CHAPTER II.
OF ATHENS.
The republick of Athens, once the seat of learning and eloquence, the school of arts and sciences, and the centre of wit, gaiety, and politeness, exhibits a strong contrast to that of Sparta, as well in her form of government, as in the genius and manners of her inhabitants.
The government of Athens, after the abolition of monarchy, was truly democratick, and so much convulsed by those civil dissensions, which are the inevitable consequences of that kind of government, that of all the Grecian states, the Athenian may be the most strictly termed the seat of faction. I observe that the history of this celebrated republick is neither very clear nor interesting until the time of Solon. The laws of Draco (the first legislator of the Athenians who gave his laws in writing) affixed death as the common punishment of the most capital crimes, or the most trivial offences; a circumstance which implies either the most cruel austerity in the temper of the lawgiver, or such an abandoned profligacy in the manners of the people, as laid him under a necessity of applying such violent remedies. As the historians have not clearly decided which of these was the case, I shall only remark, that the humanity of the people, so natural to the human species, was interested upon the occasion, and the excessive rigour of the laws obstructed the very means of their being carried into execution. A plain proof that a multiplicity of rigorous penal laws are not only incompatible with the liberty of a free state, but even repugnant to human nature. For the natural equity of mankind can easily distinguish between the nature and degree of crimes; and the sentiments of humanity will naturally be excited when the punishment seems to be too rigorous in proportion to the demerits of the offender. The chief reason, in my opinion, why so many offenders in our nation escape with impunity for want of prosecution, is because our laws make no distinction, as to the punishment, between the most trifling robbery on the highway, and the most atrocious of all crimes, premeditated murder.
The remedy which Draco proposed by his laws, proving worse than the disease, the whole body of the people applied to Solon, as the only person equal to the difficult task of regulating their government. The supreme power of the state was at that time vested in nine magistrates, termed archons or governors, elected annually by the people out of the body of the nobility. But the community in general was split into three factions, each contending for such a form of government as was most agreeable to their different interests. The most sensible amongst the Athenians, dreading the consequence of these divisions, were willing, as Plutarch informs us, to invest Solon with absolute power; but our disinterested philosopher was a stranger to that kind of ambition, and preferred the freedom and happiness of his countrymen to the splendour of a crown.[48] He continued the archons in their office as usual, but limited their authority by instituting a senate of four hundred persons elected by the people, by way of ballot, out of the four tribes into which the community was at that time divided. He revived and improved the senate and court of Areopagus, the most sacred and most respectable tribunal, not only of Greece, but of all which we ever read of in history.[49] The integrity and equity of this celebrated court was so remarkable, that not only the Greeks, but the Romans, sometimes, submitted such causes to their determination which they found too intricate and difficult for their own decision. To prevent all suspicion of partiality either to plaintiff or defendant, this venerable court heard all causes and passed their definitive sentence in the dark, and the pleaders on either side were strictly confined to a bare representation of the plain truth of the fact, without either aggravation or embellishment. For all the ornament of fine language, and those powers of rhetorick which tended to bias the judgment by interesting the passions of the judges, were absolutely prohibited. Happy if the pleaders were restricted to this righteous method in our own courts of judicature, where great eloquence and great abilities are too often employed to confound truth and support injustice!
It is evident from history that Solon at first proposed the institutions of Lycurgus as the model for his new establishment. But the difficulty which he met with in the abolition of all debts, the first part of his scheme, convinced him of the utter impracticability of introducing the laconick equality, and deterred him from all farther attempts of that nature. The laws of Athens gave the creditor so absolute a power over his insolvent debtor, that he could not only oblige the unhappy wretch to do all his servile drudgery, but could sell him and his children for slaves in default of payment. The creditors had made so oppressive an use of their power, that many of the citizens were actually obliged to sell their children to make good their payments; and such numbers had fled their country to avoid the effects of their detestable inhumanity, that, as Plutarch observes, the city was almost unpeopled by the extortion of the usurers.[50] Solon, apprehensive of an insurrection amongst the poorer citizens, who openly threatened to alter the government, and make an equal partition of the lands, thought no method so effectual to obviate this terrible evil, as to cancel all debts, as Lycurgus had done formerly at Sparta. But some of his friends, to whom he had privately communicated his scheme, with an assurance that he did not propose to meddle with the lands, were too well versed in the art of jobbing to neglect so fair an opportunity of making a fortune. For they stretched their credit to the utmost in loans of large sums from the moneyed men, which they immediately laid out in the purchase of landed estates. A precedent which the treacherous Agesilaus copied too successfully afterwards at Sparta. The cheat appeared as soon as the edict for abolishing all debts was made publick: but the odium of so flagitious a piece of roguery was thrown wholly upon Solon; as the censure of the publick for all frauds and exactions committed by officers in the inferior departments will naturally fall upon the minister at the helm, however disinterested and upright.
