PHILOPŒMEN AND THE FALL OF SPARTA.
The history of Greece may well seem remarkable to modern readers, since it brings us in contact with conditions which have ceased to exist anywhere upon the earth. To gain some idea of its character, we should have to imagine each of the counties of one of our American States to be an independent nation, with its separate government, finances, and history, its treaties of peace and declarations of war, and its frequent fierce conflicts with some neighboring county. Each of these counties would have its central city, surrounded by high walls, and its citizens ready at any moment to take arms against some other city and march to battle against foes of their own race and blood. In some cases a single county would have three or four cities, each hostile to the others, like the cities of Thebes, Platæa, Thespiæ, and Orchomenos, in Bœotia; standing ready, like fierce dogs each in its separate kennel, to fall upon one another with teeth and claws. It may further be said that of the population of these counties five out of every six were slaves, and that these slaves were white men, most of them of Greek descent. The general custom in those days was either to slay prisoners in cold blood, or sell them to spend the remainder of their lives in slavery.
This state of affairs was not confined to Greece. It existed in Italy until Rome conquered all its small neighbor states. It existed in Asia until the great Babylonian and Persian empires conquered all the smaller communities. It was the first form of a civilized nation, that of a city surrounded by enough farming territory to supply its citizens with food, each city ready to break into war with any other, and each race of people viewing all beyond its borders as strangers and barbarians, to be dealt with almost as if they were beasts of prey instead of men and brothers.
The cities of Greece were not only thus isolated, but each had its separate manners, customs, government, and grade of civilization. Athens was famous for its intellectual cultivation; Thebes had a reputation for the heavy-headed dulness of its people; Sparta was a rigid war school, and so on with others. In short, the world has gone so far beyond the political and social conditions of that period that it is by no means easy for us to comprehend the Grecian state.
Among those cities Sparta stood in one sense alone. While the others were enclosed in strong walls, Sparta remained open and free,—its only wall being the valorous hearts and strong arms of its inhabitants. While other cities were from time to time captured and occasionally destroyed, no foeman had set foot within Sparta's streets. Not until the days of Epaminondas was Laconia invaded by a powerful foe; and even then Sparta remained free from the foeman's tread. Neither Philip of Macedon, nor his son Alexander, entered this proud city, and it was not until the troublous later times that the people of Sparta, feeling that their ancient warlike virtue was gone, built around their city a wall of defence.
But the humiliation of that proud city was at hand. It was to be entered by a foeman; the laws of Lycurgus, under which it had risen to such might, were to come to an end; and lordly Sparta was to sink into insignificance, and its glory remain but a memory to man.
About the year 252 B.C. was born Philopœmen, the last of the great generals of Greece. He was the son of Craugis, a citizen of Megalopolis, the great city which Epaminondas had built in Arcadia. Here he was thoroughly educated in philosophy and the other learning of the time; but his natural inclination was towards the life of a soldier, and he made a thorough study of the use of arms and the management of horses, while sedulously seeking the full development of his bodily powers. Epaminondas was the example he set himself, and he came little behind that great warrior in activity, sagacity, and integrity, though he differed from him in being possessed of a hot, contentious temper, which often carried him beyond the bounds of judgment.
Philopœmen was marked by plain manners and a genial disposition, in proof of which Plutarch tells an amusing story. In his later years, when he was general of a great Grecian confederation, word was brought to a lady of Megara that Philopœmen was coming to her house to await the return of her husband, who was absent. The good lady, all in a tremor, set herself hurriedly to prepare a supper worthy of her guest. While she was thus engaged a man entered dressed in a shabby cloak, and with no mark of distinction. Taking him for one of the general's train who had been sent on in advance, the housewife called on him to help her prepare for his master's visit. Nothing loath, the visitor threw off his cloak, seized the axe she offered him, and fell lustily to work in cutting up fire-wood.