed by an express injunction that the bearer was to be put to death—a discovery which left him no alternative except to deliver it to the ephors.[393] But those magistrates, who had before disbelieved the helot informers, still refused to believe even the confidential slave with his master’s autograph and seal, and with the full account besides, which doubtless he would communicate at the same time, of all that had previously passed in the Persian correspondence. Partly from the suspicion which, in antiquity, always attached to the testimony of slaves, except when it was obtained under the pretended guarantee of torture, partly from the peril of dealing with so exalted a criminal, the ephors would not be satisfied with any evidence less than his own speech and their own ears. They directed the Argilian slave to plant himself as a suppliant in the sacred precinct of Poseidon, near Cape Tænarus, under the shelter of a double tent, or hut, behind which two of them concealed themselves. Apprised of this unexpected mark of alarm, Pausanias hastened to the temple, and demanded the reason: upon which the slave disclosed his knowledge of the contents of the letter, and complained bitterly that, after a long and faithful service,—with a secrecy never once betrayed, throughout this dangerous correspondence,—he was at length rewarded with nothing better than the same miserable fate which had befallen the previous messengers. Pausanias, admitting all these facts, tried to appease the slave’s disquietude, and gave him a solemn assurance of safety if he would quit the sanctuary; urging him at the same time to proceed on the journey forthwith, in order that the schemes in progress might not be retarded.

All this passed within the hearing of the concealed ephors; who at length, thoroughly satisfied, determined to arrest Pausanias immediately on his return to Sparta. They met him in the public street, not far from the temple of Athene Chalciœcus (or of the Brazen House); but as they came near, either their menacing looks, or a significant nod from one of them, revealed to this guilty man their purpose; and he fled for refuge to the temple, which was so near that he reached it before they could overtake him. He planted himself as a suppliant, far more hopeless than the Argilian slave whom he had so recently talked over at Tænarus, in a narrow-roofed chamber belonging to the sacred building; where the ephors, not warranted in touching him, took off the roof, built up the doors, and kept watch until he was on the point of death by starvation. According to a current story, not recognised by Thucydides, yet consistent with Spartan manners, his own mother was the person who placed the first stone to build up the door, in deep abhorrence of his treason. His last moments being carefully observed, he was brought away just in time to expire without, and thus to avoid the desecration of the temple. The first impulse of the ephors was to cast his body into the ravine, or hollow, called the Cæadas, the usual place of punishment for criminals: probably, his powerful friends averted this disgrace, and he was buried not far off, until, some time afterwards, under the mandate of the Delphian oracle, his body was exhumed and transported to the exact spot where he had died. Nor was the oracle satisfied even with this reinterment: pronouncing the whole proceeding to be a profanation of the sanctity of Athene, it enjoined that two bodies should be presented to her as an atonement for the one carried away. In the very early days of Greece, or among the Carthaginians, even at this period, such an injunction would probably have produced the slaughter of two human victims: on the present occasion, Athene, or Hicesius, the tutelary god of suppliants, was supposed to be satisfied by two brazen statues; not, however, without some attempts to make out that the expiation was inadequate.

Thus perished a Greek who reached the pinnacle of renown simply from the accidents of his lofty descent, and of his being general at Platæa, where[394] it does not appear that he displayed any superior qualities. His treasonable projects implicated and brought to disgrace a man far greater than himself, the Athenian Themistocles.

The chronology of this important period is not so fully known as to enable us to make out the full dates of particular events; but we are obliged—in consequence of the subsequent events connected with Themistocles, whose flight to Persia is tolerably well marked as to date—to admit an interval of about nine years between the retirement of Pausanias from his command at Byzantium, and his death. To suppose so long an interval engaged in treasonable correspondence, is perplexing; and we can only explain it to ourselves very imperfectly by considering that the Spartans were habitually slow in their movements, and that the suspected regent may perhaps have communicated with partisans, real or expected, in many parts of Greece. Among those whom he sought to enlist as accomplices was Themistocles, still in great power—though, as it would seem, in declining power—at Athens: and the charge of collusion with the Persians connects itself with the previous movement of political parties in that city.

POLITICAL CHANGES AT ATHENS

The rivalry of Themistocles and Aristides had been greatly appeased by the invasion of Xerxes, which had imposed upon both the peremptory necessity of co-operation against a common enemy. Nor was it apparently resumed, during the times which immediately succeeded the return of the Athenians to their country: at least we hear of both in effective service, and in prominent posts. Themistocles stands forward as the contriver of the city walls and architect of Piræus: Aristides is commander of the fleet, and first organiser of the confederacy of Delos. Moreover, we seem to detect a change in the character of the latter: he had ceased to be the champion of Athenian old-fashioned landed interest, against Themistocles as the originator of the maritime innovations. Those innovations had now, since[395] the battle of Salamis, become an established fact; a fact of overwhelming influence on the destinies and character, public as well as private, of the Athenians. During the exile at Salamis, every man, rich or poor, landed proprietor or artisan, had been for the time a seaman: and the anecdote of Cimon, who dedicated the bridle of his horse in the Acropolis, as a token that he was about to pass from the cavalry to service on shipboard, is a type of that change of feeling which must have been impressed more or less upon every rich man in Athens. From henceforward the fleet is endeared to every man as the grand force, offensive and defensive, of the state, in which character all the political leaders agree in accepting it.

We see by the active political sentiment of the German people, after the great struggles of 1813 and 1814, how much an energetic and successful military effort of the people at large, blended with endurance of serious hardship, tends to stimulate the sense of political dignity and the demand for developed citizenship: and if this be the tendency even among a people habitually passive on such subjects, much more was it to be expected in the Athenian population, who had gone through a previous training of near thirty years under the democracy of Clisthenes. At the time when that constitution was first established, it was perhaps the most democratical in Greece: it had worked extremely well and had diffused among the people a sentiment favourable to equal citizenship and unfriendly to avowed privilege: so that the impressions made by the struggle at Salamis found the popular mind prepared to receive them. Early after the return to Attica, the Clisthenean constitution was enlarged as respects eligibility to the magistracy. According to that constitution, the fourth or last class of the Solonian census, including the considerable majority of the freemen, were not admissible to offices of state, though they possessed votes in common with the rest: no person was eligible to be a magistrate unless he belonged to one of the three higher classes. This restriction was now annulled, and eligibility extended to all the citizens. We may appreciate the strength of feeling with which such reform was demanded, when we find that it was proposed by Aristides, a man the reverse of what is called a demagogue, and a strenuous friend of the Clisthenean constitution. No political system would work after the Persian War, which formally excluded “the maritime multitude” from holding magistracy. We rather imagine that election of magistrates was still retained, and not exchanged for drawing lots until a certain time, though not a long time, afterwards. That which the public sentiment first demanded was the recognition of the equal and open principle: after a certain length of experience, it was found that poor men, though legally qualified to be chosen, were in point of fact rarely chosen: then came the lot, to give them an equal chance with the rich. The principle of sortition, or choice by lot, was never applied, as we have before remarked, to all offices at Athens—never, for example, to the strategi, or generals, whose functions were more grave and responsible than those of any other person in the service of the state, and who always continued to be elected by show of hands.

And it was probably about this period, during the years immediately succeeding the battle of Salamis,—when the force of old habit and tradition had been partially enfeebled by so many stirring novelties,—that the archons were withdrawn altogether from political and military duties, and confined to civil or judicial administration. At the battle of Marathon, the polemarch is a military commander, president of the ten strategi: we know him afterwards only as a civil magistrate, administering justice to the metics,[396] or non-freemen, while the strategi perform military duties without him. The special and important change which characterised the period immediately succeeding the battle of Salamis, was the more accurate line drawn between the archons and the strategi; assigning the foreign and military department entirely to the strategi, and rendering the archons purely civil magistrates,—administrative as well as judicial. It was by some such steps that the Athenian administration gradually attained that complete development which it exhibits in practise during the century from the Peloponnesian War downward, to which nearly all our positive and direct information relates.

THE DOWNFALL OF THEMISTOCLES

With this expansion both of democratical feeling and of military activity at Athens, Aristides appears to have sympathised; and the popularity thus insured to him, probably heightened by some regret for his previous ostracism, was calculated to acquire permanence from his straightforward and incorruptible character, now brought into strong relief from his function as assessor to the new Delian confederacy. On the other hand, the ascendency of Themistocles, though so often exalted by his unrivalled political genius and daring, as well as by the signal value of his public recommendations, was as often overthrown by his duplicity of means and unprincipled thirst for money. New political opponents sprang up against him, men sympathising with Aristides, and far more violent in their antipathy than Aristides himself. Of these, the chief were Cimon, son of Miltiades and Alcmæon; moreover, it seems that the Lacedæmonians, though full of esteem for Themistocles immediately after the battle of Salamis, had now become extremely hostile to him—a change which may be sufficiently explained from his stratagem respecting the fortifications of Athens, and his subsequent ambitious projects in reference to the Piræus. The Lacedæmonian influence, then not inconsiderable in Athens, was employed to second the political combinations against him. He is said to have given offence by manifestations of personal vanity, by continual boasting of his great services to the state, and by the erection of a private chapel, close to his own house, in honour of Artemis Aristobule, or Artemis of admirable counsel; just as Pausanias had irritated the Lacedæmonians by inscribing his own single name on the Delphian tripod, and as the friends of Aristides had displeased the Athenians by endless encomiums upon his justice.

But the main cause of his discredit was the prostitution of his great influence for arbitrary and corrupt purposes. In the unsettled condition of so many different Grecian communities, recently emancipated from Persia, when there was past misrule to avenge, wrong-doers to be deposed and perhaps punished, exiles to be restored, and all the disturbance and suspicions accompanying so great a change of political condition as well as of foreign policy, the influence of the leading men at Athens must have been great in determining the treatment of particular individuals. Themistocles, placed at the head of an Athenian squadron and sailing among the islands, partly for the purposes of war against Persia, partly for organising the new confederacy, is affirmed to have accepted bribes without scruple, for executing sentences just and unjust, restoring some citizens, expelling others, and even putting some to death. We learn this from a friend and guest of Themistocles, the poet Timocreon of Ialysus in Rhodes, who had expected his own restoration from the Athenian commander, but found that it was thwarted[397] by a bribe of three talents from his opponents; so that he was still kept in exile on the charge of medism. The assertions of Timocreon, personally incensed on this ground against Themistocles, are doubtless to be considered as passionate and exaggerated: nevertheless, they are a valuable memorial of the feelings of the time, and are far too much in harmony with the general character of this eminent man to allow of our disbelieving them entirely. Timocreon is as emphatic in his admiration of Aristides as in his censure of Themistocles, whom he denounces as “a lying and unjust traitor.”

Such conduct as that described by this new Archilochus, even making every allowance for exaggeration, must have caused Themistocles to be both hated and feared among the insular allies, whose opinion was now of considerable importance to the Athenians. A similar sentiment grew up partially against him in Athens itself, and appears to have been connected with suspicions of treasonable inclinations towards the Persians. As the Persians could offer the highest bribes, a man open to corruption might naturally be suspected of inclinations towards their cause; and if Themistocles had rendered pre-eminent service against them, so also had Pausanias, whose conduct had undergone so fatal a change for the worse. It was the treason of Pausanias, suspected and believed against him by the Athenians even when he was in command at Byzantium, though not proved against him at Sparta until long afterwards, which first seems to have raised the presumption of medism against Themistocles also, when combined with the corrupt proceedings which stained his public conduct: we must recollect, also, that Themistocles had given some colour to these presumptions, even by the stratagems in reference to Xerxes, which wore a double-faced aspect, capable of being construed either in a Persian or in a Grecian sense. The Lacedæmonians, hostile to Themistocles since the time when he had outwitted them respecting the walls of Athens, and fearing him also as a supposed accomplice of the suspected Pausanias, procured the charge of medism to be preferred against him at Athens; by secret instigations, and, as it is said, by bribes, to his political opponents. But no satisfactory proof could be furnished of the accusation, which Themistocles himself strenuously denied, not without emphatic appeals to his illustrious services. In spite of violent invectives against him from Alcmæon and Cimon, tempered, indeed, by a generous moderation on the part of Aristides, his defence was successful. He carried the people with him and was acquitted of the charge. Nor was he merely acquitted, but, as might naturally be expected, a reaction took place in his favour: his splendid qualities and exploits were brought impressively before the public mind, and he seemed for the time to acquire greater ascendency than ever.

Such a charge, and such a failure, must have exasperated to the utmost the animosity between him and his chief opponents,—Aristides, Cimon, Alcmæon, and others; nor can we wonder that they were anxious to get rid of him by ostracism. In explaining this peculiar process, we have already stated that it could never be raised against any one individual separately and ostensibly, and that it could never be brought into operation at all, unless its necessity were made clear, not merely to violent party men, but also to the assembled senate and people, including, of course, a considerable proportion of the more moderate citizens. We may well conceive that the conjuncture was deemed by many dispassionate Athenians well suited for the tutelary intervention of ostracism, the express benefit of which consisted in its separating political opponents when the antipathy between them threatened to push one or the other into extra-constitutional proceedings—especially when one of those parties was Themistocles, a man alike vast in his[398] abilities and unscrupulous in his morality. Probably also there were not a few wished to revenge the previous ostracism of Aristides: and lastly, the friends of Themistocles himself, elate with his acquittal and his seemingly augmented popularity, might indulge hopes that the vote of ostracism would turn out in his favour, and remove one or other of his chief political opponents. From all these circumstances we learn without astonishment, that a vote of ostracism was soon after resorted to. It ended in the temporary banishment of Themistocles.

He retired into exile, and was residing at Argos, whither he carried a considerable property, yet occasionally visiting other parts of the Peloponnesus, when the exposure and death of Pausanias, together with the discovery of his correspondence, took place at Sparta. Among this correspondence were found proofs, which Thucydides seems to have considered as real and sufficient, of the privity of Themistocles. According to Ephorus and others, he is admitted to have been solicited by Pausanias, and to have known his plans, but to have kept them secret while refusing to co-operate in them, but probably after his exile he took a more decided share in them than before; being well-placed for that purpose at Argos, a city not only unfriendly to Sparta, but strongly believed to have been in collusion with Xerxes at his invasion of Greece. On this occasion the Lacedæmonians sent to Athens, publicly to prefer a formal charge of treason against him, and to urge the necessity of trying him as a Panhellenic criminal before the synod of the allies assembled at Sparta. Whether this latter request would have been granted, or whether Themistocles would have been tried at Athens, we cannot tell: for no sooner was he apprised that joint envoys from Sparta and Athens had been despatched to arrest him, than he fled forthwith from Argos to Corcyra. The inhabitants of that island, though owing gratitude to him and favourably disposed, could not venture to protect him against the two most powerful states in Greece, but sent him to the neighbouring continent.

Here, however, being still tracked and followed by the envoys, he was obliged to seek protection from a man whom he had formerly thwarted in a demand at Athens, and who had become his personal enemy—Admetus, king of the Molossians. Fortunately for him, at the moment when he arrived, Admetus was not at home; and Themistocles, becoming a suppliant to his wife, conciliated her sympathy so entirely, that she placed her child in his arms, and planted him at the hearth in the full solemnity of supplication to soften her husband. As soon as Admetus returned, Themistocles revealed his name, his pursuers, and his danger, entreating protection as a helpless suppliant in the last extremity. He appealed to the generosity of the Epirotic prince not to take revenge on a man now defenceless, for offence given under such very different circumstances; and for an offence too, after all, not of capital moment, while the protection now entreated was to the suppliant a matter of life or death. Admetus raised him up from the hearth with the child in his arms, an evidence that he accepted the appeal and engaged to protect him; refusing to give him up to the envoys, and at last only sending him away on the expression of his own wish to visit the king of Persia. Two Macedonian guides conducted him across the mountains to Pydna, in the Thermaic Gulf, where he found a merchant ship about to set sail for the coast of Asia Minor, and took a passage on board; neither the master nor the crew knowing his name. An untoward storm drove the vessel to the island of Naxos, at that moment besieged by an Athenian armament: had he been forced to land there, he would of course have been recognised and seized, but his wonted[399] subtlety did not desert him. Having communicated both his name and the peril which awaited him, he conjured the master of the ship to assist in saving him, and not to suffer any one of the crew to land; menacing that if by any accident he were discovered, he would bring the master to ruin along with himself, by representing him as an accomplice induced by money to facilitate the escape of Themistocles: on the other hand, in case of safety, he promised a large reward. Such promises and threats weighed with the master, who controlled his crew, and forced them to beat about during a day and a night off the coast, without seeking to land. After that dangerous interval, the storm abated, and the ship reached Ephesus in safety.

Thus did Themistocles, after a series of perils, find himself safe on the Persian side of the Ægean. At Athens, he was proclaimed a traitor, and his property confiscated: nevertheless, as it frequently happened in cases of confiscation, his friends secreted a considerable sum, and sent it over to him in Asia, together with the money which he had left at Argos; so that he was thus enabled liberally to reward the ship-captain who had preserved him. With all this deduction, the property which he possessed of a character not susceptible of concealment, and which was therefore actually seized, was found to amount to eighty talents [about £16,000 or $80,000] according to Theophrastus, to one hundred talents according to Theopompus. In contrast with this large sum, it is melancholy to learn that he had begun his political career with a property not greater than three talents. The poverty of Aristides at the end of his life presents an impressive contrast to the enrichment of his rival.

The escape of Themistocles, and his adventures in Persia, appear to have formed a favourite theme for the fancy and exaggeration of authors a century afterwards: we have thus many anecdotes which contradict either directly or by implication the simple narrative of Thucydides. Thus we are told that at the moment when he was running away from the Greeks, the Persian king also had proclaimed a reward of two hundred talents for his head, and that some Greeks on the coast of Asia were watching to take him for this reward: that he was forced to conceal himself strictly near the coast, until means were found to send him up to Susa in a closed litter, under pretence that it was a woman for the king’s harem: that Mandane, sister of Xerxes, insisted upon having him delivered up to her as an expiation for the loss of her son at the battle of Salamis: that he learned Persian so well, and discoursed in it so eloquently, as to procure for himself an acquittal from the Persian judges, when put upon his trial through the importunity of Mandane: that the officers of the king’s household at Susa, and the satraps on his way back, threatened him with still further perils: that he was admitted to see the king in person, after having received a lecture from the chamberlain on the indispensable duty of falling down before him to do homage, etc., with several other uncertified details, which make us value more highly the narrative of Thucydides. Indeed, Ephorus, Dinon, Clitarchus, and Heraclides, from whom these anecdotes appear mostly to be derived, even affirmed that Themistocles had found Xerxes himself alive and seen him: whereas, Thucydides and Charon, the two contemporary authors, for the former is nearly contemporary, asserted that he had found Xerxes recently dead, and his son Artaxerxes on the throne.

According to Thucydides, the eminent exile does not seem to have been exposed to the least danger in Persia. He presented himself as a deserter from Greece, and was accepted as such: moreover,—what is more strange, though it seems true,—he was received as an actual benefactor of the[400] Persian king, and a sufferer from the Greeks on account of such dispositions, in consequence of his communications made to Xerxes respecting the intended retreat of the Greeks from Salamis, and respecting the contemplated destruction of the Hellespontine bridge. He was conducted by some Persians on the coast up to Susa, where he addressed a letter to the king couched in the following terms, such as probably no modern European king would tolerate except from a Quaker: “I, Themistocles, am come to thee, having done to thy house more mischief than any other Greek, as long as I was compelled in my own defence to resist the attack of thy father—but having also done him yet greater good, when I could do so with safety to myself, and when his retreat was endangered. Reward is yet owing to me for my past service: moreover, I am now here, chased away by the Greeks, in consequence of my attachment to thee, but able still to serve thee with great effect. I wish to wait a year, and then to come before thee in person to explain my views.”

Whether the Persian interpreters, who read this letter to Artaxerxes Longimanus, exactly rendered its brief and direct expression, we cannot say. But it made a strong impression upon him, combined with the previous reputation of the writer, and he willingly granted the prayer for delay: though we shall not readily believe that he was so transported as to show his joy by immediate sacrifice to the gods, by an unusual measure of convivial indulgence, and by crying out thrice in his sleep, “I have got Themistocles the Athenian,”—as some of Plutarch’s authors informed him. In the course of the year granted, Themistocles had learned so much of the Persian language and customs as to be able to communicate personally with the king, and acquire his confidence: no Greek, says Thucydides, had ever before attained such a commanding influence and position at the Persian court. His ingenuity was now displayed in laying out schemes for the subjugation of Greece to Persia, which were eminently captivating to the monarch, who rewarded him with a Persian wife and large presents, sending him down to Magnesia, on the Mæander, not far from the coast of Ionia. The revenues of the district round that town, amounting to the large sum of fifty talents [£10,000 or $50,000] yearly, were assigned to him for bread: those of the neighbouring seaport of Myus, for articles of condiment to his bread, which was always accounted the main nourishment: those of Lampsacus on the Hellespont, for wine. Not knowing the amount of these two latter items, we can not determine how much revenue Themistocles received altogether: but there can be no doubt, judging from the revenues of Magnesia alone, that he was a great pecuniary gainer by his change of country. After having visited various parts of Asia, he lived for a certain time at Magnesia, in which place his family joined him from Athens. How long his residence at Magnesia lasted we do not know, but seemingly long enough to acquire local estimation and leave mementos behind him. He at length died of sickness, when sixty-five years old, without having taken any step towards the accomplishment of those victorious campaigns which he had promised to Artaxerxes. That sickness was the real cause of his death, we may believe on the distinct statement of Thucydides; who at the same time notices a rumour partially current in his own time, of poison voluntarily taken, from painful consciousness on the part of Themistocles himself that the promises made could never be performed—a further proof of the general tendency to surround the last years of this distinguished man with impressive adventures, and to dignify his last moments with a revived feeling, not unworthy of his earlier patriotism. The report may possibly have been designedly circulated by his friends and relatives, in order to conciliate some tenderness[401] towards his memory (his sons still continued citizens at Athens, and his daughters were married there). These friends further stated that they had brought back his bones to Attica, at his own express command, and buried them privately without the knowledge of the Athenians; no condemned traitor being permitted to be buried in Attic soil. If, however, we even suppose that this statement was true, no one could point out with certainty the spot wherein such interment had taken place: nor does it seem, when we mark the cautious expressions of Thucydides, that he himself was satisfied of the fact: moreover, we may affirm with confidence that the inhabitants of Magnesia, when they showed the splendid sepulchral monument erected in honour of Themistocles in their own market-place, were persuaded that his bones were really enclosed within it.

Aristides died about three or four years after the ostracism of Themistocles; but respecting the place and manner of his death, there were several contradictions among the authors whom Plutarch had before him. Some affirmed that he perished on foreign service in the Euxine Sea; others, that he died at home, amidst the universal esteem and grief of his fellow-citizens. A third story, confined to the single statement of Craterus, and strenuously rejected by Plutarch, represents Aristides as having been falsely accused before the Athenian judicature and condemned to a fine of fifty minæ [£180, or $900], on the allegation of having taken bribes during the assessment of the tribute on the allies—which fine he was unable to pay, and was therefore obliged to retire to Ionia, where he died. Dismissing this last story, we find nothing certain about his death except one fact,—but that fact at the same time the most honourable of all,—that he died very poor. It is even asserted that he did not leave enough to pay funeral expenses, that a sepulchre was provided for him at Phalerum at the public cost, besides a handsome donation to his son Lysimachus, and a dowry to each of his two daughters. In the two or three ensuing generations, however, his descendants still continued poor, and even at that remote day, some of them received aid out of the public purse, from the recollection of their incorruptible ancestor. Near a century and a half afterwards, a poor man, named Lysimachus, descendant of the just Aristides, was to be seen at Athens, near the chapel of Iacchus, carrying a mysterious tablet, and obtaining his scanty fee of two oboli [3d. or 6 cents] for interpreting the dreams of the passers-by: Demetrius the Phalerean procured from the people, for the mother and aunt of this poor man, a small daily allowance.

On all these points the contrast is marked when we compare Aristides with Themistocles. The latter, having distinguished himself by ostentatious cost at Olympia, and by a choregic victory at Athens, with little scruple as to the means of acquisition, ended his life at Magnesia in dishonourable affluence greater than ever, and left an enriched posterity both at that place and at Athens. More than five centuries afterwards, his descendant, the Athenian Themistocles, attended the lectures of the philosopher Ammonius at Athens, as the comrade and friend of Plutarch himself.c

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CHAPTER XXIII. THE GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE

The history of this time with its rush of events and its startling changes exhibits on the Athenian side a picture of astonishing and almost preternatural energy.b The transition from the Athenian hegemony to the Athenian empire was doubtless gradual, so that no one could determine precisely where the former ends and the latter begins: but it had been consummated before the thirty years’ truce, which was concluded fourteen years before the Peloponnesian War, and it was in fact the substantial cause of that war. Empire then came to be held by Athens,—partly as a fact established, resting on acquiescence rather than attachment or consent in the minds of the subjects,—partly as a corollary from necessity of union combined with her superior force: while this latter point, superiority of force as a legitimate title, stood more and more forward, both in the language of her speakers and in the conceptions of her citizens. Nay, the Athenian orators of the middle of the Peloponnesian War venture to affirm that their empire had been of this same character ever since the repulse of the Persians: an inaccuracy so manifest, that if we could suppose the speech made by the Athenian Euphemus at Camarina in 415 B.C., to have been heard by Themistocles or Aristides fifty years before, it would have been alike offensive to the prudence of the one and to the justice of the other.

The imperial state of Athens, that which she held at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, when her allies, except Chios and Lesbos, were tributary subjects, and when the Ægean Sea was an Athenian lake, was of course the period of her greatest splendour and greatest action upon the Grecian world. It was also the period most impressive to historians, orators, and philosophers, suggesting the idea of some one state exercising dominion over the Ægean, as the natural condition of Greece, so that if Athens lost such dominion, it would be transferred to Sparta, holding out the dispersed maritime Greeks as a tempting prize for the aggressive[403] schemes of some new conqueror, and even bringing up by association into men’s fancies the mythical Minos of Crete, and others, as having been rulers of the Ægean in times anterior to Athens.

Even those who lived under the full-grown Athenian empire had before them no good accounts of the incidents between 479-450 B.C.; for we may gather from the intimation of Thucydides, as well as from his barrenness of facts, that while there were chroniclers both for the Persian invasion and for the times before, no one cared for the times immediately succeeding. Hence, the little light which has fallen upon this blank has all been borrowed—if we except the careful Thucydides—from a subsequent age; and the Athenian hegemony has been treated as a mere commencement of the Athenian empire: credit has been given to Athens for a long-sighted ambition, aiming from the Persian War downwards at results which perhaps Themistocles may have partially divined, but which only time and successive accidents opened even to distant view. But such systematic anticipation of subsequent results is fatal to any correct understanding, either of the real agents or of the real period; both of which are to be explained from the circumstances preceding and actually present, with some help, though cautious and sparing, from our acquaintance with that which was then an unknown future. When Aristides and Cimon dismissed the Lacedæmonian admiral Dorcis, and drove Pausanias away from Byzantium on his second coming out, they had to deal with the problem immediately before them; they had to complete the defeat of the Persian power, still formidable, and to create and organise a confederacy as yet only inchoate. This was quite enough to occupy their attention, without ascribing to them distant views of Athenian maritime empire.

In that brief sketch of incidents preceding the Peloponnesian War, which Thucydides introduces as “the throwing off of his narrative,” he neither gives, nor professes to give, a complete enumeration of all which actually occurred. During the interval between the first desertion of the Asiatic allies from Pausanias to Athens, in 477 B.C., and the revolt of Naxos in 466 B.C., he recites three incidents only: first, the siege and capture of Eion, on the Strymon, with its Persian garrison; next, the capture of Scyros, and appropriation of the island to Athenian cleruchs, or out-citizens; thirdly, the war with Carystus in Eubœa and reduction of the place by capitulation. It has been too much the practice to reason as if these three events were the full history of ten or eleven years. Considering what Thucydides states respecting the darkness of this period, we might perhaps suspect that they were all which he could learn about it on good authority: and they are all, in truth, events having a near and special bearing on the subsequent history of Athens herself; for Eion was the first stepping-stone to the important settlement of Amphipolis, and Scyros in the time of Thucydides was the property of outlying Athenian citizens, or cleruchs.

Still, we are left in almost entire ignorance of the proceedings of Athens, as conducting the newly established confederate force: for it is certain that the first ten years of the Athenian hegemony must have been years of most active warfare against the Persians. One positive testimony to this effect has been accidentally preserved to us by Herodotus, who mentions, that “before the invasion of Xerxes, there were Persian commanders and garrisons everywhere in Thrace and the Hellespont, all of whom were conquered by the Greeks after that invasion, with the single exception of Mascames, governor of Doriscus, who could never be taken, though many different Grecian attempts were made upon the fortress. Of those who were captured[404] by the Greeks, not one made any defence sufficient to attract the admiration of Xerxes, except Boges, governor of Eion.” Boges, after bravely defending himself, and refusing offers of capitulation, found his provisions exhausted, and further resistance impracticable. He then kindled a vast funeral pile, slew his wives, children, concubines, and family, and cast them into it, threw his precious effects over the wall into the Strymon, and lastly, precipitated himself into the flames. His brave despair was the theme of warm encomium among the Persians, and his relatives in Persia were liberally rewarded by Xerxes. This capture of Eion, effected by Cimon, has been mentioned, as already stated, by Thucydides; but Herodotus here gives us to understand that it was only one of a string of enterprises, all unnoticed by Thucydides, against the Persians. Nay, it would seem from his language, that Mascames maintained himself in Doriscus during the whole reign of Xerxes, and perhaps longer, repelling successive Grecian assaults.

The valuable indication here cited from Herodotus would be of itself a sufficient proof that the first years of the Athenian hegemony were full of busy and successful hostility against the Persians. And in truth this is what we should expect: the battles of Salamis, Platæa, and Mycale, drove the Persians out of Greece, and overpowered their main armaments, but did not remove them at once from all the various posts which they occupied throughout the Ægean and Thrace. Without doubt, the Athenians had to clear the coasts and the islands of a great number of different Persian detachments: an operation never short nor easy, with the then imperfect means of siege, as we may see by the cases of Sestus and Eion; nor, indeed, always practicable, as the case of Doriscus teaches us. The fear of these Persians, yet remaining in the neighbourhood, and even the chance of a renewed Persian invading armament, formed one pressing motive for Grecian cities to join the new confederacy: while the expulsion of the enemy added to it those places which he had occupied. It was by these years of active operations at sea against the common enemy, that the Athenians first established that constant, systematic, and laborious training, among their own ships’ crews, which transmitted itself with continual improvements down to the Peloponnesian War: it was by these, combined with the present fear, that they were enabled to organise the largest and most efficient confederacy ever known among Greeks, to bring together deliberative deputies, to plant their own ascendency as enforcers of the collective resolutions, and to raise a prodigious tax from universal contribution. Lastly, it was by these same operations, prosecuted so successfully as to remove present alarm, that they at length fatigued the more lukewarm and passive members of the confederacy, and created in them a wish either to commute personal service for pecuniary contribution, or to escape from the obligation of service in any way. The Athenian nautical training would never have been acquired, the confederacy would never have become a working reality, the fatigue and discontents among its members would never have arisen, unless there had been a real fear of the Persians, and a pressing necessity for vigorous and organised operations against them, during the ten years between 477 and 466 B.C.

But after a few years several of the confederates becoming weary of personal military service, prevailed upon the Athenians to provide ships and men in their place, and imposed upon themselves in exchange a money payment of suitable amount. This commutation, at first probably introduced to meet some special case of inconvenience, was found so suitable to the taste of all parties that it gradually spread through the larger portion of the[405] confederacy. To unwarlike allies, hating labour and privation, it was a welcome relief, while to the Athenians, full of ardour and patient of labour, as well as discipline, for the aggrandisement of their country, it afforded constant pay for a fleet more numerous than they could otherwise have kept afloat. It is plain from the statement of Thucydides that this altered practice was introduced from the petition of the confederates themselves, not from any pressure or stratagem on the part of Athens. But though such was its real source, it did not the less fatally degrade the allies in reference to Athens, and extinguish the original feeling of equal rights and partnership in the confederacy, with communion of danger as well as of glory, which had once bound them together.

The Athenians came to consider themselves as military chiefs and soldiers, with a body of tribute-paying subjects, whom they were entitled to hold in dominion, and restrict, both as to foreign policy and internal government, to such extent as they thought expedient, but whom they were also bound to protect against foreign enemies. The military force of these subject-states was thus in a great degree transferred to Athens, by their own act, just as that of so many of the native princes in India was made over to the English.

Under such circumstances several of the confederate states grew tired even of paying their tribute, and averse to continuance as members. They made successive attempts to secede, but Athens, acting seemingly in conjunction with the synod, repressed their attempts one after the other, conquering, fining, and disarming the revolters; which was the more easily done, since in most cases their naval force had been in great part handed over to her. As these events took place, not all at once, but successively in different years, the number of mere tribute-paying allies as well as of subdued revolters continually increasing, so there was never any one moment of conspicuous change in the character of the confederacy: the allies slid unconsciously into subjects, while Athens, without any predetermined plan, passed from a chief into a despot. By strictly enforcing the obligations of the pact upon unwilling members, and by employing coercion against revolters, she had become unpopular in the same proportion as she acquired new power, and that, too, without any guilt of her own. In this position, even if she had been inclined to relax her hold upon the tributary subjects, considerations of her own safety would have deterred her from doing so; for there was reason to apprehend that they might place their strength at the disposal of her enemies. It is very certain that she never was so inclined; it would have required a more self-denying public morality than has ever been practised by any state, either ancient or modern, even to conceive the idea of relinquishing voluntarily an immense ascendency as well as a lucrative revenue: least of all was such an idea likely to be conceived by Athenian citizens, whose ambition increased with their power, and among whom the love of Athenian ascendency was both passion and patriotism. But though the Athenians were both disposed and qualified to push all the advantages offered, and even to look out for new, we must not forget that the foundations of their empire were laid in the most honourable causes: voluntary invitation, efforts both unwearied and successful against a common enemy, unpopularity incurred in discharge of an imperative duty, and inability to break up the confederacy without endangering themselves as well as laying open the Ægean Sea to the Persians.

There were two causes, besides that which has just been adverted to, for the unpopularity of imperial Athens. First, the existence of the confederacy,[406] imposing permanent obligations, was in conflict with the general instinct of the Greek mind, tending towards separate political autonomy of each city, as well as with the particular turn of the Ionic mind, incapable of that steady personal effort which was requisite for maintaining the synod of Delos, on its first large and equal basis. Next,—and this is the great cause of all,—Athens, having defeated the Persians, and thrust them to a distance, began to employ the force and the tribute of her subject-allies in warfare against Greeks, wherein these allies had nothing to gain from success, everything to apprehend from defeat, and a banner to fight for, offensive to Hellenic sympathies. On this head, the subject-allies had great reason to complain throughout the prolonged wars of Greek against Greek for the purpose of sustaining Athenian predominance: but on the point of practical grievances or oppression they had little ground for discontent and little feeling of actual discontent. Among the general body of citizens in the subject-allied cities, the feeling towards Athens was rather indifference than hatred: the movement of revolt against her proceeded from small parties of leading men, acting apart from the citizens, and generally with collateral views of ambition for themselves; and the positive hatred towards her was felt chiefly by those who were not her subjects.

It is probable that the same indisposition to personal effort, which prompted the confederates of Delos to tender money payment as a substitute for military service, also induced them to neglect attendance at the synod. But we do not know the steps whereby this assembly, at first an effective reality, gradually dwindled into a mere form and vanished. Nothing, however, can more forcibly illustrate the difference of character between the maritime allies of Athens, and the Peloponnesian allies of Sparta, than the fact that, while the former shrank from personal service, and thought it an advantage to tax themselves in place of it, the latter were “ready enough with their bodies,” but uncomplying and impracticable as to contributions. The contempt felt by these Dorian landsmen for the military efficiency of the Ionians recurs frequently, and appears even to have exceeded what the reality justified: but when we turn to the conduct of the latter twenty years earlier, at the battle of Lade, in the very crisis of the Ionic revolt from Persia, we detect the same want of energy, the same incapacity of personal effort and labour, as that which broke up the confederacy of Delos with all its beneficial promise. To appreciate fully the indefatigable activity and daring, together with the patient endurance of laborious maritime training, which characterised the Athenians of that day, we have only to contrast them with these confederates, so remarkably destitute of both. Amidst such glaring inequalities of merit, capacity, and power, to maintain a confederacy of equal members was impossible: it was in the nature of things that the confederacy should either break up, or be transmuted into an Athenian empire.

It has already been mentioned that the first aggregate assessment of tribute, proposed by Aristides, and adopted by the synod at Delos, was four hundred and sixty talents in money (about £92,000, or $460,000). At that time many of the confederates paid their quota, not in money but in ships; but this practice gradually diminished, as the commutations above alluded to, of money in place of ships, were multiplied, while the aggregate tribute, of course, became larger. It was no more than six hundred talents at the commencement of the Peloponnesian War, forty-six years after the first formation of the confederacy; from whence we may infer that it was never at all increased upon individual members during the interval. For the[407] difference between four hundred and sixty talents and six hundred admits of being fully explained by the numerous commutations of service for money, as well as by the acquisitions of new members, which doubtless Athens had more or less the opportunity of making. It is not to be imagined that the confederacy had attained its maximum number, at the date of the first assessment of tribute: there must have been various cities, like Sinope and Ægina, subsequently added.

Without some such preliminary statements as those just given, respecting the new state of Greece between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, beginning with the Athenian hegemony, or headship, and ending with the Athenian empire, the reader would hardly understand the bearing of those particular events which our authorities enable us to recount; events unhappily few in number, though the period must have been full of action, and not well authenticated as to dates.

The first known enterprise of the Athenians in their new capacity,—whether the first absolutely or not, we cannot determine,—between 476 B.C. and 466 B.C., was the conquest of the important post of Eion, on the Strymon, where the Persian governor, Boges, starved out after a desperate resistance, destroyed himself rather than capitulate, together with his family and precious effects, as has already been stated. The next events named are their enterprises against the Dolopes and Pelasgi in the island of Scyros, seemingly about 470 B.C., and the Dryopes in the town and district of Carystus, in Eubœa. To the latter, who were of a different kindred from the inhabitants of Chalcis and Eretria, and received no aid from them, they granted a capitulation: the former were more rigorously dealt with, and expelled from their island. Scyros was barren, and had little to recommend it, except a good maritime position and an excellent harbour; while its inhabitants, seemingly akin to the Pelasgian residents in Lemnos, prior to the Athenian occupation of that spot, were alike piratical and cruel. Some Thessalian traders, recently plundered and imprisoned by them, had raised a complaint against them before the Amphictyonic synod, which condemned the island to make restitution: the mass of the islanders threw the burden upon those who had committed the crime; and these men, in order to evade payment, invoked Cimon with the Athenian armament who conquered the island, expelled the inhabitants, and peopled it with Athenian settlers.

Such clearance was a beneficial act, suitable to the new character of Athens as guardian of the Ægean Sea against piracy: but it seems also connected with Athenian plans. The island lay very convenient for the communication with Lemnos, which the Athenians had doubtless reoccupied after the expulsion of the Persians, and became, as well as Lemnos, a recognised adjunct, or outlying portion, of Attica: moreover, there were old legends which connected the Athenians with it, as the tomb of their hero Theseus, whose name, as the mythical champion of democracy, was in peculiar favour at the period immediately following the return from Salamis. It was in the year 476 B.C., that the oracle had directed them to bring home the bones of Theseus from Scyros, and to prepare for that hero a splendid entombment and edifice in their new city: they had tried to effect this, but the unsocial manners of the Dolopians had prevented a search, and it was only after Cimon had taken the island that he found, or pretended to find, the body. It was brought to Athens in the year 469 B.C., and after being welcomed by the people in solemn and joyous procession, as if the hero himself had come back, was deposited in the interior of the city; the monument called the Theseum, with its sacred precinct being built on the spot, and invested with[408] the privilege of a sanctuary for men of poor condition who might feel ground for dreading the oppressions of the powerful, as well as for slaves in case of cruel usage. Such were the protective functions of the mythical hero of democracy, whose installation is interesting as marking the growing intensity of democratical feeling in Athens since the Persian War.

THE VICTORIES OF CIMON

It was about two years or more after this incident, that the first breach of union in the confederacy of Delos took place. The important island of Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades,—an island which thirty years before had boasted a large marine force and eight thousand hoplites,—revolted; on what special ground we do not know: but probably the greater islands fancied themselves better able to dispense with the protection of the confederacy than the smaller—at the same time they were more jealous of Athens. After a siege of unknown duration by Athens and the confederate force, it was forced to surrender, and reduced to the condition of a tributary subject; its armed ships being doubtless taken away, and its fortifications razed: whether any fine or ulterior penalty was levied, we have no information.

Though we know no particulars respecting operations against Persia, since the attack on Eion, such operations must have been going on; but the expedition under Cimon, undertaken not long after the Naxian revolt, was attended with memorable results. That commander, having under him two hundred triremes from Athens, and one hundred from the various confederates, was despatched to attack the Persians on the southwestern and southern coast of Asia Minor. He attacked and drove out several of their garrisons from various Grecian settlements, both in Caria and Lycia: among others, the important trading city of Phaselis, though at first resisting, and even standing a siege, was prevailed upon by the friendly suggestions of the Chians in Cimon’s armament to pay a contribution of ten talents and join in the expedition. From the length of time occupied in these various undertakings, the Persian satraps had been enabled to assemble a powerful force, both fleet and army, near the mouth of the river Eurymedon, in Pamphylia, under the command of Tithraustes and Pherendates, both of the regal blood. The fleet, chiefly Phœnician, seems to have consisted of two hundred ships, but a further reinforcement of eighty Phœnician ships was expected, and was actually near at hand, and the commanders were unwilling to hazard a battle before its arrival. Cimon, anxious for the same reason to hasten on the combat, attacked them vigorously: partly from their inferiority of numbers, partly from discouragement at the absence of the reinforcement, they seem to have made no strenuous[409] resistance. They were put to flight and driven ashore, so speedily, and with so little loss to the Greeks, that Cimon was enabled to disembark his men forthwith, and attack the land-force which was drawn up on shore to protect them.

The battle on land was long and gallantly contested, but Cimon at length gained a complete victory, dispersed the army with the capture of many prisoners, and either took or destroyed the entire fleet. As soon as his victory and his prisoners were secured, he sailed to Cyprus for the purpose of intercepting the reinforcement of eighty Phœnician ships in their way, and was fortunate enough to attack them while yet they were ignorant of the victories of the Eurymedon. These ships too were all destroyed, though most of the crews appear to have escaped ashore on the island. Two great victories, one at sea and the other on land, gained on the same day by the same armament, counted with reason among the most glorious of all Grecian exploits, and were extolled as such in the inscription on the commemorative offering to Apollo, set up out of the tithe of the spoils. The number of prisoners, as well as the booty taken by the victors, was immense.

A victory thus remarkable, which thrust back the Persians to the region eastward of Phaselis, doubtless fortified materially the position of the Athenian confederacy against them; but it tended not less to exalt the reputation of Athens, and even to popularise her with the confederates generally, from the large amount of plunder divisible among them. Probably this increased power and popularity stood her in stead throughout her approaching contest with Thasos, and at the same time it explains the increasing fear and dislike of the Peloponnesians.c

Athens, become, within a very few years, from the capital of a small province, in fact though not yet in avowed pretension, the head of an empire, exhibited a new and singular phenomenon in politics, a sovereign people; a people, not, as in many other Grecian democracies, sovereign merely of that state which themselves, maintained by slaves, composed, but supreme over other people in subordinate republics, acknowledging a degree of subjection, yet claiming to be free. Under this extraordinary political constitution philosophy and the arts were beginning to make Athens their principal resort. Migrating from Egypt and the east, they had long been fostered on the western coast of Asia. In Greece itself they had owed some temporary encouragement principally to those called tyrants; the Pisistratidæ at Athens, and Periander at Corinth. But their efforts were desultory and comparatively feeble till the communication with the Asian Greeks, checked and interrupted by their subjection to Persia, was restored, and Athens, chief of the glorious confederacy by whose arms the deliverance had been effected, began to draw everything toward itself as a common centre, the capital of an empire. Already science and fine taste were so far perfected that Æschylus had exhibited tragedy in its utmost dignity, and Sophocles and Euripides were giving it the highest polish, when Cimon returned in triumph to his country.

MITFORD’S VIEW OF THE PERIOD

It was the peculiar felicity of Athens in this period that, of the constellation of great men which arose there, each was singularly fitted for the situation in which the circumstances of the time required him to act; and none filled his place more advantageously than Cimon. But the fate of all those great men, and the resources employed, mostly in vain, to avert it, sufficiently mark, in this splendid era, a defective constitution, and law and justice[410] ill assured. Aristides, we are told, though it is not undisputed, had founded his security upon extreme poverty: Cimon endeavoured to establish himself by a splendid, and almost unbounded, yet politic liberality. To ward against envy, and to secure his party with that tremendous tyrant, as the comic poet not inaptly calls the sovereign people, he made a parade of throwing down the fences of his gardens and orchards in the neighbourhood of Athens, and permitted all to partake of their produce; a table was daily spread at his house for the poorer citizens, but more particularly for those of his own ward, whom he invited from the agora, the courts of justice, or the general assembly; a bounty which both enabled and disposed them to give their time at his call whenever his interest required their support. In going about the city he was commonly attended by a large retinue, handsomely clothed; and if he met an elderly citizen ill clad, he directed one of his attendants to change cloaks with him. To the indigent of higher rank he was equally attentive, lending or giving money, as he found their circumstances required, and always managing his bounty with the utmost care that the object of it should not be put to shame.[42]

His conduct, in short, was a continual preparation for an election; not, as in England, to decide whether the candidate should or should not be a member of the legislature; but whether he should be head of the commonwealth or an exile.[43] In his youth he had affected a roughness of manners, and a contempt for the elegances generally reckoned becoming his rank, and which his fortune enabled him to command. In his riper years he discovered that virtue and grossness have no natural connection: he became himself a model of politeness, patronised every liberal art, and studied to procure elegant as well as useful indulgences for the people. By him were raised the first of those edifices which, for want of a more proper name, we call porticos, under whose magnificent shelter, in their torrid climate, it became the delight of the Athenians to assemble, and pass their leisure in promiscuous conversation. The widely celebrated groves of Academia acknowledged him as the founder of their fame. In the wood, before rude and without water, he formed commodious and elegant walks, and adorned them with running fountains. Nor was the planting of the agora, or great market-place of Athens, with that beautiful tree, the oriental plane, forgotten as a benefit from Cimon; while, ages after him, his trees flourished, affording an agreeable and salutary shade to those who exposed their wares there, and to those who came to purchase them. Much, if not the whole of these things, we are given to understand, was done at his private expense; but our information upon the subject is inaccurate. Those stores, with which his victories had enriched the treasury, probably furnished the sums employed upon some of the public works executed under his direction, as, more especially, the completion of the fortification of the citadel, whose principal defence hitherto, on the southern side, had been the precipitous form of the rock.

While with this splendid and princely liberality Cimon endeavoured to confirm his own interest, he was attentive to promote the general welfare, and to render permanent the superiority of Athens among the Grecian republics. The citizens of the allied states grew daily more impatient of the[411] requisitions regularly made to take their turn of service on shipboard, and longed for uninterrupted enjoyment of their homes, in that security against foreign enemies which their past labours had, they thought, now sufficiently established. But that the common interest still required the maintenance of a fleet was a proposition that could not be denied, while the Persian empire existed, or while the Grecian seas offered temptation for piracy. Cimon therefore proposed that any commonwealth of the confederacy might compound for the personal service of its citizens, by furnishing ships, and paying a sum of money to the common treasury: the Athenians would then undertake the manning of the fleet. The proposal was at the moment popular; most of the allies acceded to it, unaware or heedless of the consequences; for, while they were thus depriving themselves of all maritime force, making that of Athens irresistible, they gave that ambitious republic claims upon them, uncertain in their nature, and which, as they might be made, could now also be enforced, at its pleasure.

Having thus at the same time strengthened itself and reduced to impotence many of the allied states, the Athenian government became less scrupulous of using force against any of the rest which might dispute its sovereign authority. The reduction of Eion, by the confederate arms under Cimon, had led to new information of the value of the adjacent country; where some mines of gold and silver, and a lucrative commerce with the surrounding Thracian hordes, excited avidity. But the people of the neighbouring island of Thasos, very anciently possessed of that commerce, and of the more accessible mines, insisted that these, when recovered from the common enemy by the arms of that confederacy of which they were members, should revert entire to them. The Athenians, asserting the right of conquest, on the contrary, claimed the principal share as their own. The Thasians, irritated, renounced the confederacy. Cimon then was commanded to lead the confederate armament against them. They venturing an action at sea, were defeated; and Cimon, debarking his forces on the island, became quickly master of everything but the principal town, to which he laid siege. The Athenians then hastened to appropriate that inviting territory on the continent, which was their principal object, by sending thither a colony of no less than ten thousand men, partly Athenian citizens, partly from the allied commonwealths.

The Thasians had not originally trusted in their own strength alone for the hope of final success. Early in the dispute they had sent ministers to Lacedæmon, soliciting protection against the oppression of Athens. The pretence was certainly favourable, and the Lacedæmonian government, no longer pressed by domestic troubles, determined to use the opportunity for interfering to check the growing power of the rival commonwealth, so long an object of jealousy, and now become truly formidable. Without a fleet capable of contending with the Athenian, they could not send succour immediately to Thasos: but they were taking measures secretly for a diversion in its favour, by invading Attica, when a sudden and extraordinary calamity, an earthquake which overthrew the city of Sparta, and in its immediate consequences threatened destruction to the commonwealth, compelled them to confine all their attention at home. Nevertheless the siege, carried on with great vigour, and with all the skill of the age under the direction of Cimon, was, during three years, obstinately resisted. Even then the Thasians obtained terms, severe indeed, but by which they obviated the miseries, death often for themselves and slavery for their families, to which Grecian people, less able to defend themselves, were frequently[412] reduced by Grecian arms. Their fortifications however were destroyed; their ships of war were surrendered; they paid immediately a sum of money; they bound themselves to an annual tribute; and they yielded all claim upon the opposite continent, and the valuable mines there.

The sovereignty of the Athenian people over the allied republics would thus gain some present confirmation; but in the principal object their ambition and avarice were, apparently through over-greediness, disappointed. The town of Eion stood at the mouth of the river Strymon. For the new settlement a place called the Nine Ways, a few miles up the river, was chosen; commodious for the double purpose of communicating with the sea, and commanding the neighbouring country. But the Edonian Thracians, in whose territory it was, resenting the encroachment, infested the settlers with irregular but continual hostilities. To put an end to so troublesome a war the whole force of the colony marched against them. As the Greeks advanced, the Edonians retreated; avoiding a general action, while they sent to all the neighbouring Thracian tribes for assistance, as in a common cause. When they were at length assembled in sufficient numbers, having engaged the Greeks far within a wild and difficult country, they attacked, overpowered, and cut in pieces their army, and annihilated the colony.

Cimon, on his return to Athens, did not meet the acclamations to which he had been accustomed. Faction had been busy in his absence. Apparently the fall of the colony of the Nine Ways furnished both instigation and opportunity, perhaps assisted by circumstances of which no information remains. A prosecution was instituted against him, on the pretence, according to the biographers, that he ought to have extended the Athenian dominion by conquest in Macedonia, and that bribes from Alexander, king of that country, had stopped his exertions. The covetous ambition indeed of the Athenian people, inflamed by interested demagogues, was growing boundless. Cimon, indignant at the ungrateful return for a life divided between performing the most important services to his country, and studying how most to gratify the people, would enter little into particulars in refuting a charge, one part of which he considered as attributing to him no crime, the other as incapable of credit, and therefore beneath his regard. He told the assembled people that “they mistook both him and the country which it was said he ought to have conquered. Other generals have cultivated an interest with the Ionians and the Thessalians, whose riches might make an interference in their concerns profitable. For himself, he had never sought any connection with those people; but he confessed he esteemed the Macedonians, who were virtuous and brave, but not rich; nor would he ever prefer riches to those qualities, though he had his satisfaction in having enriched his country with the spoils of its enemies.” The popularity of Cimon was yet great; his principal opponents apparently found it not a time for pushing matters to extremity against him, and such a defence sufficed to procure an honourable acquittal.

Meanwhile Lacedæmon had been in the utmost confusion and on the brink of ruin. In the year 464 B.C. the earthquake came suddenly at mid-day, with a violence before unheard of. The youths of the principal families, assembled in the gymnasium at the appointed hour for exercise, were in great numbers crushed by its fall: many of both sexes and of all ages were buried under the ruins of other buildings: the shocks were repeated; the earth opened in several places; vast fragments from the summits of Taygetus were tumbled down its sides: in the end only five houses remained[413] standing in Sparta, and it was computed that twenty thousand lives were lost.

The first strokes of this awful calamity filled all ranks with the same apprehensions. But, in the continuance of it, that wretched multitude, excluded from all participation in the prosperity of their country, began to found hope on its distress: a proposal, obscurely made, was rapidly communicated, and the helots assembled from various parts with one purpose, of putting their severe masters to death, and making the country their own. The ready foresight and prudent exertion of Archidamus, who had succeeded his grandfather Leotychides in the throne of the house of Procles, preserved Lacedæmon. In the confusion of the first alarm, while some were endeavouring to save their most valuable effects from the ruins of the city, others flying various ways for personal safety, Archidamus, collecting what he could of his friends and attendants about him, caused trumpets to sound to arms, as if an enemy were at hand. The Lacedæmonians, universally trained to the strictest military discipline, obeyed the signal; arms were the only necessaries sought; and civil rule, dissipated by the magnitude of the calamity, was, for the existing circumstances, most advantageously supplied by military order. The helots, awed by the very unexpected appearance of a regular army instead of a confused and flying multitude, desisted from their meditated attempt; but, quitting the city, spread themselves over the country, and excited their fellows universally to rebellion.

The greater part of those miserable men, whom the Lacedæmonians held in so cruel a bondage, were descendants of the Messenians, men of the same blood with themselves, Greeks and Dorians. Memory of the wars of their ancestors, of their hero Aristomenes, and of the defence of Ithome, was not obsolete among them. Ithome accordingly they seized and made their principal post; and they so outnumbered the Lacedæmonians that, though deficiently armed, yet, being not without discipline acquired in attendance upon their masters in war, they were capable of being formidable even in the field. Nor was it thus only that the rebellion was distressing.[44] The Lacedæmonians, singularly ready and able in the use of arms, were singularly helpless in almost every other business. Deprived of their slaves they were nearly deprived of the means of subsistence; agriculture stopped, and mechanic arts ceased. Application was therefore made to the neighbouring allies for succour. The zealous friendship of the Æginetans upon the occasion we find afterwards acknowledged by the Lacedæmonian government, and assistance came from as far as Platæa. Thus re-enforced the spirited and well-directed exertions of Archidamus quickly so far reduced the rebellion that the insurgents remaining in arms were blockaded in Ithome. But the extraordinary natural strength of that place, the desperate obstinacy of the defenders, and the deficiency of the assailants in the science of attack, giving reason to apprehend that the business might not be soon accomplished, the Lacedæmonians sent to desire assistance from the Athenians, who were esteemed, beyond the other Greeks, experienced and skilful in the war of sieges.

This measure seems to have been on many accounts imprudent. There was found at Athens a strong disposition to refuse the aid. But Cimon, who, with a universal liberality, always professed particular esteem for the Lacedæmonians, prevailed upon his countrymen to take the generous part; and a considerable body of forces marched under his command into the Peloponnesus.[414] Upon their arrival at the camp of the besiegers an assault upon the place was attempted, but with so little success that recourse was again had to the old method of blockade. It was in the leisure of that inactive and tedious mode of attack that principally arose those heartburnings which first occasioned an avowed national aversion between the Athenians and Lacedæmonians, and led, not indeed immediately, but in a direct line, to the fatal Peloponnesian War. All the prudence and all the authority of Cimon could not prevent the vivacious spirit of the Athenians from exulting, perhaps rather insultingly, in the new pre-eminence of their country; wherever danger called, they would be ostentatiously forward to meet it; and an assumed superiority, without a direct pretension to it, was continually appearing.

The Spartan pride was offended by their arrogance; the Spartan gravity was disturbed by their lively forwardness: it began to be considered that, though Greeks, they were Ionians, whom the Peloponnesians considered as an alien race; and it occurred that if, in the continuance of the siege, any disgust should arise, there was no security that they might not renounce their present engagements, and even connect themselves with the helots; who, as Greeks, had, not less than the Lacedæmonians, a claim to friendship and protection from every other Grecian people. Mistrust thus arose on one side; disgust became quickly manifest on both; and the Lacedæmonians shortly resolved to dismiss the Athenian forces. This however they endeavoured to do, as far as might be, without offence, by declaring that an “assault having been found ineffectual, the assistance of the Athenians was superfluous for the blockade, and the Lacedæmonians would not give their allies unnecessary trouble.” All the other allies were however retained, and the Athenians alone returned home; so exasperated by this invidious distinction that, on their arrival at Athens, the party adverse to Cimon proposing a decree for renouncing the confederacy with Lacedæmon, it was carried. An alliance with Argos, the inveterate enemy of Sparta, immediately followed; and soon after the Thessalians acceded to the new confederacy.

While Lacedæmon was engaged with this dangerous insurrection, a petty war arose in the Peloponnesus, affording one of the most remarkable, among the many strong instances on record, of the miseries to which the greater part of Greece was perpetually liable from the defects of its political system. Argos, the capital of Argolis, and formerly of the Peloponnesus under the early kings of the Danaan race, or perhaps before them, lost its preeminence, as we have already seen, during the reigns of the Persidæan and Pelopidæan princes, under whom Mycenæ became the first city of Greece. On the return of the Heraclidæ, Temenus fixed his residence at Argos, which thus regained its superiority. But, as the oppressions, arising from a defective political system, occasioned very generally through Greece the desire, so the troubles of the Argive government gave the means for the inferior towns to become independent republics. Like the rest, or perhaps more than the rest, generally oppressive, that government was certainly often ill-conducted and weak; and Lacedæmon, its perpetual enemy, fomented the rebellious disposition of its dependencies. During the ancient wars of Sparta and Messenia, the Argives had expelled the people of their towns of Asine and Nauplia, and forced them to seek foreign settlements; a resource sufficiently marking a government both weak and oppressive. Mycenæ was now a much smaller town than Argos; but its people, encouraged by Lacedæmon, formed lofty pretensions. The far-famed temple of Juno, the tutelar deity of the country, situated about five miles from[415] Argos, and little more than one from Mycenæ, was considered by the Argives as theirs; and, from the time, it was supposed, of the Heraclidæ, the priestess had been appointed and the sacred ceremonies administered under the protection of their government. Nevertheless the Mycenæans now claimed the right to this superintendency. The games of Nemea, from their institution, or, as it was called, their restoration, had been under the direction of the Argives; but the Mycenæan government claimed also the prior right to preside there. These however were but branches of a much more important claim; for they wanted only power, or sufficient assistance from Sparta, to assert a right of sovereignty over Argos itself and all Argolis; and they were continually urging another pretension, not the less invidious to Argos because better founded, a pretension to merit with all the Greek nation for having joined the confederacy against Persia, while the Argives allied themselves with the common enemy of Greece. The favourable opportunity afforded by the helot rebellion was eagerly seized by the Argives for ridding themselves of such troublesome and dangerous neighbours, whom they considered as rebellious subjects. Laying siege to Mycenæ they took the place, reduced the surviving people to slavery, and dedicating a tenth of the spoil to the gods destroyed the town, which was never rebuilt.

At Athens, after the banishment of Themistocles, Cimon remained long in possession of a popularity which nothing could resist; and his abilities, his successes, and his moderation, his connection with the aristocratical interest, and his favour with the people, seemed altogether likely to insure, if anything could insure, permanency and quiet to his administration. But in Athens, as in every free government, there would always be a party adverse to the party in the direction of public affairs: matters had been for some time ripening for a change; and the renunciation of the Lacedæmonian alliance was the triumph of the opposition.d

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XXIV. THE RISE OF PERICLES

Cimon was beyond dispute the ablest and most successful general of his day: and his victories had shed a lustre on the arms of Athens, which almost dimmed the glories of Marathon and Salamis. But while he was gaining renown abroad, he had rivals at home, who were endeavouring to supplant him in the affections of the people, and to establish a system of domestic and foreign policy directly counter to his views, and were preparing contests for him in which his military talents would be of little avail. While Themistocles and Aristides were occupying the political stage, an extraordinary genius had been ripening in obscurity, and was only waiting for a favourable juncture to issue from the shade into the broad day of public life. Xanthippus, the conqueror of Mycale, had married Agariste, a descendant of the famous Clisthenes, and had left two sons, Ariphron and Pericles. Of Ariphron little is known beside his name: but Pericles, to an observing eye, gave early indications of a mind formed for great things, and a will earnestly bent on them.

In his youth he had not rested satisfied with the ordinary Greek education, but had applied himself, with an ardour which was not even abated by the lapse of years, nor stifled by his public avocations, to intellectual pursuits, which were then new at Athens, and confined to a very narrow circle of inquisitive spirits. His birth and fortune afforded him the means of familiar intercourse with all the men most eminent in every kind of knowledge and art, who were already beginning to resort to Athens as a common seat of learning. Thus, though Pythoclides taught him to touch the cithara, he sought the elements of a higher kind of music in the lessons of Damon, who was believed to have contributed mainly to train him for his political career: himself no ordinary person; for he was held up by the comic poets to public jealousy, as a secret favourer of tyranny, and was driven from Athens by the process of ostracism. But Pericles also entered with avidity into the abstrusest philosophical speculations, and even took pleasure in the arid subtleties of the Eleatic school, or at[417] least in the ingenuity and the dialectic art with which they were unfolded to him by Zeno. But his principal guide in such researches, and the man who appears to have exercised the most powerful and durable influence on his mind and character, was the philosopher Anaxagoras, with whom he was long united in intimate friendship. Not only his public and private deportment, and his habits of thought, but the tone and style of his eloquence were believed to have been formed by his intercourse with Anaxagoras. It was commonly supposed that this effect was produced by the philosopher’s physical speculations, which, elevating his disciple above the ignorant superstition of the vulgar, had imparted to him the serene condescension and dignified language of a superior being. But we should be loth to believe that it was the possession of such physical secrets as Anaxagoras was able to communicate, that inspired Pericles with his lofty conceptions, or that he was intoxicated with the little taste of science which had weaned him from a few popular prejudices. We should rather ascribe so deep an impression to the distinguishing tenet of the Anaxagorean system, by which the philosopher himself was supposed to have acquired the title of Mind.

It was undoubtedly not for the mere amusement of his leisure that Pericles had enriched his mind with so many rare acquirements. All of them were probably considered by him as instruments for the use of the statesman: and even those which seemed most remote from all practical purposes, may have contributed to the cultivation of that natural eloquence, to which he owed so much of his influence. He left no specimens of his oratory behind him, and we can only estimate it, like many other fruits of Greek genius, by the effect it produced. The few minute fragments preserved by Plutarch, which were recorded by earlier authors because they had sunk deep in the mind of his hearers, seem to indicate that he loved to concentrate his thoughts in a bold and vivid image: as when he called Ægina the eyesore of Piræus, and said that he descried war lowering from the Peloponnesus. But though signally gifted and accomplished for political action, it was not without much hesitation and apprehension that he entered on a field, where he saw ample room indeed for the display of his powers, but also many enemies and great dangers. The very superiority of which he could not but be conscious, suggested a motive for alarm, as it might easily excite suspicion in the people of views adverse to their freedom: and these fears were heightened by some circumstances, trifling in themselves, but capable of awakening or confirming a popular prejudice.

His personal appearance was graceful and majestic, notwithstanding a remarkable disproportion in the length of his head, which became a subject of inexhaustible pleasantry for the comic poets of this day: but the old men who remembered Pisistratus, were struck by the resemblance which they discovered between the tyrant and the young heir of the Alemæonids, and not only in their features, but in the sweetness of voice, and the volubility of utterance, with which both expressed themselves. Still, after the ostracism of Themistocles, and the death of Aristides, while Cimon was engaged in continual expeditions, Pericles began to present himself more and more to the public eye, and was soon the acknowledged chief of a powerful party, which openly aimed at counteracting Cimon’s influence, and introducing opposite maxims into the public counsels.

To some of the ancients indeed it appeared that the course of policy adopted by Pericles was entirely determined by the spirit of emulation, which induced him to take a different ground from that which he found already occupied by Cimon: and that, as Cimon was at the head of the[418] aristocratical party which had been represented by Aristides, he therefore placed himself in the front of that which had been led by Themistocles. The difference between these parties, after the revolution by which the ancestor of Pericles had undermined the power of the old aristocracy, was for some time very faintly marked, and we have seen that Aristides himself was the author of a very democratical measure, which threw the first officers of the state open to all classes of the citizens. The aristocracy had no hope of recovering what it had lost; but, as the commonalty grew more enterprising, it became also more intent on keeping all that it had retained, and on stopping all further innovation at home. Abroad too, though it was no longer a question, whether Athens should continue to be a great maritime power, or should reduce her navy to the footing of the old naucraries, and though Cimon himself had actively pursued the policy of Themistocles, there was room for great difference of opinion as to the course which was to be followed in her foreign relations. The aristocratical party wished, for their own sake at least as much as for that of peace and justice, to preserve the balance of power as steady as possible in Greece, and directed the Athenian arms against the Persian empire with the greater energy, in the hope of diverting them from intestine warfare. The democratical party had other interests, and concurred only with that part of these views which tended towards enriching and aggrandising the state.

It is difficult wholly to clear Pericles from the charge of having been swayed by personal motives in the choice of his political system, as it would be to establish it. But even if it were certain that his decision was not the result of conviction, it might as fairly be attributed to a hereditary prepossession in favour of the principles for which his ancestors had contended, and which had probably been transmitted in his family, as to his competition with Cimon, or to his fear of incurring the suspicion that he aimed at a tyranny, or unconstitutional power; a suspicion to which he was much more exposed in the station which he actually filled. But if his personal character might seem better adapted to an aristocratical than to a democratical party, it must also render us unwilling to believe, that he devoted himself to the cause of the commonalty merely that he might make it the instrument of his own ambition. There seems to be much better ground for supposing that he deliberately preferred the system which he adopted, as the most consistent, if not alone reconcilable, with the prosperity and safety of Athens: though his own agency in directing and controlling it might be a prominent object in all his views. But he might well think that the people had gone too far to remain stationary, even if there was any reason why it should not seize the good which lay within its reach. Its greatness had risen with the growth of the commonalty, and, it might appear to him, could only be maintained and extended by the same means: at home by a decided ascendency of the popular interest over that of the old aristocracy, and every other class in the state; abroad by an equally decided supremacy over the rest of Greece.

The contest between the parties seems for some time to have been carried on, without much violence or animosity, and rather with a noble emulation in the service of the public, than with assaults on one another. Cimon had enriched his country with the spoil and ransom of the Persians; and he had also greatly increased his private fortune. His disposition was naturally inclined to liberality, and he made a munificent use of his wealth.

The state of things had undergone a great change at Athens in favour of the poorer class, since Solon had been obliged to interpose, to protect them from the rigour of creditors, who first impoverished, and then enslaved[419] them. Since this time the aristocracy had found it expedient to court the commonalty which it could no longer oppress, and to part with a portion of its wealth for the sake of retaining its power. There were of course then, as at all times, benevolent individuals, who only consulted the dictates of a generous nature: but the contrast between the practice which prevailed before and after the age of Solon, seems clearly to mark the spurious origin of the ordinary beneficence. Yet Isocrates, when he extols the bounty of the good old times, which prevented the pressure of poverty from being ever felt, speaks of land granted at low rents, sums of money advanced at low interest, and asserts that none of the citizens were then in such indigence, as to depend on casual relief. Cimon’s munificence therefore must have been remarkable, not only in its degree, but in its kind: and was not the less that of a demagogue, because he sought popularity, not merely for his own sake, but for that of his order and his party.

Such was the light in which it was viewed by Pericles; and some of the measures which most strongly marked his administration were adopted to counteract its effects. He was not able to rival Cimon’s profusion, and he even husbanded his private fortune with rigid economy, that he might keep his probity in the management of public affairs free both from temptation and suspicion. His friend Demonides is said first to have suggested the thought of throwing Cimon’s liberality into the shade, and rendering it superfluous, by proposing a similar application of the public revenue. Pericles perhaps deemed it safer and more becoming, that the people should supply the poorer citizens with the means of enjoyment out of its own funds, than that they should depend on the bounty of opulent individuals. He might think that the generation which had raised their country to such a pitch of greatness, was entitled to reap the fruits of the sacrifice which their fathers had made, in resigning the produce of the mines of Laurium to the use of the state.

Very early therefore he signalised his appearance in the assembly by becoming the author of a series of measures, all tending to provide for the subsistence and gratification of the poorer class at the public expense. But we must here observe, that, while he was courting the favour of the multitude by these arts, he was no less studious to command its respect. From his first entrance into public life, he devoted himself with unremitting application to business; he was never to be seen out of doors, but on the way between his house and the seat of council: and, as if by way of contrast to Cimon’s convivial tastes, declined all invitations to the entertainments of his acquaintance—once only during the whole period he broke through this rule, to honour the wedding of his relative Euryptolemus with his presence—and confined himself to the society of a very select circle of intimate friends. He bestowed the most assiduous attention on the preparation of his speeches, and so little disguised it, that he used to say he never mounted the bema, without praying that no inappropriate word might drop from his lips. The impression thus produced was heightened by the calm majesty of his air and carriage, and by the philosophical composure which he maintained under all provocations.[45] And he was so careful to avoid the effect which familiarity might have on the people, that he was sparing even in his attendance at the assembly, and, reserving his own appearance for great occasions, carried many of his measures through the agency of his friends[420] and partisans. Among them the person whose name is most frequently associated with that of Pericles was Ephialtes, son of Sophonides, a person not much less conspicuous for his rigid integrity than Aristides himself, and who seems to have entered into the views of Pericles with disinterested earnestness, and fearlessly to have borne the brunt of the conflict with the opposite party.

Immediately after the conquest of Thasos an occasion occurred for the two parties to measure their strength. As has been described, Cimon had received instructions, before he brought home his victorious armament, to attempt some further conquest on the mainland between the newly conquered district and Macedonia. Plutarch says, that he was expected to have invaded Macedonia, and to have added a large tract of it to the dominions of Athens. Yet it does not clearly appear how the conquest of Thasos afforded an opportunity of effecting this with greater ease: nor is any motive suggested for such an attack on the territories of Alexander. We might hence be inclined to suspect, that the expedition which Cimon had neglected to undertake, though called for by the people’s wishes, if not by their express orders, was to have been directed, not against Macedonia, but against the Thracian tribes on its frontier, who had so lately cut off their colonists on the Strymon: a blow which the Athenians were naturally impatient to avenge, but which the king of Macedonia might well be supposed to have witnessed without regret, even if he did not instigate those who inflicted it. However this may be, Cimon’s forbearance disappointed and irritated the people, and his adversaries inflamed the popular indignation by ascribing his conduct to the influence of Macedonian gold. This part of the charge at least was undoubtedly groundless; and Pericles, though appointed by the people one of Cimon’s accusers, when he was brought to trial for treason, seems to have entered into the prosecution with reluctance. The danger however was great, and Elpinice came to the house of Pericles to plead with him for her brother. Pericles, playfully, though it would seem not quite so delicately as our manners would require, reminded her that she was past the age at which female intercession is most powerful; but in effect he granted her request; for he kept back the thunder of his eloquence, and only rose once, for form’s sake, to second the accusation. Plutarch says that Cimon was acquitted; and there seems to be no reason for doubting the fact, except a suspicion, that this was the trial to which Demosthenes alludes, when he says that Cimon narrowly escaped with his life, and was condemned to a penalty of fifty talents: a singular repetition of his father’s destiny.

THE AREOPAGUS

This however was only a prelude to a more momentous struggle, which involved the principles of the parties, and excited much stronger feelings of mutual resentment. It appears to have been about this time that Pericles resolved on attacking the aristocracy in its ancient and revered stronghold, the Areopagus. We have seen that this body, at once a council and a court of justice, was composed, according to Solon’s regulation, of the ex-archons. Its character was little altered after the archonship was filled by lot, so long as it was open to none but citizens of the wealthiest class. But, by the innovation introduced by Aristides, the poorest Athenian might gain admission to the Areopagus. Still the change which this measure produced in its composition was probably for a long time scarcely perceptible, and attended with no effect on its maxims and proceedings. When Pericles made his attack[421] on it, it was perhaps as much as ever an aristocratical assembly. The greater part of the members had come in under the old system, and most of those who followed them probably belonged to the same class; for though in the eye of the law the archonship had become open to all, it is not likely that many of a lower station would immediately present themselves to take their chance. But even if any such were successful, they could exert but little influence on the general character of the council, which would act much more powerfully on them. The poor man who took his seat among a number of persons of superior rank, fortune, and education, would generally be eager to adopt the tone and conform to the wishes of his colleagues; and hence the prevailing spirit might continue for many generations unaltered. This may be the main point which Isocrates had in view, when he observed that the worst men, as soon as they entered the Areopagus, seemed to change their nature. Pericles therefore had reason to consider it as a formidable obstacle to his plans. He did not however attempt, or perhaps desire, to abolish an institution so hallowed by tradition; but he aimed at narrowing the range of its functions, so as to leave it little more than an august name. Ephialtes was his principal coadjutor in this undertaking, and by the prominent part which he took in it exposed himself to the implacable enmity of the opposite party, which appears to have set all its engines in motion to ward off the blow.

It is not certain whether this struggle had begun, or was only impending, at the time of the embassy which came from Sparta to request the aid of the Athenians against Ithome. But the two parties were no less at variance on this subject than on the other. The aristocratical party considered Sparta as its natural ally, and did not wish to see Athens without a rival in Greece. Cimon was personally attached to Sparta, possessed the confidence of the Spartans, and took every opportunity of expressing the warmest admiration for their character and institutions; and, to mark his respect for them, gave one of his sons the name of Lacedæmonius. He himself was in some degree indebted to their patronage for his political elevation, and had requited their favour by joining with them in the persecution of Themistocles. When therefore Ephialtes dissuaded the people from granting the request of the Spartans, and exclaimed against the folly of raising a fallen antagonist, Cimon urged them “not to permit Greece to be lamed, and Athens to lose her yoke-fellow.” This advice prevailed, and Cimon was sent with a large force to assist the Spartans at the siege of Ithome.

The first effect produced by the affront Sparta later gave to Athens, was, as we have seen, a resolution to break off all connection with Sparta, and, to make the rupture more glaring, they had entered into an alliance with Sparta’s old rival, Argos.

This turn of events was extremely agreeable to the democratical party at Athens, not only in itself, on account of the assistance which they might hope to receive from Argos, but because it immediately afforded them a great advantage in their conflict with their domestic adversaries, and in particular furnished them with new arms against Cimon. He instantly became obnoxious, both as the avowed friend of Sparta, and as the author and leader of the expedition which had drawn so rude an insult on his countrymen. The attack on the authority of the Areopagus was now prosecuted with greater vigour, and Cimon had little influence left to exert in its behalf. Yet his party seems not by any means to have remained passive, but to have put forth all its strength in a last effort to save its citadel: and it was supported by an auxiliary which had in its possession some very powerful engines to wield in its defence.

[422]

This was the poet Æschylus, who was attached to it by his character and his early associations. Himself a Eupatrid, perhaps connected with the priestly families of Eleusis, his deme, if not his birth-place, he gloried in the laurels which he had won at Marathon, above all the honours earned by his sword and by his pen, though he had also fought at Salamis, and had founded a new era of dramatic poetry. He was an admirer of Aristides, whose character he had painted in one of his tragedies, under the name of an ancient hero, with a truth which was immediately recognised by the audience.

The contest with Persia, which was the subject of one of his great works, probably appeared to him the legitimate object for the energies of Greece. Beside this general disposition to side with Cimon’s party, against Pericles, the whole train of his poetical and religious feelings was nourished by a study of the mythical and religious traditions of Greek antiquity. In his tragedy, entitled the Eumenides, he exhibits the mythical origin of the court and council of Areopagus, in the form which best suited his purpose, tracing it to the cause first pleaded there between the Argive matricide Orestes, who pledges his country to eternal alliance with Athens, and the “dread goddesses,” who sought vengeance for the blood which he had shed. The poet brings these terrible beings on the stage, as well as the tutelary goddess of the city, who herself institutes the tribunal, “to last throughout all ages,” and exhorts her people to preserve it as the glory and safeguard of the city; and the spectators are led to consider the continuance of the blessings which the pacified avengers promise to the land, as depending on the permanence of the institution which had succeeded to their function.b

Owing to a misunderstanding as to the date of this tragedy, it was long believed that Æschylus wrote it in reproof of Pericles for diminishing the power of the Areopagus. When it became certain that the play was not produced till 458, a new light was thrown on the affair, showing Æschylus as a defender of the merely judicial function of the Areopagus, for Pericles and Ephialtes left the Areopagus its judicial dignity and merely removed its political weight, as will be more fully shown in a later chapter. Æschylus therefore appears as one in no sense protesting, but rather as showing the true origin and strictly judicial function of the Areopagus, and approving Ephialtes who carried the day and reduced its pretensions.a

[423]

CIMON EXILED

This triumph of Pericles and his party over the Areopagus seems to have been immediately followed by the ostracism of Cimon, which took place about two years after the return of the Athenians from Messenia: and it is therefore not improbable that his exile may have been not so much an effect of popular resentment, as a measure of precaution, which may have appeared necessary even to the moderate men of both parties, for the establishment of public tranquillity.b

The new character which Athens had assumed, as a competitor for landed alliances not less than for maritime ascendency, came opportunely for the protection of the neighbouring town of Megara. It appears that Corinth, perhaps instigated like Argos by the helplessness of the Lacedæmonians, had been making border encroachments—on the one side upon Cleonæ, on the other side upon Megara: on which ground the latter, probably despairing of protection from Lacedæmon, renounced the Lacedæmonian connection, and obtained permission to enrol herself as an ally of Athens. This was an acquisition of signal value to the Athenians, since it both opened to them the whole range of territory across the outer Isthmus of Corinth to the interior of the Crissæan gulf, on which the Megarian port of Pegæ was situated, and placed them in possession of the passes of Mount Geranea, so that they could arrest the march of a Peloponnesian army over the isthmus, and protect Attica from invasion. It was moreover of great importance in its effects on Grecian politics: for it was counted as a wrong by Lacedæmon, gave deadly offence to the Corinthians, and lighted up the flames of war between them and Athens; their allies the Epidaurians and Æginetans taking their part. Though Athens had not yet been guilty of unjust encroachment against any Peloponnesian state, her ambition and energy had inspired universal awe; while the maritime states in the neighbourhood, such as Corinth, Epidaurus, and Ægina, saw these terror-striking qualities threatening them at their own doors, through her alliance with Argos and Megara. Moreover, it is probable that the ancient feud between the Athenians and Æginetans, though dormant since a little before the Persian invasion, had never been appeased or forgotten: so that the Æginetans, dwelling within sight of Piræus, were at once best able to appreciate, and most likely to dread, the enormous maritime power now possessed by Athens. Pericles was wont to call Ægina the eyesore of Piræus: but we may be sure that Piræus, grown into a vast fortified port within the existing generation, was in a much stronger degree the eyesore of Ægina.

The Athenians were at this time actively engaged in prosecuting the war against Persia, having a fleet of no less than two hundred sail, equipped by or from the confederacy collectively, now serving in Cyprus and on the Phœnician coast. Moreover the revolt of the Egyptians under Inarus (about 460 B.C.) opened to them new means of action against the Great King. Their fleet, by invitation of the rebels, sailed up the Nile to Memphis, where there seemed at first a good prospect of throwing off the Persian dominion. Yet in spite of so great an abstraction from their disposable force, their military operations near home were conducted with unabated vigour: and the inscription which remains—a commemoration of their citizens of the Erechthid tribe who were slain in one and the same year in Cyprus, Egypt, Phœnicia, the Halieis, Ægina, and Megara—brings forcibly before us that remarkable energy which astonished and even alarmed their contemporaries.

[424]

Their first proceedings at Megara were of a nature altogether novel, in the existing condition of Greece. It was necessary for the Athenians to protect their new ally against the superiority of the Peloponnesian land-force, and to insure a constant communication with it by sea. But the city (like most of the ancient Hellenic towns) was situated on a hill at some distance from the sea, separated from its port Nisæa by a space of nearly one mile. One of the earliest proceedings of the Athenians was to build two lines of wall, near and parallel to each other, connecting the city with Nisæa; so that the two thus formed one continuous fortress, wherein a standing Athenian garrison was maintained, with the constant means of succour from Athens in case of need. These “Long Walls,” though afterwards copied in other places and on a larger scale, were at that juncture an ingenious invention, and were erected for the purpose of extending the maritime arm of Athens to an inland city.

THE WAR WITH CORINTH

The first operations of Corinth however were not directed against Megara. The Athenians, having undertaken a landing in the territory of the Halieis (the population of the southern Argolic peninsula, bordering on Trœzen and Hermione), were defeated on land by the Corinthian and Epidaurian forces: possibly it may have been in this expedition that they acquired possession of Trœzen, which we find afterwards in their dependance, without knowing when it became so. But in a sea-fight which took place off the island of Cecryphaleia (between Ægina and the Argolic peninsula) the Athenians gained the victory. After this victory and defeat—neither of them apparently very decisive—the Æginetans began to take a more energetic part in the war, and brought out their full naval force together with that of their allies—Corinthians, Epidaurians, and other Peloponnesians: while Athens equipped a fleet of corresponding magnitude, summoning her allies also; though we do not know the actual numbers on either side.

In the great naval battle which ensued off the island of Ægina, the superiority of the new nautical tactics acquired by twenty years’ practice of the Athenians since the Persian War—over the old Hellenic ships and seamen, as shown in those states where at the time of the battle of Marathon the maritime strength of Greece had resided—was demonstrated by a victory most complete and decisive. The Peloponnesian and Dorian seamen had as yet had no experience of the improved seacraft of Athens, and when we find how much they were disconcerted with it even twenty-eight years afterwards at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, we shall not wonder at its destructive effect upon them in this early battle. The maritime power of Ægina was irrecoverably ruined. The Athenians captured seventy ships of war, landed a large force upon the island, and commenced the siege of the city by land as well as by sea.

