Mosaics of Grecian History

by Marcius Willson; Robert Pierpont Wilson

III. SPARTA'S CONQUESTS.

Under the constitution of Lycurgus Sparta began her career of conquest. Of the death of the great law-giver we have no reliable account; but it is stated that, having bound the Spartans to make no change in the laws until his return, he voluntarily banished himself forever from his country and died in a foreign land. During a century or more subsequent to the time of Lycurgus, the Spartans remained at peace with their neighbors; but jealousies arose between them and the Messe'nians, a people west of Laconia, which, stimulated by insults and injuries on both sides, gave rise to the FIRST MESSENIAN WAR, 743 years before the Christian era. For the first four years the Spartans made little progress; but in the fifth year of the war a great battle was fought, and, although its result was indecisive, the Messenians deemed it prudent to retire to the strongly fortified mountain of Itho'me. In the eighteenth year of the conflict the Spartans suffered a severe defeat, and were driven back into their own territory; but at the close of the twentieth year the Messenians were obliged to abandon their fortress of Ithome, and leave their rich fields in the undisturbed possession of their conquerors. Many of the inhabitants fled into Arcadia and other friendly territories, while those who remained were treated with great severity, and reduced to the condition of the Helots.

The war thus closed developed the warlike spirit that the institutions of Lycurgus were so well calculated to encourage; and the Spartans were so stern and unyielding in their exactions, that they drove the Messenians to revolt thirty-nine years later, 685 B.C. The Messenians found an able leader in Aristom'enes, whose valor in the first battle struck fear into his enemies, and inspired his countrymen with confidence. In this struggle the Argives, Arcadians, Si-çy-o'nians, and Pisa'tans aided Messenia, while the Corinthians assisted Sparta. In alarm the Spartans sought the advice of the Delphic oracle, and received the mortifying response that they must seek a leader from the Athenians, between whose country and Laconia there had been no intercourse for several centuries. Fearing to disobey the oracle, but reluctant to further the cause of the Spartans, the Athenians sent to the latter the poet TYRTÆ'US, who had no distinction as a warrior. His patriotic and martial odes, however, roused the spirit of the Spartans, and animated them to new efforts against the foe. He appears as the great hero of Sparta during the SECOND MESSENIAN WAR, and of his songs that have come down to us we give the following as a specimen:

To the field, to the field, gallant Spartan band,
Worthy sons, like your sires, of our warlike land!
Let each arm be prepared for its part in the fight,
Fix the shield on the left, poise the spear with the right;
Let no care for your lives in your bosoms find place,
No such care knew the heroes of old Spartan race.
[Footnote: Mure's "History of Greek Literature,"
vol. iii., p. 195.]

But the Spartans were not immediately successful. In the first battle that ensued they were defeated with severe loss; but in the third year of the war the Messenians suffered a signal defeat, owing to the treachery of Aristoc'rates, the king of their Arcadian allies, who deserted them in the heat of battle, and Aristomenes retired to the mountain fortress of Ira. The war continued, with varying success, seventeen years in all; throughout the whole of which period Aristomenes distinguished himself by many noble exploits; but all his efforts to save his country were ineffectual. A second time Sparta conquered (668 B.C.), and the yoke appeared to be fixed on Messenia forever. Thenceforward the growing power of Sparta seemed destined to undisputed pre-eminence, not only in the Peloponnesus, but throughout all Greece. Before 600 B.C. Sparta had conquered the upper valley of the Eurotas from the Arcadians, and, forty years later, compelled Te'gea, the capital of Arcadia, to acknowledge her supremacy. Still later, in 524 B.C., a long struggle with the Argives was terminated in favor of Sparta, and she was now the most powerful of the Grecian states.

CHAPTER V.

FORMS OF GOVERNMENT, AND CHANGES IN GRECIAN POLITICS.

Although Greek political writers taught that there were, primarily, but three forms of government—monarchy, or the rule of one; aristocracy, that of the few; and democracy, that of the many—the latter always limited by the Greeks to the freemen—yet it appears that when anyone of these degenerated from its supposed legitimate object, the welfare of the state, it was marked by a peculiar name. Thus a monarchy in which selfish aims predominated became a tyranny; and in later Grecian history, such was the prevailing sentiment in opposition to kingly rule that all kings were called tyrants: an aristocracy which directed its measures chiefly to the preservation of its power became an oligarchy; and a democracy that departed from the civil and political equality which was its supposed basis, and gave ascendancy to a faction, was sometimes designated by the term ochlocracy, or the dominion of the rabble. "A democracy thus corrupted," says THIRLWALL, "exhibited many features of a tyranny. It was jealous of all who were eminently distinguished by birth, fortune, or reputation; it encouraged flatterers and sycophants; was insatiable in its demands on the property of the rich, and readily listened to charges which exposed them to death or confiscation. The class which suffered such oppression, commonly ill satisfied with the principle of the Constitution itself, was inflamed with the most furious animosity by the mode in which it was applied, and it regarded the great mass of its fellow-citizens as its mortal enemies."

As in all the Greek states there was a large class of people not entitled to the full rights of citizenship, including, among others, persons reduced to slavery as prisoners of war, and foreign settlers and their descendants, so there was no such form of government as that which the moderns understand by a complete democracy. Of a republic also, in the modern acceptation of the term—that is, a representative democracy—the Greeks knew nothing. As an American statesman remarks, "Certain it is that the greatest philosophers among them would have regarded as something monstrous a republic spreading over half a continent and embracing twenty-six states, each of which would have itself been an empire, and not a commonwealth, in their sense of the word."[Footnote: Hugh S. Legaré's Writings, vol. i., p.440.]