The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 04

by Unknown

JASON OF THESSALY

Intelligence of the fatal blow at Leuctra, carried to Lacedæmon, was borne with much real magnanimity, and with all that affectation of unconcern which the institutions of Lycurgus commanded. It happened to be the last day of the festival called the Naked Games; and the chorus of men was on the stage, before the assembled people, when the officer charged with the despatches arrived. The ephors were present, as their official duty required, and to them the despatches were delivered. Without interrupting the entertainment they communicated the names of the slain to their relations, with an added admonition, that the women should avoid that clamorous lamentation which was usual, and bear the calamity in silence. On the morrow all the relations of the slain appeared as usual in public, with a deportment of festivity and triumph, while the few kinsmen of the survivors, who showed themselves abroad, carefully marked in their appearance humiliation and dejection.

It was a large proportion of the best strength of the commonwealth that, after so great a loss in the battle, remained in a danger not in the moment to be calculated. Every exertion therefore was to be made to save it. Of six moras, into which for military purposes the Lacedæmonian people were divided, the men of four, within thirty years after boyhood (such was the term, meaning perhaps the age of about fourteen), had marched under Cleombrotus; those however being excepted who bore at the time any public office. The ephors now ordered the remaining two moras to march, together with those of the absent moras, to the fortieth year from boyhood, and no longer allowing exception for those in office. The command, Agesilaus being not yet sufficiently recovered to take it, was committed to his son Archidamus. Requisitions were at the same time hastened off for the assistance of the allies: and the Lacedæmonian interest, or the interest adverse to the pretensions and apprehended purposes of Thebes, prevailed so in Tegea, Mantinea, Phlius, Corinth, Sicyon, and throughout the Achæan towns, that from all those places the contingent of troops was forwarded with alacrity.

Meanwhile the leading Thebans, meaning to pay a compliment that might promote their interest in Athens, had hastened thither information of their splendid success. But the impression made by this communication was not favourable to their views: on the contrary, it showed that the jealousy, formerly entertained so generally among the Athenians towards Lacedæmon, was already transferred to Thebes. Thus the incessant quarrels among the Grecian republics, source indeed of lasting glory to some, brought however, with their decision, neither lasting power nor lasting quiet to any; but, proving ever fertile in new discord, had a constant tendency to weaken the body of the nation. Relief to Lacedæmon in its pressing danger came, not from its own exertion, not from the interest which all the Grecian republics had in preventing Thebes from acquiring that overbearing dominion with which in a Lacedæmon had oppressed them, but from a power newly risen, or revived, in a corner of the country whence, for centuries, Greece had not been accustomed to apprehend anything formidable.

Jason of Pheræ in Thessaly was one of those extraordinary men in whom superior powers of mind and body sometimes meet. He was formed to be a hero had he lived with Achilles: and as a politician he could have contended with Themistocles or Pericles. He had the advantage of being born to eminence in his own city, one of the principal of Thessaly; and he appears to have acquired there a powerful popularity. Little informed of the early part of his life, we find him mentioned as general of the Pheræans about six years before the battle of Leuctra, and commanding a force sent to assist Neogenes, chief of Histiæa in Eubœa. In the contests of faction in Thessaly it was become common to employ mercenary troops. Jason excelled in diligence in training such troops, in courage and skill in commanding them, and in the arts by which he attached them to his interest.

Of the state of Thessaly at this time altogether we may form some judgment from what the contemporary historian [Xenophon] has related of Pharsalus, one of its most considerable cities. The leaders of the factions by which Pharsalus was torn, weary at length of ruinous contest, came to an extraordinary agreement. Fortunately they had a fellow-citizen, Polydamas, eminent throughout Thessaly for high birth, large possessions, and that splendid hospitality for which the Thessalians were distinguished, but yet more singularly eminent for integrity. To this man the Pharsalians committed the command of their citadel and the exclusive management of their public revenue, giving him altogether a princely authority. In so extraordinary an office Polydamas had the good fortune to succeed in everything, except in opposing the ambition of the too politic and powerful Jason.