This edict was equally disagreeable to the rich and to the poor. For the rich were violently deprived of all that part of their property which consisted in their loans, and the poor were disappointed of that share of the lands which they so greedily expected. How Solon drew himself out of this difficulty, historians have no where informed us. All we can learn from them is, that the decree was at last received and submitted to, and that Solon was still continued in his office with the same authority as before.
This experiment gave Solon a thorough insight into the temper of his countrymen, and most probably induced him to accommodate his subsequent regulations to the humour and prejudices of the people. For as he wanted the authority which naturally arises from royal birth, as well as that which is founded on the unlimited confidence of the people, advantages which Lycurgus possessed in so eminent a degree, he was obliged to consult rather what was practicable, than what was strictly right; and endeavour, as far as he was able, to please all parties. That he acknowledged this, seems evident from his answer to one who asked him “whether the laws he had given the Athenians were the best he could possibly have made?”[51] “They are the best,” replied Solon, “which the Athenians are capable of receiving.” Thus whilst he confined the magistracies and the executive part of the government solely to the rich, he lodged the supreme power in the hands of the poorer citizens. For though every freeman whose fortune did not amount to a particular census or estimate, was excluded from all state offices by the laws of Solon; yet he had a legal right of giving his opinion and suffrage in the Εκκλησια or assembly of the people, which was wholly composed of this inferior class of citizens. But as all elections, and all cases of appeal from the superior courts were determined by the voices of this assembly; as no law could pass without their approbation, and the highest officers in the republick were subject to their censure, this assembly became the dernier resort in all causes, and this mob government, as it may be justly termed, was the great leading cause of the ruin of their republick. Anacharsis the Scythian philosopher, who at that time resided with Solon, justly ridiculed this excess of power which he had lodged in the people.[52] For when he had heard some points debated, first in the senate, and afterwards decided in the assembly of the people, he humourously told Solon, that at Athens “wise men debated, but fools decided.” Solon was as sensible of this capital defect as Anacharsis; but he was too well acquainted with the licentiousness and natural levity of the people, to divest them of a power, which he knew they would resume by violence at the first opportunity. The utmost therefore he could do was to fix his two senates as the moorings of the constitution.[53] That of four hundred, to secure the state against the fluctuating temper and tumultuous fury of the people;[54] that of the areopagus, to restrain the dangerous encroachments of the great and wealthy.[55] He repealed all the laws of Draco, those against murder alone excepted; rightly judging, as Plutarch remarks, that it was not only most iniquitous, but most absurd, to inflict the same punishment upon a man for being idle, or stealing a cabbage or an apple out of a garden, as for committing murder or sacrilege.[56] But as the account handed down to us of the laws which Solon established is extremely lame and imperfect, I shall only mention the sarcasm of Anacharsis upon that occasion, as a proof of their insufficiency to answer that end for which Solon designed them. For that philosopher comparing the corrupt manners of the Athenians with the coercive power of Solon’s laws, resembled the latter to cobwebs which would entangle only the poor and feeble;[57] but were easily broke through by the rich and powerful. Solon is said to have replied,[58] “that men would readily stand to those mutual compacts, which it was the interest of neither party to violate; and that he had so rightly adapted his laws to the reason of his countrymen, as to convince them how much more advantageous it was to adhere to what was just, than to be guilty of injustice.” The event, as Plutarch truly observes, proved more correspondent to the opinion of Anacharsis, than to the hopes of Solon. For Pisistratus, a near relation of Solon's, having artfully formed a strong party among the poorer citizens, by distributing bribes under the specious pretence of relieving their necessities, procured a guard of fifty men armed with clubs only for the safety of his person, by the help of which he seized the citadel, abolished the democracy, and established a single tyranny in spite of all the efforts of Solon.[59]
