Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History

by Charlotte M. Yonge

CHAP. XXXIV. ARATUS AND THE ACHAIAN LEAGUE. b.c. 267.

ntigonus Gonatas was now quite the most powerful person left in Macedon or Greece, and though Sparta and Athens tried to get the help of Egypt against him, they could do nothing to shake off his power.

There were twelve little cities in the Peloponnesus, which were all united together in one league, called the Achaian, each governing itself, but all joining together against any enemy outside. In the good old times they had sent men to the wars as allies of Sparta, but they had never had a man of much mark among them. In the evil times, Sicyon, a city near Achaia, fell under the power of a tyrant, and about the time that Pyrrhus was killed, Clinias, a citizen of Sicyon, made a great attempt to free his townsmen, but he was found out, his house attacked, and he and his family all put to death, except his son Aratus, a little boy of seven years old, who ran away from the dreadful sight, and went wandering about the town, till by chance he came into

the house of the tyrant’s sister. She took pity on the poor boy, hid him from her brother all day, and at night sent him to Argos to some friends of his father, by whom he was brought up.

When he was only twenty he wrote to friends at Sicyon, and finding them of the same mind with himself, he climbed the walls at night and met them. The people gathered round him, and he caused it to be proclaimed with a loud voice, “Aratus, the son of Clinias, calls on Sicyon to resume her liberty.” The people all began rushing to the tyrant’s house. He fled by an underground passage, and his house was set on fire, but not one person on either side was killed or wounded. Aratus was resolved to keep Sicyon free, and in order to make her strong enough, he persuaded the citizens to join her to the Achaian League; and he soon became the leading man among all the Achaians, and his example made other cities come into the same band of union. He further tried to gain strength by an alliance with Egypt, and he went thither to see Ptolemy III., called Euergetes, or the Benefactor. It is said that Ptolemy’s good-will was won by Aratus’ love of art, and especially of pictures. Apelles, the greatest Grecian painter, was then living, and had taken a portrait of one of the tyrants of Sicyon. Aratus had destroyed all their likenesses, and he stood a long time looking at this one before he could bring himself to condemn it, but at last he made up his mind that it must not be spared. Ptolemy liked him so

much that he granted him 150 talents for the city, and the Achaians were so much pleased that they twice elected him their general, and the second time he did them a great service.

In the middle of the Isthmus of Corinth stood the city, and in the midst was a fort called Acro-Corinthus, perched on a high hill in the very centre of the city, so that whoever held it was master of all to the south, and old Philip of Macedon used to call it the Corinthian shackles of Greece. The king of Macedon, Antigonus III., now held it; but Aratus devised a scheme to take it. A Corinthian named Erginus had come to Sicyon on business, and there met a friend of Aratus, to whom he chanced to mention that there was

a narrow path leading up to the Acro-Corinthus at a place where the wall was low. Aratus heard of this, and promised Erginus sixty talents if he would guide him to the spot; but as he had not the money, he placed all his gold and silver plate and his wife’s jewels in pledge for the amount.

On the appointed night Aratus came with 400 men, carrying scaling-ladders, and placed them in the temple of Juno, outside the city, where they all sat down and took off their shoes. A heavy fog came on, and entirely hid them; and Aratus, with 100 picked men, came to the rock at the foot of the city wall, and there waited while Erginus and seven others, dressed as travellers, went to the gates and killed the sentinel and guard, without an alarm. Then the ladders were fixed, and Aratus came up with his men, and stood under the wall unseen, while four men with lights passed by them. Three of these they killed, but the fourth escaped, and gave the alarm. The trumpets were sounded, and every street was full of lights and swarmed with men; but Aratus, meantime, was trying to climb the steep rocks, and groping for the path leading up to the citadel. Happily the fog lifted for a moment, the moon shone out, and he saw his way, and hastened up to the Acro-Corinthus, where he began to fight with the astonished garrison. The 300 men whom he had left in the temple of Juno heard the noise in the city and saw the lights, then marched in and came to the foot of the rock, but not being able to find

the path, they drew up at the foot of a precipice, sheltered by an overhanging rock, and there waited in much anxiety, hearing the battle overhead, but not able to join in it. The Macedonian governor, in the meantime, had called out his men, and was going up to support the guard in the fort, blowing his trumpets, when, as he passed these men, they dashed out on him, just as if they had been put in ambush on purpose, and so dismayed them in the confusion that they fancied the enemy five times as many, as the moon and the

torches flashed on their armour, and they let themselves all be made prisoners.

By the time morning had come Corinth was in the hands of the Achaians, and Aratus came down from the fortress to meet the people in the theatre. His 400 men were drawn up in two lines at its entrances, and the Corinthians filled the seats, and shouted with an ecstasy of joy, for it was the first time for nearly a century that true Greeks had gained any advantage over Macedonians. Aratus was worn out by anxiety, his long march, and night of fighting, and as he stood leaning on his spear he could hardly rally strength to address them, and while giving back to them the keys of their city, which they had never had since Philip’s time, he exhorted them to join the League, which they did. The Macedonians were expelled, and Aratus put an Achaian garrison into the Acro-Corinthus.

His whole care was to get Greece free from the Macedonians, and he drove them out from city after city, persuading each to join the Achaian League as it was delivered. Argos was still under a tyrant named Aristippus, and Aratus made many attempts to turn him out, by his usual fashion of night attacks. Once he got into the city, and fought there all day, though he was wounded with a lance in the thigh; but he was obliged to retreat at night. However, he attacked the tyrant when out on an expedition, and slew him, but still could not set Argos free, as the tyrant’s son Aristomenes still held it.

However, Lysiades, the tyrant of Megalopolis, was so moved by admiration for the patriot that he resigned, and the city joined the League. In fact, Aratus was at this time quite the greatest man in Greece. He beat the Ætolians, when they were on a foray into the Achaian territories, and forced them to make peace; and he tried also to win Athens and Sparta to the common cause against Macedon, but there were jealousies in the way that hindered his success, and all his enterprises were rendered more difficult by his weakly health, which always made him suffer greatly from the fatigue and excitement of a battle.

CHAP. XXXV. AGIS AND THE REVIVAL OF SPARTA. b.c. 244–236.

parta had never been so overcome by Macedon as the states north of the Isthmus, but all the discipline of Lycurgus had been forgotten, and the Ephors and Kings had become greedy, idle, and corrupt. One of the kings, named Leonidas, had gone to Antioch, married an Eastern wife, and learned all the Syrian and Persian vanities in which King Seleucus delighted, and he brought these home to Sparta. The other king, Eudamidas, was such a miser, that on his death, in 244, his widow and his mother were said to possess more gold than all the rest of the people in the state put together; but he left a son of nineteen, named Agis, most unlike himself.

As soon as, in his childhood, Agis had heard the story of his great forefathers, he set himself to live like an ancient Spartan, giving up whatever Lycurgus had forbidden, dressing and eating as plainly as he could, and always saying that he would not be king if he did

not hope to make Sparta her true self again. When he became king, he was seen in the usual dress of a Greek, uncrowned, as the first Leonidas and Agesilaus had been; while the other king, ill named Leonidas, moved about in a diadem and purple robes and jewels, like a Persian Shah.

So there was a public assembly, and one of the Ephors proposed the reform, showing how ease and

pleasure had brought their city low, and how hardihood and courage might yet bring back her true greatness. Leonidas spoke against the changes, but Agis argued with such fire and force that he won over all that were high-minded enough to understand him, and in especial Cleombrotus, the son-in-law of Leonidas. Agis laid down before the assembly all his father’s vast hoards, and his example was followed by many; but the other king put such difficulties in the way that the reformers found that they could do nothing unless they removed him, so they brought forward an old law, which forbade that any son of Hercules should reign who had married a foreign woman, or sojourned in a strange land.

On hearing of this, Leonidas took refuge in the temple of Athene, and as he did not appear when he was summoned before the Ephors, they deposed him, and named Cleombrotus in his stead; but when Agis found there was a plan for killing the old king, he took care to send him away in safety to Tegea, with his daughter Chilonis, who clave to him in trouble.

Agis thought his uncle Agesilaus was heartily with the change, and so had him chosen one of the Ephors; but, in truth, all Agesilaus wanted was to be free from his debts, and he persuaded the young king that the lands could not be freshly divided till all debts had been cancelled. So all the bonds were brought into the market-place and burnt, while Agesilaus cried out

that he had never seen so fine a fire; but having done this, he was resolved not to part with his wealth, and delayed till the Ætolians made an attack on the Peloponnesus, and Aratus called on Sparta to assist the Achaians. Agis was sent at the head of an army to the Isthmus, and there behaved like an ancient Spartan king, sharing all the toils and hardships of the soldiers, and wearing nothing to distinguish him from them; but while he was away everything had gone wrong at Sparta; people had gone back to their old bad habits, and Agesilaus was using his office of Ephor so shamefully that he had been obliged to have a guard of soldiers to protect him from the people. This behaviour had made the people suspect his nephew of being dishonest in his reforms, and they had sent to recall Leonidas.

