Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History

by Charlotte M. Yonge

CHAP. XII.—AFTER THE HEROIC AGE.

ll these heroes of whom we have been telling lived, if they lived at all, about the time of the Judges of Israel. Troy is thought to have been taken at the time that Saul was reigning in Israel, and there is no doubt that there once was a city between Mount Ida and the Ægean Sea, for quantities of remains have been dug up, and among them many rude earthenware images of an owl, the emblem of Pallas Athene, likenesses perhaps of the Palladium. Hardly anything is told either false or true of Greece for three hundred years after this time, and when something more like history begins we find that all Greece, small as it is, was divided into very small states, each of which had a chief city and a government of its own, and was generally shut in from its neighbours by mountains or by sea. There were the three tribes, Ionian, Dorian, and Æolian, dwelling in these little states, and, though they often quarrelled among themselves, all thinking themselves one nation, together with their kindred in the islands of the Ægean, on the coasts of Asia, and also in Sicily and Southern Italy, which was sometimes called Greater Greece.

Some time between the heroic age and the historical time, there had been a great number of songs and verses composed telling of the gods and heroes. Singers and poets used to be entertained by the kings, and sometimes to wander from one place to another, welcomed by all, as they chanted to the harp or the lyre the story of the great forefathers of their hosts, especially when they had all joined together, as in the hunt of the great boar of Calydon, in the voyage for the Golden Fleece, and, above all, in the siege of Troy. The greatest of all these singers was the blind poet Homer, whose songs of the wrath of Achilles and the wanderings of Ulysses were loved and learnt by everyone. Seven different cities claimed to be his birth-place, but no one knows more about him than that he was blind—not even exactly when he lived—but his poems did much to make the Greeks hold together.

And so did their religion. Everybody sent to ask questions of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, and there really were answers to them, though no one can tell by what power. And at certain times there were great festivals at certain shrines. One was at Olympia, in Elis, where there was a great festival every five years. It was said that Hercules, when a little boy, had here won a foot-race with his brothers, and when the Heracleids returned to Sparta they founded a feast, with games for all the Greeks to contend in. There were chariot races, horse races, foot races, boxing and wrestling matches, throwing weights, playing with

quoits, singing and reciting of poems. The winner was rewarded with a wreath of bay, of pine, of parsley, or the like, and he wore such an one as his badge of honour for the rest of his life. Nothing was thought more of than being first in the Olympic games, and the Greeks even came to make them their measure of time, saying that any event happened in such and such a year of such an Olympiad. The first Olympiad they counted from was the year 776 b.c., that is, before the coming of our blessed Lord. There were other games every three years, which Theseus was said to have instituted, on the isthmus of Corinth, called the Isthmean Games, and others in two different places, and no honour was more highly esteemed than success in these.

There were also councils held of persons chosen from each tribe, called Amphictyons, for arranging their affairs, both religious and worldly, and one great Amphictyonic council, which met near Delphi, to discuss the affairs of all Greece. In truth, all the great nations who long ago parted in Asia have had somewhat the same arrangement. A family grew first into a clan, then into a tribe, then into a nation, and the nation that settled in one country formed fresh family divisions of clans, tribes, and families. At first the father of a family would take council with the sons, the head of a clan with the fathers of families, the chief of a tribe with the heads of clans, and as these heads of clans grew into little kings, the ablest of them would lead the nation in time of war, as Agamemnon did the chiefs

against Troy. However, the Greeks seem for the most part, between the heroic and historical ages, to have dropped the king or chief of each state, and only to have managed them by various councils of the chief heads of families, who were called aristoi, the best, while those who were not usually called into council, though they too were free, and could choose their governors, and vote in great matters, were termed demos, the people. This is why we hear of aristocracy and democracy. Under these freemen were the people of the country they had conquered, or any slaves they had bought or taken captive, or strangers who had come to live in the place, and these had no rights at all.

Greek cities were generally beautiful places, in valleys between the hills and the sea. They were sure to have several temples to the gods of the place. These were colonnades of stone-pillars, upon steps, open all round, but with a small dark cell in the middle, which was the shrine of the god, whose statue, and carvings of whose adventures, adorned the outside. There was an altar in the open-air for sacrifices, the flesh of which was afterwards eaten. In the middle of a town was always a market-place, which served as the assembling-place of the people, and it had a building attached to it where the fire of Vesta was never allowed to go out. The charge of it was given to the best men who could be found; and when a set of citizens went forth to make a new home or colony in Asia, Sicily, or Italy, they always took brands from this fire, guarded them

carefully in a censer, and lighted their altar-fires therefrom when they settled down.

These cities were of houses built round paved courts. The courts had generally a fountain in the middle, and an altar to the hero forefather of the master, where, before each meal, offerings were made and wine poured out. The rooms were very small, and used for little but sleeping; and the men lived chiefly in the cloister or pillared walks round the court. There was a kind of back-court for the women of the family, who did not often appear in the front one, though they were not shut up like Eastern women. Most Greeks had farms, which they worked by the help of their slaves, and whence came the meat, corn, wine, and milk that

maintained the family. The women spun the wool of the sheep, wove and embroidered it, making for the men short tunics reaching to the knee, with a longer mantle for dignity or for need; and for themselves long robes

In time of war the armour was a helmet with a horse-hair crest, a breast-plate on a leathern cuirass, which had strips of leather hanging from the lower edge as far down as the knee; sometimes greaves to guard the leathern buskin; a round shield of leather, faced with metal, and often beautifully ornamented; and also spears, swords, daggers, and sometimes bows and arrows. Chariots for war had been left off since the heroic times; indeed Greece was so hilly that horses were not very much used in battle, though riding was part of the training of a Greek, and the Thessalian

horses were much valued. Every state that had a seaboard had its fleet of galleys, with benches of oars; but the Greek sailors seldom ventured out of sight of land, and all that Greece or Asia Minor did not produce was brought by the Phœnicians, the great sailors, merchants, and slave-dealers of the Old World. They brought Tyrian purple, gold of Ophir, silver of Spain, tin of Gaul and Britain, ivory from India, and other such luxuries; and they also bought captives in war, or kidnapped children on the coast, and sold them as slaves. Ulysses’ faithful swineherd was such a slave, and of royal birth; and such was the lot of many an Israelite child, for whom its parents’ “eyes failed with looking and longing.”

Greece was not so small as what is called Greece now in our modern maps. It reached northwards as far as the Volutza and Khimera mountains, beyond which lay Macedon, where the people called themselves Greeks, but were not quite accepted as such. In this peninsula, together with the Peloponnesus and the isles, there were twenty little states, making up Hellas, or Greece. [109]

CHAP. XIII.—LYCURGUS AND THE LAWS OF SPARTA. b.c. 884–668.

ou remember that after a hundred years the grandsons of Hercules returned, bringing with them their followers of Dorian birth, and conquered Laconia. These Dorians called themselves Spartans, and were the rulers of the land, though the Greeks, who were there before them, were also freemen, all but those of one city, called Helos, which revolted, and was therefore broken up, and the people were called Helots, and became slaves to the Spartans. One of the Spartan kings, sons of Hercules, had twin sons, and these two reigned together with equal rights, and so did their sons after them, so that there were always two kings at Sparta. One line was called the Agids, from Agis, its second king; the other Eurypontids, from Eurypon, its third king, instead of from the two original twins.