If the Lacedæmonians had not been occupied at home by the blockade of Ithome, they would have been probably induced to invade Attica as a diversion to the Æginetans; especially as the Persian Megabazus came to Sparta at this time on the part of Artaxerxes to prevail upon them to do so, in order that the Athenians might be constrained to retire from Egypt. This Persian brought with him a large sum of money, but was nevertheless obliged to return without effecting his mission. The Corinthians and Epidaurians, however, while they carried to Ægina a reinforcement of three[425] hundred hoplites, did their best to aid her further by an attack upon Megara; which place, it was supposed, the Athenians could not possibly relieve without withdrawing their forces from Ægina, inasmuch as so many of their men were at the same time serving in Egypt. But the Athenians showed themselves equal to all these three exigencies at one and the same time—to the great disappointment of their enemies. Myronides marched from Athens to Megara at the head of the citizens in the two extremes of military age, old and young; these being the only troops at home. He fought the Corinthians near the town, gaining a slight, but debatable advantage, which he commemorated by a trophy, as soon as the Corinthians had returned home. But the latter, when they arrived at home, were so much reproached by their own old citizens, for not having vanquished the refuse of the Athenian military force, that they returned back at the end of twelve days and erected a trophy on their side, laying claim to a victory in the past battle. The Athenians, marching out of Megara, attacked them a second time, and gained on this occasion a decisive victory. The defeated Corinthians were still more unfortunate in their retreat; for a body of them, missing their road, became entangled in a space of private ground enclosed on every side by a deep ditch and having only one narrow entrance. Myronides, detecting this fatal mistake, planted his hoplites at the entrance to prevent their escape, and then surrounded the enclosure with his light-armed troops, who with their missile weapons slew all the Corinthian hoplites, without possibility either of flight or resistance. The bulk of the Corinthian army effected their retreat, but the destruction of this detachment was a sad blow to the city.

THE LONG WALLS

Splendid as the success of the Athenians had been during this year, both on land and at sea, it was easy for them to foresee that the power of their enemies would presently be augmented by the Lacedæmonians taking the field. Partly on this account—partly also from the more energetic phase of democracy, and the long-sighted views of Pericles, which were now becoming ascendant in the city—the Athenians began the stupendous undertaking of connecting Athens with the sea by means of long walls. The idea of this measure had doubtless been first suggested by the recent erection of long walls, though for so much smaller a distance, between Megara and Nisæa: for without such an intermediate stepping-stone, the project of a wall forty stadia (about 4½ English miles) to join Athens with Piræus, and another wall of thirty-five stadia (nearly 4 English miles) to join it with Phalerum, would have appeared extravagant even to the sanguine temper of Athenians—as it certainly would have seemed a few years earlier to Themistocles himself. Coming as an immediate sequel of great recent victories, and while Ægina, the great Dorian naval power, was prostrate and under blockade, it excited the utmost alarm among the Peloponnesians—being regarded as the second great stride, at once conspicuous and of lasting effect, in Athenian ambition, next to the fortification of Piræus. But besides this feeling in the bosom of enemies, the measure was also interwoven with the formidable contention of political parties then going on at Athens. Cimon had been recently ostracised; and the democratical movement pressed by Pericles and Ephialtes (of which more presently) was in its full tide of success; yet not without a violent and unprincipled opposition on the part of those who supported the existing constitution.

[426]

Now the Long Walls formed a part of the foreign policy of Pericles, continuing on a gigantic scale the plans of Themistocles when he first schemed the Piræus. They were framed to render Athens capable of carrying on war against any superiority of land attack, and of bidding defiance to the united force of Peloponnesus. But though thus calculated for contingencies which a long-sighted man might see gathering in the distance, the new walls were, almost on the same grounds, obnoxious to a considerable number of Athenians: to the party recently headed by Cimon, which was attached to the Lacedæmonian connection, and desired above all things to maintain peace at home, reserving the energies of the state for anti-Persian enterprise: to many landed proprietors in Attica, whom they seemed to threaten with approaching invasion and destruction of their territorial possessions: to the rich men and aristocrats of Athens, averse to a still closer contact and amalgamation with the maritime multitude in Piræus: lastly, perhaps, to a certain vein of old Attic feeling, which might look upon the junction of Athens with the separate demes of Piræus and Phalerum as effacing the special associations connected with the holy rock of Athene. When to all these grounds of opposition we add the expense and trouble of the undertaking itself, the interference with private property, the peculiar violence of party which happened then to be raging, and the absence of a large proportion of military citizens in Egypt, we shall hardly be surprised to find that the projected long walls brought on a risk of the most serious character both for Athens and her democracy. If any further proof were wanting of the vast importance of these long walls, in the eyes both of friends and of enemies, we might find it in the fact that their destruction was the prominent mark of Athenian humiliation after the battle of Ægospotami, and their restoration the immediate boon of Pharnabazus and Conon after the victory of Cnidus.

Under the influence of the alarm now spread by the proceedings of Athens, the Lacedæmonians were prevailed upon to undertake an expedition out of Peloponnesus, although the helots in Ithome were not yet reduced to surrender. Their force consisted of fifteen hundred troops of their own, and ten thousand of their various allies, under the regent Nicomedes. The ostensible motive, or the pretence, for this march, was the protection of the little territory of Doris against the Phocians, who had recently invaded it and taken one of its three towns. The mere approach of so large a force immediately compelled the Phocians to relinquish their conquest, but it was soon seen that this was only a small part of the objects of Sparta, and that her main purpose, under instigation of the Corinthians, was, to arrest the aggrandisement of Athens. It could not escape the penetration of Corinth, that the Athenians might presently either enlist or constrain the towns of Bœotia into their alliance, as they had recently acquired Megara, in addition to their previous ally Platæa: for the Bœotian federation was at this time much disorganised, and Thebes, its chief, had never recovered her ascendency since the discredit of her support lent to the Persian invasion. To strengthen Thebes and to render her ascendency effective over the Bœotian cities, was the best way of providing a neighbour at once powerful and hostile to the Athenians, so as to prevent their further aggrandisement by land: it was the same policy as Epaminondas pursued eighty years afterwards, in organising Arcadia and Messene against Sparta. Accordingly the Peloponnesian force was now employed partly in enlarging and strengthening the fortifications of Thebes herself, partly in constraining the other Bœotian cities into effective obedience to her supremacy; probably by placing their governments in the[427] hands of citizens of known oligarchical politics, and perhaps banishing suspected opponents. To this scheme the Thebans lent themselves with earnestness; promising to keep down for the future their border neighbours, so as to spare the necessity of armies coming from Sparta.

But there was also a further design, yet more important, in contemplation by the Spartans and Corinthians. The oligarchical opposition at Athens was so bitterly hostile to the Long Walls, to Pericles, and to the democratical movement, that several of them opened a secret negotiation with the Peloponnesian leaders; inviting them into Attica, and entreating their aid in an internal rising for the purpose not only of putting a stop to the Long Walls, but also of subverting the democracy. The Peloponnesian army, while prosecuting its operations in Bœotia, waited in hopes of seeing the Athenian malcontents in arms, encamping at Tanagra on the very borders of Attica for the purpose of immediate co-operation with them. The juncture was undoubtedly one of much hazard for Athens, especially as the ostracised Cimon and his remaining friends in the city were suspected of being implicated in the conspiracy. But the Athenian leaders, aware of the Lacedæmonian operations in Bœotia, knew also what was meant by the presence of the army on their immediate borders—and took decisive measures to avert the danger. Having obtained a reinforcement of one thousand Argeians and some Thessalian horse, they marched out to Tanagra, with the full Athenian force then at home; which must of course have consisted chiefly of the old and the young, the same who had fought under Myronides at Megara; for the blockade of Ægina was still going on.

Near Tanagra a bloody battle took place between the two armies, wherein the Lacedæmonians were victorious, chiefly from the desertion of the Thessalian horse who passed over to them in the very heat of the engagement. But though the advantage was on their side, it was not sufficiently decisive to favour the contemplated rising in Attica. Nor did the Peloponnesians gain anything by it except an undisturbed retreat over the high lands of Geranea, after having partially ravaged the Megarid.

CIMON RECALLED

Though the battle of Tanagra was a defeat, yet there were circumstances connected with it which rendered its effects highly beneficial to Athens. The ostracised Cimon presented himself on the field, as soon as the army had passed over the boundaries of Attica, requesting to be allowed to occupy his station as a hoplite and fight in the ranks of his tribe—the Œneis. But such was the belief, entertained by the members of the senate and by his political enemies present, that he was an accomplice in the conspiracy known to be on foot, that permission was refused and he was forced to retire. In departing he conjured his personal friends, Euthippus (of the deme Anaphlystus) and others, to behave in such a manner as might wipe away the stain resting upon his fidelity, and in part also upon theirs. His friends retained his panoply and assigned to it the station in the ranks which he would himself have occupied: they then entered the engagement with desperate resolution and one hundred of them fell side by side in their ranks. Pericles, on his part, who was present among the hoplites of his own tribe the Acamantii, aware of this application and repulse of Cimon, thought it incumbent upon him to display not merely his ordinary personal courage, but an unusual recklessness of life and safety, though it happened that he[428] escaped unwounded. All these incidents brought about a generous sympathy and spirit of compromise among the contending parties at Athens; while the unshaken patriotism of Cimon and his friends discountenanced and disarmed those conspirators who had entered into correspondence with the enemy, at the same time that it roused a repentant admiration towards the ostracised leader himself. Such was the happy working of this new sentiment that a decree was shortly proposed and carried—proposed too by Pericles himself—to abridge the ten years of Cimon’s ostracism, and permit his immediate return.

We may recollect that under circumstances partly analogous, Themistocles had himself proposed the restoration of his rival Aristides from ostracism, a little before the battle of Salamis: and in both cases, the suspension of enmity between the two leaders was partly the sign, partly also the auxiliary cause, of reconciliation and renewed fraternity among the general body of citizens. It was a moment analogous to that salutary impulse of compromise, and harmony of parties, which followed the extinction of the oligarchy of Four Hundred, forty-six years afterwards, and on which Thucydides dwells emphatically as the salvation of Athens in her distress—a moment rare in free communities generally, not less than among the jealous competitors for political ascendency at Athens.

So powerful was this burst of fresh patriotism and unanimity after the battle of Tanagra, which produced the recall of Cimon and appears to have overlaid the pre-existing conspiracy, that the Athenians were quickly in a condition to wipe off the stain of their defeat. It was on the sixty-second day after the battle that they undertook an aggressive march under Myronides into Bœotia: the extreme precision of this date (being the single case throughout the summary of events between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars wherein Thucydides is thus precise) marks how strong an impression it made upon the memory of the Athenians. At the battle of Œnophyta, engaged against the aggregate Theban and Bœotian forces, or, if Diodorus is to be trusted, in two battles, of which that of Œnophyta was the last, Myronides was completely victorious. The Athenians became masters of Thebes as well as of the remaining Bœotian towns; reversing all the arrangements recently made by Sparta, establishing democratical governments, and forcing the aristocratical leaders, favourable to Theban ascendency and Lacedæmonian connection, to become exiles. Nor was it only Bœotia which the Athenians thus acquired; Phocis and Locris were both successively added to the list of their dependent allies, the former being in the main friendly to Athens and not disinclined to the change, while the latter were so decidedly hostile that one hundred of their chiefs were detained and sent to Athens as hostages. The Athenians thus extended their influence, maintained through internal party-management, backed by the dread of interference from without in case of need, from the borders of the Corinthian territory, including both Megara and Pegæ, to the strait of Thermopylæ.

These important acquisitions were soon crowned by the completion of the Long Walls and the conquest of Ægina. That island, doubtless starved out by its protracted blockade, was forced to capitulate on condition of destroying its fortifications, surrendering all its ships of war, and submitting to annual tribute as a dependent ally of Athens. The reduction of this once powerful maritime city marked Athens as mistress of the sea on the Peloponnesian coast not less than on the Ægean. Her admiral Tolmides displayed her strength by sailing round Peloponnesus, and even by the insult of burning the Lacedæmonian ports of Methone and of Gythium. He took Chalcis,[429] a possession of the Corinthians, and Naupactus belonging to the Ozolian Locrians, near the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf, disembarked troops near Sicyon, with some advantage in a battle against opponents from that town, and either gained or forced into the Athenian alliance not only Zacynthus and Cephallenia, but also some of the towns of Achaia; for we afterwards find these latter attached to Athens without knowing when the connection began. During the ensuing year the Athenians renewed their attack upon Sicyon, with a force of one thousand hoplites under Pericles himself, sailing from the Megarian harbour of Pegæ in the Crissæan Gulf. This eminent man, however, gained no greater advantage than Tolmides, defeating the Sicyonian forces in the field and driving them within their walls. He afterwards made an expedition into Acarnania, taking the Achæan allies in addition to his own forces, but miscarried in his attack on Œniadæ and accomplished nothing. Nor were the Athenians more successful in a march undertaken this same year against Thessaly, for the purpose of restoring Orestes, one of the exiled princes or nobles of Pharsalus. Though they took with them an imposing force, including their Bœotian and Phocian allies, the powerful Thessalian cavalry forced them to keep in a compact body and confined them to the ground actually occupied by their hoplites; while all their attempts against the city failed, and their hopes of internal rising were disappointed.

Had the Athenians succeeded in Thessaly, they would have acquired to their alliance nearly the whole of extra-Peloponnesian Greece. But even without Thessaly their power was prodigious, and had now attained a maximum height from which it never varied except to decline. As a counter-balancing loss against so many successes, we have to reckon their ruinous defeat in Egypt, after a war of six years against the Persians (460-455 B.C.). At first they had gained brilliant advantages, in conjunction with the insurgent prince Inarus; expelling the Persians from all Memphis except that strongest part called the White Fortress. And such was the alarm of the Persian king Artaxerxes at the presence of the Athenians in Egypt, that he sent Megabazus with a large sum of money to Sparta, in order to induce the Lacedæmonians to invade Attica. This envoy however failed, and an augmented Persian force, being sent to Egypt under Megabyzus, son of Zopyrus, drove the Athenians and their allies, after an obstinate struggle, out of Memphis into the island of the Nile called Prosopitis. Here they were blocked up for eighteen months, until at length Megabyzus turned the arm of the river, laid the channel dry, and stormed the island by land. A very few Athenians escaped by land to Cyrene: the rest were either slain or made captive, and Inarus himself was crucified. And the calamity of Athens was farther aggravated by the arrival of fifty fresh Athenian ships, which, coming after the defeat, but without being aware of it, sailed into the Mendesian branch of the Nile, and thus fell unawares into the power of the Persians and Phœnicians, very few either of the ships or men escaping. The whole of Egypt became again subject to the Persians, except Amyrtæus, who contrived by retiring into the inaccessible fens still to maintain his independence. One of the largest armaments ever sent forth by Athens and her confederacy was thus utterly ruined.

It was about the time of the destruction of the Athenian army in Egypt, and of the circumnavigation of Peloponnesus by Tolmides, that the internal war, carried on by the Lacedæmonians against the helots or Messenians at Ithome, ended. These besieged men, no longer able to stand out against a protracted blockade, were forced to abandon this last fortress of ancient[430] Messenian independence, stipulating for a safe retreat from the Peloponnesus with their wives and families; with the proviso that if any one of them ever returned to Peloponnesus, he should become the slave of the first person who seized him. They were established by Tolmides at Naupactus (recently taken by the Athenians from the Ozolian Locrians), where they will be found rendering good service to Athens in the following wars.

THE FIVE-YEARS’ TRUCE

After the victory of Tanagra, the Lacedæmonians made no further expeditions out of Peloponnesus for several succeeding years, not even to prevent Bœotia and Phocis from being absorbed into the Athenian alliance. The reason of this remissness lay, partly, in their general character; partly, in the continuance of the siege of Ithome, which occupied them at home; but still more perhaps, in the fact that the Athenians, masters of the Megarid, were in occupation of the road over the high lands of Geranea, and could therefore obstruct the march of any army out from Peloponnesus. Even after the surrender of Ithome, the Lacedæmonians remained inactive for three years, after which time a formal truce was concluded with Athens by the Peloponnesians generally, for five years longer. This truce was concluded in a great degree through the influence of Cimon, who was eager to resume effective operations against the Persians; while it was not less suitable to the political interest of Pericles that his most distinguished rival should be absent on foreign service, so as not to interfere with his influence at home. Accordingly Cimon, having equipped a fleet of two hundred triremes from Athens and her confederates, set sail for Cyprus, from whence he despatched sixty ships to Egypt, at the request of the insurgent prince Amyrtæus, who was still maintaining himself against the Persians amidst the fens—while with the remaining armament he laid siege to Citium. In the prosecution of this siege, he died either of disease or of a wound. The armament, under his successor Anaxicrates, became so embarrassed for want of provisions that they abandoned the undertaking altogether, and went to fight the Phœnician and Cilician fleet near Salamis in Cyprus. They were here victorious, first on sea and afterwards on land, though probably not on the same day, as at the Eurymedon; after which they returned home, followed by the sixty ships which had gone to Egypt for the purpose of aiding Amyrtæus.

From this time forward no further operations were undertaken by Athens and her confederacy against the Persians. And it appears that a convention was concluded between them, whereby the Great King on his part promised two things: To leave free, undisturbed, and untaxed, the Asiatic maritime Greeks, not sending troops within a given distance of the coast: To refrain from sending any ships of war either westward of Phaselis (others place the boundary at the Chelidonean islands, rather more to the westward) or within the Cyanean rocks at the confluence of the Thracian Bosporus with the Euxine. On their side the Athenians agreed to leave him in undisturbed possession of Cyprus and Egypt. This was called the Peace of Callias.

We may believe in the reality of this treaty between Athens and Persia, improperly called the Cimonian Treaty: improperly, since not only was it concluded after the death of Cimon, but the Athenian victories by which it was immediately brought on, were gained after his death. Nay more—the probability is, that if Cimon had lived, it would not have been concluded at[431] all. For his interest as well as his glory led him to prosecute the war against Persia, since he was no match for his rival Pericles either as a statesman or as an orator, and could only maintain his popularity by the same means whereby he had earned it—victories and plunder at the cost of the Persians. His death ensured more complete ascendency to Pericles whose policy and character were of a cast altogether opposite.

THE CONFEDERACY BECOMES AN EMPIRE

Athens was now at peace both abroad and at home, under the administration of Pericles, with a great empire, a great fleet, and a great accumulated treasure. The common fund collected from the contributions of the confederates, and originally deposited at Delos, had before this time been transferred to the Acropolis at Athens. At what precise time such transfer took place, we cannot state: nor are we enabled to assign the successive stages whereby the confederacy, chiefly with the free will of its own members, became transformed from a body of armed and active warriors under the guidance of Athens, into disarmed and passive tribute-payers defended by the military force of Athens: from allies free, meeting at Delos, and self-determining into subjects isolated, sending their annual tribute, and awaiting Athenian orders. But it would appear that the change had been made before this time. Some of the more resolute of the allies had tried to secede, but Athens had coerced them by force, and reduced them to the condition of tribute-payers without ships or defence; and Chios, Lesbos, and Samos were now the only allies free and armed on the original footing. Every successive change of an armed ally into a tributary, every subjugation of a seceder, tended of course to cut down the numbers, and enfeeble the authority of the Delian synod; and, what was still worse, it materially altered the reciprocal relation and feelings both of Athens and her allies—exalting the former into something like a despot, and degrading the latter into mere passive subjects.

Of course the palpable manifestation of the change must have been the transfer of the confederate fund from Delos to Athens. The only circumstance which we know respecting this transfer is, that it was proposed by the Samians—the second power in the confederacy, inferior only to Athens, and least of all likely to favour any job or sinister purpose of the Athenians.

Such transition, arising spontaneously out of the character and circumstances of the confederates themselves, was thus materially forwarded by the acquisitions of Athens extraneous to the confederacy. She was now not merely the first maritime state in Greece, but perhaps equal to Sparta even in land-power, possessing in her alliance Megara, Bœotia, Phocis, Locris, together with Achaia and Trœzen in the Peloponnesus. Large as this aggregate already was, both at sea and on land, yet the magnitude of the annual tribute, and still more the character of the Athenians themselves, superior to all Greeks in that combination of energy and discipline which is the grand cause of progress, threatened still further increase. Occupying the Megarian harbour of Pegæ, the Athenians had full means of naval action on both sides of the Corinthian isthmus: but what was of still greater importance to them, by their possession of the Megarid and of the high lands of Geranea, they could restrain any land-force from marching out of the Peloponnesus, and were thus (considering besides their mastery at sea) completely unassailable in Attica. Ever since the repulse of Xerxes, Athens had been advancing in[432] an uninterrupted course of power and prosperity at home, as well as of victory and ascendency abroad—to which there was no exception except the ruinous enterprise in Egypt.

Looking at the position of Greece therefore about 448 B.C.—after the conclusion of five years’ truce between the Peloponnesians and Athens, and of the so-called Cimonian Peace between Persia and Athens—a discerning Greek might well calculate upon further aggrandisement of this imperial state as the tendency of the age; and accustomed as every Greek was to the conception of separate town-autonomy as essential to a freeman and a citizen, such prospect could not but inspire terror and aversion. The sympathy of the Peloponnesians for the islanders and ultra-maritime states, who constituted the original confederacy of Athens, was not considerable. But when the Dorian island of Ægina was subjugated also, and passed into the condition of a defenceless tributary, they felt the blow sorely on every ground. The ancient celebrity, and eminent service rendered at the battle of Salamis, of this memorable island, had not been able to protect it; while those great Æginetan families, whose victories at the sacred festival-games Pindar celebrates in a large proportion of his odes, would spread the language of complaint and indignation throughout their numerous “guests” in every Hellenic city. Of course, the same anti-Athenian feeling would pervade those Peloponnesian states which had been engaged in actual hostility with Athens—Corinth, Sicyon, Epidaurus, etc., as well as Sparta, the once-recognised head of Hellas, but now tacitly degraded from her pre-eminence, baffled in her projects respecting Bœotia, and exposed to the burning of her port at Gythium without being able even to retaliate upon Attica. Putting all those circumstances together, we may comprehend the powerful feeling of dislike and apprehension now diffused so widely over Greece against the upstart despot-city; whose ascendency, newly acquired, maintained by superior force, and not recognised as legitimate, threatened nevertheless still further increase. Sixteen years hence, this same sentiment will be found exploding into the Peloponnesian War. But it became rooted in the Greek mind during the period which we have now reached, when Athens was much more formidable than she had come to be at the commencement of that war: nor shall we thoroughly appreciate the ideas of that later period, unless we take them as handed down from the earlier date of the five years’ truce (about 451-446 B.C.).

COMMENCEMENT OF DECLINE

Formidable as the Athenian empire both really was and appeared to be, however, this widespread feeling of antipathy proved still stronger, so that instead of the threatened increase, the empire underwent a most material diminution. This did not arise from the attack of open enemies; for during the five years’ truce, Sparta undertook only one movement, and that not against Attica: she sent troops to Delphi, in an expedition dignified with the name of the Sacred War—expelled the Phocians, who had assumed to themselves the management of the temple—and restored it to the native Delphians. To this the Athenians made no direct opposition, but as soon as the Lacedæmonians were gone, they themselves marched thither and placed the temple again in the hands of the Phocians, who were then their allies. The Delphians were members of the Phocian league, and there was a dispute of old standing as to the administration of the temple—whether it[433] belonged to them separately or to the Phocians collectively. The favour of those who administered it counted as an element of considerable moment in Grecian politics; the sympathies of the leading Delphians led them to embrace the side of Sparta, but the Athenians now hoped to counteract this tendency by means of their preponderance in Phocis. We are not told that the Lacedæmonians took any ulterior step in consequence of their views being frustrated by Athens—a significant evidence of the politics of that day.

The blow which brought down the Athenian empire from this its greatest exaltation was struck by the subjects themselves. The Athenian ascendency over Bœotia, Phocis, Locris, and Eubœa, was maintained, not by means of garrisons, but through domestic parties favourable to Athens, and a suitable form of government—just in the same way as Sparta maintained her influence over her Peloponnesian allies. After the victory of Œnophyta, the Athenians had broken up the governments in the Bœotian cities established by Sparta before the battle of Tanagra, and converted them into democracies at Thebes and elsewhere. Many of the previous leading men had thus been sent into exile; and as the same process had taken place in Phocis and Locris, there was at this time a considerable aggregate body of exiles, Bœotian, Phocian, Locrian, Eubœan, Æginetan, etc., all bitterly hostile to Athens, and ready to join in any attack upon her power. We learn further that the democracy established at Thebes after the battle of Œnophyta was ill conducted and disorderly, which circumstance laid open Bœotia still further to the schemes of assailants on the watch for every weak point. These various exiles, all joining their forces and concerting measures with their partisans in the interior, succeeded in mastering Orchomenos, Chæronea, and some other less important places in Bœotia.

The Athenian general Tolmides marched to expel them, with one thousand Athenian hoplites and an auxiliary body of allies. It appears that this march was undertaken in haste and rashness. The hoplites of Tolmides principally youthful volunteers and belonging to the best families of Athens, disdained the enemy too much to await a larger and more commanding force: nor would the people listen even to Pericles, when he admonished them that the march would be full of hazard, and adjured them not to attempt it without greater numbers as well as greater caution. Fatally indeed were his predictions justified. Though Tolmides was successful in his first enterprise—the recapture of Chæronea, wherein he placed a garrison—yet in his march, probably incautious and disorderly, when departing from that place, he was surprised and attacked unawares, near Coronea, by the united body of exiles and their partisans.

No defeat in Grecian history was ever more complete or ruinous. Tolmides himself was slain, together with many of the Athenian hoplites, while a large number of them were taken prisoners. In order to recover these prisoners, who belonged to the best families in the city, the Athenians submitted to a convention whereby they agreed to evacuate Bœotia altogether: in all the cities of that country the exiles were restored, the democratical government overthrown, and Bœotia was transformed from an ally of Athens into her bitter enemy. Long indeed did the fatal issue of this action dwell in the memory of the Athenians, and inspire them with an apprehension of Bœotian superiority in heavy armour on land. But if the hoplites under Tolmides had been all slain on the field, their death would probably have been avenged and Bœotia would not have been lost—whereas in the case of living citizens, the Athenians deemed no sacrifice too great to redeem them.[434] We shall discover hereafter in the Lacedæmonians a feeling very similar, respecting their brethren captured at Sphacteria.

The calamitous consequences of this defeat came upon Athens in thick and rapid succession. The united exiles, having carried their point in Bœotia, proceeded to expel the philo-Athenian government both from Phocis and Locris, and to carry the flame of revolt into Eubœa. To this important island Pericles himself proceeded forthwith, at the head of a powerful force; but before he had time to complete the reconquest, he was summoned home by news of a still more formidable character. The Megarians had revolted from Athens. By a conspiracy previously planned, a division of hoplites from Corinth, Sicyon, and Epidaurus, was already admitted as garrison into their city: the Athenian soldiers who kept watch over the Long Walls had been overpowered and slain, except a few who escaped into the fortified port of Nisæa. As if to make the Athenians at once sensible how seriously this disaster affected them, by throwing open the road over Geranea, Plistoanax, king of Sparta, was announced as already on his march for an invasion of Attica. He did in truth conduct an army, of mixed Lacedæmonians and Peloponnesian allies, into Attica, as far as the neighbourhood of Eleusis and the Thriasian plain. He was a very young man, so that a Spartan of mature years, Cleandridas, had been attached to him by the ephors as adjutant and counsellor. Pericles, it is said, persuaded both the one and the other, by means of large bribes, to evacuate Attica without advancing to Athens. We may fairly doubt whether they had force enough to adventure so far into the interior, and we shall hereafter observe the great precautions with which Archidamus thought it necessary to conduct his invasion, during the first year of the Peloponnesian War, though at the head of a more commanding force. Nevertheless, on their return, the Lacedæmonians, believing that they might have achieved it, found both of them guilty of corruption. Both were banished: Cleandridas never came back, and Plistoanax himself lived for a long time in sanctuary near the temple of Athene at Tegea, until at length he procured his restoration by tampering with the Pythian priestess, and by bringing her bought admonitions to act upon the authorities at Sparta.

So soon as the Lacedæmonians had retired from Attica, Pericles returned with his forces to Eubœa, and reconquered the island completely. With that caution which always distinguished him as a military man, so opposite to the fatal rashness of Tolmides, he took with him an overwhelming force of fifty triremes and five thousand hoplites. He admitted most of the Eubœan towns to surrender, altering the government of Chalcis by the expulsion of the wealthy oligarchy called the hippobotæ. But the inhabitants of Histiæa at the north of the island, who had taken an Athenian merchantman and massacred all the crew, were more severely dealt with, the free population being all or in great part expelled, and the land distributed among Athenian cleruchs or out-settled citizens.

Yet the reconquest of Eubœa was far from restoring Athens to the position which she had occupied before the fatal engagement of Coronea. Her land-empire was irretrievably gone, together with her recently acquired influence over the Delphian oracle; and she reverted to her former condition of an exclusively maritime potentate. Moreover, the precarious hold which she possessed over unwilling allies had been demonstrated in a manner likely to encourage similar attempts among her maritime subjects; attempts which would now be seconded by Peloponnesian armies invading Attica. The fear of such a combination of embarrassments, and especially of an irresistible enemy carrying ruin over the flourishing territory round Eleusis and Athens,[435] was at this moment predominant in the Athenian mind. We shall find Pericles, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War fourteen years afterwards, exhausting all his persuasive force, and not succeeding without great difficulty, in prevailing upon his countrymen to endure the hardship of invasion—even in defence of their maritime empire, and when events had been gradually so ripening as to render the prospect of war familiar, if not inevitable. But the late series of misfortunes had burst upon them so rapidly and unexpectedly, as to discourage even Athenian confidence, and to render the prospect of continued war full of gloom and danger. The prudence of Pericles would doubtless counsel the surrender of their remaining landed possessions or alliances, which had now become unprofitable, in order to purchase peace; but we may be sure that nothing short of extreme temporary despondency could have induced the Athenian assembly to listen to such advice, and to accept the inglorious peace which followed. A truce for thirty years was concluded with Sparta and her allies, in the beginning of 445 B.C., whereby Athens surrendered Nisæa, Pegæ, Achaia, and Trœzen—thus abandoning the Peloponnesus altogether, and leaving the Megarians (with their full territory and their two ports) to be included among the Peloponnesian allies of Sparta.

It was to the Megarians, especially, that the altered position of Athens after this truce was owing: it was their secession from Attica and junction with the Peloponnesians, which laid open Attica to invasion. Hence arose the deadly hatred on the part of the Athenians towards Megara, manifested during the ensuing years—a sentiment the more natural, as Megara had spontaneously sought the alliance of Athens a few years before as a protection against the Corinthians, and had then afterwards, without any known ill-usage on the part of Athens, broken off from the alliance and become her enemy, with the fatal consequence of rendering her vulnerable on the land-side. Under such circumstances we shall not be surprised to find the antipathy of the Athenians against Megara strongly pronounced, insomuch that the system of exclusion which they adopted against her was among the most prominent causes of the Peloponnesian War.d

THE GREATNESS OF PERICLES

Athens now rested six years, unengaged in any hostilities; a longer interval of perfect peace than she had before known in above forty years elapsed since she rose from her ashes after the Persian invasion. It is a wonderful and singular phenomenon in the history of mankind, little accounted for by anything recorded by ancient, or imagined by modern writers, that, during this period of turbulence, in a commonwealth whose whole population in free subjects amounted scarcely to thirty thousand families, art, science, fine taste, and politeness should have risen to that perfection which has made Athens the mistress of the world through all succeeding ages. Some sciences indeed have been carried higher in modern times, and art has put forth new branches, of which some have given new helps to science: but Athens, in that age, reached a perfection of taste that no country has since surpassed; but on the contrary all have looked up to, as a polar star, by which, after sinking in the deepest barbarism, taste has been guided in its restoration to splendour, and the observation of which will probably ever be the surest preservative against its future corruption and decay.

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One great point of the policy of Pericles was to keep the people always either amused or employed. During peace an exercising squadron of sixty trireme galleys was sent out for eight months in every year. Nor was this without a further use than merely engaging the attention of the people, and maintaining the navy in vigour. He sometimes took the command in person: and, sailing among the distant dependencies of the empire, settled disputes between them, and confirmed the power and extended the influence of Athens. The Ægean and the Propontis did not bound his voyages: he penetrated into the Euxine; and finding the distant Grecian settlement of Sinope divided between Timesileus, who affected the tyranny, and an opposing party, he left there Lamachus with thirteen ships, and a land-force with whose assistance to the popular side the tyrant and those of his faction were expelled. The justice of what followed may indeed appear questionable. Their houses and property, apportioned into six hundred lots, were offered to so many Athenian citizens; and volunteers were not wanting to accept the offer, and settle at Sinope. To disburden the government at home, by providing advantageous establishments, in distant parts, for the poor and discontented among the sovereign citizens of Athens, was a policy more than once resorted to by Pericles. It was during his administration, in the year, according to Diodorus, in which the Thirty Years’ Truce was concluded, that the deputation came from the Thessalian adventurers who had been expelled by the Crotoniats from their attempted establishment in the deserted territory of Sybaris, in consequence of which, under his patronage, the colony was settled with which the historian Herodotus then, and afterward the orator Lysias, passing to Thurii, both established themselves there.

A GREEK FEDERATION PLANNED

Plutarch has attributed to Pericles a noble project, unnoticed by any earlier extant author, but worthy of his capacious mind, and otherwise also bearing some characters of authenticity and truth. It was no less than to unite all Greece under one great federal government, of which Athens should be the capital. But the immediate and direct avowal of such a purpose would be likely to raise jealousies so numerous and extensive as to form insuperable obstacles to the execution. The religion of the nation was that alone in which the Grecian people universally claimed a clear common interest; and even in this every town and almost every family claimed something peculiar to itself. In the vehemence of public alarm, during the Persian invasion, vows had been, in some places, made to the gods for sacrifices, to an extent beyond what the votaries, when blessed with deliverance beyond hope, were able to perform; and some temples, destroyed by the invaders, were not yet restored; probably because the means of those in whose territories they had stood were deficient. Taking these circumstances then for his ground, Pericles proposed that a congress of deputies from every republic of the nation should be assembled at Athens, for the purpose first of inquiring concerning vows for the safety of Greece yet unperformed, and temples, injured by the barbarians, not yet restored; and then of proceeding to concert measures for the lasting security of navigation in the Grecian seas, and for the preservation of peace by land also between all the states composing the Greek nation. The naval question, but still more the ruin which, in the Persian invasion, had befallen northern Greece, and especially Attica, while Peloponnesus had felt nothing of its evils, gave pretensions for Athens to[437] take the lead in the business. On the motion of Pericles, a decree of the Athenian people directed the appointment of ministers to invite every Grecian state to send its deputies. Plutarch, rarely attentive to political information, has not at all indicated what attention was shown, or what participation proposed, for Lacedæmon. His prejudices indeed we find very generally adverse to the Lacedæmonian government, and favouring the Athenian democracy. But, judging from the friendship which, according to the authentic information of Thucydides, subsisted between Pericles and Archidamus, king of Lacedæmon, through life, it is little likely that, in putting forward the project for the peace of Greece, Pericles would have proposed anything derogatory to the just weight and dignity of Sparta; which indeed would have been, with peace the pretence, only putting forward a project of contest.

Pericles, when he formed his coalition with Cimon, seems to have entered heartily into the enlarged views of that great man; and, with the hope that, through their coalition, both the oligarchical and the democratical powers in Athens might be held justly balanced, had early in view to establish the peace of Greece on a union between Athens and Lacedæmon. It is however evident, from the narrative of Thucydides, that Archidamus rarely could direct the measures of the Lacedæmonian government. On a view of all information, then, it may seem probable that the project of Pericles was concerted with Archidamus; and that the opposition of those in Lacedæmon, of an adverse faction concurred with opposition from those in Athens, who apprehended injury to their interests from a new coalition with the aristocratical party, to compel the great projector to abandon his magnificent and beneficent purpose.f

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XXV. ATHENS AT WAR

Peace between Lacedæmon and Athens was indispensable towards the quiet of the rest of the nation, but, in the want of such a union as Pericles had projected, was unfortunately far from being insured; and, when war began anywhere, though among the most distant settlements of the Grecian people, how far it might extend was not to be foreseen. A dispute between two Asiatic states of the Athenian confederacy led Athens into a war which greatly endangered the truce made for thirty years, when it had scarcely lasted six. Miletus and Samos, each claiming the sovereignty of Priene, originally a free Grecian commonwealth, asserted their respective pretensions by arms. The Milesians, not till they were suffering under defeat, applied to Athens for redress, as of a flagrant injury done them. The usual feuds within every Grecian state furnished assistance to their clamour; for, the aristocracy prevailing at that time in Samos, the leaders of the democratical party joined the enemies of their country in accusing the proceedings of its government before the Athenian people.

THE SAMIAN WAR

The opposition at Athens maliciously imputed the measures following to the weak compliance of Pericles with the solicitations of Aspasia in favour of her native city; but it appears clearly, from Thucydides, that no such motive was needful: the Athenian government would of course take cognisance of the cause; and, as might be expected, a requisition was sent to the Samian administration to answer, by deputies at Athens, to the charges urged against them. The Samians, unwilling to submit their claim to the arbitration of those who they knew were always systematically adverse to the aristocratical interest, refused to send deputies. A fleet of forty trireme galleys however brought them to immediate submission; their government was changed to a democracy, in which those who had headed the opposition of course took the lead; and to insure permanent acquiescence from the aristocratical party, fifty men and fifty boys, of the first families of the island, were taken as hostages, and placed under an Athenian guard in the island of Lemnos.

What Herodotus mentions, as an observation applicable generally, we may readily believe was on this occasion experienced in Samos, “that the[439] lower people were most unpleasant associates to the nobles.” A number of these, unable to support the oppression to which they found themselves exposed, quitted the island, and applied to Pissuthnes, satrap of Sardis. The project of conquering Greece by arms appears to have been abandoned by the Persian government; but the urgency for constantly watching its politics, and interfering, as occasion might offer, with a view to the safety, if not to the extension, of the western border of the empire, was obvious; and it appears that the western satraps were instructed accordingly. The Samian refugees were favourably received by Pissuthnes. They corresponded with many of their party yet remaining in the island, and they engaged in their interest the city of Byzantium, itself a subject ally of Athens. Collecting then about seven hundred auxiliary soldiers, they crossed by night the narrow channel which separates Samos from the continent, and, being joined by their friends, they surprised and overpowered the new administration. Without delay they proceeded to Lemnos, and so well conducted their enterprise that they carried off their hostages, together with the Athenian guard set over them. To win then more effectually the favour of the satrap, the Athenian prisoners were presented to him. Assured of assistance from Byzantium, being also not without hopes from Lacedæmon, they prepared to prosecute their success by immediately undertaking an expedition against Miletus.

Information of these transactions arriving quickly at Athens, Pericles, with nine others, according to the ancient military constitution, joined with him in command, hastened to Samos with a fleet of sixty trireme galleys. Pericles met the Samian fleet and defeated it. He debarked his infantry on the island of Samos, and laid siege to the city by land and sea.

In the ninth month from the commencement of the siege, it capitulated: the ships of war were surrendered, the fortifications were destroyed, the Samians bound themselves to the payment of a sum of money by instalment for the expenses of the war, and gave hostages as pledges of their fidelity to the sovereign commonwealth of Athens. The Byzantines, not waiting the approach of the coercing fleet, sent their request to be readmitted to their former terms of subjection, which was granted.

This rebellion, alarming and troublesome at the time to the administration of Athens, otherwise little disturbed the internal peace of the commonwealth; and, in the event, contributed rather to strengthen its command over its dependencies. Pericles took occasion from it to acquire fresh popularity. On the return of the armament to Athens the accustomed solemnities, in honour of those who had fallen in the war, were performed with new splendour; and, in speaking the funeral oration, he exerted the powers of his eloquence very highly to the gratification of the people. As he descended from the bema, the stand whence orations were delivered to the people, the women presented him with chaplets; an idea derived from the ceremonies of the public games, where the crowning with a chaplet was the distinction of the victors, and, as something approaching to divine honour, was held among the highest tokens of admiration, esteem, and respect.

THE WAR WITH CORCYRA

The threatened renewal of general war in Greece having been obviated by the determination of the Peloponnesian congress not to interfere between the Athenians and their Asiatic allies, peace prevailed during the next three[440] years after the submission of the Samians; or, if hostilities occurred anywhere, they were of so little importance that no account of them remains. A fatal spark then, raising fire in a corner of the country hitherto little within the notice of history, the blaze rapidly spread over the whole with inextinguishable fury; insomuch that the further history of Greece, with some splendid episodes, is chiefly a tale of calamities, which the nation, in ceaseless exertions of misdirected valour and genius, brought upon itself.

The island of Corcyra had been occupied, in an early age, by a colony from Corinth. The political connection of colonies with the mother-country will always depend upon their respective strength; and the Grecian colonies, all having been the offspring of very small states, in many instances acquired more than the parent’s force. Corcyra, already populous, had not yet entirely broken its connection with Corinth, when the resolution was taken by its government to settle a colony on the Illyrian coast. An embassy was therefore sent, in due form, to desire a Corinthian for the leader. Phaleus, of a family boasting its descent from Hercules, was accordingly appointed to that honour: some Corinthians and others of Dorian race accompanied him; and Phaleus thus became the nominal founder of Epidamnus, which was however considered as a Corcyræan, not a Corinthian colony.

But in process of time Epidamnus, growing populous and wealthy, followed the example of its mother-country, asserted independency, and maintained the claim. Like most other Grecian cities, it was then, during many years, torn by sedition; and a war supervening with the neighbouring barbarians, it fell much from its former flourishing state. But the spirit of faction remaining in spite of misfortune untamed, the commonalty at length expelled all the higher citizens. These, finding refuge among the Illyrians, engaged with them in a predatory war, which was unremittingly carried on against the city by land and sea. Unable thus to rest, and almost to subsist, the Epidamnians in possession requested assistance from Corcyra. This humble supplication however being rejected, they hastened a deputation to Corinth.

Fortunately for their object, though peace had not yet been broken, yet animosity between Corinth and Corcyra had so risen that the Corcyræans, who had long refused political dependency, now denied to the Corinthians all those honours and compliments usually paid by Grecian colonies to their parent states. Under stimulation thus from affront, and with encouragement from the oracle, the prospect of an acquisition of dominion was too tempting, and the proposal of the Epidamnians was accepted. But Corinth had at this time only thirty ships of war, whereas Corcyra was able to put to sea near four times the number; being, next to Athens, the most powerful maritime state of Greece. Application for naval assistance was therefore made to the republics with which Corinth was most bound in friendship, and thus more than forty vessels were obtained. It had been the settled policy of the Corcyræans, islanders and strong at sea, to engage in no alliances. They had avoided both the Peloponnesian and the Athenian confederacy; and hitherto with this policy they had prospered. But, alarmed now at the combination formed against them, and fearing it might still be extended, they sent ambassadors to Lacedæmon and Sicyon; who prevailed so far that ministers from those two states accompanied them to Corinth, as mediators in the existing differences. In presence of these the Corcyræan ambassadors proposed to submit the matters in dispute to the arbitration of any Peloponnesian states, or to the Delphian oracle, which the Corinthians had supposed already favourable to them. The Corinthians[441] however, now prepared for war, and apparently persuaded that neither Lacedæmon nor Sicyon would take any active part against them, refused to treat upon any equal terms, and the Corcyræan ambassadors departed (435 B.C.).

The Corinthians then hastened to use the force they had collected. The Corcyræans had manned those of their ships which were already equipped, and hastily prepared some of those less in readiness, when their herald returned, bearing no friendly answer. With eighty galleys then they quitted their port, met the enemy off Actium, and gained a complete victory, destroying fifteen ships. Returning to Corcyra, they erected their trophy on the headland of Leucimme, and they immediately put to death all their prisoners, except the Corinthians, whom, as pledges, they kept in bonds. Epidamnus surrendered to their forces on the same day.

The opportunities now open, for both revenge and profit, were not neglected by the Corcyræans. During that year, unopposed on the sea, there was scarcely an intermission of their smaller enterprises; by some of which they gained booty, by others only gave alarm, but by all together greatly distressed the Corinthians and their allies (434 B.C.).

But since their misfortune off Actium the Corinthians had been unremittingly assiduous in repairing their loss, and in preparing to revenge it. Triremes were built, all necessaries for a fleet were largely collected, rowers were engaged throughout Peloponnesus, and where else in any part of Greece they could be obtained for hire. The Corcyræans, informed of these measures, notwithstanding their past success were uneasy with the consideration that their commonwealth stood single, while their enemies were members of an extensive confederacy; of which, though a part only had yet been induced to act, more powerful exertions were nevertheless to be apprehended. In this state of things it appeared necessary to abandon their ancient policy, and to seek alliances. Thucydides gives us to understand that they would have preferred the Peloponnesian to the Athenian confederacy; induced, apparently, both by their kindred origin, and their kindred form of government. But they were precluded by the circumstances of the existing war, Corinth being one of the most considerable members of the Peloponnesian confederacy; and it was beyond hope that Lacedæmon could be engaged in measures hostile to so old and useful an ally. It was therefore finally resolved to send an embassy to Athens. As soon as the purpose of the Corcyræans was known at Corinth, ambassadors were sent thence to Athens to remonstrate against it.

The Athenian people were assembled to receive the two embassies, each of which, in presence of the other, made its proposition in a formal oration. The point to be determined was highly critical for Athens. A truce existed, but not a peace, with a confederacy inferior in naval force, but far superior by land; and Attica, a continental territory, was open to attack by land. But next to Athens Corcyra was the most powerful maritime republic; and to prevent the accession of its strength, through alliance, or through conquest, to the Peloponnesian confederacy, was, for the Athenian people, highly important. In the articles of the truce moreover it was expressly stipulated, that any Grecian state, not yet a member of either confederacy, might at pleasure be admitted to either. But, notwithstanding this, it was little less than certain that, in the present circumstances, an alliance with Corcyra must lead to a rupture with the Peloponnesians; and this consideration occasioned much suspense in the minds of the Athenians. Twice the assembly was held to debate the question. On the first day, the arguments[442] of the Corinthian ambassadors had so far effect that nothing was decided: on the second, the spirit of ambition, ordinary in democracy, prevailed, and the question was carried for alliance with Corcyra.

Meanwhile the earnestness with which the Corinthians persevered in their purpose of prosecuting war against the Corcyræans, now to be supported by the power of Athens, appears to mark confidence in support, on their side, from the Lacedæmonian confederacy; some members of which indeed were evidently of ready zeal. The Corinthians increased their own trireme galleys to ninety. The Eleans, resenting the burning of Cyllene, had exerted themselves in naval preparation, and sent ten triremes completely manned to join them. Assistance from Megara, Leucas, and Ambracia made their whole fleet a hundred and fifty: the crews would hardly be less than forty thousand men. With this large force they sailed to Chimerium, a port of Thesprotia, over against Corcyra, where, according to the practice of the Greeks, they formed their naval camp.

The Athenian government meanwhile, desirous to confirm their new alliance, yet still anxious to avoid a rupture with the Peloponnesian confederacy, had sent ten triremes to Corcyra, under the command of Lacedæmonius, son of Cimon; but with orders not to fight, unless a descent were made on the island, or any of its towns were attacked. The Corcyræans, on receiving intelligence that the enemy was approaching, put to sea with a hundred and ten triremes, exclusive of the Athenian, and formed their naval camp on one of the small islets called Sybota, the Sow-leas or Sow-pastures, between their own island and the main. Their land-forces at the same time, with a thousand auxiliaries from Zacynthus, encamped on the headland of Leucimme in Corcyra, to be prepared against invasion; while on the opposite coast of the continent the barbarians, long since friendly to Corinth, assembled in large number. The Corinthians however, moving in the night, perceived in the dawn the Corcyræan fleet approaching. Both prepared immediately to engage.

So great a number of ships had never before met in any action between Greeks and Greeks. The onset was vigorous; and the battle was maintained, on either side, with much courage but little skill. Both Corcyræan and Corinthian ships were equipped in the ancient manner, very inartificially. The decks were crowded with soldiers, some heavy-armed, some with missile weapons; and the action, in the eye of the Athenians, trained in the discipline of Themistocles, resembled a battle of infantry rather than a sea-fight. Once engaged, the number and throng of the vessels made free motion impossible: nor was there any attempt at the rapid evolution of the diecplus, as it was called, for piercing the enemy’s line and dashing away his oars, the great objects of the improved naval tactics; but the event depended, as of old, chiefly upon the heavy-armed soldiers who fought on the decks. Tumult and confusion thus prevailing everywhere, Lacedæmonius, restrained by his orders from fighting, gave yet some assistance to the Corcyræans, by showing himself wherever he saw them particularly pressed, and alarming their enemies. The Corcyræans were, in the left of their line, successful: twenty of their ships put to flight the Megarians and Ambracians who were opposed to them, pursued to the shore, and, debarking, plundered and burnt the naval camp. But the Corinthians, in the other wing, had meanwhile been gaining an advantage which became decisive through the imprudent forwardness of the victorious Corcyræans. The Athenians now endeavoured, by more effectual assistance to their allies, to prevent a total rout; but disorder was already too prevalent, and advantage of[443] numbers too great against them. The Corinthians pressed their success; the Corcyræans fled, the Athenians became mingled among them; and in the confusion of a running fight acts of hostility passed between the Athenians and Corinthians. The defeated however soon reached their own shore, whither the conquerors did not think proper to follow.

In the action several galleys had been sunk; most by the Corinthians, but some by the victorious part of the Corcyræan fleet. The crews had recourse, as usual, to their boats; and it was common for the conquerors, when they could seize any of these, to take them in tow and make the men prisoners: but the Corinthians, in the first moment of success, gave no quarter; and, unaware of the disaster of the right of their fleet, in the hurry and confusion of the occasion, not easily distinguishing between Greeks and Greeks, inadvertently destroyed many of their unfortunate friends. When pursuit ceased, and they had collected whatever could be recovered of the wrecks and the dead, they carried them to a desert harbour, not distant, on the Thesprotian coast, called, like the neighbouring islets, Sybota: and depositing them under the care of their barbarian allies, who were there encamped, they returned, on the afternoon of the same day, with the purpose of renewing attack upon the Corcyræan fleet.

The Corcyræans meanwhile had been considering the probable consequences of leaving the enemy masters of the sea. They dreaded descents upon their island, and consequent ravage of their lands. The return of their victorious squadron gave them new spirits: Lacedæmonius encouraged them with assurance that, since hostilities had already passed, he would no longer scruple to afford them his utmost support; and they resolved upon the bold measure of quitting their port and, though evening was already approaching, again giving the enemy battle. Instantly they proceeded to put this in execution. The pæan, the song of battle, was already sung, when the Corinthians began suddenly to retreat. The Corcyræans were at a loss immediately to account for this; but presently they discovered a squadron coming round a headland, which had concealed it longer from them than from the enemy. Still uncertain whether it might be friendly or hostile, they also retreated into their port; but shortly, to their great joy, twenty triremes under Glaucon and Andocides, sent from Attica, in the apprehension that the small force under Lacedæmonius might be unequal to the occurring exigencies, took their station by them.

Next day the Corcyræans did not hesitate, with the thirty Athenian ships, for none of those under Lacedæmonius had suffered materially in the action, to show themselves off the harbour of Sybota, where the enemy lay, and offer battle. The Corinthians came out of the harbour, formed for action, and so rested. They were not desirous of risking an engagement against the increased strength of the enemy, but they could not remain conveniently in the station they had occupied, a desert shore, where they could neither refit their injured ships, nor recruit their stock of provisions; and they were encumbered with more than a thousand prisoners; a very inconvenient addition to the crowded complements of their galleys. Their object therefore was to return home: but they were apprehensive that the Athenians, holding the truce as broken by the action of the preceding day, would not allow an unmolested passage. It was therefore determined to try their disposition by sending a small vessel with a message to the Athenian commanders, without the formality of a herald. This was a service not without danger. Those Corcyræans, who were near enough to observe what passed, exclaimed, in the vehemence of their animosity, “that the bearers should be[444] put to death;” which, considering them as enemies, would have been within the law of war of the Greeks. The Athenian commanders however thought proper to hold a different conduct. To the message delivered, which accused them of breaking the truce, by obstructing the passage of Corcyra, they replied that “it was not their purpose to break the truce, but only to protect their allies. Wherever else the Corinthians chose to go, they might go without interruption from them; but any attempt against Corcyra, or any of its possessions, would be resisted by the Athenians to the utmost of their power.”

Upon receiving this answer, the Corinthians, after erecting a trophy at Sybota on the continent, proceeded homeward. In their way they took by stratagem Anactorium, a town at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf, which had formerly been held in common by their commonwealth and the Corcyræans; and, leaving a garrison there, proceeded to Corinth. Of their prisoners they found near eight hundred had been slaves, and these they sold. The remainder, about two hundred and fifty, were strictly guarded, but otherwise treated with the utmost kindness. Among them were some of the first men of Corcyra; and through these the Corinthians hoped, at some future opportunity, to recover their ancient interest and authority in the island.

The Corcyræans meanwhile had gratified themselves with the erection of a trophy on the island Sybota, as a claim of victory, in opposition to the Corinthian trophy on the continent. The Athenian fleet returned home; and thus ended, without any treaty, that series of actions which is distinguished among Greek writers by the name of the Corcyræan, or, sometimes, the Corinthian war.b

THE WAR WITH POTIDÆA AND MACEDONIA

The Corinthians had incurred an immense cost, and taxed all their willing allies, only to leave their enemy stronger than she was before. From this time forward they considered the Thirty Years’ Truce as broken, and conceived a hatred, alike deadly and undisguised, against Athens; so that the latter gained nothing by the moderation of her admirals in sparing the Corinthian fleet off the coast of Epirus. An opportunity was not long wanting for the Corinthians to strike a blow at their enemy, through one of her widespread dependencies.

On the isthmus of that lesser peninsula called Pallene, which forms the westernmost of the three prongs of the greater Thracian peninsula called Chalcidice, between the Thermaic and the Strymonic gulfs, was situated the Dorian town of Potidæa, one of the tributary allies of Athens, but originally colonised from Corinth, and still maintaining a certain metropolitan allegiance towards the latter: insomuch that every year certain Corinthians were sent thither as magistrates under the title of Epidemiurgi. On various points of the neighbouring coast, also, there were several small towns belonging to the Chalcidians and Bottiæans, enrolled in like manner in the list of Athenian tributaries. The neighbouring inland territory, Mygdonia and Chalcidice, was held by the Macedonian king, Perdiccas, son of that Alexander who had taken part, fifty years before, in the expedition of Xerxes. These two princes appear gradually to have extended their dominions, after the ruin of Persian power in Thrace by the exertions of Athens, until at length they acquired all the territory between the rivers Axius and Strymon. Now Perdiccas had been for some time the friend and[445] ally of Athens; but there were other Macedonian princes, his brother Philip, and Derdas, holding independent principalities in the upper country, apparently on the higher course of the Axius near the Pæonian tribes, with whom he was in a state of dispute. These princes having been accepted as the allies of Athens, Perdiccas from that time became her active enemy, and it was from his intrigues that all the difficulties of Athens on that coast took their first origin. The Athenian empire was much less complete and secure over the seaports on the mainland than over the islands: for the former were always more or less dependent on any powerful land-neighbour, sometimes more dependent on him than upon the mistress of the sea; and we shall find Athens herself cultivating assiduously the favour of Sitalces and other strong Thracian potentates, as an aid to her dominion over the seaports. Perdiccas immediately began to incite and aid the Chalcidians and Bottiæans to revolt from Athens, and the violent enmity against the latter, kindled in the bosoms of the Corinthians by the recent events at Corcyra, enabled him to extend the same projects to Potidæa. Not only did he send envoys to Corinth in order to concert measures for provoking the revolt of Potidæa, but also to Sparta, instigating the Peloponnesian league to a general declaration of war against Athens. And he further prevailed on many of the Chalcidian inhabitants to abandon their separate small town on the seacoast, for the purpose of joint residence at Olynthus, which was several stadia from the sea. Thus that town, as well as the Chalcidian interest, became much strengthened, while Perdiccas further assigned some territory near Lake Bolbe to contribute to the temporary maintenance of the concentrated population.

The Athenians were not ignorant either of his hostile preparations or of the dangers which awaited them from Corinth after the Corcyræan sea-fight immediately after which they sent to take precautions against the revolt of Potidæa; requiring the inhabitants to take down their wall on the side of Pallene, so as to leave the town open on the side of the peninsula, or on what may be called the sea-side, and fortified only towards the mainland—requiring them further both to deliver hostages and to dismiss the annual magistrates who came to them from Corinth. An Athenian armament of thirty triremes and one thousand hoplites, under Archestratus and ten others, despatched to act against Perdiccas in the Thermaic gulf, was directed at the same time to enforce these requisitions against Potidæa, and to repress any dispositions to revolt among the neighbouring Chalcidians. Immediately on receiving the requisitions, the Potidæans sent envoys both to Athens, for the purpose of evading and gaining time, and to Sparta, in conjunction with Corinth, in order to determine a Lacedæmonian invasion of Attica, in the event of Potidæa being attacked by Athens. From the Spartan authorities they obtained a distinct affirmative promise, in spite of the Thirty Years’ Truce still subsisting: at Athens they had no success, and they accordingly openly revolted (seemingly about midsummer 432 B.C.), at the same time that the armament under Archestratus sailed. The Chalcidians and Bottiæans revolted also, at the express instigation of Corinth, accompanied by solemn oaths and promises of assistance. Archestratus with his fleet, on reaching the Thermaic gulf, found them all in proclaimed enmity, but was obliged to confine himself to the attack of Perdiccas in Macedonia, not having numbers enough to admit of a division of his force. He accordingly laid siege to Therma, in co-operation with the Macedonian troops from the upper country, under Philip and the brothers of Derdas; after taking that place, he next proceeded to besiege Pydna. But it would probably have been wiser had he turned[446] his whole force instantly to the blockade of Potidæa; for during the period of more than six weeks that he spent in the operations against Therma, the Corinthians conveyed to Potidæa a reinforcement of sixteen hundred hoplites and four hundred light-armed, partly their own citizens, partly Peloponnesians, hired for the occasion—under Aristeus, son of Adimantus, a man of such eminent popularity, both at Corinth and at Potidæa, that most of the soldiers volunteered on his personal account. Potidæa was thus put in a state of complete defence shortly after the news of its revolt reached Athens, and long before any second armament could be sent to attack it. A second armament, however, was speedily sent forth—forty triremes and two thousand Athenian hoplites under Callias, son of Calliades, with four other commanders—who on reaching the Thermaic gulf, joined the former body at the siege of Pydna. After prosecuting the siege in vain for a short time, they found themselves obliged to patch up an accommodation on the best terms they could with Perdiccas, from the necessity of commencing immediate operations against Aristeus and Potidæa. They then quitted Macedonia, first crossing by sea from Pydna to the eastern coast of the Thermaic Gulf—next attacking, though without effect, the town of Berœa—and then marching by land along the eastern coast of the gulf, in the direction of Potidæa. On the third day of easy march, they reached the seaport called Gigonus, near which they encamped.

In spite of the convention concluded at Pydna, Perdiccas, whose character for faithlessness we shall have more than one occasion to notice, was now again on the side of the Chalcidians, and sent two hundred horse to join them, under the command of Iolaus. Aristeus posted his Corinthians and Potidæans on the isthmus near Potidæa, providing a market without the walls, in order that they might not stray in quest of provisions. His position was on the side towards Olynthus—which was about seven miles off, but within sight, and in a lofty and conspicuous situation. He here awaited the approach of the Athenians, calculating that the Chalcidians from Olynthus would, upon the hoisting of a given signal, assail them in the rear when they attacked him. But Callias was strong enough to place in reserve his Macedonian cavalry and other allies as a check against Olynthus; while with his Athenians and the main force he marched to the isthmus and took position in front of Aristeus. In the battle which ensued, Aristeus and the chosen band of Corinthians immediately about him were completely successful, breaking the troops opposed to them, and pursuing for a considerable distance; but the remaining Potidæans and Peloponnesians were routed by the Athenians and driven within the walls. On returning from pursuit, Aristeus found the victorious Athenians between him and Potidæa, and was reduced to the alternative either of cutting his way through them into the latter town, or of making a retreating march to Olynthus. He chose the former as the least of two hazards, and forced his way through the flank of the Athenians, wading into the sea in order to turn the extremity of the Potidæan wall, which reached entirely across the isthmus with a mole running out at each end into the water: he effected this daring enterprise and saved his detachment, though not without considerable difficulty and some loss. Meanwhile, the auxiliaries from Olynthus, though they had begun their march on seeing the concerted signal, had been kept in check by the Macedonian horse, so that the Potidæans had been beaten and the signal again withdrawn, before they could make any effective diversion: nor did the cavalry on either side come into action. The defeated Potidæans and Corinthians, having the town immediately in their rear, lost only three[447] hundred men, while the Athenians lost one hundred and fifty, together with the general, Callias.

The victory was, however, quite complete, and the Athenians, after having erected their trophy and given up the enemy’s dead for burial, immediately built their blockading wall across the isthmus on the side of the mainland, so as to cut off Potidæa from all communication with Olynthus and the Chalcidians. To make the blockade complete, a second wall across the isthmus was necessary, on the other side towards Pallene: but they had not force enough to detach a completely separate body for this purpose, until after some time they were joined by Phormion with sixteen hundred fresh hoplites from Athens. That general, landing at Aphytis, in the peninsula of Pallene, marched slowly up to Potidæa, ravaging the territory in order to draw out the citizens to battle: but the challenge not being accepted, he undertook, and finished without obstruction, the blockading wall on the side of Pallene, so that the town was now completely enclosed and the harbour watched by the Athenian fleet. The wall once finished, a portion of the force sufficed to guard it, leaving Phormion at liberty to undertake aggressive operations against the Chalcidic and Bottiæan townships. The capture of Potidæa being now only a question of more or less time, Aristeus, in order that the provisions might last longer, proposed to the citizens to choose a favourable wind, get on shipboard, and break out suddenly from the harbour, taking their chance of eluding the Athenian fleet, and leaving only five hundred defenders behind. Though he offered himself to be among those left, he could not determine the citizens to so bold an enterprise, and therefore sallied forth, in the way proposed, with a small detachment, in order to try and procure relief from without—especially some aid or diversion from Peloponnesus. But he was able to accomplish nothing beyond some partial warlike operations among the Chalcidians, and a successful ambuscade against the citizens of Sermyla, which did nothing for the relief of the blockaded town: it had, however, been so well provisioned that it held out for two whole years—a period full of important events elsewhere.

From these two contests between Athens and Corinth, first indirectly at Corcyra, next distinctly and avowedly at Potidæa, sprang those important movements in the Lacedæmonian alliance which will be recounted later.c

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[448]

CHAPTER XXVI. IMPERIAL ATHENS UNDER PERICLES

The judicial alterations effected at Athens by Pericles and Ephialtes, described in a preceding chapter, gave to a large proportion of the citizens direct jury functions and an active interest in the constitution, such as they had never before enjoyed; the change being at once a mark of previous growth of democratical sentiment during the past, and a cause of its further development during the future. The Athenian people were at this time ready for any personal exertion. The naval service especially was prosecuted with a degree of assiduity which brought about continual improvement in skill and efficiency; while the poorer citizens, of whom it chiefly consisted, were more exact in obedience and discipline than any of the more opulent persons from whom the infantry or the cavalry were drawn. The maritime multitude, in addition to self-confidence and courage, acquired by this laborious training an increased skill, which placed the Athenian navy every year more and more above the rest of Greece: and the perfection of this force became the more indispensable as the Athenian empire was now again confined to the sea and seaport towns; the reverses immediately preceding the Thirty Years’ Truce having broken up all Athenian land ascendency over Megara, Bœotia, and the other continental territories adjoining to Attica.

Instead of trying to cherish or restore the feelings of equal alliance, Pericles formally disclaimed it. He maintained that Athens owed to her subject allies no account of the money received from them, so long as she performed her contract by keeping away the Persian enemy, and maintaining the safety of the Ægean waters. This was, as he represented, the obligation which Athens had undertaken; and provided it were faithfully discharged, the allies had no right to ask questions or institute control. That it was faithfully discharged no one could deny: no ship of war except those of Athens and her allies was ever seen between the eastern and western shores of the Ægean. An Athenian fleet of sixty triremes was kept on duty in these waters, chiefly manned by Athenian citizens, and beneficial as well from the protection afforded to commerce as for keeping the seamen in constant pay and training. And such was the effective superintendence maintained, that in[449] the disastrous period preceding the Thirty Years’ Truce, when Athens lost Megara and Bœotia, and with difficulty recovered Eubœa, none of her numerous maritime subjects took the opportunity to revolt.

The total of these distinct tributary cities is said to have amounted to one thousand, according to a verse of Aristophanes, which cannot be under the truth, though it may well be, and probably is, greatly above the truth. The total annual tribute collected at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, and probably also for the years preceding it, is given by Thucydides at about six hundred talents [£120,000 or $600,000]. Of the sums paid by particular states, however, we have little or no information. It was placed under the superintendence of the Hellenotamiæ; originally officers of the confederacy, but now removed from Delos to Athens, and acting altogether as an Athenian treasury-board. The sum total of the Athenian revenue, from all sources, including this tribute, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War is stated by Xenophon at one thousand talents: customs, harbour, and market-dues, receipt from the silver mines at Laurium, rents of public property, fines from judicial sentences, a tax per head upon slaves, the annual payment made by each metic, etc., may have made up a larger sum than four hundred talents; which sum, added to the six hundred talents from tribute, would make the total named by Xenophon. But a verse of Aristophanes, during the ninth year of the Peloponnesian War, B.C. 422, gives the general total of that time as “nearly two thousand talents”: this is in all probability much above the truth, though we may reasonably imagine that the amount of tribute money levied upon the allies had been augmented during the interval. Whatever may have been the actual magnitude of the Athenian budget, however, prior to the Peloponnesian War, we know that during the larger part of the administration of Pericles, the revenue including tribute, was so managed as to leave a large annual surplus; insomuch that a treasure of coined money was accumulated in the Acropolis during the years preceding the Peloponnesian War—which treasure when at its maximum reached the great sum of ninety-seven hundred talents [£1,940,000 or $9,700,000], and was still at six thousand talents, after a serious drain for various purposes, at the moment when that war began. This system of public economy, constantly laying by a considerable sum year after year—in which Athens stood alone, since none of the Peloponnesian states had any public reserve whatever—goes far of itself to vindicate Pericles from the charge of having wasted the public money in mischievous distributions for the purpose of obtaining popularity; and also to exonerate the Athenian demos from that reproach of a greedy appetite for living by the public purse which it is common to advance against them. After the death of Cimon, no further expeditions were undertaken against the Persians, and even for some years before his death, not much appears to have been done. The tribute money thus remained unexpended, and kept in reserve, as the presidential duties of Athens prescribed, against future attack, which might at any time be renewed.

Though we do not know the exact amount of the other sources of Athenian revenue, however, we know that tribute received from allies was the largest item in it. And altogether the exercise of empire abroad became a prominent feature in Athenian life, and a necessity to Athenian sentiment, not less than democracy at home. Athens was no longer, as she had been once, a single city, with Attica for her territory: she was a capital or imperial city—a despot-city, was the expression used by her enemies, and even sometimes by her own citizens—with many dependencies attached to her, and bound to follow her orders. Such was the manner in which not merely[450] Pericles and the other leading statesmen, but even the humblest Athenian citizen, conceived the dignity of Athens; and the sentiment was one which carried with it both personal pride and stimulus to patriotism.

To establish Athenian interests in the dependent territories, was one important object in the eyes of Pericles, and while he discountenanced all distant and rash enterprises, such as invasion of Egypt or Cyprus, he planted out many cleruchies and colonies of Athenian citizens intermingled with allies, on islands and parts of the coast. He conducted one thousand citizens to the Thracian Chersonese, five hundred to Naxos, and two hundred and fifty to Andros. In the Chersonese, he further repelled the barbarous Thracian invaders from without, and even undertook the labour of carrying a wall of defence across the isthmus, which connected the peninsula with Thrace; since the barbarous Thracian tribes, though expelled some time before by Cimon, had still continued to renew their incursions from time to time. Ever since the occupation of the elder Miltiades, about eighty years before, there had been in this peninsula many Athenian proprietors, apparently intermingled with half-civilised Thracians: the settlers now acquired both greater numerical strength and better protection, though it does not appear that the cross-wall was permanently maintained. The maritime expeditions of Pericles even extended into the Euxine Sea, as far as the important Greek city of Sinope, then governed by a despot named Timesileus, against whom a large proportion of the citizens were in active discontent.

Lamachus was left with thirteen Athenian triremes to assist in expelling the despot, who was driven into exile with his friends: the properties of these exiles were confiscated, and assigned to the maintenance of six hundred Athenian citizens, admitted to equal fellowship and residence with the Sinopians. We may presume that on this occasion Sinope became a member of the Athenian tributary alliance, if it had not been so before: but we do not know whether Cotyora and Trapezus, dependencies of Sinope further eastward, which the ten thousand Greeks found on their retreat fifty years afterwards, existed in the time of Pericles or not. Moreover, the numerous and well-equipped Athenian fleet, under the command of Pericles, produced an imposing effect upon the barbarous princes and tribes along the coast, contributing certainly to the security of Grecian trade, and probably to the acquisition of new dependent allies.

It was by successive proceedings of this sort that many detachments of Athenian citizens became settled in various portions of the maritime empire of the city—some rich, investing their property in the islands as more secure (from the incontestable superiority of Athens at sea) even than Attica, which since the loss of the Megarid could not be guarded against a Peloponnesian land invasion—others poor, and hiring themselves out as labourers. The islands of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, as well as the territory of Histiæa, on the north of Eubœa, were completely occupied by Athenian proprietors and citizens: other places were partially so occupied. And it was doubtless advantageous to the islanders to associate themselves with Athenians in trading enterprises, since they thereby obtained a better chance of the protection of the Athenian fleet. It seems that Athens passed regulations occasionally for the commerce of her dependent allies, as we see by the fact that, shortly before the Peloponnesian War, she excluded the Megarians from all their ports. The commercial relations between Piræus and the Ægean reached their maximum during the interval immediately preceding the Peloponnesian War. Nor were these relations confined to the country east and north of Attica: they reached also the western regions. The most important settlements[451] founded by Athens during this period were, Amphipolis in Thrace and Thurii in Italy. Amphipolis was planted by a colony of Athenians and other Greeks, under the conduct of the Athenian Agnon, in 437 B.C. It was situated near the river Strymon in Thrace, on the eastern bank, and at the spot where the Strymon resumes its river-course after emerging from the lake above.

The colony of Thurii on the coast of the Gulf of Tarentum in Italy, near the site and on the territory of the ancient Sybaris, was founded by Athens about seven years earlier than Amphipolis, not long after the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ Truce with Sparta, 443 B.C.

The fourteen years between the Thirty Years’ Truce and the breaking out of the Peloponnesian War, are a period of full maritime empire on the part of Athens—partially indeed resisted, but never with success. They are a period of peace with all cities extraneous to her own empire; and of splendid decorations to the city itself, emanating from the genius of Phidias and others, in sculpture as well as in architecture. Since the death of Cimon, Pericles had become, gradually but entirely, the first citizen in the commonwealth. His qualities told for more, the longer they were known, and even the disastrous reverses which preceded the Thirty Years’ Truce had not overthrown him, since he had protested against that expedition of Tolmides into Bœotia out of which they first arose. But if the personal influence of Pericles had increased, the party opposed to him seems also to have become stronger than before; and to have acquired a leader in many respects more effective than Cimon—Thucydides, son of Melesias.

The new chief was a relative of Cimon, but of a character and talents more analogous to those of Pericles: a statesman and orator rather than a general, though competent to both functions if occasion demanded, as every leading man in those days was required to be. Under Thucydides, the political and parliamentary opposition against Pericles assumed a constant character and organisation such as Cimon, with his exclusively military aptitudes, had never been able to establish. The aristocratical party in the commonwealth—the “honourable and respectable” citizens, as we find them styled, adopting their own nomenclature—now imposed upon themselves the obligation of undeviating regularity in their attendance on the public assembly, sitting together in a particular section, so as to be conspicuously parted from the demos. In this manner, their applause and dissent, their mutual encouragement to each other, their distribution of parts to different speakers, was made more conducive to the party purposes than it had been before when these distinguished persons were intermingled with the mass of citizens. Thucydides himself was eminent as a speaker, inferior only to Pericles—perhaps hardly inferior even to him.

Such an opposition made to Pericles, in all the full license which a democratical constitution permitted, must have been both efficient and embarrassing. But the pointed severance of the aristocratical chiefs, which Thucydides, son of Melesias, introduced, contributed probably at once to rally the democratical majority round Pericles, and to exasperate the bitterness of party conflict. As far as we can make out the grounds of the opposition, it turned partly upon the pacific policy of Pericles towards the Persians, partly upon his expenditure for home ornament. Thucydides contended that Athens was disgraced in the eyes of the Greeks by having drawn the confederate treasure from Delos to her own Acropolis, under pretence of greater security—and then employing it, not in prosecuting war against the Persians, but in beautifying Athens by new temples and costly statues.[452] To this Pericles replied that Athens had undertaken the obligation, in consideration of the tribute-money, to protect her allies and keep off from them every foreign enemy,—that she had accomplished this object completely at the present, and retained a reserve sufficient to guarantee the like security for the future,—that under such circumstances she owed no account to her allies of the expenditure of the surplus, but was at liberty to employ it for purposes useful and honourable to the city. In this point of view it was an object of great public importance to render Athens imposing in the eyes both of the allies and of Hellas generally, by improved fortifications,—by accumulated embellishment, sculptural and architectural,—and by religious festivals, frequent, splendid, musical, and poetical.

Such was the answer made by Pericles in defence of his policy against the opposition headed by Thucydides. And considering the ground of the debate on both sides, the answer was perfectly satisfactory. For when we look at the very large sum which Pericles continually kept in reserve in the treasury, no one could reasonably complain that his expenditure for ornamental purposes was carried so far as to encroach upon the exigencies of defence. What Thucydides and his partisans appear to have urged, was that this common fund should still continue to be spent in aggressive warfare against the Persian king, in Egypt and elsewhere—conformably to the projects pursued by Cimon during his life. But Pericles was right in contending that such outlay would have been simply wasteful; of no use either to Athens or her allies, though risking all the chances of distant defeat, such as had been experienced a few years before in Egypt.

So bitter however was the opposition made by Thucydides and his party to this projected expenditure—so violent and pointed did the scission of aristocrats and democrats become—that the dispute came after no long time to that ultimate appeal which the Athenian constitution provided for the case of two opposite and nearly equal party-leaders—a vote of ostracism. Of the particular details which preceded this ostracism, we are not informed; but we see clearly that the general position was such as the ostracism was intended to meet. Probably the vote was proposed by the party of Thucydides, in order to procure the banishment of Pericles, the more powerful person of the two and the most likely to excite popular jealousy. The challenge was accepted by Pericles and his friends, and the result of the voting was such that an adequate legal majority condemned Thucydides to ostracism. And it seems that the majority must have been very decisive, for the party of Thucydides was completely broken by it: and we hear of no other single individual equally formidable, as a leader of opposition, throughout all the remaining life of Pericles.

The ostracism of Thucydides apparently took place about two years after the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ Truce (443-442 B.C.), and it is to the period immediately following, that the great Periclean works belong. The southern wall of the Acropolis had been built out of the spoils brought by Cimon from his Persian expeditions; but the third of the Long Walls connecting Athens with the harbour was the proposition of Pericles, at what precise time we do not know. The Long Walls originally completed (not long after the battle of Tanagra, as has already been stated) were two, one from Athens to Piræus, another from Athens to Phalerum: the space between them was broad, and if in the hands of an enemy, the communication with Piræus would be interrupted. Accordingly, Pericles now induced the people to construct a third or intermediate wall, running parallel with the first wall to Piræus, and within a short distance (seemingly near one furlong) from it:[453] so that the communication between the city and the port was placed beyond all possible interruption, even assuming an enemy to have got within the Phaleric wall. It was seemingly about this time, too, that the splendid docks and arsenal in Piræus, alleged by Isocrates to have cost one thousand talents [£200,000 or $1,000,000] were constructed; while the town itself of Piræus was laid out anew with straight streets intersecting at right angles. Apparently this was something new in Greece—the towns generally, and Athens itself in particular, having been built without any symmetry, or width, or continuity of streets: and Hippodamus the Milesian, a man of considerable attainments in the physical philosophy of the age, derived much renown as the earliest town architect, for having laid out the Piræus on a regular plan. The market-place, or one of them at least, permanently bore his name—the Hippodamian agora. At a time when so many great architects were displaying their genius in the construction of temples, we are not surprised to hear that the structure of towns began to be regularised also. Moreover we are told that the new colonial town of Thurii, to which Hippodamus went as a settler, was also constructed in the same systematic form as to straight and wide streets.

The new scheme upon which the Piræus was laid out, was not without its value as one visible proof of the naval grandeur of Athens. But the buildings in Athens and on the Acropolis formed the real glory of the Periclean age. A new theatre, termed the Odeon, was constructed for musical and poetical representations at the great Panathenaic solemnity; next, the splendid temple of Athene, called the Parthenon, with all its masterpieces of decorative sculpture, friezes, and reliefs; lastly, the costly portals erected to adorn the entrance of the Acropolis, on the western side of the hill, through which the solemn processions on festival days were conducted. It appears that the Odeon and the Parthenon were both finished between 445 and 437 B.C.: the Propylæa somewhat later, between 437 and 431 B.C., in which latter year the Peloponnesian War began. Progress was also made in restoring or reconstructing the Erechtheion, or ancient temple of Athene Polias, the patron goddess of the city—which had been burnt in the invasion of Xerxes. But the breaking out of the Peloponnesian War seems to have prevented the completion of this, as well as of the great temple of Demeter, at Eleusis, for the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries—that of Athene, at Sunium—and that of Nemesis at Rhamnus. Nor was the sculpture less memorable than the architecture; three statues of Athene, all by the hand of Phidias, decorated the Acropolis, one colossal, forty-seven feet high, of ivory, in the Parthenon, a second of bronze, called the Lemnian Athene, a third of colossal magnitude, also in bronze, called Athene Promachos, placed between the Propylæa, and the Parthenon, and visible from afar off, even to the navigator approaching Piræus by sea.

It is not, of course, to Pericles that the renown of these splendid productions of art belongs; but the great sculptors and architects, by whom they were conceived and executed, belonged to that same period of expanding and stimulating Athenian democracy, which likewise called forth creative genius in oratory, in dramatic poetry, and in philosophical speculation.

Considering these prodigious achievements in the field of art only as they bear upon Athenian and Grecian history, they are phenomena of extraordinary importance. When we learn the profound impression which they produced upon Grecian spectators of a later age, we may judge how immense was the effect upon that generation which saw them both begun and finished. In the year 480 B.C., Athens was ruined by the occupation[454] of Xerxes: since that period, the Greeks had seen, first, the rebuilding and fortifying of the city on an enlarged scale; next, the addition of Piræus with its docks and magazines; thirdly, the junction of the two by the Long Walls, thus including the most numerous concentrated population, wealth, arms, ships, etc., in Greece; lastly, the rapid creation of so many new miracles of art—the sculptures of Phidias as well as the paintings of the Thasian painter Polygnotus, in the temple of Theseus, and in the portico called Pœcile.b

Plutarch says: “That which was the chief delight of the Athenians and the wonder of strangers, and which alone serves for a proof that the boasted power and opulence of ancient Greece is not an idle tale, was the magnificence of the temples and public edifices. Works were raised of an astonishing magnitude, and inimitable beauty and perfection, every architect striving to surpass the magnificence of the design with the elegance of the execution; yet still the most wonderful circumstance was the expedition with which they were completed. Phidias was appointed by Pericles superintendent of all the public edifices.”f

It thus appears that the gigantic strides by which Athens had reached her maritime empire were now immediately succeeded by a series of works which stamped her as the imperial city of Greece, gave to her an appearance of power even greater than the reality, and especially put to shame the old-fashioned simplicity of Sparta. The cost was doubtless prodigious, and could only have been borne at a time when there was a large treasure in the Acropolis, as well as a considerable tribute annually coming in: if we may trust a computation which seems to rest on plausible grounds, it cannot have been much less than three thousand talents in the aggregate [£600,000 or $3,000,000].

The expenditure of so large a sum was, of course, a source of revenue and of great private gain to all manner of contractors, tradesmen, merchants, artisans of various descriptions, etc., concerned in it: in one way or another, it distributed itself over a large portion of the whole city. And it appears that the materials employed for much of the work were designedly of the most costly description, as being most consistent with the reverence due to the gods: marble was rejected as too common for the statue of Athene, and ivory employed in its place; while the gold with which it was surrounded weighed not less than forty talents [£8000 or $40,000]. A large expenditure for such purposes, considered as pious towards the gods, was at the same time imposing in reference to Grecian feeling, which regarded with admiration every variety of public show and magnificence, and repaid with grateful deference the rich men who indulged in it. Pericles knew well that the visible splendour of the city, so new to all his contemporaries, would cause her great power to appear greater still, and would thus procure for her a real, though unacknowledged influence—perhaps even an ascendency—over all cities of the Grecian name. And it is certain that even among those who most hated and feared her, at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, there prevailed a powerful sentiment of involuntary deference.

JUDICIAL REFORMS OF PERICLES

Before Ephialtes advanced his main proposition for abridging the competence of the senate of Areopagus, he appears to have been strenuous in repressing the practical abuse of magisterial authority, by accusations[455] brought against the magistrates at the period of their regular accountability. After repeated efforts to check the practical abuse of these magisterial powers, Ephialtes and Pericles were at last conducted to the proposition of cutting them down permanently, and introducing an altered system.

It was now that Pericles and Ephialtes carried their important scheme of judicial reform. The senate of Areopagus was deprived of its discretionary censorial power, as well as of all its judicial competence, except that which related to homicide. The individual magistrates, as well as the senate of Five Hundred, were also stripped of their judicial attributes (except the power of imposing a small fine), which were transferred to the newly created panels of salaried dicasts, lotted off in ten divisions from the aggregate Heliæa. Ephialtes first brought down the laws of Solon from the Acropolis to the neighbourhood of the market-place, where the dicasteries sat—a visible proof that the judicature was now popularised.

In the representation of many authors, the full bearing of this great constitutional change is very inadequately conceived. What we are commonly told is, that Pericles was the first to assign a salary to these numerous dicasteries at Athens. He bribed the people with the public money (says Plutarch), in order to make head against Cimon, who bribed them out of his own private purse; as if the pay were the main feature in the case, and as if all which Pericles did was, to make himself popular by paying the dicasts for judicial service which they had before rendered gratuitously. The truth is, that this numerous army of dicasts, distributed into ten regiments and summoned to act systematically throughout the year, was now for the first time organised: the commencement of their pay is also the commencement of their regular judicial action. What Pericles really did was, to sever for the first time from the administrative competence of the magistrates that judicial authority which had originally gone along with it. The great men who had been accustomed to hold these offices were lowered both in influence and authority: while on the other hand a new life, habit, and sense of power, sprung up among the poorer citizens. A plaintiff having cause of civil action, or an accuser invoking punishment against citizens guilty of injury either to himself or to the state, had still to address himself to one or other of the archons, but it was only with a view of ultimately arriving before the dicastery by whom the cause was to be tried.

While the magistrates individually were thus restricted to simple administration, they experienced still more serious loss of power in their capacity of members of the Areopagus, after the year of archonship was expired. Instead of their previous unmeasured range of supervision and interference, they were now deprived of all judicial sanction beyond that small power of fining which was still left both to individual magistrates, and to the senate of Five Hundred. But the cognisance of homicide was still expressly reserved to them—for the procedure, in this latter case religious not less than judicial, was so thoroughly consecrated by ancient feeling, that no reformer could venture to disturb or remove it.