Agesilaus fled, and Agis was obliged to take sanctuary in Athene’s temple, and Cleombrotus in that of Neptune, where Leonidas found him. His wife Chilonis, with her two little children, threw herself between him and her father, pleading for his life, and promising he should leave the city; and Leonidas listened, trying to make her remain, but she clung to her husband, and went into exile with him.

Agiatis, the young wife of Agis, could not join him in the temple, being kept at home by the birth of her first babe. He never left the sanctuary, except to go to the baths, to which he was guarded by armed friends. At last two of these were bribed to betray him. One

said, “Agis, I must take you to the Ephors,” and the other threw a cloak over his head; while Leonidas came up with a guard of foreign soldiers and dragged him to prison, where the Ephors came to examine him. One asked him if he repented. “I can never repent of virtue,” he said.

They sentenced him to die; and finding that his mother and grandmother were trying to stir up the people to demand that he should be heard in public, they sent the executioners at once to put him to death. One of them came in tears, but Agis quickly said, “Weep not, friend; I am happier than those who condemn me;” and he held out his neck for the rope which strangled him just as his grandmother and mother came in. The grandmother was strangled the next moment. The mother said, “May this be for the good of Sparta,” and after laying out the limbs of her son and mother, was also put to death; and the young widow Agiatis, with her babe, was carried to the house of Leonidas. The reform of Agis had lasted only three years, and he was but twenty-two, when his plans were thus cruelly cut short.

Leonidas was thus left to reign alone, the first time such a thing had happened in Sparta. As poor Agiatis was a rich heiress, he kept her in his house, and married her to his son Cleomenes, a mere boy, much younger than herself. She was the fairest and wisest woman in Greece; and though she always was cold, grave, and stern towards the wicked old king, she loved his wife,

and was gentle towards the young boy, who was blameless of his father’s sin, and gave her all his heart for his whole life. He cared for nothing so much as to hear from her of Agis, his brave, self-denying ways, and noble plans; and thus did they live, after the untimely death of Agis, strengthened by the study of the Stoic philosophy, which taught that virtue was the highest good, and that no suffering, not even death, was to be shunned in pursuit of her.

When Leonidas died, in 236, Cleomenes became the only king, but he was so young that Aratus and the Achaians thought it a good time for extending the power of their league at the expense of Sparta; so, though no war was going on, Aratus sent a troop by night to seize Tegea and Orchomenus, cities in alliance with Sparta. But his designs were found out in time for Cleomenes to strengthen the garrisons in both places, and march himself to a place called the Athenæum, which guarded one of the passes into Laconia.

This made the attempt fail, and Cleomenes wrote to ask the cause of the night march of the Achaians. Aratus answered that it was to hinder the fortification of the Athenæum.

“What was the use, then, of torches and scaling-ladders?” asked Cleomenes.

Aratus laughed, and asked a Spartan who was in exile what kind of youth this young king was; and the Spartan made reply, “If you have any designs against

Sparta, you had better begin them before the game chicken’s spurs are grown.”

It was a great pity that these two free states in Laconia and Achaia were only wasting their strength against each other, instead of joining against Macedon.

CHAP. XXXVI. CLEOMENES AND THE FALL OF SPARTA. b.c. 236–222.

ratus cared more for Achaia than for Greece, and soon was again at war with Sparta, and Cleomenes marched out against him. He retreated, and Cleomenes in great joy put his troops in mind how in old times the Spartans never asked how many were the foe, but only where they were. Then he followed the Achaians and gained a great victory; indeed there was a doubt at first whether Aratus were not slain; but he had marched off with the remnant of the army, and next was heard of as having taken Mantinea.

This displeased the Ephors, and they called Cleomenes back. He hoped to be stronger by the aid of his fellow-king, and, as the little child of Agis had just died in his house, sent to invite home Archidamas, the brother of Agis, who was living in exile; but the Ephors had the youth murdered as soon as he reached Laconia, and then laid on Cleomenes both this murder and that of his little stepson Agis. But all the better sort held

by him, and his mother Cratesiclea, and his wife Agiatis, so cleared him, that all trusted him, and he was again sent out with an army, and defeated Aratus.

He was sure he could bring back good days to Sparta, if only he were free of the Ephors. One of these, who was on his side, went to sleep in a temple, and there had a dream that four of the chairs of the Ephors were taken away, and that he heard a voice saying, “This is best for Sparta.” After this, he and Cleomenes contrived that the king should lead out an army containing most of the party against him. He took them by long marches to a great distance from home, and then left them at night with a few trusty friends, with whom he fell upon the Ephors at supper, and killed four of them, the only blood he shed in this matter. In the morning he called the people together, and showed them how the Ephors had taken too much power, and how ill they had used it, especially in the murder of Agis; and the people agreed henceforth to let him rule without them. Then all debts were given up, all estates resigned to be divided again, Cleomenes himself being the first to set the example, and the partition was made. But as one line of the Heracleid kings was extinct, Cleomenes made his brother Euclidas reign with him, and was able to bring back all the old ways of Lycurgus, the hard fare and plain living, so that those who had seen the Eastern state of the upstart Macedonian soldiers wondered at the sight of the son of Hercules, descendant of a line

of thirty-one kings, showing his royalty only in the noble simplicity of his bearing.

Mantinea turned out the Achaians and invited Cleomenes back, and now it was plain that the real question was whether the Spartan kingdom or the Achaian League should lead the Peloponnesus—in truth, between Aratus and Cleomenes. Another victory was gained over the Achaians, a treaty was made, and they were going to name Cleomenes head of the League, when he fell ill. He had over-tried his strength by long marches, and chilled himself by drinking cold water; he broke a blood-vessel, and had to be carried home in a litter, causing meantime the Achaian prisoners to be set free, to show that he meant to keep the treaty.

But Aratus, in his jealousy, forgot that the great work of his youth had been to get free of Macedon, and in order to put down Sparta and Cleomenes, actually asked the help of Antigonus, king of Macedon, and brought his hated troops back into the Peloponnesus, promising to welcome them, if only Cleomenes might be put down.

The brave young king had recovered and taken Argos, and soon after Corinth drove out the Achaian garrison and gave themselves to him; but the great Macedonian force under Antigonus himself was advancing, and Corinth in terror went over to him, the other allies deserted, and Cleomenes was marching back to Sparta, when a messenger met him at Tegea with tidings of the death of his beloved wife. He

listened steadily, gave orders for the defence of Tegea, and then, travelling all night, went home and gave way to an agony of grief, with his mother and two little children.

He had but 5000 Spartans, and his only hope was in getting aid from Ptolemy the Benefactor, king of Egypt. This was promised, but only on condition that he would send as hostages to Egypt his mother and babes. He was exceedingly grieved, and could not bear to tell his mother; but she saw his distress, and found out the cause from his friends. She laughed in hopes of cheering him. “Was this what you feared to tell me? Put me on board ship at once, and send this old carcase where it may be of the most use to Sparta.” He escorted her, at the head of the whole army, to the promontory of Tænarus, where the temple of Neptune looks out into the sea. In the temple they parted, Cleomenes weeping in such bitter sorrow that his mother’s spirit rose. “Go to, king of Sparta,” she said. “Without doors, let none see us weep, nor do anything contrary to the honour and dignity of Sparta. That at least is in our own power, though, for the rest, success or failure depends on the gods.” So she sailed away, and Cleomenes went back to do his part. The Achaians had not only given Antigonus the title of Head of the League, but had set up his statues, and were giving him the divine honours that had been granted to Alexander and to Demetrius the City-taker.

The only part of the Peloponnesus that still held out

was Laconia. Cleomenes guarded all the passes, though the struggle was almost without hope, for little help came from Egypt, only a letter from brave old Cratesiclea, begging that whatever was best for the country might be done without regard to an old woman or a child. Cleomenes then let the slaves buy their freedom, and made 2000 soldiers from among them, and marching out with these he surprised and took the Achaian city of Megalopolis. One small party of citizens, under a brave young man named Philopœmen, fought, while the rest had time to escape to Messene. Cleomenes offered to give them back the place if they would join with Sparta, but they refused, and he had the whole town plundered and burnt as a warning to the other Peloponnesians, and the next year he ravaged Argolis, and beat down the standing corn with great wooden swords.

But Antigonus had collected a vast force to subdue the Peloponnesus, and Cleomenes prepared for his last battle at Sellasia, a place between two hills. On one named Evas he placed his brother Euclidas, on the other named Olympus he posted himself, with his cavalry in the middle. He had but 20,000 men, and Antigonus three times as many, with all the Achaians among them. Euclidas did not, as his brother had intended, charge down the hill, but was driven backwards over the precipices that lay behind him. The cavalry were beaten by Philopœmen, who fought all day, though a javelin had pierced both his legs; and

Cleomenes found it quite impossible to break the Macedonian phalanx, and out of his 6000 Spartans found himself at the end of the day with only 200.