The affairs of Sparta had fallen into a corrupt state by the third generation after Eurypon. The king of his line was killed in a quarrel, and his widow, a wicked

woman, offered his brother Lycurgus to kill her little new-born babe, if he would marry her, that she might continue to be queen. Lycurgus did not show his horror, but advised her to send the child alive to him, that he might dispose of it. So far from killing it was he, that he carried it at once to the council, placed it on the throne, and proclaimed it as Charilaus, king of Sparta.

There were still murmurs from those who did not know that Lycurgus had saved the little boy’s life. As he was next heir to the throne, it was thought that he must want to put Charilaus out of the way, so as to reign himself; so, having seen the boy in safe keeping, Lycurgus went on his travels to study the laws and ways of other countries. He visited Crete, and learnt the laws of Minos; and, somewhere among the Greek settlements in Asia, he is said to have seen and talked to Homer, and heard his songs. He also went to Egypt, and after that to India, where he may have learnt much from the old Brahmin philosophy; and then, having made his plan, he repaired to Delphi, and prayed until he received answer from Apollo that his laws should be the best, and the state that obeyed them the most famous in Greece. He then went home, where he had been much missed, for his young nephew Charilaus, though grown to man’s estate, was too weak and good-natured to be much obeyed, and there was a great deal of idleness, and gluttony, and evil of all sorts prevailing.

Thirty Spartans bound themselves to help Lycurgus in his reform, and Charilaus, fancying it a league against

himself, fled into the temple of Pallas, but his uncle fetched him out, and told him that he only wanted to make laws for making the Spartans great and noble. The rule was only for the real Dorian Spartans, the masters of the country, and was to make them perfect warriors. First, then, he caused all the landmarks to be taken up, and the lands thrown into one, which he divided again into lots, each of which was large enough to yield 82 bushels of corn in a year, with wine and oil in proportion. Then, to hinder hoarding, he allowed no money to be used in the country but great iron weights, so that a small sum took up a great deal of room, and could hardly be carried about, and thus there was no purchasing Phœnician luxuries; nor was anyone to use gold or ivory, soft cushions, carpets, or the like, as being unworthy of the race of Hercules. The whole Spartan nation became, in fact, a regiment of highly-disciplined warriors. They were to live together in public barracks, only now and then visiting their homes, and even when they slept there, being forbidden to touch food till they came to the general meal, which was provided for by contributions of meal, cheese, figs, and wine from each man’s farm, and a little money to buy fish and meat; also a sort of soup called black broth, which was so unsavoury that nobody but a Spartan could eat it, because it was said they brought the best sauce, namely, hunger. A boy was admitted as soon as he was old enough, and was warned against repeating the talk of his elders, by being told on his first entrance, by the eldest man in the

company, “Look you, sir; nothing said here goes out there.” Indeed no one used more words than needful, so that short, pithy sayings came to be called Laconic. To be a perfect soldier was the great point, so boys were taught that no merit was greater than bearing pain without complaint; and they carried this so far, that a boy who had brought a young wolf into the hall, hidden under his tunic, let it bite him even to death without a groan or cry. It is said that they were trained to theft, and were punished, not for the stealing, but the being found out. And, above all, no Spartan was ever to turn his back in battle. The mothers gave the sons a shield, with the words, “With it, or on it.” The Spartan shields were long, so that a dead warrior would be borne home on his shield; but a man would not dare show his face again if he had thrown it away in flight. The women were trained to running, leaping, and throwing the bar, like the men, and were taught stern hardihood, so that, when their boys were offered to the cruel Diana, they saw them flogged to death at her altar without a tear. All the lives of the Spartans were spent in exercising for war, and the affairs of the state were managed not so much by the kings, but by five judges called Ephors, who were chosen every year, while the kings had very little power. They had to undergo the same discipline as the rest—dressed, ate, and lived like them; but they were the high priests and chief captains, and made peace or war.

At first Lycurgus’ laws displeased some of the

citizens much, and, when he was proposing them, a young man named Alcander struck him on the face with his staff, and put out his eye. The others were shocked, and put Alcander into Lycurgus’ hands, to be punished as he thought fit. All Lycurgus did was to make him wait upon him at meals, and Alcander was so touched and won over that he became one of his best supporters. After having fully taught Sparta to observe his rule, Lycurgus declared that he had another journey to take, and made the people swear to observe his laws till he came back again. He never did come back, and they held themselves bound by them for ever.

This story of Lycurgus has been doubted, but whether there were such a man or not, it is quite certain that these were the laws of Sparta in her most famous days, and that they did their work of making brave and hardy soldiers. The rule was much less strict in the camp than the city, and the news of a war was delightful to the Spartans as a holiday-time. All the hard work of their farms was done for them by the Helots, who were such a strong race that it was not easy to keep them down, although their masters were very cruel to them, often killing large numbers of them if they seemed to be growing dangerous, always ill-treating them, and, it is said, sometimes making them drunk, that the sight of their intoxication might disgust the young Spartans. In truth, the whole Spartan system was hard and unfeeling, and much fitter to make fighting machines than men.

The first great Spartan war that we know of was with their neighbours of Messenia, who stood out bravely, but were beaten, and brought down to the state of Helots in the year 723 b.c., all but a small band, who fled into other states. Among them was born a brave youth named Aristomenes, who collected all the boldest of his fellow-Messenians to try to save their country, and Argos, Arcadia, and Elis joined with them. Several battles were fought. One, which was called the battle of the Boar’s Pillar, was long sung about. An augur had told Aristomenes that under a tree sat the Spartan brothers Castor and Pollux, to protect their countrymen, and that he might not pass it; but in the pursuit he rushed by it, and at that moment the shield was rent from him by an unseen hand. While he was searching for it, the Spartans (who do seem this time to have fled) escaped; but Messene was free, and he was crowned with flowers by the rejoicing women. A command from Apollo made him descend into a cave, where he found his shield, adorned with the figure of an eagle, and, much encouraged, he won another battle, and would have entered Sparta itself, had not Helen and her twin brothers appeared to warn him back. At last, however, the war turned against him, and in a battle on Laconian ground he was stunned by a stone, and taken prisoner, with 50 more. They were all condemned to be thrown down a high rock into a deep pit. Everyone else was killed by the fall, but Aristomenes found himself unhurt, with sky above, high