It was upon this same ground probably that the stationary party defended all the prerogatives of the senate of Areopagus—denouncing the curtailments proposed by Ephialtes as impious and guilty innovations. How extreme their resentment became, when these reforms were carried,—and how fierce was the collision of political parties at this moment,—we may judge by the result. The enemies of Ephialtes caused him to be privately assassinated, by the hand of a Bœotian of Tanagra named Aristodicus. Such a crime—rare in the political annals of Athens, for we come to no known[456] instance of it afterwards until the oligarchy of the Four Hundred in 411 B.C.—marks at once the gravity of the change now introduced, the fierceness of the opposition offered, and the unscrupulous character of the conservative party. Cimon was in exile and had no share in the deed. Doubtless the assassination of Ephialtes produced an effect unfavourable in every way to the party who procured it. The popular party in their resentment must have become still more attached to the judicial reforms just assured to them, while the hands of Pericles, the superior leader left behind and now acting singly, must have been materially strengthened.

It is from this point that the administration of that great man may be said to date: he was now the leading adviser (we might almost say Prime Minister) of the Athenian people. His first years were marked by a series of brilliant successes—already mentioned—the acquisition of Megara as an ally, and the victorious war against Corinth and Ægina. But when he proposed the great and valuable improvement of the Long Walls, thus making one city of Athens and Piræus, the same oligarchical party, which had opposed his judicial changes and assassinated Ephialtes, again stood forward in vehement resistance. Finding direct opposition unavailing, they did not scruple to enter into treasonable correspondence with Sparta—invoking the aid of a foreign force for the overthrow of the democracy: so odious had it become in their eyes, since the recent innovations. How serious was the hazard incurred by Athens, near the time of the battle of Tanagra, has been already recounted; together with the rapid and unexpected reconciliation of parties after that battle, principally owing to the generous patriotism of Cimon and his immediate friends. Cimon was restored from ostracism on this occasion, before his full time had expired; while the rivalry between him and Pericles henceforward becomes mitigated, or even converted into a compromise, whereby the internal affairs of the city were left to the one, and the conduct of foreign expeditions to the other. The successes of Athens during the ensuing ten years were more brilliant than ever, and she attained the maximum of her power: which doubtless had a material effect in imparting stability to the democracy as well as to the administration of Pericles—and enabled both the one and the other to stand the shock of those great public reverses, which deprived the Athenians of their dependent landed alliances, in the interval between the defeat of Coronea and the Thirty Years’ Truce.

Along with the important judicial revolution brought about by Pericles, were introduced other changes belonging to the same scheme and system.

Thus a general power of supervision both over the magistrates and over the public assembly, was vested in seven magistrates, now named for the first time, called nomophylaces, or law-guardians, and doubtless changed every year. These nomophylaces sat alongside of the Proedri or presidents both in the senate and in the public assembly, and were charged with the duty of interposing whenever any step was taken or any proposition made contrary to the existing laws: they were also empowered to constrain the magistrates to act according to law.

Another important change, which we may with probability refer to Pericles, is the institution of the nomothetæ. These men were in point of fact dicasts, members of the six thousand citizens annually sworn in that capacity. But they were not, like the dicasts for trying causes, distributed into panels or regiments known by a particular letter and acting together throughout the entire year: they were lotted off to sit together only on special occasion and as the necessity arose. According to the reform now introduced, the ecclesia or public assembly, even with the sanction of the senate of Five Hundred,[457] became incompetent either to pass a new law or to repeal a law already in existence; it could only enact a psephism—that is, properly speaking, a decree applicable only to a particular case; though the word was used at Athens in a very large sense, sometimes comprehending decrees of general as well as permanent application. In reference to laws, a peculiar judicial procedure was established. The thesmothetæ were directed annually to examine the existing laws, noting any contradictions or double laws on the same matter; and in the first prytany (tenth part) of the Attic year, on the eleventh day, an ecclesia was held, in which the first business was to go through the laws seriatim, and submit them for approval or rejection; first beginning with the laws relating to the senate, next coming to those of more general import, especially such as determined the functions and competence of the magistrates. If any law was condemned by the vote of the public assembly, or if any citizen had a new law to propose, the third assembly of the prytany was employed, previous to any other business, in the appointment of nomothetæ and in the provision of means to pay their salary.

The effect of this institution was to place the making or repealing of laws under the same solemnities and guarantees as the trying of causes or accusations in judicature.

As an additional security both to the public assembly and the nomothetæ against being entrapped into decisions contrary to existing law, another remarkable provision has yet to be mentioned—a provision probably introduced by Pericles at the same time as the formalities of law-making by means of specially delegated nomothetæ. This was the Graphe Paranomon—indictment for informality or illegality—which might be brought on certain grounds against the proposer of any law or any psephism, and rendered him liable to punishment by the dicastery. He was required in bringing forward his new measure to take care that it should not be in contradiction with any pre-existing law—or if there were any such contradiction, to give formal notice of it, to propose the repeal of that which existed, and to write up publicly beforehand what his proposition was—in order that there might never be two contradictory laws at the same time in operation, nor any illegal decree passed either by the senate or by the public assembly. If he neglected this precaution, he was liable to prosecution under the Graphe Paranomon, which any Athenian citizen might bring against him before the dicastery, through the intervention and under the presidency of the thesmothetæ.

That this indictment, as one of the most direct vents for such enmity, was largely applied and abused at Athens, is certain. But though it probably deterred unpractised citizens from originating new propositions, it did not produce the same effect upon those orators who made politics a regular business, and who could therefore both calculate the temper of the people, and reckon upon support from a certain knot of friends. Aristophon, towards the close of his political life, made it a boast that he had been thus indicted and acquitted seventy-five times. Probably the worst effect which it produced was that of encouraging the vein of personality and bitterness which pervades so large a proportion of Attic oratory, even in its most illustrious manifestations; turning deliberative into judicial eloquence, and interweaving the discussion of a law or decree along with a declamatory harangue against the character of its mover. We may at the same time add that the Graphe Paranomon was often the most convenient way of getting a law or a psephism repealed, so that it was used even when the annual period had passed over, and when the mover was therefore out of danger, the indictment being then brought only against the law or decree.

[458]

Such were the great constitutional innovations of Pericles and Ephialtes,—changes full of practical results,—the transformation, as well as the complement, of that democratical system which Clisthenes had begun and to which the tide of Athenian feeling had been gradually mounting up during the preceding twenty years. The entire force of these changes is generally not perceived, because the popular dicasteries and the nomothetæ are so often represented as institutions of Solon, and as merely supplied with pay by Pericles. This erroneous supposition prevents all clear view of the growth of the Athenian democracy by throwing back its last elaborations to the period of its early and imperfect start. To strip the magistrates of all their judicial power, except that of imposing a small fine, and the Areopagus of all its jurisdiction except in cases of homicide—providing popular, numerous, and salaried dicasts to decide all the judicial business at Athens as well as to repeal and enact laws—this was the consummation of the Athenian democracy. No serious constitutional alteration (excepting the temporary interruptions of the Four Hundred and the Thirty) was afterwards made until the days of Macedonian interference. As Pericles made it, so it remained in the days of Demosthenes—though with a sensible change in the character, and abatement in the energies, of the people, rich as well as poor.

In appreciating the practical working of these numerous dicasteries at Athens, in comparison with such justice as might have been expected from individual magistrates, we have to consider: first, that personal and pecuniary corruption seems to have been a common vice among the leading men of Athens and Sparta, when acting individually or in boards of a few members, and not uncommon even with the kings of Sparta; next, that in the Grecian cities generally, as we know even from the oligarchical Xenophon (he particularly excepts Sparta), the rich and great men were not only insubordinate to the magistrates, but made a parade of showing that they cared nothing about them. We know also from the same unsuspected source, that while the poorer Athenian citizens who served on shipboard were distinguished for the strictest discipline, the hoplites or middling burghers who formed the infantry were less obedient, and the rich citizens who served on horseback the most disobedient of all.

To make rich criminals amenable to justice has been found so difficult everywhere, until a recent period of history, that we should be surprised if it were otherwise in Greece. When we follow the reckless demeanour of rich men like Critias, Alcibiades, and Midias, even under the full-grown democracy of Athens, we may be sure that their predecessors under the Clisthenean constitution would have been often too formidable to be punished or kept down by an individual archon of ordinary firmness, even assuming him to be upright and well-intentioned. Now the dicasteries established by Pericles were inaccessible both to corruption and intimidation: their number, their secret suffrage, and the impossibility of knowing beforehand what individuals would sit in any particular cause, prevented both the one and the other. And besides that the magnitude of their number, extravagant according to our ideas of judicial business, was essential to this tutelary effect—it served further to render the trial solemn and the verdict imposing on the minds of parties and spectators, as we may see by the fact that, in important causes the dicastery was doubled or tripled. Nor was it possible by any other means than numbers to give dignity to an assembly of citizens, of whom many were poor, some old, and all were despised individually by rich accused persons who were brought before them—as Aristophanes and Xenophon give us plainly to understand. If we except[459] the strict and peculiar educational discipline of Sparta, these numerous dicasteries afforded the only organ which Grecian politics could devise, for getting redress against powerful criminals, public as well as private, and for obtaining a sincere and uncorrupt verdict.

Taking the general working of the dicasteries, we shall find that they are nothing but jury-trial applied on a scale broad, systematic, unaided, and uncontrolled, beyond all other historical experience—and that they therefore exhibit in exaggerated proportions both the excellences and the defects characteristic of the jury system, as compared with decision by trained and professional judges. All the encomiums, which it is customary to pronounce upon jury-trial, will be found predicable of the Athenian dicasteries in a still greater degree; all the reproaches, which can be addressed on good ground to the dicasteries, will apply to modern juries also, though in a less degree.

RHETORS AND SOPHISTS

The first establishment of the dicasteries is nearly coincident with the great improvement of Attic tragedy in passing from Æschylus to Sophocles. The same development of the national genius, now preparing splendid manifestations both in tragic and comic poetry, was called with redoubled force into the path of oratory, by the new judicial system. A certain power of speech now became necessary, not merely for those who intended to take a prominent part in politics, but also for private citizens to vindicate their rights or repel accusations, in a court of justice. It was an accomplishment of the greatest practical utility, even apart from ambitious purposes; hardly less so than the use of arms or the practice of the gymnasium. Accordingly, the teachers of grammar and rhetoric, and the composers of written speeches to be delivered by others, now began to multiply and to acquire an unprecedented importance—as well at Athens as under the contemporary democracy of Syracuse, in which also some form of popular judicature was established. Style and speech began to be reduced to a system, and so communicated; not always happily, for several of the early rhetors adopted an artificial, ornate, and conceited manner, from which Attic good taste afterwards liberated itself. But the very character of a teacher of rhetoric as an art—a man giving precepts and putting himself forward in show-lectures as a model for others, is a feature first belonging to the Periclean age, and indicates a new demand in the minds of the citizens.

We begin to hear, in the generation now growing up, of the rhetor and the sophist, as persons of influence and celebrity. These two names denoted persons of similar moral and intellectual endowments, or often indeed the same person, considered in different points of view; either as professing to improve the moral character, or as communicating power and facility of expression, or as suggesting premises for persuasion, illustrations on the commonplaces of morals and politics, argumentative abundance on matters of ordinary experience, dialectical subtlety in confuting an opponent, etc. Antiphon of the deme Rhamnus in Attica, Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, Tisias of Syracuse, Gorgias of Leontini, Protagoras of Abdera, Prodicus of Ceos, Theodorus of Byzantium, Hippias of Elis, Zeno of Elea, were among the first who distinguished themselves in these departments of teaching. Antiphon was the author of the earliest composed speech really spoken in a dicastery and preserved down to the later critics. These men were mostly not citizens of Athens, though many of them belonged to towns comprehended[460] in the Athenian empire, at a time when important judicial causes belonging to these towns were often carried up to be tried at Athens—while all of them looked to that city as a central point of action and distinction. The term “sophist,” which Herodotus applies with sincere respect to men of distinguished wisdom such as Solon, Anacharsis, Pythagoras, etc., now came to be applied to these teachers of virtue, rhetoric, conversation, and disputation; many of whom professed acquaintance with the whole circle of human science, physical as well as moral (then narrow enough), so far as was necessary to talk about any portion of it plausibly, and to answer any question proposed to them.

Though they passed from one town to another, partly in the capacity of envoys from their fellow-citizens, partly as exhibiting their talents to numerous hearers, with much renown and large gain—they appear to have been viewed with jealousy and dislike by a large portion of the public. For at a time when every citizen pleaded his own cause before the dicastery, they imparted, to those who were rich enough to purchase it, a peculiar skill in the common weapons, which made them like fencing-masters or professional swordsmen amidst a society of untrained duellists. Moreover Socrates—himself a product of the same age, a disputant on the same subjects, and bearing the same name of a sophist—but despising political and judicial practice, and looking to the production of intellectual stimulus and moral impressions upon his hearers—Socrates or rather Plato, speaking through the person of Socrates—carried on throughout his life a constant polemical warfare against the sophists and rhetors in that negative vein in which he was unrivalled. And as the works of these latter have not remained, it is chiefly from the observations of their opponents that we know them; so that they are in a situation such as that in which Socrates himself would have been if we had been compelled to judge of him only from the Clouds of Aristophanes, or from those unfavourable impressions respecting his character which we know, even from the Apologia of Plato and Xenophon, to have been generally prevalent at Athens.

This is not the opportunity, however, for trying to distinguish the good from the evil in the working of the sophists and rhetors. At present it is enough that they were the natural product of the age; supplying those wants, and answering to that stimulus, which arose partly from the deliberations of the ecclesia, but still more from the contentions before the dicastery—in which latter a far greater number of citizens took active part, with or without their own consent. The public and frequent dicasteries constituted by Pericles opened to the Athenian mind precisely that career of improvement which was best suited to its natural aptitude. They were essential to the development of that demand out of which grew not only Grecian oratory, but also, as secondary products, the speculative moral and political philosophy, and the didactic analysis of rhetoric and grammar, which long survived after Grecian creative genius had passed away. And it was one of the first measures of the oligarchy of Thirty, to forbid by an express law, any teaching of the art of speaking. Aristophanes derides the Athenians for their love of talk and controversy, as if it had enfeebled their military energy; but in his time, most undoubtedly, that reproach was not true—nor did it become true, even in part, until the crushing misfortunes which marked the close of the Peloponnesian War. During the course of that war, restless and energetic action was the characteristic of Athens even in a greater degree than oratory or political discussion, though before the time of Demosthenes a material alteration had taken place.

[461]

The establishment of these paid dicasteries at Athens was thus one of the most important and prolific events in all Grecian history. The pay helped to furnish a maintenance for old citizens, past the age of military service. Elderly men were the best persons for such a service, and were preferred for judicial purposes both at Sparta and, as it seems, in heroic Greece. Nevertheless, we need not suppose that all the dicasts were either old or poor, though a considerable proportion of them were so, and though Aristophanes selects these qualities as among the most suitable subjects for his ridicule. Pericles has been often censured for this institution, as if he had been the first to insure pay to dicasts who before served for nothing, and had thus introduced poor citizens into courts previously composed of citizens above poverty. But in the first place, this supposition is not correct in point of fact, inasmuch as there were no such constant dicasteries previously acting without pay; next, if it had been true, the habitual exclusion of the poor citizens would have nullified the popular working of these bodies, and would have prevented them from answering any longer to the reigning sentiment at Athens. Nor could it be deemed unreasonable to assign a regular pay to those who thus rendered regular service. It was indeed an essential item in the whole scheme and purpose, so that the suppression of the pay of itself seems to have suspended the dicasteries, while the oligarchy of Four Hundred was established—and it can only be discussed in that light. As the fact stands, we may suppose that the six thousand heliasts who filled the dicasteries were composed of the middling and poorer citizens indiscriminately; though there was nothing to exclude the richer, if they chose to serve.b

PHIDIAS ACCUSED

The public works which were undertaken through the advice of Pericles were executed under his inspection; the choice of the artists employed and of the plans adopted, was probably entrusted in a great measure to his judgment; and the large sums expended on them passed through his hands. This was an office which it was scarcely possible to exercise at Athens without either exciting suspicion or giving a handle for calumny. We find that Cratinus in one of his comedies threw out some hints as to the tardiness with which Pericles carried on the third of the Long Walls which he had persuaded the people to begin. “He had been long professing to go on with it, but in fact did not stir a step.” Whether the motives to which this delay was imputed were such as to call his integrity into question, does not appear; but in time his enemies ventured openly to attack him on this ground. Yet the first blow was not aimed directly at himself, but was intended to wound him through the side of a friend. Phidias, whose genius was the ruling principle which animated and controlled every design for the ornament of the city, had been brought, as well by conformity of taste as by the nature of his engagement, into an intimate relation with Pericles. To ruin Phidias was one of the readiest means both of hurting the feelings and of shaking the credit of Pericles. If Phidias could be convicted of a fraud on the public, it would seem an unavoidable inference that Pericles had shared the profit. The ivory statue of the goddess in the Parthenon, which was enriched with massy ornaments of pure gold, appeared to offer a groundwork for a charge which could not easily be refuted. To give it the greater weight, a man named Menon, who had been employed by Phidias in some of the details of the work, was induced to seat himself in the agora with the ensigns of[462] a suppliant, and to implore pardon of the people as the condition of revealing an offence in which he had been an accomplice with Phidias. He accused Phidias of having embezzled a part of the gold which he had received from the treasury. But this charge immediately fell to the ground through a contrivance which Pericles had adopted for a different end. The golden ornaments had been fixed on the statue in such a manner, that they could be taken off without doing it any injury, and thus afforded the means of ascertaining their exact weight. Pericles challenged the accusers of Phidias to use this opportunity of verifying their charge; but they shrank from the application of this decisive test.

Though however they were thus baffled in this part of their attempt, they were not abashed or deterred; for they had discovered another ground, which gave them a surer hold on the public mind. Some keen eye had observed two figures among those with which Phidias had represented the battle between Theseus and the Amazons on the shield of the goddess, in which it detected the portraits of the artist himself, as a bald old man, and that of Pericles in all the comeliness of his graceful person. To the religious feelings of the Athenians this mode of perpetuating the memory of individuals, by connecting their portraits with an object of public worship, appeared to violate the sanctity of the place; and it was probably also viewed as an arrogant intrusion, no less offensive to the majesty of the commonwealth. It seems as if Menon’s evidence was required even to support this charge. Phidias was committed to prison, and died there. The informer, who was a foreigner, was rewarded with certain immunities; and, as one who in the service of the state had provoked a powerful enemy, was placed by a formal decree under the protection of the Ten Generals.

ASPASIA AT THE BAR

This success emboldened the enemies of Pericles to proceed. They had not indeed established any of their accusations; but they had sounded the disposition of the people, and found that it might be inspired with distrust and jealousy of its powerful minister, or that it was not unwilling to see him humbled. They seem now to have concerted a plan for attacking him, both directly and indirectly, in several quarters at once; and they began with a person in whose safety he felt as much concern as in his own, and who could not be ruined without involving him in the like calamity.

This was the celebrated Aspasia, who had long attracted almost as much of the public attention at Athens as Pericles himself. She was a native of Miletus, which was early and long renowned as a school for the cultivation of female graces. She had come, it would seem, as an adventurer to Athens, and by the combined charms of her person, manners, and conversation, won the affections and the esteem of Pericles. Her station had freed her from the restraints which custom laid on the education of the Athenian matron: and she had enriched her mind with accomplishments which were rare even among the men. Her acquaintance with Pericles seems to have begun while he was still united to a lady of high birth, before the wife of the wealthy Hipponicus. We can hardly doubt that it was Aspasia who first disturbed this union, though it is said to have been dissolved by mutual consent. But after parting from his wife, who had borne him two sons, Pericles attached himself to Aspasia by the most intimate relation which the laws permitted him to contract with a foreign woman; and she acquired an ascendency over him, which[463] soon became notorious, and furnished the comic poets with an inexhaustible fund of ridicule, and his enemies with a ground for serious charges. On the stage she was the Hera of the Athenian Zeus, the Omphale, or the Dejanira of an enslaved or a faithless Hercules. The Samian War was ascribed to her interposition on behalf of her birthplace; and rumours were set afloat which represented her as ministering to the vices of Pericles by the most odious and degrading of offices. There was perhaps as little foundation for this report, as for a similar one in which Phidias was implicated; though among all the imputations brought against Pericles this is that which it is the most difficult clearly to refute.

But we are inclined to believe that it may have arisen from the peculiar nature of Aspasia’s private circles, which, with a bold neglect of established usage, were composed not only of the most intelligent and accomplished men to be found at Athens, but also of matrons, who it is said were brought by their husbands, to listen to her conversation; which must have been highly instructive as well as brilliant, since Plato did not hesitate to describe her as the preceptress of Socrates, and to assert that she both formed the rhetoric of Pericles, and composed one of his most admired harangues. The innovation which drew women of free birth, and good condition, into her company for such a purpose, must, even where the truth was understood, have surprised and offended many; and it was liable to the grossest misconstruction. And if her female friends were sometimes seen watching the progress of the works of Phidias, it was easy, through his intimacy with Pericles, to connect this fact with a calumny of the same kind.

There was another rumour still more dangerous, which grew out of the character of the persons who were admitted to the society of Pericles and Aspasia. Athens had become a place of resort for learned and ingenious men of all pursuits. None were more welcome at the house of Pericles than such as were distinguished by philosophical studies, and especially by the profession of new speculative tenets. He himself was never weary of discussing such subjects; and Aspasia was undoubtedly able to bear her part in this, as well as in any other kind of conversation. The mere presence of Anaxagoras, Zeno, Protagoras, and other celebrated men, who were known to hold doctrines very remote from the religious conceptions of the vulgar, was sufficient to make a circle in which they were familiar pass for a school of impiety. Such were the materials out of which the comic poet Hermippus, laying aside the mask, framed a criminal prosecution against Aspasia. His indictment included two heads: an offence against religion, and that of corrupting Athenian women to gratify the passions of Pericles.

ANAXAGORAS ALSO ASSAILED

This cause seems to have been still pending, when one Diopithes procured a decree, by which persons who denied the being of the gods, or taught doctrines concerning the celestial bodies which were inconsistent with religion, were made liable to a certain criminal process. This stroke was aimed immediately at Anaxagoras—whose physical speculations had become famous, and were thought to rob the greatest of the heavenly beings of their inherent deity—but indirectly at his disciple and patron Pericles. When the discussion of this decree, and the prosecution commenced against Aspasia, had disposed the people to listen to other less probable charges, the main attack was opened, and the accusation which in the affair of Phidias had been silenced[464] by the force of truth, was revived in another form. A decree was passed on the motion of one Dracontides, directing Pericles to give in his accounts to the Prytanis, to be submitted to a trial, which was to be conducted with extraordinary solemnity; for it was to be held in the citadel, and the jurors were to take the balls with which each signified his verdict, from the top of an altar. But this part of the decree was afterwards modified by an amendment moved by Agnon, which ordered the cause to be tried in the ordinary way, but by a body of fifteen hundred jurors. The uncertainty of the party which managed these proceedings, and their distrust as to the evidence which they should be able to procure, seem to be strongly marked by a clause in this decree, which provided that the offence imputed to Pericles might be described either as embezzlement, or by a more general name, as coming under the head of public wrong.

Yet all these machinations failed at least of reaching their main object. The issue of those which were directed against Anaxagoras cannot be exactly ascertained through the discrepancy of the accounts given of it. According to some authors he was tried, and condemned either to a fine and banishment or to death; but in the latter case made his escape from prison. According to others he was defended by Pericles, and acquitted. Plutarch says that Pericles, fearing the event of a trial, induced him to withdraw from Athens; and it seems to have been admitted on all hands, that he ended his long life in quiet and honour at Lampsacus. The danger which threatened Aspasia was also averted; but it seems that Pericles, who pleaded her cause, found need for his most strenuous exertions, and that in her behalf he descended to tears and entreaties, which no similar emergency of his own could ever draw from him. It was indeed probably a trial more of his personal influence than of his eloquence; and his success, hardly as it was won, may have induced his adversaries to drop the proceedings instituted against himself, or at least to postpone them to a fitter season. After weathering this storm he seems to have recovered his former high and firm position, which to the end of his life was never again endangered, except by one very transient gust of popular displeasure. He felt strong enough to resist the wishes, and to rebuke the impatience of the people. Yet it was a persuasion so widely spread among the ancients as to have lasted even to modern times, that his dread of the persecution which hung over him, and his consciousness that his expenditure of the public money would not bear a scrutiny, were at least among the motives which induced him to kindle the war which put an end to the Thirty Years’ Truce.c

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CHAPTER XXVII. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE AGE OF PERICLES

COST OF LIVING AND WAGES

Everywhere in the ancient world, but in a higher or less degree in different countries, the necessaries of life upon the whole were cheaper than they are at the present day. But with regard to particular articles, examples enough of the contrary are found. The main causes of this comparative cheapness were the less amount of money in circulation, the uncommon fruitfulness of the southern countries which the Greeks inhabited, or with which they traded; countries which at that time were cultivated with an extraordinary degree of care, but are at present neglected; and the impossibility of exportation to the distant regions which had no intercourse, or but little, with the countries lying on the Mediterranean Sea. The last is especially the reason of the great cheapness of wine. The large quantities of the same which were produced in all southern regions, were not distributed over so considerable an extent of the earth as at present. Nevertheless in considering the prices of commodities in ancient times the difference of times and places must be well weighed. In Rome and Athens wine was not, in the most flourishing condition of the state, as cheap as it was in Upper Italy and in Lusitania. In Upper Italy, the Sicilian medimnus of wheat, which was equal to the Attic medimnus, and considerably less than the Prussian bushel (or than 1½ English bushels), was worth, even in the times of Polybius, according to the account of that historian, only four oboli. This price seems to rest upon an inaccurate comparison of the Roman with the Greek coin, and particularly upon the supposition that the modius, one-sixth of the medimnus, was worth two asses, the medimnus, therefore, worth twelve asses; which,[466] estimating the denarius to be equivalent to the drachma, would be equal to 4½ oboli. To this last amount four ancient oboli of the standard of Solon (11.4 cents) may certainly be estimated as equivalent. The medimnus of barley was worth the half of this price, the metretes of wine (about ten English gallons), was worth as much as the medimnus of barley.

In the time of Solon, indeed, an ox was worth only five drachmæ, a sheep one drachma, and the medimnus of grain the same. But gradually the prices increased five fold; of several articles seven, ten and twenty fold. After the examples of modern times this will not appear strange. The amount of ready money was not only increased, but by the increase of population, and of intercourse, its circulation was accelerated: so that already in the age of Socrates, Athens was considered an expensive place of residence.

The cheapness of commodities, in ancient times, has generally been exaggerated by some, who supposed the assumption, that prices were on an average ten times lower than in the eighteenth century, to come the nearest to the truth. The prices of grain, according to which the prices of many other articles must be regulated, show the contrary. It is difficult to designate average prices, however; since so few, and those only very casual accounts, are extant. Letronne designates the value of the medimnus of grain at two and a half drachmæ as the average price in Greece, in particular at the city of Athens, about the year 400 B.C.; and in accordance with this, he assumes the value of grain, compared with that of silver, to have been in the relation of 1 to 3146; the same at Rome, fifty years before the Christian era, to have been in the relation of 1 to 2681, in France, before the year 1520 in the relation of 1 to 4320, and in the nineteenth century in the relation of 1 to 1050. This estimation, according to which the present prices of grain are three times as high as they were during the period of the most flourishing condition of Greece, appears the most probable.

The most temperate man needed daily, at least, an obolus for his food, one-fourth of an obolus for a chœnix of grain, according to the price of barley in the time of Socrates; together, annually, reckoning the year at 360 days, 75 drachmæ; for clothes and shoes at least 15 drachmæ. A family, therefore, of four adult persons must have needed at least 360 drachmæ (£12 or $60) for these necessaries of life. The sum requisite, however, in the time of Demosthenes, must have been 22½ drachmæ higher for each person; for 4 persons, therefore, 90 drachmæ (£3 or $15) higher. To this must be added the cost of a habitation, the value of which, estimated at least at 3 minæ, would involve, according to the common rate of interest (12 per cent.), an annual expense of 36 drachmæ (£1 or $5). So that the poorest family of 4 adult free persons, if they did not wish to live upon bread and water, needed upon an average about £17 or $85 annually.

Socrates did not have, as was falsely reported, two wives at the same time, but one after the other; Myrto, who was poor when he married her, and who probably had no dowry, and Xanthippe. He also had three children. Of these, Lamprocles was already adult at the death of his father, but Sophroniscus and Menexenus were minors. He prosecuted no manual art after he had sacrificed the employment of his youth to the never-resting effort to acquire wisdom. His teaching procured him no income. According to Xenophon he lived upon his property, which, if it should have found a good purchaser (ὡνητὴς), the house included, might easily have brought, altogether, five minæ; and he needed only a small addition from his friends. From this it has been inferred, that living was extraordinarily cheap at Athens. It is evident, however, that Socrates with his family could[467] not live upon the interest of so small an amount of property. For, however poor the house may have been, its value can scarcely be estimated at less than three minæ. So that, without taking the furniture into consideration, the remainder of his property from which interest could be derived, could have amounted to but two minæ, and the income from it, according to the common rate of interest, to only twenty-four drachmæ. With this sum he could not have procured even the amount of barley which was requisite for himself and his wife, to say nothing of the other necessaries of life, and of the support of his children.

The history of the ancient sages is so entangled and garnished with traditions, and the circumstances of their lives are so differently represented even by contemporary writers, that we can seldom find firm ground on which to stand. Thus, according to the defence of Socrates composed by Plato, the former is represented to have affirmed that he could pay for his liberation only about a mina of silver; and Eubulides says the same. According to others, he estimated the amount which he should pay at twenty-five drachmæ, and in the defence ascribed to Xenophon he is represented as neither having himself estimated any amount, nor having allowed his friends to do so. Thus the well-informed Demetrius of Phalerum affirmed, in opposition to Xenophon, that Socrates had, beside his house, seventy minæ at interest in the possession of Crito. And Libanius informs us that he had lost eighty minæ, which he had inherited from his father, by the insolvency of a friend, in whose hands he had placed it, and who certainly cannot have been, as Schneider supposed, the wealthy Crito.

But assuming that Xenophon’s account is perfectly correct, we must suppose that the mother of the young boys supported herself and both the children, either by labour or from her dowry, and that Lamprocles supported himself, and that the famed economy of Socrates probably consisted, among other things, in this also, that he kept them at work. And then, again, suppose that he always lived upon his twenty-four drachmæ, with a small additional sum from his friends, yet no one could live as he did. It is true, that he is said to have frequently offered sacrifices at home, and upon the public altars. But they were doubtless only baked dough, shaped into the forms of animals, after the manner of the poor; properly bread, therefore, a great part of which was at the same time eaten, and to which his family also contributed. He lived in the strictest sense upon bread and water, except when invited to entertainments at the tables of others, and could therefore be particularly glad, as he is said to have been, on account of the cheapness of barley, when four chœnices sold for an obolus. He wore no undergarment; even his outside garment was poor, and the same one was worn both summer and winter. He generally went barefooted, and his dress-sandals, which he occasionally wore, may have lasted him his life-time. His walk for pleasure and exercise before his house served him instead of a relish for his meal. In short, no slave was so poorly maintained as was Socrates. The drachma [about 8½d. or 17 cents] which he gave Prodicus was certainly the largest sum ever spent by him at one time. And it may boldly be affirmed, without wishing to disparage his exalted genius, that, in respect to his indigence, and a certain cynicism in his character, the representation of Aristophanes was not much exaggerated, but in the essential particulars was delineated from the life.

If in the time of Socrates four persons lived upon £17 or $85 a year, they must have been satisfied with but a scanty allowance. He who wished to live respectably, needed even then, and still more in the time of Demosthenes,[468] a sum considerably larger. According to the speech against Phænippus, there were left to the complainant and his brother by their father, forty-five minæ to each, on which, it is said, one could not easily live, namely, upon the interest of it, which amounted, according to the common rate of interest, to 540 drachmæ (£19 or $95).

Mantitheus in Demosthenes asserts that he could have been maintained and educated upon the interest of his mother’s dowry, which amounted to a talent; consequently, according to the usual rate of interest, upon 720 drachmæ (£25 or $125), annually. For the maintenance of the young Demosthenes himself, his sister still younger, and his mother, seven minæ (£24 or $120) were annually paid, without reckoning anything for their habitation, since they dwelt in their own house. The cost of the education of Demosthenes was not included in this sum. For that the guardians remained in debt. Lysias refers, in one of his speeches, to the knavish account of the guardian of the children of Diodotus. He had, for example, charged for clothing, shoes, and hair-cutting over a talent for a period of less than eight years, and for sacrifices and festivals more than four thousand drachmæ, and he ultimately would pay a balance of only two minæ of silver, and thirty Cyzicene staters, whereby his wards had become impoverished. Lysias remarks, that if he had charged more than any one in the city had ever done before for two boys, and their sister, a pedagogue, and a female servant, his account could not have amounted to more than a thousand drachmæ (£35 or $175) annually. This would be not much less than three drachmæ daily, and must certainly appear to have been too much in the time of that orator for three children and two attendants.

In the time of Solon one must certainly have been able to travel quite a distance with an obolus, since that lawgiver forbid that a woman should take with her upon a march, or a journey, a larger quantity of meat and drink than could be purchased for that sum, and a basket of larger dimensions than an ell in length. On the contrary, when the citizens of Trœzen, according to Plutarch, resolved to give to each of the old men, women, and children who fled from Athens upon the approach of Xerxes, two oboli daily, it appears to be a large sum for the purpose. In the most flourishing period of the state, however, even a single person could maintain himself but indifferently on two or three oboli a day. Notwithstanding all this, the cheapness and facility of living still remained very great. In accordance with the noble reverence of the Greeks for the dead, the death of a man, his interment, and monument, often occasioned more expense than many years of his life, since private persons appropriated three, ten, fifty, and even 120 minæ, to that purpose.

The value of the property of the Athenian people, excluding the property of the state, and the mines, was according to a probable computation, at thirty thousand to forty thousand talents. Of these if only twenty thousand talents be considered productive property, every one of the twenty thousand citizens would have had, if the property had been equally divided, the interest of a talent, or, according to the common rate of interest, 720 drachmæ as an annual income. On this, with the addition of the profit from their labour, they might all have lived in a respectable manner. They would in that case have realised what the ancient sages and statesmen considered the highest prosperity of a state. But a considerable number of the citizens were poor. Others possessed a large amount of property, on which they could fare luxuriously on account of the cheapness of living, and the high rate of interest, and yet at the same time could increase their means, because property augmented exceedingly fast.

[469]

This inequality corrupted the state, and the manners of the people. Its most natural consequence was the submissiveness of the poor towards the rich, although they believed that their rights were equal. The rich followed the practice, afterwards so notorious and decried at Rome, of suing for the favour of the people, sometimes in a nobler, sometimes in a baser manner.

In proportion to the cheapness of the necessaries of life, the wages of labour must have been less in ancient times than at present. And all the multitude of those who sought labour as the means of subsistence must have diminished its price, since competition everywhere produces this result. In this number, beside the thetes and aliens under the protection of the state, a great part of the slaves are to be included; so that the families of slaves belonging to the rich, lessened the profit of the poorer class of citizens. The Phocians, by whom the keeping of slaves is said to have been in the earlier periods of their state prohibited, not unjustly reproached Mnason, who possessed a thousand slaves and more, for depriving an equal number of poor citizens of the means of subsistence. After the Peloponnesian War even citizens who had been accustomed to a higher standing were compelled to support themselves, whatever it might have cost them to submit to it, as day labourers, or in some other way, by the labour of their hands. For they had lost their landed property in foreign states, and on account of the want of money, and the decrease of the population, rents had depreciated, and loans were not to be had.

Nevertheless, we do not find that daily wages were excessively low. Lucian represents the daily wages of an agricultural labourer or gardener, on a remote estate lying near the frontiers of Attica, to have been, in the time of Timon, four oboli (5¾d. or 11.4 cents). The wages of a porter are the same in Aristophanes, and of a common labourer, who carried dirt, they were three oboli. When Ptolemy sent to the Rhodians one hundred house builders, together with 350 labourers, in order to restore the buildings destroyed by an earthquake, he gave them fourteen talents annually for their food, three oboli a day for each man. We know not, however, by what standard the money was estimated. This was, if they were slaves, for other aliment beside grain; if they were free men, it was only a part of their wages, since a man needs something else besides his food. In 408 B.C., a sawyer (πρίστης) who sawed for a public building, received a drachma a day. A carpenter, who worked on the same building, received five oboli a day. We find that in the time of Pericles, as it seems, a drachma, as daily wages, was given to each of a number of persons working by the day. It is not at all probable that they were artisans, but only common labourers.

Persons in higher stations, or those who laboured with the pen, were, according to genuine democratic principles, not better paid. The architect of the temple of Minerva Polias received no more than a stone sawyer,[470] or common labourer engaged upon the building, namely, a drachma (8½d. or 17 cents) daily. The undersecretary (ὑπογραμματεὺς) of the superintendents of the public buildings received daily five oboli (7¼d. or 14.25 cents). For particular services, in which a certain deference is manifested by the labourer to the person served, a high price was paid in Athens, as is the case in all large cities. When Bacchus in the Frogs of Aristophanes wishes to have his bundle carried by a porter, the latter demands two drachmæ. When the god offers the ghost nine oboli, he replies that before he will do so, he must become alive again. If this conversation in the realm of departed spirits is not a scene from real life, it has no point. A living porter at Athens was probably just as shameless in his demands, and if less were offered, he might have said: “I must die before I do it.”

The fare for a voyage by sea, particularly for long voyages, was extraordinarily low. For sailing from Ægina to the Piræus, more than sixteen miles, two oboli (3d. or 6 cents) were paid in the time of Plato. For sailing from Egypt, or Pontus, to the Piræus, a man, with his family and baggage, paid in the same period at the most two drachmæ (1s. 5d. or 35 cents). This is a proof that commerce was very lucrative, so that it was not found necessary to take a high fare from passengers. In the time of Lucian four oboli were given for being conveyed from Athens to Ægina. The freight of timber seems to have been higher, according to Demosthenes, who mentions that for transporting a ship-load from Macedonia to Athens, 1,750 drachmæ were paid. The enormous vessel for conveying grain named Isis, which in the time of the emperors brought so much grain from Egypt to Italy, that, according to report, the cargo was sufficient to last the whole of Attica a year, earned in freight at least twelve talents annually. The freight of a talent in weight from Ceos, which lay directly opposite Sunium, to Athens, was an obolus.

The price of a bath, although it is not barely a compensation for labour was two oboli. A delicate little gentleman is represented by Philemon to have paid four persons each six chalci, as appears from a passage of Pollux, for plucking out the hair of his body with pitch, that he might have a feminine skin. Moreover, the rich had their own, and the Athenian people public baths.

The pay of the soldiers was different in different periods, and according to circumstances. It fluctuated between two oboli, and, including the money given for subsistence, two drachmæ for a hoplite and his servant. The cavalry received from twice to fourfold the pay of the infantry; officers, commonly twice, generals four fold the same. For, as in respect to labour performed for daily wages, the higher station had not a relatively higher estimation in the same degree, as at the present day. The money given for subsistence was commonly equal in amount to the pay. For from two to three oboli a day the soldier could maintain himself quite well, especially since in many places living was much cheaper than in Athens. His pay was partly as surplus, partly for clothes and weapons, and if booty were added, he might become rich. This explains the saying of the comedian Theopompus, that a man could support a wife on two oboli of pay daily; with four oboli a day his fortune was made. The pay alone of the soldier is here meant, without the money given him for subsistence.

The pay of the judges, and of those who attended the assemblies of the people (ἐκκλησιασταί) amounted at least to three oboli a day, and like the theoricon served only as an additional supply for the subsistence of the citizens. The heliast in Aristophanes shows clearly how difficult it was,[471] with that sum, to procure bread, food, and wood for three persons. He does not include clothing and habitation, because he sustained the expenses for them out of his own property. The pay of senators and of ambassadors was higher. Persons engaged in the liberal arts and sciences, and prostitutes, were paid the highest prices.

The ancient states maintained public, salaried physicians; for example, Hippocrates is said to have been public physician at Athens. These, again, had servants, particularly slaves, who attended to their masters’ business among the poorer class, and among the slaves. The celebrated physician Democedes, of Croton, received, about 540 B.C. notwithstanding there was little money in circulation at that time, the high salary of a talent of silver (£211:10 or $1026, since Attic money seems to be meant). When called to Athens he received one hundred minæ (£350 or $1750), until Polycrates of Samos gave him two talents. In like manner, no doubt, practitioners in many other arts were paid by the state; as, for example, architects at Rhodes and Cyzicus, and certainly in every place of importance. For it cannot be supposed that all architects, particularly those invited from foreign countries, would have exercised their art, as several did at Athens, for daily wages.

The compensation of musicians, and of theatrical performers, was very high. Amœbeus, a singer of ancient Athens, received every time he sang in public, an Attic talent. That the players on the flute demanded a high price for their services, is well known. In a Corcyræan inscription, a late one indeed, but executed before the dominion of the Romans was established in that island, fifty Corinthian minæ were designated as the compensation, beside their expensive maintenance, for the services of three players on the flute, three tragedians, and three comedians at the celebration of a festival. The compensation of distinguished theatrical performers was not less, although, beside the period of their engagement at Athens, they earned large sums in travelling, and performing at the various cities and places on their route. For example, Polus or Aristodemus is said to have earned a talent in two days, or even in one day, or for performing in a single drama. All these artists received, in addition, prizes of victory. Also common itinerant theatrical performers, jugglers, conjurers, fortune-tellers, enjoyed a competency; although the sum paid by the individual spectator was small, a few chalci, or oboli, but sometimes even a drachma. The custom of paying fees for apprenticeship to the trades and arts, and also to the medical profession, was established even in the time of Socrates. For a part of the instruction in music, and for athletic exercises, it was the duty of the tribes in Athens to provide. Each tribe had its own teachers, whose lessons the youth of the whole tribe attended. In the other schools each individual paid for his instruction; we know not how much. The legislation of Charondas, in which the salaries of the teachers are said to have been permanently established, would have made an exception, if the laws from which Diodorus derived his information, had not been fictitious.

The teachers of wisdom and eloquence, or sophists, were not paid by the state until later times. But in earlier periods, they required large sums from their scholars. In this they imitated the mercenary lyric poets, whose inspiration frequently slumbered until incited by gold. Protagoras of Abdera is said to have been the first who taught for money. He required from each scholar, for a complete course of instruction, an hundred minæ (£350 or $1750). Gorgias asked the same price, and yet his property at his death amounted to only one thousand staters. Zeno of Elea, in other respects[472] unlike the sophists, required the same amount. Since the price for teaching wisdom was so high, it was natural that there should be chaffering about it, and that an agreement upon reasonable terms should be sought. Hippias earned, while yet a young man, in connection with Protagoras, in a short time, 150 minæ. Even from a small city he earned more than twenty minæ, not by long courses of lessons, as it seems, but by a shorter method of proceeding. But gradually the increased number of teachers reduced the price. Evenus of Paros, as early as the time of Socrates, required, to the general derision, only ten minæ (£35 or $175); while for the same sum Isocrates taught the whole art of oratory. And this appears to have been in the age of Lycurgus, the usual honorary of a teacher of eloquence. At length the Socratic philosophers found it convenient to teach for a compensation. Aristippus was the first who did so. Moreover, payment was also sometimes required from each auditor for single discourses, as, for example, by Prodicus, one, two, four, to fifty drachmæ. Antiphon was the first who wrote speeches and orations for money. He required high prices for them.b

SCHOOLS, TEACHERS, AND BOOKS

It is remarkable that the frequent notices which occur of schoolmasters and their schools, supply so little clear information as to the habits or social position of this important part of the community; nor does it appear whether they were a distinct class, or merely a lower grade of sophists or rhetors. They seem, however, to have belonged to the upper rank of citizens in some states, and to have been received in the best circles. Such as they were, the lessons they taught were limited to the Greek tongue. Instruction in foreign languages was never esteemed in Greece either a necessary or an important branch of general education. This is a peculiarity which forms also a signal defect of Greek culture as compared with that of modern times.

In Athens, and probably in other Greek republics, every citizen was under at least a moral obligation to provide his sons with a competent knowledge of letters. The discipline of the schools was also under state control. Yet the government nowhere seems to have provided or maintained them, or to have appointed or paid the schoolmasters, whose livelihood depended on the fees of their pupils. The amount of those fees has not been recorded. But more distinct notices have been transmitted of the charges made by literary professors of the higher class. The fees said to have been paid for a course of instruction to some of the earlier and more distinguished sophists and philosophers are so extravagant as to be scarcely credible, even when attested, as they are in some instances, by the best contemporaneous authority. Protagoras is taunted by Plato as the first professor of the higher branches of learning who taught for hire. If this imputation be well founded, his older contemporaries, Zeno and Gorgias, must have been speedily led to follow his example: for Zeno is said by Plato himself to have been paid 100 minæ, or upwards of £400 [$2000], by each disciple, for a course of lectures; and Gorgias also to have been richly remunerated by his pupils. The fees of both Protagoras and Gorgias are rated by other authorities at the same amount as those of Zeno. This sum, taking into account the high value of the precious metals in ancient times, would be equal to about £2000, or $10,000. But prices were afterwards greatly reduced, as the number of professors increased, and the former blind veneration for their magic powers of communicating knowledge, or for the value of the knowledge communicated, declined.[473] Isocrates, the younger contemporary of Protagoras, and probably the better master of the two, was satisfied with ten minæ [£40 or $200] for the course; which sum seems afterwards to have remained the ordinary rate of payment.

No distinct notice occurs of the existence, during the Attic period, either at Athens or elsewhere, of a public library, in the familiar sense of a miscellaneous collection of books for the use of the citizens; although, as in the time of Pisistratus, standard editions of the popular works recited at public solemnities, and more especially of the dramas of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, were preserved at Athens under the charge of the city clerk. Private libraries had, however, already become sufficiently voluminous or curious to merit being specially recorded. Such were those of Euripides, the poet, and of Plato, part of whose collection was purchased at Tarentum, in Italy, from the heirs of its former proprietor, Philolaus, and another part at Syracuse; those of Euthydemus mentioned by Xenophon, of Aristotle, of Nicocrates of Cyprus, and of the Athenian archon, Euclides. The varied character of the works stored in the library of a literary professor, towards the close of this period, is illustrated by a scene in a comedy of Alexis, the humour of which turns on the gluttony of Hercules, a hero habitually burlesqued for that failing in Greek satirical literature. The youthful demigod, when directed by his master, the poet Linus, to select the book he preferred from his preceptor’s collection,—described as containing the poems of Homer, Orpheus, Hesiod, Chœrilus, Epicharmus, the tragedians, and the popular prose classics,—makes choice of a cookery book.

That books of all kinds, then commonly in use, abounded during the greater part of the Attic period appears, not only from the general familiarity which the educated ranks possessed with the text of the national classics, but still more from the absence of any allusion to a scarcity of copies as interposing a serious obstacle to the attainment of such knowledge. The book trade, as a distinct branch of commerce, seems indeed to have been still limited, as in truth it was, comparatively, in every age prior to the invention of printing; and remained, probably in a great measure, in the hands of professional copyists.

Booksellers, however, and a book mart at Athens, are mentioned by authors flourishing during the Peloponnesian War; and occasional notices occur of book scribes or copyists, and of bookbinding. A trade in books or paper is also mentioned by Xenophon as having been carried on about the same date, between Greece and the coasts of the Euxine Sea. A considerable time, however, seems to have been required to bring the works, even of the most popular authors, into general circulation; and the disciples of distinguished philosophers, Hermodorus for example, a scholar of Plato, appear to have made profit by being the first to transport copies of their masters’ lectures into distant localities.c

THE POSITION OF A WIFE IN ATHENS

It was generally the father who chose a wife for his son, looking less to her person than to her family and dowry. This is one of the respects in which the historic position of women differed from the heroic. No longer does the man with splendid gifts win a wife from many suitors; the father must dower his daughter appropriately in order to place her with a husband, and so the daughter often appeared as a burden to the family; so, also, the foundations of petticoat government in marriage were often laid, since the man[474] was only the usufructuary, not the owner of the dowry. How much equality of fortune was considered, and how much a poor family, unable to offer a dowry itself, shrank from the proposals of a rich man, one may gather from the Trinummus of Plautus, in which the whole action turns upon this point. Lesbonicus, who is unable to dower his sister, says to the suitor in the play: “I will not have you think how you can help my poverty; think, rather, that I, though poor, am not dishonourable, so people shall not say that I have let you have my own sister for a mistress, without any dowry like this, rather than for a wife.”

Very often young men were obliged by their fathers to marry, that they might at last be reclaimed from a disorderly life, and thereby, also, discharging their duty to the state. This is what happens, for instance, to the libertine Lesbonicus in the same play by Plautus. Resignedly he receives the news that he is betrothed: “I will have her, this one or that one, any one you like”; whereon the father-in-law comments, “A hundred wives would not be punishment enough for his sins!” The ancients themselves felt the unkindness that lay in this treatment of girls. The feeling is most strongly expressed in a fragment of Sophocles, where young maidens complain:

“But when, light of heart, we reach the time of maidenhood, we are cast from the house and sold, far from the home-gods and mother and father; and yet, when the wedding is over, we must sing praises and believe that it is right as it is.”

We cannot wonder if in the early days of marriage the atmosphere was often cold, the heavens clouded. For this reason Plato wished that before marriage there should be a nearer acquaintance between the interested persons, so that no one should be deceived; and he proposed the arranging of special games, in which young men and maidens should perform dances. The statement, however, that no free-born Athenian ever married from love and passionate inclination is a gross exaggeration, the outcome of a one-sided and prejudiced view. In many comedies the plot turns on a young man’s passion for a maiden who in the end is discovered to be a citizen, and generally the lost daughter of a rich man. And every one must remember the glorified love of the prince’s son Hæmon for the heroic Antigone. It is incredible that in these instances the author presented situations that never occurred in the actual world. But other indications are to be found. If we look up the life of Cimon, for instance, in Plutarch, we shall find the following passages:

“But when Callias came, a rich Athenian who had fallen in love with Elpinice, and begged that he might pay her father’s fine for him, she consented, and her brother Cimon gave her to Callias for a wife. So much is certain that Cimon loved his wife Isodice too passionately and made himself too unhappy over her death, if one may judge by the elegies composed for his consolation.”

Only we must not think that such a passion was “romantic” in the modern sense; its birth was more natural and sensual, and it did not rise to a transcendent deification of the beloved. Sometimes it may well have happened that love put in an appearance after marriage, as in The Mother-in-law[475] of Terence, where Pamphilus, attracted by the noble qualities of the wife he once despised, gradually becomes untrue to his mistress. The peculiarly prosaic and cool relations that existed between man and wife, along with the leading motive for marriage, is most clearly expressed in a document of the highest interest to the historian of morals, the speech against the courtesan Neæra, which is attributed to Demosthenes. “Mistresses,” he says, “are kept for pleasure, and housekeepers for daily attendance and personal service; but a man marries a woman that he may beget legitimate children, of the same station on both sides, and have a faithful guardian in the house.”

Companionable intercourse between man and wife was necessarily hindered by the sharp division between their occupations, and reduced itself, no doubt, to very few hours in the day. “Because,” Ischomachus says, “it is better for a woman to stay in than to be away from home, whereas it is ignominious for a man to stay at home and not concern himself with what is going on in the world.” So, in the same piece of Xenophon, Socrates says to Aristobulus: “Is there any one to whom you talk less than to your wife?” And the disciple answers, “No one, or at least very few.” We learn, however, from comedies and other sources, that in reality things did not wear so sorry an aspect, and that feminine curiosity and jealousy led to all sorts of questions and talks. On the other hand, there was no question of any intercourse with other men; in fact a wife withdrew if her husband, by chance, brought a guest home with him. If the husband were not at home it would have been reckoned a gross incivility for another man to enter the house. Indeed, Demosthenes mentions a case where a friend, who had been summoned by a servant for help, did not venture into the house because the master was away. So what Cornelius Nepos says about the Greek woman is true: “She does not appear at dinner except among relatives; she stays in the inner part of the house where no one is admitted but her nearest kinsmen.”

Euripides, indeed, went so far as to forbid the visits of women among themselves, for he writes in the Andromache: “Never, never—for I do not say it only for this one occasion—ought intelligent men, who are married, to allow other women to visit their wives, for they are the teachers of wickedness. One corrupts the marriage because she gains something by it, another wants a companion in sinning.” But things were not so bad on the whole in this respect either. In the Regiment of Women, by Aristophanes, a neighbour says to Blephyrus, who misses his wife when he gets up in the morning, “What can it be? Do you think one of her friends has asked her to breakfast, perhaps?” And the husband answers, “I think that must be it. After all, she is not so bad as that comes to, so far as I know.”

Phidias symbolised the solitariness of the home-keeping wife by the tortoise, on whose back he set the statue of Aphrodite Urania in Elis. But the acutest note of women’s relations to the outer world is in the Thesmophoriazusæ of Aristophanes, where the women speak themselves: “If we are an evil, why do you marry us, and allow us neither to go out, nor to be caught looking from the windows, and insist on guarding the evil with so much care? And if a woman goes out and you find her before the door, you get into a rage, whereas you ought to be pleased and bring a thank offering, if you were really rid of the evil and did not find her sitting there any more when you came home. Then when we take a peep out of the window every man wants to look at the evil, and when one blushes and draws in one’s head, they all want all the more to see the evil peep out.” Even on occasions when fear and necessity would break through conventional restrictions, we find the women going no farther than the door of the house; and[476] the orator Lycurgus actually complains because after the battle of Chæronea, the women inquired after the fate of their own men-folk from their doorways.

Walking in the street was made a very difficult matter even for married women. Even Solon left directions on this subject; and among other things he said that no woman, when she went out, must have more than three pieces of clothing, nor more than one obolus’ worth of food and drink with her, nor must she carry any basket of more than two feet. Also she must not travel by night, except in a carriage, and then have a light carried before her. In the times of the Diadochi, indeed, special superintendents were appointed in Athens to check the immorality and extravagance of women, such as were already established in other cities, Syracuse, for example. Since the husband generally did the marketing himself, and walks had not yet, it would seem, become fashionable, although they were recommended by a woman disciple of Pythagoras, Phintys, there were hardly any other motives left for going out except the attendance at religious functions and the play.d

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[477]

CHAPTER XXVIII. ART OF THE PERICLEAN AGE

ARCHITECTURE

Policy united with natural inclination to induce Pericles to patronise the arts, and call forth their finest productions for the admiration and delight of the Athenian people. The Athenian people were the despotic sovereign; Pericles the favourite and minister, whose business it was to indulge the sovereign’s caprices that he might direct their measures; and he had the skill often to direct even their caprices. That fine taste, which he possessed eminently, was in some degree general among the Athenians; and the gratification of that fine taste was one means by which he retained his influence. Works were undertaken, according to the expression of Plutarch, in whose time they remained still perfect, of stupendous magnitude, and in form and grace inimitable; all calculated for the accommodation or in some way for the gratification of the multitude. Phidias was superintendent of the works: under him many architects and artists were employed, whose merit entitled them to fame with posterity, and of whose labours (such is the hardness of the Attic marble, their principal material, and the mildness of the Attic atmosphere) relics, which have escaped the violence of men, still, after the lapse of more than two thousand years, exhibit all the perfection of design, and even of workmanship, which earned that fame.c

But the Greeks had not attained all at once to the architectural perfection which we admire on the Acropolis. They had assigned their gods the crest of the mountains or the deep forests for their first abode; they desired to have them nearer to themselves and, from the earliest times, they built them dwellings, at first rustic and clumsy, but which were gradually embellished and attracted other arts with religious pomp; the poets celebrating the gods and their native country, the philosophers raising the great problems of nature and of the soul. The temple was the centre of Hellenic life.

But the gods, like men, have to reckon with time. Before sending out the radiations of their divine majesty from the midst of the wonders of art,[478] those destined to become the glorious dwellers on Olympus were at first obscure and indefinite personalities, inhabiting the trunk of an oak, then wretched wooden structures, and later on houses of stone and sometimes of brass, like the Athene Chalciœcus of Sparta. It was only with the progress of civilised life that their habitation grew in size and loftiness. The true temples, and the most ancient of them, those of Corinth, Samos, and Metapontum—date only from the seventh century.

The Greeks were acquainted neither with the pointed arch nor the dome. Some have thought to find that at Tiryns and Mycenæ, but if some of the bays and galleries end in a point, it is because the courses draw closer and closer together and end by meeting at the top. The method is therefore clumsy and barbarous; it was abandoned for the lintel and the pediment.

All the Greek temples resemble one another in their general plan of construction; and yet the architectural combinations might be very numerous, inasmuch as they all differ in the nature of the material employed and the ornamentation which decorates them, in the number of the columns and the size of the intercolumniations, which determine the proportions of the edifice, above all in the character peculiar to each of the three orders—the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian. A single member of the structure, the column with the portion of the entablature which it supports, determines this character.

The first temples worthy of the name were in the Doric style. The walls were large and heavy, the columns short and stunted without any base, like the stake which had been the primitive support, but with flutings, a capital, and a double pediment stretching above a wide face, like an eagle with outstretched wings—the expression is Pindar’s. The whole edifice, built of ordinary stone, was hidden, as in the case of many of the Egyptian temples, under a coat of stucco which displayed vivid colours. The remains of this are to be seen at Assus, on the coast of Asia; at Corinth, Delphi and Ægina in Greece; at Syracuse, Agrigentum and Selinus in Sicily; at Metapontum and especially at Pæstum in Italy, where the grandest ruins in the ancient Doric order are to be found. The common characteristic of these buildings, which nearly all belong to the seventh or sixth century, was their sturdy but[479] heavy and thick-set appearance. The columns have a height of only four diameters—four and two-thirds at most; and the stucco in coming off has displayed the poverty of the material employed. Even the temple of Olympia was built of a hard and porous tufa which the stucco had concealed under a brilliant covering. That of Ægina was also of stone, not marble; there remain of it at least some beautiful ruins.

We must go to Athens to find Doric architecture in its severe elegance. Even in the temple of Ægina the column is higher: five and a third diameters; at the Theseum it is five and a half; at the Parthenon, six, and this is the proportion which is most pleasing to the eye. Of these three temples the first, in which we can still find traces of an archaic character, belongs to the sixth century; the second, which has better proportions, to the first half of the fifth; the third is the architectural triumph of the age of Pericles.

The Parthenon, built entirely of Pentelic marble, is not the most vast of the Greek temples, but its execution is more perfect and it is this which made it the masterpiece of Hellenic art. A very small detail will show the finish of the work. It is with difficulty and by the assistance of eye and hand that one succeeds in discovering the joints of the tambours forming the colonnade which surrounds the building, so skilfully have these enormous masses been adjusted. Even in her masons Athens possessed artists.

The interior of the Parthenon contained two halls: the smaller at the back, the opisthodomus, enclosed the public treasure; the larger, or cella, contained the statue of the goddess born without mother from the thought of the master of the gods, and who was as the soul of which the Parthenon was the material casing. Figures in high relief, about twice life size, adorned the two pediments of the temple. The frieze, which ran round the cella and opisthodomus at a height of thirteen metres (42 ft., 8 ins.), and to a length of more than one hundred and sixty metres (525 ft.), represented the procession of the great Panathenæa.

The work was finished in 435 B.C. It is neither the centuries nor the barbarians that have mutilated it. The Parthenon was still almost intact in 1687, when on the 27th of September Morosini bombarded the citadel. One of the projectiles, setting fire to the barrels of powder stored in the temple, blew up a part of it; then the Venetian desired that the statues should be taken down from the pediment and he broke them. Lord Elgin, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, tore down the bas-reliefs of the frieze and the metopes: this was another disaster. The Ilissus or Cephisus, the Hercules or Theseus, the Charities, “vernal goddesses”—called by some the Three Fates, by others Demeter, Core, and Iris—are still, though somewhat mutilated, the most precious of our relics of antiquity. In 1812 some other Englishmen carried off the frieze of the temple of Phigalia (Bassæ), built by Ictinus. All these fragments of masterpieces were sold for hard cash, and it is under the damp and gloomy sky of England that we are reduced to admiring the remains of that which was the imperial mantle which Pericles wrapped about Pallas Athene. Thus to understand the incomparable magnificence of the Parthenon, we must render back to it in imagination what men have taken away, then place it on its lofty rock, one hundred and fifty-six metres (512 ft.) high, whence a magic panorama is unrolled before the eyes, and surround it with the buildings of the Acropolis; the Erechtheum, which exhibited all the graces of art, beside the severe grandeur of the principal temple; the bronze statue of Athene Promachus, “she who fought in the front rank,” to which the artist gave a colossal height, so that the sailors arriving from the high sea steered by the plume on her helmet and the gold[480] tip of her lance, maris stella; and lower down, at the only place by which the rock was accessible, the wonderful vestibule of the Propylæa and the temple of Victory which formed one of its wings; but, above all, it must be seen wrapped in the blazing light of the eastern sky, compared to which our clearest day is but a twilight.

One thing has been observed in the Parthenon which proves the profound artistic sense the Greeks possessed and how well they understood how to correct geometry by taste. In all the Parthenon there is no surface which is absolutely flat. As the columns owe their full beauty only to the fact that they exhibit towards their centre a slight outward curve, of which the eye is not aware, so the entire building, colonnades and walls, is inclined slightly inwards towards an invisible point which would be lost in the region of the clouds, and all the horizontal lines are convex. But all with such delicacy that it is sufficient to allow the eye and the light to wander gently over the surfaces and to give the monument at once the grace of art and the solidity of strength; but not enough for it to assume the compressed and heavy aspect of a truncated pyramid like the Egyptian temples. On the southern façade the rise of the curve is only one hundred and twenty-three millimetres (about 4½ inches).

The Propylæa, the masterpiece of civil and military architecture, belonged, like the Parthenon, to the Doric order, and stood at the only accessible point of the Acropolis. The architect Mnesicles disposed its various parts in such a manner as to give an aspect of grandeur to the entrance to the Holy of Holies of pagan Athens and also to secure its defence. Epaminondas would have transported it to Thebes to adorn the Cadmea: six centuries after, Pausanias admired it more than the Parthenon, and Plutarch said: “These works have preserved a freshness, a virginity which time cannot wither; they appear still bright with youth as if a breath would animate them and as if they had an immortal soul.”

Athens had other monuments which were erected at very diverse epochs: the Anaceum, the temple of Castor and Pollux, where the sale of slaves took place; the Pantheon or temple of all the gods, the work of the emperor Hadrian; the octagonal Tower of the Winds, an indifferent work built about the first century before Christ. On each of its eight sides, corresponding to the quarters of the principal winds, was sculptured the figure of one of them. This tower still exists, as well as the choragic monument erected by the choregus Lysicrates, in 334 B.C., on the occasion of the victory of the Acamantid tribe in a chorus. The remains of the theatre of Bacchus are still to be seen on the south-eastern slope of the citadel, some of the marble seats bearing very beautiful sculptures. But the Stadium beyond the Ilissus, according to Pausanias one of the wonders of Athens, has disappeared and the excavations made there produced nothing remarkable.

Like its capital, Attica too had monuments of victory, of patriotic pride, and pious gratitude to the gods: and all these monuments were constructed in the severe style whose principal models we have just studied. In the sacred city of Eleusis, in sight of Salamis, a vast religious edifice was built, capable of containing the multitude of those initiated into the mysteries of Ceres. Rhamnus which overlooks the plain of Marathon, raised a sanctuary to Nemesis, the goddess of just vengeance; and on the summit of Cape Sunium, two temples consecrated to Poseidon and Athene, the tutelary deities of Attica, signalised from afar, to sailors coming from the isles or the coast of Asia, their approach to the ground where the Persians had found a tomb and the Greeks liberty. When on the days of the sacred festivals, the[481] people arrived in long theoria (embassies) at the promontory now called Cape Colonna, they saw extending at their feet that sea which had now become their own domain, and fervently thanked the two divinities for having given them: for their leaders, political wisdom; for their mariners, favourable winds. At a later time philosophy was to take its seat near the temple of the gods, and we, like it, believe that Sunium heard some of the discourses of Plato.

The school of Athens extended her influence to distant places. It did not build the temple of Olympia, but Phidias made the statue of Zeus; Pæonius of Mende and Alcamenes of Lemnos have been credited, without absolute proof, with the sculptures of the two pediments, on one of which was represented the combat of Pelops and Œnomaus, and on the other the contests of the Lapithæ and Centaurs at the nuptials of Pirithous.

Time, barbarians, perhaps fire, destroyed the temple, and the Alpheus, in overflowing its banks, covered the plain of Altis which Pausanias had seen in such beauty with eight or ten metres (about 26 or 32 ft.) of alluvium. Before the Expédition de Morée, which brought away some fragments for the Louvre, even the spot in which so much magnificence stood was unknown. The successful excavations of the German commission have brought to light a victory of Pæonius, a Hermes of Praxiteles and other masterpieces.

The Ionic style is also native to the coast of Asia, where the Doric had preceded it. It was exhibited there in all its grace in the sixth century, when the temple of Ephesus was erected. The Cretan Chersiphron and his son Metagenes began its construction, which was carried on, like that of our Gothic cathedrals, with a tardiness that extended it over two or three centuries. Its columns, several of which were given by Crœsus, had a height of eight diameters, with bases which lacked the Doric columns and voluted capitals which the ancients compared to the drooping curls of a woman’s hair. Of the Ionic temple at Samos, burned by the Persians, a single column[482] remains upright, and according to the diameter of the base it was sixteen metres (about 52½ ft.) high. This temple was therefore a colossal structure. At Athens the Erechtheum and the temple of the Wingless Victory are in the same style, but of very small dimensions. The first contained the oldest image of Athene: a statue of olive wood which was said to have fallen from heaven. In the second was a warlike Minerva; in order to attach her permanently to the fortunes of Athens, the sculptor had not given her the wings which are the attributes of the fickle goddess of lucky battles.

In the time of Pericles the Corinthian style has not yet appeared but is about to do so. It is related that Callimachus, having seen on a child’s tomb at Corinth, a basket filled with its playthings and enveloped in the graceful curves of the leaves of an acanthus, took from it the idea of the Corinthian capital. The date of his birth is unknown, but since Ictinus after the plague of Athens, and Scopas in 396 constructed, the one at Phigalia, the other at Tegea, two temples in which traces have been found of the new style of architecture, its invention must have followed very soon after the construction of the Propylæa.

There is a question concerning Greek architecture which has only been answered in our own day, that of polychromy. In spite of our very decided preference for bare stone, we have been forced to recognise that the Greeks had a different taste. Light and colour are the joy of the eyes; but their rôle is not the same in countries in which the sky often appears like a shroud suspended above the earth, and in those where that earth, animated by the sun, sings, with its thousand voices, the poem of nature. In the north a wan light casts gloom upon the monuments; thus we are not loath to build them with materials which at first give them a dazzling whiteness. In the south they are too vividly illuminated, and the dazzling brightness of the marble would burn the eyes if the sun did not clothe the stone in a golden tint which rests the gaze. Colour, unnecessary and somewhat incommoding to the sculptor, whose main concern is with the form and truth of outline, furnishes the architect on the contrary with a valuable means of animating the great flat surfaces which in their nakedness would be cold and lifeless. He does not, like the polychromic sculptor, seek to create a deceitful illusion; colour and ornamentation make no false pretence, and are a charm the more when, in the case of a building standing in the midst of a sacred wood, it establishes a needful harmony between the work of art and that of nature.

Egypt and Asia were prodigal of colour, whether in painting or by the use of enamelled faiences with which the monuments of Persia are still covered. The most ancient inhabitants of Hellas passed under their influence. Colour has been found on the walls of dwellings older than Homer by ten centuries; it was to be seen at Tiryns, one of the capitals of the heroic age, and on the prows of the first ships which ventured into the midst of the waves. This usage continued through the epochs which succeeded; but, as in every domain of art, the Greeks modified this legacy of their ancestors and of the peoples which had preceded them in civilised life, according to the requirements of a delicate taste. Hues more or less vivid covered the stone of the temple, even the sculptures of the frieze, the metopes, and the pediment; terra-cottas, whose colours mixed with a kind of paste were indestructible, decorated the upper parts of the monument and enlivened these severe structures. But a distinction must be drawn between the polychromy of Athens in the time of Pericles and that of other Hellenic countries. In Sicily, in greater Greece, even in Ægina, where the materials which the architects had to dispose of were of a coarse description, it may be[483] that the temples received a brilliant colouring. But at Athens the beautiful Pentelic marble employed in the construction of the temples was certainly not entirely concealed under crude and violent colours. The words of Plutarch, quoted above, on the freshness and youth preserved by the monuments of the Acropolis, when six centuries had already passed over them, does not allow us to believe in more than a moderate colouration for the columns and walls. At one point only of the building there was certainly greater variety. In all countries women, who are ingenious artists, apply themselves to adorning their heads, and with reason: it is the stronghold from which formidable arrows are shot. Ictinus also decorated the upper portions of the Parthenon with all the graces he could call into play. Ornaments of gilt bronze fastened to the draperies of the figures, inlaid enamels, and magnificent carvings running all along the frieze. On festival days treasures and garlands were added, so that the edifice wore on its brow, as it were, a crown of flowers and foliage over a circlet of precious stones.

Antiquity has preserved us no details concerning the artists; we are ignorant of even the native country of most of them. For centuries their works spoke for them, but the very ruins of the monuments they raised have perished. Only the Parthenon still proudly lifts its mutilated head above the mass of rubbish.

A great poet saw a gloomy vision of Europe dying and Paris vanishing. Twenty-five centuries before, Thucydides drew a less poetic but more faithful fantasy for Athens and Lacedæmon. Comparing the sterility of the one to the fertility of the other, he said: “Let both towns be destroyed and the mere débris of the monuments and temples of Athens will reveal a glorious city; the ruins of Lacedæmon will be only those of a large village.”

SCULPTURE

Art is a natural instinct which is to be found even amongst the last of the savages who were the prehistoric inhabitants of Gaul, and which the most intelligent of animals do not possess. This instinct is developed or arrested, not, as has been said, according to race, but in response to the social influences to which a people is subjected amidst melancholy and severe or peaceful and smiling scenes which extinguish or call forth the creative imagination. These influences, working through the centuries, predisposed Hellas to change the paths which art had been pursuing in the East; and[484] habits which were easily acclimatised in Greece, but which could not have had their birth on the banks of the Nile and Euphrates, favoured this slow evolution.

Thanks to a good system of education, to long-continued gymnastic exercises and to a life in the open air, often without clothing and always without a dress which could hamper the harmonious development of the body, the Greeks became the most beautiful race under the sun. As they had always before their eyes the ephebi, so agile in the race, the wrestlers and the athletes, who displayed so much virile grace, the æsthetic sense developed in them with a strength which, when nature had given genius to the artists, produced masterpieces. Religion still further increased this tendency. Their gods having been conceived in the image of man, as a superior humanity, the sculptors, as the religious conscience grew more elevated and taste was purified, took their ideal for the representations of the dwellers on Olympus from human beauty carried to perfection. The people even looked upon it as a gift of heaven, and after death men were accorded heroic honours on account of their beauty.

Herodotus has preserved us a fact which exhibits the Greek character: Philip of Croton was venerated as a hero after his death, in a small building erected to him because he was the most beautiful man of his time, and the old historian agrees with the Egestans who had made this singular kind of god. He does not ask if Xerxes had truly royal qualities. “In his vast army,” he says, “none was more worthy by his beauty of the sovereign power.” In one of the choregiæ in which he often triumphed by his magnificence, Nicias had given the part of Dionysus to a young slave so perfectly handsome and so nobly attired that on his appearance the people broke into applause. Nicias liberated him at once, considering, he said, that it was an impiety to retain in servitude a man who had been hailed by the Athenians in the character of a god. Nicias indeed was performing a very popular act; it was the handsome ephebus, not the god, who had excited the admiration of the spectators.

From first to last Greece thought thus. Many a time in the Odyssey, Ulysses and Telemachus fancy that they see a god when they unexpectedly encounter a tall and beautiful man; and the cold and severe Aristotle writes: “If amongst mortals any were born resembling the images of the gods, the rest of mankind would agree in swearing to them an eternal obedience.” Simonides, without going so far, made beauty the second of the four conditions necessary to happiness, and Isocrates said: “Virtue is so honoured only because it is moral beauty.” It was because he was the most beautiful of the ephebi that Sophocles was charged, after Salamis, with the task of leading the chorus which sung the hymn of victory; and it is said Phidias engraved on the finger of Zeus at Olympia: “Pantarces is beautiful”—a sacrilege which might have exposed him to great danger. We no longer possess this inscription, but we find a similar one on a painted vase, where[485] Victory is offering a crown to a handsome ephebus. The gods themselves had the reputation of being sensible of this advantage, which had procured many mortals the honour of their love. At Ægium Jupiter desired that his priests should be chosen from among the young men who had carried off the prize for beauty; for this merit Ganymede was snatched up to heaven, that he might serve as cup-bearer to the gods, and Apollo admitted into his sanctuary the statue of Phryne, the most admired of the courtesans of Greece. It is notorious how Hyperides saved the beautiful hetæra from a capital charge, when she was standing before the judges, by simply tearing away at an appropriate moment the veil which hid her beauty. The recollection of these facts serves to explain the divine honours paid to Antinoüs by the most Grecian of the Roman emperors; but they also show how much this worship of beauty, of which the Greeks had made a religion and from which Plato was to weave a theory, went to form the artists, and, to a certain extent, the philosophers of Greece. Did not Plato utter words whence has been legitimately derived the famous saying that Beauty is the splendour of goodness? The jurisconsults of the Roman empire called themselves the priests of law; Phidias and Polyclitus might have styled themselves the priests of the beautiful; and this trait suffices to mark the difference between the two civilisations, the Greek and the Roman. Beauty is the perpetual aspiration of the French spirit which seeks it in everything, in the great spectacles of nature or in the works of famous writers and artists.

Amongst the statues of which the ancients were most proud, are some which amaze us by their colossal height, and others which shock our taste by the diversity of the colours and materials employed. The Egyptians treated their Pharaohs and their gods in a similar fashion, as did the Persians their kings, the Athenians the people or the senate personified, and we ourselves do the same to translate certain ideas: the Saint Borromeo of Lake Maggiore and the Liberty of New York are colossi. Executed to be seen from afar, they strike the eye by their mass, and are the expression in stone of elevated sentiments: of holiness, patriotism, or independence. On the promontory where they are placed between earth and heaven they appear as the very genius of the people which erected them, a shining witness of their gratitude, and the figurative representation of their inmost thought.

The art of colossal sculpture was at the service of the gods, and was in its place in or near their temples. It was the same with the chryselephantine sculpture, and for the same reasons. The most celebrated of these sculptures and those which from ancient descriptions we know the best, were the Athene of the Parthenon and the Zeus of Olympia.

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Reaching with her pedestal to a height of fifteen metres (about 49 ft.), Minerva stood erect, enveloped in a talaric tunic, the dress of virgins. In one hand she held a Victory, in the other the spear round which the serpent Erichthonius was coiled. The draperies were of gold, the naked parts of ivory, the head of Medusa, on the Ægis, in silver, the eyes being of precious stones.

How did this Minerva, which was seen by Julian as late as the fourth century of our era, finally perish? The Christians have been charged with this, but the accusation should be brought against her wealth. So much gold could not escape the barbarians, whoever they were, whether invaders from the north, needy princes, or ordinary thieves. The pillage of the Parthenon had already begun in the time of Isocrates and the Athene of Julian must have been only a ruin.

Phidias was also summoned to Olympia. The treasures accumulated in the temple from the offerings of all Greece, permitted him to execute a work which surpassed that of the Parthenon. On a throne of cedar wood, inlaid with gold and ivory, ebony, and precious stones, and covered with bas-reliefs and paintings, Zeus was majestically seated. His thick hair and beard were of gold; of gold and ivory was the Victory he carried in his right hand, in token that his will was always triumphant; of gold, too, mingled with other metals was the royal sceptre surmounted by an eagle, which he held in his left hand. On the head was the crown of olive leaves, which was given to the victors in the games, but, as was fitting, that of the god was gold, as well as his sandals and his mantle, which revealed his naked breast in ivory. His visage had the virile beauty proper to the father of gods and men; his tranquil gaze was indeed that of the all-powerful whom no passion stirs and behind whose broad forehead should reside the vast intelligence of the orderer of worlds. Placed at the back of the naos, at the point where the trend of the architectural lines attracted the gaze, the statue, fifteen or sixteen metres (49 or 52 ft.) high, seemed still more colossal than it was.

The Olympian Jupiter shared the fate of the Minerva of the Parthenon; he was too rich for an age grown too barbarous and beliefs too hostile. It is said that in 393 Theodosius had it transported to Constantinople, where it perished some years later in one of the great conflagrations that so often visited the new capital of the Empire; it is not likely that it was so long respected. Already in the second century Lucian laughs at this “honest fellow, the exterminator of giants, who remained seated so quietly while brigands shaved his golden hair.”

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Other towns besides Athens and Olympia had chryselephantine statues. Costly materials were used for the Juno at Argos, the Æsculapius of Epidaurus, and others.

Phidias did not confine himself to representing gods, that is to say to making colossi; with his own hands, or more often through those who worked under his direction, he lavished less divine sculpture on the frieze, the metopes, and the double pediment of the temple, the figures of which, as seen from below, do not appear to be of more than ordinary height. Those which he chiselled on Minerva’s shield and on her sandals, were still smaller. The magnificent fragments which remain to us from the two pediments, Demeter and Core, Iris and Cephisus, the Charities or Fates, the Hercules or Theseus, are the works of his school and we may say of his mind. In spite of their mutilations, these marbles, like those of the Victory untying her sandal, may be ranged beside, if not above, the most glorious creations of Renaissance sculpture in the purity of the style and the calm serenity of the figures, which neither have their limbs twisted in violent action nor their brows overcharged with thought, as happened when statuary strove to rival painting. What a puissant life is in these divinities tranquilly seated in the pediments, and how calm on their fiery horses are the riders in the Panathenaic procession! Later on the school of grace and voluptuousness will appear, with an Athenian, Praxiteles, as its chief; still later, passion will agitate the marble: then the decay of art begins—such a drama as the “Farnese bull”[46] depicts may not fittingly be presented in stone.

It is to the eternal honour of Phidias that he finally broke with hieratic art, whose influence is still traceable in the beautiful statues of Ægina, with their admirably studied but lifeless shapes and grinning heads exhibiting, even in pain and death, the same idiotic smile. The great artist sought the beauty which is the spiritual essence of things, whether it be in the soul seen through the body; or nature contemplated in her most harmonious expansion; and this ideal beauty he realised without making the effort visible. This is supreme art; for there is no grandeur without simplicity.

PAINTING, MUSIC, ETC.

If the description in the Iliad of the shield of Achilles is a work of imagination, those of the Athene of the Parthenon and the Zeus of Olympia, as given by Pausanias after an attentive study of the works themselves, show[488] that the school of Athens had carried the art of carving metal and ivory to a high degree of perfection, as well as that of working hard stones for casts or in relief. Yet this skill was borrowed from the school of Argos, where work in bronze was held in high honour.

It was not so with painting, which in Greece had never the perfection of statuary, whatever may be said on the faith of anecdotes more famous than veracious. Modern painting seeks to move; that of the ancients was rather sculptural in its character, in the sense that it sacrificed colouring to design and the effects of light and shade to form—a stranger to what might be called, if we have Rembrandt in mind, the drama of light and shade, or, in referring to the Venetians, the harmonious chant of colours. Sicyon was the first Greek town which had a school for design. Athens, Miletus, and subsequently Corinth, followed this example. We shall see presently that Greece had great painters, and that those of Athenian origin did not occupy the first rank in this art. But it would be rash to speak of Greek painting except according to the judgment of the ancients, since nothing of it remains save painted vases, which belong to industry rather than art; and the mural decorations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, which are too often mere conventional productions, executed hurriedly and probably for small payment by workmen rather than artists. The Roman mosaics were also made by Greek hands, but there is not one, except the battle of Issus, which is of a high order of art.

The Greeks possessed the merit of realising that the highest intellectual culture is one of the conditions of greatness in the individual and the state; and they understood how to utilise every means of attaining it. In their plan of education, besides the study of poets and philosophers to form the mind, and gymnastic exercise to develop suppleness and strength, they included music, which habituates the mind to harmony, and dancing, which bestows grace. These two secondary arts were the chief ones at Lacedæmon; they also ranked high among the Athenians, though Athens did not set her mark on them as she did on architecture and the art of statuary. They were indispensable auxiliaries at festivals, sacrifices, and funerals, and played a part in the performance of religious rites. The marvellous effects of the lyre of Orpheus were universally kept in mind, and Achilles, the hero who was the ideal type of warlike courage, was represented celebrating his exploits on the cithara; in the Iliad or the Odyssey there is no feast to which a melodious singer is not invited. Down to the last days of Greece the beneficent action of music was believed in: Polybius attributed the misfortunes of the Arcadians to the neglect among them of the art which calms the passions and which, by teaching the rules of harmony, trains the learner not to violate public peace. Damon the musician, a friend of Pericles[489] and of Socrates, held that musical methods could not be changed without threatening the foundation of morality and the laws of the city. Plato thinks the same, and Aristotle calls music “the greatest charm of life.” It is well known how much importance was attached to it by the school of the Pythagoreans, who professed to hear the music of the celestial spheres turning harmoniously through infinite space.

The Greeks also conceived of dancing in another fashion from ours, for they had introduced into it number and measure, which in art are a manifestation of beauty, but no longer remain so when whirling speed is substituted for grace. With them the dance formed part of their religious solemnities and military education. “The ancients,” says Plato in the Seventh Book of the Laws, “have bequeathed us a great number of beautiful dances.” In the Dorian cities dancing was one of the necessary rites in the worship of Apollo, and the gravest people participated. Theseus, returning from Crete, danced the γέρανος in the holy island of Delos, to celebrate his victory over the Minotaur; and the Spartans, in annual commemoration of their triumph over the people of Thyrea danced the γυμνοπαιδια before the images of Apollo, Diana, and Latona, singing verses of Aleman and the Cretan Thaletas. The Bacchic dances, with thyrsi and lighted torches, were a mimic representation of the life of Dionysus.

In the neighbourhood of Eleusis was to be seen the fountain of beautiful dances, Callichorum, where the initiated chanted the invocation to Iacchus as they danced: “O adored god, approach at our voice. Iacchus! Iacchus! come and dance the sacred thiasus in this meadow, thy well-beloved home; strike the ground with a bold foot and mingle in our free and joyous dances, inspired by the graces who rule our consecrated chorus.”

Plato, in his treatise on “Law,” which is a kind of commentary on Athenian legislation and customs, attaches extreme importance, even for the moral education of youth, to the possession by the ephebi of the “art of choruses,” which includes song and dance.