With these he rode back to Sparta, where he stopped in the market-place to tell his people that all was lost, and they had better make what terms they could. They should decide whether his life or death were best for him, and while they deliberated, he turned towards his own empty house, but he could not bear to enter it. A slave girl taken from Megalopolis ran out to bring him food and drink, but he would taste nothing, only being tired out he leant his arm sideways against a pillar and laid his head on it, and so he waited in silence till word was brought him that the citizens wished him to escape.

He quietly left Sparta and sailed for Alexandria, where the king, Ptolemy the Benefactor, at first was short and cold with him, because he would not cringe to him, but soon learned to admire him, treated him as a brother, promised him help to regain Sparta, and gave him a pension, which he spent in relieving other exiled Greeks. But the Benefactor died, and his son, Ptolemy Philopator, was a selfish wretch, who hated and dreaded the grave, stern man who was a continual rebuke to him, and who, the Alexandrians said, walked about like a lion in a sheepfold. He refused the fleet his father had promised, would not let Cleomenes go back alone to try his fortune on Antigonus’ death, and at last, on some report of his meaning to attack Cyrene,

had him shut up with his friends in a large room. They broke forth, and tried to fight their way to a ship, but they were hemmed in, no one came to their aid, and rather than be taken prisoners, they all fell on their own swords; and on the tidings, Ptolemy commanded all the women and children to be put to death. Cratesiclea saw her two grandsons slain before her eyes, and then crying, “Oh, children, where are ye gone?” herself held out her neck for the rope.

CHAP. XXXVII. PHILOPŒMEN, THE LAST OF THE GREEKS. b.c. 236–184.

he jealousy and rivalry of Aratus and the Achaians had made them put themselves under the power of Macedon, in order thus to overthrow Sparta. Aratus seemed to have lost all his skill and spirit, for when the robber Ætolians again made an attack on the Peloponnesus, he managed so ill as to have a great defeat; and the Achaians were forced again to call for the help of the Macedonians, whose king was now Philip, son to Antigonus.

A war went on for many years between the Macedonians, with the Achaians on the one hand and the Ætolians on the other. Aratus was a friend and adviser to Philip, but would gladly have loosened the yoke he had helped to lay on Greece. When the old Messenian town of Ithome fell into the hands of Philip, he went into the temple of Jupiter, with Aratus and another adviser called Demetrius the Pharian, to consult the sacrifices as to whether he should put a

garrison into Ithome to overawe Messenia. The omens were doubtful, and Philip asked his two friends what they thought. Demetrius said, “If you have the soul of a priest, you will restore the fort to the Messenians; if you have the soul of a prince, you will hold the ox by both his horns.”

The ox was, of course, the Peloponnesus, and the other horn was the Acro-Corinthus, which, with Ithome, gave Philip power over the whole peninsula. The king then asked Aratus’ advice. He said, “Thieves nestle in the fastnesses of rocks. A king’s best fortress is loyalty and love;” and at his words Philip turned away, and left the fort to its own people. He was at that time a youth full of good promise, but he let himself be led astray by the vices and pleasures of his court, and withdrew his favour from Aratus. Then he began to misuse the Messenians, and had their country ravaged. Aratus, who was for the seventeenth time general of the League, made a complaint, and Philip, in return, contrived that he should be slowly poisoned. He said nothing; only once, when a friend noticed his illness, he said, “This is the effect of the friendship of kings.” He died in 213, and just about this time Philopœmen of Megalopolis returned from serving in the Cretan army to fight for his country. He was a thoroughly noble-hearted man, and a most excellent general, and he did much to improve the Achaian army. In the meantime Sparta had fallen under the power of another tyrant, called Nabis, a horribly cruel

wretch, who had had a statue made in the likeness of his wife, with nails and daggers all over her breast. His enemies were put into her arms; she clasped them, and thus they died. He robbed the unhappy people of Sparta; and all the thieves, murderers, and outlaws of the country round were taken into his service, and parties of them sent out to collect plunder all over the Peloponnesus. At last one of his grooms ran away with some horses, and took refuge at Megalopolis, and this Nabis made a cause for attacking both that city and Messenia; but at last Philopœmen was made general of the Achaian League, and gave the wretch such a defeat as forced him to keep at home, while Philopœmen ravaged Laconia.

Philip of Macedon offered to come and drive out Nabis if the Achaians would help him, but they distrusted him, and did not choose to go to war with the Romans, whom the robber Ætolians had called from Italy to assist them. However, Philip reduced Nabis to make all sorts of promises and treaties, which, of course, he did not keep, but invited in the Ætolians to assist him. This, however, brought his punishment on him, for soon after their arrival these allies of his murdered him, and began to rob all Laconia. Philopœmen and his Achaians at once marched into the country, helped the Spartans to deliver themselves from the robbers, and persuaded them to join the League. They were so much pleased with him that they resolved to give him Nabis’ palace and treasure,

but he was known to hate bribes so much that nobody could at first be found to make him the offer. One man was sent to Megalopolis, but when he saw Philopœmen’s plain, grave, hardy life, and heard how much he disapproved of sloth and luxury, he did not venture to say a word about the palace full of Eastern magnificence, but went back to Sparta. He was sent again, and still found no opportunity; and when, the third time, he did speak, Philopœmen thanked the Spartans, but said he advised them not to spend their riches on spoiling honest men, whose help they might have at no cost at all, but rather to use them in buying over those who made mischief among them.

Wars were going on at this time between Philip of Macedon, on the one side, and the Ætolians on the other. Philip’s ally was Antiochus the Great, the Greek king of Syria; the Ætolians had called in the Romans, that great, conquering Italian nation, whose plan was always to take the part of some small nation against a more powerful one, break the strength of both, and then join them to their own empire. But the Achaians did not know this, and wished them well, while they defeated the Macedonians at the great battle of Cynocephalæ, or the Dog’s Head Rocks, in Thessaly. Philip was obliged to make peace, and one condition required of him was that he should give up all claims to power over Greece. Then at Corinth, at the Isthmian games, the Roman consul, Quintius Flaminius, proclaimed that the Greek states were once more free.

Such a shout of joy was raised that it is said that birds flying in the air overhead dropped down with the shock, and Flaminius was almost stifled by the crowds of grateful Greeks who came round him to cover him with garlands and kiss his hands.

But, after all, the Romans meant to keep a hold on Greece, though they left the cities to themselves for a little while. The Spartans who had been banished by Nabis had not returned home, but lived a life of robbery, which was thought to be favoured by Philopœmen, and this offended those at home, some of

whom plundered a town called Las. The Achaians demanded that the guilty should be given up to them for punishment, and a war began, which ended by a savage attack on Sparta, in which Philopœmen forgot all but the old enmity between Achaia and Laconia, put ninety citizens to death, pulled down the walls, besides abolishing the laws of Lycurgus, which, however, nobody had observed since the fall of Cleomenes. Many citizens were sent into banishment, and these went to Rome to complain of the Achaians. While they were gone the Messenians rose against the League, while Philopœmen was lying sick of a fever at Argos; but though he was ill, and seventy years old, he collected a small troop of young Megalopolitan horsemen, to join the main army with them. But he met the full force of the Messenians, and while fighting bravely to shelter his young followers, received a blow on the head which stunned him, so that he was made prisoner, and carried to Messene. There his enemies showed him in the theatre, but the people only recollected how noble he was, and how he had defended all Greece from Nabis. So his enemies hurried him away, and put him in an underground dungeon, where, at night, they sent an executioner to carry him a dose of poison. Philopœmen raised himself with difficulty, for he was very weak, and asked the man whether he could tell him what had become of his young Megalopolitan friends. The man replied that he thought they had most of them escaped. “You

bring good news,” said Philopœmen; then, swallowing the draught, he laid himself on his back, and, almost instantly died. He is called the Last of the Greeks, for there never was a great man of the old sort after him.

CHAP. XXXVIII.—THE FALL OF GREECE. b.c. 189–146.

fter the death of Philopœmen there was little real spirit left in the Achaians, and Callicrates, who became the leading man among them, led them to submit themselves to the senate of Rome, and do as it pleased with regard to Sparta and Messene.

Philip of Macedon was at war with Rome all his life, and his son Perseus went on with it. Marcus Paullus Æmilius, one of the best and bravest of the Romans, was sent to subdue him, and the great battle was fought in 188, at Pydna, near Mount Olympus. The night before the battle there was an eclipse of the moon, which greatly terrified the Macedonians; but the Romans had among them an officer who knew enough of the movements of the heavenly bodies to have told the soldiers of it beforehand, and its cause. The Macedonians being thus discouraged, gave way, and fled as soon as the battle seemed to be going against them; and Perseus himself galloped from the field to Pella, where he was so beside himself with

despair that he stabbed two of his counsellors who tried to show him the mistakes he had made. But as Æmilius advanced, he was forced to retreat before him, even into the island of Samothrace, which was sacred soil, whence he could not be taken by force. The Romans watched all round the island, and he dreaded that the Samothracians should give him up to them; so he bargained with a Cretan shipmaster to take him and all his treasure on board his ship, and carry him off at night. The Cretan received half the treasure, and Perseus crept out at a small window, crossed a garden, and reached the wharf, where, to his horror, he found that the treacherous captain had sailed off with the treasure, and left him behind.