precipices on all sides, and his dead comrades under him. He wrapped himself in his cloak to wait for death, but on the third day he heard something moving, uncovered his face, and saw that a fox had crept in from a cavern at the side of the pit. He took hold of the fox’s tail, crawled after it, and at last saw the light of day. He scraped the earth till the way was large enough for him to pass, escaped, and gathered his friends, to the amazement of the Spartans. Again he gained the victory, and a truce was made, but he was treacherously seized, and thrown into prison. However, this time he was set free by a maiden, whom he gave in marriage to his son. At last Eira, the chief city of Messenia, was betrayed by a foolish woman, while Aristomenes was laid aside by a wound. In spite of this, however, he fought for three days and nights against the Spartans, and at last drew up all the survivors—women as well as men—in a hollow square, with the children in the middle, and demanded a free passage. The Spartans allowed these brave Messenians to pass untouched, and they reached Arcadia. There the dauntless Aristomenes arranged another scheme for seizing Sparta itself, but it was betrayed, and failed. The Arcadians stoned the traitor, while the gentle Aristomenes wept for him. The remaining Messenians begged him to lead them to a new country, but he would not leave Greece as long as he could strike a blow against Sparta. However, he sent his two sons, and they founded in Sicily a new Messene, which we still call Messina.

Aristomenes waited in vain in Arcadia, till Damagetus, king of Rhodes, who had been bidden by an oracle to marry the daughter of the best of Greeks, asked for the daughter of Aristomenes, and persuaded him to finish his life in peace and honour in Rhodes.

CHAP. XIV.—SOLON AND THE LAWS OF ATHENS. b.c. 594–546.

orth of the Peloponnesus, jutting out into the Ægean Sea, lay the rocky little Ionian state of Attica, with its lovely city, Athens. There was a story that Neptune and Pallas Athene had had a strife as to which should be the patron of the city, and that it was to be given to whichever should produce the most precious gift for it. Neptune struck the earth with his trident, and there appeared a war-horse; but Pallas’ touch brought forth an olive-tree, and this was judged the most useful gift. The city bore her name; the tiny Athenian owl was her badge; the very olive-tree she had bestowed was said to be that which grew in the court of the Acropolis, a sacred citadel on a rock above the city; and near at hand was her temple, called the Parthenon, or Virgin’s Shrine. Not far off was the Areopagus, a Hill of Ares, or Mars, the great place for hearing causes and doing justice; and below these there grew up a city filled with men as brave as the Spartans,

and far more thoughtful and wise, besides having a most perfect taste and sense of beauty.

The Athenians claimed Theseus as their greatest king and first lawgiver. It was said that, when the Dorians were conquering the Peloponnesus, they came north and attacked Attica, but were told by an oracle that they never would succeed if they slew the king of Athens. Codrus, who was then king of Athens, heard of this oracle, and devoted himself for his country. He found that in battle the Dorians always forbore to strike

him, and he therefore disguised himself, went into the enemy’s camp, quarrelled with a soldier there, and thus caused himself to be killed, so as to save his country. He was the last king. The Athenians would not have anyone less noble to sit in his seat, and appointed magistrates called Archons in the stead of kings.

Soon they fell into a state of misrule and disorder, and they called on a philosopher named Draco to draw up laws for them. Draco’s laws were good, but very strict, and for the least crime the punishment was death. Nobody could keep them, so they were set aside and forgotten, and confusion grew worse, till another wise lawgiver named Solon undertook to draw up a fresh code of laws for them.

Solon was one of the seven wise men of Greece, who all lived at the same time. The other six were Thales, Bion, Pittacus, Cleobulus, Chilo, and Periander. This last was called Tyrant of Corinth. When the ancient Greeks spoke of a tyrant, they did not mean a cruel king so much as a king who had not been heir to the crown, but had taken to himself the rule over a free people. A very curious story belongs to Periander, for we have not quite parted with the land of fable. It is about the poet Arion, who lived chiefly with him at Corinth, but made one voyage to Sicily. As he was coming back, the sailors plotted to throw him overboard, and divide the gifts he was bringing with him. When he found they were resolved, he only begged to play once more on his lyre; then, standing on the prow,

he played and sung a hymn calling the gods to his aid. So sweet were the sounds that shoals of dolphins came round the ship, and Arion, leaping from the prow, placed himself on the back of one, which bore him safely to land. Periander severely punished the treacherous sailors. Some think that this story was a Greek alteration of the history of Jonah, which might have been brought by the Phœnician sailors.

Solon was Athenian by birth, and of the old royal line. He had served his country in war, and had travelled to study the habits of other lands, when the Athenians, wearied with the oppressions of the rich and great, and finding that no one attended to the laws of Draco, left it to him to form a new constitution. It would be of no use to try to explain it all. The chief thing to be remembered about it is, that at the head of the government were nine chief magistrates, who were called Archons, and who were changed every three years. To work with them, there was a council of four hundred aristoi, or nobles; but when war or peace was decided, the whole demos, or people, had to vote, according to their tribes; and if a man was thought to be dangerous to the state, the demos might sentence him to be banished. His name was written on an oyster shell, or on a tile, by those who wished him to be driven away, and these were thrown into one great vessel. If they amounted to a certain number, the man was said to be “ostracised,” and forced to leave the city. This was sometimes done very unjustly, but it answered the

purpose of sending away rich men who became overbearing, and kept tyrants from rising up. There were no unnatural laws as there were at Sparta; people might live at home as they pleased; but there were schools, and all the youths were to be taught there, both learning and training in all exercises. And whether it was from Solon’s laws or their own character, there certainly did arise in Athens some of the greatest and noblest men of all times.

After having set things in order, Solon is said to have been so annoyed by foolish questions on his schemes, that he went again on his travels. First he visited his friend Thales, at Miletus, in Asia Minor; and, finding him rich and comfortable, he asked why he had never married. Thales made no answer then, but a few days later he brought in a stranger, who, he said, was just from Athens. Solon asked what was the news. “A great funeral was going on, and much lamentation,” said the man. “Whose was it?” He did not learn the name, but it was a young man of great promise, whose father was abroad upon his travels. “The father was much famed for his wisdom and justice.” “Was it Solon?” cried the listener. “It was.” Solon burst into tears, tore his hair, and beat his breast; but Thales took his hand, saying, “Now you see, O Solon, why I have never married, lest I should expose myself to griefs such as these;” and then told him it was all a trick. Solon could not much have approved such a trick, for when Thespis, a great actor of plays, came to

Athens, Solon asked him if he were not ashamed to speak so many falsehoods. Thespis answered that it was all in sport. “Ay,” said Solon, striking his staff on the ground; “but he that tells lies in sport will soon tell them in earnest.”