We may well believe that demoralising dances existed in Ionia and elsewhere. At Sparta and Athens the Pyrrhic dance was a military exercise and a patriotic training. The ephebi danced them at the greater and lesser Panathenæa, imitating all the movements of a combat for attack, defence, or the evasion of darts. And was not the heroic circle of the Suliote women a recollection of these warlike dances? Having taken refuge on the summit of a mountain to escape a harem or the yataghan of the Turks, they sang their funeral hymn, joined hands and danced on this narrow peak, which was surrounded by precipices. Each time that the ring approached the abyss, the circle was narrowed, for one of their number detached herself from it to fling herself down; and one after another, all threw themselves over.

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THE ARTISTS OF THE OTHER CITIES OF HELLAS

The fifth century is the golden age of Greek art. We have told of the artists whom Athens gave to the world; we shall now see what others the rest of Hellas produced—such at least whose names have come down to us with an indication of their works.

Chersiphron and his son Metagenes of Knossos, in Crete, are outside the period with which we are dealing, for they began the construction of the great temple of Ephesus in the sixth century.

The domain of statuary had a great artist whom the ancients have compared to Phidias, Polyclitus of Sicyon or Argos. The artists of the century of Pericles did not confine themselves to one corner of the regions of art; they cultivated the whole. Polyclitus was as much a skilful architect as a great sculptor. At Epidaurus he erected a circular monument, the Tholus, and a theatre which was much admired by the ancients; at Argos his Juno was the rival of the Minerva of the Parthenon, though it did not stand as high, and was less costly. Phidias lived with the gods in spirit, Polyclitus dwelt more among men. He even wrote on the proportions of the human body, and applied his knowledge to his Doryphorus, which was called the “canon,” or the “rule.” The ancients divided the palm for statuary between the two great artists: giving it to the one for his gods; to the other for his Canephorus, which Verres stole from the Sicilians, his Amazon, which triumphed over that of Phidias in the famous competition at Ephesus, and his statues of successful athletes, such as the Diadumenus and the two Astragalizontes, or dice-players. Myron, whom we might have included among the Athenian artists, went farther in his imitation of nature; his bronze cow was famous, and still more so his Discobolus, whose attitude must have been very difficult to render.

Polygnotus of Thasos, whom Cimon brought from that town in 463, lived for a long time on the banks of the Ilissus, and was given the rights of an Athenian citizen as a reward for his labours in the decoration of the temple of Theseus, the Anaceum, the Pœcile, and a part of the Propylæa. There was some stiffness in the designs of Polygnotus; his was a sculptural painting which, nevertheless, obtained great effects by very simple means. The ancients lauded the expression and beauty of his figures, but they have neither the grace nor the dramatic character which the painters of the period that followed were to give to their works. The arts of painting and statuary are two sisters who resemble each other, and both follow the variations of taste: the first with a vivacity at times imprudent, the second with more reserve. Zeuxis of Heraclea Pontica and his rival, Parrhasius of Ephesus, were younger than Polygnotus. Their painting was already more scientific, less ideal, and nearer reality. Aristotle reproaches Zeuxis with yielding too much to Ionian effeminacy. If we are to believe anecdotes whose frequent repetition does not make them more authentic, these painters even succeeded in deceiving the eye: the one with a bunch of grapes which the birds came to peck at, the other with a curtain which Zeuxis attempted to draw back, thinking that it concealed the real picture. These would be triumphs of ingenuity rather than art. It is to be noted that both men drew freely on the abundant resources of ancient poetry. Both attained to great fame and opulence. In spite of the misfortunes of the times, Greece still had gold for her favourite painters. Archelaus, king of Macedon, paid four hundred minæ for the painting of Zeuxis in his palace, and Parrhasius never appeared in public without a robe of purple fringed with gold. He considered himself[491] “master of the elegancies,” as well as of his art, so we need not wonder at his having inclined to effeminate gracefulness. “His Theseus,” said Ephranor, “is fed on roses; mine was fed on meat.” But it was at a later time, with Lysippus and Pamphilus, that the school of Sicyon was to have its full splendour.

The sight of the sculptors and painters turning to Homer for their inspiration, calls forth the remark that the Iliad was the Bible of Greece, as much for art as for religion. As our churches of the Middle Ages constituted, by means of their windows, a grand book of religious instruction, so the walls and pediments of the Greek temples exhibited to the eye legends which spoke of the divinities and heroes of the Hellenic race. Thus, while in Rome art was to be merely a foreign importation, in Greece it came from the very heart of the country; and this was the secret of its greatness.b

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XXIX. GREEK LITERATURE

ORATORY AND LYRIC POETRY

Of all branches of literature there is none more closely interwoven with political life than oratory. This art could only have been developed among the Ionians, for no other race had the same innate taste for vivacious utterance, or the same feeling for fluency, copiousness, and brilliancy of speech. Nor is there any doubt that the kind of oratory which aims at influencing the feeling and directing the resolutions of the civic body was first practised in the cities of Ionia. But it was at Athens that Greek oratory was brought to its true perfection. There the public oration developed side by side with freedom of speech and the duty of speaking which was encumbent on every Attic citizen. It seemed so intimately connected with the life of Attica that the state of Theseus was represented as founded by it.

For this reason oratory was not the subject of a special study that could be conceived of apart from public life, but the simple expression of practical experience and statesman-like prudence; for at that period men could not have imagined a popular leader who was not at the same time a statesman proved in peace and war and had not won by his public career the right to be listened to by his fellow citizens. And as oratory grew into a power which dominated the life of the community, so language itself was advanced to a new stage in development, when Athens became the centre of the world. What grew out of the local dialect was a new idiom, in which the power inherent in the Greek language first came to its full maturity by becoming the vehicle of Attic culture.

The Greek language had undergone a many-sided development in Ionia. The Ionic dialect was the repository not only of the Homeric and post-Homeric epics and hymns, but of the whole treasure of elegiac and iambic poetry. Ionia was the first country to avail herself largely of the art of writing. This was first put to use in connection with the art of the country; the epic poems which had been composed without the aid of writing, and had become the property of the nation, were by its aid disseminated, cast into permanent[493] form, and continued. Reading and writing were first introduced into the schools of the Rhapsodists, which is the reason why Homer himself is represented as a schoolmaster; and when the later epic poets—Arctinus, Lesches, and others—who sang in Ionia after the beginning of the Olympiads, made the great epic the starting-point of their own poems, in which they endeavoured to amplify, supplement, and connect the substance of the Iliad and the Odyssey, writing was a common accomplishment among poets, and the rhapsodic art itself took on more of the character of a science in consequence.

At this point, however, and in Ionia as before, there came into being a wholly novel method of literary statement, intended, not to rouse the emotions of a crowded audience, but to spread abroad the results of scientific research. Philosophers and historians wrote for the public in prose, and in the sixth century the taste for reading and writing spread with great rapidity through the whole of Ionia, where Samos, in particular, became a school for the cultivation of the art of writing.

At this time, however, prose did not develop in contrast to poetry; as yet no distinction was made between the two classes of composition. The colloquial language of ordinary life, the lively popular note, was simply adopted by writers of fables, and from the tales of Æsop the maxims of homely wit and wisdom passed into literature. Archilochus was fond of using them, so was Herodotus. Men were so accustomed to learn from the poets that even speculative philosophers set forth their theories in poetic garb, like Xenophanes, who wandered about reciting his doctrines in the form of a rhapsody. The narratives of Herodotus are composed with a view to stirring the listening crowd, and the poetic character of his descriptions is unmistakable. His style flows on with the ease of an epic recitation, his sentences hang together loosely; poet-like he sees around him the audience which he desires to enchant and thrill with the charm of his story. Even in philosophy no attempt was made to reproduce the sequence of ideas in clear and exact terms. The teachings of Heraclitus bore the character of Sibylline oracles; he delighted in figurative language which suggested rather than followed up an idea, and apart from the abstruseness of his thought the construction of his sentences was so far from plain that it was impossible to determine precisely the grammatical sequence of his discourse.

Thus, great as was the wealth of Ionian literature, it had as yet no prose, while other parts of the country were even more backward. Generally speaking, we may say that the distinction between poetry and prose as two separate forms of literature was not recognised by the Greeks till late. We need only recall the hymns of Pindar to see how phrases and ideas of an entirely prosaic order occur side by side with the loftiest flights of poetic imagery. It was reserved for Athenian literature to create a prose style. The language was sufficiently new and supple to take and reproduce the peculiar impress of the Attic spirit; and this, as compared with the Ionic spirit, manifests itself in language, as in garb and manners, by greater simplicity and smoothness of form.

The dialect spoken in Attica occupied a sort of intermediate position among the dialects of the various tribes of Greece, and was therefore admirably fitted to become the medium of communication among all educated Greeks. For, although closely akin to Ionic, the Attic dialect had remained free from many Ionic peculiarities developed in the islands and on the further coast—particularly from the tendency to soften the vowel sounds.

Side by side with the eloquence which subserved political ends and was designed to guide the masses, there developed in Athens the speech of the[494] law courts, which from the outset was more strictly in accordance with regular rules and bore more likeness to a literary exercise, by reason of the rise of a class of writers who composed pleas for others. For it was the law in Attica that every man must conduct his own case, so that even those who had their speeches composed by counsel were themselves obliged to deliver them. Accordingly the personality of the orator, which carried such weight in political speeches, fell completely into the background; he was a mere writer of orations (logographos), and dealt with public instead of private affairs. This kind of oratory entered into much closer relations with sophistry, because the latter aimed at giving the mind such versatility as would enable it to handle with skill any subject presented to it and to discover in each the greatest variety of interesting matter.

A peculiar kind of public oration which attained to importance in the Athens of Pericles was the speech in honour of citizens who had fallen in battle. By a special statute which dates from the time of Cimon, a speech of this character was associated with a public funeral; and it was the custom to commission the most approved orator of the day to deliver this funeral oration in the name of the community, as an honourable distinction and acknowledgment of the public services of the deceased. Wordy and elaborate eulogiums did not suit the taste of the time. At such moments, when the citizens felt themselves smitten with grievous loss, it seemed a worthier task to bid them take courage, to turn their mourning into thanksgiving, their sorrow into joy and pride, by holding up before them the lofty interests of the public service for which their fellow citizens had laid down their lives, and to encourage the hearers to the same joyful self sacrifice.

Considering that all the arts and sciences flourished most vigorously during the period of the Persian wars, the fruits of which came to maturity in the years of peace under Pericles, it may well surprise us that the lyric art, the very one which is wont to be most closely associated with every spiritual movement, did not keep pace with the development of the other arts; and that the Wars of Liberation, so national, so just, and crowned, after grievous trials, with such amazing success, found no fuller echo in popular minstrelsy. Various circumstances combine to explain the fact.

The home of Æolian lyric poetry was more remote from the agitations of the times, and the inspiration which had called forth the poems of Alcæus[495] and Sappho a hundred years before had burnt low. Choral lyric poetry, on the other hand, was too completely interwoven with religious worship and earlier conditions of life, it was too much accustomed to put its art at the service of the old families whose glories belonged to the past rather than the present, to find itself at home in these changed times. The Theban bard, in particular, was too deeply concerned for his native city—which had reaped nothing but shame and misery from the Wars of Liberation—and for Delphi—which had from the first looked with disfavour on the national aspirations after liberty—to appreciate dispassionately the glories of the new era, though he was too large hearted and liberal minded to refuse the victorious city of Athens its meed of admiration and praise in song. The Thebans punished Pindar for calling Athens “the pillar of Hellas”; the Athenians rewarded him, rightly esteeming his tribute a triumph of the good cause. In Sparta nothing was done to celebrate the Wars of Liberation. The Spartan constitution allowed no freedom of intellectual life, and furnished too little in the way of comfort and contentment to prove a favourable soil for poetry.

In the elegy, the oldest form of Greek lyric—so perfect an expression of the Ionic spirit in its varied measures and uses—a new form had been evolved in Ionia itself, side by side with the older one in which Theognis had expounded his party rancour and Solon his statesman-like wisdom—a lighter form which touched upon life in accents untinged by grief, the song of joyous conviviality, giving the gaiety of the banquet a higher consecration by the introduction of ethical ideas. “To drink, to jest, to bear a just mind,” sang Ion, and brought public affairs gracefully into the conversation. Dionysius the Athenian, a statesman of note in the age of Pericles, associated himself with Ion in this form of verse, and the lighter kind of elegy so appealed to the intellectual character of contemporary Athens that even Sophocles and Æschylus composed elegies of this sort. The fifth century was so rich in life and movement that these occasional verses were produced in great abundance; the epigram itself is no more than a subsidiary kind of elegiac verse. Its concise form was due to its original purpose, which was to serve as an inscription on some public monument, and it is therefore more closely connected with the great events of the time than any other kind of poetry. Simonides of Ceos was esteemed above all other Greeks as a writer of occasional verse in the best sense of the term, so much so that Sparta commissioned the Ionian poet to sing the praise of her Leonidas. With inimitable felicity he immortalised the events of the Wars of Liberation in brief pregnant epigrams[496] inscribed on monuments of every sort, sang the praises of the fallen in elegies, and celebrated the days of Artemisium and Marathon in grand cantatas which were performed by festal choirs.

The state did what it could to advance the cause of art. It offered poets brilliant opportunities for distinguishing themselves at the celebrations held in honour of its victories, and gave prizes for the best performances. As Themistocles had been assisted by Simonides, so Cimon was assisted by the genius of Ion, who in like manner laboured to hand down his fame to posterity. Pericles was led by his own tastes as well as by political considerations to do all that lay in his power to foster the art of song in Athens. For this purpose he introduced the musical competitions at the Panathenæa, and so summoned all men of talent to vie publicly one with another. He himself was the organiser and lawgiver in this department, and settled with profound artistic knowledge the manner in which the singers and cithara-players should appear at the festivals. If in spite of all these efforts lyric poetry did not take the place we might have anticipated in the Athens of Pericles, and Simonides found no worthy successors, the principal reason must be sought in the fact that another stronger and richer voice of poetry arose, into which the lyric was merged and so lost its individual importance.

Of all kinds of lyric poetry none was cultivated in Athens so admirably and successfully as the dithyrambus, the chant in praise of the god Dionysus, the giver of blessings—the branch of religious poetry which showed a capacity for development beyond all others. Lasus of Hermione, the tutor of Pindar, had changed this form of song (originally no more than the medium of an enthusiastic nature worship) into an artistically constructed choral chant and invested it with such splendour by bold and varied measures and the rippling music of flutes, as to cast the fame of Arion, its original inventor, into the shade. From the Peloponnesus Lasus brought the new art to the court of the Pisistratidæ at Athens. At that time everything connected with the worship of Dionysus was regarded with special favour, the dithyrambus was introduced into state festivals, and wealthy citizens vied with one another in equipping and training Bacchic choirs, composed of fifty singers who danced circling the flaming altars of Dionysus; and no expense was spared to procure new songs for the Attic Dionysia from the greatest masters, such as Pindar and Simonides. The latter could boast that he had won no less than fifty dithyrambic victories at Athens. But the evolution of the dithyrambus did not stop there.

The dithyrambus not only included every metre and rhythm known to earlier kinds of lyric poetry, but it contained elements which tended to pass beyond the limitations of the lyric. For the festal chorus regarded the god whose praises they, sang as an immanent presence and, as it were, lived through all that befell him, whether of persecution or victory; and it was therefore but a short step to pass beyond the assumption that their audience was acquainted with the events which formed the subject of their chants, and to call them to mind by narration or set them forth by spectacular representation. The leaders of the dithyrambic chorus accordingly interspersed their singing with recitations, and thus epic and song were combined. The epic recitation was then rendered more effective by the aid of action and costume, the god himself was made visible in his suffering and triumph, the leader of the chorus undertook the part, the dancers were transformed into satyrs—attendants of the god and partakers of his fortunes; and thus from the union of the old forms of poetry there sprang a new form, the drama, the richest and most perfect of all.

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The Greeks were by nature gifted with dramatic talent. Their natural vivacity induced them to clothe every doubt or deliberation in the form of a dialogue. Thus even in Homer we find the germ of the drama, which now reaped the benefit of the entire evolution of the older art methods. For all that dance and song had invented in the way of balanced rhythm, effective metre, and poetic imagery, was here united, enlivened by the art of mimicry, which made the person of the actor the instrument of artistic exposition, and warmed by the joyous fires of the Bacchic festival.

The cycle of representation could not but be limited so long as the action was confined by ceremonial considerations to the subjects offered by the worship of Bacchus. The Greeks therefore went a step farther and in place of the fortunes of Bacchus took other subjects equally well calculated to arouse lively sympathy, and thus (when this form of art had been invented) there flowed in an abundance of materials and fertile themes, the storehouse of Homeric and post-Homeric epos was flung open, the national heroes were introduced to the nation in a novel and striking guise, and a vast field of activity was opened to dramatic art.

This advance had already been made beyond the borders of Attica; for before the time of Clisthenes the hero Adrastus had been substituted for Dionysus, and it may be that a similar enlargement of the scope of dithyrambic poetry had also taken place at Corinth. But it was at Athens alone that these rudiments of the drama reached their full development. As the epic had mirrored the heroic days of old, as the lyric kept pace with the development of the nation for three centuries after the decline of the epic, so the drama was the form of poetry which began to flower at the moment when Athens became the pivot of Greek history. Originating from humble beginnings in the time of Solon, it grew in magnitude and importance with the growth of the city’s greatness, and is associated with the history of Athens in every stage of its development.

TRAGEDY

Thespis was the founder of Attic tragedy, for it was he who introduced the alternation of recitation and song and arranged the stage and costumes. The story goes that Solon had small liking for the new art, believing the violent excitement of the emotions by the representation of imaginary events to be prejudicial, but that the tyrants favoured this popular diversion, like everything else connected with the democratic worship of Dionysus, because it suited the purpose of their policy to provide brilliant entertainments for the population at the expense of wealthy citizens. About 550 B.C. they summoned the chorus leader from Icaria to the city, competitions between rival tragic choruses were introduced, and the stage near the black poplar in the market place became a centre of Attic festivity.

With the restoration of peace all civic festivals took a higher flight, the various constituents fell apart, tragedy rejected the baser elements of Bacchic festivity and assumed greater dignity, it was cast into definite artistic forms by Pratinas and Chœrilus, and became freer and freer in its choice of subject. The old element was not abandoned for all that, the rustic youth would not be deprived of their accustomed masquerade, and the people were left their satyr choruses. But the two forms, which could not be combined without mutual detriment, were separated, and thus the satyr drama grows up side by side with tragedy. Pratinas, who migrated[498] to Athens from Phlius, gave these plays their typical form, and they retained their original character of Bacchic jollity, their rustic and homely features, and the merry rout of the satyrs with their wild dances and rude jests. Thus these elements were preserved to literature and yet prevented from molesting or hampering the further development of tragedy.

The period in which Athens took her place as a great power and sent her triremes across the sea to support the Ionian revolt, likewise constituted an epoch in the history of Attic tragedy. About that time the wooden scaffoldings from which the audience had looked on at the plays of Pratinas, Chœrilus, Phrynichus, and the youthful Æschylus, gave way; and the drama had already attained such consequence in Athens that the building of a magnificent theatre was taken in hand. A permanent stage of stone was built within the precincts sacred to Dionysus on the southern declivity of the citadel, and seats for spectators, rising one above the other in semi-circular rows, were built into the rock of the Acropolis in such wise that the audience commanded a view of Hymettus and the Ilissus on the left and of the harbour on the right.

Meanwhile the artistic structure of tragedy was steadily advancing towards perfection. The subject-matter grew more varied, music and the dance were used in a greater variety of forms, female characters were added. Nevertheless the lyric element remained predominant down to the time of the Persian wars; and Phrynichus, the greatest predecessor of Æschylus, was most admired for his charming choral songs. It was with the great drama of the War of Liberation that the theatrical drama began to unfold its full powers, and nowhere do we perceive more clearly the manifestation of the newly-acquired energy which pervaded every department of Attic life.

The man destined to give utterance in tragic art to the spirit of the great age was Æschylus, the son of Euphorion of Eleusis, a scion of an ancient family, through which he claimed association with one of the most venerable sanctuaries of the land. This is why he calls himself the pupil of Demeter, thus testifying that the solemn services of the temple at Eleusis had not failed to exercise a lasting influence upon his mind. As a boy he witnessed the fall of the tyrants: when come to man’s estate he fought at Marathon, being then thirty-five years old, and he himself declared, in the inscription on his tombstone, that he took pride, not in his tragedies, but in his share in that great day, though there he had been but a citizen among citizens, while as a poet he was without peer among his contemporaries. For it was he whose creative genius laid the foundations of Attic tragedy, making all previous achievements look like imperfect attempts.

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He introduced a second actor on the stage, and thus made the play a real drama, by which means lively colloquy first became possible. Dialogue, for which the Athenians were singularly well qualified by their love of talking, readiness and acute reasoning faculty, was thus transferred to the stage, and this gave it a wholly novel interest. The language of the dialogue was in the main that of ordinary life, while older phonetic principles prevailed in the chorus, which was thus less familiar to the ear and produced an impression of solemnity and dignity which suited well with its character of the oldest element of tragedy and the religious centre about which it had crystallised. The choruses were shortened to allow the action to proceed more vigorously, the characters of the dramatis personæ were more sharply defined, a distinction was made between leading and secondary parts, and the parts of secondary characters of lower station bore the stamp of the common people, as distinguished from the heroic figures of the play. The stage itself was brought to a higher pitch of perfection. It was effectively fitted up as an ideal scene by Agatharchus, the son of Eudemus, an artist from Samos, who cultivated scene painting scientifically as a branch of art, and mechanism was pressed into the service to raise shades from the depths of the earth or cause gods to hover in the air by artificial means. The spectacle as a whole gained in solemn dignity no less than in spiritual import and moral significance.

The principal aim of the earlier poets had been to express and induce emotional moods; but the object of the drama was to present the legends of olden times completely in their general connection, and for this purpose Attic drama was so arranged that three tragedies were joined to form a single whole, in order to display upon a harmonious plan the successive developments of the mythical story, and these three tragedies, which were so many acts of one great drama, were followed by a Satyr-drama as afterpiece. This led back from the affecting solemnity of the tragedies to the popular sphere of the Dionysian festival, where the diverting adventures witnessed and enacted by the satyrs restored the minds of the spectators to innocent mirth. It was a healthy trait of popular sentiment which thus mingled jest and earnest, and one of which we see other evidences in vase painting and the sculptures of the temples.

Such was the tetralogy of Attic drama, which, if not invented by Æschylus yet received its artistic consummation at his hands. The dithyrambic chorus was divided into groups, each consisting of twelve (and later of fifteen) persons, so that there was a special chorus for each part of the tetralogy, to follow sympathetically the action of the dramatis personæ and fill up the pauses with dance and song. The orchestra, where the chorus was placed, lay between the stage and the spectators, just as the chorus itself symbolically occupied an intermediate position between the audience and the heroes of the drama.

The Greeks were accustomed to look upon the poets as their teachers, and no man could gain recognition as a poet among them who had only talent, imagination, and artistic skill to show as proofs of his poetic vocation; this required a thorough education of heart and mind and clear insight into things human and divine. Hence the calling of a poet laid claim to the whole man and the man’s whole life, and none conceived of it more nobly than Æschylus. Like Pindar he takes his hearers into the very heart of the myth, drawing out its moral earnestness and illuminating it with the light of historical experience. Humanity, as represented by Æschylus in the Titan Prometheus, with its constancy through struggles and misery, its[500] proud self-respect, its indefatigable inventive genius, with its tendency, too, to rashness and arrogant boasting, is the generation of his own contemporaries, with their reckless aspirations; but no wisdom avails man save that which comes from Zeus, no skill and intelligence save that which is based on devout morality. Thus, without petty premeditation the poet becomes a true teacher of the people; in an age of incipient scepticism he endeavours to uphold the religion of his forefathers, to purify popular conceptions and to draw forth the kernel of wholesome truth from the many-hued tinsel of popular fables. It was the mission of the poet to maintain harmony between popular tradition and advancing knowledge.

But the poets lived in the midstream of civic life, and it is not to be supposed that, in a city like Athens, men who at public festivals set forth the creations of their genius in the public eye, could remain indifferent to the questions of their own day. They were obliged of necessity to belong to one party or another, and if they were sincere and candid, their views as to what was for the good of the commonwealth could not but appear in their works. Their choice of subject was still limited in the main to mythology; man’s strength of will, his deeds and sufferings, the contradiction between laws human and divine, were still set forth by preference in the characters of the Homeric age of which the tradition survived in the epos. These were the prototypes of the human race, their sufferings were the sufferings and entanglements incident to the whole human race; in contemplating them the spectators were to be freed from what was personal in their sorrows and cares, the narrow bounds of their self-consciousness were to be widened, and they were to receive from the performance not only the highest artistic pleasure, but a cheering and healing purification of their hearts. These heroes of olden times were in harmony with the ideal character which the dramatists were bent on giving to the whole world of the stage; but the impression was none the less striking because the audience was transported into a dim and legendary past. We feel the spirit of the warrior of Marathon in the warlike plays of Æschylus, and the spectator of his Seven against Thebes glowed with eagerness to strike a blow for his country.

Meanwhile Phrynichus had ventured to put modern events on the stage, and his Fall of Miletus and Phœnissæ were no doubt fraught with political intention. Æschylus followed the example of his predecessor in a far grander style when, four years after the production of the Phœnissæ of Phrynichus, he produced his drama of the Persæ. He depicted the fall of the Great King. But with fine artistic instinct he chose Persia, not Attica, for the scene of his tragedy. He brings before our eyes the consequences of the battle, its reaction upon the hostile empire, in its own capital. Darius is conjured from the grave that in the person of the pious and prudent ruler may be set forth the glory of the inviolate Persian empire, while his successor returns from Hellas shorn of all dignity, a warning example of the ruin which foolish arrogance brings upon all sovereign power. The whole composition is pervaded by the idea of retribution, which had been awakened in the Greek mind by the Persian wars.

In the tragedy of Phrynichus, Themistocles is extolled above all other men, while Æschylus only alludes to him in passing as the inventor of a subtle stratagem. On the other hand the latter gives a detailed account of the fight on Psyttalea, so exalting the fame of Aristides, who contributed substantially to the victory of Salamis, not by sea, but by land.

The Persæ was the middle play of a trilogy and comes to no final conclusion. The shade of Darius hints at other defeats in the future, and at[501] the struggles of Platæa. From Glaucus, the third play of the trilogy, an allusion to Himera has been preserved. The first part, Phineus, takes its name from the mythical seer who revealed to the Argonauts their coming voyage to the land of the northern barbarians. Hence, it is extremely probable that all three plays were linked together by a single idea, the idea (present to all thinking men of the time) of the great struggle between barbarian and Greek, between Asia and Europe, which had its mythical prelude in the voyage of the Argonauts, and came to its glorious issue on the battlefields of Greece and Sicily. In like manner Herodotus had conceived of the Persian War as one link in a great chain of historical development, and Pindar had associated Salamis, Platæa, and Himera as ranking equally among the glorious days of the Greeks; and we may be sure that the trilogy of the Persæ would not have been acted at the court of Hiero unless it had fully satisfied the tyrant’s love of praise.

Æschylus represented the legendary history of the house of Pelops in the three plays of the Oresteia, and that of the royal house of Thebes and the Thracian king, Lycurgus, each in a cycle of three dramas; he worked up the legend of Prometheus so that the conflicts and discords of the several parts find a satisfactory solution in a larger order of things; and thus the poet wove legend and history into a single piece. Prehistoric and present times, East and West, the mother-country and the colonies, all form parts of a grand picture, of a chain of events linked together by prophecy and reciprocal reaction. The poet looks forward and backward, and prophet-like interprets the course of history, seeing the inner necessity revealed to the eye of the spirit. He uplifts the hearts of his people by setting forth the waxing power of the Greeks, the waning might of the barbarians on every side, without a taint of scorn or malicious triumph to vitiate the moral majesty of his work. At the same time he moderates the pride of victory, by pointing to the guilt which brought about the Persian overthrow and to the eternal laws of divine justice, the observance of which is the inexorable condition of the prosperity of the Greeks.

In the tragedies on mythical subjects there was no lack of passages which permitted of or actually challenged application to the events of the day. Next to Aristides, it was Cimon to whom the muse of Æschylus did homage. Like Cimon, the poet was the champion of a common Hellenism, of patriarchal customs, the rule of the best, the discipline of the good old times, and so when the waves of popular agitation rose higher and higher till they threatened the very Areopagus, the last bulwark, the septuagenarian poet led his muse into the strife of conflicting parties and exerted his utmost powers to impress upon his fellow-citizens the sacred dignity of the Areopagus as a divine institution and to warn them of the consequences of sinful license. The Eumenides of Æschylus is a brilliant example of the way in which a great imaginative work may be made to serve a special purpose and express a particular tendency without losing anything of its transparent lucidity or of the sublimity which stamps it as a masterpiece for all time. But though the Areopagus remained unmolested as a court of justice (and we should like to fancy the poem of Æschylus an influential factor in the matter) the poet felt alien and solitary in the city where democracy had completely gained the ascendant. This was not the freedom for which he had bled in the field; the band of those who had fought in the Wars of Liberation dwindled and dwindled; the Oresteia was the last work he produced in Athens; and he died in his seventieth year at Gela in Sicily (456 B.C.), after a residence there of about two years.

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The day of the warriors of Marathon was past, and the new age, the age of Pericles, found exponents in a younger generation, and on the Attic stage in Sophocles. Like Æschylus he was of noble birth, as is indicated by his appointment to be a priest of the hero, Halon, but his father was a craftsman and the head of a great smithy for the manufacture of weapons. He was born in the metalliferous district of Colonus about B.C. 496 and grew up amidst the delightful rural scenery of the valley of the Cephisus, in the shade of the sacred olives that had witnessed the first beginnings of national history, yet near the capital and near the sea, which he overlooked from the crags of Colonus, and where he saw the port grow up during his boyhood years. In the early bloom of youthful beauty he led the dance at the festival held in honour of the victory of Salamis; twelve years later he entered the lists as a rival of the great poet Æschylus, whose inspiring art had attracted him to follow the same path to poetic fame. It was a day of unwonted excitement throughout Athens when all men awaited the issue of the contest between the ambitious young poet and Æschylus, then close upon sixty years of age and twice already the wearer of the laurel crown. The occasion was the same Dionysian festival on which Cimon, having brought the Thracian campaign to a glorious close, came up from the Piræus and offered his thank-offerings to the gods in the orchestra of the theatre. The people were in raptures over the relics of Theseus which he had brought back, and amidst the assenting acclamations of the assembled citizens the archon Apsephion appointed Cimon and his fellow-generals umpires, as being the worthiest representatives of the ten tribes. The result was that the prize was awarded to the Triptolemus trilogy of Sophocles.

There was no opposition between the art of Sophocles and that of his predecessor. The former looked up reverentially to the man whose original genius had led the way to the consummation of tragic art. Envy and jealousy were foreign to his lovable disposition. But he was an independent-minded pupil of his great master, and a man of very different endowments. His genius was gentler, simpler, and more tranquil, the extremes of pathos and pomp were repugnant to his taste. Accordingly he toned down the force of the theatrical diction which Æschylus had introduced, and, without degrading his characters to the common level, tried to make them more human, so that the spectators could feel more closely akin to them. This method is intimately connected with the altered treatment of the subjects of tragedy.[503] In the treatment of tragic legend Æschylus reached the greatest heights to which the genius of Greece ever soared; in this sphere no man could surpass him. But Sophocles realised that the legends could not always be presented to the people with the same breadth of handling without their interest being gradually exhausted. It was therefore necessary to develop more vital action within the various tragedies, to conceive the characters more definitely, and excite a more vivid psychological interest.

Æschylus had already treated the trilogy in such a manner that it was not bound to the thread of a single myth, and the combination, if not dissolved by Sophocles, was so far loosened as to make each tragedy of the three complete in itself, leading up to its appropriate close within the limits of the action and capable of being judged as a separate composition. The result was much greater freedom, the motive of each play could be treated in fuller detail and the poetic picture enhanced by the prominence given to secondary characters. Thus, in his treatment of the legend of Orestes, Sophocles suffers the act of matricide and its perpetrator to fall into the background and gives quite a new turn to the familiar subject by making Electra the leading character in place of her brother Orestes, showing the whole course of the action as reflected in her spirit, and thus securing an opportunity of creating a study of varied emotion and a type of womanly heroism to which the picture of her sister’s dissimilar temperament serves as an admirable foil.

In order to take full advantage of the resources of a more refined and advanced style of art, Sophocles introduced a third actor on the stage and thus opened the way to incomparably greater vividness of treatment no less than to much greater variety of colouring and grouping in the dramatis personæ. Moreover, Sophocles, though an adept in the song and dance, was the first poet to abandon the practice of appearing in the parts he had created. From that time the professions of poet and actor were distinct, and the art of the latter acquired greater independent value. A less active part, outside the scope of the action, was assigned to the chorus, and the dramatic element became more significantly prominent as the nucleus of the tragedy. Æschylus himself recognised the advance, for he not only adopted the improvements in the outward setting of tragedy thus effected, but spurred on by his younger rival, rose to the height of a maturer art in his dramas.

To the influence of Sophocles was due the increased fondness for Attic subjects; his Triptolemus extolled Attica as the home of a superior civilisation, which spread victoriously from that centre to distant lands, he brings the legend of Œdipus to an harmonious close on Attic soil, at Colonus, his own birth-place, and even in the Electra he manifests the Athenian point of view by taking the overthrow of unlawful dominion and the successful struggle for liberty as the purpose of the action.

His tragedies contributed more than any other works to give spiritual significance, as Pericles strove to do, to the age of Athenian might and splendour. Like Pericles, Sophocles endeavoured to maintain the ascendency of the ancient worship and customs of the country, the unwritten precepts of sacred law, while at the same time mastering every step of intellectual progress and every enlargement of the bounds of knowledge. His diction bears the stamp of a trained and powerful intellect, which often carries terseness to the verge of obscurity; but with what skill does he preserve the charm of graceful expression, what a spirit of felicitous harmony pervades all his works! He was a man after Pericles’ own heart, and his personal intimacy with the latter is proved by the gay and unaffected manner in which the[504] statesman treats the poet as his colleague in the camp. Sophocles was never a partisan or party writer in the same sense as Æschylus, and as Phrynichus seems to have been, but his art was a mirror of the noblest tendencies of the time, a glorified version of the Athens of Pericles. We meet with his clear and sound judgment on civil affairs in every passage in which he praises prudent counsel as the safeguard of states, and the Attic people rightly appreciated him as the true poet of his age, for none ever won so many prizes or enjoyed his fame so unmolested as Sophocles, nor could Euripides (who though only fifteen or sixteen years his junior belonged to a totally different era) gain any success as his rival until the age of Pericles was past. And even to him Sophocles was never obliged to yield the palm.

COMEDY

Side by side with tragedy, and from the same germ, i.e., from the Bacchic festivities, comedy developed. It is full sister to tragedy, but grew up longer in rustic freedom and fell much later under the discipline and training of the city; and for that reason it retained more faithfully the character of its source. For its origin was the jollity of the vintage, the merry-making of country folk over the increase of another year, which is found in all wine-growing districts. Swarms of masked holiday-makers sang the praises of the genial god and in tipsy merriment played all kinds of jokes and tricks on every one who met the procession and gave an opening for pranks and raillery, the events of the day were freely exploited, and he who hit upon the merriest quips was rewarded by the hearty laughter and applause of a grateful audience.

Thus the autumnal festival was kept in Attica in its day, and more particularly in the district of Icaria, not far from Marathon. The worship of Dionysus as there celebrated made it in a manner the nursery of the whole body of Athenian drama, for Thespis came from Icaria. Thither, too, came Susarion of Megara, bringing from his native place the rude wit of Megarian farce and setting the fashion which remained in vogue for the time in Attica. From his school arose Mæson, who was very popular in the time of the Pisistratidæ. The next step was the transference of the rustic stage to the capital, where it was recognised by the government as a part of the Dionysian festival and supported out of the public funds. This took place in the time of Cimon, after the Persian wars, and the energetic temper which at that time pervaded the life of Athens proved its vigour by transforming the rude, half-foreign farce into a well-organised form of art, full of significance and thoroughly Attic in character, of which we must regard Chionides and Magnes of Icaria as the founders.

When once the Icarian drama was naturalised in the home of tragedy many of the concomitants of the tragic drama were transferred to it, public contests in comedy were instituted by the state, prizes were adjudicated and awarded, and the cost of the chorus was defrayed from the public funds; moreover it was similarly arranged in such matters as the stage, the dialogue, the chorus, and the number of actors, without, however, forfeiting its peculiar characteristics. For tragedy carried the spectators into a loftier sphere, and strove by every means at her command to present figures and conditions on a grander scale than that of ordinary life, while comedy maintained the closest relations with contemporary and common life. It remained more unaffected in dance, versification, and diction no less than in poetic design;[505] nay, to such an extent did it retain its topical character and its adaptation to the events of the hour that the poet used the choir to interrupt the course of the action entirely in order to discuss his personal affairs or the burning questions of the time with the audience in lengthy parabases.

This kind of dramatic composition could only flourish in a democratic atmosphere, and it was associated with the democracy in every stage of its development. Occupied from the outset with the preposterous and ridiculous side of life, it castigated all follies, defects, and weaknesses, and amidst the variety and publicity of the civic life of Athens it could never lack either subjects for mirth or a witty, ingenious, and laughter-loving audience ready to catch at every allusion. But it also served the purpose of bringing abuses and contradictions in public life to light. This was the serious side of its calling, for unless inspired by a serious and patriotic temper its humour would have grown dull, ineffective, and contemptible. The aim of the comic poets was to be not mere frivolous provokers of mirth, but teachers of men, and leaders of the people, even as the tragic poets were; and in an age of feverish excitement the severest of their censures were directed against new-fangled ways. Comedy was aristocratic in character, it championed native custom against foreign ways, it ruthlessly denounced every evil tendency in life and art, and every instance of misconduct or abuse of power. It cherished the memory of the heroes of the Wars of Liberation and encouraged others to emulate their example, and it was fond of subjects which had some bearing on important contemporary events, as we see in the Thracian Women of Cratinus, which was associated with the establishment of colonies in Thrace.

The founders of comedy as an Attic art are Crates and Cratinus. Cratinus was slightly younger than Æschylus, and like him was endowed with original creative genius, but his taste for unrestrained freedom and his inexhaustible fund of humour marked him out as a born comic poet, while his rude veracity qualified him to make comedy a power in the state. It became so about the time that Pericles came into power, and though Cratinus was not the sort of man to commit himself unreservedly to one or other of the contesting parties, we know that in his Archilochi (a comedy in which the chorus was composed of scoffers like Archilochus) he brought an Attic citizen upon the stage immediately after the death of Cimon and put in his mouth a lament for “the divine man,” “the most hospitable, the best of all Panhellenes, with whom he had hoped to spend a serene old age—but now he had passed away before him.” The mighty Cratinus was succeeded by Aristophanes and Eupolis, both unmistakably akin to him in mind and feeling, but gentler, more moderate, and stricter in their adherence to the rules of art. But Aristophanes alone combined with these qualities a wealth of creative invention in nothing inferior to the genius of Cratinus.

THE GLORY OF ATHENS

All these men,—philosophers and historians, orators and poets,—each one of whom marks an epoch in the development of art and science, were not merely contemporaries, but lived together in the same city, some born there and nourished from their youth on the glories of their native place, others attracted thither by the same glory; nor was their association merely local, they laboured, consciously or unconsciously, at a common task. For whether they were personally intimate or not with the great statesman who was the centre of the Attic world, nay, even if they were numbered among his[506] opponents, they could not but render him substantial help in his life-work of making Athens the intellectual capital of Greece.

Here whatever germs of culture were introduced from foreign parts gained new life, the Ionian study of countries and peoples became history as soon as Herodotus came into touch with Athens; the Peloponnesian dithyrambus grew into tragedy at Athens, the farce of Megara into Attic comedy; here the philosophy of Ionia and Magna Græcia met to supplement each other’s defects and prepare the way for the development of Attic philosophy; even sophistry was nowhere turned to such account as at Athens. In earlier times every district, city, and island had had its peculiar school and tendencies, but now all vigorous intellectual movements crowded together at Athens; local and tribal peculiarities of temperament and dialect were reconciled; and as the drama (the most Attic of all the arts) absorbed all art-methods into itself, to reproduce them in organic harmony, so from all the achievements of the genius of Greece there grew a general culture which was at once the heritage of Attica and of the Greek nation. Vehemently as other states might oppose the political predominance of Athens, none could deny that the city where Æschylus, Sophocles, Herodotus, Zeno, Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Crates, and Cratinus all laboured together, was the focus of all lofty aspirations, the heart of the nation, Hellas in Hellas.

Slight as is our knowledge of the personal relations of these great contemporaries, there are a few traditions from which we can gather some idea of the intercourse of Pericles with the most eminent among them and of their intercourse with one another. We know that Pericles equipped the chorus for a theatrical performance in which Æschylus carried off the prize. We know of the friendship of Herodotus and Sophocles, and we actually possess the beginning of some occasional verses addressed to Herodotus by the poet, then in the fifty-fifth year of his age; a letter in elegiac metre dating from the time when the historian migrated to Thurii, and withdrew from the delightful society of the best men of Athens. Sophocles was before all things sociable, and we hear that he formed a circle of men skilled in the fine arts and dedicated it to the Muses, and that it held regular meetings. This reciprocal stimulus resulted in a steady advance in all directions. In every branch of art we can trace the epochs of development as surely as in the structure of the trimetre of the drama. But as, generally speaking, Greek art owed its unfaltering progress to the fact that the younger artists did not endeavour to gain a start by rash attempts at originality, but held fast the good in all things and readily adopted and perfected methods that had once gained acceptance, so in Athens we see the elder masters gratefully praised and honoured by their pupils, like Æschylus by Sophocles and Cratinus by Aristophanes.

[507]

It is one of the most notable characteristics of the intellectual life of Athens that her eminent men, however high a view they took of their own calling, did not owe their pre-eminence in it to any narrow-minded restriction of their interest to their own peculiar sphere. This versatility was rendered possible by the vitality for which the contemporaries of Pericles were remarkable, and it seems as though the brilliant prime of the Greek nation manifested itself most plainly in the frequent combination of extraordinary mental and physical powers. We cannot but admire the men who retained their vital force unimpaired to extreme old age and advanced in the practice of their art to the last.

Sophocles, after having composed 113 dramas, is said to have read the chorus of the Œdipus at Colonus aloud, to disprove the rumour that he was incapable of managing his own affairs by reason of the infirmities of old age. Cratinus was ninety-one when he produced Dame Bottle, the saucy comedy with which he defeated Aristophanes, who had looked upon him as a rival whose day was over. Simonides, Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno, were likewise examples of healthy and vigorous old age. Timocreon combined the skill of an athlete with the profession of a poet. Polus, Sophocles’ favourite actor, was competent to take the leading part in eight tragedies in four days. Lastly, the sterling capacity and versatility of the masters of those days is shown by the fact that though extraordinarily prolific authors of imaginative works, they spared time to strive after scientific certainty concerning the problems and resources of their art, and combined absolute self-possession and the love of theoretical study with the enthusiasm of the artist temperament. Thus Lasus, the inventor of the perfected form of the dithyrambus, was at the same time an accomplished critic and one of the first writers on the theory of music; and Sophocles himself wrote a treatise on the tragic chorus, to set forth his views as to its place and purpose in tragedy. In like manner the most distinguished architects wrote scientific treatises on the principles of their art, Polyclitus worked out the theory of numbers which lies at the root of plastic symmetry, and Agatharchus the principles of optics, according to which he had arranged the decoration of the stage. In so doing he took the first step towards the teaching of perspective, which was subsequently developed by Democritus and Anaxagoras.b

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[508]

CHAPTER XXX. THE OUTBREAK OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

No admirer of Greek civilisation can turn from the peaceful age of Pericles and follow the next step in Grecian history without a feeling of sadness, for he has to see the most cultured people of antiquity torn by internal dissensions and interstate jealousies; he has to see the people who represent the acme of culture harassed for a generation by an imbecile strife, which shall leave it so weakened that it will become an easy prey to outside foes. In every succeeding generation, when men have studied the history of classical times, the same feeling of amazement has prevailed, and has often found expression in contemplating this period of the Peloponnesian War; but it remained for John Ruskin to invent the vivid phrase which in three words epitomises the entire story, when he speaks of this amazing conflict as the “suicide of Greece.” It was in truth nothing less than that.

There was no great question at issue between the Athenian and Spartan peoples that must be decided by the arbitrament of arms or otherwise. There was no reason outside the temperament of the people themselves why the Athenians on the one hand, and the Spartans on the other, might not have gone on indefinitely, each people pre-eminent in its own territory, and each standing aloof from the other; but that interstate jealousy which was responsible for so many things in Grecian history came as a determining influence which at last could not longer be controlled. Persian might, which dared not re-enter Greece, but which longed for the overthrow of an old enemy, urged on one side or the other, as seemed for the moment best to serve that end. The remaining Grecian cities took sides with Athens or Sparta according to their predilections, or their own personal enmities and jealousies, and there resulted a war which involved practically all the cities of Greece, and which, after continuing for a full generation, brought Hellas as a whole to destruction.

OUR SOURCES

The history of this war has been preserved to posterity in far greater detail than has the history of any preceding conflict anywhere in the world. The Athenian general Thucydides, who himself took an active part in the earlier stages of the war, commanding forces in the field until finally he suffered the displeasure of the Athenians, determined from the outset, as he himself tells us, to write a complete history of the conflict which he believed would be the most memorable of all in the annals of history. The work[509] which he produced has probably been more widely celebrated and more universally applauded than any other piece of historical composition that was ever written. All manner of extravagant things have been said about it. Every one has heard, for example, of Macaulay’s saying that he felt he might perhaps equal any other piece of historical writing that had ever been done except the seventh book of Thucydides, before which he felt himself helpless. This eulogy is of a piece with much more that has been said in similar kind by a multitude of other critics. It has even been alleged that no historian of a later period has ever dealt out such impartial judgment as is to be found in the pages of Thucydides. Seemingly forgetful of the meaning of words, critics have even assured us that no period of like extent of the world’s history, ancient or modern, is so fully known to us as this period of the Peloponnesian War through the history of Thucydides.

To any one, who himself will take up the history of Thucydides, either in the original or in such a translation as the admirable one of Dale, two things will at once be apparent; in the first place it will not long be open to doubt, to any one who is familiar with the literature of antiquity, that this work of Thucydides, considered in relation to the time in which it was written, is really an extraordinary production; but, in the second place, it will be equally clear that if we are to consider the work not in comparison with the writings of ancient authors but as a part of world-literature, then much that has been said of it must be regarded as fulsome eulogy.

To say that this work covers the period of the Peloponnesian War as no modern period of history has been covered; to say that no modern historian has dealt with his topic with the calm impartiality of Thucydides; to say that no writer can hope to produce an historical narrative comparable to the seventh book, or to any other book, of Thucydides—to say such things as these is to abandon the broad impartial view from which alone criticism worthy of the name is possible, and to come under the spell of other minds. The History of the Peloponnesian War is a great book; as an historical composition it is one of the greatest ever written: but when one has said that one has said enough. Its style, by common consent, is not such as to make it a model, and its matter is very largely the recital of bald facts with evidence of an insight into the political motives beneath the surface, which seems extraordinary only because the predecessors of Thucydides and some of his successors had seemed so woefully to lack such insight. As to the impartiality of the narrative, we must not overlook the significance of Professor Mahaffy’s remark, that for most of the period covered in the history of Thucydides this history itself is our sole authority. That it does, nevertheless, evince a high degree of impartiality and a broad sweep of intellect on the part of its author will not be questioned; but Professor Mahaffy makes an estimate, which no one who is not fully under the spell of antiquity would think of disputing, when he asserts his belief that such modern historians as, for example, Thirlwall, must be accredited with at least as high a degree of impartiality as Thucydides can claim.

But all this must not be taken as in any sense denying that the work of Thucydides is a marvellous production. Considering the time when it was written, and that its author was a participant in many of the events which he describes, it is astonishing that his work should be measurably free from partiality. That it is so was, perhaps, at least in some measure, due to the fact that Thucydides was banished from Athens, and hence wrote his history not so much from the Athenian standpoint, as from the standpoint of a man without a country, who was at enmity with both Spartans and Athenians.[510] But, partial or impartial, the history of Thucydides remains, and presumably must always remain, the sole contemporary record open to posterity of that great struggle through which Greece, as it were, voluntarily threw away her prestige and her power.

Thucydides, to be sure, did not complete his history of the war, or, if he did, his later chapters have not been preserved to us. The former supposition is doubtless the correct one, because the thread of the narrative, which Thucydides dropped so abruptly, was taken up by Xenophon, also a contemporary. It was a not unusual custom among the ancient authors to write important works as explicit continuations of the works of other writers. Xenophon’s narrative of the events of the later years of the Peloponnesian War is such a work. Like the history of Thucydides it is practically our sole authority for the period that it covers, but, by common consent of critics, it takes a much lower level than the work which it supplements.

Xenophon was also an exile from Athens; but he differed from Thucydides in being an ardent friend of Sparta, and his prejudices are well known to readers of his works. One must suppose, however, that the favourite pupil of Socrates may be depended upon for reasonable impartiality when he deals with matters of fact. But, be this as it may, it is Xenophon, and Xenophon alone, who tells us most that we know at first hand, not alone of the closing years of the Peloponnesian War, but of many in the period succeeding. We shall constantly support our narrative of the events of this period, therefore, by references to the pages of Xenophon, as well as to those of Thucydides.a

THE ORIGIN OF THE WAR

Even before the recent hostilities at Corcyra and Potidæa, it had been evident to reflecting Greeks that prolonged observance of the Thirty Years’ Truce was becoming uncertain, and that the mingled hatred, fear, and admiration which Athens inspired throughout Greece would prompt Sparta and the Spartan confederacy to seize any favourable opening for breaking down the Athenian power. That such was the disposition of Sparta was well understood among the Athenian allies, however considerations of prudence and general slowness in resolving might postpone the moment of carrying it into effect. Accordingly not only the Samians when they revolted had applied to the Spartan confederacy for aid, which they appear to have been prevented from obtaining chiefly by the pacific interests then animating the Corinthians—but also the Lesbians had endeavoured to open negotiations with Sparta for a similar purpose, though the authorities to whom alone the proposition could have been communicated, since it long remained secret and was never executed—had given them no encouragement.

The affairs of Athens had been administered, under the ascendency of Pericles, without any view to extension of empire or encroachment upon others, though with constant reference to the probabilities of war, and with anxiety to keep the city in a condition to meet it. But even the splendid internal ornaments, which Athens at that time acquired, were probably not without their effect in provoking jealousy on the part of other Greeks as to her ultimate views. The only known incident, wherein Athens had been brought into collision with a member of the Spartan confederacy prior to the Corcyræan dispute, was her decree passed in regard to Megara, prohibiting the Megarians, on pain of death, from all trade or intercourse as well with Athens as with all ports within the Athenian empire. This prohibition[511] was grounded on the alleged fact, that the Megarians had harboured runaway slaves from Athens, and had appropriated and cultivated portions of land upon her border; partly land, the property of the goddesses of Eleusis; partly a strip of territory disputed between the two states, and therefore left by mutual understanding in common pasture without any permanent enclosure. In reference to this latter point, the Athenian herald Anthemocritus had been sent to Megara to remonstrate, but had been so rudely dealt with, that his death shortly afterwards was imputed to the Megarians. We may reasonably suppose that ever since the revolt of Megara fourteen years before—which caused to Athens an irreparable mischief—the feeling prevalent between the two cities had been one of bitter enmity, manifesting itself in many ways, but so much exasperated by recent events as to provoke Athens to a signal revenge. Exclusion from Athens and all the ports in her empire, comprising nearly every island and seaport in the Ægean, was so ruinous to the Megarians, that they loudly complained of it at Sparta, representing it as an infraction of the Thirty Years’ Truce; though it was undoubtedly within the legitimate right of Athens to enforce, and was even less harsh than the systematic expulsion of foreigners by Sparta, with which Pericles compared it.

These complaints found increased attention after the war of Corcyra and the blockade of Potidæa by the Athenians. The sentiments of the Corinthians towards Athens had now become angry and warlike in the highest degree. It was not simply resentment for the past which animated them, but also the anxiety farther to bring upon Athens so strong a hostile pressure as should preserve Potidæa and its garrison from capture. Accordingly they lost no time in endeavouring to rouse the feelings of the Spartans against Athens, and in inducing them to invite to Sparta all such of the confederates as had any grievances against that city. Not merely the Megarians, but several other confederates, came thither as accusers; while the Æginetans, though their insular position made it perilous for them to appear, made themselves vehemently heard through the mouths of others, complaining that Athens withheld from them the autonomy to which they were entitled under the truce.

According to the Lacedæmonian practice, it was necessary first that the Spartans themselves, apart from their allies, should decide whether there existed a sufficient case of wrong done by Athens against themselves or against Peloponnesus—either in violation of the Thirty Years’ Truce, or in any other way. If the determination of Sparta herself were in the negative, the case would never even be submitted to the vote of the allies; but if it were in the affirmative, then the latter would be convoked to deliver their opinion also: and assuming that the majority of votes coincided with the previous decision of Sparta, the entire confederacy stood then pledged to the given line of policy—if the majority was contrary, the Spartans would stand alone, or with such only of the confederates as concurred. Even in the oligarchy of Sparta, such a question as this could only be decided by a general[512] assembly of Spartan citizens, qualified both by age, by regular contribution to the public mess, and by obedience to Spartan discipline. To the assembly so constituted the deputies of the various allied cities addressed themselves, each setting forth his case against Athens. The Corinthians chose to reserve themselves to the last, after the assembly had been inflamed by the previous speakers.

Of this important assembly, on which so much of the future fate of Greece turned, Thucydides has preserved an account unusually copious. First, the speech delivered by the Corinthian envoys. Next, that of some Athenian envoys, who happening to be at the same time in Sparta on some other matters, and being present in the assembly so as to have heard the speeches both of the Corinthians and of the other complainants, obtained permission from the magistrates to address the assembly in their turn. Thirdly, the address of the Spartan king Archidamus, on the course of policy proper to be adopted by Sparta. Lastly, the brief, but eminently characteristic, address of the ephor, Sthenelaidas, on putting the question for decision. These speeches, the composition of Thucydides himself, contain substantially the sentiments of the parties to whom they are ascribed. Neither of them is distinctly a reply to that which has preceded, but each presents the situation of affairs from a different point of view.

To dwell much upon specific allegations of wrong, would not have suited the purpose of the Corinthian envoy; for against such, the Thirty Years’ Truce expressly provided that recourse should be had to amicable arbitration—to which recourse he never once alludes. He knew that, as between Corinth and Athens, war had already begun at Potidæa; and his business, throughout nearly all of a very emphatic speech, is to show that the Peloponnesian confederacy, and especially Sparta, is bound to take instant part in it, not less by prudence than by duty. He employs the most animated language to depict the ambition, the unwearied activity, the personal effort abroad as well as at home, the quick resolves, the sanguine hopes never dashed by failure—of Athens, as contrasted with the cautious, home-keeping, indolent, scrupulous routine of Sparta. He reproaches the Spartans with their backwardness and timidity, in not having repressed the growth of Athens before she reached this formidable height, especially in having allowed her to fortify her city after the retreat of Xerxes and afterwards to build the Long Walls from the city to the sea. The Spartans (he observes) stood alone among all Greeks in the notable system of keeping down an enemy, not by acting, but by delaying to act—not arresting his growth, but putting him down when his force was doubled. Falsely indeed had they acquired the reputation of being sure, when they were in reality merely slow. In resisting Xerxes, as in resisting Athens, they had always been behindhand, disappointing and leaving their friends to ruin; while both these enemies had only failed of complete success through their own mistakes.

After half apologising for the tartness of these reproofs—which however, as the Spartans were now well disposed to go to war forthwith, would be well-timed and even agreeable—the Corinthian orator vindicates the necessity of plain-speaking by the urgent peril of the emergency and the formidable character of the enemy who threatened them. “You do not reflect” he says “how thoroughly different the Athenians are from yourselves. They are innovators by nature, sharp both in devising, and in executing what they have determined: you are sharp only in keeping what you have got, in determining on nothing beyond, and in doing even less than absolute necessity requires. They again dare beyond their means, run risks beyond their own[513] judgment, and keep alive their hopes in desperate circumstances: your peculiarity is, that your performance comes short of your power, you have no faith even in what your judgment guarantees, when in difficulties you despair of all escape. They never hang back, you are habitual laggards: they love foreign service, you cannot stir from home: for they are always under the belief that their movements will lead to some further gain, while you fancy that new products will endanger what you already have. When successful, they make the greatest forward march; when defeated, they fall back the least. Moreover they task their bodies on behalf of their city as if they were the bodies of others, while their minds are most of all their own, for exertion in her service. When their plans for acquisition do not come successfully out, they feel like men robbed of what belongs to them: yet the acquisitions when realised appear like trifles compared with what remains to be acquired. If they sometimes fail in an attempt, new hopes arise in some other direction to supply the want; for with them alone the possession and the hope of what they aim at are almost simultaneous, from their habit of quickly executing all that they have once resolved. And in this manner do they toil throughout all their lives amidst hardship and peril, disregarding present enjoyment in the continual thirst for increase, knowing no other festival recreation except the performance of active duty, and deeming inactive repose a worse condition than fatiguing occupation. To speak the truth in two words, such is their inborn temper that they will neither remain at rest themselves nor allow rest to others.

“Such is the city which stands opposed to you, Lacedæmonians—yet ye still hang back from action. Your continual scruples and apathy would hardly be safe, even if ye had neighbours like yourselves in character: but as to dealings with Athens, your system is antiquated and out of date. In politics as in art, it is the modern improvements which are sure to come out victorious; and though unchanged institutions are best, if a city be not called upon to act, yet multiplicity of active obligations requires multiplicity and novelty of contrivance. It is through these numerous trials that the means of Athens have acquired so much more new development than yours.”

The Corinthians concluded by saying, that if, after so many previous warnings, now repeated for the last time, Sparta still refused to protect her allies against Athens, if she delayed to perform her promise made to the Potidæans of immediately invading Attica, they (the Corinthians) would forthwith look for safety in some new alliance, which they felt themselves fully justified in doing. They admonished her to look well to the case, and to carry forward Peloponnesus, with undiminished dignity, as it had been transmitted to her from her predecessors.

Such was the memorable picture of Athens and her citizens, as exhibited by her fiercest enemy before the public assembly at Sparta. It was calculated to impress the assembly, not by appeal to recent or particular misdeeds, but by the general system of unprincipled and endless aggression which was imputed to Athens during the past, and by the certainty held out that the same system, unless put down by measures of decisive hostility, would be pushed still farther in future, to the utter ruin of Peloponnesus. And to this point did the Athenian envoy (staying in Sparta about some other negotiation and now present in the assembly) address himself in reply, after having asked and obtained permission from the magistrates. The empire of Athens was now of such standing that the younger men present had no personal knowledge of the circumstances under which it had grown up, and[514] what was needed as information for them would be impressive as a reminder even to their seniors.

In her position, he asserted, no Grecian power either would or could have acted otherwise—no Grecian power, certainly not Sparta, would have acted with so much equity and moderation or given so little ground of complaint to her subjects. Worse they had suffered, while under Persia; worse they would suffer, if they came under Sparta, who held her own allies under the thraldom of an oligarchical party in each city; and if they hated Athens this was only because subjects always hated the present dominion, whatever that might be.

Having justified both the origin and the working of the Athenian empire, the envoy concluded by warning Sparta to consider calmly, without being hurried away by the passions and invectives of others, before she took a step from which there was no retreat, and which exposed the future to chances such as no man on either side could foresee. He called on her not to break the truce mutually sworn to, but to adjust all differences, as Athens was prepared to do, by the amicable arbitration which that truce provided. Should she begin war, the Athenians would follow her lead and resist her, calling to witness those gods under whose sanction the oaths were taken. At any time previous to the affair of Corcyra, the topics insisted upon by the Athenian would probably have been profoundly listened to at Sparta. But now the mind of the Spartans was made up. Having cleared the assembly of all “strangers,” and even all allies, they proceeded to discuss and determine the question among themselves. Most of their speakers held but one language—expatiating on the wrongs already done by Athens, and urging the necessity of instant war. There was however one voice, and that a commanding voice, raised against this conclusion: the ancient and respected king Archidamus opposed it.

The speech of Archidamus is that of a deliberate Spartan, who, setting aside both hatred to Athens and blind partiality to allies, looks at the question with a view to the interests and honour of Sparta only. He reminded them of the wealth, the population (greater than that of any other Grecian city), the naval force, the cavalry, the hoplites, the large foreign dominion of Athens—and then asked by what means they proposed to put her down. Ships, they had few; trained seamen, yet fewer; wealth, next to none. They could indeed invade and ravage Attica, by their superior numbers and land-force. But the Athenians had possessions abroad sufficient to enable them to dispense with the produce of Attica, while their great navy would retaliate the like ravages upon Peloponnesus. To suppose that one or two devastating expeditions into Attica would bring the war to an end, would be a deplorable error; such proceedings would merely enrage the Athenians, without impairing their real strength, and the war would thus be prolonged, perhaps for a whole generation. Before they determined upon war, it was absolutely necessary to provide more efficient means for carrying it on; and to multiply their allies not merely among the Greeks, but among foreigners also. While this was in process, envoys ought to be sent to Athens to remonstrate and obtain redress for the grievances of the allies. If the Athenians granted this—which they very probably would do, when they saw the preparations going forward, and when the ruin of the highly-cultivated soil of Attica was held over them in terrorem without being actually consummated—so much the better: if they refused, in the course of two or three years, war might be commenced with some hopes of success. Archidamus reminded his countrymen that their allies would hold them responsible for[515] the good or bad issue of what was now determined; admonishing them, in the true spirit of a conservative Spartan, to cling to that cautious policy which had been ever the characteristic of the state, despising both taunts on their tardiness and panegyric on their valour.

The speech of Archidamus was not only in itself full of plain reason and good sense, but delivered altogether from the point of view of a Spartan; appealing greatly to Spartan conservative feeling and even prejudice. But in spite of all this, and in spite of the personal esteem entertained for the speaker, the tide of feeling in the opposite direction was at that moment irresistible. Sthenelaidas, one of the five ephors to whom it fell to put the question for voting, closed the debate. His few words mark at once the character of the man, the temper of the assembly, and the simplicity of speech, though without the wisdom of judgment, for which Archidamus had taken credit to his countrymen.

“I don’t understand,” he said, “these long speeches of the Athenians. They have praised themselves abundantly, but they have never rebutted what is laid to their charge—that they are guilty of wrong against our allies and against Peloponnesus. Now if in former days they were good men against the Persians, and are now evil-doers against us, they deserve double punishment as having become evil-doers instead of good. But we are the same now as we were then: we know better than to sit still while our allies are suffering wrong: we shall not adjourn our aid, while they cannot adjourn their sufferings. Others have in abundance wealth, ships, and horses—but we have good allies, whom we are not to abandon to the mercy of the Athenians: nor are we to trust our redress to arbitration and to words, when our wrongs are not confined to words. We must help them speedily and with all our strength. Nor let any one tell us that we can with honour deliberate when we are actually suffering wrong—it is rather for those who intend to do the wrong, to deliberate well beforehand. Resolve upon war then, Lacedæmonians, in a manner worthy of Sparta. Suffer not the Athenians to become greater than they are: let us not betray our allies to ruin, but march with the aid of the gods against the wrong-doers.”

With these few words, so well calculated to defeat the prudential admonitions of Archidamus, Sthenelaidas put the question for the decision of the assembly—which at Sparta was usually taken neither by show of hands, nor by deposit of balls in an urn, but by cries analogous to the ay or no of the English House of Commons—the presiding ephor declaring which of the cries predominated. On this occasion the cry for war was manifestly the stronger. Yet Sthenelaidas affected inability to determine which of the two was the louder, in order that he might have an excuse for bringing about a more impressive manifestation of sentiment and a stronger apparent majority—since a portion of the minority would probably be afraid to show their real opinions as individuals openly. He therefore directed a division—like the speaker of the English House of Commons when his decision in favour of ay or no is questioned by any member—“Such of you as think that the truce has been violated and that the Athenians are doing us wrong, go to that side; such as think the contrary, to the other side.” The assembly accordingly divided, and the majority was very great on the warlike side of the question.

The first step of the Lacedæmonians, after coming to this important decision, was to send to Delphi and inquire of the oracle whether it would be beneficial to them to undertake the war. The answer brought back (Thucydides seems hardly certain that it was really given) was—that if[516] they did their best they would be victorious, and that the gods would help them, invoked or uninvoked. They at the same time convened a general congress of their allies to Sparta, for the purpose of submitting their recent resolution to the vote of all.

If there were any speeches delivered at this congress in opposition to the war, they were not likely to be successful in a cause wherein even Archidamus had failed. After the Corinthian had concluded, the question was put to the deputies of every city, great and small indiscriminately: and the majority decided for war. This important resolution was adopted about the end of 432 B.C., or the beginning of January 431 B.C.: the previous decision of the Spartans separately, may have been taken about two months earlier, in the preceding October or November 432 B.C.

Reviewing the conduct of the two great Grecian parties at this momentous juncture, with reference to existing treaties and positive grounds of complaint, it seems clear that Athens was in the right. She had done nothing which could fairly be called a violation of the Thirty Years’ Truce: while for such of her acts as were alleged to be such, she offered to submit them to that amicable arbitration which the truce itself prescribed. The Peloponnesian confederates were manifestly the aggressors in the contest; and if Sparta, usually so backward, now came forward in a spirit so decidedly opposite, we are to ascribe it partly to her standing fear and jealousy of Athens, partly to the pressure of her allies, especially of the Corinthians. Thucydides, recognising these two as the grand determining motives, and indicating the alleged infractions of truce as simple occasions or pretexts, seems to consider the fear and hatred of Athens as having contributed more to determine Sparta than the urgency of her allies. That the extraordinary aggrandisement of Athens, during the period immediately succeeding the Persian invasion, was well-calculated to excite alarm and jealousy in Peloponnesus, is indisputable. But if we take Athens as she stood in 432 B.C., it deserves notice that she had neither made, nor (so far as we know) tried to make, a single new acquisition during the whole fourteen years which had elapsed since the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ Truce—and moreover that that truce marked an epoch of signal humiliation and reduction of her power. The triumph which Sparta and the Peloponnesians then gained, though not sufficiently complete to remove all fear of Athens, was yet great enough to inspire them with the hope that a second combined effort would subdue her. This mixture of fear and hope was exactly the state of feeling out of which war was likely to grow.

Moreover the confident hopes of the Peloponnesians were materially strengthened by the widespread sympathy in favour of their cause, proclaiming as it did the intended liberation of Greece from a despot city.

To Athens, on the other hand, the coming war presented itself in a very different aspect; holding out scarcely any hope of possible gain, and the certainty of prodigious loss and privation—even granting that at this heavy cost, her independence and union at home, and her empire abroad, could be upheld. By Pericles, and by the more long-sighted Athenians, the chance of unavoidable war was foreseen even before the Corcyræan dispute. But Pericles was only the first citizen in a democracy, esteemed, trusted, and listened to, more than any one else by the body of citizens, but warmly opposed in most of his measures, under the free speech and latitude of individual action which reigned at Athens—and even bitterly hated by many active political opponents. The formal determination of the Lacedæmonians, to declare war, must of course have been made known at Athens, by those Athenian envoys who had entered an unavailing protest against it in the Spartan[517] assembly. No steps were taken by Sparta to carry this determination into effect until after the congress of allies and their pronounced confirmatory vote. Nor did the Spartans even then send any herald, or make any formal declaration. They despatched various propositions to Athens, not at all with a view of trying to obtain satisfaction, or of providing some escape from the probability of war; but with the contrary purpose—of multiplying demands, and enlarging the grounds of quarrel. Meanwhile the deputies retiring home from the congress to their respective cities carried with them the general resolution for immediate warlike preparations to be made with as little delay as possible.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE CONFLICT

The first requisition addressed by the Lacedæmonians to Athens was a political manœuvre aimed at Pericles, their chief opponent in that city. His mother Agariste belonged to the great family of the Alemæonids, who were supposed to be under an inexorable hereditary taint, in consequence of the sacrilege committed by their ancestor Megacles nearly two centuries before, in the slaughter of the Cylonian suppliants near the altar of the Venerable Goddesses. Ancient as this transaction was, it still had sufficient hold on the mind of the Athenians to serve as the basis of a political manœuvre: about seventy-seven years before, shortly after the expulsion of Hippias from Athens, it had been so employed by the Spartan king Cleomenes, who at that time exacted from the Athenians a clearance of the ancient sacrilege, to be effected by the banishment of Clisthenes (the founder of the democracy) and his chief partisans. This demand, addressed by Cleomenes to the Athenians at the instance of Isagoras, the rival of Clisthenes, had been then obeyed, and had served well the purposes of those who sent it. A similar blow was now aimed by the Lacedæmonians at Pericles (the grand-nephew of Clisthenes), and doubtless at the instance of his political enemies: religion required, it was pretended, that “the abomination of the goddess should be driven out.” If the Athenians complied with this demand, they would deprive themselves, at this critical moment, of their ablest leader. But the Lacedæmonians, not expecting compliance, reckoned at all events upon discrediting Pericles with the people, as being partly the cause of the war through family taint of impiety; and this impression would doubtless be loudly proclaimed by his political opponents in the assembly.

The influence of Pericles with the Athenian public had become greater and greater as their political experience of him was prolonged. But the bitterness of his enemies appears to have increased along with it; and not long before this period, he had been indirectly assailed, as we have seen,[518] through the medium of accusations against three different persons, all more or less intimate with him—his mistress Aspasia, the philosopher Anaxagoras, and the sculptor Phidias. It is said also that Dracontides proposed and carried a decree in the public assembly, that Pericles should be called on to give an account of the money which he had expended, and that the dicasts, before whom the account was rendered, should give their suffrage in the most solemn manner from the altar: this latter provision was modified by Agnon, who, while proposing that the dicasts should be fifteen hundred in number, retained the vote by pebbles in the urn according to ordinary custom.

If Pericles was ever tried on such a charge, there can be no doubt that he was honourably acquitted: for the language of Thucydides respecting his pecuniary probity is such as could not have been employed if a verdict of guilty on a charge of peculation had been publicly pronounced. But we cannot be certain that he ever was tried; indeed, another accusation urged by his enemies, and even by Aristophanes in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian War, implies that no trial took place: for it was alleged that Pericles, in order to escape this danger, “blew up the Peloponnesian War,” and involved his country in such confusion and peril as made his own aid and guidance indispensably necessary to her, especially that he passed the decree against the Megarians by which the war was really brought on. We know enough, however, to be certain that such a supposition is altogether inadmissible. The enemies of Pericles were far too eager, and too expert in Athenian political warfare, to have let him escape by such a stratagem. Moreover, we learn from the assurance of Thucydides that the war depended upon far deeper causes—that the Megarian decree was in no way the real cause of it; that it was not Pericles, but the Peloponnesians, who brought it on, by the blow struck at Potidæa.

All that we can make out, amidst these uncertified allegations, is that, in a year or two immediately preceding the Peloponnesian War, Pericles was hard pressed by the accusations of political enemies—perhaps even in his own person, but certainly in the persons of those who were most in his confidence and affection. And it was in this turn of his political position, that the Lacedæmonians sent to Athens the above-mentioned requisition, that the ancient Cylonian sacrilege might be at length cleared out; in other words, that Pericles and his family might be banished. Doubtless his enemies, as well as the partisans of Lacedæmon at Athens, would strenuously support this proposition. And the party of Lacedæmon at Athens was always strong, even during the middle of the war; to act as proxenus to the Lacedæmonians was accounted an honour even by the greatest Athenian families. On this occasion, however, the manœuvre did not succeed, nor did the Athenians listen to the requisition for banishing the sacrilegious Alcmæonids. On the contrary, they replied that the Spartans too had an account of sacrilege to clear off: for they had violated the sanctuary of Poseidon at Cape Tænarus, in dragging from it some helot suppliants; and the sanctuary of Athene Chalciœcus at Sparta, in blocking up and starving to death the guilty regent Pausanias. To require that Laconia might be cleared of these two acts of sacrilege, was the only answer which the Athenians made to the demand sent for the banishment of Pericles. Probably the actual effect of that demand was to strengthen him in the public esteem—very different from the effect of the same manœuvre when practised before by Cleomenes against Clisthenes.

Other Spartan envoys shortly afterwards arrived with fresh demands. The Athenians were now required: (1) to withdraw their troops from[519] Potidæa; (2) to replace Ægina in its autonomy; (3) to repeal the bill of exclusion against the Megarians.

It was upon the latter that the greatest stress was laid; an intimation being held out that the war might be avoided if such repeal were granted. We see plainly from this proceeding that the Lacedæmonians acted in concert with the anti-Periclean leaders at Athens. To Sparta and her confederacy the decree against the Megarians was of less importance than the rescue of the Corinthian troops now blocked up in Potidæa; but on the other hand, the party opposed to Pericles would have much better chance of getting a vote of the assembly against him on the subject of the Megarians: and this advantage, if gained, would serve to enfeeble his influence generally. No concession was obtained however on either of the three points: even in respect to Megara, the decree of exclusion was vindicated and upheld against all the force of opposition. At length the Lacedæmonians—who had already resolved upon war and had sent three envoys in mere compliance with the exigencies of ordinary practice, not with any idea of bringing about an accommodation—sent a third batch of envoys with a proposition which at least had the merit of disclosing their real purpose without disguise. Rhamphias and two other Spartans announced to the Athenians the simple injunction: “The Lacedæmonians wish the peace to stand; and it may stand, if you will leave the Greeks autonomous.” Upon this demand, so very different from the preceding, the Athenians resolved to hold a fresh assembly on the subject of war or peace, to open the whole question anew for discussion, and to determine once for all on a peremptory answer.

The last demands presented on the part of Sparta, which went to nothing less than the entire extinction of the Athenian empire—combined with the character, alike wavering and insincere, of the demands previously made, and with the knowledge that the Spartan confederacy had pronounced peremptorily in favour of war—seemed likely to produce unanimity at Athens, and to bring together this important assembly under the universal conviction that war was inevitable. Such however was not the fact.

The reluctance to go to war was sincere amidst the majority of the assembly, while among a considerable portion of them it was so preponderant, that they even now reverted to the opening which the Lacedæmonians had before held out about the anti-Megarian decree, as if that were the chief cause of the war. There was much difference of opinion among the speakers, several of whom insisted upon the repeal of this decree, treating it as a matter far too insignificant to go to war about, and denouncing the obstinacy of Pericles for refusing to concede such a trifle. Against this opinion Pericles entered his protest, in an harangue decisive and encouraging, which Dionysius of Halicarnassus ranks among the best speeches in Thucydides: the latter historian may probably himself have heard the original speech.

“I continue, Athenians, to adhere to the same conviction, that we must not yield to the Peloponnesians. Now let none of you believe that we shall be going to war about a trifle if we refuse to rescind the Megarian decree—which they chiefly put forward, as if its repeal would avert the war—let none of you take blame to yourselves as if we had gone to war about a small matter. For this small matter contains in itself the whole test and trial of your mettle: if ye yield it, ye will presently have some other greater exaction put upon you, like men who have already truckled on one point from fear: whereas if ye hold out stoutly, ye will make it clear to them that they must deal with you upon a footing of equality.”

[520]

Pericles then examined the relative strength of parties and the chances of war. The Peloponnesians were a self-working population, with few slaves, and without wealth, either private or public: they had no means of carrying on distant or long-continued war: they were ready to expose their persons, but not at all ready to contribute from their very narrow means: in a border-war or a single land battle, they were invincible, but for systematic warfare against a power like Athens, they had neither competent headship, nor habits of concert and punctuality, nor money to profit by opportunities, always rare and accidental, for successful attack. They might perhaps establish a fortified post in Attica, but it would do little serious mischief; while at sea, their inferiority and helplessness would be complete, and the irresistible Athenian navy would take care to keep it so. Nor would they be able to reckon on tempting away the able foreign seamen from Athenian ships by means of funds borrowed from Olympia or Delphi. For besides that the mariners of the dependent islands would find themselves losers even by accepting a higher pay, with the certainty of Athenian vengeance afterwards, Athens herself would suffice to man her fleet in case of need, with her own citizens and metics: she had within her own walls steersmen and mariners better, as well as more numerous, than all Greece besides. There was but one side on which Athens was vulnerable: Attica unfortunately was not an island—it was exposed to invasion and ravage. To this the Athenians must submit, without committing the imprudence of engaging a land battle to avert it: they had abundant lands out of Attica, insular as well as continental, to supply their wants, and they could in their turn, by means of their navy, ravage the Peloponnesian territories, whose inhabitants had no subsidiary lands to recur to.

“Mourn not for the loss of land and house,” continued the orator: “reserve your mourning for men: houses and land acquire not men, but men acquire them. Nay, if I thought I could prevail upon you, I would exhort you to march out and ravage them yourselves, and thus show to the Peloponnesians that for them at least ye will not truckle. And I could exhibit many further grounds for confidently anticipating success, if ye will only be willing not to aim at increased dominion when we are in the midst of war, and not to take upon yourself new self-imposed risks; for I have ever been more afraid of our own blunders than of the plans of our enemy. But these are matters for further discussion, when we come to actual operations: for the present, let us dismiss these envoys with the answer—That we will permit the Megarians to use our markets and harbours, if the Lacedæmonians on their side will discontinue their summary expulsions of ourselves and our allies from their own territory; for there is nothing in the truce to prevent either one or the other: That we will leave the Grecian cities autonomous, if we had them as autonomous at the time when the truce was made; and as soon as the Lacedæmonians shall grant to their allied cities autonomy such as each of them shall freely choose, not such as is convenient to Sparta: That while we are ready to give satisfaction according to the truce, we will not begin war, but will repel those who do begin it. Such is the reply at once just and suitable to the dignity of this city. We ought to make up our minds that war is inevitable: the more cheerfully we accept it, the less vehement shall we find our enemies in their attack: and where the danger is greatest, there also is the final honour greatest, both for a state and for a private citizen. Assuredly our fathers, when they bore up against the Persians—having no such means as we possess to start from, and even compelled to abandon all that they did possess—both repelled the invader and brought[521] matters forward to our actual pitch, more by advised operation than by good fortune, and by a daring courage greater than their real power. We ought not to fall short of them: we must keep off our enemies in every way, and leave an unimpaired power to our successors.”

These animating encouragements of Pericles carried with them the majority of the assembly, so that answer was made to the envoys, such as he recommended, on each of the particular points in debate. It was announced to them, moreover, on the general question of peace or war, that the Athenians were prepared to discuss all the grounds of complaint against them, pursuant to the truce, by equal and amicable arbitration, but that they would do nothing under authoritative demand. With this answer the envoys returned to Sparta, and an end was put to negotiation.

It seems evident, from the account of Thucydides, that the Athenian public was not brought to this resolution without much reluctance, and great fear of the consequences, especially destruction of property in Attica; and that a considerable minority took opposition on the Megarian decree—the ground skilfully laid by Sparta for breaking the unanimity of her enemy, and strengthening the party opposed to Pericles. But we may also decidedly infer from the same historian—especially from the proceedings of Corinth and Sparta as he sets them forth—that Athens could not have avoided the war without such an abnegation both of dignity and power as no nation under any government will ever submit to, and as would have even left her without decent security for her individual rights. It is common to ascribe the Peloponnesian War to the ambition of Athens, but this is a partial view of the case.

The aggressive sentiment, partly fear and partly hatred, was on the side of the Peloponnesians, who were not ignorant that Athens desired the continuance of peace, but were resolved not to let her stand as she was at the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ Truce. It was their purpose to attack her and break down her empire, as dangerous, wrongful, and anti-Hellenic. The war was thus partly a contest of principle, involving the popular proclamation of the right of every Grecian state to autonomy, against Athens: partly a contest of power, wherein Spartan and Corinthian ambition was not less conspicuous, and far more aggressive in the beginning than Athenian.

Conformably to what is here said, the first blow of the war was struck, not by Athens, but against her. After the decisive answer given to the Spartan envoys, taken in conjunction with the previous proceedings, and the preparations actually going on, among the Peloponnesian confederacy, the truce could hardly be said to be in force, though there was no formal proclamation of rupture.

A few weeks undoubtedly passed in restricted and mistrustful intercourse; though individuals who passed the borders did not think it necessary to take a herald with them, as in time of actual war. Had the excess of ambition been on the side of Athens compared with her enemies, this was the time for her to strike the first blow, carrying with it of course greater probability of success, before their preparations were completed. But she remained strictly within the limits of the truce, while the disastrous series of mutual aggressions, destined to tear in pieces the entrails of Hellas, was opened by her enemy and her neighbour.

The little town of Platæa, still hallowed by the memorable victory over the Persians as well as by the tutelary consecration received from Pausanias, was the scene of this unforeseen enterprise which marks the opening of hostilities in the Peloponnesian war.b

[522]

THE SURPRISE OF PLATÆA

War had been only threatened, not declared; and peaceful intercourse, though not wholly free from distrust, was still kept up between the subjects of the two confederacies. But early in the following spring, 431 B.C., in the fifteenth year of the Thirty Years’ Truce, an event took place which closed all prospects of peace, precipitated the commencement of war, embittered the animosity of the contending parties, and prepared some of the most tragical scenes of the ensuing history. In the dead of night the city of Platæa was surprised by a body of three hundred Thebans, commanded by two of the great officers called Bœotarchs. They had been invited by a Platæan named Nauclides, and others of the same party, who hoped with the aid of the Thebans to rid themselves of their political opponents, and to break off the relation in which their city was standing to Athens, and transfer its alliance to Thebes. The Thebans, foreseeing that a general war was fast approaching, felt the less scruple in strengthening themselves by this acquisition, while it might be made with little cost and risk. The gates were unguarded, as in time of peace, and one of them was secretly opened to the invaders, who advanced without interruption into the marketplace. Their Platæan friends wished to lead them at once to the houses of their adversaries, and to glut their hatred by a massacre. But the Thebans were more anxious to secure the possession of the city, and feared to provoke resistance by an act of violence. Having therefore halted in the marketplace, they made a proclamation inviting all who were willing that Platæa should become again, as it had been in former times, a member of the Bœotian body, to join them.

The Platæans who were not in the plot, imagined the force by which their city had been surprised to be much stronger than it really was, and, as no hostile treatment was offered to them, remained quiet, and entered into a parley with the Thebans. In the course of these conferences they gradually discovered that the number of the enemy was small, and might be easily overpowered; and, as they were in general attached to the Athenians, or at least strongly averse to an alliance with Thebes, they resolved to make the attempt, while the darkness might favour them, and perplex the strangers. To avoid suspicion they met to concert their plan of operation by means of passages opened through the walls of their houses; and having barricaded the streets with wagons, and made such other preparations as they thought necessary, a little before daybreak they suddenly fell upon the Thebans.