There was nothing for him to do but to yield to the Romans. He came into the camp in mourning, and Æmilius gave him his hand and received him kindly, but kept him a prisoner, and formed Macedon into a province under Roman government. Æmilius himself went on a journey through the most famous Greek cities, especially admiring Athens, and looking at the places made famous by historians, poets, and philosophers. He took Polybius, a learned Athenian philosopher, who wrote the history of this war, to act as tutor to his two sons, though both were young men able to fight in this campaign, and from that time forward the Romans were glad to have Greek teachers for their sons, and Greek was spoken by them as freely and easily as their own Latin; every well-educated man

knew the chief Greek poets by heart, and was of some school of philosophy, either Stoic or Epicurean, but the best men were generally Stoics.

After Macedon was ruined the Romans resolved to put down all stirrings of resistance to them in the rest of Greece. Their friend Callicrates, therefore, accused all the Achaians who had been friendly to Perseus, or who had any brave spirit—1000 in number—of conspiring against Rome, and called on the League to sentence them to death; but as this proposal was heard with horror, they were sent to Rome to justify themselves, and the Roman senate, choosing to suppose they had been judged by the League, sentenced them never to return to Achaia. Polybius was among them, so that his home was thenceforth in the house of his pupils, the sons of Æmilius. Many times did the Achaians send entreaties that they might be set at liberty, and at last, after seventeen years, Polybius’ pupils persuaded the great senator Cato to speak for them, and he did so, but in a very rough, unfeeling way. “Anyone who saw us disputing whether a set of poor old Greeks should be buried by our grave-diggers or their own would think we had nothing else to do,” he said. So the Romans consented to their going home; but when they asked to have all their rank and honours restored to them, Cato said, “Polybius, you are less wise than Ulysses. You want to go back into the Cyclops’ cave for the wretched rags and tatters you left behind you there.” After all, Polybius either did not go home or did not stay there, for he was soon again with his beloved pupils; and in the seventeen years of exile the 1000 had so melted away that only 300 went home again.

But the very year after their return a fresh rising was made by the Macedonians, under a pretender who claimed to be the son of Perseus, and by the Peloponnesians, with the Achaians and Spartans at their head, while the Corinthians insulted the Roman ambassadors. A Roman general named Quintus Metellus was sent to subdue them, and routed the Macedonians at the battle of Scarphæa, but after that another general named Mummius was sent out. The Achaians had collected all their strength against him, and in the first skirmish gained a little success; and this encouraged them to risk a battle, in which they were so confident

of victory that they placed their wives and children on a hill to watch them, and provided waggons to carry away the spoil. The battle was fought at Leucoptera, near the Isthmus, and all this boasting was soon turned into a miserable defeat. Diæus, who commanded the Greeks, was put to flight, and riding off to Megalopolis in utter despair, he killed his wife and children, to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy, and then poisoned himself.

The other Achaians at first retreated into Corinth, and in the course of the night scattered themselves each to his own city. In the morning Mummius marched in and gave up the unhappy city to plunder. All the men were slain, all the women and children taken for slaves, and when all the statues, pictures, and jewels had been gathered out of the temples and houses, the place was set on fire, and burnt unceasingly for several days; the walls were pulled down, and the city blotted out from Greece. There was so much metal of all kinds in the burning houses that it all became fused together, and produced a new and valuable metal called Corinthian brass. The Romans were at this time still very rude and ignorant, and did not at all understand the value and beauty of the works of art they carried off. Polybius saw two soldiers making a dice-board of one of the most famous pictures in Greece; and Mummius was much laughed at for telling the captains of the ships who took home some of the statues to exhibit in his triumph that if they lost them they should supply

new ones at their own cost. The Corinthians suffered thus for having insulted the ambassadors. The other cities submitted without a blow, and were left untouched to govern themselves, but in subjection to Rome, and with Roman garrisons in their citadels. Polybius was sent round them to assure them of peace, and they had it for more than 500 years, but the freedom of Greece was gone for ever.

CHAP. XXXIX.—THE GOSPEL IN GREECE. b.c. 146–a.d. 60.

fter a time Macedon and Achaia were made by the Romans into provinces, each of which had a governor who had been one year in a magistrate’s office at Rome, and then was sent out to rule in a province for three or for five years.

In 146, nearly a hundred years after the ruin of Corinth, Julius Cæsar built it up again in great strength and beauty, and made it the capital of Achaia. As it stood where the Isthmus was only six miles across, and had a beautiful harbour on each side, travellers who did not wish to go round the dangerous headlands of the Peloponnesus used to land on one side and embark on the other. Thus Corinth become one of the great stations for troops, and also a mart for all kinds of merchandise, and was always full of strangers, both Greeks and Jews.

The Romans, as conquerors, had rights to be tried only by their own magistrates and laws, and these laws were generally just. They were, however, very hard

on subject nations; and, therefore, the best thing that could happen to a man was to be made a Roman citizen, and this was always done to persons of rank, by way of compliment—sometimes to whole cities.

Athens had never had a great statesman or soldier in her since the time of Phocion, but her philosophers and orators still went on discoursing in the schools, and for four hundred years at least Athens was a sort of university town, where the rich young men from Rome, Carthage, Alexandria, Asia Minor, and Syria came to see the grand old buildings and works of art, and to finish their education. For though the great men of Greece were all dead, their works, both in stone and in writing, still remained, and were the models of all the world, and their language was spoken all over the East.

The Romans’ own tongue, Latin, was used at home, of course, but every gentleman knew Greek equally well, and all the Syrians, Jews, and Egyptians who had much intercourse with them used Greek as the language sure to be known—much as French is now used all over Europe.

But there was an answer coming to all those strainings and yearnings after God and His truth which had made those old Greek writings beautiful. There is a story that one night a ship’s crew, passing near a lonely island in the Ægean Sea, sacred to the gods, heard a great wailing and crying aloud of spirit voices, exclaiming, “Great Pan is dead.”

Pan was the heathen god of nature, to whom sacred places were dedicated, and this strange crying was at the very night after a day when, far away in Judæa, the sun had been darkened at noon, and the rocks were rent, and One who was dying on a cross had said, “It is finished.” For the victory over Satan and all his spirits was won by death.

Some fifteen years later than that day, as Paul, a Jew of Tarsus, in Asia Minor, with the right of Roman citizenship, and a Greek education, was spreading the knowledge of that victory over the East—while he slept at the new Troy built by Alexander, there stood by his bed, in a vision by night, a man of Macedon, saying, “Come over and help us.”

He went, knowing that the call came from God, and the cities of Macedon gained quite new honours.

Philippi, where he was first received, had a small number of Jews in it, to whom he spake by the river side, but many Greeks soon began to listen; and then it was that the evil spirits, who spake aloud to men in heathen lands, first had to own the power of Christ, who had conquered. A slave girl, who had long been possessed by one of these demons, was forced at the sight of Paul and his companion Silas to cry aloud, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation.” She followed them about for some days doing this, until Paul, grieved in the spirit, bade the evil one, in Jesus’ name, to leave her. At once the name of the Conqueror caused the demon to depart; but the owner of the slave girl, enraged at the loss of her soothsaying powers, accused the Apostle and his friend to the magistrates, and, without examination, they were thrown into prison. At night, while they sang praise in the dungeon, an earthquake shook it; the doors were open, the fetters loosed, and the jailer, thinking them fled, would have killed himself, but for Paul’s call to him that all were safe. He heard the Word of life that night, and was baptised; but St. Paul would not leave the prison, either then or at the permission of the magistrates, when they found they had exceeded their powers, but insisted that they should come themselves to fetch him out, thus marking his liberty as a Roman, so that others might fear to touch him. He had founded a church at Philippi, in which he always found great comfort and

joy; and when he was forced to go on to Thessalonica, he found many willing and eager hearers among the Greeks; but the Jews, enraged at his teaching these, stirred up the mob, and not only forced him to leave that city, but hunted him wherever he tried to stop in Macedon, so that he was obliged to hurry into the next province, Achaia, and wait at Athens for the companions whom he had left to go on with his work at Philippi and Thessalonica.

While at Athens, the multitude of altars and temples, and the devotion paid to them, stirred his spirit, so that he could not but speak out plainly, and point to the

truth. It seemed a new philosophy to the talkers and inquirers, who had talked to shreds the old arguments of Plato and Epicurus, and longed for some fresh light or new interest; and he was invited to Areopagus to set forth his doctrine. There, in the face of the Parthenon and the Acropolis, with philosophers and students from all parts of the empire around, he made one of his greatest and noblest speeches—“Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are greatly religious. For as I passed through your city, and beheld how ye worship, I found an altar with this inscription—‘To the unknown God.’ Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship; Him declare I unto you.”