After this, Solon went on to Lydia. This was a kingdom of Greek settlers in Asia Minor, where flowed that river Pactolus, whose sands contained gold-dust, from King Midas’ washing, as the story went. The king was Crœsus, who was exceedingly rich and splendid. He welcomed Solon, and, after showing him all his glory, asked whom the philosopher thought the happiest of men. “An honest man named Tellus,” said Solon, “who lived uprightly, was neither rich nor poor, had good children, and died bravely for his country.” Crœsus was vexed, but asked who was next happiest. “Two brothers named Cleobis and Bito,” said Solon, “who were so loving and dutiful to their mother, that, when she wanted to go to the temple of Juno, they yoked themselves to her car, and drew her thither; then, having given this proof of their love, they lay down to sleep, and so died without pain or grief.” “And what do you think of me?” said Crœsus. “Ah!” said Solon, “call no man happy till he is dead.”

Crœsus was mortified at such a rebuff to his pride, and neglected Solon. There was a clever crooked Egyptian slave at Crœsus’ court, called Æsop, who gave his advice in the form of the fables we know so well, such as the wolf and the lamb, the fox and the grapes, etc.;

though, as the Hindoos and Persians have from old times told the same stories, it would seem as if Æsop only repeated them, but did not invent them. When Æsop saw Solon in the background, he said, “Solon, visits to kings should be seldom, or else pleasant.” “No,” said Solon; “visits to kings should be seldom, or else profitable,” as the courtly slave found them. Æsop came to a sad end. Crœsus sent him to Delphi to distribute a sum of money among the poor, but they quarrelled so about it that Æsop said he should take it back to the king, and give none at all; whereupon the Delphians, in a rage, threw him off a precipice, and killed him.

Crœsus was just thinking of going to war with the great Cyrus, king of the Medes and Persians, the same who overcame Assyria, took Babylon, and restored Jerusalem, and who was now subduing Asia Minor. Crœsus asked council of all the oracles, but first he tried their truth. He bade his messenger ask the oracle at Delphi what he was doing while they were inquiring. The answer was—

“Lo, on my sense striketh the smell of a shell-covered tortoise
Boiling on the fire, with the flesh of a lamb, in a cauldron;
Brass is the vessel below, brass the cover above it.”

Crœsus was really, as the most unlikely thing to be guessed, boiling a tortoise and a lamb together in a brazen vessel. Sure now of the truth of the oracle, he sent splendid gifts, and asked whether he should go to war with Cyrus. The answer was that, if he did, a mighty kingdom would be overthrown.

He thought it meant the Persian, but it was his own. Lydia was overcome, Sardis, his capital, was burnt, and he was about to be slain, when, remembering the warning, “Call no man happy till his death,” he cried out, “O Solon, Solon, Solon!”

Cyrus heard him, and bade that he should be asked what it meant. The story so struck the great king, that he spared Crœsus, and kept him as his adviser for the rest of his life.

CHAP. XV.—PISISTRATUS AND HIS SONS. b.c. 558–499.

fter all the pains that Solon had taken to guard the freedom of the Athenians, his system had hardly begun to work before his kinsman Pisistratus, who was also of the line of Codrus, overthrew it. First this man pretended to have been nearly murdered, and obtained leave to have a guard of fifty men, armed with clubs; and with these he made everyone afraid of him, so that he had all the power, and became tyrant of Athens. He was once driven out, but he found a fine, tall, handsome woman, a flower-girl, in one of the villages of Attica, dressed her in helmet and cuirass, like the goddess Pallas, and came into Athens in a chariot with her, when she presented him to the people as their ruler. The common people thought she was their goddess, and Pisistratus had friends among the rich, so he recovered his power, and he did not, on the whole, use it badly. He made a kind law, decreeing that a citizen who had been maimed in battle should be provided for by the State, and he was the first Greek to found a

library, and collect books—namely, manuscripts upon the sheets of the rind of the Egyptian paper-rush, or else upon skins. He was also the first person to collect and arrange the poems of Homer. Everybody seems to have known some part by heart, but they were in separate songs, and Pisistratus first had them written down and put in order, after which no Greek was thought an educated man unless he thoroughly knew the Iliad and Odyssey.

Pisistratus ruled for thirty-three years, and made the Athenians content, and when he died his sons Hippias and Hipparchus ruled much as he had done, and gave no cause for complaint. One thing they did was to set up mile-stones all over the roads of Attica, each with a bust of Mercury on the top, and a wise proverb carved below the number of the miles. But they grew proud and insolent, and one day a damsel of high family was rudely sent away from a solemn religious procession, because Hipparchus had a quarrel with her brother Harmodius. This only made Harmodius vow vengeance, and, together with his friend Aristogeiton, he made a plot with other youths for surrounding the two brothers at a great festival, when everyone carried myrtle-boughs, as well as their swords and shields. The conspirators had daggers hidden in the myrtle, and succeeded in killing Hipparchus, but Harmodius was killed on the spot, and Aristogeiton was taken and tortured to make him reveal his other accomplices, and so was a girl named Leœna, who was known to have

been in their secrets; but she bore all the pain without a word, and when it was over she was found to have bitten off her tongue, that she might not betray her friends. Hippias kept up his rule for a few years longer, but he found all going against him, and that the people were bent on having Solon’s system back; so, fearing for his life, he sent away his wife and children, and soon followed them to Asia, b.c. 510. This—which is called the Expulsion of the Pisistratids—was viewed by the Athenians as the beginning of their freedom. They paid yearly honours to the memory of the murderers Harmodius and Aristogeiton; and as Leœna means a lioness, they honoured that brave woman’s constancy with the statue of a lioness without a tongue.

Hippias wandered about for some time, and ended by going to the court of the king of Persia. Cyrus was now dead, after having established a great empire, which spread from the Persian Gulf to the shore of the Mediterranean, and had Babylon for one of its capitals. When Crœsus was conquered, almost all the Greek colonies along the coast of Asia Minor likewise fell to the “Great King,” as his subjects called him. The Persians adored the sun and fire as emblems of the great God, and thought the king himself had something of divinity in his person, and therefore, like most Eastern kings, he had entire power over his people for life or death; they were all his slaves, and the only thing he could not do was to change his own decrees.

After the Asian coast, the isles of the Ægean stood

next in the way of the Persian. In the little isle of Samos lived a king called Polycrates, who had always been wealthy and prosperous. His friend Amasis, king of Egypt, told him that the gods were always jealous of the fortunate, and that, if he wished to avert some terrible disaster, he had better give up something very precious. Upon this Polycrates took off his beautiful signet ring and threw it into the sea; but a few days later a large fish was brought as a present to the king, and when it was cut up the ring was found in its stomach, and restored to Polycrates. Upon this Amasis

renounced his friendship, declaring that, as the gods threw back his offering, something dreadful was before him. The foreboding came sadly true, for the Persian satrap, or governor, of Sardis, being envious of Polycrates, declared that the Ionian was under the Great King’s displeasure, and invited him to Sardis to clear himself. Polycrates set off, but was seized as soon as he landed in Asia, and hung upon a cross.