The little band made a vigorous defence, and twice or thrice repulsed the assailants; but as these still returned to the charge, and were assisted by[523] the women and slaves, who showered stones and tiles from the houses on the enemy, all at the same time raising a tumultuous clamour, and a heavy rain increased the confusion caused by the darkness, they at length lost their presence of mind, and took to flight. But most were unable to find their way in the dark through a strange town, and several were slain as they wandered to and fro in search of an outlet. The gate by which they were admitted had in the meanwhile been closed, and no other was open. Some, pressed by their pursuers, mounted the walls, and threw themselves down on the outside, but for the most part were killed by the fall. A few were fortunate enough to break open one of the gates in a lone quarter, with an axe which they obtained from a woman, and to effect their escape. The main body, which had kept together, entered a large building adjoining the walls, having mistaken its gates, which they found open, for those of the town, and were shut in. The Platæans at first thought of setting fire to the building; but at length the men within, as well as the rest of the Thebans who were still wandering up and down the streets, surrendered at discretion.

Before their departure from Thebes it had been concerted that as large a force as could be raised should march the same night to support them. The distance between the two places was not quite nine miles, and these troops were expected to reach the gates of Platæa before the morning; but the Asopus, which crossed their road, had been swollen by the rain, and the state of the ground and the weather otherwise retarded them, so that they were still on their way when they heard of the failure of the enterprise. Though they did not know the fate of their countrymen, as it was possible that some might have been taken prisoners, they were at first inclined to seize as many of the Platæans as they could find without the walls, and to keep them as hostages. The Platæans anticipated this design, and were alarmed, for many of their fellow citizens were living out of the town in the security of peace, and there was much valuable property in the country. They therefore sent a herald to the Theban army to complain of their treacherous attack, and call upon them to abstain from further aggression, and to threaten that, if any was offered, the prisoners should answer for it with their lives. The Thebans afterwards alleged that they had received a promise, confirmed by an oath, that, on condition of their retiring from the Platæan territory, the prisoners should be released; and Thucydides seems disposed to believe this statement. The Platæans denied that they had pledged themselves to spare the lives of the prisoners, unless they should come to terms on the whole matter with the Thebans; but it does not seem likely that, after ascertaining the state of the case, the Thebans would have been satisfied with so slight a security. It is certain however that they retired, and that the Platæans, as soon as they had transported their movable property out of the country into the town, put to death all the prisoners—amounting to 180, and including Eurymachus, the principal author of the enterprise, and the man who possessed the greatest influence in Thebes.

On the first entrance of the Thebans into Platæa a messenger had been despatched to Athens with the intelligence, and the Athenians had immediately laid all the Bœotians in Attica under arrest; and when another messenger brought the news of the victory gained by the Platæans, they sent a herald to request that they would reserve the prisoners for the disposal of the Athenians. The herald came too late to prevent the execution: and the Athenians, foreseeing that Platæa would stand in great need of defence, sent[524] a body of troops to garrison it, supplied it with provisions, and removed the women and children and all persons unfit for service in a siege.

After this event it was apparent that the quarrel could only be decided by arms. Platæa was so intimately united with Athens, that the Athenians felt the attack which had been made on it as an outrage offered to themselves, and prepared for immediate hostilities. Sparta, too, instantly sent notice to all her allies to get their contingents ready by an appointed day for the invasion of Attica. Two-thirds of the whole force which each raised were ordered to march, and when the time came assembled in the isthmus, where King Archidamus put himself at their head. An army more formidable, both in numbers and spirit, had never issued from the peninsula; and Archidamus thought it advisable, before they set out, to call the principal officers together, and to urge the necessity of proceeding with caution and maintaining exact discipline, as soon as they should have entered the enemy’s territory; admonishing them not to be so far elated by their superior numbers as to believe that the Athenians would certainly remain passive spectators of their inroads. And though all except himself were impatient to move, he would not yet take the decisive step, without making one attempt more to avert its necessity. He still cherished a faint hope, that the resolution of the Athenians might be shaken by the prospect of the evils of war which were now so imminent, and he sent Melesippus to sound their disposition. But the envoy was not able to obtain an audience from the people, nor so much as to enter the walls. A decree had been made, at the instigation of Pericles, to receive no embassy from the Spartans while they should be under arms. Melesippus was informed that if his government wished to treat with Athens, it must first recall its forces. He himself was ordered to quit Attica that very day, and persons were appointed to conduct him to the frontier, to prevent him from holding communication with any one by the way. On parting with his conductors he exclaimed, “This day will be the beginning of great evils to Greece.”

Such a prediction might well occur to any one, who reflected on the nature of the two powers which were now coming into conflict, and on the great resources of both, which, though totally different in kind, were so evenly balanced that no human eye could perceive in which scale victory hung; and the termination of the struggle could seem near only to one darkened by passion. The strength of Sparta, as was implied in the observation of Sthenelaidas, lay in the armies which she could collect from the states of her confederacy. The force which she could thus bring into the field is admitted by Pericles, in one of the speeches ascribed to him by Thucydides, to be capable of making head against any that could be raised by the united efforts of the rest of Greece. Within the isthmus her allies included all the states of Peloponnesus, except Achaia and Argos; and the latter was bound to neutrality by a truce which still wanted several years of its term. Hence the great contest now beginning was not improperly called the Peloponnesian War. Beyond the isthmus she was supported by Megara and Thebes, which drew the rest of Bœotia along with it; and Attica would thus have been completely surrounded on the land side by hostile territories, if Platæa and Oropus had not been politically attached to it. The Locrians of Opus, the Dorians of the mother-country, and the Phocians (though these last were secretly more inclined to the Athenians, who had always taken their part in their quarrels with Delphi, the stanch friend of Sparta) were also on her side. Thessaly, Acarnania, and the Amphilochian Argos, were in alliance with her enemy; but for this very reason, and more especially from their hostility to the[525] Messenians of Naupactus, the Ætolians were friendly to her; and she could also reckon on the Corinthian colonies, Anactorium, Ambracia, and Leucas.

The power which Sparta exerted over her allies was much more narrowly limited than that which Athens had assumed over her subjects. The Spartan influence rested partly on the national affinity by which the head was united to the Dorian members of the confederacy, but still more on the conformity, which she established or maintained among all of them, to her own oligarchical institutions. This was the only point in which she encroached on the independence of any. Every state had a voice in the deliberations by which its interests might be affected; and if Sparta determined the amount of the contributions required by extraordinary occasions, she was obliged carefully to adjust it to the ability of each community. So far was she from enriching herself at the expense of the confederacy, that at the beginning of the war there was, as we have seen, no common treasure belonging to it, and no regular tribute for common purposes. But, to compensate for these defects, her power stood on a more durable basis of goodwill than that of Athens; and though in every state there was a party attached to the Athenian interest on political grounds, yet on the whole the Spartan cause was popular throughout Greece; and while Athens was forced to keep a jealous eye on all her subjects, and was in continual fear of losing them, Sparta, secure of the loyalty of her own allies, could calmly watch for opportunities of profiting by the disaffection of those of her rival.

At home indeed her state was far from sound, and the Athenians were well aware of her vulnerable side; but abroad, and as chief of the Peloponnesian confederacy, she presented the majestic and winning aspect of the champion of liberty against Athenian tyranny and ambition: and hence she had important advantages to hope from states which were but remotely connected with her, and were quite beyond the reach of her arms. Many powerful cities in Italy and Sicily were thus induced to promise her their aid, and it was on this she founded her chief expectations of forming a navy, which might face that of Athens. Her allies in this quarter engaged to furnish her with money and ships, which, it was calculated, would amount to no less than five hundred, though for the present it was agreed that they should wear the mask of neutrality, and admit single Athenian vessels into their ports. But as she was conscious that she should still be deficient in the sinews of war, she already began to turn her eyes to the common enemy of Greece, who was able abundantly to supply this want, and would probably be willing to lavish his gold for the sake of ruining Athens, the object of his especial enmity and dread.

The extent of the Athenian empire cannot be so exactly computed. In the language of the comic stage, it is said to comprehend a thousand cities; and it is difficult to estimate what abatement ought to be made from this playful exaggeration. The subjects of Athens were in general more opulent than the allies of Sparta, and their sovereign disposed of their revenues at her pleasure. The only states to which she granted more than a nominal independence were some islands in the western seas, Corcyra, Zacynthus, and Cephallenia—points of peculiar importance to her operations and prospects in that quarter, though even there she was more feared than loved. At the moment of the revolt of Potidæa her empire had reached its widest range, and her finances were in the most flourishing condition; and at the outbreak of the war her naval and military strength was at its greatest height. Pericles, as one of the ten regular generals, or ministers of war, before the Peloponnesian army had reached the frontier, held an assembly,[526] in which he gave an exact account of the resources which the republic had at her disposal.

Her finances, beside the revenue which she drew from a variety of sources, foreign and domestic, were nourished by the annual tribute of her allies, which now amounted to six hundred talents [£120,000 or $600,000]. Six thousand, in money, still remained in the treasury, after the great expenditure incurred on account of the public buildings, and the siege of Potidæa, before which the sum had amounted to nearly ten thousand. But to this, Pericles observed, must be added the gold and silver which, in various forms of offerings, ornaments, and sacred utensils, enriched the temples or public places, which he calculated at five hundred talents, without reckoning the precious materials employed in the statues of the gods and heroes. The statue of Athene in the Parthenon alone contained forty talents’ weight of pure gold, in the ægis, shield, and other appendages. If they should ever be reduced to the want of such a supply, there could be no doubt that their tutelary goddess would willingly part with her ornaments for their service, on condition that they were replaced at the earliest opportunity.

They could muster a force of 13,000 heavy-armed, beside those who were employed in their various garrisons, and in the defence of the city itself, with the long walls and the fortifications of its harbours, who amounted to 16,000 more; made up, indeed, partly of the resident aliens, and partly of citizens on either verge of the military age. The military force also included 1200 cavalry and 1600 bowmen, beside some who were mounted; and they had 300 galleys in sailing condition.

PERICLES’ RECONCENTRATION POLICY

After rousing the confidence of the Athenians by this enumeration, Pericles urged them without delay to transport their families and all their movable property out of the enemy’s reach, and, as long as the war should last, to look upon the capital as their home. To encourage a patriotic spirit by his example, and at the same time to secure himself from imputations to which he might be exposed, either by the Spartan cunning, or by an indiscreet display of private friendship, he publicly declared, that if Archidamus, who was personally attached to him by the ties of hospitality, should, either from this motive, or in compliance with orders which might be given in an opposite intention, exempt his lands from the ravages of war, they should from that time become the property of the state.

To many of his hearers that which he required was a very painful sacrifice. Many had been born, and had passed all their lives, in the country. They were attached to it, not merely by the profit or the pleasure of rural pursuits, but by domestic and religious associations. For though the incorporation of the Attic townships had for ages extinguished their political independence, it had not interrupted their religious traditions, or effaced the peculiar features of their local worship; and hence the Attic countryman clung to his deme with a fondness which he could not feel for the great city. In the period of increasing prosperity which had followed the Persian invasion, the country had been cultivated and adorned more assiduously than ever. All was now to be left or carried away. Reluctantly they adopted the decree which Pericles proposed; and, with heavy hearts, as if going into exile, they quitted their native and hereditary seats. If the rich man sighed to part from his elegant villa, the husbandman still more deeply[527] felt the pang of being torn from his home, and of abandoning his beloved fields, the scenes of his infancy, the holy places where his forefathers had worshipped, to the ravages of a merciless invader. All however was removed: the flocks and cattle to Eubœa and other adjacent islands; all beside that was portable, and even the timber of the houses, into Athens, to which they themselves migrated with their families.

The city itself was not prepared for the sudden influx of so many new inhabitants. A few found shelter under the roofs of relatives or friends; but the greater part, on their arrival, found themselves houseless as well as homeless. Some took refuge in such temples as were usually open; others occupied the towers of the walls; others raised temporary hovels on any vacant ground which they could find in the city, and even resorted for this purpose to a site which had hitherto been guarded from all such uses by policy, aided by a religious sanction. It was the place under the western wall of the citadel, called, from the ancient builders of the wall, the Pelasgicum: a curse had been pronounced on any one who should tenant it; and men remembered some words of an oracle, which declared it better untrodden. The real motive for the prohibition was probably the security of the citadel; but all police seems to have been suspended by the urgency of the occasion. It was some time before the newcomers bethought themselves of spreading over the vacant space between the long walls, or of descending to Piræus. But this foretaste of the evils of war did not damp the general ardour, especially that of the youthful spirits, which began at Athens, as elsewhere, to be impatient of repose. Numberless oracles and predictions were circulated, in which every one found something that accorded with the tone of his feelings. Even those who had no definite hopes, fears, or wishes shared the excitement of men on the eve of a great crisis. The holy island of Delos had been recently shaken by an earthquake. It was forgotten, or was never known out of Delos itself, that this had happened already, just before the first Persian invasion. It was deemed a portent, which signified new and extraordinary events, and it was soon combined with other prodigies, which tended to encourage similar forebodings. Such was the state in which the Athenians awaited the advance of the Peloponnesian army.c

Adolf Holme compares the Periclean policy of voluntary reconcentration with the acts of the Dutch, when in the sixteenth century they let the Spanish destroy their crops, and then opened the dikes and flooded their own country. We may compare also the compulsory reconcentration of the country people in the cities as carried out by General Weyler in Cuba, in 1897, and by Lord Kitchener in South Africa, in 1901.a

THE FIRST YEAR’S RAVAGE

Archidamus, as soon as the reception of his last envoy was made known to him, continued his march from the isthmus into Attica—which territory he entered by the road of Œnoe, the frontier Athenian fortress of Attica[528] towards Bœotia. His march, was slow, and he thought it necessary to make a regular attack on the fort of Œnoe, which had been put in so good a state of defence that, after all the various modes of assault—in which the Lacedæmonians were not skilful—had been tried in vain, and after a delay of several days before the place, he was compelled to renounce the attempt.

The want of enthusiasm on the part of the Spartan king, his multiplied delays, first at the isthmus, next in the march, and lastly before Œnoe, were all offensive to the fiery impatience of the army, who were loud in their murmurs against him. He acted upon the calculation already laid down in his discourse at Sparta—that the highly cultivated soil of Attica was to be looked upon as a hostage for the pacific dispositions of the Athenians, who would be more likely to yield when devastation, though not yet inflicted, was nevertheless impending and at their doors. In this point of view, a little delay at the border was no disadvantage; and perhaps the partisans of peace at Athens may have encouraged him to hope that it would enable them to prevail.

After having spent several days before Œnoe without either taking the fort or receiving any message from the Athenians, Archidamus marched onward to Eleusis and the Thriasian plain—about the middle of June, eighty days after the surprise of Platæa. His army was of irresistible force, not less than sixty thousand hoplites, according to the statement of Plutarch, or of one hundred thousand, according to others. Considering the number of constituent allies, the strong feeling by which they were prompted, and the shortness of the expedition combined with the chance of plunder, even the largest of these two numbers is not incredibly great, if we take it to include not hoplites only, but cavalry and light armed also. But as Thucydides, though comparatively full in his account of this march, has stated no general total, we may presume that he had heard none upon which he could rely.

As the Athenians had made no movement towards peace, Archidamus anticipated that they would come forth to meet him in the fertile plain of Eleusis and Thria, which was the first portion of territory that he sat down to ravage. Yet no Athenian force appeared to oppose him, except a detachment of cavalry, who were repulsed in a skirmish near the small lakes called Rheiti. Having laid waste this plain without any serious opposition, Archidamus did not think fit to pursue the straight road which from Thria conducted directly to Athens across the ridge of Mount Ægaleos, but turned off to the eastward, leaving that mountain on his right hand until he came to Cropia, where he crossed a portion of the line of Ægaleos over to Acharnæ.

He was here about seven miles from Athens, on a declivity sloping down into the plain which stretches westerly and northwesterly from Athens, and visible from the city walls; and here he encamped, keeping his army in perfect order for battle, but at the same time intending to damage and ruin the place and its neighbourhood. Acharnæ was the largest and most populous of all the demes in Attica, furnishing no less than three thousand hoplites to the national line, and flourishing as well by its corn, vines, and olives, as by its peculiar abundance of charcoal burning from the forests of ilex on the neighbouring hills. Moreover, if we are to believe Aristophanes, the Acharnian proprietors were not merely sturdy “hearts of oak,” but peculiarly vehement and irritable. It illustrates the condition of a Grecian territory under invasion, when we find this great deme, which could not have contained less than twelve thousand free inhabitants of both sexes[529] and all ages, with at least an equal number of slaves, completely deserted. Archidamus calculated that when the Athenians actually saw his troops so close to their city, carrying fire and sword over their wealthiest canton, their indignation would become uncontrollable, and they would march out forthwith to battle. The Acharnian proprietors especially (he thought) would be foremost in inflaming this temper, and insisting upon protection to their own properties—or if the remaining citizens refused to march out along with them, they would, after having been thus left undefended to ruin, become discontented and indifferent to the general weal.

Though his calculation was not realised, it was nevertheless founded upon most rational grounds. What Archidamus anticipated was on the point of happening, and nothing prevented it except the personal ascendency of Pericles, strained to its very utmost. So long as the invading army was engaged in the Thriasian plain, the Athenians had some faint hope that it might (like Plistoanax fourteen years before) advance no farther into the interior. But when it came to Acharnæ within sight of the city walls—when the ravagers were actually seen destroying buildings, fruit trees, and crops, in the plain of Athens, a sight strange to every Athenian eye except to those very old men who recollected the Persian invasion—the exasperation of the general body of citizens rose to a pitch never before known. The Acharnians first of all—next the youthful citizens, generally—became madly clamorous for arming and going forth to fight. Knowing well their own great strength, but less correctly informed of the superior strength of the enemy, they felt confident that victory was within their reach. Groups of citizens were everywhere gathered together, angrily debating the critical question of the moment; while the usual concomitants of excited feeling—oracles and prophecies of diverse tenor, many of them doubtless promising success against the enemy at Acharnæ—were eagerly caught up and circulated.

In this inflamed temper of the Athenian mind, Pericles was naturally the great object of complaint and wrath. He was denounced as the cause of all the existing suffering: he was reviled as a coward for not leading out the citizens to fight, in his capacity of general: the rational convictions as to the necessity of the war and the only practical means of carrying it on, which his repeated speeches had implanted, seemed to be altogether forgotten. This burst of spontaneous discontent was of course fomented by the numerous political enemies of Pericles, and particularly by Cleon,[47] now rising into importance as an opposition-speaker; whose talent for invective was thus first exercised under the auspices of the high aristocratical party, as well as of an excited public.

But no manifestations, however violent, could disturb either the judgment or the firmness of Pericles. He listened unmoved to all the declarations made against him, resolutely refusing to convene a public assembly, or any meeting invested with an authorised character, under the present irritated temper of the citizens. It appears that he as general, or rather the board of ten generals among whom he was one, must have been invested constitutionally with the power not only of calling the ecclesia when they thought fit, but also of preventing it from meeting, and of postponing even those regular[530] meetings which commonly took place at fixed times, four times in the prytany. No assembly accordingly took place, and the violent exasperation of the people was thus prevented from realising itself in any rash public resolution. That Pericles should have held firm against this raging force, is but one among the many honourable points in his political character; but it is far less wonderful than the fact that his refusal to call the ecclesia was efficacious to prevent the ecclesia from being held. The entire body of Athenians were now assembled within the walls, and if he refused to convoke the ecclesia, they might easily have met in the Pnyx without him; for which it would not have been difficult at such a juncture to provide plausible justification. The inviolable respect which the Athenian people manifested on this occasion for the forms of their democratical constitution—assisted doubtless by their long-established esteem for Pericles, yet opposed to an excitement alike intense and pervading, and to a demand apparently reasonable, in so far as regarded the calling of an assembly for discussion—is one of the most memorable incidents in their history.

While Pericles thus decidedly forbade any general march out for battle he sought to provide as much employment as possible for the compressed eagerness of the citizens. The cavalry were sent forth, together with the Thessalian cavalry their allies, for the purpose of restraining the excursions of the enemy’s light troops, and protecting the lands near the city from plunder. At the same time he fitted out a powerful expedition, which sailed forth to ravage Peloponnesus, even while the invaders were yet in Attica. Archidamus, after having remained engaged in the devastation of Acharnæ long enough to satisfy himself that the Athenians would not hazard a battle, turned away from Athens in a northwesterly direction towards the demes between Mount Brilessus and Mount Parnes, on the road passing through Decelea. The army continued ravaging these districts until their provisions were exhausted, and then quitted Attica by the northwestern road near Oropus, which brought them into Bœotia. As the Oropians, though not Athenians, were yet dependent upon Athens—the district of Græa, a portion of their territory, was laid waste; after which the army dispersed and retired back to their respective homes. It would seem that they quitted Attica towards the end of July, having remained in the country between thirty and forty days.

Meanwhile, the Athenian expedition, under Caranus, Proteas, and Socrates, joined by fifty Corcyræan ships and by some other allies, sailed round Peloponnesus, landing in various parts to inflict damage, and among other places at Methone (Modon), on the southwestern peninsula of the Lacedæmonian territory. The place, neither strong nor well-garrisoned, would have been carried with little difficulty, had not Brasidas, the son of Tellis—a gallant Spartan now mentioned for the first time, but destined to great celebrity afterwards—who happened to be on guard at a neighbouring post, thrown himself into it with one hundred men by a rapid movement, before the dispersed Athenian troops could be brought together to prevent him. He infused such courage into the defenders of the place that every attack was repelled, and the Athenians were forced to re-embark—an act of prowess which procured for him the first public honours bestowed by the Spartans during this war. Sailing northward along the western coast of Peloponnesus, the Athenians landed again on the coast of Elis, a little south of the promontory called Cape Ichthys: they ravaged the territory for two days, defeating both the troops in the neighbourhood and three hundred chosen men from the central Elean territory. Strong winds on a harbourless coast now[531] induced the captains to sail with most of the troops round Cape Ichthys, in order to reach the harbour of Phea on the northern side of it; while the Messenian hoplites, marching by land across the promontory, attacked Phea and carried it by assault. When the fleet arrived, all were re-embarked—the full force of Elis being under march to attack them. They then sailed northward, landing on various other spots to commit devastation, until they reached Sollium, a Corinthian settlement on the coast of Acarnania. They captured this place, which they handed over to the inhabitants of the neighbouring Acarnanian town of Palærus, as well as Astacus, from whence they expelled the despot Euarchus, and enrolled the town as a member of the Athenian alliance. From hence they passed over to Cephallenia, which they were fortunate enough also to acquire as an ally of Athens without any compulsion—with its four distinct towns or districts, Pale, Cranii, Same, and Proni. These various operations took up near three months from about the beginning of July, so that they returned to Athens towards the close of September—the beginning of the winter half of the year, according to the distribution of Thucydides.

This was not the only maritime expedition of the summer. Thirty more triremes, under Cleopompus, were sent through the Euripus to the Locrian coast opposite to the northern part of Eubœa. Some disembarkations were made, whereby the Locrian towns of Thronium and Alope were sacked, and further devastation inflicted; while a permanent garrison was planted, and a fortified post erected, in the uninhabited island of Atalante opposite to the Locrian coast, in order to restrain privateers from Opus and the other Locrian towns in their excursions against Eubœa. It was further determined to expel the Æginetan inhabitants from Ægina, and to occupy the island with Athenian colonists. This step was partly rendered prudent by the important position of the island midway between Attica and Peloponnesus. But a concurrent motive, and probably the stronger motive, was the gratification of ancient antipathy and revenge against a people who had been among the foremost in provoking the war and in inflicting upon Athens so much suffering. The Æginetans, with their wives and children, were all put on ship-board and landed in Peloponnesus, where the Spartans permitted them to occupy the maritime district and town of Thyrea, their last frontier towards Argos; some of them, however, found shelter in other parts of Greece. The island was made over to a detachment of Athenian cleruchs, or citizen proprietors, sent hither by lot.

To the sufferings of the Æginetans, which we shall hereafter find still more deplorably aggravated, we have to add those of the Megarians. Both had been most zealous in kindling the war, but upon none did the distress of war fall so heavily. Both probably shared the premature confidence felt among the Peloponnesian confederacy, that Athens could never hold out more than a year or two, and were thus induced to overlook their own undefended position against her. Towards the close of September, the full force of Athens, citizens and metics, marched into the Megarid, under Pericles, and laid waste the greater part of the territory; while they were in it, the hundred ships which had been circumnavigating Peloponnesus, having arrived at Ægina on their return, joined their fellow citizens in the Megarid, instead of going straight home. The junction of the two formed the largest Athenian force that had ever yet been seen together; there were ten thousand citizen hoplites (independent of three thousand others who were engaged in the siege of Potidæa), and three thousand metic hoplites, besides a large number of light troops. Against so large a force the[532] Megarians could make no head, so that their territory was all laid waste, even to the city walls. For several years of the war, the Athenians inflicted this destruction once, and often twice in the same year. A decree was proposed in the Athenian ecclesia by Charinus, though perhaps not carried, to the effect that the strategi every year should swear, as a portion of their oath of office, that they would twice invade and ravage the Megarid. As the Athenians at the same time kept the port of Nisæa blocked up, by means of their superior naval force and of the neighbouring coast of Salamis, the privations imposed on the Megarians became extreme and intolerable. Not only their corn and fruits, but even their garden vegetables were rooted up, and their situation was that of a besieged city pressed by famine. Even in the time of Pausanias, many centuries afterward, the miseries of the town during these years were remembered and communicated to him, being assigned as the reason why one of their most memorable statues had never been completed.

To the various military operations of Athens during the course of this summer, some other measures of moment are to be added. Moreover, Thucydides notices an eclipse of the sun, which modern astronomical calculations refer to the third of August; had this eclipse happened three months earlier, immediately before the entrance of the Peloponnesians into Attica, it might probably have been construed as an unfavourable omen, and caused the postponement of the scheme. Expecting a prolonged struggle, the Athenians now made arrangements for placing Attica in a permanent state of defence, both by sea and land; what these arrangements were, we are not told in detail, but one of them was sufficiently remarkable to be named particularly. They set apart one thousand talents [£200,000 or $1,000,000] out of the treasure in the Acropolis as an inviolable reserve, not to be touched except on the single contingency of a hostile naval force about to assail the city, with no other means at hand to defend it. They further enacted that if any citizen should propose, or any magistrate put the question, in the public assembly, to make any different application of this reserve, he should be punishable with death. Moreover, they resolved every year to keep back one hundred of their best triremes, and trierarchs to command and equip them, for the same special necessity. It may be doubted whether this latter provision was placed under the same stringent sanction, or observed with the same rigour, as that concerning the money; which latter was not departed from until the twentieth year of the war, after all the disasters of the Sicilian expedition, and on the terrible news of the revolt of Chios. It was on that occasion that the Athenians first repealed the sentence of capital punishment against the proposer of this forbidden change, and next appropriated the money to meet the then imminent peril of the commonwealth.

The resolution here taken about this sacred reserve, and the rigorous sentence interdicting contrary propositions, is pronounced by Mitford[48] to[533] be an evidence of the indelible barbarism of democratical government. But we must recollect, first, that the sentence of capital punishment was one which could hardly by possibility come into execution; for no citizen would be so mad as to make the forbidden proposition while this law was in force. Whoever desired to make it would first begin by proposing to repeal the prohibitory law, whereby he would incur no danger, whether the assembly decided in the affirmative or negative; and if he obtained an affirmative decision he would then, and then only, proceed to move the re-appropriation of the fund. To speak the language of English parliamentary procedure, he would first move the suspension or abrogation of the standing order whereby the proposition was forbidden; next, he would move the proposition itself; in fact, such was the mode actually pursued, when the thing at last came to be done. But though the capital sentence could hardly come into effect, the proclamation of it in terrorem had a very distinct meaning. It expressed the deep and solemn conviction which the people entertained of the importance of their own resolution about the reserve; it forewarned all assemblies and all citizens to come of the danger of diverting it to any other purpose; it surrounded the reserve with an artificial sanctity, which forced every man who aimed at the re-appropriation to begin with a preliminary proposition formidable on the very face of it, as removing a guarantee which previous assemblies had deemed of immense value, and opening the door to a contingency which they had looked upon as treasonable. The proclamation of a lighter punishment, or a simple prohibition without any definite sanction whatever, would neither have announced the same emphatic conviction, nor produced the same deterring effect. The assembly of 431 B.C. could not in any way enact laws which subsequent assemblies could not reverse; but it could so frame its enactments, in cases of peculiar solemnity, as to make its authority strongly felt upon the judgment of its successors, and to prevent them from entertaining motions for repeal except under necessity at once urgent and obvious.

Far from thinking that the law now passed at Athens displayed barbarism, either in the end or in the means, we consider it principally remarkable for its cautious and long-sighted view of the future—qualities the exact reverse of barbarism—and worthy of the general character of Pericles, who probably suggested it. Athens was just entering into a war which threatened to be of indefinite length, and was certain to be very costly. To prevent the people from exhausting all their accumulated fund, and to place them under a necessity of reserving something against extreme casualties, was an object of immense importance. Now the particular casualty, which Pericles (assuming him to be the proposer) named as the sole condition of touching this one thousand talents, might be considered as of all others the most improbable, in the year 431 B.C. So immense was then the superiority of the Athenian naval force, that to suppose it defeated, and a Peloponnesian fleet in full sail for Piræus, was a possibility which it required a statesman of extraordinary caution to look forward to, and which it is truly wonderful that the people generally could have been induced to contemplate. Once tied up to this purpose, however, the fund lay ready for any other terrible emergency: and we shall find the actual employment of it incalculably beneficial to Athens, at a moment of the gravest peril, when she could hardly have protected herself without some such special resource. The people would scarcely have sanctioned so rigorous an economy, had it not been proposed to them at a period so early in the war that their available reserve was still much larger. But it will be forever to the credit of their[534] foresight as well as constancy, that they should first have adopted such a precautionary measure, and afterwards adhered to it for nineteen years, under severe pressure for money, until at length a case arose which rendered further abstinence really, and not constructively, impossible.

To display their force and take revenge by disembarking and ravaging parts of the Peloponnesus, was doubtless of much importance to Athens during this first summer of the war: though it might seem that the force so employed was quite as much needed in the conquest of Potidæa, which still remained under blockade, and of the neighbouring Chalcidians in Thrace, still in revolt. It was during the course of this summer that a prospect opened to Athens of subduing these towns, through the assistance of Sitalces, king of the Odrysian Thracians. That prince had married the sister of Nymphodorus, a citizen of Abdera; who engaged to render him, and his son Sadocus, allies of Athens. Sent for to Athens and appointed proxenus of Athens at Abdera, which was one of the Athenian subject allies, Nymphodorus made this alliance, and promised in the name of Sitalces that a sufficient Thracian force should be sent to aid Athens in the reconquest of her revolted towns: the honour of Athenian citizenship was at the same time conferred upon Sadocus. Nymphodorus further established a good understanding between Perdiccas II of Macedonia and the Athenians, who were persuaded to restore to him Therma, which they had before taken from him. The Athenians had thus the promise of powerful aid against the Chalcidians and Potidæans: yet the latter still held out, with little prospect of immediate surrender. Moreover, the town of Astacus in Acarnania, which the Athenians had captured during the summer, in the course of their expedition round Peloponnesus, was recovered during the autumn by the deposed despot Euarchus, assisted by forty Corinthian triremes and one thousand hoplites. This Corinthian armament, after restoring Euarchus, made some unsuccessful descents both upon other parts of Acarnania and upon the island of Cephallenia: in the latter they were entrapped into an ambuscade and obliged to return home with considerable loss.b

FOOTNOTES

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[535]

CHAPTER XXXI. THE PLAGUE; AND THE DEATH OF PERICLES

THE ORATION OF PERICLES

It was towards the close of autumn that Pericles, chosen by the people for the purpose, delivered the funeral oration at the public interment of those warriors who had fallen during the campaign, on the occasion of the conquest of Samos. One of the remarkable features in this discourse is its business-like, impersonal character: it is Athens herself who undertakes to commend and to decorate her departed sons, as well as to hearten up and admonish the living.

After a few words on the magnitude of the empire and on the glorious efforts as well as endurance whereby their forefathers and they had acquired it—Pericles proceeds to sketch the plan of life, the constitution, and the manners, under which such achievements were brought about.

“We live under a constitution such as noway to envy the laws of our neighbours,—ourselves an example to others, rather than mere imitators. It is called a democracy, since its permanent aim tends towards the Many and not towards the Few: in regard to private matters and disputes, the laws deal equally with every man; while looking to public affairs, and to claims of individual influence, every man’s chance of advancement is determined not by party favour but by real worth, according as his reputation stands in his own particular department: nor does poverty, or obscure station, keep him back, if he really has the means of benefiting the city. And our social march is free, not merely in regard to public affairs, but also in regard to intolerance of each other’s diversity of daily pursuits. For we are not angry with our neighbour for what he may do to please himself, nor do we ever put on those sour looks, which, though they do no positive damage, are not the less sure to offend. Thus conducting our private social intercourse with reciprocal indulgence, we are restrained from wrong on public matters by fear and reverence of our magistrates for the time being and of our laws—especially such laws as are instituted for the protection of wrongful sufferers, and even such others as, though not written, are enforced by a common sense of shame.

“Besides this, we have provided for our minds numerous recreations from toil, partly by our customary solemnities of sacrifice and festival throughout the year, partly by the elegance of our private establishments, the daily[536] charm of which banishes the sense of discomfort. From the magnitude of our city, the products of the whole earth are brought to us, so that our enjoyment of foreign luxuries is as much our own and assured as those which we grow at home. In respect to training for war, we differ from our opponents (the Lacedæmonians) on several material points. First, we lay open our city as a common resort: we apply no xenelasia to exclude even an enemy either from any lesson or any spectacle, the full view of which he may think advantageous to him; for we trust less to manœuvres and quackery than to our native bravery, for warlike efficiency. Next, in regard to education, while the Lacedæmonians even from their earliest youth subject themselves to an irksome exercise for the attainment of courage, we with our easy habits of life are not less prepared than they, to encounter all perils within the measure of our strength. The proof of this is, that the Peloponnesian confederates do not attack us one by one, but with their whole united force; while we, when we attack them at home, overpower for the most part all of them who try to defend their own territory. None of our enemies has ever met and contended with our entire force; partly in consequence of our large navy—partly from our dispersion in different simultaneous land expeditions. But when they chance to be engaged with any part of it, if victorious, they pretend to have vanquished us all—if defeated, they pretend to have been vanquished by all.

“Now if we are willing to brave danger, just as much under an indulgent system as under constant toil, and by spontaneous courage as much as under force of law—we are gainers in the end by not vexing ourselves beforehand with sufferings to come, yet still appearing in the hour of trial not less daring than those who toil without ceasing.

“In other matters, too, as well as in these, our city deserves admiration. For we combine elegance of taste with simplicity of life, and we pursue knowledge without being enervated: we employ wealth not for talking and ostentation, but as a real help in the proper season: nor is it disgraceful to any one who is poor to confess his poverty, though he may rather incur reproach for not actually keeping himself out of poverty. The magistrates who discharge public trusts fulfil their domestic duties also—the private citizen, while engaged in professional business, has competent knowledge on public affairs: for we stand alone in regarding the man who keeps aloof from these latter not as harmless, but as useless. Moreover, we always hear and pronounce on public matters, when discussed by our leaders—or perhaps strike out for ourselves correct reasonings about them: far from accounting discussion an impediment to action, we complain only if we are not told what is to be done before it becomes our duty to do it. For in truth we combine in the most remarkable manner these two qualities—extreme boldness in execution with full debate beforehand on that which we are going about: whereas with others, ignorance alone imparts boldness—debate introduces hesitation. Assuredly those men are properly to be regarded as the stoutest of heart, who, knowing most precisely both the terrors of war and the sweets of peace, are still not the less willing to encounter peril.

“In fine, I affirm that our city, considered as a whole, is the schoolmistress of Greece; while, viewed individually, we enable the same man to furnish himself out and suffice to himself in the greatest variety of ways and with the most complete grace and refinement. This is no empty boast of the moment, but genuine reality; and the power of the city, acquired through the dispositions just indicated, exists to prove it. Athens alone of all cities[537] stands forth in actual trial greater than her reputation: her enemy when he attacks her will not have his pride wounded by suffering defeat from feeble hands—her subjects will not think themselves degraded as if their obedience were paid to an unworthy superior. Having thus put forth our power, not uncertified, but backed by the most evident proofs, we shall be admired not less by posterity than by our contemporaries. Nor do we stand in need either of Homer or of any other panegyrist, whose words may for the moment please, while the truth when known would confute their intended meaning. We have compelled all land and sea to become accessible to our courage, and have planted everywhere imperishable monuments of our kindness as well as of our hostility.

“Such is the city on behalf of which these warriors have nobly died in battle, vindicating her just title to unimpaired rights—and on behalf of which all of us here left behind must willingly toil. It is for this reason that I have spoken at length concerning the city, at once to draw from it the lesson that the conflict is not for equal motives between us and enemies who possess nothing of the like excellence—and to demonstrate by proofs the truth of my encomium pronounced upon her.”

Pericles pursues at considerable additional length the same tenor of mixed exhortation to the living and eulogy of the dead; with many special and emphatic observations addressed to the relatives of the latter, who were assembled around and doubtless very near him. But the extract which we have already made is so long, that no further addition would be admissible: yet it was impossible to pass over lightly the picture of the Athenian commonwealth in its glory, as delivered by the ablest citizen of the age. The effect of the democratical constitution, with its diffused and equal citizenship, in calling forth not merely strong attachment, but painful self sacrifice, on the part of all Athenians—is nowhere more forcibly insisted upon than in the words above cited of Pericles, as well as in others afterwards. “Contemplating as you do daily before you the actual power of the state, and becoming passionately attached to it, when you conceive its full greatness, reflect that it was all acquired by men daring, acquainted with their duty, and full of an honourable sense of shame in their actions”—such is the association which he presents between the greatness of the state as an object of common passion, and the courage, intelligence, and mutual esteem, of individual citizens, as its creating and preserving causes; poor as well as rich being alike interested in the partnership.

But the claims of patriotism, though put forward as essentially and deservedly paramount, are by no means understood to reign exclusively, or to absorb the whole of the democratical activity. Subject to these, and to those laws and sanctions which protect both the public and individuals against wrong, it is the pride of Athens to exhibit a rich and varied fund of human impulse—an unrestrained play of fancy and diversity of private pursuit coupled with a reciprocity of cheerful indulgence between one individual and another—and an absence even of those “black looks” which so much embitter life, even if they never pass into enmity of fact. This portion of the speech of Pericles deserves particular attention, because it serves to correct an assertion, often far too indiscriminately made, respecting antiquity as contrasted with modern societies—an assertion that the ancient societies sacrificed the individual to the state, and that only in modern times has individual agency been left free to the proper extent. This is preeminently true of Sparta—it is also true in a great degree of the ideal societies depicted by Plato and Aristotle: but it is pointedly untrue of the[538] Athenian democracy, nor can we with any confidence predicate it of the major part of the Grecian cities.

Connected with this reciprocal indulgence of individual diversity, was not only the hospitable reception of all strangers at Athens, which Pericles contrasts with the xenelasia or jealous expulsion practised at Sparta—but also the many-sided activity, bodily and mental, visible in the former, so opposite to that narrow range of thought, exclusive discipline of the body, and never-ending preparation for war, which formed the system of the latter. His assertion that Athens was equal to Sparta even in her own solitary excellence—efficiency on the field of battle—is doubtless untenable. But not the less impressive is his sketch of that multitude of concurrent impulses which at this same time agitated and impelled the Athenian mind—the strength of one not implying the weakness of the remainder: the relish for all pleasures of art and elegance, and the appetite for intellectual expansion, coinciding in the same bosom with energetic promptitude as well as endurance: abundance of recreative spectacles, yet noway abating the cheerfulness of obedience even to the hardest calls of patriotic duty: that combination of reason and courage which encountered danger the more willingly from having discussed and calculated it beforehand: lastly, an anxious interest, as well as a competence of judgment, in public discussion and public action, common to every citizen rich and poor, and combined with every man’s own private industry. So comprehensive an ideal of many-sided social development, bringing out the capacities for action and endurance, as well as those for enjoyment, would be sufficiently remarkable, even if we supposed it only existing in the imagination of a philosopher: but it becomes still more so when we recollect that the main features of it at least were drawn from the fellow citizens of the speaker. It must be taken however as belonging peculiarly to the Athens of Pericles and his contemporaries; nor would it have suited either the period of the Persian War fifty years before, or that of Demosthenes seventy years afterwards.

At the former period, the art, letters, philosophy, adverted to with pride by Pericles, were as yet backward, while even the active energy and democratical stimulus, though very powerful, had not been worked up to the pitch which they afterwards reached: at the latter period, although the intellectual manifestations of Athens subsist in full or even increased vigour, we shall find the personal enterprise and energetic spirit of her citizens materially abated. As the circumstances, which we have already recounted, go far to explain the previous upward movement, so those which fill the coming chapters, containing the disasters of the Peloponnesian War, will be found to explain still more completely the declining tendency shortly about to commence. Athens was brought to the brink of entire ruin, from which it is surprising that she recovered at all—but noway surprising that she recovered at the expense of a considerable loss of personal energy in the character of her citizens.

And thus the season at which Pericles delivered his discourse lends to it an additional and peculiar pathos. It was delivered at a time when Athens was as yet erect and at her maximum: for though her real power was doubtless much diminished compared with the period before the Thirty Years’ Truce, yet the great edifices and works of art, achieved since then, tended to compensate that loss, in so far as the sense of greatness was concerned; and no one, either citizen or enemy, considered Athens as having at all declined. It was delivered at the commencement of the great struggle with the Peloponnesian confederacy, the coming hardships of which[539] Pericles never disguised either to himself or to his fellow citizens, though he fully counted upon eventual success. Attica had been already invaded; it was no longer “the unwasted territory,” as Euripides had designated it in his tragedy Medea, represented three or four months before the march of Archidamus—and a picture of Athens in her social glory was well calculated both to arouse the pride and nerve the courage of those individual citizens, who had been compelled once, and would be compelled again and again, to abandon their country residences and fields for a thin tent or confined hole in the city. Such calamities might indeed be foreseen: but there was one still greater calamity, which, though actually then impending, could not be foreseen.b

At the very beginning of the next summer the Peloponnesians and their allies, with two-thirds of their forces, as on the first occasion, invaded Attica, under the command of Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedæmonians; and after encamping, they laid waste the country. When they had not yet been many days in Attica, the plague first began to show itself among the Athenians; though it was said to have previously lighted on many places, about Lemnos and elsewhere. Such a pestilence, however, and loss of life as this, was nowhere remembered to have happened. For neither were physicians of any avail at first, treating it as they did, in ignorance of its nature,—nay, they themselves died most of all, inasmuch as they most visited the sick,—nor any other art of man. And as to the supplications that they offered in their temples, or the divinations, and similar means, that they had recourse to, they were all unavailing; and at last they ceased from them, being overcome by the pressure of the calamity.

THUCYDIDES’ ACCOUNT OF THE PLAGUE

It is said to have first begun in the part of Ethiopia above Egypt, and then to have come down into Egypt, and Libya, and the greatest part of the king’s territory.[49] On the city of Athens it fell suddenly, and first attacked the men in the Piræus; so that it was even reported by them that the Peloponnesians had thrown poison into the cisterns; for as yet there were no fountains there. Afterwards it reached the upper city also; and then they died much more generally. Now let every one, whether physician or unprofessional man, speak on the subject according to his views; from what source it was likely to have arisen, and the causes which he thinks were sufficient to have produced so great a change from health to universal sickness. I, however, shall only describe what was its character; and explain those symptoms by reference to which one might best be enabled to recognise it through this previous acquaintance, if it should ever break out again; for I was both attacked by it myself, and had personal observation of others who were suffering with it.

That year then, as was generally allowed, happened to be of all years the most free from disease, so far as regards other disorders; and if any one had any previous sickness, all terminated in this. Others, without any ostensible cause, but suddenly, while in the enjoyment of health, were seized at first with violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation of the eyes; and the internal parts, both the throat and the tongue, immediately[540] assumed a bloody tinge, and emitted an unnatural and fetid breath. Next after these symptoms, sneezing and hoarseness came on; and in a short time the pain descended to the chest, with a violent cough. When it settled in the stomach, it caused vomiting; and all the discharges of bile that have been mentioned by physicians succeeded, and those accompanied with great suffering. An ineffectual retching also followed in most cases, producing a violent spasm, which in some cases ceased soon afterwards, in others not until a long time later.

Externally the body was not very hot to the touch, nor was it pale; but reddish, livid, and broken out in small pimples and sores. But the internal parts were burnt to such a degree that they could not bear clothing or linen of the very lightest kind to be laid upon them, nor to be anything else but stark naked; but would most gladly have thrown themselves into cold water if they could. Indeed many of those who were not taken care of did so, plunging into cisterns in the agony of their unquenchable thirst: and it was all the same whether they drank much or little. Moreover, the misery of restlessness and wakefulness continually oppressed them. The body did not waste away so long as the disease was at its height, but resisted it beyond all expectation: so that they either died in most cases on the ninth or the seventh day, through the internal burning, while they had still some degree of strength; or if they escaped that stage of the disorder, then, after it had further descended into the bowels, and violent ulceration was produced in them, and intense diarrhœa had come on, the greater part were afterwards carried off through the weakness occasioned by it. For the disease, which was originally seated in the head, beginning from above, passed throughout the whole body; and if any one survived its most fatal consequences, yet it marked him by laying hold of his extremities; for it settled on the pudenda, and fingers, and toes, and many escaped with the loss of these, while some also lost their eyes. Others, again, were seized on their first recovery with forgetfulness of everything alike, and did not know either themselves or their friends.

For the character of the disorder surpassed description; and while in other respects also it attacked every one in a degree more grievous than human nature could endure, in the following way, especially, it proved itself[541] to be something different from any of the diseases familiar to man.[50] All the birds and beasts that prey on human bodies, either did not come near them, though there were many lying unburied, or died after they had tasted them. As a proof of this, there was a marked disappearance of birds of this kind, and they were not seen either engaged in this way, or in any other; while the dogs, from their domestic habits, more clearly afforded opportunity of marking the result I have mentioned.

The disease, then, to pass over many various points of peculiarity, as it happened to be different in one case from another, was in its general nature such as I have described. And no other of those to which they were accustomed afflicted them besides this at that time; or whatever there was, it ended in this. And of those who were seized by it some died in neglect, others in the midst of every attention. And there was no one settled remedy, so to speak, by applying which they were to give them relief: for what did good to one, did harm to another. And no constitution showed itself fortified against it, in point either of strength or weakness: but it seized on all alike, even those that were treated with all possible regard to diet. But the most dreadful part of the whole calamity was the dejection felt whenever any one found himself sickening (for by immediately falling into a feeling of despair, they abandoned themselves much more certainly to the disease, and did not resist it), and the fact of their being charged with infection from attending on one another, and so dying like sheep. And it was this that caused the greatest mortality amongst them; for if through fear they were unwilling to visit each other, they perished from being deserted, and many houses were emptied for want of some one to attend to the sufferers; or if they did visit them, they met their death, and especially such as made any pretensions to goodness; for through a feeling of shame they were unsparing of themselves, in going into their friends’ houses when deserted by all others; since even the members of the family were at length worn out by the very moanings of the dying, and were overcome by their excessive misery. Still more, however, than even these, did such as had escaped the disorder show pity for the dying and the suffering, both from their previous knowledge of what it was, and from their being now in no fear of it themselves: for it never seized the same person twice, so as to prove actually fatal. And such persons were felicitated by others; and themselves, in the excess of their present joy, entertained for the future also, to a certain degree, a vain hope that they would never now be carried off even by any other disease.

In addition to the original calamity, what oppressed them still more was the crowding into the city from the country, especially the newcomers. For as they had no houses, but lived in stifling cabins at the hot season of the year, the mortality amongst them spread without restraint; bodies lying on one another in the death agony, and half-dead creatures rolling about in the streets and round all the fountains, in their longing for water. The sacred places also in which they had quartered themselves, were full of the corpses of those that died there in them: for in the surpassing violence of the calamity, men not knowing what was to become of them, came to disregard everything, both sacred and profane, alike. And all the laws were violated which they before observed respecting burials; and they buried them as each one could. And many from want of proper means, in[542] consequence of so many of their friends having died, had recourse to shameless modes of sepulture; for on the piles prepared for others, some, anticipating those who had raised them, would lay their own dead relatives and set fire to them; and others, while the body of a stranger was burning, would throw on the top of it the one they were carrying, and go away.

In other respects also the plague was the origin of lawless conduct in the city, to a greater extent than it had before existed. For deeds which formerly men hid from view, so as not to do them just as they pleased, they now more readily ventured on; since they saw the change so sudden in the case of those who were prosperous and quickly perished, and of those who before had had nothing, and at once came into possession of the property of the dead. So they resolved to take their enjoyment quickly, and with a sole view to gratification; regarding their lives and their riches alike as things of a day. As for taking trouble about what was thought honourable, no one was forward to do it; deeming it uncertain whether, before he had attained to it, he would not be cut off; but everything that was immediately pleasant, and that which was conducive to it by any means whatever, this was laid down to be both honourable and expedient. And fear of gods, or law of men, there was none to stop them; for with regard to the former they esteemed it all the same whether they worshipped them or not, from seeing all alike perishing; and with regard to their offences against the latter, no one expected to live till judgment should be passed on him, and so to pay the penalty of them; but they thought a far heavier sentence was impending in that which had already been passed upon them; and that before it fell on them, it was right to have some enjoyment of life.

Such was the calamity which the Athenians had met with, and by which they were afflicted, their men dying within the city, and their land being wasted without. In their misery they remembered this verse amongst other things, as was natural they should; the old men saying that it had been uttered long ago:

Now there was a dispute amongst them, and some asserted that it was not “a plague” (loimos), that had been mentioned in the verse by the men of former times, but “a famine” (limos): the opinion, however, at the present time naturally prevailed that “a plague” had been mentioned: for men adapted their recollections to what they were suffering. But, I suppose, in case of another Dorian war ever befalling them after this, and a famine happening to exist, in all probability they will recite the verse accordingly. Those who were acquainted with it recollected also the oracle given to the Lacedæmonians, when on their inquiring of the god whether they should go to war, he answered, “that if they carried it on with all their might, they would gain the victory; and that he would himself take part with them in it.” With regard to the oracle then, they supposed that what was happening answered to it. For the disease had begun immediately after the Lacedæmonians had made their incursion; and it did not go into the Peloponnesus, worth even speaking of, but ravaged Athens most of all, and next to it the most populous of the other towns. Such were the circumstances that occurred in connection with the plague.

The Peloponnesians, after ravaging the plain, passed into the Paralian territory, as it is called, as far as Laurium, where the gold mines of the Athenians are situated. And first they ravaged the side which looks towards Peloponnesus; afterwards, that which lies towards Eubœa and Andros.[543] Pericles being general at that time as well as before, maintained the same opinion as he had in the former invasion, about the Athenians not marching out against them.

While they were still in the plain, before they went to the Paralian territory, he was preparing an armament of a hundred ships to sail against the Peloponnesus; and when all was ready, he put out to sea. On board the ships he took four thousand heavy-armed of the Athenians, and three hundred cavalry in horse transports, then for the first time made out of old vessels: a Chian and Lesbian force also joined the expedition with fifty ships. When this armament of the Athenians put out to sea, they left the Peloponnesians in the Paralian territory of Attica. On arriving at Epidaurus, in the Peloponnesus, they ravaged the greater part of the land, and having made an assault on the city, entertained some hope of taking it; but did not, however, succeed. After sailing from Epidaurus, they ravaged the land belonging to Trœzen, Haliœ, and Hermione; all which places are on the coast of the Peloponnesus. Proceeding thence they came to Prasiæ, a maritime town of Laconia, and ravaged some of the land, and took the town itself, and sacked it. After performing these achievements, they returned home; and found the Peloponnesians no longer in Attica, but returned.

Now all the time that the Peloponnesians were in the Athenian territory, and the Athenians were engaged in the expedition on board their ships, the plague was carrying them off both in the armament and in the city, so that it was even said that the Peloponnesians, for fear of the disorder, when they heard from the deserters that it was in the city, and also perceived them performing the funeral rites, retired the quicker from the country. Yet in this invasion they stayed the longest time, and ravaged the whole country: for they were about forty days in the Athenian territory.

The same summer Hagnon, son of Nicias, and Cleopompus, son of Clinias, who were colleagues with Pericles, took the army which he had employed, and went straightway on an expedition against the Chalcidians Thrace-ward, and Potidæa, which was still being besieged: and on their arrival they brought up their engines against Potidæa, and endeavoured to take it by every means. But they neither succeeded in capturing the city, nor in their other measures, to any extent worthy of their preparations: for the plague attacked them, and this indeed utterly overpowered them there, wasting their force to such a degree, that even the soldiers of the Athenians who were there before were infected with it by the troops which came with Hagnon, though previously they had been in good health. Phormion, however, and his sixteen hundred, were no longer in the neighbourhood of the Chalcidians (and so escaped its ravages). Hagnon therefore returned with his ships to Athens, having lost by the plague fifteen hundred out of four thousand heavy-armed, in about forty days. The soldiers who were there before still remained in the country, and continued the siege of Potidæa.

After the second invasion of the Lacedæmonians, the Athenians, when their land had been again ravaged, and the disease and the war were afflicting them at the same time, changed their views, and found fault with Pericles, thinking that he had persuaded them to go to war, and that it was through him that they had met with their misfortunes; and they were eager to come to terms with the Lacedæmonians. Indeed they sent ambassadors to them, but did not succeed in their object. And their minds being on all sides reduced to despair, they were violent against Pericles. He therefore, seeing them irritated by their present circumstances, and doing everything that he himself expected them to do, called an assembly, (for he was still general)[544] wishing to cheer them, and by drawing off the irritation of their feelings to lead them to a calmer and more confident state of mind.

The Lacedæmonians and their allies the same summer made an expedition with a hundred ships against the island of Zacynthus, which lies over against Elis. The inhabitants are a colony of the Achæans of the Peloponnesus, and were in alliance with the Athenians. On board the fleet were a thousand heavy-armed of the Lacedæmonians, and Cnemus, a Spartan, as admiral. Having made a descent on the country, they ravaged the greater part of it; and when they did not surrender, they sailed back home.

At the end of the same summer, Aristeus, a Corinthian, Aneristus, Nicolaus, and Stratodemus, ambassadors of the Lacedæmonians, Timagoras, a Tegean, and Pollis, an Argive in a private capacity, being on their way to Asia, to obtain an interview with the king, if by any means they might prevail on him to supply money and join in the war, went first to Thrace, to Sitalces the son of Teres, wishing to persuade him, if they could, to withdraw from his alliance with the Athenians. He gave orders to deliver them up to the Athenian ambassadors; who, having received them, took them to Athens. On their arrival the Athenians, being afraid that if Aristeus escaped he might do them still more mischief (for even before this he had evidently conducted all the measures in Potidæa and their possessions Thrace-ward) without giving them a trial, though they requested to say something in their own defence, put them to death that same day, and threw them into pits; thinking it but just to requite them in the same way as the Lacedæmonians had begun with; for they had killed and thrown into pits the merchants, both of the Athenians and their allies, whom they had taken on board trading vessels about the coast of the Peloponnesus. Indeed all that the Lacedæmonians took on the sea at the beginning of the war, they butchered as enemies, both those who were confederates of the Athenians and those who were neutral.

The following winter, the Athenians sent twenty ships round the Peloponnese, with Phormion as commander, who, making Naupactus his station, kept watch that no one either sailed out from Corinth and the Crissæan Bay, or into it. Another squadron of six they sent towards Caria and Lycia, with Melesander as commander, to raise money from those parts, and to hinder the privateers of the Peloponnesians from making that their rendezvous, and interfering with the navigation of the merchantmen from Phaselis and Phœnicia, and the continent in that direction. But Melesander, having gone up the country into Lycia with a force composed of the Athenians from the ships and the allies, and being defeated in a battle, was killed, and lost a considerable part of the army.

The same winter, when the Potidæans could no longer hold out against their besiegers, the inroads of the Peloponnesians into Attica having had no more effect towards causing the Athenians to withdraw, and their provisions being exhausted, and many other horrors having befallen them in their straits for food, and some having even eaten one another; under these circumstances, they made proposals for a capitulation to the generals of the Athenians who were in command against them, Xenophon, son of Euripides, Histiodorus, son of Aristoclides, and Phanomachus, son of Callimachus; who accepted them, seeing the distress of their army in so exposed a position, and the state having already expended 2000 talents [£400,000 or $2,000,000] on the siege. On these terms therefore they came to an agreement; that themselves, their children, wives, and auxiliaries, should go out of the place with one dress each—but the women with two—and with a[545] fixed sum of money for their journey. According to this treaty, they went out to Chalcidice, or where each could: but the Athenians blamed the generals for having come to an agreement without consulting them; for they thought they might have got possession of the place on their own terms; and afterwards they sent settlers of their own to Potidæa and colonised it. These were the transactions of the winter; and so ended the second year of this war.c

LAST PUBLIC SPEECH OF PERICLES

In his capacity of strategus, Pericles convoked a formal assembly of the people, for the purpose of vindicating himself publicly against the prevailing sentiment, and recommending perseverance in his line of policy. The speeches made by his opponents, assuredly very bitter, are not given by Thucydides; but that of Pericles himself is set down at considerable length, and a memorable discourse it is. It strikingly brings into relief both the character of the man and the impress of actual circumstances—an impregnable mind conscious not only of right purposes but of just and reasonable anticipations, and bearing up with manliness, or even defiance, against the natural difficulty of the case, heightened by an extreme of incalculable misfortune. He had foreseen, while advising the war originally, the probable impatience of his countrymen under its first hardships, but he could not foresee the epidemic by which that impatience had been exasperated into madness; and he now addressed them not merely with unabated adherence to his own deliberate convictions, but also in a tone of reproachful remonstrance against their unmerited change of sentiment towards him—seeking at the same time to combat that uncontrolled despair which, for the moment, overlaid both their pride and their patriotism. Far from humbling himself before the present sentiment, it is at this time that he sets forth his titles to their esteem in the most direct and unqualified manner, and claims the continuance of that which they had so long accorded, as something belonging to him by acquired right.

His main object, throughout this discourse, is to fill the minds of his audience with patriotic sympathy for the weal of the entire city, so as to counterbalance the absorbing sense of private woe. If the collective city flourishes (he argues), private misfortunes may at least be borne: but no amount of private prosperity will avail, if the collective city falls (a proposition literally true in ancient times and under the circumstances of ancient warfare—though less true at present). “Distracted by domestic calamity, ye are now angry both with me who advised you to go to war, and with yourselves who followed the advice. Ye listened to me, considering me superior to others in judgment, in speech, in patriotism, and in incorruptible probity—nor ought I now to be treated as culpable for giving such advice, when in point of fact the war was unavoidable and there would have been still greater danger in shrinking from it. I am the same man, still unchanged—but ye in your misfortunes cannot stand to the convictions which ye adopt when yet unhurt. Extreme and unforeseen, indeed, are the sorrows which have fallen upon you: yet inhabiting as ye do a great city and brought up in dispositions suitable to it, ye must also resolve to bear up against the utmost pressure of adversity, and never to surrender your dignity. I have often explained to you that ye have no reason to doubt of eventual success in the war, but I will now remind you, more emphatically than before, and even with a degree of ostentation suitable as a stimulus to[546] your present unnatural depression—that your naval force makes you masters not only of your allies, but of the entire sea—one-half of the visible field for action and employment. Compared with so vast a power as this, the temporary use of your houses and territory is a mere trifle—an ornamental accessory not worth considering: and this too, if ye preserve your freedom, ye will quickly recover. It was your fathers who first gained this empire, without any of the advantages which ye now enjoy; ye must not disgrace yourselves by losing what they acquired. Delighting as ye all do in the honour and empire enjoyed by the city, ye must not shrink from the toils whereby alone that honour is sustained: moreover ye now fight, not merely for freedom instead of slavery, but for empire against loss of empire, with all the perils arising out of imperial unpopularity. It is not safe for you now to abdicate, even if ye chose to do so; for ye hold your empire like a despotism—unjust perhaps in the original acquisition, but ruinous to part with when once acquired. Be not angry with me, whose advice ye followed in going to war, because the enemy have done such damage as might be expected from them; still less on account of this unforeseen distemper: I know that this makes me an object of your special present hatred, though very unjustly, unless ye will consent to give me credit also of any unexpected good luck which may occur. Our city derives its particular glory from unshaken bearing up against misfortune: her power, her name, her empire of Greeks over Greeks, are such as have never before been seen: and if we choose to be great, we must take the consequence of that temporary envy and hatred which is the necessary price of permanent renown. Behave ye now in a manner worthy of that glory; display that courage which is essential to protect you against disgrace at present, as well as to guarantee your honour for the future. Send no further embassy to Sparta, and bear your misfortunes without showing symptoms of distress.”

The irresistible reason, as well as the proud and resolute bearing of this discourse, set forth with an eloquence which it was not possible for Thucydides to reproduce—together with the age and character of Pericles—carried the assent of the assembled people; who, when in the Pnyx and engaged according to habit on public matters, would for a moment forget their private sufferings in considerations of the safety and grandeur of Athens. Possibly indeed, those sufferings, though still continuing, might become somewhat alleviated when the invaders quitted Attica, and when it was no longer indispensable for all the population to confine itself within the walls. Accordingly, the assembly resolved that no further propositions should be made for peace, and that the war should be prosecuted with vigour. But though the public resolution thus adopted showed the ancient habit of deference to the authority of Pericles, the sentiments of individuals taken separately were still those of anger against him as the author of that system which had brought them into so much distress. His political opponents—Cleon, Simmias, or Lacratidas, perhaps all three in conjunction—took care to provide an opportunity for this prevalent irritation to manifest itself in act, by bringing an accusation against him before the dicastery. The accusation is said to have been preferred on the ground of pecuniary malversation, and ended by his being sentenced to pay a considerable fine, fifteen, fifty, or eighty talents, according to different authors.[51]

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The accusing party thus appeared to have carried their point, and to have disgraced, as well as excluded from re-election, the veteran statesman. But the event disappointed their expectations. The imposition of the fine not only satiated all the irritation of the people against him, but even occasioned a serious reaction in his favour, and brought back as strongly as ever the ancient sentiment of esteem and admiration. It was quickly found that those who had succeeded Pericles as generals neither possessed nor deserved in an equal degree the public confidence and he was accordingly soon re-elected, with as much power and influence as he had ever in his life enjoyed.

But that life, long, honourable, and useful, had already been prolonged considerably beyond the sixtieth year, and there were but too many circumstances, besides the recent fine, which tended to hasten as well as to embitter its close. At the very moment when Pericles was preaching to his countrymen, in a tone almost reproachful, the necessity of manful and unabated devotion to the common country, in the midst of private suffering—he was himself among the greatest of sufferers, and most hardly pressed to set the example of observing his own precepts. The epidemic carried off not merely his two sons (the only two legitimate, Xanthippus and Paralus), but also his sister, several other relatives, and his best and most useful political friends. Amidst this train of domestic calamities, and in the funeral obsequies of so many of his dearest friends, he remained master of his grief, and maintained his habitual self command, until the last misfortune—the death of his favourite son Paralus, which left his house without any legitimate representative to maintain the family and the hereditary sacred rites. On this final blow, though he strove to command himself as before, yet at the obsequies of the young man, when it became his duty to place a wreath on the dead body, his grief became uncontrollable, and he burst out, for the first time in his life, into profuse tears and sobbing.

In the midst of these several personal trials he received the intimation, through Alcibiades and some other friends, of the restored confidence of the people towards him, and his re-election to the office of strategus. But it was not without difficulty that he was persuaded to present himself again at the public assembly, and resume the direction of affairs. The regret of the people was formally expressed to him for the recent sentence—perhaps indeed the fine may have been repaid to him, or some evasion of it permitted, saving the forms of law—in the present temper of the city; which was further displayed towards him by the grant of a remarkable exemption from a law of his own original proposition. He had himself, some years before, been the author of that law, whereby the citizenship of Athens was restricted to persons born both of Athenian fathers and Athenian mothers, under which restriction several thousand persons, illegitimate on the mother’s side, are said to have been deprived of the citizenship, on occasion of a public distribution of corn. Invidious as it appeared to grant, to Pericles singly, an exemption from a law which had been strictly enforced against so many others, the people were now moved not less by compassion than by anxiety to redress their own previous severity. Without a legitimate heir, the house of Pericles, one branch of the great Alcmæonid gens by his mother’s side, would be left deserted, and the continuity of the family sacred rites would be broken—a misfortune painfully felt by every Athenian family, as calculated to wrong all the deceased members, and provoke their posthumous displeasure towards the city. Accordingly, permission was granted to Pericles to legitimise, and to inscribe in his own gens and phratry, his natural son by Aspasia, who bore his own name.

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THE END AND GLORY OF PERICLES

It was thus that Pericles was reinstated in his post of strategus as well as in his ascendency over the public counsels—seemingly about August or September—430 B.C. He lived about one year longer, and seems to have maintained his influence as long as his health permitted. Yet we hear nothing of him after this moment, and he fell a victim, not to the violent symptoms of the epidemic, but to a slow and wearing fever, which undermined his strength as well as his capacity. To a friend who came to ask after him when in this disease, Pericles replied by showing a charm or amulet which his female relations had hung about his neck—a proof how low he was reduced, and how completely he had become a passive subject in the hands of others. And according to another anecdote which we read, yet more interesting and equally illustrative of his character—it was during his last moments, when he was lying apparently unconscious and insensible, that the friends around his bed were passing in review the acts of his life, and the nine trophies which he had erected at different times for so many victories. He heard what they said, though they fancied that he was past hearing, and interrupted them by remarking, “What you praise in my life, belongs partly to good fortune; and is, at best, common to me with many other generals. But the peculiarity of which I am most proud, you have not noticed: no Athenian has ever put on mourning through any action of mine.”

Such a cause of self-gratulation, doubtless more satisfactory to recall at such a moment than any other, illustrates that long-sighted calculation, aversion to distant or hazardous enterprise, and economy of the public force, which marked his entire political career; a career long, beyond all parallel in the history of Athens—since he maintained a great influence, gradually swelling into a decisive personal ascendency, for between thirty and forty years. His character has been presented in very different lights by different authors, both ancient and modern, and our materials for striking the balance are not so good as we could wish. But his immense and long-continued supremacy, as well as his unparalleled eloquence, are facts attested not less by his enemies than by his friends—nay, even more forcibly by the former than by the latter. The comic writers, who hated him, and whose trade it was to deride and hunt down every leading political character, exhaust their powers of illustration in setting forth both the one and the other: Telecleides, Cratinus, Eupolis, Aristophanes, all hearers and all enemies, speak of him like Olympian Zeus hurling thunder and lightning—like Hercules and Achilles—as the only speaker on whose lips persuasion sat and who left his sting in the minds of his audience: while Plato the philosopher, who disapproved of his political working and of the moral effects which he produced upon Athens, nevertheless extols his intellectual and oratorical ascendency—“his majestic intelligence.” There is another point of eulogy, not less valuable, on which the testimony appears uncontradicted: throughout his long career, amidst the hottest political animosities, the conduct of Pericles towards opponents was always mild and liberal.[52]

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The conscious self-esteem and arrogance of manner, with which the contemporary poet Ion reproached him, contrasting it with the unpretending simplicity of his own patron Cimon, though probably invidiously exaggerated, is doubtless in substance well founded, and those who read the last speech just given out of Thucydides will at once recognise in it this attribute. His natural taste, his love of philosophical research, and his unwearied application to public affairs, all contributed to alienate him from ordinary familiarity, and to make him careless, perhaps improperly careless, of the lesser means of conciliating public favour.

But admitting this latter reproach to be well founded, as it seems to be, it helps to negative that greater and graver political crime which has been imputed to him, of sacrificing the permanent well-being and morality of the state to the maintenance of his own political power—of corrupting the people by distributions of the public money. “He gave the reins to the people.” in Plutarch’s words, “and shaped his administration for their immediate spectacle or festival or procession, thus nursing up the city in elegant pleasures—and by sending out every year sixty triremes manned by citizen-seamen on full pay, who were thus kept in practice and acquired nautical skill.”

The charge here made against Pericles, and supported by allegations in themselves honourable rather than otherwise—of a vicious appetite for immediate popularity, and of improper concessions to the immediate feelings of the people against their permanent interests—is precisely that which Thucydides in the most pointed manner denies; and not merely denies, but contrasts Pericles with his successors in the express circumstance that they did so, while he did not. The language of the contemporary historian well deserves to be cited: “Pericles, powerful from dignity of character as well as from wisdom, and conspicuously above the least tinge of corruption, held back the people with a free hand, and was their real leader instead of being led by them. For not being a seeker of power from unworthy sources, he did not speak with any view to present favour, but had sufficient sense of dignity to contradict them on occasion, even braving their displeasure. Thus whenever he perceived them insolently and unseasonably confident, he shaped his speeches in such a manner as to alarm and beat them down; when again he saw them unduly frightened, he tried to counteract it and restore their confidence; so that the government was in name a democracy, but in reality an empire exercised by the first citizen in the state. But those who succeeded after his death, being more equal one with another, and each of them desiring pre-eminence over the rest, adopted the different course of courting the favour of the people and sacrificing to that object even important state interests. From whence arose many other bad measures, as might be expected in a great and imperial city, and especially the Sicilian expedition.”

It will be seen that the judgment here quoted from Thucydides contradicts, in the most unqualified manner, the reproaches commonly made against Pericles of having corrupted the Athenian people—by distributions of the public money, and by giving way to their unwise caprices—for the purpose of acquiring and maintaining his own political power. Nay, the historian particularly notes the opposite qualities—self-judgment, conscious dignity, indifference to immediate popular applause or wrath when set against what was permanently right and useful—as the special characteristic of that great statesman. A distinction might indeed be possible, and Plutarch professes to note such distinction, between the earlier and the later part of his long political career. Pericles began (so that biographer[550] says) by corrupting the people in order to acquire power; but having acquired it, he employed it in an independent and patriotic manner, so that the judgment of Thucydides, true respecting the later part of his life, would not be applicable to the earlier.

The internal political changes at Athens, respecting the Areopagus and the dicasteries, took place when Pericles was a young man, and when he cannot be supposed to have yet acquired the immense personal weight which afterwards belonged to him (Ephialtes in fact seems in those early days to have been a greater man than Pericles, if we may judge by the fact that he was selected by his political adversaries for assassination)—so that they might with greater propriety be ascribed to the party with which Pericles was connected, rather than to that statesman himself. But next, we have no reason to presume that Thucydides considered these changes as injurious, or as having deteriorated the Athenian character. All that he does say as to the working of Pericles on the sentiment and actions of his countrymen is eminently favourable.

Though Thucydides does not directly canvass the constitutional changes effected in Athens under Pericles, yet everything which he does say leads us to believe that he accounted the working of that statesman, upon the whole, on Athenian power as well as on Athenian character, eminently valuable, and his death as an irreparable loss. And we may thus appeal to the judgment of an historian who is our best witness in every conceivable respect, as a valid reply to the charge against Pericles of having corrupted the Athenian habits, character, and government. If he spent a large amount of the public treasure upon religious edifices and ornaments, and upon stately works for the city—yet the sum which he left untouched, ready for use at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, was such as to appear more than sufficient for all purposes of defence, or public safety, or military honour. It cannot be shown of Pericles that he ever sacrificed the greater object to the less—the permanent and substantially valuable, to the transitory and showy—assured present possessions, to the lust of new, distant, or uncertain conquests. If his advice had been listened to, the rashness which brought on the defeat of the Athenian Tolmides at Coronea in Bœotia would have been avoided, and Athens might probably have maintained her ascendency over Megara and Bœotia, which would have protected her territory from invasion, and given a new turn to the subsequent history.

Pericles is not to be treated as the author of the Athenian character: he found it with its very marked positive characteristics and susceptibilities, among which, those which he chiefly brought out and improved were the best. The lust of expeditions against the Persians, which Cimon would have pushed into Egypt and Cyprus, he repressed, after it had accomplished all which could be usefully aimed at: the ambition of Athens he moderated rather than encouraged: the democratical movement of Athens he regularised, and worked out into judicial institutions which ranked among the prominent features of Athenian life, and worked with a very large balance of benefit to the national mind as well as to the individual security, in spite of the many defects in their direct character as tribunals. But that point in which there was the greatest difference between Athens, as Pericles found it and as he left it, is unquestionably, the pacific and intellectual development—rhetoric, poetry, arts, philosophical research, and recreative variety. To which, if we add great improvement in the cultivation of the Attic soil, extension of Athenian trade, attainment and laborious maintenance of the maximum of maritime skill (attested by the battles of[551] Phormion), enlargement of the area of complete security by construction of the Long Walls, lastly, the clothing of Athens in her imperial mantle, by ornaments architectural and sculptural—we shall make out a case of genuine progress realised during the political life of Pericles, such as the evils imputed to him, far more imaginary than real, will go but little way to alloy. How little, comparatively speaking, of the picture drawn by Pericles in his funeral harangue of 431 B.C., would have been correct, if the harangue had been delivered over those warriors who fell at Tanagra twenty-seven years before!

Taking him altogether, with his powers of thought, speech, and action, his competence civil and military, in the council as well as in the field, his vigorous and cultivated intellect, and his comprehensive ideas of a community in pacific and many-sided development, his incorruptible public morality, caution, and firmness, in a country where all those qualities were rare, and the union of them in the same individual of course much rarer—we shall find him without a parallel throughout the whole course of Grecian history.b

WILHELM ONCKEN’S ESTIMATE OF PERICLES

Among the important personages of antiquity, there is none on whom posterity has so fully agreed in its judgment, as on Pericles. When we meet with this name in modern works, we find but one general voice acknowledging his greatness, one voice of admiration for the unusual qualities which distinguished him.

Even the opposers of his political administration were just to him, even those who, in the great rising of Athenian democracy, saw the beginning of a splendid misery, did not deny their respect to the man, who by this development was assigned a place in the first rank. Without wishing to do so they heaped praise on him, in which we must decline to join, although we are the last to wish to rob him of his well-deserved fame. In the political revolution which resulted in the sovereignty of the constitutional demos, and in checking the ruin which only too soon followed, they credited him with so much blame and merit, as even had he divided it with Ephialtes and others, would still have surpassed the power of any mortal, though he were the greatest of the great.

Such great political events as those here mentioned, are not the work of individual men, not the act of a party, however great may be the aggregate of the particular forces it may have at command. They have their root in the nature of the conditions, in the disposition of the circumstances, in the requirements of society, in alliance with which the individual, like Antæus, derives fresh strength out of every defeat, and without which he is but rolling the stone of Sisyphus.

For such a deeply rooted change in the forms of political life in a community, whether that change be for good or evil, elementary forces are necessary which are neither subject to the command nor to the violence of the individual, which human will can neither loose nor arrest, and in the present case we have to deal with a revolution to effect which the agitators employed but a single lever, a single weapon, the convincing word, the power of oratory, the weight of reason.

Also the advent of the internal decay which, as is supposed, followed so rapidly on the violent exertion of the power of the Athenian mob at home, would not, had the times really been ripe for it, have awaited the death of[552] Pericles, an event usually regarded, in flattering enough recognition of the greatness of the man, as the thunderbolt which struck and came to set fire to the heaped-up seeds of corruption.

But the unsought-for praise which springs from this misunderstanding again strikingly proves how universally spread, how deeply rooted is the respect of posterity for this one great Athenian. It is remarkable, however, that his immediate and more remote contemporaries, held an opinion quite different. In examining their judgments on this statesman, we see that with all the deplorable incompleteness of tradition an almost complete unanimity of opinion is found, but this unanimity is not for, but against, Pericles. To our great surprise we discover that the most diverse channels which voiced public opinion, the most various representatives of the universal judgment, seem to have entered into a regular conspiracy against the memory of this man, against the fame of his public and of his personal character.

Highly gifted comic poets such as Cratinus and Eupolis, not to mention others, frivolous anecdote-mongers such as Stesimbrotus of Thasos and Idomeneus of Lampsacus, rhetorical historians like Ephorus, whom Diodorus follows, and earnest philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, are unanimous in repudiating and condemning Pericles. One would understand if they satisfied themselves with a truly Greek disparagement of his great qualities, and exaggeration of his defects, although one might wonder at the unanimity of this proceeding: but they do not stop at this; some at least even go so far as to stamp Pericles as a criminal.

Idomeneus of Lampsacus reproached him with an assassination of the worst kind, committed on his true friend and confederate Ephialtes. Ephorus accused him of embezzling public money and of extensive thefts of public property entrusted to his administration; and comparatively speaking Plato’s judgment is mild, when he consigns him to the ranks of those common demagogues who are not particular as to their means of fraudulently obtaining the favour of the populace. And Aristotle who had cleared him of many serious accusations does not admit him among the statesmen and patriots of the highest rank, but gives preference to such men as Nicias, Thucydides, and even Theramenes.

The reason of this extraordinary fact lies in the partisan spirit which though notorious is not always rightly estimated, and by which the overwhelming majority of the Greek writers whose works have come down to us were animated against the Athenian democracy, so that the champion of popular government which they condemned in principle, cannot possibly find favour in their sight.

On what then does the judgment of posterity repose, a judgment that is in direct opposition to such an imposing number of authorities? Is it a conjecture to which a tacit agreement of competent judges gave a legal authority? Is it the result of an arbitrary process which on grounds of innate probability and by an undisputed verdict clears the historical kernel of all the dross with which the hate and envy, mistakes and calumnies of contemporaries had surrounded it? Or if this judgment is based on the authentic foundation of evidence, is it surely not merely commended, by its innate rectitude, but also confirmed by an unequivocal testimony?

The latter is the case. Our judgment of Pericles is based on the immovable foundation of a testimony which stands alone, not only in this respect but also in the whole of Greek literature, the testimony of Thucydides. It is to Thucydides that his greatest contemporary owes the honour accorded to his name by posterity. His summing up amounts to this: Pericles owes[553] the authoritative position which he occupies in the Athenian state, neither to cunning nor force, but exclusively to the trust of his fellow citizens: their trust in the tried greatness of his spirit, the universally recognised purity of his character, the immovable firmness of his will.

He stood, in truth, above the people, whom he ruled as a prince; raised even above the suspicion of dishonesty, raised above the reproach of cringing submissiveness, he stood firm in his superior influence on the resolution of the multitude, because he had not gained possession of it by the employment of unseemly means, but through the esteem of the citizens for his aptitude for government. He did not give way to the pressure of the changing fancies and moods of the moment. He met the anger of the multitude with unflinching pride, he brought the insolent to their senses, and encouraged the faint hearted to self-confidence. It was a democracy in appearance only, in deed and truth it was the rule of an individual man, of the greatest of the great, over the people.e

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XXXII. THE SECOND AND THIRD YEARS OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

Among students of Greek history the little town of Platæa takes a large hold upon the affections. We have seen how its old time devotion to Athens brought upon it a sudden descent from the arch-enemy Thebes at the very outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. It was a case of Greek against Greek, of Theban duplicity versus Platæan wile. The success of Platæa was so neat and exasperating as to inspire a desperate revenge. Now it was no longer a playtime for trickery, and on both sides the sterner elements of human nature were put to test. The siege of Platæa lasted from the summer of the third year of the war (429 B.C.) to the summer of the fifth year (427 B.C.) but it seems better to tell it in isolated continuity. Accordingly three separate portions of Thirlwall’s vivid history are here brought together.a

In the beginning of the summer 429 B.C., a Peloponnesian army was again assembled at the isthmus, under the command of Archidamus. But instead of invading Attica, which was perhaps thought dangerous on account of the pestilence, he gratified the wishes of the Thebans, by marching into the territory of Platæa, where he encamped, and prepared to lay it waste. But before he had committed any acts of hostility, envoys from Platæa demanded an audience, and, being admitted, made a solemn remonstrance against his proceedings in the name of religion. They reminded the Spartans that, after the glorious battle which secured the liberty of Greece, Pausanias in the presence of the allied army, and in the public place of Platæa, where he had just offered a sacrifice in honour of the victory, formally reinstated the Platæans in the independent possession of their city and territory, which he placed under the protection of all the allies, with whom they had shared the common triumph, to defend them from unjust aggression. They complained that the Spartans were now about to violate this well-earned privilege, which had been secured to Platæa by solemn oaths, at the instigation of her bitterest enemies, the Thebans. And they adjured him, by the gods who had been invoked to witness the engagement of Pausanias, as well as by those of Sparta, and of their violated territory, to desist from his enterprise.

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Archidamus in reply admitted the claim of the Platæans, but desired them to reflect that the rights on which they insisted implied some corresponding duties; that, if the Spartans were pledged to protect their independence, they were themselves no less bound to assist the Spartans in delivering those who had once been their allies in the struggle with Persia, from the tyranny of Athens. Yet Sparta, as she had already declared, did not wish to force them to take a part in the war which she was waging for the liberties of Greece, but would be satisfied if they would remain neutral, and would admit both parties alike to amicable intercourse, without aiding either. The envoys returned with this answer, and, after laying it before the people, came back, instructed to reply: that it was impossible for them to accede to the proposal of Archidamus, without the consent of the Athenians, who had their wives and children in their hands; and they should have reason to fear either the resentment of their present allies, who on the retreat of the Spartans might come and deprive them of their city; or the treachery of the Thebans, who under the cover of neutrality, might find another opportunity of surprising them. But the Spartan, without noticing the ties that bound them to Athens, met the last objection with a new offer.

“Let them commit their city, houses, and lands, to the custody of the Spartans, with an exact account of the boundaries, the number of their trees, and all other things left behind, which it was possible to number. Let them withdraw, and live elsewhere until the end of the war. The Spartans would then restore the deposit entrusted to them, and in the meanwhile would provide for the cultivation of the land, and pay a fair rent.”

It is possible that this proposal may have been honestly meant; though it is as likely that it was suggested by the malice of the Thebans. For it was evident that the Platæans could not accept it without renouncing the friendship of the Athenians, to whom they had committed their families, and in the most favourable contingency, which would be the fall of their old ally, casting themselves upon the honour of an enemy for their political existence; while nevertheless the speciously liberal offer, if rejected, would afford a pretext for treating them with the utmost rigour. This the Platæans probably perceived; and therefore, when their envoys returned with the proposal of the Spartans, requested an armistice, that they might lay it before the Athenians, promising to accept it if they could obtain their consent.

Archidamus granted their request; but the answer brought from Athens put an end, as might have been expected, to the negotiation. It exhorted them to keep their faith with their ally, and to depend upon Athenian protection. Thus urged and emboldened, they resolved, whatever might befall them, to adhere to the side of Athens, and to break off all parley with the enemy, by a short answer, delivered not through envoys, but from the walls: that it was out of their power to do as the Spartans desired.[53] Archidamus, on receiving this declaration, prepared for attacking the city. But first, with great solemnity, he called upon the gods and heroes of the land to witness, that he had not invaded it without just cause, but after the Platæans had first abandoned their ancient confederates; and that whatever they might hereafter suffer would be a merited punishment of the perverseness with which they had rejected his equitable offers.