Then, looking forth on the temples crowded on the rocks, he tried to open their minds to the truth that the God of all dwells in no temples made with hands, that all men alike are His children, and that, since living, breathing, thinking man has sprung from Him, it is lowering His greatness to represent Him by cold, dead, senseless stone, metal, or ivory. “He bore with the times of ignorance,” said Paul; “but now He called on all men to turn to Him to prepare for the day when all should be judged, by the Man whom He had ordained for the purpose, as had been shown by His rising from the dead.”

The Greeks had listened to the proclamation of one great unseen God, higher than art could represent; but when Paul spoke of rising from the dead, they burst into mockery. They had believed in spirits living, but

not in bodies rising again, and the philosophers would not listen. Very few converts were made in Athens, only Dionysius, and a woman named Damaris, and a few more; and the city of learning long closed her ears against those who would have taught her what Socrates and Plato had been feeling after like men in the dark.

At the merchant city of Corinth, Paul had greater success; he stayed there nearly two years, and from thence sent letters to the Thessalonians, who were neglecting their daily duties, expecting that our Lord was about immediately to return. After Paul had left Corinth, he wrote to that city also, first to correct certain evils that had arisen in the Church there, and afterwards to encourage those who had repented, and promise another visit. This visit, as well as one to his Macedonian churches, was paid in his third journey; and when he had been arrested at Jerusalem, and was in Rome awaiting his trial before the emperor, Nero, he wrote to his friends at Philippi what is called the Epistle of Joy, so bright were his hopes of his friends there.

St. Andrew also laboured in Greece, and was put to death in Achaia, by being fastened to a cross of olive-wood, shaped like an X, where he hung exhorting the people for three days before he died. When St. Paul was released, he and the great evangelist St. John, and such of the apostles as still survived, set the Church in order, appointing bishops over their cities, and Dionysius of Athens became Bishop of Corinth, and St. Paul’s

pupil from Antioch, Titus, was Bishop of Crete, and received an epistle from Paul on the duties of his office. In process of time Christianity won its way, and the oracles became silent, as the demons which spoke in them fled from the Name of Jesus.

CHAP. XL.—UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

or three hundred years Rome reigned over all the countries round the Mediterranean, with one emperor at her head, and the magistrates of his appointment to rule in all the provinces, while garrisons were placed to quell risings of the people, or to keep in order the wild tribes on any dangerous border. For a long course of years Greece was quiet, and had no need of such troops. The people of her cities were allowed to manage their own affairs enough to satisfy them and make them contented, though they had lost all but such freedom as they could have by being enrolled as citizens of Rome, and they were too near the heart of the empire to be in danger from barbarous neighbours, so that they did not often have troops among them, except those passing through Corinth to the East.

Towards the end of these three hundred years, however, Thrace and Thessaly began to be threatened by wild nations who came from the banks of the Danube, and robbed the rich villages and countries to the south. The empire was, in truth, growing weaker, and enemies

began to press upon it; and this made the emperor, Diocletian, decide that it was beyond the power of any one man to rule and defend it all, and he therefore divided it with his friend Maximian, whom he made Emperor of the East, while he remained Emperor of the West. The Western empire was the Latin-speaking half, and the Eastern the Greek-speaking half, of these lands, though both still called themselves Roman.

The two halves were joined together again, about the

year 300, under Constantine the Great, who was the first Christian emperor. He thought he should be more in the middle of his government if he moved his capital from Rome to the old Greek city of Byzantium, which he adorned with most splendid buildings, and called after his own name, Constantinople; and this became the capital of the East, as Rome was of the West. Athens remained all this time the place of study for Christians as well as heathens, and people still talked philosophy and studied eloquence among the laurel and myrtle groves, and looked at the temples, which still stood there, though hardly anyone frequented them. One emperor, Julian, the cousin of Constantine, studied there as a youth, and became so fond of the old philosophy and learning, and so admired the noble ways of the times when men were seeking after truth, that he thought Greece and Rome would be great again if they turned back to these heathen ways, not seeing that this was going back to the dark out of which those men had been struggling.

Julian tried to bring back heathen customs, and to have the old gods worshipped again; but he was killed in an expedition against the Persians, and soon after his time the old idol-worship was quite forgotten. Every city had a Bishop and clergy, and the Bishops of each division of the empire were under a great ruling Bishop, who was called a Patriarch. Greece was under the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Greek churches were made as like the pattern of the temple at Jerusalem

as they could be. The end which represented the Holy of Holies, and had the altar in it, was veiled, and enclosed within what were called the Royal Gates, and these were only opened at times of celebrating the Holy Communion. This end was raised steps, and the Holy Scriptures and sermon were spoken to the people from the front of the Royal Gates. The pavement was of rich marble, and the ceiling, which was generally vaulted, was inlaid with coloured stones, making pictures in what is called Mosaic, because thus the stones were set by Moses in the High Priest’s vestment. The clergy wore robes like those of the priests, and generally had flowing hair and beards, though in front the hair was cut in a circlet, in memory of our Lord’s crown of thorns.

Now that everyone had become Christian, and bad or worldly people were not afraid to belong to the Church for fear of persecution, there was often sin and evil among them. Many who grieved at this shut themselves up from the world in the most lonely places they could find—little islands, deep woods, mountain tops, or rocks, and the like. When they lived alone they were called hermits, when there were many together they were called monks, and the women who thus lived were nuns. Many such monasteries there were in Greece, especially one upon Mount Athos—that peninsula that Xerxes tried to cut off—and most of these have continued even to our own time.

The emperor Theodosius, who reigned at the end of

this fourth century over both East and West, was a very good and great man, and during his reign the Greek lands were kept from the marauders. In his time, however, the Thessalonians brought a most dreadful punishment on themselves. For want of public business, or any real and noble interest, the people had come to care for nothing but games and races, and they loved these sports with a sort of passionate fury. There was a chariot-driver at Thessalonica who was a wicked man, but whose racing was so much admired that when, for some crime, Botheric, the governor, put him in prison and hindered his performance, the mob rose, when they missed him in the amphitheatre, and threw stones at the governor and his officers, so that several were killed, and Botheric among them. The news was taken to the emperor, and in great wrath he ordered that the Thessalonians should be punished. The order was given to a cruel, savage man, who hurried off at once, lest the emperor should relent and stop him. He invited the Thessalonians to meet him in the amphitheatre, and when they were there, expecting to hear some message, he had all the doors closed, and sent in his soldiers, who killed them all, innocent as well as guilty, even strangers who had only just come to the place.

Theodosius was much shocked to find how his passionate words had been obeyed, and the good Bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose, made him wait as a penitent, cut off from the Holy Communion, while he was thus

stained with blood, until after many months his repentance could be accepted, and he could be forgiven.

But though the Eastern and Western empires were broken apart, the Church was one. The Greeks, indeed, found fault with the Romans for putting three words into the Creed of Nicea which had not been

decided on by the consent of the whole Church in Council, and there was a question between the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople as to which had the chief rule. At last their disputes in the eleventh century caused a schism, or ruling apart, and the Greek Church became separated from the Roman Church.

CHAP. XLI.—THE FRANK CONQUEST. 1201–1446.

here is very little to tell about Greece for hundreds of years. It was a part of the Eastern Empire, and was for the most part in a quiet state, except when robbers came against it. The Bulgarians came from the North, but after they had become Christian they were somewhat less dangerous. From the East and South came Saracens and Moors, who had been converted to the faith of the false Arabian prophet Mahommed; and from the West came the Northmen, all the way from Norway and Denmark, to rob the very east end of the Mediterranean, so that beautiful old ornaments, evidently made in Greece, have been found in the northern homes that once belonged to these sea-kings.

The Greeks had little spirit to fight, and the emperors took some of these stout Northmen into their pay against the Bulgarians and Saracens, calling them their Varangian Guard. Another band, of northern blood, though they had been settled in Normandy for two

generations, came, and after driving out the Saracens from Sicily and Southern Italy, set up two little kingdoms there. Robert Guiscard, or the Wizard, the first and cleverest of these Norman kings, had a great wish to gain Greece also, and had many fights with the troops of the Emperor of the East, Alexis Comnenus. Their quarrels with him made the Greeks angry and terrified when all the bravest men of the West wanted to come through their lands on the Crusade, or Holy War, to deliver Jerusalem from the Saracens. Then, since the schism between the Churches, the Greeks and the Latins had learnt scarcely to think of one another as Christians at all, and certainly they did not behave to one another like Christians, for the Greeks cunningly robbed, harassed, and deceived the Latins, and the Latins were harsh, rude, and violent with the Greeks.