Amasis himself died just as the Persians were coming to attack Egypt, which Cyrus’ son Cambyses entirely conquered, and added to the Persian empire; but Cambyses shortly after lost his senses and died, and there was an unsettled time before a very able and spirited king named Darius obtained the crown, and married Cyrus’ daughter Atossa. Among the prisoners made at Samos there was a physician named Democedes, who was taken to Susa, Darius’ capital. He longed to get home, and tried not to show how good a doctor he was; but the king one day hurt his foot, and, when all the Persian doctors failed to cure him, he sent for Democedes, who still pretended to be no wiser, until torture was threatened, and he was forced to try his skill. Darius recovered, made him great gifts, and sent him to attend his wives; but Democedes still pined for home, and managed to persuade Atossa to beg the king to give her Spartan and Athenian slaves, and to tell him some great undertaking was expected from him. The doctor’s hope in this was that he should be sent as a spy to Greece, before the war, and should make his escape;

but it was a bad way of showing love to his country. Hippias was at Susa too, trying to stir up Darius to attack Athens, and restore him as a tributary king; and there was also Histiæus, a Greek, who had been tyrant of Miletus, and who longed to get home. All the Ionian Greeks on the coast of Asia Minor hated the Persian rule, and Histiæus hoped that if they revolted he should be wanted there, so he sent a letter to his friend Aristagoras, at Miletus, in a most curious way. He had the head of a trusty slave shaved, then, with a red-hot pin, wrote his advice to rise against the Persians, and, when the hair was grown again, sent the man as a present to Aristagoras, with orders to tell him to shave his head.

Aristagoras read the letter, and went to Sparta to try to get the help of the kings in attacking Persia. He took with him a brass plate, engraven with a map of the world, according to the notions of the time, where it looked quite easy to march to Susa, and win the great Eastern empire. At first Cleomenes, the most spirited of the kings, was inclined to listen, but when he found that this easy march would take three months he changed his mind, and thought it beyond Spartan powers. Aristagoras went secretly to his house, and tried to bribe him, at least, to help the Ionians in their rising; but while higher and higher offers were being made, Gorgo, the little daughter of Cleomenes, only eight years old, saw by their looks that something was wrong, and cried out, “Go away, father; this stranger

will do you harm.” Cleomenes took it as the voice of an oracle, and left the stranger to himself.

He then went to Athens, and the Athenians, being Ionians themselves, listened more willingly, and promised to aid their brethren in freeing themselves. Together, the Athenians and a large body of Ephesians, Milesians, and other Ionians, attacked Sardis. The Persian satrap Artaphernes threw himself into the citadel; but the town, which was built chiefly of wicker-work, that the houses might not be easily thrown down by earthquakes, caught fire, and was totally burnt. The Athenians could not stay in the flaming streets, and had to give back, and the whole Persian force of the province came up and drove them out. Darius was furious when he heard of the burning of Sardis, and, for fear he should forget his revenge, ordered that a slave should mention the name of Athens every day to him as he sat down to dinner. Histiæus, however, succeeded in his plan, for Darius believed him when he said the uproar could only have broken out in his absence, and let him go home to try to put it down.

He was not very well received by Artaphernes, who was sure he was at the bottom of the revolt. “Aristagoras put on the shoe,” he said, “but it was of your stitching.”

Aristagoras had been killed, and Histiæus, fleeing to the Ionians, remained with them till they were entirely beaten, and he surrendered to the Persians, by whom

he was crucified, while the Ionians were entirely crushed, and saw their fairest children carried off to be slaves in the palace at Susa. Darius had longed after Greek slaves ever since he had seen a fine handsome girl walking along, upright, with a pitcher of water on her head, the bridle of a horse she was leading over her arm, and her hands busy with a distaff. He did not know that such grand people are never found in enslaved, oppressed countries, like his own, and he wanted to have them all under his power, so he began to raise his forces from all parts of his empire, for the conquest of what seemed to him the insolent little cities of Greece, and Hippias, now an old man, undertook to show him the way to Athens, and to betray his country. The battle was between the East and West—between a despot ruling mere slaves, and free, thoughtful cities, full of evil indeed, and making many mistakes, but brave and resolute, and really feeling for their hearths and homes.

CHAP. XVI.—THE BATTLE OF MARATHON. b.c. 490.

he whole Persian fleet, manned by Phœnician sailors, and a huge army, under the two satraps Datis and Artaphernes, were on the opposite side of the Ægean Sea, ready to overwhelm little Attica first, and then all Greece. Nobody had yet stood firm against those all-conquering Persians, and as they came from island to island the inhabitants fled or submitted. Attica was so small as to have only 9000 fighting men to meet this host. They sent to ask the aid of the Spartans, but though these would have fought bravely, an old rule forbade them to march during the week before the full moon, and in this week Athens might be utterly ruined. Nobody did come to their help but 600 men from the very small state of Platæa, and this little army, not numbering 10,000, were encamped around the temple of Hercules, looking down upon the bay of Marathon, where lay the ships which had just landed at least 200,000 men of all the Eastern nations, and among them many of the Greeks of Asia

Minor. The hills slant back so as to make a sort of horse-shoe round the bay, with about five miles of clear flat ground between them and the sea, and on this open space lay the Persians.

It was the rule among the Athenians that the heads of their ten tribes should command by turns each for a day, but Aristides, the best and most high-minded of all of them, persuaded the rest to give up their turns to Miltiades, who was known to be the most skilful captain. He drew up his men in a line as broad as the whole front of the Persian army, though far less deep, and made them all come rushing down at them with even step, but at a run, shouting the war-cry, “Io pæan! Io pæan!” In the middle, where the best men of the Persians were, they stood too firm to be thus broken, but at the sides they gave way, and ran back towards the sea, or over the hills, and then Miltiades gave a signal to the two side divisions—wings, as they were called—to close up together, and crush the Persian centre. The enemy now thought of nothing but reaching their ships and putting out to sea, while the Athenians tried to seize their ships; Cynegyrus, one brave Greek, caught hold of the prow of one ship, and when the crew cut off his hand with an axe, he still clung with the other, till that too was cut off, and he sank and was drowned. The fleet still held many men, and the Athenians saw that, instead of crossing back to Asia Minor, it was sailing round the promontory of Sunium, as if to attack Athens. It was even said that

a friend of Hippias had raised a shield, glittering in the sun, as a signal that all the men were away. However, Miltiades left Aristides, with his tribe of 1000 men, to guard the plain and bury the dead, and marched back over the hills with the rest to guard their homes, that same night; but the Persians must have been warned, or have changed their mind, for they sailed away for Asia; and Hippias, who seems to have been wounded in the battle, died at Lemnos. The Spartans came up just as all was over, and greatly praised the Athenians, for indeed it was the first time Greeks had beaten Persians, and it was the battle above all others that saved Europe from falling under the slavery of the East. The fleet was caught by a storm as it crossed the Ægean Sea again.