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THE SPARTANS AND THEBANS ATTACK PLATÆA

His first operation, after ravaging the country, was to invest the city with a palisade, for which the fruit trees cut down by his troops furnished materials. This slight inclosure was sufficient for his purpose, as he hoped that the overwhelming superiority of his numbers would enable him to take the place by storm. The mode of attack which he chiefly relied upon, was the same which we have seen employed by the Persians against the Ionian cities. He attempted to raise a mound to a level with the walls. It was piled up with earth and rubbish, wood and stones, and was guarded on either side by a strong lattice-work of forest timber. For seventy days and seventy nights the troops, divided into parties which constantly relieved each other, were occupied in this labour without intermission, urged to their tasks by the Lacedæmonians who commanded the contingents of the allies. But as the mound rose, the besieged devised expedients for averting the danger.

First they surmounted the opposite part of their wall with a superstructure of brick—taken from the adjacent houses which were pulled down for the purpose—secured in a frame of timber, and shielded from fiery missiles by a curtain of raw hides and skins, which protected the workmen and their work. But as the mound still kept rising as fast as the wall, they set about contriving plans for reducing it. And first, issuing by night through an opening made in the wall, they scooped out and carried away large quantities of the earth from the lower part of the mound. But the Peloponnesians, on discovering this device, counteracted it, by repairing the breach with layers of stiff clay, pressed down close on wattles of reed. Thus baffled, the besieged sank a shaft within the walls, and thence working upon a rough estimate, dug a passage under ground as far as the mound, which they were thus enabled to undermine. And against this contrivance the enemy had no remedy, except in the multitude of hands, which repaired the loss almost as soon as it was felt.

But the garrison, fearing that they should not be able to struggle long with this disadvantage, and that their wall would at length be carried by force of numbers, provided against this event, by building a second wall, in the shape of a half-moon, behind the raised part of the old wall, which was the chord of the arc. Thus in the worst emergency they secured themselves a retreat, from which they would be able to assail the enemy to great advantage, and he would have to recommence his work under the most unfavourable circumstances. This countermure drove the besiegers to their last resources. They had already brought battering engines to play upon the walls. But the spirit and ingenuity of the besieged had generally baffled these assaults; though one had given an alarming shock to the superstructure in front of the half-moon. Sometimes the head of an engine was caught up by means of a noose; sometimes it was broken off by a heavy beam, suspended by chains from two levers placed on the wall.

Now, however, after the main hope of the Peloponnesians, which rested on their mound, was completely defeated by the countermure, Archidamus resolved to try a last extraordinary experiment. He caused the hollow between the mound and the wall, and all the space which he could reach on the other side, to be filled up with a pile of faggots, which, when it had been steeped in pitch and sulphur, was set on fire. The blaze was such as had perhaps never before been kindled by the art of man; Thucydides compares it to a burning forest. It penetrated to a great distance within the city; and if it had been seconded, as the besiegers hoped, by a favourable wind,[557] would probably have destroyed it. The alarm and confusion which it caused for a time in the garrison were great; a large tract of the city was inaccessible. Yet it does not appear that Archidamus made any attempt to take advantage of their consternation and disorder. He waited; but the expected breeze did not come to spread the flames, and—according to a report which the historian mentions, but does not vouch for—a sudden storm of thunder and rain arose to quench them.

Thus thwarted and disheartened, and perhaps unable to keep the whole of his army any longer in the camp, he reluctantly determined to convert the siege to a blockade, which it was foreseen would be tedious and expensive. A part of the troops were immediately sent home: the remainder set about the work of circumvallation, which was apportioned to the contingents of the confederates. Two ditches were dug round the town, and yielded materials for a double line of walls, which were built in the intermediate space on the edge of each trench. The walls were sixteen feet asunder; but the interval was occupied with barracks for the soldiers, so that the whole might be said to form one wall. At the distance of ten battlements from each other were large towers, which covered the whole breadth of the rampart. At the autumnal equinox the lines were completed, and were left, one-half in the custody of the Bœotians, the other in that of their allies. The troops who were not needed for this service were then led back to their homes. The garrison of the place at this time consisted of four hundred Platæans, and eighty Athenians; and 110 women who had been retained, when all the useless hands were sent to Athens, to minister to the wants of the men.

PART OF THE PLATÆANS ESCAPE; THE REST CAPITULATE

Athens could do nothing for the relief of Platæa. The brave garrison had begun to suffer from the failure of provisions; and, as their condition grew hopeless, two of their leading men, Theænetus a soothsayer, and Eupompidas, one of the generals, conceived the project of escaping across the enemy’s lines. When it was first proposed, it was unanimously adopted: but as the time for its execution approached, half of the men shrank from the danger, and not more than 220 adhered to their resolution. The contrivers of the plan took the lead in the enterprise. Scaling ladders of a proper height were the first requisite; and they were made upon a measurement of the enemy’s wall, for which the besieged had no other basis than the number of layers of brick, which were sedulously counted over and over again by different persons, until the amount, and consequently the height of the wall, was sufficiently ascertained. A dark and stormy night, in the depth of winter, was chosen for the attempt; it was known that in such nights the sentinels took shelter in the towers, and left the intervening battlements unguarded; and it was on this practice that the success of the adventure mainly depended. It was concerted, that the part of the garrison which remained behind should make demonstrations of attacking the enemy’s lines on the side opposite to that by which their comrades attempted to escape. And first a small party, lightly armed, the right foot bare, to give them a surer footing in the mud, keeping at such a distance from each other as to prevent their arms from clashing, crossed the ditch, and planted their ladders, unseen and unheard; for the noise of their approach was drowned by the wind. The first who mounted were twelve men armed with short swords, led by Ammeas son of Corœbus. His followers, six on each side,[558] proceeded immediately to secure the two nearest towers. Next came another party with short spears, their shields being carried by their comrades behind them. But before many more had mounted, the fall of a tile, broken off from a battlement by one of the Platæans, as he laid hold of it, alarmed the nearest sentinels, and presently the whole force of the besiegers was called to the walls. But no one knew what had happened, and the general confusion was increased by the sally of the besieged. All therefore remained at their posts; only a body of three hundred men, who were always in readiness to move toward any quarter where they might be needed, issued from one of the gates in search of the place from which the alarm had arisen. In the meanwhile the assailants had made themselves masters of the two towers between which they scaled the wall, and, after cutting down the sentinels, guarded the passages which led through them, while others mounted by ladders to the roofs, and thence discharged their missiles on all who attempted to approach the scene of action. The main body of the fugitives now poured through the opening thus secured, applying more ladders, and knocking away the battlements: and as they gained the other side of the outer ditch, they formed upon its edge, and with their arrows and javelins protected their comrades, who were crossing, from the enemy above. Last of all, and with some difficulty—for the ditch was deep, the water high, and covered with a thin crust of ice—the parties which occupied the towers effected their retreat; and they had scarcely crossed, before the three hundred were seen coming up with lighted torches. But their lights, which discovered nothing to them, made them a mark for the missiles of the Platæans, who were thus enabled to elude their pursuit, and to move away in good order.

All the details of the plan seem to have been concerted with admirable forethought. On the first alarm fire signals were raised by the besiegers to convey the intelligence to Thebes. But the Platæans had provided against this danger, and showed similar signals from their own walls, so as to render it impossible for the Thebans to interpret those of the enemy. This precaution afforded additional security to their retreat. For instead of taking the nearest road to Athens, they first bent their steps toward Thebes, while they could see their pursuers with their blazing torches threading the ascent of Cithæron. After they had followed the Theban road for six or seven furlongs, they struck into that which led by Erythræ and Hysiæ to the Attic border, and arrived safe at Athens. Out of the 220 who set out together, one fell into the enemy’s hands, after he had crossed the outer ditch. Seven turned back panic-struck, and reported that all their companions had been cut off: and at daybreak a herald was sent to recover their bodies. The answer revealed the happy issue of the adventure.

By this time the remaining garrison of Platæa was reduced to the last stage of weakness. The besiegers might probably long before have taken the town without difficulty by assault. But the Spartans had a motive of policy for wishing to bring the siege to a different termination. They looked forward to a peace which they might have to conclude upon the ordinary terms of a mutual restitution of conquests made in the war. In this case, if Platæa fell by storm, they would be obliged to restore it to Athens; but if it capitulated, they might allege that it was no conquest. With this view their commander protracted the blockade, until at length he discovered by a feint attack that the garrison was utterly unable to defend the walls. He then sent a herald to propose that they should surrender, not to the Thebans, but to the Spartans, on condition that Spartan judges alone should[559] decide upon their fate. These terms were accepted, the town delivered up, and the garrison, which was nearly starved, received a supply of food. In a few days five commissioners came from Sparta to hold the promised trial. But instead of the usual forms of accusation and defence, the prisoners found themselves called upon to answer a single question: Whether in the course of the war they had done any service to Sparta and her allies. The spirit which dictated such an interrogatory was clear enough. The prisoners however obtained leave to plead for themselves without restriction; their defence was conducted by two of their number, one of whom, Lacon son of Aimnestus, was proxenus of Sparta.

The arguments of the Platæan orators, as reported by Thucydides, are strong, and the address which he attributes to them is the only specimen he has left of pathetic eloquence. They could point out the absurdity of sending five commissioners from Sparta, to inquire whether the garrison of a besieged town were friends of the besiegers; a question which, if retorted upon the party which asked it, would equally convict them of a wanton aggression. They could appeal to their services and sufferings in the Persian War, when they alone among the Bœotians remained constant to the cause of Greece, while the Thebans had fought on the side of the barbarians in the very land which they now hoped to make their own with the consent of Sparta. They could plead an important obligation which they had more recently conferred on Sparta herself, whom they had succoured with a third part of their whole force, when her very existence was threatened by the revolt of the Messenians after the great earthquake. They could urge that their alliance with Athens had been originally formed with the approbation, and even by the advice, of the Spartans themselves; that justice and honour forbade them to renounce a connection which they had sought as a favour, and from which they had derived great advantages; and that, as far as lay in themselves, they had not broken the last peace, but had been treacherously surprised by the Thebans, while they thought themselves secure in the faith of treaties. Even if their former merits were not sufficient to outweigh any later offence which could be imputed to them, they might insist on the Greek usage of war, which forbade proceeding to the last extremity with an enemy who had voluntarily surrendered himself; and as they had proved, by the patience with which they had endured the torments of hunger, that they preferred perishing by famine to falling into the hands of the Thebans, they had a right to demand that they should not be placed in a worse condition by their own act, but if they were to gain nothing by their capitulation, should be restored to the state in which they were when they made it.

But unhappily for the Platæans they had nothing to rely upon but the mercy or the honour of Sparta: two principles which never appear to have had the weight of a feather in any of her public transactions; and though the Spartan commissioners bore the title of judges, they came in fact only to pronounce a sentence which had been previously dictated by Thebes. Yet the appeal of the Platæans was so affecting, that the Thebans distrusted the firmness of their allies, and obtained leave to reply. They very judiciously and honestly treated the question as one which lay entirely between the Platæans and themselves. They attributed the conduct of their ancestors in the Persian War, to the compulsion of a small, dominant faction, and pleaded the services which they had themselves since rendered to Sparta. They depreciated the patriotic deeds of the Platæans, as the result of their attachment to Athens, whom they had not scrupled to abet in all her undertakings against the liberties of Greece. They defended the attempt which[560] they had made upon Platæa during the peace, on the ground that they had been invited by a number of its wealthiest and noblest citizens, and they charged the Platæans with a breach of faith in the execution of their Theban prisoners, whose blood called for vengeance as loudly as they for mercy.

These were indeed reasons which fully explained and perhaps justified their own enmity to Platæa, and did not need to be aided by so glaring a falsehood, as the assertion that their enemies were enjoying the benefit of a fair trial. But the only part of their argument, that bore upon the real question, was that in which they reminded the Spartans that Thebes was their most powerful and useful ally. This the Spartans felt; and they had long determined that no scruples of justice or humanity should endanger so valuable a connection. But it seems that they still could not devise any more ingenious mode of reconciling their secret motive with outward decency, than the original question, which implied that if the prisoners were their enemies, they might rightfully put them to death; and in this sophistical abstraction all the claims which arose out of the capitulation, when construed according to the plainest rules of equity, were overlooked. The question was again proposed to each separately, and when the ceremony was finished by his answer or his silence, he was immediately consigned to the executioner. The Platæans who suffered amounted to two hundred; their fate was shared by twenty-five Athenians, who could not have expected or claimed milder treatment, as they might have been fairly excepted from the benefit of the surrender. The women were all made slaves. If there had been nothing but inhumanity in the proceeding of the Spartans, it would have been so much slighter than that which they had exhibited towards their most unoffending prisoners from the beginning of the war, as scarcely to deserve notice. All that is very signal in this transaction is the baseness of their cunning, and perhaps the dullness of their invention.

The town and its territory were, with better right, ceded to the Thebans. For a year they permitted the town to be occupied by a body of exiles from Megara, and by the remnant of the Platæans belonging to the Theban party. But afterwards—fearing perhaps that it might be wrested from them—they razed it to the ground, leaving only the temples standing. But on the site, and with the materials of the demolished buildings, they erected an edifice 200 feet square, with an upper story, the whole divided into apartments, for the reception of the pilgrims who might come to the quinquennial festival, or on other sacred occasions. They also built a new temple, which together with the brass and the iron found in the town, which were made into couches, they dedicated to Hera, the goddess to whom Pausanias was thought to have owed his victory. The territory was annexed to the Theban state lands, and let for a term of ten years. So, in the ninety-third year after Platæa had entered into alliance with Athens, this alliance became the cause of its ruin.b

NAVAL AND OTHER COMBATS

While Archidamus was holding Platæa by the throat, other enterprises were meeting with varied success. Athens sent 2000 hoplites and 200 horse to Chalcidian Thrace under the Xenophon to whom Potidæa had surrendered. He made an assault on the town of Spartolus, only to lose a desperate battle, and to be crushed on his retreat; Xenophon and two associated generals were killed, and with them 430 hoplites, a loss of about 25 per cent.

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In Thrace, Sitalces, king of an immense realm, came to the aid of Athens against the double-dealing Macedonian king, Perdiccas. He invaded Macedonia and the Chalcidian territory, and voyaged far and wide until the severity of winter and the failure of Athenian aid led him to retire.

Meanwhile, the Spartans had tried to wrest the Ionian Sea from Athens. Their expedition against Cephallenia and Zacynthus in 430 B.C. had failed, but now a powerful horde was gathered against Acarnania. Sparta sent a thousand hoplites under the admiral Cnemus. Corinth, Leucadia, Anactorium, and Ambracia furnished troops, and other bodies came from barbaric Epirots and Macedonian tribes otherwise obscure, including 1000 Chaonians, 1000 Orestæ besides Thesprotians, Molossians, Atintanes, and Paravæi. Even the Macedonian king, Perdiccas, a professed ally of Athens, sent 1000 Macedonians. These arrived, however, too late; fortunately for them, since the troops, without waiting for the fleet, marched against the Acarnanian city of Stratus in such disorderly pride that they fell into ambush, and, after a chaotic retreat, dispersed.

The fleet which was to have collaborated in the campaign hoped to evade the vigilance of the Athenian fleet as Cnemus had done, but the imperial fleet was under the command of the great and cunning Phormion, who was not deterred from attack by inferiority of numbers. Interesting naval chess-play followed.a

Now the fleet from Corinth and the rest of the confederates coming from the Crissæan Bay, which ought to have joined Cnemus, in order to prevent the Acarnanians on the coast from succouring their countrymen in the interior, did not do so; but they were compelled, about the same time as the battle was fought at Stratus, to come to an engagement with Phormion and the twenty Athenian vessels that kept guard at Naupactus. For Phormion kept watching them as they coasted along out of the gulf, wishing to attack them in the open sea. But the Corinthians and the allies were not sailing to Acarnania with any intention to fight by sea, but were equipped more for land service. When, however, they saw them sailing along opposite to them, as they themselves proceeded along their own coast, and on attempting to cross over from Patræ in Achaia to the mainland opposite, on their way to Acarnania observed the Athenians sailing against them from Chalcis and the river Evenus (for they had not escaped their observation when they had endeavoured to bring to secretly during the night); under these circumstances they were compelled to engage in the mid passage. They had separate commanders for the contingents of the different states that joined the armament, but those of the Corinthians were Machaon, Isocrates, and Agatharcidas.

And now the Peloponnesians ranged their ships in a circle, as large as they could without leaving any opening, with their prows turned outward and their sterns inward; and placed inside all the small craft that accompanied them, and their five best sailers, to advance out quickly and strengthen any point on which the enemy might make his attack.

On the other hand, the Athenians, ranged in a single line, kept sailing round them, and reducing them into a smaller compass; continually brushing past them, and making demonstrations of an immediate onset; though they had previously been commanded by Phormion not to attack them till he himself gave the signal. For he hoped that their order would not be maintained like that of a land-force on shore, but that the ships would fall foul of each other, and that the other craft would cause confusion; and if the wind should blow from the gulf, in expectation of which he was sailing[562] round them, and which usually rose towards morning, that they would not remain steady an instant. He thought, too, that it rested with him to make the attack, whenever he pleased, as his ships were the better sailers; and that then would be the best time for making it. So when the wind came down upon them, and their ships, being now brought into a narrow compass, were thrown into confusion by the operation of both causes—the violence of the wind, and the small craft dashing against them—and when ship was falling foul of ship, and the crews were pushing them off with poles, and in their shouting, and trying to keep clear, and abusing each other, did not hear a word either of their orders or the boatswains’ directions; while, through inexperience, they could not lift their oars in the swell of the sea, and so rendered the vessels less obedient to the helmsmen; just then, at that favourable moment, he gave the signal.

And the Athenians attacked them, and first of all sank one of the admiral-ships, then destroyed all wherever they went, and reduced them to such a condition, that owing to their confusion none of them thought of resistance, but they fled to Patræ and Dyme, in Achaia. The Athenians having closely pursued them, and taken twelve ships, picking up most of the men from them, and putting them on board their own vessels, sailed off to Molycrium; and after erecting a trophy at Rhium, and dedicating a ship to Neptune, they returned to Naupactus. The Peloponnesians also immediately coasted along with their remaining ships from Dyme and Patræ to Cyllene, the arsenal of the Eleans; and Cnemus and the ships that were at Leucas, which were to have formed a junction with these, came thence, after the battle of Stratus, to the same port.

Then the Lacedæmonians sent to the fleet, as counsellors to Cnemus, Timocrates, Brasidas, and Lycophron; commanding him to make preparations for a second engagement more successful than the former, and not to be driven off the sea by a few ships. For the result appeared very different from what they might have expected (particularly as it was the first sea-fight they had attempted); and they thought that it was not so much their fleet that was inferior, but that there had been some cowardice; for they did not weigh the long experience of the Athenians against their own short practice of naval matters. They despatched them, therefore, in anger; and on their arrival they sent round, in conjunction with Cnemus, orders for ships to be furnished by the different states, while they refitted those they already had, with a view to an engagement. Phormion, too, on the other hand, sent messengers to Athens to acquaint them with their preparations, and to tell them of the victory they had gained; at the same time desiring them to send him quickly the largest possible number of ships, for he was in daily expectation of an immediate engagement. They despatched to him twenty; but gave additional orders to the commander of them to go first to Crete. For Nicias, a Cretan of Gortyn, who was their proxenus, persuaded them to sail against Cydonia, telling them that he would reduce it under their power; for it was at present hostile to them. His object, however, in calling them in was, that he might oblige the Polichnitæ, who bordered on the Cydonians. The commander, therefore, of the squadron went with it to Crete, and in conjunction with the Polichnitæ laid waste the territory of the Cydonians; and wasted no little time in the country, owing to adverse winds and the impossibility of putting to sea.

During the time that the Athenians were thus detained on the coast of Crete, the Peloponnesians at Cyllene, having made their preparations for an engagement, coasted along to Panormus in Achaia, where the land-force of[563] the Peloponnesians had come to support them. Phormion, too, coasted along to the Rhium near Molycrium, and dropped anchor outside of it, with twenty ships, the same as he had before fought with. This Rhium was friendly to the Athenians; the other, namely, that in the Peloponnesus, is opposite to it; the distance between the two being about seven stadia of sea, which forms the mouth of the Crissæan Gulf. At the Rhium in Achaia, then, being not far from Panormus, where their land-force was, the Peloponnesians also came to anchor with seventy-seven ships, when they saw that the Athenians had done the same. And for six or seven days they lay opposite each other, practising and preparing for the battle; the Peloponnesians intending not to sail beyond the Rhia into the open sea, for they were afraid of a disaster like the former; the Athenians, not to sail into the straits, for they thought that fighting in a confined space was in favour of the enemy.

Now when the Athenians did not sail into the narrow part of the gulf to meet them, the Peloponnesians, wishing to lead them on even against their will, weighed in the morning, and having formed their ships in a column four abreast, sailed to their own land towards the inner part of the gulf, with the right wing taking the lead, in which position also they lay at anchor. In this wing they had placed their twenty best sailers; that if Phormion, supposing them to be sailing against Naupactus, should himself also coast along in that direction to relieve the place, the Athenians might not, by getting outside their wing, escape their advance against them, but that these ships might shut them in. As they expected, he was alarmed for the place in its unprotected state; and when he saw them under weigh, against his will, and in great haste too, he embarked his crews and sailed along shore; while the land-forces of the Messenians at the same time came to support him. When the Peloponnesians saw them coasting along in a single file, and already within the gulf and near the shore (which was just what they wished), at one signal they suddenly brought their ships round and sailed in a line, as fast as each could, against the Athenians, hoping to cut off all their ships. Eleven of them, however, which were taking the lead, escaped the wing of the Peloponnesians and their sudden turn into the open gulf; but the rest they surprised, and drove them on shore, in their attempt to escape, and destroyed them, killing such of the crews as had not swum out of them. Some of the ships they lashed to their own and began to tow off empty, and one they took men and all; while in the case of some others, the Messenians, coming to their succour, and dashing into the sea with their armour, and boarding them, fought from the decks, and rescued them when they were already being towed off.

To this extent then the Peloponnesians had the advantage, and destroyed the Athenian ships; while their twenty vessels in the right wing were in pursuit of those eleven of the enemy that had just escaped their turn into the open gulf. They, with the exception of one ship, got the start of them and fled for refuge to Naupactus; and facing about, opposite the temple of Apollo, prepared to defend themselves, in case they should sail to shore against them. Presently they came up, and were singing the pæan as they sailed, considering that they had gained the victory; and the one Athenian vessel that had been left behind was chased by a single Leucadian far in advance of the rest. Now there happened to be a merchant vessel moored out at sea, which the Athenian ship had time to sail round, and struck the Leucadian in pursuit of her amidship, and sunk her. The Peloponnesians therefore were panic-stricken by this sudden and unlooked-for achievement; and moreover, as they were pursuing in disorder, on account of the advantage[564] they had gained, some of the ships dropped their oars, and stopped in their course, from a wish to wait for the rest—doing what was unadvisable, considering that they were observing each other at so short a distance—while others even ran on the shoals, through their ignorance of the localities.

The Athenians, on seeing this, took courage, and at one word shouted for battle, and rushed upon them. In consequence of their previous blunders and their present confusion, they withstood them but a short time and then fled to Panormus, whence they had put out. The Athenians pursued them closely, and took six of the ships nearest to them, and recovered their own, which the enemy had disabled near the shore and at the beginning of the engagement, and had taken in tow. Of the men, they put some to death, and made others prisoners. Now on board the Leucadian ship, which went down off the merchant vessel, was Timocrates the Lacedæmonian; who, when the ship was destroyed, killed himself, and falling overboard was floated into the harbour of Naupactus. On their return, the Athenians erected a trophy at the spot from which they put out before gaining the victory; and all the dead and the wrecks that were near their coast they took up, and gave back to the enemy theirs under truce. The Peloponnesians also erected a trophy, as victors, for the defeat of the ships they had disabled near the shore; and the ship they had taken they dedicated at Rhium, in Achaia, by the side of the trophy. Afterwards, being afraid of the reinforcement from Athens, all but the Leucadians sailed at the approach of night into the Crissæan Bay and the port of Corinth. Not long after their retreat, the Athenians from Crete arrived at Naupactus, with the twenty ships that were to have joined Phormion before the engagement. And thus ended the summer.

Before, however, the fleet dispersed which had retired to Corinth and the Crissæan Bay, Cnemus, Brasidas, and the rest of the Peloponnesian commanders wished, at the suggestion of the Megarians, to make an attempt upon Piræus, the port of Athens; which, as was natural from their decided superiority at sea, was left unguarded and open. It was determined, therefore, that each man should take his oar, and cushion, and tropoter, and go by land from Corinth to the sea on the side of Athens; and that after proceeding as quickly as possible to Megara, they should launch from its port, Nisæa, forty vessels that happened to be there, and sail straightway to Piræus. For there was neither any fleet keeping guard before it, nor any thought of the enemy ever sailing against it in so sudden a manner; and as for their venturing to do it openly and deliberately, they supposed that either they would not think of it, or themselves would not fail to be aware beforehand, if they should. Having adopted this resolution, they proceeded immediately to execute it; and when they had arrived by night, and launched the vessels from Nisæa, they sailed, not against Athens as they had intended, for they were afraid of the risk (some wind or other was also said to have prevented them), but to the headland of Salamis looking towards Megara; where there was a fort, and a guard of three ships to prevent anything from being taken in or out of Megara. So they assaulted the fort, and towed off the triremes empty; and making a sudden attack on the rest of Salamis, they laid it waste.

Now fire signals of an enemy’s approach were raised towards Athens, and a consternation was caused by them not exceeded by any during the whole war. For those in the city imagined that the enemy had already sailed into Piræus; while those in Piræus thought that Salamis had been taken, and that they were all but sailing into their harbours: which indeed, if they would but have not been afraid of it, might easily have been done; and it was not a wind that would have prevented it. But at daybreak the Athenians[565] went all in a body to Piræus to resist the enemy; and launched their ships, and going on board with haste and much uproar, sailed with the fleet to Salamis, while with their land-forces they mounted guard at Piræus. When the Peloponnesians saw them coming to the rescue, after overrunning the greater part of Salamis, and taking both men and booty, and the three ships from the port of Budorum, they sailed for Nisæa as quickly as they could; for their vessels too caused them some alarm, as they had been launched after lying idle a long time, and were not at all water-tight. On their arrival at Megara they returned again to Corinth by land. When the Athenians found them no longer on the coast of Salamis, they also sailed back; and after this alarm they paid more attention in future to the safety of Piræus, both by closing the harbours, and by all other precautions.

During this winter, after the fleet of the Peloponnesians had dispersed, the Athenians at Naupactus under the command of Phormion, after coasting along to Astacus, and there disembarking, marched into the interior of Acarnania, with four hundred heavy-armed of the Athenians from the ships and four hundred of the Messenians. From Stratus, Coronta, and some other places, they expelled certain individuals who were thought to be untrue to them; and having restored Cynes, son of Theolytus, to Coronta, returned again to their vessels and sailed home to Athens at the return of spring, taking with them such of the prisoners from the naval battles as were freemen (who were exchanged man for man), and the ships they had captured. And so ended this winter, and the third year of the war.c

Bury, following Grote, says, that after this, Phormion “silently drops out of history, and as we find his son Asopius sent out in the following summer at the request of the Acarnanians, we must conclude that his career had been cut short by death”: Duruy says he died in 428 B.C., and that “the city gave him an honourable funeral and placed his tomb beside that of Pericles.” Asopius after failing in an assault on Œniadæ, was killed before Leucas.a

FOOTNOTES

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[566]

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE FOURTH TO THE TENTH YEARS—AND PEACE

The fourth year of the war, 428 B.C., opened with the third invasion of Attica by Archidamus, but the Periclean policy of remaining within the walls was continued. Athens herself remaining impregnable, revolt broke out among her allies.a

One of the most remarkable events in the history of the Peloponnesian war is the revolt of Mytilene. The island of Lesbos contained five Æolian towns, which were indeed connected in a certain way, but were yet perfectly independent of one another; Mytilene, however, by the advantages of its position and by its excellent harbour, had risen far above the other four towns. The three smaller ones among them, Pyrrha, Eresus, and Antissa, had absolutely joined Mytilene, and were guided by it; but Methymna had not done so, and the relation in which the Lesbians stood to Athens was still very favourable: their contingent consisted in ships commanded by Lesbians, and they paid no tribute. But the fate of Samos had warned the few places standing in the same relation, Chios and Lesbos, and had rendered them suspicious of the intentions of the Athenians; and they feared lest the Athenians should treat them as they had treated the smaller islands, and should reduce them to the same state of dependence as Samos, by ordering them to deliver up their ships and pay tribute. But the more such places became aware of their importance, and the more they felt that by going over to the other side, they would cast a great weight into the scale, the more they naturally became inclined to revolt. Thus the Mytileneans were prepared for the step they took, and the revolt spread thence over the whole of Lesbos, with the exception of Methymna, which, as is always the case in confederations of states, from jealousy of Mytilene, sided with the Athenians, and directed their attention to the fact that treasonable plots were formed in Lesbos, and that a revolt was near at hand.

THE REVOLT OF MYTILENE

At first the Athenians, with incredible carelessness, paid little attention to the information, a neglect which was the consequence of the strange anarchical condition of Athens, where the government had in reality no power. There was no magistracy to take the initiative, or to form a preliminary resolution or probuleuma in such cases. The people might indeed meet, and did meet every day, and any demagogue might propose a measure; but when[567] this was not done, there was no authority on which it was incumbent to introduce such measures, and nothing was done. At Mytilene, on the other hand, although under the supremacy of Athens democracy everywhere gained the upper hand, there seems to have been a powerful aristocratic element, and the government must have been very strong. Everything was carefully and cautiously prepared, and was kept profoundly secret. The revolt was determined upon, and public opinion was in favour of it. But as they wished to proceed safely, and provide themselves sufficiently with arms and provisions, the undertaking was delayed, and the Athenians, who at first had neglected everything, at last fitted out an expedition which was to take Mytilene by surprise.

But on this occasion it became evident how injurious it was to Athens, down to the end of the war, that at such times of urgent necessity the government still continued to be as before, and that there had not been instituted a separate magistrate for war to take such measures in time. As all proceedings were public, and neither the preparations nor their object could be kept secret, all the plans were known to everybody, as they were discussed in the popular assembly. It was indeed resolved there to surprise Mytilene; but this decree was ludicrous, and its consequences might be foreseen.

A Mytilenean, who was staying at Athens, or some one else anxious to do them a service, on hearing of it, went to Eubœa, took a boat, and informed the Mytileneans of the danger that was threatening them. Had this not been done, the revolt would have been prevented, and that for the good of the Mytileneans themselves. The intention of the Athenians was to surprise the city during the celebration of a festival, which the Mytileneans solemnised at a considerable distance from their city, in conjunction with the other Lesbians. Knowing the design of the Athenians, they did not go out to the festival, and determined to raise the standard of revolt at once. They quickly applied to the Peloponnesians, with whom they had, no doubt, been already negotiating, and requested the Spartans to send them succour of some kind or another. The Spartans sent them a commander without a force, which was anything but what they would have liked. He undertook the command in the city, and exhorted them to be courageous and persevering. They were expected to undergo the hardships of famine for the sake of the Spartans, but the general did not bring them any additional strength to repel the Athenians. They had nothing but their own forces.

The Athenian fleet now arrived and blockaded the city; after several little engagements the Mytileneans were reduced to extremities. Their envoys had at length prevailed upon the Peloponnesians to send them a motley fleet to relieve Mytilene. But it set sail with the usual slowness of the Spartans, and did not arrive until Mytilene, compelled by famine, had surrendered. Such was the care shown to save Mytilene! The long endurance of famine, shows how strongly the Mytileneans were bent upon escaping from the dominion of their enemies. How fearful it must have been, may be inferred from the fact, that in the end they preferred surrendering at discretion to an enraged enemy. The courage of the Mytileneans was like that of the Campanians in the Hannibalic War: they allowed themselves to be shut up like sheep in a fold, to be starved, and thus there remained nothing for them in the end, but to surrender. Many of those who had been most conspicuous, were taken prisoners by Paches, the Athenian general. The capitulation contained nothing else but a promise that the Athenian commander would not, on his own authority, order any one to be put to death, and that he would leave the decision to the people of Athens.

[568]

The war had already assumed the most fearful character: Alcidas, the Spartan admiral of the Peloponnesian fleet, which went to the relief of the Mytileneans, had, on his voyage, indulged in the most cruel piracy; he had captured all the ships he met with, without any regard as to what place they belonged to, and had thrown into the sea the crews of the allies and subjects of the Athenians, for whose deliverance the Spartans pretended to be anxious, as well as those of Athenian vessels. This barbarous mode of warfare was practised by the Spartans from the very beginning of the war. They not only captured the Athenian ships which sailed round Peloponnesus, but mutilated the crews, chopping off the hands of the sailors, and then drowned them.

This inhuman cruelty of the Spartans excited in the minds of the Athenians a desire to make reprisals; and thus it unfortunately became quite a natural feeling among the Athenians to devise inhuman vengeance upon the Mytileneans. They felt that Athens had given the Mytileneans no cause for revolt, that the alliance with them had been left unaltered as it had been before, and that if the Mytileneans had succeeded in joining the Spartans, they would have brought Athens into great danger, partly by their power, and partly by their example. It was, moreover, thought necessary to terrify Chios by a striking example, in order that the oligarchical party there might not attempt a similar undertaking. Those who did not see the necessity for such a measure, at least imagined that they saw it, for reasons of this kind are never anything else than an evil pretext. With all enticements of this description, the people were induced to despatch orders to the general Paches to avenge on the Mytileneans what the Spartans had done to the Athenians. He was to put to death all the men capable of bearing arms, and to sell women and children into slavery.

But the minds of the Athenians were too humane for such a design to be entertained by them for any length of time; and although it had been possible to carry out such a decree, through the existing confusion of ideas about morality, yet the better voice had not yet died away in their bosoms. The historian need not tell us that thousands could not close their eyes during the night in consequence of the terrible decree; and that through fear lest it should be carried into effect, they assembled early in the morning, even before sunrise. The morning after the day on which the decree had been passed, all the people met earlier than usual, and demanded of the prytanes once more to put the question to the vote, to see whether the decree should be carried into effect or not. This was done, and although the ferocious Cleon struggled with all fury to obtain the sanction of the first decree, yet humanity prevailed at this second voting.b

It is in this debate that Cleon first appears in the pages of Thucydides; he was opposed by Diodotus who, by calm logic rather than impassioned appeal, won the Athenians over to mercy. It is thus that Thucydides describes the escape of the Mytileneans:a

“And they immediately despatched another trireme with all speed, that they might not find the city destroyed through the previous arrival of the first; which had the start by a day and a night. The Mytilenean ambassadors having provided for the vessel wine and barley-cakes, and promising great rewards if they should arrive first, there was such haste in their course, that at the same time as they rowed they ate cakes kneaded with oil and wine; and some slept in turn while others rowed. And as there happened to be no wind against them, and the former vessel did not sail in any haste on so horrible a business, while this hurried on in the manner described;[569] though the other arrived so much first that Paches had read the decree, and was on the point of executing the sentence, the second came to land after it, and prevented the butchery. Into such imminent peril did Mytilene come.

“The other party, whom Paches had sent off as the chief authors of the revolt, the Athenians put to death, according to the advice of Cleon, amounting to rather more than one thousand. They also dismantled the walls of the Mytileneans, and seized their ships.”c

It was resolved that only the leaders of the rebellion should be taken to account and conveyed to Athens, but that no harm should be done to the other Mytileneans. The Mytileneans were, of course, obliged to deliver up all their ships and arms; and their territory, with that of the other towns, except Methymna, made a cleruchia: that is, it was divided into equal lots, and given to Athenian citizens as fiefs. But this was, in point of fact, nothing else than the imposition of a permanent land-tax upon the former owners; for the Athenians let out their lots to the ancient proprietors for a small rent. The number of rebels who were carried to Athens and executed there, was, indeed, very great, sadly great; but they were real rebels, and their blood did not come upon the heads of the Athenians.

In the declamations of the sophists, we hear much of the evils of the Athenian democracy, of the misfortunes of the most distinguished men: and that of Paches is regarded as one of the most conspicuous cases. The people, it is said, were ungrateful towards Paches, the conqueror of Mytilene, who had, even before that conquest, distinguished himself as a general; and they now took him to account for the manner in which he had conducted the war; and he, in order to escape condemnation, made away with himself. This story is believed to have been related by the father of all sophists and declaimers, Isocrates, and is mentioned also by the sophists of later times, and by a Roman writer on military affairs. But the true account may be learnt from a poem of the Greek Anthology, where Paches is said to have abused his power in subduing the island: he dishonoured two noble ladies of Mytilene, who went to Athens to appeal to the sense of justice of the Athenian people.

On that occasion the Athenians showed their true humanity, for they forgot how dangerous enemies the Mytileneans had been to them, and notwithstanding the victory of Paches, they were inexorable towards him, and had he not put an end to his life, he would certainly have been condemned and handed over to the Eleven. Of this deed the friends of Athens need not be ashamed.

The conduct of the commander of the Spartan fleet, which appeared on the coast of Ionia, shows the Spartans in the same light in which they always appear, as immensely awkward and slow in all they undertook. It was in vain that the Corinthians and other enterprising people advised them to attack Mytilene, because the Athenians were in a newly-conquered city, and the appearance of a superior force of Peloponnesians would be sufficient to create a revolt in the city, and to crush the small force of the Athenians. But Alcidas, in torpid Spartan laziness, was immovable, and returned to Peloponnesus without undertaking or having effected anything, except that he received on board the suppliants who threw themselves into the sea, and carried on the most cruel piracy. The Spartans followed the principle of not punishing their generals, which was the very opposite to that of the Athenians, who often made their commanders responsible when fortune had been against them; and when they had neglected an opportunity, or been guilty of any crime, they never escaped unpunished.b

[570]

It was shortly after the fate of Mytilene was sealed, that Platæa fell into the power of ruthless Sparta, as described previously. The affair of Mytilene was followed by an internal war in the island of Corcyra. In describing this sedition Thucydides is unwontedly vivid and his final moralising upon the bloody event, as Grote says, “will ever remain memorable as the work of an analyst and a philosopher.”a

THUCYDIDES’ ACCOUNT OF THE REVOLT OF CORCYRA

Now the forty ships of the Peloponnesians which had gone to the relief of the Lesbians, (and which were flying, at the time we referred to them, across the open sea, and were pursued by the Athenians, and caught in a storm off Crete, and from that point had been dispersed,) on reaching the Peloponnese, found at Cyllene thirteen ships of the Leucadians and Ambracians, with Brasidas, son of Tellis, who had lately arrived as counsellor to Alcidas. For the Lacedæmonians wished, as they had failed in saving Lesbos, to make their fleet more numerous, and to sail to Corcyra, which was in a state of sedition; as the Athenians were stationed at Naupactus with only twelve ships; and in order that they might have the start of them, before any larger fleet reinforced them from Athens. So Brasidas and Alcidas proceeded to make preparations for these measures.

For the Corcyræans began their sedition on the return home of the prisoners taken in the sea-fights off Epidamnus, who had been sent back by the Corinthians, nominally on the security of eight hundred talents given for them by their proxeni, but in reality, because they had consented to bring over Corcyra to the Corinthians. These men then were intriguing, by visits to each of the citizens, to cause the revolt of the city from the Athenians. On the arrival of a ship from Athens and another from Corinth, with envoys on board, and on their meeting for a conference, the Corcyræans voted to continue allies of the Athenians according to their agreement, but to be on friendly terms with the Peloponnesians, as they had formerly been.

Now there was one Pithias, a volunteer proxenus of the Athenians, and the leader of the popular party; him these men brought to trial, on a charge of enslaving Corcyra to the Athenians. Having been acquitted, he brought to trial in return the five richest individuals of their party, charging them with cutting stakes in the ground sacred to Jupiter, and to the hero Alcinous; the penalty affixed being a stater for every stake. When they had been convicted, and, owing to the amount of the penalty, were sitting as suppliants in the temples, that they might be allowed to pay it by instalments, Pithias, who was a member of the council also, persuades that body to enforce the law. So when they were excluded from all hope by the severity of the law, and at the same time heard that Pithias was likely, while he was still in the council, to persuade the populace to hold as friends and foes the same as the Athenians did, they conspired together, and took daggers, and, having suddenly entered the council, assassinated Pithias and others, both counsellors and private persons, to the number of sixty. Some few, however, of the same party as Pithias, took refuge on board the Athenian trireme, which was still there.

Having perpetrated this deed, and summoned the Corcyræans to an assembly, they told them that this was the best thing for them, and that so they would be least in danger of being enslaved by the Athenians; and they moved, that in future they should receive neither party, except coming in a[571] quiet manner with a single ship, but should consider a larger force as hostile. As they moved, so also they compelled them to adopt their motion. They likewise sent immediately ambassadors to Athens, to show, respecting what had been done, that it was for their best interests, and to prevail on the refugees there to adopt no measure prejudicial to them, that there might not be any reaction.

On their arrival, the Athenians arrested as revolutionists both the ambassadors and all who were persuaded by them, and lodged them in custody in Ægina. In the meantime, on the arrival of a Corinthian ship and some Lacedæmonian envoys, the dominant party of the Corcyræans attacked the commonalty, and defeated them in battle. When night came on, the commons took refuge in the citadel, and on the eminences in the city, and there established themselves in a body, having possession also of the Hyllaic harbour; while the other party occupied the market-place, where most of them dwelt, with the harbour adjoining it, looking towards the mainland.

The next day they had a few skirmishes, and both parties sent about into the country, inviting the slaves, and offering them freedom. The greater part of them joined the commons as allies; while the other party was reinforced by eight hundred auxiliaries from the continent.

After the interval of a day, a battle was again fought, and the commons gained the victory, having the advantage both in strength of position and in numbers: the women also boldly assisted them, throwing at the enemy with the tiling from the houses, and standing the brunt of the mêlée beyond what could have been expected from their nature. About twilight the rout of the oligarchical party was effected; and fearing that the commons might carry the arsenal at the first assault, and put them to the sword, they fired the houses round about the market-place, and the lodging-houses, to stop their advance, sparing neither their own nor other people’s; so that much property belonging to the merchants was consumed, and the whole city was in danger of being destroyed, if, in addition to the fire, there had been a wind blowing on it. After ceasing from the engagement, both sides remained quiet, and kept guard during the night. On victory declaring for the commons, the Corinthian ship stole out to sea; while the greater part of the auxiliaries passed over unobserved to the continent.

The day following, Nicostratus son of Diïtrephes, a general of the Athenians, came to their assistance from Naupactus with twelve ships and five hundred heavy-armed, and wished to negotiate a settlement, persuading them to agree with each other to bring to trial the ten chief authors of the sedition (who immediately fled), and for the rest to dwell in peace, having made an arrangement with each other, and with the Athenians, to have the same foes and friends. After effecting this he was going to sail away; but the leaders of the commons urged him to leave them five of his ships, that their adversaries might be less on the move; and they would themselves man and send with him an equal number of theirs. He consented to do so, and they proceeded to enlist their adversaries for the ships. They, fearing that they should be sent off to Athens, seated themselves as suppliants in the temple of the Dioscuri; while Nicostratus was trying to persuade them to rise, and to encourage them. When he did not prevail on them, the commons, having armed themselves on this pretext, alleged that they had no good intentions, as was evident from their mistrust in not sailing with them; and removed their arms from their houses, and would have despatched some of them whom they met with, if Nicostratus had not prevented it. The rest, seeing what was going on, seated themselves as suppliants in the[572] temple of Juno, their number amounting to not less than four hundred. But the commons, being afraid of their making some new attempt, persuaded them to rise, and transferred them to the island in front of the temple, and provisions were sent over there for them.

When the sedition was at this point, on the fourth or fifth day after the transfer of the men to the island, the ships of the Peloponnesians, three-and-fifty in number, came up from Cyllene, having been stationed there since their return from Ionia. The commander of them, as before, was Alcidas, Brasidas sailing with him as counsellor. After coming to anchor at Sybota, a port on the mainland, as soon as it was morning they sailed towards Corcyra.

The Corcyræans, being in great confusion, and alarmed both at the state of things in the city and at the advance of the enemy, at once proceeded to equip sixty vessels, and to send them out, as they were successively manned, against the enemy; though the Athenians advised them to let them sail out first, and afterwards to follow themselves with all their ships together. On their vessels coming up to the enemy in this scattered manner, two immediately went over to them, while in others the crews were fighting amongst themselves, and there was no order in their measures. The Peloponnesians, seeing their confusion, drew up twenty of their ships against the Corcyræans, and the remainder against the twelve of the Athenians, amongst which were the two celebrated vessels, Salaminia and Paralus.

The Corcyræans, coming to the attack in bad order, and by few ships at a time, were distressed through their own arrangements; while the Athenians, fearing the enemy’s numbers and the chance of their surrounding them, did not attack their whole fleet, or even the centre of the division opposed to themselves, but took it in flank, and sank one ship. After this, when the Peloponnesians had formed in a circle, they began to sail round them, and endeavoured to throw them into confusion. The division which was opposed to the Corcyræans perceiving this, and fearing that the same thing might happen as had at Naupactus, advanced to their support. Thus the whole united fleet simultaneously attacked the Athenians, who now began to retire, rowing astern; at the same time wishing the vessels of the Corcyræans to retreat first, while they themselves drew off as leisurely as possible, and while the enemy were still ranged against them. The sea-fight then, having been of this character, ended at sunset.

The Corcyræans, fearing that the enemy, on the strength of his victory, might sail against the city, and either rescue the men in the island, or proceed to some other violent measures, carried the men over again to the sanctuary of Juno, and kept the city under guard. The Peloponnesians, however, though victorious in the engagement, did not dare to sail against the city, but withdrew with thirteen of the Corcyræan vessels to the continent, whence they had put out. The next day they advanced none the more against the city, though the inhabitants were in great confusion, and though Brasidas, it is said, advised Alcidas to do so, but was not equal to him in authority; but they landed on the promontory of Leucimne, and ravaged the country.

Meanwhile, the commons of the Corcyræans, being very much alarmed lest the fleet should sail against them, entered into negotiation with the suppliants and the rest for the preservation of the city. And some of them they persuaded to go on board the ships; for, notwithstanding the general dismay, they still manned thirty, in expectation of the enemy’s advance against them. But the Peloponnesians, after ravaging the land till mid-day, sailed away; and at nightfall the approach of sixty Athenian ships[573] from Leucas was signalled to them, which the Athenians had sent with Eurymedon son of Thucles, as commander, on hearing of the sedition, and of the fleet about to go to Corcyra with Alcidas.

The Peloponnesians then immediately proceeded homeward by night with all haste, passing along shore; and having hauled their ships over the isthmus of Leucas, that they might not be seen doubling it, they sailed back. The Corcyræans, on learning the approach of the Athenian fleet and the retreat of the enemy, took and brought into the city the Messenians, who before had been without the walls: and having ordered the ships they had manned to sail round into the Hyllaic harbour, while they were going round, they put to death any of their opponents they might have happened to seize; and afterwards despatched, as they landed them from the ships, all that they had persuaded to go on board. They also went to the sanctuary of Juno, and persuaded about fifty men to take their trial, and condemned them all to death. The majority of the suppliants, who had not been prevailed on by them, when they saw what was being done, slew one another there on the sacred ground; while some hanged themselves on the trees, and others destroyed themselves as they severally could. During seven days that Eurymedon stayed after his arrival with his sixty ships, the Corcyræans were butchering those of their countrymen whom they thought hostile to them; bringing their accusations, indeed, against those only who were for putting down the democracy; but some were slain for private enmity also, and others for money owed them by those who had borrowed it. Every mode of death was thus had recourse to; and whatever ordinarily happens in such a state of things, happened then, and still more. For father murdered son, and they were dragged out of the sanctuaries, or slain in them; while in that of Bacchus some were walled up and perished. So savagely did the sedition proceed; while it appeared to do so all the more from its being amongst the earliest.[54]

For afterwards, even the whole of Greece, so to say, was convulsed; struggles being everywhere made by the popular leaders to call in the Athenians, by the oligarchical party, the Lacedæmonians. Now they would have had no pretext for calling them in, nor have been prepared to do so, in time of peace. But when pressed by war, and when an alliance also was maintained by both parties for the injury of their opponents and for their own gain therefrom, occasions of inviting them were easily supplied to such as wished to effect any revolution. And many dreadful things befell the cities through this sedition, which occur, and will always do so, as long as human nature is the same, but in a more violent or milder form, and varying in their phenomena, as the several variations of circumstances may in each case present themselves.

For in peace and prosperity both communities and individuals had better feelings, through not falling into urgent needs; whereas war, by taking away the free supply of daily wants, is a violent master, and assimilates most men’s tempers to their present condition. The states then were thus torn by sedition, and the later instances of it in any part, from having heard what had been done before, exhibited largely an excessive refinement of ideas, both in the eminent cunning of their plans, and the monstrous cruelty of their vengeance. The ordinary meaning of words was changed by them as[574] they thought proper. For reckless daring was regarded as courage that was true to its friends; prudent delay, as specious cowardice; moderation, as a cloak for unmanliness; being intelligent in everything, as being useful for nothing. Frantic violence was assigned to the manly character; cautious plotting was considered a specious excuse for declining the contest.

The advocate for cruel measures was always trusted; while his opponent was suspected. He that plotted against another, if successful, was reckoned clever; he that suspected a plot, still cleverer; but he that forecasted for escaping the necessity of all such things, was regarded as one who broke up his party, and was afraid of his adversaries. In a word, the man was commended who anticipated one going to do an evil deed, or who persuaded to it one who had no thought of it. Moreover, kindred became a tie less close than party, because the latter was more ready for unscrupulous audacity. For such associations have nothing to do with any benefit from established laws, but are formed in opposition to those institutions by a spirit of rapacity. Again, their mutual grounds of confidence they confirmed not so much by any reference to the divine law as by fellowship in some act of lawlessness. The fair professions of their adversaries they received with a cautious eye to their actions, if they were stronger than themselves, and not with a spirit of generosity.

To be avenged on another was deemed of greater consequence than to escape being first injured oneself. As for oaths, if in any case exchanged with a view to a reconciliation, being taken by either party with regard to their immediate necessity, they only held good so long as they had no resources from any other quarter; but he that first, when occasion offered, took courage to break them, if he saw his enemy off his guard, wreaked his vengeance on him with greater pleasure for his confidence, than he would have done in an open manner; taking into account both the safety of the plan, and the fact that by taking a treacherous advantage of him he also won a prize for cleverness. And the majority of men, when dishonest, more easily get the name of talented, than, when simple, that of good; and of the one they are ashamed, while of the other they are proud. Now the cause of all these things was power pursued for the gratification of covetousness and ambition, and the consequent violence of parties when once engaged in contention.

For the leaders in the cities, having a specious profession on each side, put forward, respectively, the political equality of the people, or a moderate aristocracy, while in word they served the common interests, in truth they made them their prizes. And while struggling by every means to obtain an advantage over each other, they dared and carried out the most dreadful deeds; heaping on still greater vengeance, not only so far as was just and expedient for the state, but to the measure of what was pleasing to either party in each successive case: and whether by an unjust sentence of condemnation, or on gaining the ascendency by the strong hand, they were ready to glut the animosity they felt at the moment. Thus piety was in fashion with neither party; but those who had the luck to effect some odious purpose under fair pretences were the more highly spoken of. The neutrals amongst the citizens were destroyed by both parties; either because they did not join them in their quarrel, or for envy that they should so escape.

Thus every kind of villainy arose in Greece from these seditions. Simplicity, which is a very large ingredient in a noble nature, was laughed down and disappeared; and mutual opposition of feeling, with a want of confidence, prevailed to a great extent. For there was neither promise that[575] could be depended on, nor oath that struck them with fear, to put an end to their strife; but all being in their calculations more strongly inclined to despair of anything proving trustworthy, they looked forward to their own escape from suffering more easily than they could place confidence in arrangements with others. And the men of more homely wit, generally speaking, had the advantage; for through fearing their own deficiency and the cleverness of their opponents, lest they might be worsted in words, and be first plotted against by means of the versatility of their enemy’s genius, they proceeded boldly to deeds. Whereas their opponents, arrogantly thinking that they should be aware beforehand, and that there was no need for their securing by action what they could by stratagem, were unguarded and more often ruined.

It was in Corcyra then that most of these things were first ventured on; both the deeds which men who were governed with a spirit of insolence, rather than of moderation, by those who afterwards afforded them an opportunity of vengeance, would do as the retaliating party; or which those who wished to rid themselves of their accustomed poverty, and passionately desired the possession of their neighbours’ goods, might unjustly resolve on; or which those who had begun the struggle, not from covetousness, but on a more equal footing, might savagely and ruthlessly proceed to, chiefly through being carried away by the rudeness of their anger. Thus the course of life being at that time thrown into confusion in the city, human nature, which is wont to do wrong even in spite of the laws, having then got the mastery of the law, gladly showed itself to be unrestrained in passion, above regard for justice, and an enemy to all superiority. They would not else have preferred vengeance to religion, and gain to innocence; in which state envy would have had no power to hurt them. And so men presume in their acts of vengeance to be the first to violate those common laws on such questions, from which all have a hope secured to them of being themselves rescued from misfortune; and they will not allow them to remain, in case of any one’s ever being in danger and in need of some of them.c

DEMOSTHENES AND SPHACTERIA

These massacres at Corcyra, Mytilene, Platæa, and Melos were doubly disastrous; iniquity always striking back at its perpetrators, thus making two victims. Through such reversions to the barbarity of former days the sense of right, of justice will everywhere become enfeebled until it finally disappears.

As though nature herself had wished to take part in the general disorder, earthquakes visited Attica, Eubœa, and all of Bœotia, particularly Orchomenos. Pestilence had never made its appearance in the Peloponnesus: now for a year it raged among the Athenians with terrible mortality. Since its outbreak it had carried off forty-three hundred hoplites, three hundred horsemen, and innumerable victims among the general population. This was the last blow fate dealt the Athenians. To appease the god to whom all pollution was an offence, they caused the island of Apollo to be thoroughly purified as had already been done by the Pisistratidæ. Birth and death being alike forbidden at Delos, the remains of the dead buried there were exhumed and sent elsewhere, and the sick were transported to Rhenea, a neighbouring island. Finally, there were instituted in honour of Apollo games and horse-races which were to be celebrated every four years, the[576] Greeks as well as the Romans thinking to gain thus the protection of a god, whom they caused to be represented by images at these festivals.

The Ionians, excluded from the Peloponnesian solemnities, flocked to those of Delos, where Nicias, at the first celebration, made himself remarkable for the magnificence of his gifts. In one night he caused to be constructed between Delos and Rhenea a bridge seven hundred metres long, carpeted and decorated with wreaths, across which was to pass the procession of the dead exiled in the name of religion from the holy island (425 B.C.).

It is a proof of the part taken by the people of Athens in the great things accomplished by Pericles, that in the four years passed without his enlightened counsel, they had displayed under the double scourge of plague and war that steadfastness he had particularly enjoined upon them: no disturbances took place in the city and no pettiness of spirit was shown in the choice of military chiefs. In vain Cleon thundered from the tribune. Into the hands of none but tried generals, were they noble, rich, or friends of peace, like Nicias and Demosthenes, was given the command of their armies. At Mytilene and Corcyra those who had placed their trust in Lacedæmon had perished; the destruction of Platæa was the only check received by Athens. She began to turn her gaze toward Sicily; soon she sent there twenty galleys to aid the Leontini against Syracuse. Her pretext was community of origin with the Leontini, but in reality she wished to prevent the exportation of Sicilian grain into the Peloponnesus.

Demosthenes was a true general, able and bold; to him war was a science made up of difficult combinations as well as courage. Leaving to his colleague, Nicias, the seas near Athens he set out for western waters, to destroy the influence of Corinth even in the gulf that bears his name. Aided by the Acarnanians he had the preceding year (426) vanquished in the land-battle of Olpæ, by force of superior tactics, the Peloponnesians, who lost so many men that the general had three hundred panoplies, his share of the plunder, consecrated in the temple at Athens. But this Acarnanian War, related at such length by Thucydides, could not have very serious results. An audacious enterprise by Demosthenes seemed, at one moment, to have brought it to a close. Struck, while navigating around the Peloponnesus, by the advantageous position of Pylos a promontory on the coast of Messene which commands the present harbour of Navarino, the best sea-port of the peninsula, left deserted by the Spartans since the Messenian War, the idea came to him that if he could occupy it with Messenians he would be “attaching a burning torch to the flank of the Peloponnesus.” He obtained from the people permission to act on this idea; but when the fleet which had set out for Corcyra and Italy arrived at Pylos, the generals commanding it shrank from the project and refused to execute it. The winds interposed in Demosthenes’ behalf, by driving the ships on to the coast and forcing the Athenians to land. Once on shore the soldiers, with that industry that characterised the Athenians, set to work to construct walls and fortifications, without either tools for cutting stone or hods for carrying mortar. At the end of six days the rampart was about finished and Demosthenes, with six galleys, took up his position on the point (425).

Sparta was with reason alarmed at this move, the place chosen by Demosthenes at the west of the Peloponnesus, forming an excellent station for hostile fleets, and from Pylos the Athenians would be able to spread agitation through all Messene, perhaps even to incite the helots to fresh revolt. The Peloponnesian army was at once recalled from Attica where it had only[577] arrived two weeks before, and also the fleet from Corcyra with the end in view of blockading Pylos by land and by sea. At the entrance to this harbour was an island fifteen stadia [not quite two miles] long called Sphacteria. The Lacedæmonians landed on this island a force of four hundred and twenty hoplites, and barred the channel on either side with vessels having their prows turned outward. Pylos had no other defence seaward than the difficulty of effecting a landing on her shores, but it was on this side that the attack began. It lasted two days and was unsuccessful. Brasidas, who had displayed great valour, was covered with wounds and lost his shield, which the waters carried over to the Athenians. There was still hope for the Lacedæmonians; but at this point forty Athenian galleys arriving from Zacynthus, assailed their fleet and after a furious combat drove their ships upon the land. Thus Sphacteria was surrounded by an armed circle that kept close guard about her night and day.

Sparta was thrown into consternation by the news of this defeat. Her population that in Lycurgus’ time numbered nine thousand was reduced in the year of the battle of Platæa to five thousand, which in another quarter of a century had dwindled to seven hundred; hence she could not support the loss of the men now held under siege by the Athenians. The ephors went in person to Pylos to examine the condition of affairs and saw no other way to preserve the lives of their fellow-citizens than to conclude an armistice with the Athenian generals. It was agreed that Laconia should send ambassadors to Athens, and that she should immediately surrender all the vessels, sixty galleys, that she had in the port of Pylos; Athens to continue the blockade of Sphacteria but allowing to pass in daily, two Attic phœnices of flour, two cotyles of wine, and a portion of meat per soldier, with half that allowance for the menials.

The Lacedæmonian deputies appeared in the assembly at Athens and, contrary to their usual custom, delivered a long discourse offering peace in exchange for the Spartan prisoners and adding that the treaty once made, all other cities would follow their example and lay down arms. Where now were all the causes of complaint held against Athens at the commencement of the war? The Spartans deserted their allies and the cause they had formerly held so just for the sake of some fellow-citizens in danger. But had they not also the preceding year betrayed the Ambracians after the defeat at Olpæ? Unfortunately Pericles was no longer there to urge upon the people a prudent generosity. Cleon exhorted the assembly to demand the restitution of the towns ceded when the Thirty Years’ Truce was concluded, and the deputies, unable to accept such terms, retired without having accomplished anything.

The armistice ceased with their return; but the Athenians, pretending the violation of certain conditions, refused to give up the Spartan vessels, which was an entirely gratuitous breach of faith since the ships were no longer of any use to the Spartans. Famine was the greatest danger the besieged had to fear; the island, thickly wooded as it was, offering peril to the enemy that would attempt to take it by force. Freedom was promised each helot who would carry provisions through the blockade, and many attempting and succeeding, the four hundred and twenty were enabled to hold out till the approach of winter.

The Athenians at Pylos had also to fear for themselves the difficulty of obtaining provisions through the severe season. The army already suffered, and this fact became known at Athens. Cleon, who had rejected the overtures of the Lacedæmonians, laid the blame on the generals. It was because[578] of their lack of resolution, he said, that hostilities were so prolonged. In this he was right, the Athenians at Pylos numbering ten thousand men as against four hundred and twenty Spartans. Nicias, in a constant state of alarm, believed success even with their superior force impossible, and to silence the demagogue proposed to him to go himself to Sphacteria.

Cleon hesitated, but the impatient people took the general at his word, and Cleon was obliged to go; promising that in twenty days all trouble would be at an end. In truth this was time enough to effect his purpose when he once seriously set to work. He first prudently requested that Demosthenes co-operate with him, and was wise enough to take counsel of this able man at every step. Shortly after his arrival at Pylos a fire lighted on Sphacteria to cook food and imperfectly extinguished, was fanned by a violent wind into a blaze that destroyed the whole forest. This accident removed the principal obstacle in the way of an attack. Demosthenes made the preparations aided by Cleon, and one night they fell upon the island with their entire force. Having among their troops many that were lightly armed, they were able to reach the highest points and from there sorely harass the Lacedæmonians who were unused to the methods of attack of an enemy that uttered wild cries and fled as soon as they had struck. The ashes of the recently consumed forest rose into the air and blinded the besieged men, and unable longer to distinguish objects they stood motionless in one place and received from every side projectiles that their felt cuirasses were ill-fitted to turn aside. To render the combat a little less unequal they retired in a body to an elevated fort at the extremity of the island. This position gave them a decided advantage, and they were beginning to repulse their assailants when there appeared upon the rocks above them a corps of Messenians who had outflanked them.

They saw the necessity of surrendering, but named a condition: that they be allowed to consult with the Lacedæmonians who were stationed on the neighbouring coast. Their compatriots replied: “You are free to act as you think best provided you incur no dishonour.” At this they laid down their arms and surrendered; the course wherein dishonour formerly lay for Sparta apparently containing it no more. One hundred and twenty-eight were killed in the engagement: of the two hundred and ninety-two survivors one hundred and twenty belonged to the noblest families of Sparta. Some one praised in the hearing of one of the prisoners the courage of those of his companions who had been slain: “It would be impossible,” he said, “to esteem the darts too highly if they are capable of distinguishing a brave man from a coward.” This retort was, for a Spartan, very Athenian in spirit. The blockade had lasted fifty-two days.

His victory at Sphacteria raised Cleon high in the estimation of the people. A decree gave him the right to live in the Prytaneum at the cost of the republic, and to perpetuate the memory of his success a statue of Victory was erected on the Acropolis. Aristophanes in revenge presented six months later his comedy of the Knights, in which Cleon as the “Paphlagonian,” the slave who ingratiates himself with Demos for the purpose of robbing him, causes blows to rain upon the faithful servants Nicias and Demosthenes, and finally serves up to his master the cake of Pylos that Demosthenes alone has prepared. We will only say in conclusion that though all the honour of the affair may go to Demosthenes, Cleon manifested in it an energy that was not without effect; that even in the account of Thucydides he does not appear to have borne himself discreditably as captain or soldier; and lastly, that all that he promised he performed.

[579]

The balance of power was now disturbed, fortune leaned to the side of the Athenians. Nevertheless, while the Lacedæmonians were taking their land-forces economically over into Attica from Laconia, Athens was ruining herself by maintaining fleets in all the seas of Greece, recruiting at heavy cost the rowers to man them. Her annual expenses amounted to twenty-five hundred talents. In 425 the reserved funds amassed by Pericles being exhausted, it became necessary to increase both the tribute paid her by her allies and the tax laid upon the revenues of her citizens. One of these measures was to cause disaffection later, and the other, that which weighed upon the rich, was to give rise to plots against the popular government, germs of disaster that the future was to bring to fruition.

FURTHER ATHENIAN SUCCESSES

The Athenians had as yet no forebodings, but applied rare vigour to the following up of their success. Nicias, at the head of a considerable armament, landed on the isthmus and defeated the Corinthians, then he proceeded to the capture of Methone between Trœzen and Epidaurus on the peninsula, and extending towards Ægina. A garrison was left behind a wall that closed the isthmus, and from this post which communicated by fire signals with Piræus the Athenians made frequent raids into Argolis (425). The following year Nicias took the island of Cythera which, situated near the southern coast of the Peloponnesus, offered great facility for making raids into that district and for waylaying ships bound there. It commanded, moreover, the seas of Crete and Sicily in both of which Athens had stationed fleets for the support of the cities at war with Syracuse.

After having ravaged Laconia for seven days with impunity, Nicias returned to Thyrea in Cynuria, where the Spartans had established the Æginetans. He took the city despite the proximity of a Lacedæmonian army which did not venture to aid it, and his prisoners were sent to Athens and there put to death. This new-born national greatness, if such a return to savagery can merit the name, increased constantly in power: the foe was a criminal meriting punishment and his defeat equivalent to a sentence of death. In just this period occurred a tragedy, the story of which we would refuse to receive were it not for Thucydides’ direct affirmation; the massacre of two thousand of the bravest helots for the sole purpose of weakening the corps and of frightening those of their companions to whom the success of Athens might have given the idea of revolt. Overwhelmed by so many reverses and fearful of seeing war established permanently around Laconia, at Pylos, Cythera, and Cynuria, the Spartans shrank from further action. Whatever step they took might lead them into error and having never learned the lessons of misfortune, they remained irresolute and timid. The Athenians, on the contrary, were full of confidence in their good fortune. The Greeks in Sicily having brought their wars to a close by a general reconciliation, the generals sent to that country by the Athenians allowed themselves to be included in the treaty. On their return the people condemned two of them to exile and one to a heavy fine, on the pretext that they had it in their power to subjugate Sicily but had been bought off by presents. The Athenian people believed themselves to be irresistible, and in the loftiness of their aspirations denied to any enterprise, whether practicable or not, the possibility of defeat. This was the forerunner of the fatal madness that seized them when Alcibiades planned the unfortunate expedition into Sicily.

[580]

Athens was thus taking everywhere the offensive, and Sparta, paralysed, had entirely ceased to act; she had recourse again to Darius, begging aid more insistently than ever, thus betraying the cause of all Greece and dimming the glory of their deeds at Thermopylæ. The Athenians intercepted the Persian Artaphernes in Thrace. In the letter this envoy bore, the king set forth that not being able to grasp the meaning of the Spartans—no two of their envoys delivering to him the same message—he had thought best in order to come to a clear understanding, to send them a deputy. Athens at once took steps to neutralise Sparta’s measures; perhaps even to supplant her in the favour of the Great King, and sent Artaphernes back honourably accompanied by ambassadors. From now on Greece was to witness the shameful spectacle offered by the descendants of the victors of Salamis and Platæa bowing down to the successors of Xerxes. At Ephesus the embassy learnt of the death of the Great King and went no further; but Athens had none the less been false, in intent if not in deed, to all the traditions of her past, and was to expiate her sin without delay.

A CHECK TO ATHENS; BRASIDAS BECOMES AGGRESSIVE

Demosthenes’ able plan had succeeded; the Peloponnesus was encircled by hostile posts; there now remained but to shut off the isthmus and imprison the Spartans in their retreat. One way of doing this was to occupy Megara, but a still better method would be to obtain an alliance with Bœotia. The attempt on Megara having failed, Demosthenes turned his attention to Bœotia. He held secret communication with the inhabitants of Chæronea, who promised to deliver over the city to a body of Athenians who were to leave Naupactus unseen, aided by the Phocians, while he himself was to storm Siphæ on the Gulf of Crissa, the Athenian general Hippocrates being charged with the capture of Delium, on the Eubœan side. These three enterprises were to be executed the same day, and if they succeeded, Bœotia, like the Peloponnesus, would be encircled by a hostile ring, and Thebes would be separated from Lacedæmon. But too many were in the secret to allow of its being kept, the enemy was warned and the three Athenian forces, failing to act in concert, lost the advantage that would have lain in a simultaneous attack.

The enterprise against Siphæ and Chæronea failed also and Hippocrates, delayed a few days in his advance, found arrayed against him in one body all the Bœotian forces that he and his colleagues had plotted to divide. He succeeded in occupying Delium and fortified the temple of Apollo found there. To the Bœotians it was profanation to turn a temple into a fortress, and this scruple was shared by many of the Athenians who entered but half-heartedly into the combat. A thousand hoplites with their chief perished in the action; contrary to sacred usage Thebes let the bodies of the dead lie without sepulture seventeen days, until the taking of Delium; holding them to be sacrilegious evil-doers whose wandering souls were to receive punishment in the infernal world.

Socrates had taken part in this battle. In company with his friend Laches and some others equally brave, he had held his ground to the last, retreating step by step before the Theban cavalry. Simultaneously with this display of heroism Aristophanes was writing his comedy, the Clouds.

Sparta possessed but one man of ability, Brasidas, who had saved Megara, menaced Piræus, and almost defeated Demosthenes at Pylos. Clear-sighted[581] and brave to the point of audacity, he possessed an additional weapon, one that was capable of inflicting cruel wounds, and that the Spartans had hitherto known little how to use, eloquence. The sea being closed to him, he decided that it would be possible to injure Athens seriously both in fortune and renown without leaving the land. The very policy she had used against Sparta, Pylos, Cythera, and Methone, could now be turned against her in Chalcidice and Thrace. At the commencement of the war she had forced Perdiccas, king of Macedonia, to enter her alliance and had gained the friendship of Sitalces the powerful king of the Odrysians, whose territory extended from the Ægean Sea to the Danube, and from Byzantium to the source of the Strymon, a distance not to be covered under thirty days’ travel.

At Athens’ instigation Sitalces had in 429 invaded Macedonia, but since then his zeal had cooled. Perdiccas, on his side, had never lost an opportunity of secretly injuring the Athenians. Even at this moment he was urging Sparta to send an expedition to Chalcidice and the coast of Thrace. To deprive Athens of these regions whence she obtained her timber was to attack her in her navy, and to carry at the same time the centre of hostilities towards the north, was to draw her away from the Peloponnesus which had lately suffered so many ills. Brasidas was charged with the enterprise, but Sparta refused to engage in it deeply. He raised a force of seven hundred helots who were armed as hoplites, to which were added a thousand Peloponnesians attracted by Perdiccas’ promises. This was little; but Brasidas held in reserve the treacherous but magical word, Liberty, that was to open for him many gates.

He took possession in this way of Acanthus, Stagira, and Amphipolis itself fell into his power, he having entered one of its suburbs by stealth, and won over all the inhabitants by the generosity of his conditions. Amphipolitans and Athenians alike he permitted to remain with retention of all their rights and property; he also accorded to those who wished to leave, five days in which to carry away all their belongings. Not for an age had war been carried on with such humanity, and it was a Spartan who was setting the example! We must also note the lack of eagerness shown by Athens’ allies to cast off her yoke which, viewed in the light of facts, takes on an aspect much less odious than that in which it is represented by rhetoricians.

THE BANISHMENT OF THUCYDIDES

The approach of so active an enemy as Brasidas, and the blows he had dealt, should have led the Athenian generals in that region to concentrate their forces on the continent not far from Amphipolis, which was Athens’ principal stronghold on that side. One of these commanders had gone with seven galleys to Thasos, where there was no need of his presence, the island being secure from menace. Though too late to save Amphipolis he arrived in time to save the port, Eion. At the suggestion of Cleon the people punished this act of negligence by a twenty years’ sentence of exile. It is to this sentence that posterity owes a masterwork in which vigorous thoughts are expressed in a style of great conciseness, the exiled one being Thucydides, who employed his leisure in writing the history of the Peloponnesian War. The real culprit was Eucles, the commander of Amphipolis, who had allowed himself to be taken by surprise.

In according liberty to the towns he took, Brasidas deprived Athens of many subjects without bestowing any on Lacedæmonia who had no desire for[582] conquest in such distant regions; hence the success of the adventurous general astonished Greece without arousing great enthusiasm in Sparta; neither did it cause much vexation at Athens after the first outburst of anger to which Thucydides fell a victim. Deprived of a few cities of importance, Athens retained her island empire; the loss of Amphipolis being her most serious reverse.

King Plistoanax, exiled in 445 from Sparta for having lent ear to the propositions of Pericles, had taken refuge on Mount Lycæus in Arcadia near the temple of Zeus, and had dwelt there nineteen years. The partisans of peace recalled the exile, who returned to his native land filled with the determination to end the war. Neither was Athens, for the moment, in a bellicose mood.

A TRUCE DECLARED; TWO TREATIES OF PEACE

Her desire to reduce expenses and Sparta’s to recover captives that belonged to her most influential families brought about, in fact, a sort of union between the two nations. In March, 423, a truce of one year was declared, the conditions being that each side should retain all its possessions. The population forming the Peloponnesian league were authorised to navigate the waters surrounding their own coasts and those of their allies, but they were forbidden the use of war-galleys. The signers of the treaty must guarantee to all free access to the temple and oracle of Pythian Apollo, must harbour no refugees, free or slave, must protect all heralds and deputies journeying by land or sea, must, in a word, aid by every means in their power the conclusion of permanent peace.

While the treaty was being concluded at Athens, Brasidas entered Scione, on the peninsula of Pallene where he was received with open arms, the inhabitants decreeing him a golden crown, and binding his head with fillets as though he had been a victorious athlete. This victory being achieved two days after the conclusion of peace, the conquered territory ought to have been given back; this Sparta refused to do and hostilities broke out again. Nicias, arriving with a considerable force, took Scione, then Mende, which was delivered over to him by the people, and persuaded Perdiccas to ally himself again with Athens. Brasidas failed in an enterprise against Potidæa. The following year Cleon was named general. He urged Athens and with reason to repeat against Potidæa the vigour of her action at Pylos, it being necessary to check the advance of Brasidas. He first seized Torone and Galepsus, then established himself at Eion to await the auxiliaries that were on their way to him from Thrace and Macedonia. But his soldiers carried him along with them in a rush to Amphipolis, where Brasidas was stationed. This latter took advantage of a false move on the part of the Athenians to attack them by surprise, and won a victory that cost him his life. Cleon also fell in this action. In the account of Thucydides Cleon was one of the first to seek flight, but according to Diodorus he died bravely. Brasidas, mourned by all his allies who took part, fully armed, in his funeral procession, was interred with the ceremonies accorded to one of the ancient heroes. His tomb was enclosed within a consecrated circle and in his honour were instituted annual games and sacrifices (422).

The death of these two men facilitated the conclusion of peace; Brasidas by his activity and success, Cleon by his discourses having been for long[583] the chief sustainers of war. Athens, which had experienced a serious check, lost confidence, as did also Sparta, the victory of Amphipolis having been gained not by her native troops but by a body of mercenaries upon whom no reliance could be placed; the war she had lightly undertaken against Athens had lasted ten years, with the menace of another contest in the near future; the Thirty Years’ Truce concluded with the Argives was on the point of expiring, and lastly her naval ports were still in the hands of the enemy and her citizens were still held captive. In both cities the balance of influence was on the side of the peace partisans, prudent Nicias in Athens, and the easy-going Plistoanax in Lacedæmon. There were two treaties of peace which were finally concluded in 421.

The first treaty guaranteed to the Greeks, according to usage, the right to offer sacrifices at Delphi, to consult its oracle and to attend its festivals. It was agreed that each side should restore the cities taken in war; Thebes alone was to be allowed to retain Platæa, in exchange for which the Athenians would keep Nisæa in the Megarid, and Anactorium and Sollium in Acarnania. It was stipulated that “what was decreed for the majority of the allies should bind them all, unless hindrances should occur on the part of the gods and heroes.” All the allies save Corinth, Megara, and the Eleans, accepted these conditions. It was finally decided that peace should be ratified by an oath renewed each year and inscribed upon the columns of Olympia and Delphi, of the temple of Poseidon on the isthmus, in the citadel at Athens, and the Amyclæum at Sparta.

One of the articles of the treaty read that prisoners should be restored on both sides. When those of Sphacteria arrived, they were degraded from their rights as citizens, that the stain on Spartan courage might be removed by showing that Lacedæmon recognised no compromise with duty, even in the face of death. It is true that shortly after, these same citizens were reinstated in their former position.

The first of these treaties which brought temporary cessation to the ills the people had suffered for the last ten years, bore the name of the honourable man who had been instrumental in having it drawn, Nicias. Who had profited by all the blood that had been shed? Sparta had increased neither in strength nor in glory, while Greece simply retained her original empire, her people not for a moment renouncing the hatred that had armed them against each other. No side had gained, and civilisation had lost what ten years of peace would have added to the brilliancy of the Age of Pericles.e

FOOTNOTES

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[584]

CHAPTER XXXIV. THE RISE OF ALCIBIADES

Thucydides remarks that after the Peace of Nicias, there was but one of the predictions current at the commencement of the Peloponnesian War that was reputed to have received its fulfilment: it was the one which declared that the war would last three times nine years. There were indeed three acts in this war; we have seen the first: the second was the uneasy truce which extends from 421 to 413 when, though there was no general war, war was everywhere. The last, from 413 to 404, includes the catastrophe and the train of circumstances which brought it about.

The first period is filled with Pericles; his policy survives him, and in spite of Cleon his spirit governs Athens; the second and third are entirely taken up by Alcibiades, his passions, his services, and his crimes.

Alcibiades whose descent was derived from Ajax, was connected on his mother’s side with the Alemæonids. The death of his father Clinias, killed at Coronea, left him to the guardianship of his relatives, Pericles and Ariphron, who, on his attaining his majority, handed him over one of the great fortunes in Athens. With wealth and noble blood, he joined that beauty which in the estimation of this artist-people added to the brilliance of talents and virtue on the brows of Sophocles and Pericles, and always seemed a gift of the gods, even on the features of an athlete. Parasites, flatterers, all who are attracted by fortune, grace, and boldness, thronged round the footsteps of this rich and witty young man, who had become what in Athens was a power, namely the ruler of fashion. Accustomed in the midst of this train to find himself applauded for his wild actions, Alcibiades dared everything, and all with impunity. The force and flexibility of his temperament rendered him capable of vice and virtue, abstinence and debauchery, according to the hour, the day, or the place. In the city of Lycurgus there was no Spartan more harsh towards his body; in Asia he outdid the satraps in luxury and self-indulgence. But his audacity and his indomitable petulance compromised the long meditated plans of his ambition for the sake of a jest or an orgy. Lively and diverse passions carried him now in one direction, now in another, and always to excess, while in the stormy versatility of his character he did not find the curb which might have restrained him, namely, the sense of right and duty.

One day he was to be seen with Socrates, welcoming with avidity the noble lessons of the philosopher, and weeping with admiration and enthusiasm; but on the morrow he would be crossing the agora with a trailing robe and indolent, dissolute mien, and would go with his too complacent friends to plunge into shameful pleasures. Yet the sage contended for him, and sometimes with success, against the crowd of his corruptors. In the[585] early wars they shared the same tent. Socrates saved Alcibiades at Potidæa, and at Delium Alcibiades protected the retreat of Socrates.

From his childhood he exhibited the half heroic, half savage nature of his mind. He was playing at dice on the public way when a chariot approached; he told the charioteer to wait; the latter paid no heed and continued to advance; Alcibiades flung himself across the road and called out, “Now pass if you dare.” He was wrestling with one of his comrades and not being the strongest, he bit the arm of his adversary. “You bite like a woman.” “No, but like a lion,” he answered. He had caused a Cupid throwing a thunderbolt to be engraved on his shield.

He had a superb dog which had cost him more than seven thousand drachmæ. When all the town had admired it he cut off its tail, its finest ornament, that it might be talked of still more. “Whilst the Athenians are interested in my dog,” he said, “they will say nothing worse concerning me.” One day he was passing in the public square; the assembly was tumultuous and he inquired the cause; he was told that a distribution of money was on hand; he advanced and threw some himself amid the applause of the crowd: but according to the fashion among the exquisites of the day he was carrying a pet quail under his mantle: the terrified bird escaped and all the people ran, shouting, after it, that they might bring it back to its master. Alcibiades and the people of Athens were made to understand one another. “They detest him,” said Aristophanes, “need him and cannot do without him.”

One day he laid a wager to give a blow in the open street to Hipponicus, one of the most eminent men in the town; he won his bet, but the next day he presented himself at the house of the man he had so grossly insulted, removed his garments and offered himself to receive the chastisement he had deserved. He had married Hipparete, a woman of much virtue, and responded to her eager affection only by outrageous conduct. After long endurance she determined to lay a petition for divorce before the archon. Alcibiades, hearing this, hurried to the magistrate’s house and under the eyes of a cheering crowd carried off his wife in his arms across the public square, she not daring to resist; and brought her back to his house where she remained, well-pleased with this tender violence.

Alcibiades treated Athens as he did Hipponicus and Hipparete, and Athens, like Hipparete and Hipponicus, often forgave this medley of faults and amiable qualities in which there was always something of that wit and audacity which the Athenians prized above everything. His audacity indeed made sport alike of justice and religion. He may be excused for beating a teacher in whose school he had not found the Iliad: but at the Dionysia he struck one of his adversaries, in the very middle of the spectacle, regardless of the solemnity; and at another time, in order the better to celebrate a festival, he carried off the sacred vessel which was required at that very moment for a public and religious service. A painter having refused to work for him he kept him prisoner until he had finished decorating his house, but dismissed him loaded with presents. On one occasion when a poet was pursued by justice, he tore the act of indictment from the public archives. In a republic these actions were not very republican. But all Greece had such a weakness for Alcibiades! At Olympia he had seven chariots competing at once, thus eclipsing the magnificence of the kings of Syracuse and Cyrene; and he carried off two prizes in the same race, while another of his chariots came in fourth. Euripides sang of his victory and cities joined together to celebrate it. The Ephesians erected him a magnificent pavilion;[586] the men of Chios fed his horses and provided him with a great number of victims; the Lesbians gave him wine and the whole assembly of Olympia took their seats at festive tables to which a private individual had invited them. Posterity, less indulgent than contemporaries, whilst recognising the eminent qualities of the man, will condemn the bad policy which made the expedition to Sicily, and the bad citizen who so many times gave the scandalous example of violating the laws and who dared to arm against his own country, to raise his hand against his mother. Alcibiades will remain the type of the most brilliant, but the most immoral and consequently the most dangerous citizen of a republic.

In spite of his birth which classed him among the Eupatrids, Alcibiades, like Pericles, went over to the side of the people, and made himself the adversary of a man very different from himself, the superstitious Nicias, who was also a noble, rich and tried by long services. But Alcibiades had the advantage of him in audacity, fascination, and eloquence. Demosthenes regards him as the first orator of his time; not that he had a great flow of language; on the contrary, as his phrases did not come quickly enough, he frequently repeated the last words of his sentences; but the force and elegance of his speech and a certain lisp which was not displeasing, rendered him irresistible. His first political act was an unwelcome measure. He suggested an increase of the tribute of the allies, an imprudence which Pericles would not have committed. But Alcibiades had different schemes and different doctrines. He believed in the right of might and he made use of it; he looked forward to gigantic enterprises and he prepared the necessary means in advance. His inaction began to weigh on him. He was thirty-one years old and had as yet done nothing; so he bestirred himself considerably on the occasion of the treaty of 421. He would have liked to supplant Nicias and win the honour of the peace for himself. His flatteries to the prisoners of Sphacteria met with no success; the Spartans relied more on the old general, and Alcibiades bore them a grudge in consequence.