In the northern point of the Adriatic Sea lay the city of Venice, built upon a cluster of little islands. The people had taken refuge there when Italy was overrun by the barbarians. In course of time these Venetians had grown to be a mighty and powerful people, whose merchant ships traded all over the Mediterranean, and whose counsellors were famed for wisdom. They had shaken off the power of the Greek emperor, and were governed by a senate and council, with a chosen nobleman at its head, who was called the Doge, or Duke. Just when the French, Germans, and Italians were setting off on the Fourth Crusade, in the year 1201, meaning to sail in Venetian ships,

the young Alexius Angelus, son to the emperor Isaac Angelus, came to beg for help for his poor old father, who had been thrown into prison by his own brother, with his eyes put out. It was quite aside from the main work of the Crusade, but the Venetians had always had a quarrel with the Greek emperors, and they prevailed to turn the army aside to attack Constantinople. With an immense pair of shears they cut in twain the great chains which shut in the harbour of the Golden Horn, and sailed safely in, led by their Doge, Dandolo, who, though eighty years old, and blind, was as keen on the battle as the youngest man there.

The French scaled the walls, the usurper fled, and blind old Isaac was led out of his dungeon, and dressed in his robes again; his son was crowned to reign with him, and they did everything to please the Crusaders. Chiefly they made the Patriarch of Constantinople consent to give up all the differences with the Roman Catholic Church, and own the Pope as superior to him. This made the Greeks angry, and they could not bear to see their young emperor so familiar with the French knights, whom they looked on as barbarians. One day he was seen with a Frenchman’s cap on his head, and his own crown lying on the ground at his feet. In great anger the people of Constantinople rose, under a man named Alexius Ducas, called “Black-brows,” murdered the two emperors, and set up this new one; but he did not reign long, for the French and Venetians

were close at hand. There was a second siege, and when the city was taken they plundered it throughout, stripped it of all the wealth they could collect, and set up Baldwin, Count of Flanders, to be emperor, with a Latin Patriarch; while the Venetians helped themselves to all the southern part of the empire, namely, the Peloponnesus and the Greek islands; and a French nobleman named Walter de Brienne was created Duke of Athens, under the Flemish emperor.

It was then that so many of the old Greek places

took the names we now see them called by in the map, and which were mostly given by the Venetian seamen. They called the Peloponnesus the Morea, or Mulberry-leaf, because it was in that shape; they called the island of Eubœa, Negropont, or Black-bridge; the Ægean Sea, the Archipelago, or Great Sea; and the Euxine, the Black Sea, because it is so dangerous. The Greeks hated their new masters very much, and would not conform to the Roman Catholic Church. A new Greek empire was set up in Asia Minor, at Nicea; and after the Latin emperor Baldwin had been lost in a battle with the Bulgarians, and great troubles swept away his successors, the emperors returned to Constantinople, under Michael Palæologus, in 1261, and drove out all the Franks, as the Greeks called the Western people, chiefly French and Italians, who had come to settle in their cities.

But the Venetians still held the cities in the greater part of the Morea, and some of the islands, and traded all over the East and West, though their Greek subjects were only kept under by main force, still held to their own Greek Church, and looked to the Roman Emperor of the East, as they called the Palæologus at Constantinople, as their head; nor was it easy to overpower people who had so many mountain fastnesses, nor to tame monks whose convents were nests on the top of rocks, some so steep that there was no way of entering them save being drawn up in a basket. Well was it for them that they had niched themselves into such

strongholds, for worse and worse days were coming upon Greece. The terrible nation of Turks were making their way out of the wild country north of Persia, and winning the old cities of Asia Minor, where they set up their Mahommedan dominion, and threatened more and more to overthrow the Greek empire altogether.

The emperor, John Palæologus, was obliged to yield to Amurath, the Turkish Sultan, all his lands except Constantinople, Thessalonica, and that part of the Morea which still clung to the empire, and the Turks set up their capital at Adrianople, whence they spread their conquests up to the very walls of Constantinople; but the Greek mountaineers, especially those of the mountain land of Epirus, now called Albania, had something of the old spirit among them, and fought hard. The Venetians used to take troops of them into their pay, since all Christians made common cause against the Turks; and these soldiers, richly armed, with white Albanian kilts, the remnant of the old Greek tunic, were called Stradiots, from the old Greek word for a soldier, Stratiotes. The bravest of them all was George Castriotes, a young Albanian, who had been given as a hostage to the Mahommedans when nine years old. He had been kept a prisoner, and made to fight in the Turkish army, and was so brave there that the Turks called him Skanderbeg, or the Lord Alexander. However, when he thought of the horror of being a Mahommedan, and fighting against the Christian faith

and his own country, he fled into Albania, raised all the Greeks, killed all the Turks in the country, and kept it safe from all the further attempts of the Sultan as long as he lived, although, at Varna, a great crusade of all the most adventurous spirits in Europe, to drive back the Turks, was wofully defeated in the year 1446.

CHAP. XLII.—THE TURKISH CONQUEST. 1453–1670.

he last Emperor of the East was the best and bravest who had reigned for many years. Constantine Palæologus did his best against the Turks, but Mahommed II., one of the greatest of the Ottoman race, was Sultan, and vowed that Constantinople should be either his throne or his tomb.

When the besieged Christians heard the Turks outside their walls chanting their prayers, they knew that the city would be assaulted the next day, and late at night Constantine called his friends together, and said, “Though my heart is full, I can speak to you no longer. There is the crown which I hold from God. I place it in your hands; I entrust it to you. I fight to deserve it still, or to die in defending it.” They wept and wailed so that he had to wait to be heard again, and then he said, “Comrades, this is our fairest day;” after which they all went to the Cathedral of St. Sophia, and received the Holy Communion together. There was a crowd around as he came out, and he stood before

them, begging them to pardon him for not having been able to make them happier. They answered with sobs and tears, and then he mounted his horse and rode round the defences.

The Turks began the attack in the early morning, and the fight raged all day; but they were the most numerous, and kept thronging into the breach, so that, though Constantine fought like a lion at bay, he could not save the place, and the last time his voice was heard it was crying out, “Is there no Christian who will cut

off my head?” The Turks pressed in on all sides, cut down the Christians, won street after street, house after house; and when at last Mahommed rode up to the palace where Roman emperors had reigned for 1100 years, he was so much struck with the desolation that he repeated a verse of Persian poetry—

“The spider hath woven her web in the palace of kings,
The owl hath sung her watch-song in the towers of Afrasiab.”

Search was made for the body of Constantine, and it was found under a heap of slain, sword in hand, and so much disfigured that it was only known by the golden eagles worked on his buskins. The whole city fell under the Turks, and the nobles and princes in the mountains of the Morea likewise owned Mahommed as their sovereign. Only Albania held out as long as the brave Skanderbeg lived to guard it; but at last, in 1466, he fell ill of a fever, and finding that he should not live, he called his friends and took leave of them, talking over the toils they had shared. In the midst there was an alarm that the Turks were making an inroad, and the smoke of the burning villages could be seen. George called for his armour, and tried to rise, but he was too weak, so he bade his friends hasten to the defence, saying he should soon be able to follow. When the Turks saw his banner, they thought he must be there, and fled, losing many men in the narrow mountain roads; but the Greeks had only just brought back the news of their success, when their great leader died. His horse loved him so much that it would

not allow itself to be touched by any other person, became wild and fierce, and died in a few weeks’ time. The Albanians could not hold out long without their gallant chief; and when the Turks took Alyssio, the body of Castriotes was taken from its grave, and the bones were divided among his enemies, who wore them as charms in cases of gold and silver, fancying they would thus gain a share of his bravery.

The Turkish empire thus included all Greece on the mainland, but the Greeks were never really subdued. On all the steep hills were castles or convents, which the Turks were unable to take; and though there were Turkish Beys and Pashas, with soldiers placed in the towns to overawe the people, and squeeze out a tribute, and a great deal more besides, from the Greek tradesmen and farmers, the main body of the people still remembered they were Greeks and Christians. Each village had its own church and priest, each diocese its bishop, all subject to the Patriarchs of Constantinople; and the Sultans, knowing what power these had over the minds of the people, kept them always closely watched, often imprisoned them, and sometimes put them to death. The islands for the most part were still under Venice, and some of the braver-spirited young men became Stradiots in the Venetian service; but too many only went off into the mountains, and became robbers and outlaws there, while those who lived a peaceable life gave way under their miseries to the two greatest faults there had always been

in the Greek nature, namely, cheating and lying. They were so sharp and clever that the dull Turks were forced to employ them, so that they grew rich fast; and then, as soon as the Pasha suspected them of having wealth, however poor they seemed to be, he would seize them, rob them, or kill them to get their money; and, what was worse, their daughters were taken away to be slaves or wives to these Mahommedans. The clergy could get little teaching, and grew as rude and ignorant as their flocks; for though the writings of the great teachers of the early Church were laid up in the libraries in the convents, nobody ever touched them. But just as, after the Macedonian conquest of old Greece, the language spread all over the East; so, after the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, Greek became much better known in Europe, for many learned men of the schools of Constantinople took refuge in Italy, bringing their books with them; the scholars eagerly learned Greek, and the works of Homer and of the great old Greek tragedians became more and more known, and were made part of a learned education. The Greeks at home still spoke the old tongue, though it had become as much altered from that of Athens and Sparta as Italian is from Latin.