All the Athenians who had been slain were buried under one great mound, adorned with ten pillars bearing their names; the Platæans had another honourable mound, and the Persians a third. All the treasure that was taken in the camp and ships was honourably brought to the city and divided. There was only one exception, namely, one Kallias, who wore long hair bound with a fillet, and was taken for a king by a poor Persian, who fell on his knees before him, and showed him a well where was a great deal of gold hidden. Kallias not only took the gold, but killed the poor stranger, and his family were ever after held as disgraced, and called by a nickname meaning, “Enriched by the Well.”

The Platæans were rewarded by being made freemen

of Athens, as well as of their own city; and Miltiades, while all his countrymen were full of joy and exultation, asked of them a fleet of seventy ships, promising to bring them fame and riches. With it he sailed for the island of Faros, that which was specially famed for its white marble. He said he meant to punish the Parians for having joined the Persians, but it really was because of a quarrel of his own. He landed, and required the Parians to pay him a hundred talents, and when they refused he besieged the city, until a woman named Timo, who was priestess at a temple of Ceres near the gates, promised to tell him a way of taking the city if he would meet her at night in the temple, where no man was allowed to enter. He came, and leaped over the outer fence of the temple, but, brave as he was in battle, terror at treading on forbidden and sacred ground overpowered him, and, without seeing the priestess, he leaped back again, fell on the other side, and severely injured his thigh. The siege was given up, and he was carried back helpless to Athens, where there was no mercy to failures, and he was arraigned before the Areopagus assembly, by a man named Xanthippus, for having wasted the money of the State and deceived the people, and therefore being guilty of death.

It must have been a sad thing to see the great captain, who had saved his country in that great battle only a year or two before, lying on his couch, too ill to defend himself, while his brother spoke for him, and

appealed to his former services. In consideration of these it was decided not to condemn him to die, but he was, instead, to pay fifty talents of silver, and before the sum could be raised, he died of his hurts. It was said that his son Kimôn put himself into prison till the fine could be raised, so as to release his father’s corpse, which was buried with all honour on the plain of Marathon, with a tomb recording his glory, and not his fall.

The two chief citizens who were left were Aristides and Themistocles, both very able men; but Aristides was perfectly high-minded, unselfish, and upright, while Themistocles cared for his own greatness more than anything else. Themistocles was so clever that his tutor had said to him when he was a child, “Boy, thou wilt never be an ordinary person; thou wilt either be a mighty blessing or a mighty curse to thy country.” When he grew up he used his powers of leading the multitude for his own advantage, and that of his party. “The gods forbid,” he said, “that I should sit on any tribunal where my friends should not have more advantage than strangers.” While, on the other hand, Aristides was so impartial and single-hearted that he got the name of Aristides the Just. He cared most for the higher class, the aristoi, and thought they could govern best, while Themistocles sought after the favour of the people; and they both led the minds of the Athenians so completely while they were speaking, that, after a meeting where they had both made a speech, Aristides said, “Athens will never be safe till

Themistocles and I are both in prison,” meaning that either of them could easily make himself tyrant.

However, Aristides, though of high family, was very poor, and men said it was by the fault of his cousin Kallias, the “Enriched by the Well;” and Themistocles contrived to turn people’s minds against him, so as to have him ostracised. One day he met a man in the street, with a shell in his hand, who asked him to write the name of Aristides on it, as he could not write himself. “Pray,” said Aristides, “what harm has this person done you, that you wish to banish him?”

“No harm at all,” said the man; “only I am sick of always hearing him called the Just.”

Aristides had no more to say, but wrote his own name; and six thousand shells having been counted up against him, he was obliged to go into exile for ten years.

Cynegyrus, the man whose hands had been cut off in the bay of Marathon, had a very famous brother named Æschylus—quite as brave a soldier, and a poet besides. The Athenians had come to worshipping Bacchus, but not in the horrid, mad, drunken manner of the first orgies. They had songs and dances by persons with their heads wreathed in vine and ivy leaves, and a goat was sacrificed in the midst. The Greek word for a goat is tragos, and the dances came to be called tragedies. Then came in the custom of having poetical speeches in the midst of the dances, made in the person of some old hero or god, and these

always took place in a curve in the side of a hill, so worked out by art that the rock was cut into galleries, for half-circles of spectators to sit one above the other, while the dancers and speakers were on the flat space at the bottom. Thespis, whom Solon reproved for falsehoods, was the first person who made the dancers and singers, who were called the chorus, so answer one another and the speakers that the tragedy became a play, representing some great action of old. The actors had to wear brazen masks and tall buskins, or no one could have well seen or heard them. Æschylus, when a little boy, was set to watch the grapes in his father’s vineyard. He fell asleep, and dreamt that Bacchus appeared to him, and bade him make his festivals noble with tragedies; and this he certainly did, for the poetry he wrote for them is some of the grandest that man ever sung, and shows us how these great Greeks were longing and feeling after the truth, like blind men groping in the dark. The custom was to have three grave plays or tragedies on the same subject on three successive days, and then to finish with a droll one, or comedy, as it was called, in honour of the god Comus. There is one trilogy of Æschylus still preserved to us, where we have the death of Agamemnon, the vengeance of Orestes, and his expiation when pursued by the Furies, but the comedy belonging to them is lost.

Almost all the greatest and best Greeks of this time believed in part in the philosophy of Pythagoras, who had lived in the former century, and taught that the

whole universe was one great divine musical instrument, as it were, in which stars, sun, winds, and earth did their part, and that man ought to join himself into the same sweet harmony. He thought that if a man did ill his spirit went into some animal, and had a fresh trial to purify it, but it does not seem as if many others believed this notion.

CHAP. XVII.—THE EXPEDITION OF XERXES. b.c. 480.

he Athenians had not a long breathing-time. Darius, indeed, died five years after the battle of Marathon; but his son Xerxes was far more fiery and ambitious, and was no sooner on the throne than he began to call together all the vast powers of the East, not to crush Athens alone, but all the Greeks. He was five years gathering them together, but in the spring of 480 he set out from Sardis to march to the Hellespont, where he had a bridge of ships chained together, made to enable his army to cross the strait on foot. Xerxes was a hot-tempered man, not used to resistance, and it was said that when a storm broke part of his bridge he caused the waves to be scourged and fetters to be thrown in, to show that he was going to bind it to his will. He sat on a throne to watch his armies pass by. It is said that there were two million six hundred thousand men, of every speech and dress in Asia and Egypt, with all sorts of weapons; and as the “Great King” watched the endless number pass by, he burst

into tears to think how soon all this mighty host would be dead men!

Xerxes had a huge fleet besides, manned by Phœnicians and Greeks of Asia Minor, and this did not venture straight across the Ægean, because of his father’s disaster, but went creeping round the northern coast. Mount Athos, standing out far and steep into the sea, stood in the way, and it was dangerous to go round it; so Xerxes thought it would be an undertaking worthy of him to have a canal dug across the neck that joins the mountain to the land, and the Greeks declared that he wrote a letter to the mountain god, bidding him not to put rocks in the way of the workmen of the “Great King.” Traces of this canal can still be found in the ravine behind Mount Athos.