There was no lack of men opposed to this treaty. It was signed amidst the applause of the old, the rich, and the cultivators, but in it Athens, through Nicias’ fault, had allowed herself to be ignominiously tricked. The merchants who during the war had seen the sea closed to their rivals and open to their own vessels, the sailors, the soldiers, and all the people of the Piræus who lived on their pay or their booty, formed a numerous party. Alcibiades constituted himself its chief. The warlike spirit which was to disappear only with Greece itself soon gave him allies from outside.

What Sparta and Athens were doing on a large scale was being done by other towns on a small one. Strong or weak, obscure or illustrious, all had the same ambition: all desired subjects. The Eleans had subdued the Lepreatæ, Mantinea and the towns in her neighbourhood; Thebes had knocked down the walls of Thespiæ in order to keep that town at her mercy; and Argos had transferred within her own walls the inhabitants of several townships of Argos, though in doing so she granted them civil rights. Sparta[587] watched with annoyance this movement for the concentration of lesser cities round more powerful ones. She proclaimed the independence of the Lepreatæ, and secretly encouraged the defection of the subjects of Mantinea and the hatred of Epidaurus against Argos. But since Sphacteria she had lost her prestige. At Corinth, at Megara, in Bœotia, it was openly said that she had basely sacrificed the interests of her allies; indignation was especially felt at her alliance with Athens. The Peloponnesian league was in fact dissolved; one people dreamed of reconstituting it for their own advantage.

The repose and prosperity of Argos in the midst of the general conflict had increased her resources and her liberal policy towards the towns of the district had augmented her strength. But the new-comers were a powerful reinforcement to the democratic party whose influence impelled Argos on a line of policy opposed to that of the Spartans. This town therefore might and wished to become the centre of an anti-Lacedæmonian league. Mantinea, where the democracy predominated; the Eleans, who had been offended by Lacedæmon; Corinth, which, by the treaty of Nicias, lost two important towns in Acarnania, were ready to join their grudges and their forces. The Argives skilfully seized the opportunity; twelve deputies were sent to all the Greek cities which desired to form a confederation from which the two cities which were equally menacing to the common liberty, namely Sparta and Athens, should be excluded. But an agreement could not be arrived at. A league of the northern states was thus rendered abortive; nothing could yet be done without Sparta or Athens.

Between these two towns there were many grounds for discontent. The lot had decided that Sparta should be the first to make the restitutions agreed on at the treaty of 421. For Athens the most valuable of these restitutions was that of Amphipolis and the towns of Chalcidice. Sparta withdrew her garrisons but did not restore the towns; and yet Nicias, deceived by the ephors, led the people to commit the mistake of not keeping the pledges which they had in their possession until Lacedæmon should have put an end to her bad faith. Sparta had negotiated for all her allies; and the most powerful were refusing to observe her engagements. The Bœotians restored Panactum, but kept the Athenian prisoners and only agreed to a truce of ten days. Athens, which had thought to win peace, was, ten days later, again at war with the Bœotians and uninterruptedly with Chalcidice. As regards the latter she had just given a terrible example of her anger. The whole male population of Scione had been put to death as a punishment for its recent revolt, in virtue of a decree of the people which the generals had carried with them.

All this furnished material which Alcibiades might work up into a war. First, he prevented the Athenians from evacuating Pylos. The helots and Messenians were simply withdrawn thence at the instance of Lacedæmon and were transported to Cephallenia. Then, warned by his friends at Argos that Sparta was seeking to draw that city into her alliance, he answered that Athens herself was quite ready to join the Argives. Athens at once concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with the Argives, the Mantineans and the Eleans. In the ardour of hatred against Sparta it was agreed that the alliance should last a hundred years; a long period for such spirits (420). We here remark a new and important point; it is that the alliance was concluded on a perfect footing of equality. The command of the allied troops was to belong to the people which should demand aid and on whose territory war should be made.

[588]

The neutrality of the Argolid and of the centre of the Peloponnesus had hitherto preserved Lacedæmon from a continental invasion. War, after having long hovered on the outskirts of the peninsula, had not ventured, within the last few years, to do more than lay hold of certain points on the coasts to the west, south, and east, which were quite remote from Sparta, at Pylos, Cythera, and Methone. But now the Argives, the Mantineans and the Eleans were about to introduce it into the heart of the Peloponnesus, to bring it in the very face of the helots. Sparta became once more the patient, deliberate city of former days, even to the point of submitting to outrageous insults. On account of the despatch of the helots to Lepreum during the sacred truce, the Eleans had condemned the Lacedæmonians to a fine of two thousand minæ, and on their refusal to pay had excluded them by decree from the Olympic games. A Spartan of distinction, named Lichas, had however a chariot competing in the same race in which Alcibiades had displayed so much magnificence and obtained wreaths. When the judges learnt his name they had him ignominiously driven away with blows. Sparta did not avenge this outrage; she had ceased to believe in herself. At last Alcibiades passed over into the Peloponnesus with a few troops.

At Argos he persuaded the people to seize a port on the Saronic Gulf from the Epidaurians; from thence the Argives might the more easily receive succours from Athens which was in possession of Ægina opposite Epidaurus. But the Lacedæmonians sent this town three hundred hoplites who arrived by sea and repelled all attacks. At this news the Athenians wrote at the base of the column on which the treaty had been engraved, that Sparta had violated the peace, and the war began (419).

It was in vain that Aristophanes produced about this time his comedy entitled the Peace, resuming the theme he had taken up seven years before in the Acharnians. It was to no purpose that he personified War as a giant who crushes the towns in a mortar, using the generals for his pestles, and showed that with the return of Peace, drawn at last from the cavern in which she has been captive for thirteen years, banquets and feasts will recommence, the whole town will be given up to joy, and the armourers only will be in despair; he persuaded no one, not even the judges of the competition, who refused him the first prize.

The Lacedæmonians, under the command of Agis, entered the Argolid with the contingents of Bœotia, Megara, Corinth, Phlius, Pellene, and Tegea. The Argive general, cut off from the town by a clever manœuvre, proposed a truce which Agis accepted. This was not what was desired by the Athenians, who arrived shortly after, to the number of a thousand hoplites and three hundred horsemen; Alcibiades spoke in presence of the people of Argos and prevailed with them: the truce was broken, a march was made on Orchomenos and it was taken. The blame of the rupture fell on Agis. The Spartans, angry at his having given their enemies time to make this conquest, wished first to demolish his house and condemn him to a fine of a hundred thousand drachmæ; his prayers won his pardon; but it was determined that in future the kings of Sparta should be assisted in the war by a council of ten Spartans.

To repair his mistake, Agis went in search of the allies; he encountered them near Mantinea. “The two armies,” says Thucydides, “advanced against each other; the Argives with impetuosity, the Lacedæmonians slowly and, according to their custom, to the sound of a great number of pipes which beat time and kept them in line.” The Lacedæmonian left was driven in, but the right, commanded by the king, retrieved the fight and[589] carried the day (418). This battle, which cost the allies eleven hundred men and the Spartans about three hundred, is regarded by Thucydides as the most important which the Greeks had fought for a long time. It restored the reputation of Sparta in the Peloponnesus, and in Argos the preponderance of the wealthy who suppressed the popular commune, put its leaders to death and made an alliance with Lacedæmon.

This treaty broke up the confederation recently agreed on with Athens, Elis, and Mantinea. The last-named town even thought itself sufficiently endangered by the defection of Argos to consent to descend once more to the rank of an ally of the Spartans. A treaty, dictated by the latter, decreed that all the states, great and small, should be free and should keep their national laws with their independence. Sparta desired nothing but divisions and weakness round her. To the policy of concentration advocated by Athens, she opposed the policy of isolation which was to put all Greece at her feet, but would also afterwards place her, with Sparta herself, at the feet of Macedonia and of the Romans (417).

The victory of Agis was that of the oligarchy. At Sicyon, in Achaia, it again raised its head or established itself more firmly. We have just seen how it resumed power in Argos. But in that town, if we are to believe Pausanias, a crime analogous to those which founded the liberties of the people in Rome brought about the fall of the tyrants three months later. Expelled by an insurrection, the chief citizens retired to Sparta, whilst the people appealed to the Athenians, and men, women, and children laboured to join Argos with the sea by means of long walls. Alcibiades hurried thither with masons and carpenters to aid in the work; but the Lacedæmonians, under the guidance of the exiles, dispersed the workers. Argos, exhausted by these cruel discords, did not recover herself; and with her fell that idea of a league of secondary states which might perhaps have spared Greece many misfortunes by imposing peace and a certain caution on the two great states (417).

The Athenians, who were acting weakly in Chalcidice, had recently lost two towns there and had seen the king of Macedon withdraw from their alliance; they resolved to avenge themselves for all their embarrassments on the Dorian island of Melos, which was insulting their maritime empire by its independence. At Naxos and Samos they had shown themselves merciful, because they were amongst the Ionians where they could reckon on a democratic party; at Melos, an outpost of the Dorians in the Cretan Sea, they were implacable because the blow struck at these islanders, faithful to their metropolis, was to find a mournful echo in Lacedæmon. A squadron of thirty-eight galleys summoned the town to submit, and on its refusal an army besieged it, took it, and exterminated all the adult male population. The women and children were sold (416). Before the attack a conference had taken place with the Melians.

“In order to obtain the best possible result for our negotiations,” said the Athenians, “let us start from a principle with which both sides shall be really satisfied, a principle which we know well and would employ with people who are as well acquainted with it as we are: it is that business between men is regulated by the laws of justice when an equal necessity obliges them to submit to it; but that those who have the advantage in strength do all that is in their power and that it is the part of the weak to yield,” and further: “nor do we fear that the divine protection will forsake us. In our principles and in our actions we neither depart from the idea which men have conceived of the Divinity nor from the line of conduct[590] which they preserve amongst themselves. We believe, according to the received opinion, that the gods, and we know very well that men, by a necessity of nature, dominate wherever they have force. This is not a law that we have made; it is not we who have first applied it; we profit by it and shall transmit it to times to come; you yourselves, with the power which we enjoy, would follow the same course.”

The theory of force has rarely been so distinctly expressed. The reputation of the Athenians has suffered by it, without their having derived the slightest profit from this evil deed. But let us observe, even while we think with horror of the sanguinary act performed at Melos, that the practice, if not the theory of this right of the strongest is a very old one; it is the principle on which the whole of antiquity is based; it is nothing but the famous law, salus populi suprema lex, so many times evoked to justify odious enterprises or iniquitous cruelties; and it must be acknowledged with sadness that in all times and in almost all places men have thought with Euripides, “that wisdom and glory are: to hold a victorious hand over the head of one’s enemies.” Force is as old as the world, it is right which emerges slowly: can we believe that its reign will not come?

The Dorian colonists of Melos had counted on the support of Sparta. “She will abandon you,” the Athenians had answered; and the prudent city which, for its part regarded all things from the point of view of utility, had sent neither ship nor soldier. This inertia inflated the hopes of Athens: she believed that the moment had come for annexing to her empire the great island of the West where internal divisions had roused in several cities the desire for foreign protection.b

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[591]

CHAPTER XXXV. THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION

The largest island in the Mediterranean, Sicily has been a stepping-stone between African, Asiatic, and European nations. Freemane has compared it with Great Britain in its “geographical and historical position.” Its original inhabitants seem to have been the Sicans who were invaded first by the Elymians and then by the Sicels. Relations with Sicily were begun as early as the Mycenæan age, and jars of Ægean ware have been unearthed in the tombs of Syracuse. The Phœnicians established factories and trading places in Sicily, and then came the Greeks overflowing the island and founding many a city and stronghold. As we have seen in a previous chapter, Sicily became one of the earliest and most important of the Greek colonies.

SICILIAN HISTORY

The African city of Carthage, which we think of chiefly along with Roman history, early took up the grievances of the Phœnicians against the Greeks. In the sixth century B.C., various settlements had fallen by the ears with one another. About 580 B.C. the Greek adventurer Pentathlus threatened the Phœnician settlements, but was defeated and slain. Carthage, however, was awakened to the danger from Greek land-hunger, and about 560 B.C. sent an expedition under Malchus, who gave a severe check to Greek encroachment and an encouragement to Carthaginian ambition. Finally, by 480 B.C., the Carthaginians were ready to combine with the Persians against Greek prosperity and independence. While Xerxes assailed the mother-country, Carthage by agreement sent an enormous expedition against the Sicilian Greeks. Their general was Hamilcar, and the magnificence of his host has been as splendidly exaggerated as that of Xerxes. His success was equal to that of the Persian, except that Xerxes escaped alive, while Hamilcar perished.

The chief instruments of the Sicilian victory were the tyrants who had gathered to themselves supreme power in their own cities or groups of cities as the tyrants of the mother-country had previously done. In Sicily there were four powerful masters of four chief cities: Anaxilaus of Rhegium in Italy, who crossing the straits, took possession of Zancle; his father-in-law Terillus of Himera; Gelo of Syracuse and his father-in-law, Theron of[592] Acragas. It was a quarrel between Theron and Terillus that gave the Carthaginians their immediate excuse for invading Sicily. Terillus being thwarted by Theron played a treacherous part like that of Hippias, and begged the Persians to attack Acragas. Terillus called in Carthage to his aid against Theron. There is a tradition that the defeat of the Carthaginians happened on the same day as the battle of Salamis. Such traditions are always subject to scepticism, and yet the coincidence of Vicksburg and Gettysburg in American history is hardly more incredible.

Theron had called on Gelo to aid him in expelling the Carthaginians, and Gelo had won the greater glory. He died two years later leaving his younger brother Hiero to succeed him. It was Hiero’s privilege to thwart the ambition of the Etruscans as his elder brother had foiled Carthage. The naval battle of Cyme was the brilliant victory which led Pindar to write one of his loftiest songs. He and Simonides, Æschylus, and Bacchylides, were all received with honour at the opulent court of Hiero. The glitter of court life, however, was small compensation for the tyranny of the various despots of Sicily. Their ambitions clashed at the least pretext, always at the cost of the blood of their subjects. They had a curious way of deporting the inhabitants of an entire city to some other place to suit their own whims. And gradually time took its revenge upon them. Theron left as his heir a weak son, Thrasydæus who went to battle with Hiero, and, losing the battle, lost also his prestige and his power, for the cities Himera and Acragas formed themselves into democracies. Five years later, in 467 B.C., Hiero died, and his tyranny fell to his brother Thrasybulus whose blood-thirsty and tax-hungry cruelties aroused a revolution. He was besieged in Syracuse, compelled to surrender and sent into exile.

Life in Sicily is not to this day so quiet as in certain other portions of the globe, and it was inevitable in the change from despotism to democracy that there should be much friction and bloodshed, but the cities lost none of the prosperity they had acquired under the tyrants. Syracuse continued to be the principal city and power in the island; Agrigentum, as the Romans named Acragas, being the second in power.

Now a new source of danger appeared, this time not from a foreign invasion, or from the ambition of such pretenders as had tried to re-establish the power of Gelo. The new threat came from a racial jealousy. The old inhabitants, the Sicels, who had been crowded into the interior, gave birth to a Napoleonic ambition. A young man named Ducetius who first appeared in 461, having fed upon certain small successes in acquiring power, showed his ingenuity in 453 by forming a federation of Sicel towns with himself as prince. He seized an early opportunity to assail the Greeks, and justified the fidelity of the Sicels by capturing the towns of Morgantium, Ætna, and the Acragantine stronghold of Motya, building a new city—Palice. He now became important enough to merit the anger of Syracuse, and a large force from Syracuse and Agrigentum marched against him. The toy Napoleon met his little Waterloo. His partisans deserted him and he found himself alone. A desperate resolve occurred to him as the only means of saving his life. He rode by night to the gates of Syracuse, entered the city secretly, and sat himself down before the altar in the market place. He was soon surrounded by a crowd who had too keen a sense of the dramatic not to forgive him and let him off with the easy exile to Corinth. From this Elba this Napoleon soon emerged. He violated his parole laying the blame on an oracle, and took a body of colonists to Sicily where he founded the city of Calacta (or Kale Akte). He began gradually to reach out for[593] more power, but his death in 440 ended his schemes and left his federation as a prize for Syracuse.

While Syracuse was beginning to plume itself upon its leadership and to dream of more definite control, the city of Athens was building an empire, not over one island but many. It was only natural that she should wish to stand well with the rich cities of Sicily. At first there could hardly have been any thought of conquest, and Grotef points out that Plutarch is mistaken and is contradicted by Thucydides, when he implies that even as late as the quarrel between Corinth and Corcyra, the Athenians had thought of dominion over Sicily. Professor Buryd however sees a distinct desire to have influence, if not conquest, from a very early day. He says:

“During the fifth century the eyes of Athenian statesmen often wandered to western Greece beyond the seas. We can surprise some oblique glances, as early as the days of Themistocles; and we have seen how under Pericles a western policy definitely began. An alliance was formed with the Elymian town of Segesta, and subsequently treaties of alliance (the stone records are still partly preserved) were concluded with Leontini and Rhegium. One general object of Athens was to support the Ionian cities against the Dorian, which were predominant in number and power, and especially against Syracuse, the daughter and friend of Corinth. The same purpose of counter-acting the Dorian predominance may be detected in the foundation of Thurii. But Thurii did not effect this purpose. The colonists were a mixed body; other than Athenian elements gained the upper hand; and, in the end, Thurii became rather a Dorian centre and was no support to Athens. It is to be observed that at the time of the foundation of Thurii, and for nigh thirty years more, Athens is seeking merely influence in the west, she has no thought of dominion. The growth of her connection with Italian and Sicilian affairs was forced upon her by the conditions of commerce and the rivalry of Corinth.” Adolph Holmb is equally positive in accusing the Athenians of an early desire to obtain a footing in Sicily.

The outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 B.C. found Sicily in a high state of prosperity, political equality, and intellectual health. According as the various cities had been founded by Dorian or Ionian colonists their family prejudices inclined them towards Sparta or Athens. The war in fact, according to Müller,h was called by the oracles, the Doric War. The preponderance in Sicily was largely toward Sparta and Corinth, for Corinth had been the mother-city to Syracuse. Grotef thus discusses the feelings of the various cities at this time:

“In that struggle the Italian and Sicilian Greeks had no direct concern, nor anything to fear from the ambition of Athens; who, though she had founded Thurii in 443 B.C., appears never to have aimed at any political ascendency even over that town—much less anywhere else on the coast. But the Sicilian Greeks, though forming a system apart in their own island, from which it suited the dominant policy of Syracuse to exclude all foreign interference, were yet connected by sympathy, and one side even by alliances, with the two main streams of Hellenic politics. Among the allies of Sparta were numbered all or most of the Dorian cities of Sicily—Syracuse, Camarina, Gela, Agrigentum, Selinus, perhaps Himera and Messana—together with Locri and Tarentum in Italy; among the allies of Athens, perhaps, the Chalcidic or Ionic Rhegium in Italy. Whether the Ionic cities in Sicily—Naxos, Catana, and Leontini—were at this time united with Athens by any special treaty, is very doubtful. But if we examine the state of politics prior to the breaking out of the war, it will be found that the connection of the[594] Sicilian cities on both sides with central Greece was rather one of sympathy and tendency, than of pronounced obligation and action. The Dorian Sicilians, though sharing the antipathy of the Peloponnesian Dorians to Athens, had never been called upon for any co-operation with Sparta; nor had the Ionic Sicilians yet learned to look to Athens for protection against Syracuse.”

Sparta counted apparently upon the active assistance of Syracuse, and demanded that the Dorians in Italy and Sicily should contribute to her both ships and money. She realised no ships, a little money, and profuse expressions of interest and sympathy. The awakening of the old Dorio-Ionic blood feud suggested to the Syracusans, however, that while the Peloponnesian War was remote from them both geographically and commercially, it yet furnished a good excuse for attacking such cities in Sicily as were in any way attached to Athens. Naxos, Catana, and Leontini were looked upon as the first prizes to be seized. These towns were so far from being able to send aid to Athens that they were compelled to ask aid of her. They succeeded in forming an alliance with Camarina, which was a Dorian city but jealous of Syracuse, and with the town of Rhegium in Italy. The friendship of Rhegium brought over to Syracuse the Italian city of Locri. With the aid of Locri and practically all the Dorian cities, Syracuse was so strong that the Ionic allies were soon in desperate straits. They sent their eloquent orator Gorgias to implore the Athenians for aid and to advise them to grant it, lest when Syracuse had conquered all Sicily she should send her troops and ships to the aid of the Spartans and Corinthians. The Athenians sent twenty triremes under Laches, who after various minor successes fell under suspicion as to his honesty and efficiency, and was called home.

The Ionians sent another appeal to Athens, and received the promise of forty more triremes. In the spring of 425 this fleet left Athens under command of Eurymedon and Sophocles. It was this fleet which, almost accidentally, paused on the Spartan coast at Pylos with the result that it gained for Athens the renowned victory of Sphacteria, as previously described. This victory was very profitable to Athens in its immediate glory, but was of very gloomy purport in the Sicilian matter, for the fleet having delayed to take part in the victory, and later pausing at Corcyra, did not reach Sicily before September. This delay had given the Syracusan allies time to undo what little had been achieved by Laches. He had won the friendship of the town of Messana, thus giving Athens command of the straits. The delay however had weakened the friendship of Messana, and lost its alliance. Furthermore, the cities which Athens had come to aid were found to be in a decided humour to put an end to the civil war. A congress of Sicilian cities was called at Gela.

This congress at Gela takes on a decided importance in political history because of the theories brought forward there by a Syracusan orator, Hermocrates, whose political creed has been compared to the Monroe Doctrine of the United States. The creed was not successfully carried out, and as has often happened in the history of the United States, the promulgators of the doctrine were by no means consistent in their actions. Hermocrates pleaded for a policy, which in modern phrase would be called “Sicily for the Sicilians.” He wished Sicily to regard herself as an entity, considering all foreigners to be outsiders, and all interference to be meddling. He was not rash enough or un-Grecian enough to deny the Sicilian cities the luxury of fighting with one another; but he called for unity against the invader or the intriguer from other shores. From his speech, as imagined by Thucydides,i the peroration is worth quoting for its cool common sense:

[595]

“And I call on you all, of your own free will, to act in the same manner as myself, and not to be compelled to do it by your enemies. For there is no disgrace in connections giving way to connections, whether a Dorian to a Dorian, or a Chalcidian to those of the same race; in a word, all of us who are neighbours, and live together in one country, and that an island, and are called by the one name of Sicilians. For we shall go to war again, I suppose, when it may so happen, and come to terms again amongst ourselves by means of general conferences; but to foreign invaders we shall always, if we are wise, offer united resistance, inasmuch as by our separate losses we are collectively endangered; and we shall never in future call in any allies or mediators. For by acting thus we shall at the present time avoid depriving Sicily of two blessings—riddance both of the Athenians and of civil war—and shall in future enjoy it by ourselves in freedom, and less exposed to the machinations of others.”

The Athenian expedition having been coldly received by the cities it came to rescue, returned to Athens, where Eurymedon was fined and Sophocles banished on a charge of bribery. And now the reservation made by Hermocrates as to the right of the Sicilian cities to war upon one another, was soon justified. And to such an extent that the Ionic cities began to realise that the Syracusans had been chiefly anxious to expel the foreign invader, in order that the island might be left entirely to Syracusan ambition. In the city of Leontini the aristocrats crushed the democrats, and turned the city into a Syracusan fort after destroying the greater portion of it. The common people appealed to Athens, and received in reply two triremes under Phæax in B.C. 422. Before he had accomplished anything the Peace of Nicias put a temporary close to the war.

In 417 B.C. the two Sicilian cities of Selinus and Segesta (or Egesta) quarrelled over a bit of territory. Syracuse aided Selinus, and Segesta, after appealing in vain to Agrigentum and to Carthage, sent envoys to Athens. The Leontine people also reminded Athens that Syracuse, having destroyed Leontini and assailed Segesta, was planning and accomplishing the gradual reduction of all Sicilian cities favourable to Athens, and thus building up an empire which would give Sparta unlimited aid. The people of Segesta asked only for men and ships, and promised to provide ample money for expenses.

The idea of such an armada delighted the fire-brand Alcibiades, who saw in it a chance to be a leader and to find an abundance of the things he most desired—adventure, notoriety, and money. The cautious Nicias opposed the scheme, and secured a delay until ambassadors could be sent to Segesta to learn if the city were really wealthy enough to pay as it promised. And now it was a case of Greek meeting Sicilian. The people of Segesta had sent secret expeditions to all their friendly towns, Phœnician or Grecian, to borrow all the treasure they could wheedle out of their prospective allies. When the Athenian envoys appeared, they were taken to the temple of Venus and shown a great array of gifts, “bowls, wine ladles, censers, and other articles of furniture in no small quantity.” These were all silver or of silver gilt, and made a far greater showing than they merited. Then the Athenians were put through a round of entertainments. In each case the host displayed all his own plate, and in addition a large portion of the common fund, which was passed from house to house surreptitiously. The gullible Athenians were overwhelmed by the evident opulence of the private citizens of Segesta, and when sixty talents of uncoined silver (valued at over £12,000 or $60,000) were handed over to the Athenians for the first month’s expenses of the fleet, the embassy was thoroughly duped, and returned[596] to Athens glowing with enthusiasm for an alliance with such a western Golconda. Then followed a tug of war between Nicias and Alcibiades. Nicias was to be one of the commanders of the expedition, and he could well claim that it was no fear of bodily danger that made him averse to it. He opposed it purely as a piece of folly. Alcibiades replied in favour of the expedition, and it was so evident that the people were determined to send the fleet that Nicias in a last effort tried to alarm the city by magnifying the difficulties of the task and demanding a tremendous force. To the Athenians, in their drunkenness for empire, and in that frenzy of “Westward Ho!” which, in the fifteenth century, attacked all Europe, the opposition of Nicias was only wind on flame. They rejoiced the more at the magnificence of the problem.

To decide upon sending a fleet of one hundred triremes instead of the sixty asked for, was folly enough; but to elect Nicias as the commander of the expedition, and to ally with him his bitter opponent, Alcibiades, was pure delirium. Still, Athens had just conquered Melos, and no task was too gigantic for her hopes.a

THE MUTILATION OF THE HERMÆ

For the two or three months immediately succeeding the final resolution taken by the Athenians to invade Sicily, the whole city was elate and bustling with preparation. The prophets, circulators of oracles, and other accredited religious advisers, announced generally the favourable dispositions of the gods, and promised a triumphant result. All classes in the city, rich and poor,—cultivators, traders, and seamen,—old and young, all embraced the project with ardour; as requiring a great effort, yet promising unparalleled results, both of public aggrandisement and individual gain. Each man was anxious to put down his own name for personal service; so that the three generals, Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lamachus, when they proceeded to make their selection of hoplites, instead of being forced to employ constraint or incur ill-will, as happened when an expedition was adopted reluctantly with many dissentients, had only to choose the fittest among a throng of eager volunteers.

Such efforts were much facilitated by the fact that five years had now elapsed since the Peace of Nicias, without any considerable warlike operations. While the treasury had become replenished with fresh accumulations, and the triremes increased in number, the military population, reinforced by additional numbers of youth, had forgotten both the hardships of the war and the pressure of epidemic disease. Hence the fleet now got together, while it surpassed in number all previous armaments of Athens, except a single one in the second year of the previous war under Pericles, was incomparably superior even to that, and still more superior to all the rest in[597] the other ingredients of force, material as well as moral, in picked men, universal ardour, ships as well as arms in the best condition, and accessories of every kind in abundance. Such was the confidence of success, that many Athenians went prepared for trade as well as for combat; so that the private stock, thus added to the public outfit and to the sums placed in the hands of the generals, constituted an unparalleled aggregate of wealth. After between two and three months of active preparations, the expedition was almost ready to start, when an event happened which fatally poisoned the prevalent cheerfulness of the city. This was the mutilation of the Hermæ, one of the most extraordinary events in all Grecian history.

The Hermæ, or half-statues of the god Hermes, were blocks of marble about the height of the human figure. The upper part was cut into a head, face, neck, and bust; the lower part was left as a quadrangular pillar, broad at the base, without arms, body, or legs, but with the significant mark of the male sex in front. They were distributed in great numbers throughout Athens, and always in the most conspicuous situations. The religious feeling of the Greeks considered the god to be planted or domiciliated where his statue stood, so that the companionship, sympathy, and guardianship of Hermes became associated with most of the manifestations of conjunct life at Athens, political, social, commercial, or gymnastic.

About the end of May 415 B.C., in the course of one and the same night, all these Hermæ, one of the most peculiar marks of the city, were mutilated by unknown hands. Their characteristic features were knocked off or levelled, so that nothing was left except a mass of stone with no resemblance to humanity or deity. All were thus dealt with in the same way, save and except very few: nay, Andocides affirms that there was but one which escaped unharmed. If we take that reasonable pains, which is incumbent on those who study the history of Greece, to realize in our minds the religious and political associations of the Athenians,—noted in ancient times for their superior piety, as well as for their accuracy and magnificence about the visible monuments embodying that feeling,—we shall in part comprehend the intensity of mingled dismay, terror, and wrath, which beset the public mind, on the morning after this nocturnal sacrilege, alike unforeseen and unparalleled. Amidst all the ruin and impoverishment which had been inflicted by the Persian invasion of Attica, there was nothing which was so profoundly felt or so long remembered as the deliberate burning of the statues and temples of the gods. If we could imagine the excitement of a Spanish or Italian town, on finding that all the images of the Virgin had been defaced during the same night, we should have a parallel, though a very inadequate parallel, to what was now felt at Athens—where religious associations and persons were far more intimately allied with all civil acts and with all the proceedings of every-day life—where, too, the god and his efficiency were more forcibly localised, as well as identified with the presence and keeping of the statue. To the Athenians, when they went forth on the following morning, each man seeing the divine guardian at his doorway dishonoured and defaced, and each man gradually coming to know that the devastation was general,—it would seem that the town had become as it were godless—that the streets, the market-place, the porticoes, were robbed of their divine protectors; and what was worse still, that these protectors, having been grossly insulted, carried away with them alienated sentiments—wrathful and vindictive instead of tutelary and sympathising.

Such was the mysterious incident which broke in upon the eager and bustling movement of Athens a few days before the Sicilian expedition was[598] in condition for starting. In reference to that expedition, it was taken to heart as a most depressing omen. The mutilation of the Hermæ, however, was something much more ominous than the worst accident. It proclaimed itself as the deliberate act of organised conspirators, not inconsiderable in number, whose names and final purpose were indeed unknown, but who had begun by committing sacrilege of a character flagrant and unheard of. For intentional mutilation of a public and sacred statue, where the material afforded no temptation to plunder, is a case to which we know no parallel: much more, mutilation by wholesale—spread by one band and in one night throughout the entire city. Though neither the parties concerned, nor their purposes, were ever more than partially made out, the concert and conspiracy itself is unquestionable.

It seems probable, as far as we can form an opinion, that the conspirators had two objects, perhaps some of them one and some the other—to ruin Alcibiades—to frustrate or delay the expedition. Indeed the two objects were intimately connected with each other; for the prosecution of the enterprise, while full of prospective conquest to Athens, was yet more pregnant with future power and wealth to Alcibiades himself. Such chances would disappear if the expedition could be prevented; nor was it at all impossible that the Athenians, under the intense impression of religious terror consequent on the mutilation of the Hermæ, might throw up the scheme altogether.

Few men in Athens either had, or deserved to have, a greater number of enemies, political as well as private, than Alcibiades; many of them being among the highest citizens, whom he offended by his insolence, and whose liturgies and other customary exhibitions he outshone by his reckless expenditure. His importance had been already so much increased and threatened to be so much more increased by the Sicilian enterprise, that they no longer observed any measures in compassing his ruin. That which the mutilators of the Hermæ seemed to have deliberately planned, his other enemies were ready to turn to profit.

While the senate of Five Hundred were invested with full powers of action, Diognetus, Pisander, Charicles, and others, were named commissioners for receiving and prosecuting inquiries: and public assemblies were held nearly every day to receive reports. The first informations received, however, did not relate to the grave and recent mutilation of the Hermæ, but to analogous incidents of older date; to certain defacements of other statues, accomplished in drunken frolic—and above all, to ludicrous ceremonies celebrated in various houses, by parties of revellers caricaturing and divulging the Eleusinian mysteries. It was under this latter head that the first impeachment was preferred against Alcibiades.

But Alcibiades saw full well the danger of having such charges hanging over his head, and the peculiar advantage which he derived from his accidental position at the moment. He implored the people to investigate the charges at once; proclaiming his anxiety to stand trial and even to suffer death, if found guilty,—accepting the command only in case he should be acquitted,—and insisting above all things on the mischief to the city of sending him on such an expedition with the charge undecided, as well as on the hardship to himself of being aspersed by calumny during his absence, without power of defence. Such appeals, just and reasonable in themselves, and urged with all the vehemence of a man who felt that the question was one of life or death to his future prospects, were very near prevailing. His enemies could only defeat them by the trick of putting up fresh speakers, less notorious for hostility to Alcibiades. These men affected a tone of[599] candour, deprecated the delay which would be occasioned in the departure of the expedition, if he were put upon his trial forthwith; and proposed deferring the trial until a certain number of days after his return. Such was the determination ultimately adopted: the supporters of Alcibiades probably not fully appreciating its consequences, and conceiving that the speedy departure of the expedition was advisable even for his interest, as well as agreeable to their own feelings. And thus his enemies, though baffled in their first attempt to bring on his immediate ruin, carried a postponement which insured to them leisure for thoroughly poisoning the public mind against him, and choosing their own time for his trial. They took care to keep back all farther accusation until he and the armament had departed.

THE FLEET SAILS

The spectacle of its departure was indeed so imposing, and the moment so full of anxious interest, that it banished even the recollection of the recent sacrilege. The entire armament was not mustered at Athens; for it had been judged expedient to order most of the allied contingents to rendezvous at once at Corcyra. But the Athenian force alone was astounding to behold. The condition, the equipment, the pomp both of wealth and force, visible in the armament, were still more impressive than the number. At day-break on the day appointed, when all the ships were ready in Piræus for departure, the military force was marched down in a body from the city and embarked. They were accompanied by nearly the whole population, metics and foreigners as well as citizens, so that the appearance was that of a collective emigration like the flight to Salamis sixty-five years before. While the crowd of foreigners, brought thither by curiosity, were amazed by the grandeur of the spectacle—the citizens accompanying were moved by deeper and more stirring anxieties. Their sons, brothers, relatives, and friends, were just starting on the longest and largest enterprise which Athens had ever undertaken; against an island extensive as well as powerful, known to none to them accurately, and into a sea of undefined possibilities—glory and profit on the one side, but hazards of unassignable magnitude on the other. At this final parting, ideas of doubt and danger became far more painfully present than they had been in any of the preliminary discussions; and in spite of all the reassuring effect of the unrivalled armament before them, the relatives now separating at the water’s edge could not banish the dark presentiment that they were bidding each other farewell for the last time.

The moment immediately succeeding this farewell—when all the soldiers were already on board and the celeustes was on the point of beginning his chant to put the rowers in motion—was peculiarly solemn and touching. Silence having been enjoined and obtained, by sound of trumpet, the crews in every ship, and the spectators on shore, followed the voice of the herald in praying to the gods for success, and in singing the pæan. On every deck were seen bowls of wine prepared, out of which the officers and the epibatæ made libations, with goblets of silver and gold. At length the final signal was given, and the whole fleet quitted Piræus in single file—displaying the exuberance of their yet untried force by a race of speed as far as Ægina. Never in Grecian history was an invocation more unanimous, emphatic, and imposing, addressed to the gods; never was the refusing nod of Zeus more stern or peremptory.f

[600]

The customary libations were poured out; and, after the triumphant pæan had been sung, the whole fleet set sail, and contended for the prize of naval skill and celerity, until they reached the shores of Ægina, from whence they enjoyed a prosperous voyage to their confederates at Corcyra.

At Corcyra the commanders reviewed the strength of the armament, which consisted of a hundred and thirty-four ships of war, with a proportional number of transports and tenders. The heavy-armed troops, exceeding five thousand, were attended with a sufficient body of slingers and archers. The army, abundantly provided with every other article, was extremely deficient in horses, which amounted to no more than thirty. But, at a moderate computation, we may estimate the whole military and naval strength, including slaves and servants, at twenty thousand men.[55]

With this powerful host, had the Athenians at once surprised and assailed the unprepared security of Syracuse, the expedition, however adventurous and imprudent, might, perhaps, have been crowned with success. But the timid mariners of Greece would have trembled at the proposal of trusting such a numerous fleet on the broad expanse of the Ionian Sea. They determined to cross the narrowest passage between Italy and Sicily, after coasting along the eastern shores of the former, until they reached the strait of Messana. That this design might be executed with the greater safety, they despatched three light vessels to examine the disposition of the Italian cities, and to solicit admission into their harbours. Neither the ties of consanguinity, nor the duties acknowledged by colonies towards their parent state, could prevail on the suspicious Thurians to open their gates, or even to furnish a market, to their Athenian ancestors. The towns of Tarentum and Locri prohibited them the use of their harbours, and refused to supply them with water; and they coasted the whole extent of the shore, from the promontory of Iapygia to that of Rhegium, before any one city would allow them to purchase the commodities for which they had immediate use. The magistrates of Rhegium granted this favour, but they granted nothing more.

A considerable detachment was sent to examine the preparations and the strength of Syracuse, and to proclaim liberty, and offer protection, to all the captives and strangers confined within its walls.

With another detachment Alcibiades sailed to Naxos, and persuaded the inhabitants to accept the alliance of Athens. The remainder of the armament proceeded to Catana, which refused to admit the ships into the harbour, or the troops into the city. But on the arrival of Alcibiades, the Catanians allowed him to address the assembly, and propose his demands. The artful Athenian transported the populace, and even the magistrates themselves, by the charms of his eloquence; the citizens flocked from every quarter, to hear a discourse which was purposely protracted for several hours; the soldiers forsook their posts; and the enemy, who had prepared to avail themselves of this negligence, burst through the unguarded gates, and became masters of the city. Those of the Catanians who were most attached to the interests of Syracuse, fortunately escaped death by the celerity of their flight. The rest accepted the proffered friendship of the Athenians. This success would probably have been followed by the surrender of Messana, which Alcibiades had filled with distrust and sedition. But when the plot was ripe for execution, the man who had contrived, and who alone could conduct it, was disqualified from serving his country. The arrival of the Salaminian galley recalled Alcibiades to Athens, that he might stand trial for his life.

[601]

ALCIBIADES TAKES FLIGHT

Alcibiades escaped to Thurii, and afterwards to Argos; and when he understood that the Athenians had set a price on his head, he finally took refuge in Sparta, where his active genius seized the first opportunity to advise and promote those fatal measures, which, while they gratified his private resentment, occasioned the ruin of his country.

The removal of Alcibiades soon appeared in the languid operations of the Athenian armament. The cautious timidity of Nicias, supported by wealth, eloquence, and authority, gained an absolute ascendant over the more warlike and enterprising character of Lamachus, whose poverty exposed him to contempt. Instead of making a bold impression on Selinus or Syracuse, Nicias contented himself with taking possession of the inconsiderable colony of Hyccara. He ravaged, or laid under contribution, some places of smaller note, and obtained thirty talents from the Segestans, which, added to the sale of the booty, furnished about thirty thousand pounds sterling, a sum that might be usefully employed in the prosecution of an expensive war. But this advantage did not compensate for the courage inspired into the Syracusans by delay, and for the dishonour sustained by the Athenian troops, in their unsuccessful attempts against Hybla and Himera, as well as for their dejection at being confined, during the greatest part of the summer, in the inactive quarters of Naxos and Catana.

Ancient Syracuse, of which the ruined grandeur still forms an object of admiration, was situated on a spacious promontory, washed on three sides by the sea, and defended on the west by abrupt and almost inaccessible mountains. The town was built in a triangular form, whose summit may be conceived on the lofty mountain Epipolæ. Adjacent to these natural fortifications, the western or inland division of the city was distinguished by the name of Tyche, or Fortune, being adorned by a magnificent temple of that flattering divinity. The triangle gradually widening towards the base, comprehended the vast extent of Achradina, reaching from the northern shore of the promontory to the southern island, Ortygia. This small island, composing the whole of modern Syracuse, formed but the third and least extensive division of the ancient; which was fortified by walls eighteen miles in circuit, enriched by a triple harbour, and peopled by above two hundred thousand warlike citizens or industrious slaves.

When the Syracusans heard the first rumours of the Athenian invasion, they despised, or affected to despise them, as idle lies invented to amuse the ignorance of the populace. The hostile armament had arrived at Rhegium before they could be persuaded, by the wisdom of Hermocrates, to provide against a danger which their presumption painted as imaginary. But when they received undoubted intelligence that the enemy had reached the Italian coast, when they beheld their numerous fleet commanding the sea of Sicily and ready to make a descent on their defenceless island, they were[602] seized with a degree of just terror and alarm proportional to their false security. The dilatory operations of the enemy not only removed the recent terror and trepidation of the Syracusans, but inspired them with unusual firmness. They requested the generals, whom they had appointed to the number of fifteen, to lead them to Catana, that they might attack the hostile camp. Their cavalry harassed the Athenians by frequent incursions, beat up their quarters, intercepted their convoys, destroyed their advanced posts, and even proceeded so near to the main body, that they were distinctly heard demanding, with loud insults, whether those boasted lords of Greece had left their native country, that they might form a precarious settlement at the foot of Mount Ætna.

NICIAS TRIES STRATEGY

Provoked by these indignities, and excited by the impatient resentment of his own troops, Nicias was still restrained from an open attempt against Syracuse by the difficulties attending that enterprise. He employed a stratagem. A citizen of Catana, whose subtile and daring genius, prepared alike to die or to deceive, ought to have preserved his name from oblivion, appeared in Syracuse as a deserter from his native city; the unhappy fate of which, in being subjected to the imperious commands, or licentious disorder of the Athenians, he lamented with perfidious tears, and with the plaintive accents of well-dissembled sorrow. “The Athenians,” he said, “spurned the confinement of the military life; their posts were forsaken, their ships unguarded, they disdained the duties of the camp, and indulged in the pleasures of the city. On an appointed day it would be easy for the Syracusans, assisted by the conspirators of Catana, to attack them unprepared, to mount their undefended ramparts, to demolish their encampment, and to burn their fleet.” This daring proposal well corresponded with the keen sentiments of revenge which animated the inhabitants of Syracuse. The day was named; the plan of the enterprise was concerted, and the treacherous Catanian returned home to revive the hopes, and to confirm the resolution, of his pretended associates.

The success of this intrigue gave the utmost satisfaction to Nicias, whose armament prepared to sail for Syracuse on the day appointed by the inhabitants of that city for assaulting, with their whole force, the Athenian camp. Already had they marched, with this view, to the fertile plain of Leontini, when, after twelve hours’ sail, the Athenian fleet arrived in the great harbour, disembarked their troops, and fortified a camp without the western wall, near to a celebrated temple of Olympian Jupiter, a situation which had been pointed out by some Syracusan exiles, and which was well adapted to every purpose of accommodation and defence. Meanwhile the cavalry of Syracuse, having proceeded to the walls of Catana, had discovered, to their infinite regret, the departure of the Athenians. The unwelcome intelligence was conveyed, with the utmost expedition, to the infantry, who immediately marched back to protect Syracuse. The rapid return of the war-like youth restored the courage of the aged Syracusans. They were joined by the forces of Gela, Selinus, and Camarina; and it was determined to attack the hostile encampment.

The attack was begun with fury, and continued with perseverance for several hours. Both sides were animated by every principle that can inspire and urge the utmost vigour of exertion, and victory was still doubtful, when a tempest suddenly arose, accompanied with unusual peals of thunder. This[603] event, which little affected the Athenians, confounded the unexperienced credulity of the enemy, who were broken and put to flight. The Syracusans escaped to their city, and the Athenians returned to their camp. In such an obstinate conflict the vanquished lost two hundred and sixty, the victors only fifty men.

The voyage, the encampment, and the battle, employed the dangerous activity, and gratified the impetuous ardour of the Athenians, but did not facilitate the conquest of Syracuse. Without more powerful preparations, Nicias despaired of taking the place, either by assault, or by a regular siege. Soon after his victory he returned with the whole armament to Naxos and Catana. Nicias had reason to expect that his victory over the Syracusans would procure him respect and assistance from the inferior states of Sicily. His emissaries were diffused over that island and the neighbouring coast of Italy. Messengers were sent to Tuscany, where Pisa and other cities had been founded by Greek colonies. An embassy was despatched to Carthage, the rival and enemy of Syracuse. Nicias gave orders to collect materials for circumvallation, iron, bricks, and all necessary stores. He demanded horses from the Segestans; and required from Athens reinforcements and a large pecuniary supply; and neglected nothing that might enable him to open the ensuing campaign with vigour and effect.

While the Athenians thus prepared for the attack of Syracuse, the citizens of that capital displayed equal activity in providing for their own defence. By the advice of Hermocrates, they appointed himself, Heraclides, and Sicanus; three, instead of fifteen generals. The commanders newly elected, both in civil and military affairs, were invested with unlimited power, which was usefully employed to purchase or prepare arms, daily to exercise the troops, and to strengthen and extend the fortifications of Syracuse. They likewise despatched ambassadors to the numerous cities and republics with which they had been connected in peace, or allied in war, to solicit the continuance of their friendship, and to counteract the dangerous designs of the Athenians.

Meanwhile the expected reinforcements arrived from Athens. In addition to his original force, Nicias had likewise collected a body of six hundred cavalry, and the sum of four hundred talents; and, in the eighteenth summer of the war, the activity of the troops and workmen had completed all necessary preparations for undertaking the siege of Syracuse.

The plan which Nicias adopted for conquering the city, was to draw a wall on either side. When these circumvallations had surrounded the place by land, he expected, by his numerous fleet, to block up the wide extent of the Syracusan harbours. The whole strength of the Athenian armament was employed in the former operations; and as all necessary materials had been provided with due attention, the works rose with a rapidity which surprised and terrified the besieged. Their former as well as their recent defeats deterred them from opposing the enemy in a general engagement; but the advice of Hermocrates persuaded them to raise walls which might traverse and interrupt those of the Athenians. The imminent danger urged the activity of the workmen; the hostile bulwarks approached each other; frequent skirmishes took place, in one of which the brave Lamachus unfortunately fell a victim to his rash valour; but the Athenian troops maintained their usual superiority.

Encouraged by success, Nicias pushed the enemy with vigour. The Syracusans lost hopes of defending their new works, or of preventing the complete circumvallation of their city. New generals were named in the[604] room of Hermocrates and his colleagues; and this injudicious alteration increased the calamities of Syracuse, which at length prepared to capitulate.

While the assembly deliberated concerning the execution of a measure, which, however disgraceful, was declared to be necessary, a Corinthian galley, commanded by Gongylus, entered the central harbour of Ortygia, which being strongly fortified, and penetrating into the heart of the city, served as the principal and most secure station for the Syracusan fleet. Gongylus announced a speedy and effectual relief to the besieged city. He acquainted the Syracusans, that the embassy, sent the preceding year to crave the assistance of Peloponnesus, had been crowned with success. His own countrymen had warmly embraced the cause of their kinsmen, and most respectable colony. They had fitted out a considerable fleet, the arrival of which might be expected every hour. The Lacedæmonians also had sent a small squadron, and the whole armament was conducted by the Spartan Gylippus, an officer of tried valour and ability.

While the desponding citizens of Syracuse listened to this intelligence with pleasing astonishment, a messenger arrived by land from Gylippus himself. That experienced commander, instead of pursuing a direct course, which might have been intercepted by the Athenian fleet, had landed with four galleys on the western coast of the island. The name of a Spartan general determined the wavering irresolution of the Sicilians. The troops of Himera, Selinus, and Gela flocked to his standard; and he approached Syracuse on the side of Epipolæ, where the line of contravallation was still unfinished, with a body of several thousand men.

SPARTAN AID

The most courageous of the citizens sallied forth to meet this generous and powerful protector. The junction was happily effected; the ardour of the troops kindled into enthusiasm; and they distinguished that memorable day by surprising several important Athenian posts. This first success reanimated the activity of the soldiers and workmen. The traverse wall was extended with the utmost diligence, and a vigorous sally deprived the enemy of the strong castle of Labdalum. Nicias, perceiving that the interest of the Athenians in Sicily would be continually weakened by delay, wished to bring the fortune of the war to the decision of a battle. Nor did Gylippus decline the engagement. The first action was unfavourable to the Syracusans, who had been imprudently posted in the defiles between their own and the enemy’s walls, which rendered of no avail their superiority in cavalry and archers. The magnanimity of Gylippus acknowledged this error, for which he completely atoned by his judicious conduct in the succeeding engagements.

The Syracusans soon extended their works beyond the line of circumvallation, so that it was impossible to block up their city, without forcing their[605] ramparts. The besiegers, while they maintained the superiority of their arms, had been abundantly supplied with necessaries from the neighbouring territory; but every place was alike hostile to them after their defeat. The soldiers who went out in quest of wood and water, were unexpectedly attacked and cut off by the enemy’s cavalry, or by the reinforcements which arrived from every quarter to the assistance of Syracuse; and they were at length reduced to depend for every necessary supply on the precarious bounty of the Italian shore.

Nicias, whose sensibility deeply felt the public distress, wrote a most desponding letter to the Athenians. He honestly described, and lamented, the misfortunes and disorders of his army. The slaves deserted in great numbers; the mercenary troops, who fought only for pay and subsistence, preferred the more secure and lucrative service of Syracuse. He therefore exhorted the assembly either to call them home without delay, or to send immediately a second armament, not less powerful than the first.

The principal squadrons of Syracuse lay in the harbour of Ortygia, separated, by an island of the same name, from the station of the Athenian fleet. While Hermocrates sailed forth with eighty galleys, to venture a naval engagement, Gylippus attacked the hostile fortifications at Plemmyrium, a promontory opposite to Ortygia, which confined the entrance of the Great Harbour. The defeat of the Syracusans at sea, whereby they lost fourteen vessels, was balanced by their victory on land, in which they took three fortresses, containing a large quantity of military and naval stores, and a considerable sum of money. In some subsequent actions, which scarcely deserve the name of battles, their fleet was still unsuccessful; but as they engaged with great caution, and found everywhere a secure retreat on a friendly shore, their loss was extremely inconsiderable. The want of success, in their first attempt, did not abate their resolution to gain the command at sea.

By unexampled assiduity the Syracusans at length prevailed in a general engagement, which was fought in the Great Harbour. Seven Athenian ships were sunk, many more were disabled, and Nicias saved the remains of his shattered and dishonoured armament by retiring behind a line of merchantmen and transports, from the masts of which had been suspended huge masses of lead, named dolphins from their form, sufficient to crush by their falling weight the stoutest galleys of antiquity. This unexpected obstacle arrested the progress of the victors; but the advantages already obtained elevated them with the highest hopes, and reduced the enemy to despair.

ALCIBIADES AGAINST ATHENS

The Athenian misfortunes in Sicily were attended by misfortunes at home still more dreadful. In the eighteenth year of the war, Alcibiades accompanied to Sparta the ambassadors of Corinth and Syracuse, who had solicited and obtained assistance to the besieged city. On that occasion the Athenian exile first acquired the confidence of the Spartans, by condemning, in the strongest terms, the injustice and ambition of his ungrateful countrymen, “whose cruelty towards himself equalled their inveterate hostility to the Lacedæmonian republic; but that republic might, by following his advice, disarm their resentment. The town of Decelea was situated on the Attic frontier, at an equal distance of fifteen miles from Thebes and Athens. This place, which commanded an extensive and fertile plain, might be[606] surprised and fortified by the Spartans, who, instead of harassing their foes by annual incursions, might thus infest them by a continual war. The wisdom of Sparta had too long neglected such a salutary and decisive measure, especially as the existence of a similar design had often been suggested by the fears of the enemy, who trembled even at the apprehension of seeing a foreign garrison in their territory.”

This advice first proposed, and often urged, by Alcibiades, was adopted in the commencement of the ensuing spring, when the warlike Agis led a powerful army into Attica. The defenceless inhabitants of the frontier fled before his irresistible arms; but instead of pursuing them, as usual, into the heart of the country, he stopped short at Decelea. As all necessary materials had been provided in great abundance, the place was speedily fortified on every side, and the walls of Decelea, which might be distinctly seen across the intermediate plain, bid defiance to those of Athens.

The latter city was kept in continual alarm by the watchful hostility of a neighbouring garrison. The open country was entirely laid waste, and the usual communication with the valuable island of Eubœa was interrupted, from which, in seasons of scarcity, or during the ravages of war, the Athenians commonly derived their supplies of corn, wine, and oil, and whatever is most necessary to life. Harassed by the fatigues of unremitting service, and deprived of daily bread, the slaves murmured, complained, and revolted to the enemy; and their defection robbed the state of twenty thousand useful artisans. Since the latter years of Pericles, the Athenians had not been involved in such distress.

The domestic calamities of the republic did not, however, prevent the most vigorous exertions abroad. Twenty galleys, stationed at Naupactus, watched the motions of the Peloponnesian fleet destined to the assistance of Syracuse; thirty carried on the war in Macedonia, to reduce the rebellion of Amphipolis; a considerable squadron collected tribute, and levied soldiers, in the colonies of Asia; another, still more powerful, ravaged the coast of Peloponnesus. Never did any kingdom or republic equal the magnanimity of Athens; never in ancient or modern times did the courage of any state, entertain an ambition so far superior to its power, or exert efforts so disproportionate to its strength. Amidst the difficulties and dangers which encompassed them on every side, the Athenians persisted in the siege of Syracuse, a city little inferior to their own; and, undaunted by the actual devastation of their country, unterrified by the menaced assault of their walls, they sent, without delay, such a reinforcement into Sicily, as afforded the most promising hopes of success in their expedition against that island.

ATHENIAN REINFORCEMENTS

The Syracusans had scarcely time to rejoice at their victory, or Nicias to bewail his defeat, when a numerous and formidable armament appeared on the Sicilian coast. The foremost galleys, their prows adorned with gaudy streamers, pursued a secure course towards the harbour of Syracuse. The emulation of the rowers was animated by the mingled sounds of trumpet and clarion; and the regular decoration, the elegant splendour, which distinguished every part of the equipment, exhibited a pompous spectacle of naval triumph. Their appearance, even at a distance, announced the country to which they belonged; and both the joy of the besiegers and the terror of the besieged, testified that Athens was the only city in the world capable[607] of sending to the sea such a beautiful and magnificent contribution. The Syracusans employed not unavailing efforts to check the progress, or to hinder the approach, of the hostile armament; which, besides innumerable foreign vessels and transports, consisted of seventy-three Athenian galleys, commanded by the experienced valour of Demosthenes and Eurymedon. The pikemen on board exceeded five thousand; the light-armed troops were nearly as numerous; and, including the rowers, workmen, and attendants, the whole strength may be reckoned equal to that originally sent with Nicias, which amounted to above twenty thousand men.

The misfortunes hitherto attending the operations in Sicily had lowered the character of the general; and this circumstance, as well as the superior abilities of Demosthenes, entitled him to assume the tone of authority in their conjunct deliberations. After ravaging the banks of the Anapus, and making some ineffectual attempts against the fortifications on that side, Demosthenes chose the first hour of a moonlit night, to proceed with the flower of the army to seize the fortresses in Epipolæ. The march was performed with successful celerity; the outposts were surprised, the guards put to the sword; and three separate encampments, of the Syracusans, the Sicilians, the allies, formed a feeble opposition to the Athenian ardour. As if their victory had already been complete, the assailants began to pull down the wooden battlements, or to urge the pursuit with a rapidity which disordered their ranks.

Meanwhile, the vigilant activity of Gylippus had assembled the whole force of Syracuse. At the approach of the enemy his vanguard retired. The Athenians were decoyed within the intricate windings of the walls, and their irregular fury was first checked by the firmness of a Theban phalanx. A resistance so sudden and unexpected might alone have been decisive; but other circumstances were adverse to the Athenians: their ignorance of the ground, the alternate obscurity of night, and the deceitful glare of the moon, which, shining in the front of the Thebans, illumined the splendour of their arms, and multiplied the terror of their numbers. The foremost ranks of the pursuers were repelled; and, as they retreated to the main body, encountered the advancing Argives and Corcyræans, who, singing the pæan in their Doric dialect and accent, were unfortunately taken for enemies. Fear, and then rage, seized the Athenians, who, thinking themselves encompassed on all sides, determined to force their way, and committed much bloodshed among their allies, before the mistake could be discovered.

To prevent the repetition of this dreadful error, their scattered bands were obliged at every moment to demand the watchword, which was at length betrayed to their adversaries. The consequence of this was doubly fatal. At every rencounter the silent Athenians were slaughtered without mercy, while the enemy, who knew their watchword, might at pleasure join, or decline, the battle, and easily oppress their weakness, or elude their strength. The terror and confusion increased; the rout became general; Gylippus pursued in good order with his victorious troops. The vanquished could not descend in a body with the celerity of fear, by the narrow passages through which they had mounted. Many abandoned their arms, and explored the unknown paths of the rocky Epipolæ. Others threw themselves from precipices, rather than await the pursuers. Several thousands were left dead or wounded on the scene of action; and in the morning the greater part of the stragglers were intercepted and cut off by the Syracusan cavalry.

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ATHENIAN DISASTER

This dreadful and unexpected disaster suspended the operations of the siege. The Athenian generals spent the time in fruitless deliberations concerning their future measures, while the army lay encamped on the marshy and unhealthy banks of the Anapus. A general sickness broke out in the camp. Demosthenes urged this calamity as a new reason for hastening their departure, while it was yet possible to cross the Ionian Sea, without risking the danger of a winter’s tempest. But Nicias opposed the design of leaving Sicily until they should be warranted to take this important step by the positive authority of the republic. The colleagues of Nicias were confounded with the firmness of an opposition so unlike the flexible timidity of his ordinary character, but they submitted to his opinion, an opinion equally fatal to himself and to them, and to the armament which they commanded.

Meanwhile the prudence of Gylippus profited by the fame of his victory, to draw a powerful reinforcement from the Sicilian cities; and the transports, so long expected from Peloponnesus, finally arrived in the harbour of Ortygia. This squadron formed the last assistance sent to either of the contending parties, and nothing further was required to complete the actors in the scene; for by the accession of the Cyrenians, Syracuse was either attacked or defended by all the various divisions of the Grecian name, which formed, in that age, the most civilised portion of the inhabitants of Asia, Africa, and Europe. The arrival of such powerful auxiliaries to the besieged, and the increasing force of the malady, totally disconcerted the Athenians. Even Nicias agreed to set sail. Every necessary preparation was made for this purpose, and the cover of night was chosen, as most proper for concealing their own disgrace, and for eluding the vengeance of the enemy. But the night appointed for their departure was distinguished by an inauspicious eclipse of the moon. The voyage was deferred till the mystical number of thrice nine days. But before the expiration of that time it was no longer practicable; for the design was soon discovered to the Syracusans, and this discovery, added to the encouragement derived from the circumstances of which we have already taken notice, increased their eagerness to attack the enemy by sea and land. Their attempts failed to destroy, by fire-ships, the Athenian fleet. They were more successful in employing superior numbers to divide the strength and to weaken the resistance of an enfeebled and dejected foe. During three days there was a perpetual succession of military and naval exploits. On the first day fortune hung in suspense; the second deprived the Athenians of a considerable squadron commanded by Eurymedon; and this misfortune was embittered on the third day, by the loss of eighteen galleys, with their crews.

A design, suggested by the wisdom of Hermocrates, was eagerly adopted by the active zeal of his fellow-citizens, who strove, with unremitting ardour, to throw a chain of vessels across the mouth of the Great Harbour, about a mile in breadth. The labour was complete before Nicias, totally occupied by other objects, attempted to interrupt it. After repeated defeats, and although he was so miserably tormented by the stone, that he had frequently solicited his recall, that virtuous commander, whose courage rose in adversity, used the utmost diligence to retrieve the affairs of his country. The shattered galleys were speedily refitted, and again prepared, to the number of a hundred and ten, to risk the event of a battle. As they had suffered greatly, on former occasions, by the hardness and massive solidity of the Syracusan prows, Nicias provided them with grappling-irons, fitted to prevent the recoil of[609] their opponents, and the repetition of the hostile stroke. The decks were crowded with armed men, and the contrivance to which the enemy had hitherto chiefly owed their success, of introducing the firmness and stability of a military, into a naval engagement, was adopted in its full extent by the Athenians. When Gylippus and the Syracusan commanders were apprised of the designs of the enemy, they hastened to the defence of the bar which had been thrown across the entrance of the harbour. Even the Athenian grappling-irons had not been overlooked; to elude the dangerous grasp of these instruments, the prows of the Syracusan vessels were covered with wet and slippery hides.

The first impression of the Athenians was irresistible; they burst through the passage of the bar, and repelled the squadrons on either side. As the entrance widened, the Syracusans, in their turn, rushed into the harbour, which was more favourable than the open sea to their mode of fighting. Thither the foremost of the Athenians returned, either compelled by superior force, or that they might assist their companions. The engagement became general in the mouth of the harbour; and in this narrow space two hundred galleys fought, during the greatest part of the day, with an obstinate and persevering valour. It would require the expressive energy of Thucydides, and the imitative, though inimitable, sounds and expressions of the Grecian tongue, to describe the noise, the tumult, and the ardour of the contending squadrons. The battle was not long confined to the shock of adverse prows, and to the distant hostility of darts and arrows. The nearest vessels grappled, and closed with each other, and their decks were soon converted into a field of blood. While the heavy-armed troops boarded the enemy’s ships, they left their own exposed to a similar misfortune; the fleets were divided into massive clusters of adhering galleys; and the confusion of their mingled shouts overpowered the voice of authority. The singular and tremendous spectacle of an engagement more fierce and obstinate than any that had ever been beheld in the Grecian seas, totally suspended the powers of the numerous and adverse battalions which encircled the coast.

Hope, fear, the shouts of victory, the shrieks of despair, the anxious solicitude of doubtful success, animated the countenances, the voice, and the gestures of the Athenians, whose whole reliance centred in their fleet. When at length their galleys evidently gave way on every side, the contrast of alternate, and the rapid tumult of successive passions, subsided in a melancholy calm. This dreadful pause of astonishment and terror was followed by the disordered trepidation of flight and fear; many escaped to the camp; others ran, uncertain whither to direct their steps; while Nicias, with a small, but undismayed band, remained on the shore to protect the landing of their unfortunate galleys. But the retreat of the Athenians could not probably have been effected, had it not been favoured by the actual circumstances of the enemy, as well as by the peculiar prejudices of ancient superstition. In this well-fought battle, the vanquished had lost fifty and the victors forty vessels. It was incumbent on the latter to employ their immediate and most strenuous efforts to recover the dead bodies of their friends, that they might be honoured with the sacred and indispensable rites of funeral. The day was far spent; the strength of the sailors had been exhausted by a long continuance of unremitting labour; and both they and their companions on shore were more desirous to return to Syracuse to enjoy the fruits of victory, than to irritate the dangerous despair of the vanquished Athenians.

It is observed by the Roman orator Cicero, with no less truth than elegance, that not only the navy of Athens, but the glory and the empire of[610] that republic, suffered shipwreck in the fatal harbour of Syracuse. The despondent degeneracy which immediately followed this ever memorable engagement was testified in the neglect of a duty which the Athenians had never neglected before, and in denying a part of their national character, which it had hitherto been their greatest glory to maintain. They abandoned to insult and indignity the bodies of the slain; and when it was proposed to them by their commanders to prepare next day for a second engagement, since their vessels were still more numerous than those of the enemy, they, who had seldom avoided a superior, and who had never declined the encounter of an equal force, declared, that no motive could induce them to withstand the weaker armament of Syracuse. Their only desire was to escape by land, under cover of the night, from a foe whom they had not courage to oppose, and from a place where every object was offensive to their sight, and most painful to their reflection.

The behaviour of the Syracusans might have proved extremely favourable to this design. The coincidence of a festival and a victory demanded an accumulated profusion of such objects as soothe the senses and please the fancy. Amidst these giddy transports, the Syracusans lost all remembrance of an enemy whom they despised; even the soldiers on guard joined the dissolute or frivolous amusements of their companions; and, during the greatest part of the night, Syracuse presented a mixed scene of secure gayety, of thoughtless jollity, and of mad and dangerous disorder.

The firm and vigilant mind of Hermocrates alone withstood, but was unable to divert, the general current. It was impossible to rouse to the fatigues of war men buried in wine and pleasure, and intoxicated with victory; and, as he could not intercept by force, he determined to retard by stratagem, the intended retreat of the Athenians, whose numbers and resentment would still render them formidable to whatever part of Sicily they might remove their camp. A select band of horsemen, assuming the character of traitors, fearlessly approached the hostile ramparts, and warned the Athenians of the danger of departing that night, as many ambuscades lurked in the way, and all the most important passes were occupied by the enemy. The frequency of treason gained credit to the perfidious advice; and the Athenians, having changed their first resolution, were persuaded by Nicias to wait two days longer, that such measures might be taken as seemed best adapted to promote the safety and celerity of their march.

The superior rank of Nicias entitled him to a pre-eminence of toil and of woe; and he deserves the regard of posterity by his character and sufferings, and still more by the melancholy firmness of his conduct.j

Few pages of history are more eloquent than those wherein Thucydides describes the epic miseries of the defeated host of Athens. They have furthermore the merit of great accuracy. The rest of this chapter may therefore be given over to his vivid and tragic picture of the retreat.a

THUCYDIDES’ FAMOUS ACCOUNT OF THE FINAL DISASTERS

When Nicias and Demosthenes thought they were sufficiently prepared, the removal of the army took place, on the third day after the sea-fight. It was a wretched scene then, not on account of the single circumstance alone, that they were retreating after having lost all their ships, and while both themselves and their country were in danger, instead of being in high hope;[611] but also because, on leaving their camp, every one had grievous things both to behold with his eyes and to feel in his heart. For as the dead lay unburied, and any one saw a friend on the ground, he was struck at once with grief and fear. And the living who were being left behind, wounded or sick, were to the living a much more sorrowful spectacle than the dead, and more piteous than those who had perished. For having recourse to entreaties and wailings, they reduced them to utter perplexity, begging to be taken away, and appealing to each individual friend or relative that any of them might anywhere see; or hanging on their comrades, as they were now going away; or following as far as they could, and when in any case the strength of their body failed, not being left behind without many appeals to heaven and many lamentations. So that the whole army, being filled with tears and distress of this kind, did not easily get away, although from an enemy’s country, and although they had both suffered already miseries too great for tears to express, and were still afraid for the future, lest they might suffer more. There was also amongst them much dejection and depreciation of their own strength. For they resembled nothing but a city starved out and attempting to escape; and no small one too, for of their whole multitude there were not less than forty thousand on the march.

Of these, all the rest took whatever each one could that was useful, and the heavy-armed and cavalry themselves, contrary to custom, carried their own food under their arms, some for want of servants, others through distrusting them; for they had for a long time been deserting, and did so in greatest numbers at that moment. And even what they carried was not sufficient; for there was no longer any food in the camp. Nor, again, was their other misery, and their equal participation in sufferings (though it affords some alleviation to endure with others), considered even on that account easy to bear at the present time; especially, when they reflected from what splendour and boasting at first they had been reduced to such an abject termination. For this was the greatest reverse that ever befell a Grecian army; since, in contrast to their having come to enslave others, they had to depart in fear of undergoing that themselves; and instead of the prayers and hymns, with which they sailed from home, they had to start on their return with omens the very contrary; going by land, instead of by sea, and relying on a military rather than a naval force. But nevertheless, in consequence of the greatness of the danger still impending, all these things seemed endurable to them.

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Nicias, seeing the army dejected, and greatly changed, passed along the ranks, and encouraged and cheered them, as well as existing circumstances allowed; speaking still louder than before, as he severally came opposite to them, in the earnestness of his feeling, and from wishing to be of service to them by making himself audible to as many as possible. If he saw them anywhere straggling, and not marching in order, he collected and brought them to their post; while Demosthenes also did no less to those who were near him, addressing them in a similar manner. They marched in the form of a hollow square, the division under Nicias taking the lead, and that of Demosthenes following; while the baggage bearers and the main crowd of camp followers were enclosed within the heavy-armed.

When they had come to the river Anapus, they found drawn up a body of the Syracusans and allies; but having routed these, and secured the passage, they proceeded onwards; while the Syracusans pressed them with charges of horse, as their light-armed did with their missiles. On that day the Athenians advanced about five miles, and then halted for the night on a hill. The day following, they commenced their march at an early hour, and having advanced about two and a half miles, descended into a level district, and there encamped, wishing to procure some eatables from the houses (for the place was inhabited), and to carry on with them water from it, since for many miles before them, in the direction they were to go, it was not plentiful. The Syracusans, in the meantime, had gone on before, and were blocking up the pass in advance of them. For there was there a steep hill, with a precipitous ravine on either side of it, called the Acræum Lepas. The next day the Athenians advanced, and the horse and dart-men of the Syracusans and allies, each in great numbers, impeded their progress, hurling their missiles upon them, and annoying them with cavalry charges. The Athenians fought for a long time, and then returned again to the same camp, no longer having provisions as they had before; and it was no more possible to leave their position, because of the cavalry.

Starting early, they began their march again, and forced their way to the hill which had been fortified; where they found before them the enemy’s infantry drawn up for the defence of the wall many spears deep; for the pass was but narrow. The Athenians charged and assaulted the wall, but being annoyed with missiles by a large body from the hill, which was steep (for those on the heights more easily reached their aim), and not being able to force a passage, they retreated again, and rested. There happened also to be at the same time some claps of thunder and rain, as is generally the case when the year is now verging on autumn; in consequence of which the Athenians were still more dispirited, and thought that all these things also were conspiring together for their ruin. While they were resting, Gylippus and the Syracusans sent a part of their troops to intercept them again with a wall on their rear, where they had already passed: but they, on their side also, sent some of their men against them, and prevented their doing it. After this, the Athenians returned again with all their army into the more level country, and there halted for the night. The next day they marched forward, while the Syracusans discharged their weapons on them, surrounding them on all sides, and disabled many with wounds; retreating if the Athenians advanced against them, and pressing on them if they gave way; most especially attacking their extreme rear, in the hope that by routing them little by little, they might strike terror into the whole army. The Athenians resisted this mode of attack for a long time, but then, after advancing five or six furlongs, halted for rest on the plain; while the Syracusans went to their camp.

[613]

During the night, their troops being in a wretched condition, both from the want of all provisions which was now felt, and from so many men being disabled by wounds in the numerous attacks that had been made upon them by the enemy, Nicias and Demosthenes determined to light as many fires as possible, and then lead off the army, no longer by the same route as they had intended, but in the opposite direction to where the Syracusans were watching for them, namely, to the sea. Now the whole of this road would lead the armament, not towards Catana, but to the other side of Sicily, to Camarina, and Gela, and the cities in that direction, whether Grecian or barbarian. They kindled therefore many fires, and began their march in the night.

And as all armies, especially the largest, are liable to have terrors and panics amongst them, particularly when marching at night, and through an enemy’s country, and with the enemy not far off; so they also were thrown into alarm; and the division of Nicias, taking the lead as it did, kept together and got a long way in advance; while that of Demosthenes, containing about half or more, was separated from the others, and proceeded in greater disorder. By the morning, nevertheless, they arrived at the seacoast, and entering on what is called the Helorine road, continued their march, in order that when they had reached the river Cacyparis, they might march up along its banks through the interior; for they hoped also that in this direction the Sicels, to whom they had sent, would come to meet them. But when they had reached the river, they found a guard of the Syracusans there too, intercepting the pass with a wall and a palisade, having carried which, they crossed the river, and marched on again to another called the Erineus; for this was the route which their guides directed them to take.

Demosthenes Surrenders His Detachment

In the meantime the Syracusans and allies, as soon as it was day, and they found that the Athenians had departed, most of them charged Gylippus with having purposely let them escape; and pursuing with all haste by the route which they had no difficulty in finding they had taken, they overtook them about dinner-time. When they came up with the troops under Demosthenes, which were behind the rest, and marching more slowly and disorderly, ever since they had been thrown into confusion during the night, at the time we have mentioned, they immediately fell upon and engaged them; and the Syracusan horse surrounded them with greater ease from their being divided, and confined them in a narrow space.

The division of Nicias was six miles in advance; for he led them on more rapidly, thinking that their preservation depended, under such circumstances, not on staying behind, if they could help it, and on fighting, but on retreating as quickly as possible, and only fighting as often as they were compelled. Demosthenes, on the other hand, was, generally speaking, involved in more incessant labour (because, as he was retreating in the rear, he was the first that the enemy attacked), and on that occasion, finding that the Syracusans were in pursuit, he was not so much inclined to push on, as to form his men for battle; until, through thus loitering, he was surrounded by them, and both himself and the Athenians with him were thrown into great confusion. Being driven back into a certain spot which had a wall all round it, with a road on each side, and many olive trees growing about, they were annoyed with missiles in every direction. This kind of attack the Syracusans naturally adopted, instead of close combat; since risking their lives against men reduced to despair was no longer for their advantage, so much as for that of[614] the Athenians. Besides, after success which was now so signal, each man spared himself in some degree, that he might not be cut off before the end of the business. They thought too that, even as it was, they should by this kind of fighting subdue and capture the Athenians.

At any rate, when, after plying the Athenians and their allies with missiles all day from every quarter, they saw them now distressed by wounds and other sufferings, Gylippus with the Syracusans and allies made a proclamation, in the first place, that any of the islanders who chose should come over to them, on condition of retaining his liberty; and some few states went over. Afterwards, terms were made with all the troops under Demosthenes, that they should surrender their arms, and that no one should be put to death, either by violence or imprisonment, or want of such nourishment as was most absolutely requisite. Thus there surrendered, in all, to the number of six thousand; and they laid down the whole of the money in their possession, throwing it into the hollow of shields, four of which they filled with it. These they immediately led back to the city, while Nicias and his division arrived that day on the banks of the river Erineus; having crossed which, he posted his army on some high ground.

Nicias Parleys, Fights, and Surrenders

The Syracusans, having overtaken him the next day, told him that Demosthenes and his division had surrendered themselves, and called on him also to do the same. Being incredulous of the fact, he obtained a truce to enable him to send a horseman to see. When he had gone, and brought word back again that they had surrendered, Nicias sent a herald to Gylippus and the Syracusans, saying that he was ready to agree with the Syracusans, on behalf of the Athenians, to repay whatever money the Syracusans had spent on the war, on condition of their letting his army go; and that until the money was paid, he would give Athenians as hostages, one for every talent. The Syracusans and Gylippus did not accede to these proposals, but fell upon this division also, and surrounded them on all sides, and annoyed them with their missiles until late in the day. And they too, like the others, were in a wretched plight for want of food and necessaries. Nevertheless, they watched for the quiet of the night, and then intended to pursue their march. And they were now just taking up their arms, when the Syracusans perceived it and raised their pæan. The Athenians, therefore, finding that they had not eluded their observation, laid their arms down again; excepting about three hundred men who forced their way through the sentinels, and proceeded, during the night, how and where they could.

As soon as it was day, Nicias led his troops forward; while the Syracusans and allies pressed on them in the same manner, discharging their missiles at them, and striking them down with their javelins on every side. The Athenians were hurrying on to reach the river Assinarus, being urged to this at once by the attack made on every side of them by the numerous cavalry and the rest of the light-armed multitude (for they thought they should be more at ease if they were once across the river), and also by their weariness and craving for drink. When they reached its banks, they rushed into it without any more regard for order, every man anxious to be himself the first to cross it; while the attack of the enemy rendered the passage more difficult. For being compelled to advance in a dense body, they fell upon and trod down one another; and some of them died immediately on the javelins and articles of baggage, while others were entangled together, and floated[615] down the stream. On the other side of the river, too, the Syracusans lined the bank, which was precipitous, and from the higher ground discharged their missiles on the Athenians, while most of them were eagerly drinking in confusion amongst themselves in the hollow bed of the stream. The Peloponnesians, moreover, charged them and butchered them, especially those in the river. And thus the water was immediately spoiled; but nevertheless it was drunk by them, mud and all, and bloody as it was, it was even fought for by most of them.

At length, when many dead were now heaped one upon another in the river, and the army was destroyed, either at the river, or, if any part had escaped, by the cavalry, Nicias surrendered himself to Gylippus, placing more confidence in him than in the Syracusans; and desired him and the Lacedæmonians to do what they pleased with himself, but to stop butchering the rest of the soldiers. After this, Gylippus commanded to make prisoners; and they collected all that were alive, excepting such as they concealed for their own benefit (of whom there was a large number). They also sent a party in pursuit of the three hundred, who had forced their way through the sentinels during the night, and took them. The part of the army, then, that was collected as general property, was not large, but that which was secreted was considerable; and the whole of Sicily was filled with them, inasmuch as they had not been taken on definite terms of surrender, like those with Demosthenes. Indeed no small part was actually put to death; for this was the most extensive slaughter, and surpassed by none of all that occurred in this Sicilian war. In the other encounters also, which were frequent on their march, no few had fallen. But many also escaped; some at the moment, others after serving as slaves, and running away subsequently. These found a place of refuge at Catana.

The Fate of the Captives

When the Syracusans and allies were assembled together, they took with them as many prisoners as they could, with the spoils, and returned to the city. All the rest of the Athenians and the allies that they had taken, they sent down into the quarries, thinking this the safest way of keeping them; but Nicias and Demosthenes they executed, against the wish of Gylippus. For he thought it would be a glorious distinction for him, in addition to all his other achievements, to take to the Lacedæmonians the generals who had commanded against them. And it so happened, that one of these, namely Demosthenes, was regarded by them as their most inveterate enemy, in consequence of what had occurred on the island and at Pylos; the other, for the same reasons, as most in their interest; for Nicias had exerted himself for the release of the Lacedæmonians taken from the island, by persuading the Athenians to make a treaty. On this account the Lacedæmonians had friendly feelings towards him; and indeed it was mainly for the same reasons that he reposed confidence in Gylippus, and surrendered himself to him. But certain of the Syracusans (as it was said) were afraid, some of them, since they had held communication with him, that if put to the torture, he might cause them trouble on that account in the midst of their success; others, and especially the Corinthians, lest he might bribe some, as he was rich, and effect his escape, and so they should again incur mischief through his agency; and therefore they persuaded the allies, and put him to death. For this cause then, or something very like it, he was executed, having least of all the Greeks deserved to meet with such a[616] misfortune, on account of his devoted attention to the practice of every virtue.

As for those in the quarries, the Syracusans treated them with cruelty during the first period of their captivity. For as they were in a hollow place, and many in a small compass, the sun, as well as the suffocating closeness, distressed them at first, in consequence of their not being under cover; and then, on the contrary, the nights coming on autumnal and cold, soon worked in them an alteration from health to disease, by means of the change. Since, too, in consequence of their want of room, they did everything in the same place; and the dead, moreover, were piled up on one another—such as died from their wounds, and from the change they had experienced, and such like. There were, besides, intolerable stenches; while at the same time they were tormented with hunger and thirst, for during eight months they gave each of them daily only a cotyle[56] of water, and two of corn. And of all the other miseries which it was likely that men thrown into such a place would suffer, there was none that did not fall to their lot. For some seventy days they thus lived all together; then the rest of them were sold, except the Athenians, and whatever Siceliots or Italians had joined them in the expedition.

The total number of those who were taken, though it were difficult to speak with exactness, was still not less than seven thousand. “And this,” says Thucydides in conclusion, “was the greatest Grecian exploit of all that were performed in this war; nay, in my opinion, of all Grecian achievements that we have heard of also; and was at once most splendid for the conquerors, and most disastrous for the conquered. For being altogether vanquished at all points, and having suffered in no slight degree in any respect, they were destroyed (as the saying is) with utter destruction, both army, and navy, and everything; and only a few out of many returned home. Such were the events which occurred in Sicily.”i

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER XXXVI. CLOSE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

In the populous and extensive kingdoms of modern Europe, the revolutions of public affairs seldom disturb the humble obscurity of private life; but the national transactions of Greece involved the interest of every family, and deeply affected the fortune and happiness of every individual. Had the arms of the Athenians proved successful in Sicily, each citizen would have derived from that event an immediate accession of wealth, as well as of power, and have felt a proportional increase of honour and security. But their proud hopes perished forever in the harbour of Syracuse. The succeeding disasters shook to the foundation the fabric of their empire.

In one rash enterprise they lost their army, their fleet, the prudence of their experienced generals, and the flourishing vigour of their manly youth—irreparable disasters which totally disabled them to resist the confederacy of Peloponnesus, reinforced by the resentment of a new and powerful enemy. While a Lacedæmonian army invested their city, they had reason to dread that a Syracusan fleet should assault the Piræus; that Athens must finally yield to these combined attacks, and her once prosperous citizens destroyed by the sword, or dragged into captivity, atone by their death or disgrace for the cruelties which they had recently inflicted on the wretched republics of Melos and Scione.

ATHENS AFTER THE SICILIAN DÉBACLE

The dreadful alternative of victory and defeat, renders it little surprising that the Athenians should have rejected intelligence, which they must have received with horror. The first messengers of such sad news were treated with contempt; but it was impossible long to withhold belief from the miserable fugitives, whose squalid and dejected countenances too faithfully attested the public calamity. Such evidence could not be refused; the arrogance of incredulity was abashed, and the whole republic thrown into consternation, or seized with despair. The venerable members of the Areopagus expressed the majesty of silent sorrow; but the piercing cries of woe extended many a mile along the lofty walls which joined the Piræus to the city; and the licentious populace raged with unbridled fury against the diviners and orators, whose blind predictions, and ambitious harangues, had promoted an expedition eternally fatal to their country.

[618]

The Athenian allies, or rather subjects, scattered over so many coasts and islands, prepared to assert their independence; the confederates of Sparta, among whom the Syracusans justly assumed the first rank, were unsatisfied with victory, and longed for revenge: even those communities which had hitherto declined the danger of a doubtful contest, meanly solicited to become parties in a war, which they expected must finally terminate in the destruction of Athens. Should all the efforts of such a powerful confederacy still prove insufficient to the ruin of the devoted city, there was yet another enemy behind, from whose strength and animosity the Athenians had everything to fear.

The long and peaceful reign of Artaxerxes expired four hundred and twenty-five years before the Christian era. There followed a rapid succession of kings, Xerxes, Sogdianus, Ochus; the last of whom assumed the name of Darius, to which historians have added the epithet of Nothus, the bastard, to distinguish this effeminate prince from his illustrious predecessor. But in the ninth year of his reign Darius was roused from his lethargy by the revolt of Egypt and Lydia. The defection of the latter threatened to tear from his dominion the valuable provinces of Asia Minor; a consequence which he determined to prevent by employing the bravery of Pharnabazus, and the policy of the crafty Tissaphernes, to govern respectively the northern and southern districts of that rich and fertile peninsula. The abilities of these generals not only quelled the rebellion in Lydia, but extended the arms of their master towards the shores of the Ægean, as well as of the Hellespont and Propontis; in direct opposition to the treaty which forty years before had been ratified between the Athenians, then in the height of their prosperity, and the unwarlike Artaxerxes. But the recent misfortunes of that ambitious people flattered the Persian commanders with the hope of restoring the whole Asiatic coast to the Great King, as well as of inflicting exemplary punishment on the proud city, which had resisted the power, dismembered the empire, and tarnished the glory of Persia.