Tyrant or patriot, as you will, in his own city of Pheræ, Jason had proceeded to bring most of the Thessalian cities, some by policy, some by arms, under that kind of subjection which so commonly in Greece was entitled confederacy. The strength of Pharsalus, directed by the abilities of Polydamas, was exerted to protect them. But Pharsalus itself was threatened, when Jason sent a proposal for a conference with the chief, which was accepted. In this conference the Pheræan avowed his “intention to reduce Pharsalus, and the towns dependent upon Pharsalus, to dependency upon himself;” but declared that “it was his wish to effect this rather by negotiation than by violence, and with benefit to Polydamas, rather than to his injury. It was in the power of Polydamas,” he said, “to persuade the Pharsalians; but that it was not in his power to defend them, the result of all his recent efforts sufficiently showed. For himself, he was resolved to hold the first situation in Greece; the second he offered to Polydamas. What their advantages would be, if a political union took place, Polydamas as well as himself could estimate.

“The cavalry of Thessaly was six thousand strong: the heavy-armed infantry exceeded ten thousand; the numerous inhabitants of the surrounding mountains, subjects of the Thessalian cities, were excellent targeteers. In addition to this force then he had six thousand mercenaries in his pay; a body such as, for choice of men, and perfection of discipline, no commonwealth of Greece possessed. But connection with Athens did not suit his views; for the Athenians affected to be the first maritime power of Greece, and he meant to make Thessaly the first. The three necessaries to naval power were timber, hands, and revenue. With the former, Athens was supplied from Macedonia, which lay much more conveniently for the supply of Thessaly. With the second their Penestian subjects were a resource to which Athens had nothing equal.” (The Penestæ were a conquered people, reduced to a kind of vassalage under the Thessalians, for whom they performed menial and laborious offices, but were not held in a slavery so severe and degrading as the helots of Laconia, for we find them admitted to that military service, the cavalry, which was generally reckoned among the Greeks to assort only with rank above the lowest citizens.)

It had been a practice of the Thessalian republics, always acknowledging some common bonds of union, to appoint, for extraordinary occasions a common military commander, a captain-general of the Thessalian nation, with the title of Tagus. To this high rank and great command Jason aspired, and the approbation of the Pharsalian government, it appears, was necessary. But he was far from so confining his views. Even the command of all Greece did not suffice for his ambition. “That all Greece might be reduced under their dominion,” he observed to Polydamas, “appeared probable from what he had already stated: but he conceived the conquest of the Persian empire to be a still easier achievement; the practical proof afforded by the return of the Cyrean Greeks, and by the great progress made with a very small force by Agesilaus, leaving this no longer a matter of mere speculation.”

Polydamas, in reply, admitted the justness of Jason’s reasoning; but alleged his own connection with Lacedæmon, which he would at no rate betray, as an objection that appeared to him insuperable. Jason, commending his fidelity to his engagements, freely consented that he should go to Lacedæmon and state his circumstances; and if he could not obtain succour which might give him reasonable hope of successful resistance, then he would stand clearly excused, both to his allies and to his fellow-citizens, in accepting the proposal offered him. Polydamas, returning then into Thessaly, requested and obtained from Jason, that he should hold under his own peculiar command the citadel of Pharsalus, which had been, in a manner so honourable to him, entrusted to his charge. For security of his fidelity to his new engagements, he surrendered his children as hostages. The Pharsalians, persuaded to acquiesce, were admitted to terms of peace and friendship by Jason, who was then elected without opposition tagus of Thessaly.