All the Greeks knew their danger now, and a council from every city met at the Isthmus of Corinth to consider what was to be done. All their ships, 271 in number, were gathered in a bay on the north of the great island of Eubœa. There the Spartan captain of the whole watched and waited, till beacons from height to height announced that the Persians were coming, and then he thought it safer to retreat within the Euripus, the channel between the island and the mainland, which is so narrow that a very few ships could stop the way of a whole fleet. However, just as they were within shelter, a terrible storm arose, which broke up and wrecked a great number of Persian ships, though the number that were left still was far beyond that of the

Greeks. On two days the Greeks ventured out, and always gained the victory over such ships as they encountered, but were so much damaged themselves, without destroying anything like the whole fleet, that such fighting was hopeless work.

In the meantime Xerxes, with his monstrous land army, was marching on, and the only place where it seemed to the council at the Isthmus that he could be met and stopped was at a place in Thessaly, where the mountains of Œta rose up like a steep wall, leaving no opening but towards the sea, where a narrow road wound round the foot of the cliff, and between it and the sea was a marsh that men and horses could never cross. The springs that made this bog were hot, so that it was called Thermopylæ, or the Hot Gates.

The council at the Isthmus determined to send an army to stop the enemy there, if possible. There were 300 Spartans, and various troops from other cities, all under the command of one of the Spartan kings, Leonidas, who had married Gorgo, the girl whose word had kept her father faithful. They built up a stone wall in front of them, and waited for the enemy, and by-and-by the Persians came, spreading over an immense space in the rear, but in this narrow road only a few could fight at once, so that numbers were of little use. Xerxes sent to desire the Spartans to give up their arms. Leonidas only answered, “Come and take them.” The Persian messenger reported that the Greeks were sitting on the wall combing their hair, while others were playing

at warlike games. Xerxes thought they were mad, but a traitor Spartan whom he had in his camp said it was always the fashion of his countrymen before any very perilous battle. Xerxes made so sure of victory over such a handful of men, that he bade his captains bring them all alive to him; but day after day his best troops fell beaten back from the wall, and hardly a Greek was slain.

But, alas! there was a mountain path through the chestnut woods above. Leonidas had put a guard of

Phocian soldiers to watch it, and the Persians did not know of it till a wretch, for the sake of reward, came and offered to show them the way, so that they might fall on the defenders of the pass from behind. In the stillness of the early dawn, the Phocians heard the trampling of a multitude on the dry chestnut leaves. They stood to arms, but as soon as the Persians shot their arrows at them they fled away and left the path open. Soon it was known in the camp that the foe were on the hills above. There was still time to retreat, and Leonidas sent off all the allies to save their lives; but he himself and his 300 Spartans, with 700 Thespians, would not leave their post, meaning to sell their lives as dearly as possible. The Delphic oracle had said that either Sparta or a king of Sparta must perish, and he was ready to give himself for his country. Two young cousins of the line of Hercules he tried to save, by telling them to bear his messages home; but one answered that he had come to fight, not carry letters, and the other that they would fight first, and then take home the news. Two more Spartans, whose eyes were diseased, were at the hot baths near. One went back with the allies, the other caused his Helot to lead him to the camp, where, in the evening, all made ready to die, and Leonidas sat down to his last meal, telling his friends that on the morrow they should sup with Pluto. One of these Thespians had answered, when he was told that the Persian arrows came so thickly as to hide the sky, “So much the better; we shall fight in the shade.”

The Persians were by this time so much afraid of these brave men that they could only be driven against them by whips. Leonidas and his thousand burst out on them beyond the wall, and there fought the whole day, till everyone of them was slain, but with heaps upon heaps of dead Persians round them, so that, when Xerxes looked at the spot, he asked in horror whether all the Greeks were like these, and how many more Spartans there were. Like a barbarian, he had Leonidas’ body hung on a cross; but in after times the brave king’s bones were buried on the spot, and a mound raised over the other warriors, with the words engraven—

“Go, passer-by, at Sparta tell,
Obedient to her law, we fell.”

There was nothing now between the Persians and the temple at Delphi. The priests asked the oracle if they should bury the treasures. “No,” the answer was; “the god will protect his own.” And just as a party of Persians were climbing up the heights to the magnificent temple there was a tremendous storm; rocks, struck by lightning, rolled down, and the Persians fled in dismay; but it is said Xerxes sent one man to insult the heathen god, and that he was a Jew, and therefore had no fears, and came back safe.

Now that Thermopylæ was lost, there was no place fit to guard short of the Isthmus of Corinth, and the council decided to build a wall across that, and defend it, so as to save the Peloponnesus. This left Attica outside, and the Athenians held anxious council what

was to become of them. Before the way to Delphi was stopped, they had asked the oracle what they were to do, and the answer had been, “Pallas had prayed for her city, but it was doomed; yet a wooden wall should save her people, and at Salamis should women be made childless, at seed-time or harvest.”

Themistocles said the wooden walls meant the ships, and that the Athenians were all to sail away and leave the city. Others would have it that the wooden walls were the old thorn fence of the Acropolis, and these,

being mostly old people, chose to stay, while all the rest went away; and while the wives and children were kindly sheltered by their friends in the Peloponnesus, the men all joined the fleet, which lay off Salamis, and was now 366 in number. The Persians overran the whole country, overcame the few who held out the Acropolis, and set Athens on fire. All the hope of Greece was now in the fleet, which lay in the strait between Attica and the isle of Salamis. Eurybiades, the Spartan commander, still wanted not to fight, but Themistocles was resolved on the battle. Eurybiades did all he could to silence him. “Those who begin a race before the signal are scourged,” said the Spartan. “True,” said Themistocles; “but the laggards never win a crown.” Eurybiades raised his leading staff as if to give him a blow. “Strike, but hear me,” said Themistocles; and then he showed such good reason for there meeting the battle that Eurybiades gave way. Six days later the Persian fleet, in all its grandeur, came up, and Xerxes caused his throne to be set on Mount Ægaleos, above the strait, that he might see the battle. The doubts of the Peloponnesians revived. They wanted to sail away and guard their own shores, but Themistocles was so resolved that they should fight that he sent a slave with a message to Xerxes, pretending to be a traitor, and advising him to send ships to stop up the other end of the strait, to cut off their retreat. This was done, to the horror of honest Aristides, who, still exiled, was in Ægina, watching what to

do for his countrymen. In a little boat he made his way at night to the ship where council was being held, and begged that Themistocles might be called out. “Let us be rivals still,” he said; “but let our strife be which can serve our country best. I come to say that your retreat is cut off. We are surrounded, and must fight.” Themistocles said it was the best thing that could happen, and led him into the council with his tidings.

They did fight. Ship was dashed against ship as fast as oars could bring them, their pointed beaks bearing one another down. The women who were made childless were Persian women. Two hundred Persian ships were sunk, and only forty Greek ones; an immense number were taken; and Xerxes, from his throne, saw such utter ruin of all his hopes and plans, that he gave up all thought of anything but getting his land army back to the Hellespont as fast as possible, for his fleet was gone!