The most prosperous time of all the Turkish power was under Solyman the Magnificent, who spread his empire from the borders of Hungary to those of Persia, and held in truth nearly the same empire as Alexander the Great. He conquered the island of Rhodes, on the

Christmas day of 1522, from the Knights of St. John, who were Frankish monks sworn to fight against the Mahommedans. Cyprus belonged to the Venetians, and in 1571 a Jew, who had renounced his faith, persuaded Sultan Selim to have it attacked, that he might gain his favourite Cyprus wine for the pressing, instead of buying it. The Venetian stores of gunpowder had been blown up by an accident, and they could not send help in time to the unfortunate governor, who was made prisoner, and treated with most savage cruelty. However, fifty years later, in 1571, the powers of Europe joined together under Don John of Austria, the brother of the king of Spain, and beat the Turks in a great sea-fight at Lepanto, breaking their strength for many years after; but the king, Philip II. (the husband of our Mary I.), was jealous of his brother, and called him home, and after that the Venetians were obliged to make peace, and give up Cyprus. The misfortune was that the Greeks and Latins hated each other so much that they never would make common cause heartily against the Turks, and the Greeks did not like to be under Venetian protection; but Venice kept Crete, or Candia, as it was now called, till 1670, when the Turks took it, after a long and terrible siege, lasting more than two years, during which the bravest and most dashing gentlemen of France made a wild expedition to help the Christian cause. But all was in vain; Candia fell, and most of the little isles in the Archipelago came one by one under the cruel power of the Turks.

CHAP. XLIII. THE VENETIAN CONQUEST AND LOSS. 1684–1796.

gain there was a time of deliverance for Greece. The Turks had had a great defeat before Vienna, and in their weak state the Venetians made another attack on them, and appointed Francis Morosini commander of the fleet and army. He took the little Ionian isle of Sta Maura, and two Albanian towns; and many brave young men, who had read of the glories of ancient Greece in the course of their studies, came from all parts of Europe to fight for her. The governor, or Seraskin, was obliged to retreat, and the Mainots, as the Greeks of the Morea were called, rose and joined him. Corinth, which was as valuable as ever as the door of the peninsula, was taken, and nothing in the Morea remained Turkish but the city of Malvasia. Morosini threw his men into Lepanto, Patras, and pushed on to Athens; but there they had six days’ fighting, during which more harm was done to the beautiful old buildings and sculptures than had befallen

them in nearly two thousand years of decay. The Turks had shut themselves up in the Acropolis, and made a powder magazine of the Parthenon. A shell from Morosini’s batteries fell into it, and blew up the roof, which had remained perfect all these years, and much more damage was done; but the city was won at last, and the Venetians were so much delighted that they chose Morosini Doge, and bestowed on him the surname of Peloponesiacus in honour of his victory. He sent home a great many precious spoils, in the way of old sculptures, to Venice—in especial two enormous marble lions which used to guard the gate of the Piræus, but which now stand on either side of the Arsenal at Venice.

Then he laid siege to Negropont, the chief city of the old isle of Eubœa; but the plague broke out in his camp, and weakened his troops so much that they were defeated and forced to give up the attempt. Illness, too, hindered him from taking Malvasia; his health was broken, and he died soon after his return to Venice. Four great and bloody sea-fights took place during the next few years, and in one the Turks had the victory, in the others it was doubtful; but when peace was made, in the year 1699, the Morea was yielded to the Venetians, and they put a line of forts across the Isthmus to secure it, as in old times. But the Venetian Republic had lost a great deal of strength and spirit, and when, in a few years, the Sultan began to prepare to take back what

he had lost, the Doge and Senate paid little attention to his doings; so that, when 100,000 Turks, with the Grand Vizier, sailed against the Morea, besides a fleet of 100 ships, the Venetian commander there had only 8000 men and 19 ships. The Venetians were hopeless, and yielded Corinth after only four days’ siege; and though safety had been promised to the inhabitants, they were cruelly massacred, and the same happened in place after place till the whole Morea was conquered, and the Venetians took ship and left the

unhappy Greeks to their fate, which was worse than ever, since they were now treated as rebels.

Several of the Ionian islands on the west side of Greece were seized by the Turks; but Corfu, the old Corcyra, held out most bravely, the priests, women, and all fighting most desperately as the Turks stormed the walls of their city; stones, iron crosses, everything that came to hand, were hurled down on the heads of the enemy; but the ramparts had been won, and thirty standards planted on the walls, when the Saxon general Schulenberg, who was commanding the Venetians, sallied out with 800 men, and charged the Turks in their rear, so that those on the walls hurried back to defend their camp. At night a great storm swept away the tents, and in the morning a Spanish fleet came to the aid of the island. The Turks were so much disheartened that they embarked as quietly as possible in the night; and when the besieged garrison looked forth in the morning, in surprise at everything being so still and quiet, they found the whole place deserted—stores of powder and food, cannon, wounded men, and all. Corfu has thus never fallen under Turkish power, for in the next year, 1717, a peace was made, in which, though Venice gave up all claim to the Morea, she kept the seven Ionian islands, and they continued under her power as long as she remained a free and independent city—that is to say, till 1796, when she was conquered by the French, and given for a time to Austria.

The state of poor Greece was dreadful. The nobles lived in fortresses upon the rocks, and the monks in their fastnesses; but the villages, towns, and coasts were worse off than ever, for the Turks treated them as rebels, and savagely oppressed and misused them. Nor were they united among themselves, for the families who dwelt in the hills were often at deadly feud with each other; the men shot each other down if they met; and it ended in whole families of men living entirely within their castle walls, and never going out except armed to the teeth on purpose to fight, while all

the business of life was carried on by the women, whom no one on either side attempted to hurt. The beautiful buildings in the cities were going to decay faster than ever, in especial the Parthenon. When it had lost its roof it was of no further use as a storehouse, so it was only looked on as a mine of white marble, and was broken down on all sides. The English Earl of Elgin obtained leave from the Turkish Government to carry away those carvings from it which are now in the British Museum, and only one row of beautiful pillars from the portico of the Temple has been left standing.

As the Russians had been converted to Christianity by the clergy of Constantinople, and belonged to the same Church, the Greeks naturally looked most there for help; but they were not well treated by the great empire, which seemed to think the chief use of them was to harass the Turks, and keep them from attacking Russia. Thus, in 1770, the Russians sent 2000 men to encourage a rising of the Mainots in the Morea, but not enough to help them to make a real resistance; and the Greeks, when they had a little advantage, were always so horridly cruel in their revenge on their Turkish prisoners as to disgrace the Christian name, and provoke a return. In 1790, again, the Suliot Greeks of Albania sent to invite Constantine, the brother of the Czar of Russia, to be king of Greece, and arranged a rising, but only misery came of it. The Russians only sent a little money, encouraged them to rise, and left them to their fate. The Turkish chief,

Ali Pasha, who in his little city of Yanina had almost become a king independent of the Sultan, hunted them down; and the Suliots, taking refuge among the rocks, fought to the death, and killed far more than their own number. In one case the Turks surprised a wedding-party, which retreated to a rock with a precipice behind. Here the women waited and watched till all the men had been slain, and then let themselves be driven over the precipice rather than be taken by the Turks.

CHAP. XLIV.—THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 1815.

n all their troubles the Greeks never quite lost heart. The merchants who had thriven in trade sent their sons to be educated in France, Russia, and Germany, and these learned to think much of the great old deeds of their forefathers, and they formed a secret society among themselves, called the Hetaira, which in time the princes and nobles of the Peloponnesus joined; so that they felt that if they only were so united and resolute as to make some Christian power think it worth while to take up their cause in earnest, they really might shake off the Turkish yoke.

In 1820, Ali Pasha, the governor of Albania, rebelled, and shut himself up in the town of Yanina, stirring up the Greeks to begin fighting on their own account, so as to prevent the Sultan from using all his power to crush him. So the Greeks began, under Prince Ipsilanti, who had served in the Russian army, to march into the provinces on the Danube; but they were not helped by the Russians, and were defeated by the

Turks. Ipsilanti fled into Austria; but another leader, called George the Olympian, lived a wild, outlaw life for some years longer, but as he had no rank the Greeks were too proud to join him. At last he shut himself up in the old convent of Secka, and held it out against the Turks for thirty-six hours, until, finding that he could defend it no longer, he put a match to the powder, and blew himself and his men up in it rather than surrender.

But the next year there was another rising all over Greece. The peasants of Attica drove the Turkish garrison out of all Athens but the Acropolis; the Suliots rose again, with secret encouragement from Ali Pasha, and hope seemed coming back. But when Omar Pasha had been sent from Constantinople with 4000 Turkish troops, he found it only too easy to rout 700 Greeks at Thermopylæ, and, advancing into Attica, he drove back the peasants, and relieved the Turkish garrison in the Acropolis, which had been besieged for eighty-three days; but no sooner had he left the place than the brave peasants returned to the siege.