The terror of such a formidable combination might have reduced the Athenians to despair. Their disasters and disgrace in Sicily destroyed at once the real and the ideal supports of their power; the loss of one-third of their citizens made it impossible to supply, with fresh recruits, the exhausted strength of their garrisons in foreign parts; the terror of their fleet was no more; and their multiplied defeats, before the walls of Syracuse, had converted into contempt that admiration in which Athens had been long held by Greeks and barbarians.

But in free governments there are many latent resources which public calamities alone can bring to light; and adversity, which to individuals endowed with inborn vigour of mind is the great school of virtue and of heroism, furnishes also to the enthusiasm of popular assemblies the noblest field for the display of national honour and magnanimity. Had the measures of the Athenians depended on one man, or even on a few, it is probable that the selfish timidity of a prince, and the cautious prudence of a council, would have sunk under the weight of misfortunes, too heavy for the unsupported strength of ordinary minds. But the first spark of generous ardour, which the love of virtue, of glory, and the republic, or even the meaner motives of ambition and vanity, excited in the assembled multitude, was diffused and increased by the natural contagion of sympathy; the patriotic flame was communicated simultaneously to every breast. With one mind and resolution the Athenians determined to brave the severity of fortune, and to withstand the assaults of the enemy.

[619]

In the year following the unfortunate expedition into Sicily, the Spartans prepared a fleet of a hundred sail, of which twenty-five galleys were furnished by their own seaports. This armament was destined to encourage and support the revolt of the Asiatic subjects of the Athenians. The islands of Chios and Lesbos, as well as the city Erythræ on the continent, solicited the Spartans to join them with their naval force. Their request was enforced by Tissaphernes, who promised to pay the sailors, and to victual the ships. At the same time, an ambassador from Cyzicus, a populous town situate on an island of the Propontis, entreated the Lacedæmonian armament to sail to the safe and capacious harbours which had long formed the wealth and the ornament of that city, and to expel the Athenian garrisons, to which the Cyzicenes and their neighbours reluctantly submitted. The Persian Pharnabazus seconded their proposal; offered the same conditions with Tissaphernes; and so little harmony subsisted between the lieutenants of the Great King, that each urged his particular demand with a total unconcern about the important interests of their common master. The Lacedæmonians held many consultations amongst themselves, and with their allies; hesitated, deliberated, resolved, and changed their resolution; and at length were persuaded by Alcibiades to prefer the overture of Tissaphernes and the Ionians to that of the Hellespontines and Pharnabazus.

The delay occasioned by this deliberation was the principal, but not the only cause which hindered the allies from acting expeditiously, at a time when expedition was of the utmost importance. A variety of private views diverted them from the general aim of the confederacy; and the season was far advanced before the Corinthians, who had been distinguished by excess of antipathy to Athens, were prepared to sail. The Athenians anticipated the designs of the rebels of Chios, and carried off seven ships as pledges of their fidelity. The squadron which returned from this useful enterprise, intercepted the Corinthians as they sailed through the Saronic Gulf; and having attacked and conquered them, pursued and blocked them up in their harbours. Meanwhile the Spartans sent to the Ionian coast such squadrons as were successively ready for sea, under the conduct of Alcibiades, Chalcideus, and Astyochus. The first of these commanders sailed to the isle of Chios, which was distracted by contending factions. The Athenian partisans were surprised and compelled to submit; and the city, which possessed forty galleys, and yielded in wealth and populousness to none of the neighbouring colonies, became an accession to the Peloponnesian confederacy. The strong and rich town of Miletus followed the example: Erythræ and Clazomenæ surrendered to Chalcideus; several places of less note were conquered by Astyochus.

When the Athenians received the unwelcome intelligence of these events, they voted the expenditure of a thousand talents, which in more prosperous times, they had deposited in the citadel, under the sanction of a decree of the senate and people, to reserve it for an occasion of the utmost danger. This seasonable supply enabled them to increase the fleet, which sailed under Phrynichus and other leaders, to the isle of Lesbos. Having secured the fidelity of the Lesbians, who were ripe for rebellion, they endeavoured to recover their authority in Miletus, anciently regarded as the capital of the Ionic coast. A bloody battle was fought before the walls of that place, between the Athenians and Argives on one side, and the Peloponnesians, assisted by the troops of Tissaphernes and the revolted Milesians, on the other. The Athenian bravery defeated, on this occasion, the superior number of Greeks and barbarians to whom they were opposed; but their Argive[620] auxiliaries were repulsed by the gallant citizens of Miletus so that in both parts of the engagement, the Ionic race, commonly reckoned the less war-like, prevailed over their Dorian rivals and enemies. Elevated with the joy of victory, the Athenians prepared to assault the town, when they were alarmed by the approach of a fleet of fifty-five sail which advanced in two divisions, the one commanded by the celebrated Hermocrates, the other by Theramenes the Spartan. Phrynichus prudently considered, that his own strength only amounted to forty-eight galleys, and refused to commit the last hope of the republic to the danger of an unequal combat. His firmness despised the clamours of the Athenian sailors, who insulted, under the name of cowardice, the caution of their admiral; and he calmly retired with his whole force to the isle of Samos, where the popular faction having lately treated the nobles with shocking injustice and cruelty, too frequent in Grecian democracies, were ready to receive with open arms the patrons of that form of government.

The retreat of the Athenian fleet acknowledged the naval superiority of the enemy; a superiority which was alone sufficient either to acquire or to maintain the submission of the neighbouring coasts and islands. In other respects too, the Peloponnesians enjoyed the most decisive advantages. Their galleys were victualled, their soldiers were paid by Tissaphernes, and they daily expected a reinforcement of a hundred and fifty Phœnician ships. But, in this dangerous crisis, fortune seemed to respect the declining age of Athens, and, by a train of accidents, singular and almost incredible, enabled Alcibiades, so long the misfortune and the scourge, to become the defence and the saviour of his country.

ALCIBIADES AGAIN TO THE FORE

During his long residence in Sparta, Alcibiades assumed the outward gravity of deportment, and conformed himself to the spare diet, and laborious exercises, which prevailed in that austere republic; but his character and his principles remained as licentious as ever. His intrigue with Timæa, the spouse of king Agis, was discovered by an excess of female levity. The queen, vain of the attachment of so celebrated a character, familiarly gave the name of Alcibiades to her son Leotychides; a name which, first confined to the privacy of her female companions, was soon spread abroad in the world. Alcibiades punished her folly by a most mortifying but well-merited declaration, boasting that he had solicited her favours from no other motive but that he might indulge the ambitious desire of giving a king to Sparta. The offence itself, and the shameless avowal, still more provoking than the offence, excited the keenest resentment in the breast of the injured husband. The magistrates and generals of Sparta, jealous of the fame, and envious of the merit of a stranger, readily sympathised with the misfortune, and encouraged the revenge of Agis; and, as the horrid practice of assassination was still[621] disgracing the manners of Greece, orders were sent to Astyochus, who commanded in chief the Peloponnesian forces in Asia, secretly to destroy Alcibiades, whose power defied those laws which in every Grecian republic condemned adulterers to death. But the active and subtile Athenian had secured too faithful domestic intelligence in the principal families of Sparta to become the victim of this execrable design. With his usual address he eluded all the snares of Astyochus: his safety, however, required perpetual vigilance and caution, and he determined to escape from the situation, which subjected him to such irksome restraint.

Publicly banished from Athens, secretly persecuted by Sparta, he had recourse to the friendship of Tissaphernes, who admired his accomplishments, and respected his abilities, which, though far superior in degree, were similar in kind to his own. Tissaphernes was of a temper the more readily to serve a friend, in proportion as he less needed his services. Alcibiades, therefore, carefully concealed from him the dangerous resentment of the Spartans. In the selfish breast of the Persian no attachment could be durable unless founded on interest; and Alcibiades, who had deeply studied his character, began to flatter his avarice, that he might insure his protection. He informed him, that by allowing the Peloponnesian sailors a drachma, or sevenpence sterling, of daily pay, he treated them with a useless and even dangerous liberality: that the pay given by the Athenians, even in the most flourishing times, amounted only to three oboli. Should the sailors prove dissatisfied with this equitable reduction, the Grecian character afforded an easy expedient for silencing their licentious clamours. It would be sufficient to bribe the naval commanders and a few mercenary orators, and the careless and improvident seamen would submit, without suspicion, the rate of their pay, as well as every other concern, to the influence and the authority of those who were accustomed to govern them.

Tissaphernes heard this advice with all the attention of an avaricious man to every proposal for saving his money; and so true a judgment had Alcibiades formed of the Greeks, that Hermocrates the Syracusan was the only officer who disdained, meanly and perfidiously, to betray the interest of the men under his command: yet through the influence of his colleagues, the plan of economy was universally adopted.

The intrigues of Alcibiades sowed jealousy and distrust in the Peloponnesian fleet: they alienated the minds of the troops both from Tissaphernes and from their commanders: the Persian was ready to forsake those whom he had learned to despise; and Alcibiades profited by this disposition to insinuate that the alliance of the Lacedæmonians was equally expensive and inconvenient for the Great King and his lieutenants.

These artful representations produced almost an open breach between Tissaphernes and his confederates. The advantage which Athens would derive from this rupture might have paved the way for Alcibiades to return to his country: but he dreaded to encounter that popular fury, whose effects he had fatally experienced, and whose mad resentment no degree of merit could appease; he therefore applied secretly to Pisander, Theramenes, and other persons of distinction in the Athenian camp. To them he deplored the desperate state of public affairs, expatiated on his own credit with Tissaphernes, and insinuated that it might be yet possible to prevent the Phœnician fleet from sailing to assist the enemy. Assuming gradually more boldness, he finally declared that the Athenians might obtain not merely the neutrality, but perhaps the assistance of Tissaphernes, should they consent to abolish their turbulent democracy, so odious to the Persians,[622] and to entrust the administration of government to men worthy to negotiate with so mighty a monarch.

When the illustrious exile proposed this measure, it is uncertain whether he was acquainted with the secret cabals which had been already formed, both in the city and in the camp, for executing the design which he suggested. One man, the personal enemy of Alcibiades, alone opposed the general current. But this man was Phrynichus. The courage with which he invited dangers many have equalled, but none ever surpassed the boldness with which he extricated himself from difficulties. When he perceived that his colleagues were deaf to every objection against recalling the friend of Tissaphernes, he secretly informed the Spartan admiral Astyochus, of the intrigues which were carrying on to the disadvantage of his country. Daring as this treachery was, Phrynichus addressed a traitor not less perfidious than himself. Astyochus was become the pensioner and creature of Tissaphernes, to whom he communicated the intelligence. The Persian again communicated it to his favourite Alcibiades, who complained in strong terms to the Athenians of the baseness and villainy of Phrynichus.

The latter exculpated himself with address; but as the return of Alcibiades might prove fatal to his safety, he ventured, a second time, to write to Astyochus, gently reproaching him with his breach of confidence, and explaining by what means he might surprise the whole Athenian fleet at Samos; an exploit that must forever establish his fame and fortune. Astyochus again betrayed the secret to Tissaphernes and Alcibiades; but before their letters could be conveyed to the Athenian camp, Phrynichus, who, by some unknown channel, was informed of this second treachery, anticipated the dangerous discovery, by apprising the Athenians of their enemy’s design to surprise their fleet. They had scarcely employed the proper means to counteract that purpose when messengers came from Alcibiades to announce the horrid perfidy of a wretch who had basely sacrificed to private resentment the last hope of his country. But the messengers arrived too late; the prior information of Phrynichus, as well as the bold and singular wickedness of his design, which no common degree of evidence was thought sufficient to prove, were sustained as arguments for his exculpation; and it was believed that Alcibiades had made use of a stratagem most infamous in itself, but not unexampled among the Greeks, for destroying a man whom he detested.

The opposition of Phrynichus, though it retarded the designs of Alcibiades, prevented not the measures of Pisander and his associates for abolishing the democracy. The soldiers at Samos were induced, by reasons above mentioned, to acquiesce in the resolution of their generals. But a more difficult task remained; to deprive the people of Athens of their liberty which, since the expulsion of the family of Pisistratus, they had enjoyed a hundred years. Pisander headed the deputation which was sent from the camp to the city to effect this important revolution. He acquainted the extraordinary assembly, summoned on that occasion in the theatre of Bacchus, of the measures which had been adopted by their soldiers and fellow-citizens at Samos. The compact band of conspirators warmly approved the example; but loud murmurs of discontent resounded in different quarters of that spacious theatre. Pisander asked the reason of this disapprobation. “Had his opponents anything better to propose? If they had, let them come forward and explain the grounds of their dissent: but, above all, let them explain how they could save themselves, their families, and their country, unless they complied with the demand of[623] Tissaphernes. The imperious voice of necessity was superior to law; and when the actual danger had ceased, they might re-establish their ancient constitution.” The opponents of Pisander were unable or afraid to reply: and the assembly passed a decree, investing ten ambassadors with full powers to treat with the Persian satrap.

Soon after the arrival of the Peloponnesian fleet on the coast of Asia, the Spartan commanders had concluded, in the name of their republic, a treaty with Tissaphernes; in which it was stipulated, that the subsidies should be regularly paid by the king of Persia, and that the Peloponnesian forces should employ their utmost endeavours to recover, for that monarch, all the dominions of his ancestors, which had been long unjustly usurped, and cruelly insulted, by the Athenians. This treaty seemed so honourable to the Great King, that his lieutenant could not venture openly to infringe it. Alarmed at the decay of his influence with the Persians, on which he had built the flattering hopes of returning to his country, Alcibiades employed all the resources of his genius to conceal his disgrace. By solicitations, entreaties, and the meanest compliances, he obtained an audience for his fellow-citizens. As the agent of Tissaphernes, he then proposed the conditions on which they might obtain the friendship of the Great King. Several demands were made, demands most disgraceful to the name of Athens: to all of which the ambassadors submitted. They even agreed to surrender the whole coast of Ionia to its ancient sovereign. But when the artful Athenian (fearful lest they should, on any terms, admit the treaty which Tissaphernes was resolved on no terms to grant) demanded that the Persian fleets should be allowed to sail, undisturbed, in the Grecian seas, the ambassadors, well knowing that should this condition be complied with, no treaty could hinder Greece from becoming a province of Persia, expressed their indignation in very unguarded language, and left the assembly in disgust.

This imprudence enabled Alcibiades to affirm, with some appearance of truth, that their own anger and obstinacy, not the reluctance of Tissaphernes, had obstructed the negotiation, which was precisely the issue of the affair most favourable to his views. His artifices succeeded, but were not attended with the consequences expected from them. The Athenians, both in the camp and city, perceived, by this transaction, that his credit with the Persians was less than he represented it; and the aristocratical faction were glad to get rid of a man, whose restless ambition rendered him a dangerous associate. They persisted, however, with great activity, in executing their purpose; of which Phrynichus, who had opposed them only from hatred of Alcibiades, became an active abettor. When persuasion was ineffectual, they had recourse to violence. Androcles, Hyperbolus, and other licentious demagogues, were assassinated. The people of Athens, ignorant of the strength of the conspirators, and surprised to find in the number many whom they least suspected, were restrained by inactive timidity, or fluctuated in doubtful suspense. The cabal alone acted with union and with vigour; and difficult as it seemed to subvert the Athenian democracy, which had subsisted a hundred years with unexampled glory, yet this design was undertaken and accomplished by the enterprising activity of Pisander, the artful eloquence of Theramenes, the firm intrepidity of Phrynichus, and the superintending wisdom of Antiphon.

He it was who formed the plan, and regulated the mode of attack, which was carried on by his associates. Pisander and his party boldly declared, that neither the spirit nor the forms of the established constitution (which had recently subjected them to such a weight of misfortunes) suited the present dangerous and alarming crisis. That it was necessary to new-model[624] the whole fabric of government; for which purpose five persons (whose names he read) ought to be appointed by the people, to choose a hundred others; each of whom should select three associates; and the four hundred thus chosen, men of dignity and opulence, who would serve their country without fee or reward, ought immediately to be invested with the majesty of the republic. They alone should conduct the administration uncontrolled, and assemble, as often as seemed proper, five thousand citizens, whom they judged most worthy of being consulted in the management of public affairs. This extraordinary proposal was accepted without opposition: the partisans of democracy dreaded the strength of the cabal; and the undiscerning multitude, dazzled by the imposing name of five thousand, a number far exceeding the ordinary assemblies of Athens, perceived not that they surrendered their liberties to the artifice of an ambitious faction.b

THE OVERTHROW OF THE DEMOCRACY: THE FOUR HUNDRED

Full liberty being thus granted to make any motion, however anti-constitutional, and to dispense with all the established formalities, such as preliminary authorisation by the senate, Pisander now came forward with his substantive propositions to the following effect:

(1) All the existing democratical magistracies were suppressed at once, and made to cease for the future. (2) No civil functions whatever were hereafter to be salaried. (3) To constitute a new government, a committee of five persons were named forthwith, who were to choose a larger body of one hundred; that is, one hundred including the five choosers themselves. Each individual out of this body of one hundred, was to choose three persons. (4) A body of Four Hundred was thus constituted, who were to take their seat in the senate house, and to carry on the government with unlimited powers, according to their own discretion. (5) They were to convene the Five Thousand, whenever they might think fit. All was passed without a dissentient voice.

The invention and employment of this imaginary aggregate of Five Thousand was not the least dexterous among the combinations of Antiphon. No one knew who these Five Thousand were: yet the resolution just adopted purported—not that such a number of citizens should be singled out and constituted, either by choice, or by lot, or in some determinate manner which should exhibit them to the view and knowledge of others—but that the Four Hundred should convene the Five Thousand, whenever they thought proper: thus assuming the latter to be a list already made up and notorious, at least to the Four Hundred themselves. The real fact was that the Five Thousand existed nowhere except in the talk and proclamations of the conspirators, as a supplement of fictitious auxiliaries. They did not even exist as individual names on paper, but simply as an imposturous nominal aggregate. The Four Hundred, now installed, formed the entire and exclusive rulers of the state. But the mere name of the Five Thousand, though it was nothing more than a name, served two important purposes for Antiphon and his conspiracy. First, it admitted of being falsely produced, especially to the armament at Samos, as proof of a tolerably numerous and popular body of equal, qualified, concurrent citizens, all intended to take their turn by rotation in exercising the powers of government; thus lightening the odium of extreme usurpation to the Four Hundred, and passing them off merely as the earliest section of the Five Thousand, put into office for a few[625] months, and destined at the end of that period to give place to another equal section. Next, it immensely augmented the means of intimidation possessed by the Four Hundred at home, by exaggerating the impression of their supposed strength. For the citizens generally were made to believe that there were five thousand real and living partners in the conspiracy; while the fact that these partners were not known and could not be individually identified, rather aggravated the reigning terror and mistrust; since every man, suspecting that his neighbour might possibly be among them, was afraid to communicate his discontent or propose means for joint resistance. In both these two ways, the name and assumed existence of the Five Thousand lent strength to the real Four Hundred conspirators. It masked their usurpation, while it increased their hold on the respect and fears of the citizens.

As soon as the public assembly at Colonus had, with such seeming unanimity, accepted all the propositions of Pisander, they were dismissed; and the new regiment of Four Hundred were chosen and constituted in the form prescribed. It now only remained to install them in the senate house. But this could not be done without force, since the senators were already within it; having doubtless gone thither immediately from the assembly, where their presence, at least the presence of the prytanes, or senators of the presiding tribe, was essential as legal presidents. They had to deliberate what they would do under the decree just passed, which divested them of all authority. Nor was it impossible that they might organise armed resistance; for which there seemed more than usual facility at the present moment, since the occupation of Decelea by the Lacedæmonians kept Athens in a condition like that of a permanent camp, with a large proportion of the citizens day and night under arms. Against this chance the Four Hundred made provision. They selected that hour of the day when the greater number of citizens habitually went home, probably to their morning meal, leaving the military station, with the arms piled and ready, under comparatively thin watch. While the general body of hoplites left the station at this hour, according to the usual practice, the hoplites—Andrian, Tenian, and others—in the immediate confidence of the Four Hundred, were directed, by private order, to hold themselves prepared and in arms, at a little distance off; so that if any symptoms should appear of resistance being contemplated, they might at once interfere and forestall it.

The Four Hundred then marched to the senate house, each man with a dagger concealed under his garment, and followed by their special bodyguard of 120 young men from various Grecian cities, the instruments of the assassinations ordered by Antiphon and his colleagues. In this array they marched into the senate house, where the senators were assembled, and commanded them to depart; at the same time tendering to them their pay for all the remainder of the year—seemingly about three months or more down to the beginning of Hecatombæon, the month of new nominations—during which their functions ought to have continued. The senators were no way prepared to resist the decree just passed under the forms of legality, with an armed body now arrived to enforce its execution. They obeyed and departed, each man as he passed the door receiving the salary tendered to him. That they should yield obedience to superior force, under the circumstances, can excite neither censure nor surprise; but that they should accept, from the hands of the conspirators, this anticipation of an unearned salary, was a meanness which almost branded them as accomplices, and dishonoured the expiring hour of the last democratical authority. The Four Hundred now at last found themselves triumphantly installed in the senate house,[626] without the least resistance, either from within its walls or even from without, by any portion of the citizens.

Thus perished, or seemed to perish, the democracy of Athens, after an uninterrupted existence of nearly one hundred years since the revolution of Clisthenes. So incredible did it appear that the numerous, intelligent, and constitutional citizens of Athens should suffer their liberties to be overthrown by a band of four hundred conspirators, while the great mass of them not only loved their democracy, but had arms in their hands to defend it, that even their enemy and neighbour Agis, at Decelea, could hardly imagine the revolution to be a fact accomplished.

The ulterior success of the conspiracy—when all prospect of Persian gold, or improved foreign position, was at an end—is due to the combinations, alike nefarious and skillful, of Antiphon, wielding and organising the united strength of the aristocratical classes at Athens; strength always exceedingly great, but under ordinary circumstances working in fractions disunited and even reciprocally hostile to each other—restrained by the ascendent democratical institutions—and reduced to corrupt what it could not overthrow. Antiphon, about to employ this anti-popular force in one systematic scheme, and for the accomplishment of a predetermined purpose, keeps still within the same ostensible constitutional limits. He raises no open mutiny: he maintains inviolate the cardinal point of Athenian political morality—respect to the decision of the senate and political assembly, as well as to constitutional maxims.

He knows, however, that the value of these meetings, depends upon freedom of speech; and that, if that freedom be suppressed, the assembly itself becomes a nullity, or rather an instrument of positive imposture and mischief. Accordingly, he causes all the popular orators to be successively assassinated, so that no man dares to open his mouth on that side; while on the other hand, the anti-popular speakers are all loud and confident, cheering one another on, and seeming to represent all the feeling of the persons present. By thus silencing each individual leader, and intimidating every opponent from standing forward as spokesman, he extorts the formal sanction of the assembly and the senate to measures which the large majority of the citizens detest. That majority, however, are bound by their own constitutional forms; and when the decision of these, by whatever means obtained, is against them, they have neither the inclination nor the courage to resist. In no part of the world has this sentiment of constitutional duty, and submission to the vote of a legal majority, been more keenly and universally felt, than it was among the citizens of democratical Athens.[57] Antiphon thus finds means to employ the constitutional sentiment of Athens as a means of killing the constitution: the mere empty form, after its vital and protective efficacy has been abstracted, remains simply as a cheat to paralyse individual patriotism.

As Grecian history has been usually written, we are instructed to believe that the misfortunes, and the corruption, and the degradation of the democratical states are brought upon them by the class of demagogues, of whom Cleon, Hyperbolus, Androcles, etc., stand forth as specimens. These men are represented as mischief makers and revilers, accusing without just cause, and converting innocence into treason. Now the history of this conspiracy of the Four Hundred presents to us the other side of the picture. It shows[627] that the political enemies, against whom the Athenian people were protected by their democratical institutions, and by the demagogues as living organs of those institutions, were not fictitious but dangerously real. It reveals the continued existence of powerful anti-popular combinations, ready to come together for treasonable purposes when the moment appeared safe and tempting. It manifests the character and morality of the leaders, to whom the direction of the anti-popular force naturally fell. It proves that these leaders, men of uncommon ability, required nothing more than the extinction or silence of the demagogues, to be enabled to subvert the popular securities and get possession of the government. We need no better proof to teach us what was the real function and intrinsic necessity of these demagogues in the Athenian system, taking them as a class, and apart from the manner in which individuals among them may have performed their duty. They formed the vital movement of all that was tutelary and public spirited in democracy. Aggressive in respect to official delinquents, they were defensive in respect to the public and the constitution.

If that force, which Antiphon found ready made, had not been efficient, at an earlier period in stifling the democracy, it was because there were demagogues to cry aloud, as well as assemblies to hear and sustain them. If Antiphon’s conspiracy was successful, it was because he knew where to aim his blows, so as to strike down the real enemies of the oligarchy and the real defenders of the people. We here employ the term demagogue because it is that commonly used by those who denounce the class of men here under review: the proper neutral phrase, laying aside odious associations, would be to call them popular speakers, or opposition speakers. But, by whatever name they may be called, it is impossible rightly to conceive their position in Athens, without looking at them in contrast and antithesis with those anti-popular forces against which they formed the indispensable barrier, and which come forth into such manifest and melancholy working under the organising hands of Antiphon and Phrynichus.c

THE REVOLT FROM THE FOUR HUNDRED

The conduct of the Four Hundred tyrants (for historians have justly adopted the language of Athenian resentment) soon opened the eyes and understanding of the most thoughtless. They abolished every vestige of ancient freedom; employed mercenary troops levied from the small islands of the Ægean, to overawe the multitude, and to intimidate, in some instances to destroy, their real or suspected enemies. Instead of seizing the opportunity of annoying the Peloponnesians, enraged at the treachery of Tissaphernes, and mutinous for want of pay and subsistence, they sent ambassadors to solicit peace from the Spartans on the most dishonourable terms. Their tyranny rendered them odious in the city, and their cowardice made them contemptible in the camp at Samos. Their cruelty and injustice were[628] described and exaggerated by the fugitives who continually arrived in that island. Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus, two officers of high merit and distinction, though not actually entrusted with a share in the principal command, gave activity and boldness to the insurgents. The abettors of the new government were attacked by surprise: thirty of the most criminal were put to death, several others were banished, democracy was re-established in the camp, and the soldiers were bound by oath to maintain their hereditary government against the conspiracy of domestic foes, and to act with vigour against the public enemy.

Thrasybulus, who headed this successful and meritorious sedition, had a mind to conceive, a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute the most daring designs. He exhorted the soldiers not to despair of effecting in the capital the same revolution which they had produced in the camp. Their most immediate concern was to recall Alcibiades, who had been deceived and disgraced by the tyrants, and who not only felt with peculiar sensibility, but could resent with becoming dignity, the wrongs of his country and his own. The advice of Thrasybulus was approved; soon after he sailed to Magnesia, and returned in company with Alcibiades.

Though the army immediately saluted him general, Alcibiades left the care of the troops to his colleagues Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus, and withdrew himself from the applauses of his admiring countrymen, on pretence of concerting with Tissaphernes the system of their future operations. But his principal motive was to show himself to the Persian, in the new and illustrious character with which he was invested; for having raised his authority among the Athenians by his influence with the satrap, he expected to strengthen this influence by the support of that authority. Before he returned to the camp, ambassadors had been sent by the tyrants, to attempt a negotiation with the partisans of democracy, who, inflamed by continual reports of the indignities and cruelties committed in Athens, prepared to sail thither to protect their friends and take vengeance on their enemies. Alcibiades judiciously opposed this rash resolution which must have left the Hellespont, Ionia, and the islands, at the mercy of the hostile fleet. But he commanded the ambassadors to deliver to their masters a short but pithy message: “That they must divest themselves of their illegal power, and restore the ancient constitution. If they delayed obedience, he would sail to the Piræus, and deprive them of their authority and their lives.”

When this message was reported at Athens, it added to the disorder and confusion in which that unhappy city was involved. The Four Hundred who had acted with unanimity in usurping the government, soon disagreed about the administration, and split into factions, which persecuted each other as furiously as both had persecuted the people. Theramenes and Aristocrates condemned and opposed the tyrannical measures of their colleagues. The perfidious Phrynichus was slain: both parties prepared for taking arms; and the horrors of a Corcyrean sedition were ready to be renewed in Athens,[629] when the old men, the children, the women, and strangers, interposed for the safety of a city which had long been the ornament of Greece, the terror of Persia, and the admiration of the world.

Had the public enemy availed themselves of this opportunity to assault the Piræus, Athens could not have been saved from immediate destruction. But the Peloponnesian forces at Miletus, long clamorous and discontented, had broken out into open mutiny, when they heard of the recall of Alcibiades, and the hostile intentions of Tissaphernes. They destroyed the Persian fortifications in the neighbourhood of Miletus; they put the garrisons to the sword; their treacherous commander, Astyochus, saved his life by flying to an altar; nor was the tumult appeased until the guilty were removed from their sight, and Mindarus, an officer of approved valour and fidelity, arrived from Sparta to assume the principal command.

The dreadful consequences which must have resulted to the Athenians, if, during the fury of their sedition, the enemy had attacked them with a fleet of a hundred and fifty sail, may be conceived by the terror inspired by a much smaller Peloponnesian squadron of only forty-two vessels commanded by the Spartan Agesandridas. The friends of the constitution had assembled in the spacious theatre of Bacchus. The most important matters were in agitation, when the alarm was given that some Peloponnesian ships had been seen on the coast. All ranks of men hastened to the Piræus; and prepared thirty-six vessels for taking the sea. When Agesandridas perceived the ardent opposition which he must encounter in attempting to land, he doubled the promontory of Sunium, and sailed towards the fertile island of Eubœa, from which, since the fortification of Decelea, the Athenians had derived far more plentiful supplies than from the desolated territory of Attica. To defend a country which formed their principal resource, they sailed in pursuit of the enemy, and observed them next day near the shore of Eretria, the most considerable town in the island.

The Eubœans, who had long watched an opportunity to revolt, supplied the Peloponnesian squadron with all necessaries in abundance; but instead of furnishing a market to the Athenians, they retired from the coast on their approach. The commanders were obliged to weaken their strength by despatching several parties into the country to procure provisions; Agesandridas seized this opportunity to attack them: most of the ships were taken; the crews swam to land; many were cruelly murdered by the Eretrians, from whom they expected protection; and such only survived as took refuge in the Athenian garrisons scattered over the island.

The news of this misfortune were most alarming to the Athenians. Neither the invasion of Xerxes, nor even the defeat in Sicily, occasioned such terrible consternation. They dreaded the immediate defection of Eubœa; they had no more ships to launch; no means of resisting their multiplied enemies: the city was divided against the camp, and divided against itself. Yet the magnanimous firmness of Theramenes did not allow the friends of liberty to despair. He encouraged them to disburden the republic of its domestic foes, who had summoned, or who were at least believed to have summoned, the assistance of the Lacedæmonian fleet, that they might be enabled to enslave their fellow citizens. Antiphon, Pisander, and the most obnoxious, seasonably escaped; the rest submitted. A decree was passed, recalling Alcibiades, and approving the conduct of the troops at Samos. The sedition ceased. The democracy, which had been interrupted four months, was restored; and such are the resources of a free government, that even this violent fermentation was not unproductive of benefit to the state.

[630]

THE TRIUMPHS OF ALCIBIADES

The Spartans, who formerly rejected the friendship, now courted the protection of Pharnabazus; to whose northern province they sailed with the principal strength of their armament, proceeded northwards in pursuit of the enemy; and the important straits, which join the Euxine and Ægean seas, became, and long continued, the scene of conflict. In the twenty-first winter of the war, a year already distinguished by the dissolution and revival of their democracy, the Athenians prevailed in three successive engagements, including Cynossema, the event of which became continually more decisive.

The Spartans yielded possession of the sea, which they hoped soon to recover, and retired to the friendly harbours of Cyzicus, to repair their shattered fleet; while the Athenians profited by the fame of their victory, and by the terror of their arms, to demand contributions from the numerous and wealthy towns in that neighbourhood. It was determined, chiefly by the advice of Alcibiades, to attack the enemy at Cyzicus; for which purpose they sailed, with eighty galleys, to the small island of Proconnesus, near the western extremity of the Propontis, and ten miles distant from the station of the Peloponnesian fleet. Alcibiades surprised sixty vessels on a dark and rainy morning, as they were manœuvring at a distance from the harbour, and skilfully intercepted their retreat. As the day cleared up, the rest sailed forth to their assistance; the action became general; the Athenians obtained a complete victory, and their valour was rewarded by the capture of the whole Peloponnesian fleet, except the Syracusan ships, which were burned, in the face of a victorious enemy, by the enterprising Hermocrates. The Peloponnesians were assisted by Pharnabazus in equipping a new fleet; but were deprived of the wise counsels of Hermocrates, whose abilities were well fitted both to prepare and to employ the resources of war. The success of the Asiatic expedition had not corresponded to the sanguine hopes of his countrymen; the insolent populace accused their commanders of incapacity; and a mandate was sent from Syracuse, depriving them of their office, and punishing them with banishment.

Meanwhile Thrasyllus obtained at Athens the supplies which he had gone to solicit; supplies far more powerful than he had reason to expect. With these forces, Thrasyllus sailed to Samos. He took Colophon, with several places of less note, in Ionia; penetrated into the heart of Lydia, burning the corn and villages; and returned to the shore, driving before him a numerous body of slaves, and other valuable booty. His courage was increased by the want of resistance on the part of Tissaphernes, whose province he had invaded; of the Peloponnesian forces at Miletus; and of the revolted colonies of Athens. He resolved, therefore, to attack the beautiful and flourishing city of Ephesus, which was then the principal ornament and defence of the Ionic coast. The Athenians were defeated, with the loss of three hundred men; and retiring from the field of battle, they sought refuge in their ships, and prepared to sail towards the Hellespont.

During the voyage thither, they fell in with twenty Sicilian galleys, of which they took four, and pursued the rest to Ephesus. Having soon afterwards reached the Hellespont, they found the Athenian armament at Lampsacus, where Alcibiades thought proper to muster the whole military and naval forces. They made a conjunct expedition against Abydos. Pharnabazus defended the place with a numerous body of Persian cavalry. The disgraced troops of Thrasyllus rejoiced in an opportunity to retrieve their honour. They attacked, repelled, and routed the enemy.

[631]

For several years the measures of the Athenians had been almost uniformly successful; but the twenty-fourth campaign was distinguished by peculiar favours of fortune. The Athenians returned in triumph to attack the fortified cities, which still declined submission; an undertaking in which Alcibiades displayed the wonderful resources of his extraordinary genius. By gradual approaches, by sudden assaults, by surprise, by treason, or by stratagem, he in a few months became master of Chalcedon, Selymbria, and at last of Byzantium itself. His naval success was equally conspicuous. The Athenians again commanded the sea. The small squadrons fitted out by the enemy successively fell into their power. It was computed by the partisans of Alcibiades, that, since assuming the command, he had taken or destroyed two hundred Syracusan and Peloponnesian galleys; and his superiority of naval strength enabled him to raise such contributions, both in the Euxine and Mediterranean, as abundantly supplied his fleet and army with every necessary article of subsistence and accommodation.

While the Athenian arms were crowned with such glory abroad, the Attic territory was continually harassed by King Agis, and the Lacedæmonian troops posted at Decelea. Their bold and sudden incursions frequently threatened the safety of the city itself; the desolated lands afforded no advantage to the ruined proprietors; nor could the Athenians venture without their walls, to celebrate their accustomed festivals. Alcibiades, animated by his foreign victories, hoped to relieve the domestic sufferings of his country; and after an absence of many years, distinguished by such a variety of fortune, eagerly longed to revisit his native city, and enjoy the rewards and honours usually bestowed by the Greeks on successful valour. This celebrated voyage, which several ancient historians studiously decorated with every circumstance of naval triumph, was performed in the twenty-fifth summer of the war. Notwithstanding all his services, the cautious son of Clinias, instructed by adversity, declined to land in the Piræus, until he was informed that the assembly had repealed the decrees against him, formally revoked his banishment, and prolonged the term of his command. Even after this agreeable intelligence he was still unable to conquer his well-founded distrust of the variable and capricious humours of the people; nor would he approach the crowded shore, till he observed, in the midst of the multitude, his principal friends and relations inviting him by their voice and action. He then landed amidst the universal acclamations of the spectators, who, unattentive to the naval pomp, and regardless of the other commanders, fixed their eyes only on Alcibiades. Next day an extraordinary assembly was summoned, by order of the magistrates, that he might explain and justify his apparent misconduct, and receive the rewards due to his acknowledged merit.

Before judges so favourably disposed to hear him, Alcibiades found no difficulty to make his defence. He was appointed commander-in-chief by sea and land. A hundred galleys were equipped, and transports were prepared for fifteen hundred heavy-armed men, with a proportional body of cavalry.

Several months had passed in these preparations, when the Eleusinian festival approached; a time destined to commemorate and to diffuse the temporal and spiritual gifts of the goddess Ceres, originally bestowed on the Athenians, and by them communicated to the rest of Greece.

Besides the mysterious ceremonies of the temple, the worship of that bountiful goddess was celebrated by vocal and instrumental music, by public shows, and exhibitions, which continued during several days, and above all, by the pompous procession, which marched for ten miles along the sacred road leading from Athens to Eleusis. This important part of the solemnity[632] had formerly been intermitted, because the Athenians, after the loss of Decelea, were no longer masters of the road, and were compelled, contrary to established custom, to proceed by sea to the temple of Ceres. Alcibiades determined to wipe off the stain of impiety which had long adhered to his character, by renewing, in all its lustre, this venerable procession. After sufficient garrisons had been left to defend the Athenian walls and fortresses, the whole body of heavy-armed troops were drawn out to protect the Eleusinian procession, which marched along the usual road to the temple, and afterwards returned to Athens, without suffering any molestation from the Lacedæmonians; having united, on this occasion alone, all the splendour of war with the pomp of superstition.

Soon after this meritorious enterprise, Alcibiades prepared to sail for Lesser Asia, accompanied by the affectionate admiration of his fellow citizens, who flattered themselves that the abilities and fortune of their commander would speedily reduce Chios, Ephesus, Miletus, and the other revolted cities and islands. The general alacrity, however, was somewhat abated by the reflection, that the arrival of Alcibiades in Athens coincided with the anniversary of the plynteria, a day condemned to melancholy idleness, from a superstitious belief that nothing undertaken on that day could be brought to a prosperous conclusion.

While the superstitious multitude trembled at the imaginary anger of Minerva, men of reflection and experience dreaded the activity and valour of Lysander, who, during the residence of Alcibiades at Athens, had taken the command of the Peloponnesian forces in the East. Years had added experience to his valour, and enlarged the resources, without abating the ardour, of his ambitious mind. In his transactions with the world, he had learned to soften the harsh asperity of his national manners; to gain by fraud what could not be effected by force; and, in his own figurative language, to “eke out the lion’s with the fox’s skin.” This mixed character admirably suited the part which he was called to act.

Since the decisive action at Cyzicus, the Peloponnesians, unable to resist the enemy, had been employed in preparing ships on the coast of their own peninsula, as well as in the harbours of their Persian and Grecian allies. The most considerable squadrons had been equipped in Cos, Rhodes, Miletus, and Ephesus; in the last of which the whole armament, amounting to ninety sail, was collected by Lysander. But the assembling of such a force was a matter of little consequence, unless proper measures should be taken for holding it together, and for enabling it to act with vigour. It was necessary, above all, to secure pay for the seamen; for this purpose, Lysander, accompanied by several Lacedæmonian ambassadors, repaired to Sardis, to congratulate the happy arrival of Cyrus, a generous and valiant youth of seventeen, who had been entrusted by his father Darius with the government of the inland parts of Lesser Asia. Lysander excited the warmest emotions of friendship in the youthful breast of Cyrus, who drinking his health after the Persian fashion, desired him to ask a boon, with full assurance that nothing should be denied him. Lysander replied, with his usual address, “That he should ask what it would be no less useful for the prince to give, than for him to receive: the addition of an obolus a day to the pay of the mariners; an augmentation which, by inducing the Athenian crews to desert, would not only increase their own strength, but enfeeble the common enemy.” Struck with the apparent disinterestedness of this specious proposal, Cyrus ordered him immediately ten thousand darics (above five thousand pounds sterling); with which he returned to Ephesus,[633] discharged the arrears due to his troops, gave them a month’s pay in advance, raised their daily allowance, and seduced innumerable deserters from the Athenian fleet.

While Lysander was usefully employed in manning his ships, and preparing them for action, Alcibiades attacked the small island of Andros. The resistance was more vigorous than he had reason to expect; and the immediate necessity of procuring pay and subsistence for the fleet, obliged him to leave his work imperfect. With a small squadron he sailed to raise contributions on the Ionian or Carian coast, committing the principal armament to Antiochus, a man totally unworthy of such an important trust. Even the affectionate partiality of Alcibiades seems to have discerned the unworthiness of his favourite, since he gave him strict orders to continue, during his own absence, in the harbour of Samos, and by no means to risk an engagement. This injunction, as it could not prevent the rashness, might perhaps provoke the vain levity of the vice-admiral, who after the departure of his friend, sailed to Notium near Ephesus, approached Lysander’s ships, and with the most licentious insults challenged him to battle. The prudent Spartan delayed the moment of attack, until the presumption of his enemies had thrown them into scattered disorder. He then commanded the Peloponnesian squadrons to advance. His manœuvres were judicious, and executed with a prompt obedience. The battle was not obstinate, as the Athenians, who scarcely expected any resistance, much less assault, sunk at once from the insolence of temerity into the despondency of fear. They lost fifteen vessels, with a considerable part of their crews. The remainder retired disgracefully to Samos; while the Lacedæmonians profited by their victory by the taking of Eion and Delphinium. Though fortune thus favoured the prudence of Lysander, he declined to venture a second engagement with the superior strength of Alcibiades, who, having resumed the command, employed every artifice and insult that might procure him an opportunity to restore the tarnished lustre of the Athenian fleet.

ALCIBIADES IN DISFAVOUR AGAIN

But such an opportunity he could never again find. The people of Athens, who expected to hear of nothing but victories and triumphs, were mortified to the last degree, when they received intelligence of such a shameful defeat. As they could not suspect the abilities, they distrusted the fidelity, of their commander. Their suspicions were increased and confirmed by the arrival of Thrasybulus, who, whether actuated by a laudable zeal for the interest of the public service, or animated by a selfish jealousy of the fame and honours that had been so liberally heaped on a rival, formally impeached Alcibiades in the Athenian assembly. “His misconduct[634] had totally ruined the affairs of his country. A talent for low buffoonery was a sure recommendation to his favour. His friends were, partially, selected from the meanest and most abandoned of men, who possessed no other merit than that of being subservient to his passions. To such unworthy instruments the fleet of Athens was entrusted; while the commander-in-chief revelled in debauchery with the harlots of Abydos and Ionia, or raised exorbitant contributions on the dependent cities, that he might defray the expense of a fortress on the coast of Thrace, in the neighbourhood of Byzantium, which he had erected to shelter himself against the just vengeance of the republic.”

In the assembly, Alcibiades was accused, and almost unanimously condemned; and that the affairs of the republic might not again suffer by the abuse of undivided power, ten commanders were substituted in his room; among whom were Thrasyllus, Leon, Diomedon; Conon, a character as yet but little known, but destined, in a future period, to eclipse the fame of his contemporaries; and Pericles, who inherited the name, the merit, and the bad fortune, of his illustrious father. The new generals immediately sailed to Samos; and Alcibiades sought refuge in his Thracian fortress.

They had scarcely assumed the command, when an important alteration took place in the Peloponnesian fleet. Lysander’s year had expired, and Callicratidas, a Spartan of a very opposite character, was sent to succeed him.

Lysander reluctantly resigned his employment; but determined to render it painful, and if possible, too weighty for the abilities of his successor. For this purpose he returned to the court of Cyrus, to whom he restored a considerable sum of money still unexpended in the service of the Grecian fleet, and to whom he misrepresented, under the names of obstinacy, ignorance, and rusticity, the unaffected plainness, the downright sincerity, and the other manly, but uncomplying, virtues of the generous Callicratidas. When that commander repaired to Sardis to demand the stipulated pay, he could not obtain admission to the royal presence.

But Callicratidas could not, with honour or safety, return to the fleet at Ephesus, without having collected money to supply the immediate wants of the sailors. He proceeded, therefore, to Miletus and other friendly towns of Ionia; and having met the principal citizens, in their respective assemblies, he explained openly and fully the mean jealousy of Lysander, and the disdainful arrogance of Cyrus. By those judicious and honourable expedients, Callicratidas, without fraud or violence, obtained such considerable, yet voluntary contributions, as enabled him to gratify the importunate demands of the sailors, and to return with honour to Ephesus, in order to prepare for action. His first operations were directed against the isle of Lesbos, or rather against the strong and populous towns of Methymna and Mytilene, which respectively commanded the northern and southern divisions of that island. Methymna was taken by storm, and subjected to the depredations of the Peloponnesian troops.

CONON WINS AT ARGINUSÆ

Meanwhile Conon, the most active and enterprising of the Athenian commanders, had put to sea with a squadron of seventy sail, in order to protect the coast of Lesbos. But this design was attempted too late; nor, had it been more early undertaken, was the force of Conon sufficient to[635] accomplish it. Callicratidas observed his motions, discovered his strength, and, with a far superior fleet, intercepted his retreat to the armament of Samos. The Athenians fled towards the coast of Mytilene, but were prevented from entering the harbour of that place by the resentment of the inhabitants, who rejoiced in an opportunity to punish those who had so often conquered, and so long oppressed, their city. In consequence of this unexpected opposition, the Athenian squadron was overtaken by the enemy. The engagement was more sharp and obstinate than might have been expected in such an inequality of strength. Thirty empty ships (for the most of the men swam to land) were taken by the Peloponnesians. The remaining forty were hauled up under the walls of Mytilene; Callicratidas recalled his troops from Methymna, received a reinforcement from Chios, and blocked up the Athenians by sea and land.

The Athenians reinforced their domestic strength with the assistance of their allies; all able-bodied men were pressed into the service; and, in a few weeks, they had assembled at Samos a hundred and fifty sail, which immediately took the sea, with a resolution to encounter the enemy.

Callicratidas did not decline the engagement. Having left fifty ships to guard the harbour of Mytilene, he proceeded with a hundred and twenty to Cape Malea, the most southern point of Lesbos. The Athenians had advanced, the same evening, to the islands or rather rocks, of Arginusæ, four miles distant from that promontory. The night passed in bold stratagems for mutual surprise, which were rendered ineffectual by a violent tempest of rain and thunder. The fight was long and bloody; passing, successively, through all the different gradations, from disciplined order and regularity to the most tumultuous confusion. The Spartan commander was slain charging in the centre of the bravest enemies. The hostile squadrons fought with various fortune in different parts of the battle, and promiscuously conquered, pursued, surrendered, or fled. Thirteen Athenian vessels were taken by the Peloponnesians; but, at length, the latter gave way on all sides: seventy of their ships were captured, the rest escaped to Chios and Phocæa.

The Athenian admirals, though justly elated with their good fortune, cautiously deliberated concerning the best means of improving their victory. Several advised that the fleet should steer its course to Mytilene, to surprise the Peloponnesian squadron which blocked up the harbour of that city. Diomedon recommended it as a more immediate and essential object of their care to recover the bodies of the slain, and to save the wreck of twelve vessels which had been disabled in the engagement. Thrasybulus observed, that by dividing their strength, both purposes might be effected. His opinion was approved. The charge of preserving the dying, and collecting the bodies of the dead, was committed to Theramenes and Thrasybulus. Fifty vessels were destined to that important service, doubly recommended by humanity and superstition. The remainder sailed to the isle of Lesbos, in quest of the Peloponnesians on that coast, who narrowly escaped destruction through the well-conducted stratagem of Eteonicus, the Spartan vice-admiral.

While the prudent foresight of Eteonicus saved the Peloponnesian squadron at Mytilene, the violence of a storm prevented Theramenes and Thrasybulus from saving their unfortunate companions, all of whom, excepting one of the admirals and a few others who escaped by their extraordinary dexterity in swimming, were overwhelmed by the waves of a tempestuous sea; nor could their dead bodies ever be recovered. These[636] unforeseen circumstances were the more disagreeable and mortifying to the commanders, because, immediately after the battle, they had sent an advice-boat to Athens, acquainting the magistrates with the capture of seventy vessels; mentioning their intended expeditions to Mytilene, Methymna, and Chios, from which they had reason to hope the most distinguished success; and particularly taking notice that the important charge of recovering the bodies of the drowned or slain had been committed to Theramenes and Thrasybulus, two captains of approved conduct and fidelity.

The joy with which the Athenians received this flattering intelligence was converted into disappointment and sorrow, when they understood that their fleet had returned to Samos, without reaping the expected fruits of victory. They were afflicted beyond measure with the total loss of the wreck, by which their brave and victorious countrymen had been deprived of the sacred rites of funeral; a circumstance viewed with peculiar horror, because it was supposed, according to a superstition consecrated by the belief of ages, to subject their melancholy shades to wander a hundred years on the gloomy banks of the Styx, before they could be transported to the regions of light and felicity. The relations of the dead lamented their private misfortunes; the enemies of the admirals exaggerated the public calamity; both demanded an immediate and serious examination into the cause of this distressful event, that the guilty might be discovered and punished.

THE TRIAL OF THE GENERALS

Amidst the ferment of popular discontents, Theramenes sailed to Athens, with a view to exculpate himself and his colleague, Thrasybulus. The letter sent thither before them had excited their fear and their resentment; since it rendered them responsible for a duty which they found it impossible to perform. Theramenes accused the admirals of having neglected the favourable moment to save the perishing, and to recover the bodies of the dead; and, after the opportunity of this important service was irrecoverably lost, of having devolved the charge on others, in order to screen their own misconduct. The Athenians greedily listened to the accusation, and cashiered the absent commanders. Conon, who during the action remained blocked up at Mytilene, was entrusted with the fleet. Protomachus and Aristogenes chose a voluntary banishment. The rest returned home to justify measures which appeared so criminal.

Archedemus, an opulent and powerful citizen, and Callixenus, a seditious demagogue, partly moved by the entreaties of Theramenes, and partly excited by personal envy and resentment, denounced the admirals to the senate. The accusation was supported by the relatives of the deceased, who appeared in mourning robes, their heads shaved, their arms folded, their eyes bathed in tears, piteously lamenting the loss and disgrace of their families, deprived of their protectors, who had been themselves deprived of those last and solemn duties to which all mankind are entitled. A false witness swore in court, that he had been saved, almost by miracle, from the wreck, and that his companions, as they were ready to be drowned, charged him to acquaint his country how they had fallen victims to the neglect of their commanders.

An unjust decree, which deprived the commanders of the benefits of a separate trial, of an impartial hearing, and of the time as well as the means necessary to prepare a legal defence, was approved by a majority of the senate, and received with loud acclamations by the people, whose levity,[637] insolence, pride, and cruelty, all eagerly demanded the destruction of the admirals. The senators were intimidated into a reluctant compliance with measures which they disapproved, and by which they were for ever to be disgraced. Yet the philosophic firmness of Socrates disdained to submit. He protested against the tameness of his colleagues, and declared that neither threats, nor danger, nor violence, could compel him to conspire with injustice for the destruction of the innocent.

But what could avail the voice of one virtuous man amidst the licentious madness of thousands? The commanders were accused, tried, condemned, and, with the most irregular precipitancy, delivered to the executioner. Before they were led to death, Diomedon addressed the assembly in a short but ever-memorable speech: “I am afraid, Athenians, lest the sentence which you have passed on us, prove hurtful to the republic. Yet I would exhort you to employ the most proper means to avert the vengeance of heaven. You must carefully perform the sacrifices which, before giving battle at Arginusæ, we promised to the gods in behalf of ourselves and of you. Our misfortunes deprive us of an opportunity to acquit this just debt, and to pay the sincere tribute of our gratitude. But we are deeply sensible that the assistance of the gods enabled us to obtain that glorious and signal victory.” The disinterestedness, the patriotism, and the magnanimity of this discourse, must have appeased (if anything had been able to appease) the tumultuous passions of the vulgar. But their headstrong fury defied every restraint of reason or of sentiment. They persisted in their bloody purpose, which was executed without pity: yet their cruelty was followed by a speedy repentance, and punished by the sharp pangs of remorse, the intolerable pain of which they vainly attempted to mitigate by inflicting a well-merited vengeance on the detestable Callixenus.b

This complication of injustice and ingratitude seemed to give the finishing blow to the Athenian state; they struggled for a while, after their defeat at Syracuse; but from hence they were entirely sunk.

The enemy, after their last defeat, had once more recourse to Lysander, who had so often led them to conquest: on him they placed their chief confidence, and ardently solicited his return. The Lacedæmonians, to gratify their allies, and yet to observe their laws, which forbade that honour being conferred twice on the same person, sent him with an inferior title, but with the power of admiral. Thus appointed, Lysander sailed towards the Hellespont, and laid siege to Lampsacus: the place was carried by storm, and abandoned by Lysander to the mercy of the soldiers. The Athenians, who followed him close, upon the news of his success, steered forward towards Sestus, and from thence, sailing along the coast, halted over against the enemy at Ægospotami, a place fatal to the Athenians.

[638]

THE BATTLE OF ÆGOSPOTAMI

The Hellespont is not above two thousand yards broad in that place. The two armies seeing themselves so near each other, expected only to rest the day, and were in hopes of coming to a battle on that next. But Lysander had another design in view: he commanded the seamen and pilots to go on board their galleys, as if they were in reality to fight the next morning at break of day, to hold themselves in readiness, and to wait his orders in profound silence. He ordered the land army, in like manner, to draw up in battle upon the coast, and to wait the day without any noise. On the morning, as soon as the sun was risen, the Athenians began to row towards them with their whole fleet in one line, and to bid them defiance. Lysander, though his ships were ranged in order of battle, with their heads towards the enemy, lay still without making any movement. In the evening, when the Athenians withdrew, he did not suffer his soldiers to go ashore, till two or three galleys, which he had sent out to observe them, were returned with advice that they had seen the enemy land. The next day passed in the same manner, as did the third and fourth. Such a conduct, which argued reserve and apprehension, extremely augmented the security and boldness of the Athenians, and inspired them with a high contempt for an army, which fear prevented from showing themselves or attempting anything.

Whilst this passed, Alcibiades, who was near the fleet, took horse, and came to the Athenian generals, to whom he represented, that they came upon a very disadvantageous coast, where there were neither ports nor cities in the neighbourhood; that they were obliged to bring their provisions from Sestus, with great danger and difficulty; and that they were very much in the wrong to suffer the soldiers and mariners of the fleet, as soon as they were ashore, to straggle and disperse themselves at their pleasure, whilst the enemy’s fleet faced them in view, accustomed to execute the orders of their general with instant obedience, and upon the slightest signal.

He offered also to attack the enemy by land, with a strong body of Thracian troops, and to force a battle. The generals, especially Tydeus and Menander, jealous of their command, did not content themselves with refusing his offers, from the opinion, that, if the event proved unfortunate, the whole blame would fall upon them, and, if favourable, that Alcibiades would engross the whole honour of it; but rejected also with insult his wise and salutary counsel: as if a man in disgrace lost his sense and abilities with the favour of the commonwealth. Alcibiades withdrew.

The fifth day, the Athenians presented themselves again, and offered battle, retiring in the evening according to custom, with a more insulting air than the days before. Lysander, as usual, detached some galleys to observe them, with orders to return with the utmost diligence when they saw the[639] Athenians landed, and to put a bright buckler[58] at each ship’s head, as soon as they reached the middle of the channel. Himself, in the meantime, ran through the whole line in his galley, exhorting the pilots and officers to hold the seamen and soldiers in readiness to row and fight on the first signal.

As soon as the bucklers were put up in the ships’ heads, and the admiral’s galley had given the signal by the sound of trumpet, the whole fleet set forwards, in good order. The land army, at the same time, made all possible haste to the top of the promontory, to see the battle. The strait that separates the two continents in this place is about fifteen stadia, or two miles in breadth, which space was presently cleared, through the activity and diligence of the rowers. Conon, the Athenian general, was the first who perceived from shore the enemy’s fleet advancing in good order to attack him, upon which he immediately cried out for the troops to embark. In the height of sorrow and perplexity, some he called to by their names, some he conjured, and others he forced to go on board their galleys: but all his endeavours and emotion were ineffectual, the soldiers being dispersed on all sides. For they were no sooner come on shore, than some were run to the sutlers, some to walk in the country, some to sleep in their tents, and others had begun to dress their suppers. This proceeded from the want of vigilance and experience in their generals, who, not suspecting the least danger, indulged themselves in taking their repose, and gave their soldiers the same liberty.

The enemy had already fallen on with loud cries, and a great noise of their oars, when Conon, disengaging himself with nine galleys, of which number was the sacred ship, stood away for Cyprus, where he took refuge with Evagoras. The Peloponnesians, falling upon the rest of the fleet, took immediately the galleys which were empty, and disabled and destroyed such as began to fill with men. The soldiers, who ran without order or arms to their relief, were either killed in the endeavour to get on board, or flying on shore, were cut in pieces by the enemy, who landed in pursuit of them. Lysander took three thousand prisoners, with all their generals, and the whole fleet. After having plundered the camp, and fastened the enemy’s galleys to the sterns of his own, he returned to Lampsacus, amidst the sounds of flutes and songs of triumph. It was his glory to have achieved one of the greatest military exploits recorded in history, with little or no loss, and to have terminated a war, in the small space of an hour, which had already lasted seven-and-twenty years, and which perhaps, without him, had been of much longer continuance. Lysander immediately sent despatches with this agreeable news to Sparta.

The three thousand prisoners taken in this battle having been condemned to die, Lysander called upon Philocles, one of the Athenian generals, who had caused all the prisoners taken in two galleys, the one of Andros, the other of Corinth, to be thrown from the top of a precipice, and had formerly persuaded the people of Athens to make a decree for cutting off the thumb of the right hand of all the prisoners of war, in order to disable them from handling the pike, and that they might be fit only to serve at the oar. Lysander, therefore, caused him to be brought forth, and asked him what sentence he would pass upon himself, for having induced his city to pass that cruel decree. Philocles, without departing from his haughtiness in the least, notwithstanding the extreme danger he was in, made answer: “Accuse not people of crimes, who have no judges; but, as you are victors, use your[640] right, and do by us as we had done by you, if we had conquered.” At the same instant he went into a bath, put on afterwards a magnificent robe, and marched foremost to the execution. All the prisoners were put to the sword, except Adimantus,[59] who had opposed the decree.e

THE FALL OF ATHENS

When he had arranged matters at Lampsacus, Lysander sailed against Byzantium and Chalcedon; where the inhabitants admitted him, after sending away the Athenian garrison under treaty. The party that had betrayed Byzantium to Alcibiades, at that time fled to Pontus, and afterwards to Athens, and became citizens there. The garrison troops of the Athenians, and whatever other Athenians he found anywhere, Lysander sent to Athens, giving them safe conduct so long as they were sailing to that place alone, and to no other; knowing that the more people were collected in the city and Piræus, the sooner there would be a want of provisions. And now, leaving Sthenelaus as Lacedæmonian harmost of Byzantium and Chalcedon, he himself sailed away to Lampsacus, and refitted his ships.

At Athens, on the arrival of the Paralus in the night, the tale of their disaster was told; and the lamentation spread from the Piræus up the Long Walls into the city, one man passing on the tidings to another: so that no one went to bed that night, not only through their mourning for the dead, but much more still because they thought they should themselves suffer the same things as they had done to the Melians (who were a colony from Lacedæmon), when they had reduced them by blockade, and to the Histiæans, Scionæans, Toronæans, Æginetans, and many others of the Greeks. But the next day they convened an assembly, at which it was resolved to block up the harbours, with the exception of one, and to put the walls in order, and mount guard upon them, and in every other way to prepare the city for a siege.

Lysander, having come with two hundred ships from the Hellespont to Lesbos, regulated both the other cities in the island, and especially Mytilene; while he sent Eteonicus with ten ships to the Athenian possessions Thraceward, who brought over all the places there to the Lacedæmonians. And all the rest of Greece too revolted from Athens immediately after the sea-fight, except the Samians; they massacred the notables amongst them, and kept possession of the city. Afterwards Lysander sent word to Agis at Decelea, and to Lacedæmon, that he was sailing up with two hundred ships. And the Lacedæmonians went out to meet him en masse, and all the rest of the Peloponnesians but the Argives, at the command of the other Spartan king, Pausanias. When they were all combined, he took them to the city and encamped before it, in the academy—the gymnasium so called. Then Lysander went to Ægina, and restored the city to the Æginetans, having collected as many of them as he could; and so likewise to the Melians, and as many others as had been deprived of their city. After[641] this, having ravaged Salamis, he came to anchor off the Piræus, with a hundred and fifty ships, and prevented all vessels from sailing into it.

The Athenians, being thus besieged by land and by sea, were at a loss what to do, as they had neither ships, nor allies, nor provisions; and they thought nothing could save them from suffering what they had done to others, not in self-defence, but wantonly wronging men of smaller states, on no other single ground, but their being allies of the Lacedæmonians. Wherefore they restored to their privileges those who had been degraded from them, and held out resolutely; and though many in the city were dying of starvation, they spoke not a word of coming to terms. But when their corn had now entirely failed, they sent ambassadors to Agis, wishing to become allies of the Lacedæmonians, while they retained their walls and the Piræus, and on these conditions to make treaty with them. He told them to go to Lacedæmon, as he had himself no power to treat. When the ambassadors delivered this message to the Athenians, they sent them to Lacedæmon. But when they were at Sellasia, near the Laconian territory, and the ephors heard what they proposed, which was the same as they had done to Agis, they bade them return from that very spot, and if they had any wish at all for peace, to come back after taking better advice.

When the ambassadors came home, and reported this in the city, dejection fell on all; for they thought they would be sold into slavery; and that even while they were sending another embassy, many would die of famine. But with respect to the demolition of their walls, no one would advise it: for Archestratus had been thrown into prison for saying in the council, that it was best to make peace with the Lacedæmonians on the terms they offered, which were, that they should demolish ten furlongs of each of the Long Walls; and a decree was then made, that it should not be allowed to advise on that subject. Such being the case, Theramenes said in the assembly, that if they would send him to Lysander, he would come back with full knowledge whether it was from a wish to enslave the city that the Lacedæmonians held out on the subject of the walls, or to have a guarantee for their good faith. Having been sent, he remained with Lysander three months and more, watching to see when the Athenians, from the failure of all their food, would agree to what any one might say. On his return in the fourth month, he reported in the assembly that Lysander had detained him all that time, and then told him to go to Lacedæmon. After this he was chosen ambassador to Lacedæmon with full powers, together with nine others. Now Lysander had sent, along with some others who were Lacedæmonians, Aristoteles, an Athenian exile, to carry word to the ephors that he had answered Theramenes, that it was they who were empowered to decide on the question of peace or war. So when Theramenes and the rest of the ambassadors were at Sellasia, being asked on what terms they had come, they replied that they had full powers to treat for peace; the ephors then ordered them to be called onward. Upon their arrival they convened an assembly, at which the Corinthians and Thebans contended most strenuously, though many others of the Greeks did so too, that they should conclude no treaty with the Athenians, but make away with them.

The Lacedæmonians, however, said they would not reduce to bondage a state which had done great good at the time of the greatest dangers that had ever befallen Greece; but they offered to make peace, on condition of their demolishing the Long Walls and Piræus, giving up all their ships but twelve, restoring their exiles, having the same friends and foes as the Lacedæmonians, and following, both by land and by sea, wherever they might[642] lead. Theramenes and his fellow-ambassadors carried back these terms to Athens. On their entering the city, a great multitude poured round them, afraid of their having returned unsuccessful: for it was no longer possible to delay, owing to the great numbers who were dying of famine. The next day the ambassadors reported on what conditions the Lacedæmonians were willing to make peace; and Theramenes, as their spokesman, said that they should obey the Lacedæmonians, and destroy the walls. When some had opposed him, but far more agreed with him, it was resolved to accept the peace. Subsequently Lysander sailed into the Piræus, and the exiles were restored; and they dug down the walls with much glee, to the music of women playing the flute, considering that day to be the beginning of liberty to Greece.

And so ended the year in the middle of which Dionysius the son of Hermocrates, the Syracusan, became tyrant, after the Carthaginians, though previously defeated in battle by the Syracusans, had reduced Agrigentum.f

A REVIEW OF THE WAR

The confederacy of Delos was formed by the free and spontaneous association of many different towns, all alike independent; towns which met in synod and deliberated by equal vote—took by their majority resolutions binding upon all—and chose Athens as their chief to enforce these resolutions, as well as to superintend generally the war against the common enemy.

Now the only way by which the confederacy was saved from falling to pieces, was by being transformed into an Athenian empire. Such transformation (as Thucydides plainly intimates) did not arise from the ambition or deep-laid projects of Athens, but from the reluctance of the larger confederates to discharge the obligations imposed by the common synod, and from the unwarlike character of the confederates generally—which made them desirous to commute military service for money-payment, while Athens on her part was not less anxious to perform the service and obtain the money. By gradual and unforeseen stages, Athens thus passed from consulate to empire; in such manner that no one could point out the precise moment of time when the confederacy of Delos ceased, and when the empire began.

But the Athenian empire came to include (between 460-446 B.C.) other cities not parties to the confederacy of Delos. Athens had conquered her ancient enemy the island of Ægina, and had acquired supremacy over Megara, Bœotia, Phocis, and Locris, and Achaia in Peloponnesus. Her empire was now at its maximum; and had she been able to maintain it—or even to keep possession of the Megarid separately, which gave her the means of barring out all invasions from the Peloponnesus—the future course of Grecian history would have been materially altered. But her empire on land did not rest upon the same footing as her empire at sea. The exiles in Megara and Bœotia, etc., and the anti-Athenian party generally in those places—combined with the rashness of her general Tolmides at Coronea—deprived her of all her land-dependencies near home, and even threatened her with the loss of Eubœa. The peace concluded in 445 B.C. left her with all her maritime and insular empire (including Eubœa), but with nothing more; while by the loss of Megara she was now open to invasion from the Peloponnesus.

On this footing she remained at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War fourteen years afterwards. That war did not arise (as has been so often[643] asserted) from aggressive or ambitious schemes on the part of Athens, but that, on the contrary, the aggression was all on the side of her enemies, who were full of hopes that they could put her down with little delay; while she was not merely conservative and defensive, but even discouraged by the certainty of destructive invasion, and only dissuaded from concessions, alike imprudent and inglorious, by the extraordinary influence and resolute wisdom of Pericles. That great man comprehended well both the conditions and the limits of Athenian empire. Athens was now understood (especially since the revolt and reconquest of the powerful island of Samos in 440 B.C.) by her subjects and enemies as well as by her own citizens, to be mistress of the sea. It was the care of Pericles to keep that belief within definite boundaries, and to prevent all waste of the force of the city in making new or distant acquisitions which could not be permanently maintained. But it was also his care to enforce upon his countrymen the lesson of maintaining their existing empire unimpaired, and shrinking from no effort requisite for that end. Though their whole empire was now staked upon the chances of a perilous war, he did not hesitate to promise them success, provided that they adhered to this conservative policy.

Following the events of the war, we shall find that Athens did adhere to it for the first seven years; years of suffering and trial, from the destructive annual invasion, the yet more destructive pestilence, and the revolt of Mytilene—but years which still left her empire unimpaired, and the promises of Pericles in fair chance of being realised. In the seventh year of the war occurred the unexpected victory at Sphacteria and the capture of the Lacedæmonian prisoners. This placed in the hands of the Athenians a capital advantage, imparting to them prodigious confidence of future success, while their enemies were in a proportional degree disheartened. It was in this temper that they first departed from the conservative precept of Pericles.

Down to the expedition against Syracuse the empire of Athens (except the possessions in Thrace) remained undiminished, and her general power nearly as great as it had ever been since 445 B.C. That expedition was the one great and fatal departure from the Periclean policy, bringing upon Athens an amount of disaster from which she never recovered; and it was doubtless an error of over-ambition.

After the Syracusan disaster, there is no longer any question about adhering to, or departing from the Periclean policy. Athens is like Patroclus[644] in the Iliad, after Apollo has stunned him by a blow on the back and loosened his armour. Nothing but the slackness of her enemies allowed her time for a partial recovery, so as to make increased heroism a substitute for impaired force, even against doubled and tripled difficulties. And the years of struggle which she now went through are among the most glorious events in her history. These years present many misfortunes, but no serious misjudgment; not to mention one peculiarly honourable moment, after the overthrow of the Four Hundred. And after all, they were on the point of partially recovering themselves in 408 B.C., when the unexpected advent of Cyrus set the seal to their destiny.

The bloodshed after the recapture of Mytilene and Scione, and still more that which succeeded the capture of Melos, are disgraceful to the humanity of Athens, and stand in pointed contrast with the treatment of Samos when reconquered by Pericles. But they did not contribute sensibly to break down her power; though, being recollected with aversion after other incidents were forgotten, they are alluded to in later times as if they had caused the fall of the empire. Her downfall had one great cause—we may almost say, one single cause—the Sicilian expedition.[60] The empire of Athens both was, and appeared to be, in exuberant strength when that expedition was sent forth; strength more than sufficient to bear up against all moderate faults or moderate misfortunes, such as no government ever long escapes. But the catastrophe of Syracuse was something overpassing in terrific calamity all Grecian experience and all power of foresight. It was like the Russian campaign of 1812 to the Emperor Napoleon, though by no means imputable, in an equal degree, to vice in the original project. No Grecian power could bear up against such a death wound; and the prolonged struggle of Athens after it is not the least wonderful part of the whole war.

GROTE’S ESTIMATE OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE

Nothing in the political history of Greece is so remarkable as the Athenian empire; taking it as it stood in its completeness, from about 460-413 B.C. (the date of the Syracusan catastrophe), or still more, from 460-424 B.C. (the date when Brasidas made his conquests in Thrace). After the Syracusan catastrophe, the conditions of the empire were altogether changed; it was irretrievably broken up, though Athens still continued an energetic struggle to retain some of the fragments. But if we view it as it had stood before that event, during the period of its integrity, it is a sight marvellous to contemplate, and its working must be pronounced, in my judgment, to have been highly beneficial to the Grecian world. No Grecian state except Athens could have sufficed to organise such a system,[645] or to hold, in partial, though regulated, continuous and specific communion, so many little states, each animated with that force of political repulsion instinctive in the Grecian mind. This was a mighty task, worthy of Athens, and to which no state except Athens was competent. We have already seen in part, and we shall see still farther, how little qualified Sparta was to perform it: and we shall have occasion hereafter to notice a like fruitless essay on the part of Thebes.

As in regard to the democracy of Athens generally, so in regard to her empire—it has been customary with historians to take notice of little except the bad side. But the empire of Athens was not harsh and oppressive, as it is commonly depicted. Under the circumstances of her dominion—at a time when the whole transit and commerce of the Ægean was under one maritime system, which excluded all irregular force—when Persian ships of war were kept out of the waters, and Persian tribute-officers away from the seaboard—when the disputes inevitable among so many little communities could be peaceably redressed by the mutual right of application to the tribunals at Athens—and when these tribunals were also such as to present to sufferers a refuge against wrongs done even by individual citizens of Athens herself (to use the expression of the oligarchical Phrynichus)—the condition of the maritime Greeks was materially better than it had been before, or than it will be seen to become afterwards. Her empire, if it did not inspire attachment, certainly provoked no antipathy, among the bulk of the citizens of the subject-communities, as is shown by the party-character of the revolts against her. If in her imperial character she exacted obedience, she also fulfilled duties and insured protection—to a degree incomparably greater than was ever realised by Sparta. And even if she had been ever so much disposed to cramp the free play of mind and purpose among her subjects—a disposition which is no way proved—the very circumstances of her own democracy, with its open antithesis of political parties, universal liberty of speech, and manifold individual energy, would do much to prevent the accomplishment of such an end, and would act as a stimulus to the dependent communities even without her own intention.

Without being insensible either to the faults or to the misdeeds of imperial Athens, I believe that her empire was a great comparative benefit, and its extinction a great loss, to her own subjects. But still more do I believe it to have been a good, looked at with reference to Panhellenic interests. Its maintenance furnished the only possibility of keeping out foreign intervention, and leaving the destinies of Greece to depend upon native, spontaneous, untrammelled Grecian agencies. The downfall of the Athenian empire is the signal for the arms and corruption of Persia again to make themselves felt, and for the re-enslavement of the Asiatic Greeks under her tribute-officers. What is still worse, it leaves the Grecian world in a state incapable of repelling any energetic foreign attack, and open to the overruling march of “the man of Macedon” half a century afterwards. For such was the natural tendency of the Grecian world to political non-integration or disintegration, that the rise of the[646] Athenian empire, incorporating so many states into one system, is to be regarded as a most extraordinary accident. Nothing but the genius, energy, discipline, and democracy of Athens, could have brought it about; nor even she, unless favoured and pushed on by a very peculiar train of antecedent events. But having once got it, she might perfectly well have kept it; and had she done so, the Hellenic world would have remained so organised as to be able to repel foreign intervention, either from Susa or from Pella. When we reflect how infinitely superior was the Hellenic mind to that of all surrounding nations and races; how completely its creative agency was stifled as soon as it came under the Macedonian dictation; and how much more it might perhaps have achieved, if it had enjoyed another century or half-century of freedom, under the stimulating headship of the most progressive and most intellectual of all its separate communities—we shall look with double regret on the ruin of the Athenian empire, as accelerating, without remedy, the universal ruin of Grecian independence, political action, and mental grandeur.c

FOOTNOTES

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[647]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter a is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

Chapter I. Land and People

b Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece.

c John B. Bury, History of Greece.

d William Ridgeway, The Early Age of Greece.

e Gustav F. Hertzberg, Geschichte der Griechen im Alterthum.

f Strabo, Γεωγραφικά.

g Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.

h Pausanias, General Description of Greece.

i Herodotus, History.

Chapter II. The Mycenæan Age

b D. G. Hogarth, article on “Mycenæan Civilisation,” in the New Volumes of the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

c Henry Schliemann, Mycenæ.

d C. Tsountas and J. Irving Manatt, The Mycenæan Age.

e Percy Gardner, New Chapters of Greek History.

f Wolfgang Helbig, Die Italiker in der Po-Ebene.

g Pigorini, In Atti dell’Accademia dei Lincei.

h C. Schuchhardt, Schliemann’s Excavations (translated by E. Sellers).

i Julius Beloch, Griechische Geschichte.

Chapter III. The Heroic Age

b George Grote, History of Greece.

c Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece.

d Friedrich C. Schlosser, Weltgeschichte.

f Plassman, quoted in Thirlwall’s Notes.

h William Mitford, History of Greece.

i L. A. Prévost-Paradol, Essai sur l’Histoire Universelle.

k Friedrich August Wolf, Prolegomena ad Homerum.

l Henry Schliemann, Troja.

[648]

Chapter IV. The Transition to Secure History

c Julius Beloch, Griechische Geschichte.

Chapter V. The Dorians

b Karl O. Müller, The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race.

c Ernst Curtius, Griechische Geschichte.

d Eugamon, Telegonia.

e Xanthus, Lydiaca.

Chapter VI. Sparta and Lycurgus

b W. Assmann, Handbuch der Allgemeinen Geschichte.

c Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men.

d Victor Duruy, Histoire grecque.

e John B. Bury, History of Greece.

f Philoste-Phanus, Timæus, Sosibius, and Demetrius Phalereus, as quoted by Plutarch.

g Aristotle, Politics.

h Plato, Republic.

Chapter VII. The Messenian Wars of Sparta

b George Grote, History of Greece.

c Pausanias, General Description of Greece.

d Tyrtæus, Fragments, 5, 6.

e Isocrates, Archidamus.

f Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library.

Chapter VIII. The Ionians

b Gustav F. Hertzberg, Geschichte der Griechen im Alterthum.

c E. G. Bulwer-Lytton, Athens: Its Rise and Fall.

d William Mitford, History of Greece.

e Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece.

f Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men.

g Strabo, Γεωγραφικά.

h Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.

Chapter IX. Some Characteristic Institutions

b Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece.

c William Mitford, History of Greece.

d Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library.

e Strabo, Γεωγραφικά.

f Pausanias, General Description of Greece.

g Aristotle, Politics.

Chapter X. The Smaller Cities and States

b Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece.

c Eugène Lerminier, Histoire des legislatures et des constitutions de la Grèce ancienne.

d Aristotle, Politics.

e Strabo, Γεωγραφικά.

f Pausanias, General Description of Greece.

g Polybius, General History.

h Herodotus, History.

i Theognis, Poems.

j Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.

Chapter XI. Crete and the Colonies

b Eugène Lerminier, Histoire des legislatures et des constitutions de la Grèce ancienne.

c Julius Beloch, Griechische Geschichte.

d Aristotle, Politics.

Chapter XII. Solon the Lawgiver

b George Grote, History of Greece.

c Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece.

d Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men.

e John B. Bury, History of Greece.

Chapter XIII. Pisistratus the Tyrant

b E. G. Bulwer-Lytton, Athens: Its Rise and Fall.

c Herodotus, History.

d Ernst Curtius, Griechische Geschichte.

Chapter XIV. Democracy Established at Athens

b George Grote, History of Greece.

c Victor Duruy, Histoire grecque.

d Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.

e Herodotus, History.

f Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men.

g Aristotle, Politics.

h Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library.

Chapter XV. The First Foreign Invasion

b Ernst Curtius, Griechische Geschichte.

c Herodotus, History.

d Victor Duruy, Histoire grecque.

e E. G. Bulwer-Lytton, Athens: Its Rise and Fall.

f G. B. Grundy, The Persian War.

g Georg Busolt, Griechische Geschichte.

h J. A. R. Munro, in the Journal of Hellenic Studies.

i F. C. H. Kruse, Hellas.

j John P. Mahaffy, Rambles and Studies in Greece.

k George Grote, History of Greece.

[649]

Chapter XVI. Miltiades and the Alleged Fickleness of Republics

b George Grote, History of Greece.

c Herodotus, History.

d Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library.

e Cornelius Nepos, Lives.

f Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men.

Chapter XVII. The Plans of Xerxes

b Herodotus, History.

c Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men; also his Moralia.

d P. H. Larcher, translation of Herodotus into French.

e James Rennel, The Geographical System of Herodotus.

f William Beloe, in his translation of Herodotus.

g Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library.

h John B. Bury, History of Greece.

Chapter XVIII. Proceedings in Greece from Marathon to Thermopylæ

b George Grote, History of Greece.

c Herodotus, History.

d James Rennel, The Geographical System of Herodotus.

Chapter XIX. Thermopylæ

b Herodotus, History.

c William Beloe, in his translation of Herodotus.

d John B. Bury, History of Greece.

e P. H. Larcher, translation of Herodotus into French.

f Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library.

g Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men.

h Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece.

i Pausanias, General Description of Greece.

Chapter XX. The Battles of Artemisium and Salamis

b George Grote, History of Greece.

c Colonel Leake, Topography of Athens.

d Herodotus, History.

e Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library.

f William Smith, History of Greece.

g Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men.

h William H. Waddington, Visit to Greece.

i Pausanias, General Description of Greece.

Chapter XXI. From Salamis to Mycale

b Herodotus, History.

c William Beloe, in his translation of Herodotus.

d Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men.

e P. H. Larcher, translation of Herodotus into French.

f John B. Bury, History of Greece.

g George Grote, History of Greece.

Chapter XXII. The Aftermath of the War

b Thucydides, History of the Grecian War (translated by Henry Dale).

c George Grote, History of Greece.

d Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men.

e Cornelius Nepos, Lives.

Chapter XXIII. The Growth of the Athenian Empire

b George W. Cox, The Athenian Empire.

c George Grote, History of Greece.

d William Mitford, History of Greece.

e Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men.

f Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece.

g Cornelius Nepos, Lives.

h Thucydides, History of the Grecian War (translated by Henry Dale).

Chapter XXIV. The Rise of Pericles

b Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece.

c Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men.

d George Grote, History of Greece.

e Thucydides, History of the Grecian War (translated by Henry Dale).

f William Mitford, History of Greece.

g Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library.

h Herodotus, History.

Chapter XXV. Athens at War

b William Mitford, History of Greece.

c George Grote, History of Greece.

d Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece.

e Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men.

f Herodotus, History.

Chapter XXVI. Imperial Athens under Pericles

b George Grote, History of Greece.

c Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece.

d Thucydides, History of the Grecian War (translated by Henry Dale).

e Xenophon, Hellenics.

[650]

Chapter XXVII. Manners and Customs of the Age of Pericles

b A. Boekh, Public Economy of the Athenians (translated by A. Lamb).

c William Mure, Grecian Literature.

d H. Goll, Kulturbilder aus Hellas und Rom.

Chapter XXVIII. Art of the Periclean Age

b Victor Duruy, Histoire grecque.

c William Mitford, History of Greece.

Chapter XXIX. Greek Literature

b Ernst Curtius, Griechische Geschichte.

Chapter XXX. The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War

b George Grote, History of Greece.

c Connop Thirlwall, History of Greece.

d Thucydides, History of the Grecian War (translated by Henry Dale).

e Adolph Holm, History of Greece.

f William Mitford, History of Greece.

g John Ruskin, Præterita.

h Xenophon, Hellenics.

Chapter XXXI. The Plague; and the Death of Pericles

b George Grote, History of Greece.

c Thucydides, History of the Grecian War (translated by Henry Dale).

d John B. Bury, History of Greece.

e William Oncken, Athen und Hellas.

f Titus Livius, Roman History.

g Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library.

h Plutarch, Lives of Illustrious Men.

Chapter XXXII. The Second and Third Years of the Peloponnesian War

b Connop Thirlwall, History of Greece.

c Thucydides, History of the Grecian War (translated by Henry Dale).

d John B. Bury, History of Greece.

e Pausanias, General Description of Greece.

f George Grote, History of Greece.

Chapter XXXIII. The Fourth to the Tenth Years

b Barthold G. Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History.

c Thucydides, History of the Grecian War (translated by Henry Dale).

d George Grote, History of Greece.

e Victor Duruy, Histoire grecque.

f Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library.

Chapter XXXIV. The Rise of Alcibiades

b Victor Duruy, Histoire grecque.

c Thucydides, History of the Grecian War (translated by Henry Dale).

Chapter XXXV. The Sicilian Expedition

b Adolf Holm, History of Greece.

c Julius Beloch, Griechische Geschichte.

d John B. Bury, History of Greece.

e Edward A. Freeman, article on “Sicily” in the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

f George Grote, History of Greece.

g Victor Duruy, Histoire grecque.

h Karl O. Müller, The Dorians.

i Thucydides, History of the Grecian War (translated by Henry Dale).

j John Gillies, History of Ancient Greece.

Chapter XXXVI. Close of the Peloponnesian War

b J. Gillies, History of Ancient Greece.

c George Grote, History of Greece.

d William Mitford, History of Greece.

e Oliver Goldsmith, History of Greece.

f Xenophon, Hellenics.

g Johann K. F. Manso, Sparta.

h Connop Thirlwall, The History of Greece.

i George W. Cox, The Athenian Empire.

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Hellenica World - Scientific Library