CHAP. XVIII.—THE BATTLE OF PLATÆA. b.c. 479–460.

fter being thus beaten by sea, and having learnt what Greeks were by land, Xerxes himself, with a broken, sick, and distressed army, went back to Sardis; but he left a satrap named Mardonius behind him, with his best troops, in Thessaly, to see whether anything could still be done for his cause. He did try whether the Athenians could be persuaded to desert the other Greeks, and become allies of Persia, but they made a noble answer—“So long as the sun held his course, the Athenians would never be friends to Xerxes. Great as might be his power, Athens trusted to the aid of the gods and heroes, whose temple he had burnt.”

A tenth part of the spoil was set apart for Apollo, and formed into a golden tripod, supported by a brazen

serpent with three heads. A great statue of Jupiter was sent to Olympia, the pedestal adorned with the names of all the cities which had sent men to the battle, and such another of Neptune was set up on the Isthmus; while a temple to Athene, adorned with pictures of the battle, was built on the spot near Platæa. Pausanias received a sample of all that was best of the spoil. Among the dead was found that one Spartan who had missed Thermopylæ. He had been miserable ever since, and only longed to die in battle, as now he had done. The Platæans were to be respected by all the other states of Greece, so long as they yearly performed

funeral rites in honour of the brave men whose tombs were left in their charge.

On the same day as the battle of Platæa was fought, another great battle was fought at Mykale, near Miletus, by the Ionian Greeks of Asia, assisted by Athenians and Spartans. It set Miletus free from the Persians, and was the first step backwards of their great power. The Athenian fleet also gained back the Chersonesus, and brought home the chains that had fastened together the bridge of boats, to be dedicated in the temples of their own gods.

The Athenians were all coming home rejoicing. Even the very week after Xerxes had burnt the Acropolis, the sacred olive which Pallas Athene was said to have given them had shot out a long branch from the stump, and now it was growing well, to their great joy and encouragement. Everyone began building up his own house; and Themistocles, Aristides, and the other statesmen prepared to build strong walls round the city, though the Spartans sent messengers to persuade them that it was of no use to have any fortified cities outside the Peloponnesus; but they knew this was only because the Spartans wanted to be masters of Greece, and would not attend to them. Athens stood about three miles from the coast, and in the port there had hitherto been a village called Piræus, and Themistocles persuaded the citizens to make this as strong as possible, with a wall of solid stone round it. These were grand days at Athens. They had noble architects and

sculptors; and Æschylus was writing the grandest of his tragedies—especially one about the despair of the Persian women—but only fragments of most of them have come down to our time.

In 375 Aristides died, greatly honoured, though he was so poor that he did not leave enough to pay his funeral expenses; but a monument was raised to him by the State, and there is only one Athenian name as pure and noble as his.

The two other men who shared with him the honours of the defeat of the Persians met with very different fates, and by their own fault. When Pausanias went back to Sparta, he found his life there too stern and full of restraint, after what he had been used to in his campaign. He tried to break down the power of the Ephors, and obtain something more like royalty for the kings, and this he hoped to do by the help of Persia. He used to meet the messenger of this traitorous correspondence in the temple of Neptune, in the promontory of Tænarus. Some of the Ephors were warned, hid themselves there, and heard his treason from his own lips. They sent to arrest him as soon as he came back to Sparta; but he took refuge in the temple of Pallas, whence he could not be dragged. However, the Spartans were determined to have justice on him. They walled up the temple, so that he could neither escape nor have food brought to him; indeed it is said that, in horror at his treason, his mother brought the first stone. When he was at the point of

death he was taken out, that the sanctuary might not be polluted, and he died just as he was carried out. The Spartans buried him close to the temple, and gave Pallas two statues of him, to make up for the suppliant she had lost, but they were always reproached for the sacrilege.

Themistocles was a friend of Pausanias, and was suspected of being mixed up in his plots. He was obliged to flee the country, and went to Epirus, where he came to the house of King Admetus, where the queen, Phthia, received him, and told him how to win her husband’s protection, namely, by sitting down on the hearth by the altar to the household gods, and holding her little son in his arms.

When Admetus came in, Themistocles entreated him to have pity on his defenceless state. The king raised him up and promised his protection, and kept his word. Themistocles was taken by two guides safely across the mountains to Pydna, where he found a merchant ship about to sail for Asia. A storm drove it to the island of Naxos, which was besieged by an Athenian fleet; and Themistocles must have fallen into the hands of his fellow-citizens if he had landed, but he told the master of the ship that it would be the ruin of all alike if he were found in the vessel, and promised a large reward if he escaped. So the crew consented to beat about a whole day and night, and in the morning landed safely near Ephesus. He kept his word to the captain; for indeed he was very rich, having taken bribes, while

Aristides remained in honourable poverty. He went to Susa, where Xerxes was dead; but the Persians had fancied his message before the battle of Salamis was really meant to serve them, and that he was suffering for his attachment to them, so the new king, Artaxerxes, the “Long-armed,” who had a great esteem for his cleverness, was greatly delighted, offered up a sacrifice in his joy, and three times cried out in his sleep, “I have got Themistocles the Athenian.”

Themistocles had asked to wait a year before seeing the king, that he might have time to learn the language. When he came, he put forward such schemes for conquering Greece that Artaxerxes was delighted, and gave him a Persian wife, and large estates on the banks of the Mæander, where he spent the rest of his life, very rich, but despised by all honest Greeks.

All the history of the war with Xerxes was written by Herodotus, a Greek of Caria, who travelled about to study the manners, customs, and histories of different nations, and recorded them in the most lively and spirited manner, so that he is often called the father of history.

Æschylus went on gaining prizes for his tragedies, till 468, when, after being thirteen times first, he was excelled by another Athenian named Sophocles, and was so much vexed that he withdrew to the Greek colonies in Sicily. It is not clear whether he ever came back to Athens for a time, but he certainly died in

Sicily, and in an extraordinary way. He was asleep on the sea-shore, when an eagle flew above him with a tortoise in its claws. It is the custom of eagles to break the shells of these creatures by letting them fall on rocks from a great height. The bird took Æschylus’ bald head for a stone, threw down the tortoise, broke his skull, and killed him!

Sophocles did not write such grand lines, yearning for the truth, as Æschylus, but his plays, of Ajax’ madness, and especially of Antigone’s self-devotion, were more touching, and full of human feeling; and Euripides, who was a little younger, wrote plays more like those of later times, with more of story in them, and more characters, especially of women. He even wrote one in which he represented Helen as never having been unfaithful at all; Venus only made up a cloud-image to be run away with by Paris, and Helen was carried away and hidden in Egypt, where Menelaus found her, and took her home. The works of these three great men have always been models. The Greeks knew their plays by heart almost as perfectly as the Iliad and Odyssey, and used to quote lines wherever they applied.