The first object of Jason, in his high office, was to inquire concerning the force which the whole country, now acknowledging him its constitutional military commander, could furnish; and it was found to amount to more than eight thousand horse, full twenty thousand heavy-armed foot, and targeteers enough, in the contemporary historian’s phrase, for war with all the world. His next care was the revenue, which might enable him to give energy to this force. Jason was ambitious, but not avaricious, and he desired to have willing subjects. He required therefore from the dependent states around Thessaly only that tribute which had been formerly assessed under the tagus Scopas. At the time of the battle of Leuctra, Jason was already this formidable potentate, and he was then in alliance with Thebes. When therefore the Thebans sent to the Athenian people an account of that splendid action, they did not fail to communicate the intelligence also to the tagus of Thessaly; and they added a request for his co-operation towards the complete overthrow of the tyranny, so long exercised by the Lacedæmonians over the Greek nation. The circumstances were altogether such as Jason was not likely to look upon with indifference. Having ordered a fleet to be equipped, he put himself at the head of his mercenaries, his standing army, and taking the cavalry in the moment about him, he began his march. He reached Bœotia without loss; showing, as the contemporary historian observes, how despatch may often do more than force.

Jason, the ally of Thebes, was connected, not indeed by political alliance, but by public and hereditary hospitality, with Lacedæmon. Pleased with the humiliation of his hosts, he was not desirous that his allies should become too powerful. On reaching the Theban camp therefore, demurring to the proposal of the Theban generals for an immediate attack upon the Lacedæmonians, he became the counsellor of peace; and, acting as mediator, he quickly succeeded so far as to procure a truce. The Lacedæmonians hastened to use the opportunity for reaching a place of safety. Jason, after having thus acted as arbiter of Greece, hastened his return to Thessaly. In his way through the hostile province of Phocis, with leisure to exercise his vengeance, for which he had not before wanted strength, he confined it to the little town of Hyampolis, whose suburbs and territory he wasted, killing many of the people. The Lacedæmonian colony of Heraclea was then to be passed. He had served Lacedæmon at Leuctra because he thought it for his interest; and he would, without scruple, or fear, injure Lacedæmon, in its colony of Heraclea, because the prosperity of that colony would obstruct his views. Heraclea was most critically situated for commanding the only easily practicable communication between the countries northward and southward. He therefore demolished the fortifications.

Greek Archer

Decidedly now the greatest potentate of Greece, powerful, not by his own strength alone, but by his numerous alliances, while on all sides his alliance was courted, Jason proposed to display his magnificence at the approaching Pythian games. He had commanded all the republics which owned the authority of the tagus of Thessaly to feed oxen, sheep, goats, and swine for the sacrifices; and he proposed the reward of a golden crown for the state which should produce the finest ox to lead the herd for the god. By a very easy impost on them severally, he collected more than a thousand oxen, and ten thousand smaller cattle. He appointed a day, a little before the festival, for assembling the military force of Thessaly; and the expectation in Greece was that he would assume to himself the presidency. Apprehension arose that he might seize the treasure of Delphi; insomuch that the Delphians consulted their oracle for directions from the god on the occasion. The answer, according to report, was similar to what had been given to their forefathers when Xerxes invaded Greece, “that the care of the treasure would be the god’s own concern.”

Before the period for the splendid display arrived, this extraordinary man, after a review of the Pheræan cavalry, sitting to give audience to any who might have occasion to speak to him, was assassinated by seven youths, who approached with the pretence of stating a matter in dispute among them. The attending guards, or friends of the tagus, killed one of them on the spot, and another as he was mounting his horse; but the rest so profited from the confusion of the moment, and the opportunities which circumstances throughout Greece commonly afforded, that they effected their escape. What was the provocation to this murder, or the advantage proposed from it, we are not informed. No symptom appears of any political view: no attempt at a revolution is noticed by the historian; but what he mentions to have followed marks the popularity of Jason among the Thessalians, and also the deficient ideas, equally of morality and true policy, generally prevailing through Greece. The brothers of the deceased, Polydorus and Polyphron, were appointed jointly to succeed to the dignity of tagus: the assassins could find no refuge in Thessaly; but in various cities of other parts of Greece they were received with honour: proof, says the contemporary historian, how vehemently it was apprehended that Jason would succeed in his purpose of making himself sovereign of the country. Such was the unfortunate state of Greece: in the weakness of its little republics men were compelled to approve means the most nefarious, where other prospect failed, by which their fears were relieved, and present safety procured. Thus assassination became so generally creditable, or at least so little uncreditable, that hope of safety, through speed in flight, was always afforded to the perpetrators.[e]