The worst of the Greeks was that they were very cruel and treacherous, and had very little notion of truth or honour, for people who have been long ground down are apt to learn the vices of slaves; and when the Turks slaughtered the men, burnt the villages, and carried off the women, they were ready to return their savage deeds with the like ferocity, and often with more cunning than the Turks could show; and this

made the European nations slow of helping them. In this year, 1821, a Greek captain plotted to set fire to the arsenal at Constantinople, murder the Sultan in the confusion, and begin a great revolt of all the Greeks living at Constantinople. The plot was found out, and terribly visited, for thousands of Christian families, who had never even heard of it, were slain in their houses, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, an aged man, whom everyone loved and respected, was also put to

death. Not only were the Christians massacred at Constantinople, but in most of the other large cities of Turkey, and only in a few were the people able to escape on board the Greek merchant ships. These ships carried ten or twelve guns, were small, swift, and well managed, and little fire-ships were sometimes sent by them into the Turkish fleet, which did a great deal of damage.

The slaughter of so many Christians had only enraged instead of terrifying the others; and a Greek prince named Mavrocordato brought an army together, which took several cities, but unhappily was as cruel as the Turks themselves in their treatment of the conquered. However, they now held Argos, met there, and made Mavrocordato their President in 1822. Ali Pasha of Yanina was reduced and shot by the Turks that same year; and Omar Pasha, who had been sent against him, had a great deal of desperate fighting with the Suliots and other Albanian Greeks, but at last he was driven back through the mountains with terrible loss.

Another horrid deed of the Turks did much to turn men’s minds against them. There were about 120,000 Christians in the island of Scio, who had taken no part in the war, and only prayed to be let alone; but two Greek captains chose to make an attack on the Turkish garrison, and thus provoked the vengeance of the Turks, who burst in full force on the unhappy island, killed every creature they found in the capital, and

ravaged it everywhere. Forty thousand were carried off as slaves, and almost all the rest killed; and when these horrors were over, only 1800 were left in the place.

The cruelty of the Turks and the constancy of the Greeks began to make all Europe take an interest in the war. People began to think them a race of heroes like those of old, and parties of young men, calling themselves Philhellenes, or lovers of Greece, came to fight in their cause. The chief of these was the English poet, Lord Byron; but he, as well as most of the others, found it was much easier to admire the Greeks when at a distance, for a war like this almost always makes men little better than treacherous savage robbers in their ways; and they were all so jealous of one another that there was no obedience to any kind of government, nor any discipline in their armies. Byron soon said he was a fool to have come to Greece, and before he could do anything he died at Missolonghi, in the year 1824. But though the Greeks fought in strange ways of their own, they at least won respect and interest by their untamableness, and though Missolonghi was taken, it was only after a most glorious resistance. When the defenders could hold out no longer, they resolved to cut their way through the Turks. One division of them were deceived by a false alarm, and returned to the town, where, when the enemy entered the powder magazine, they set fire to it, and blew themselves up, together with the Turks; the others escaped.

Athens was taken again by the Turks, all but the Acropolis; but the nations of Europe had begun to believe in the Greeks enough to advance them a large sum of money, which was called the Greek Loan; and the English admiral, Lord Cochrane, and an English soldier, General Church, did them much good by making up the quarrels among their own princes, for actually, in the midst of this desperate war with the Turks, there were seven little civil wars going on among different tribes of the Greeks themselves. General Church collected them all, and fought a great battle in the plain of Athens with the Turkish commander, Ibrahim Pasha, but was beaten again; the Acropolis was taken, and nothing remained to the Greek patriots but the citadel of Corinth and Naupliæ.

However, France, Russia, and England had now resolved to interfere on behalf of the Greeks, and when the Sultan refused to attend to them, a fleet, consisting of ships belonging to the three nations, was sent into the Mediterranean. They meant to treat with the Turks, but the Turks and Greeks thought they meant to fight, and in the bay of Navarino a battle began, which ended in the utter destruction of the Turkish fleet. Out of 120 ships, only 20 or 30 were left, and 6000 men were slain. This was on the 20th of October, 1827, and the terrible loss convinced Ibrahim Pasha that no further attempt to keep the Morea was of any use, so he sailed away to Egypt, of which his father was then Viceroy for the Sultan, but which he and his son

have since made into a separate kingdom. It was in October, 1828, that the Peloponnesus thus shook off the Turkish yoke.

It was thought best that a French army should be sent to hold the chief fortresses in the Morea, because the Greeks quarrelled so among themselves. In the meantime General Church went on driving the Turks back in the northern parts of Greece, and Count Capo d’Istria was chosen President, but he did not manage well, and gave the command of Western Greece to his own dull brother, taking it away from General Church. It seemed as if the Greeks would not know how to use their freedom now they had gained it, for the Council and the President were always quarrelling, and being jealous of each other; and there was falsehood, robbery, treachery, and assassination everywhere. And yet everyone hoped that the race that had stood so bravely all these years would improve now it was free.

CHAP. XLV.—THE KINGDOM OF GREECE. 1822–1875.

he European powers who had taken the little nation of Greeks in charge, finding that, as a republic with a president, they did nothing but dispute and fight, insisted that the country should have a king, who should govern by the help of a parliament.

But the difficulty was that nobody had any claim to be king, and the Greeks were all so jealous of each other that there was no chance of their submitting to one of themselves. The only royal family belonging to their branch of the Church were the Russians; and France, England, Austria, and all the rest were afraid of letting the great Russian power get such a hold on the Mediterranean Sea as would come of Greece being held by one of the brothers or sons of the Czar.

The first choice was very wise, for it was of one of the fittest men in Europe, Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg; and he accepted their offer at first, but when he had had time to hear more in letters from Count Capo d’Istrias, and found what a dreadful state the country was in, and how little notion the people had of truth, honour, or

obedience, he thought he should be able to do nothing with them, and refused to come to Greece. In the meantime the Greeks went on worse than ever. Capo d’Istrias was murdered by the son and brother of a chief whom he had imprisoned; and two bodies of men met, each calling itself a National Assembly—one at Argos, the other at Megara—and there was a regular civil war, during which the poor peasants had to hide in the woods and caves.

At last, in 1832, the second son of the king of Bavaria, Otho, a lad of seventeen, was chosen king by the conference in London which was settling the affairs of Greece. He was sent with a council to rule for him till he should be of age, and with a guard of Bavarian soldiers, while the French troops were sent home again; but the Ionian islands remained under the British protection, and had an English Lord High Commissioner, and garrisons of English troops.

Otho had been chosen so young that there might be the better chance of his becoming one with his subjects, but he turned out very dull and heavy, and caused discontent, because he gave all the offices he could dispose of to his German friends rather than to Greeks, which perhaps was the less wonderful that it was very hard to find a Greek who could be trusted. At last, in 1843, the people rose upon him, forced him to send away all his Bavarians, and to have Greek ministers to manage the government, who should be removed at the will of the people.

His capital was at Athens, and as everyone wished to see the places which had been made glorious by the great men of old Greece, there was such a resort of travellers thither as soon to make the town flourish; but the Government was so weak, and the whole people so used to a wild, outlaw life, that the country still swarms everywhere with robbers, whom the peasants shelter and befriend in spite of their many horrid crimes.

When the English and French nations, in the year

1853, took up the cause of Turkey against Russia, the Greeks much longed to have fought against their old enemies; but the two allied nations sent a strong guard to Athens, and kept them down. Otho had no children, and time did not draw him and his people nearer together; and after a reign of about thirty years, it was plain that the experiment had not succeeded. He resigned, and went home to end his days in Bavaria.

The Greek crown was offered to several more princes, who refused it, until George, the second son of the king of Denmark, accepted it in the year 1868. At the same time the Ionian islands were made over by the English Government to the crown of Greece, and the British troops withdrawn. One of the first things that happened in King George’s reign was the murder of three English gentlemen—Mr. Herbert, Mr. Lloyd, and Mr. Vyner—who had gone with a party to see the plain of Marathon. A gang of robbers came and seized upon them and carried them off to the hills, demanding a ransom. Lady Muncaster, who was of the party, was allowed to return to Athens with her husband, the robbers intending that the ransom should be collected; but troops were sent out to rescue the prisoners, and in rage and disappointment the robbers shot them all three. The robbers were captured and put to death, and the young king was bitterly grieved at not having been able to prevent these horrors.

Schools are doing what they can, and the Greeks are very quick-witted, and learn easily. They are

excellent sailors, clever merchants, and ready linguists, and they get on and prosper very fast; but till they learn truth, honesty, and mercy, and can clear their country of robbers, it does not seem as if anything could go really well with their kingdom, or as if it could make itself be respected. Yet we must recollect that the old Eastern Empire, under which they were for many centuries, did not teach much uprightness or good faith; and that since that time they have

had four hundred years of desperate fighting for their homes and their creed with a cruel and oppressive enemy, and that they deserve honour for their constancy even to the death. Let us hope they will learn all other virtues in time.