This usurpation proved the source of endless faction, and brought innumerable calamities upon the republick. Pisistratus was expelled more than once by the opposite party, and as often brought back in triumph either by the fraud or force of his prevailing faction. At his death he left the kingdom to his two sons Hipparchus and Hippias. The former of these was assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogiton for a personal injury they had received;[60] Hippias was soon after driven out of Athens by the Spartans at the instigation of some of his discontented countrymen. Despairing of recovering his former sovereignty by any other means, he fled to Darius for assistance, and was the cause of the first invasion of Greece by the Persians, in which he died fighting against his country in the ever memorable battle of Marathon. But the most fatal evil which resulted from the usurpation of Pisistratus, was, that perpetual fear of seeing the supreme power again lodged in the hands of a single person.[61] For this fear kept the jealousy of the people in a constant alarm, and threw them at last into the hands of the factious demagogues. Hence superior merit was frequently represented as an unpardonable crime, and a kind of high treason against the republick.[62] And the real patriots were rendered suspected to the people, just as the demagogues were influenced by envy or private pique, or even bribed by ambitious or designing men, who aspired at the very thing of which the others were unjustly accused. The history of Athens abounds with instances of the levity and inconstancy of that unsteady people. For how frequently do we find their best and ablest citizens imprisoned or sentenced to banishment by the ostracism, in honour of whom the same people had just before erected statues:[63] nay not unfrequently raising statues to the memory of those illustrious and innocent men, whom they had illegally doomed to death in the wantonness of their power;[64] at once the monuments of their injustice and too late repentance! This evil was the natural consequence of that capital error in Solon’s polity, when he entrusted the supreme power to the giddy and fluctuating populace. A defect which (as I observed before) was the great leading cause of the loss of that liberty which they had so licentiously abused. For as the removal of all the honest citizens either by death or banishment paved an easy way for usurpation and tyranny; so it was a measure invariably pursued, in the democratick governments of Greece, by all those ambitious men who aimed at subverting the liberties of their country. This truth is so clearly explained, and so incontestably proved, by the great Thucydides, that whilst I peruse the annals of that admirable historian, I cannot help grieving over the tragick pages stained with the blood of so many patriot citizens, who fell a sacrifice to the dire ambition and avarice of faction. What a striking detail does he give us of the most calamitous situation of all the Grecian republicks during the Peloponnesian war! How does he labour for expression in his pathetick enumeration of the horrible consequences of faction, after his description of the destructive sedition at Corcyra! A contempt of all religion, the open violation of the most sacred ties and compacts; devastations, massacres, assassinations, and all the savage horrors of civil discord inflamed even to madness, are the perpetual subjects of his instructive history. Calamities of which he himself was at once an eyewitness and a most faithful recorder.
Thucydides truly ascribes this destructive war to the mutual jealousy which then subsisted between the Spartans and Athenians.[65-][66] The most stale frivolous pretences were trumped up by the Spartans, and as strongly retorted by the Athenians. Both states made the interests or grievances of their allies, the constant pretext for their mutual altercations, whilst the real cause was that ambitious scheme which each state had formed of reducing all Greece under its respective dominion. But an event which both states seemed to have waited for, quickly blew up the latent sparks of jealousy into the most violent flame.[67] The Thebans privately entered the city of Platæa in the night (a small state at that time allied to Athens) which had been betrayed to them by a treacherous faction, who were enemies to the Athenians. But the honester part of the Platæans recovering from their surprise, and taking notice of the small number of the Thebans, quickly regained possession of their city by the slaughter of most of the invaders. The Platæans immediately applied to the Athenians for assistance; the Thebans to the Spartans.[68] Both states entered eagerly into the quarrel between their respective allies, and engaged as principals in that destructive war which at last involved all Greece in the common calamity. Wherever the fortune of the Spartan prevailed, an oligarchical aristocracy was established, and the friends to a popular government destroyed or banished. Where the Athenians were victors, democracy was settled or restored, and the people glutted their revenge with the blood of the nobility. Alternate revolts, truces violated as soon as made, massacres, proscriptions, and confiscations, were the perpetual consequences, in all the petty republicks, of the alternate good or bad success of those two contending rivals. In a word, all Greece seems to have been seized with an epidemick madness; and the polite, the humane Grecians treated one another, during the whole course of this unnatural war, with a ferocity unknown even to the most savage barbarians. The real cause, assigned by Thucydides, of all these atrocious evils, was, “the lust of domination arising from avarice and ambition:” for the leading men in every state, whether of the democratick or aristocratick party, affected outwardly the greatest concern for the welfare of the republick, which in reality was made the prize for which they all contended.[69] Thus, whilst each endeavoured by every possible method to get the better of his antagonist, the most audacious villanies, and the most flagrant acts of injustice were equally perpetrated by both sides. Whilst the moderate men amongst the citizens, who refused to join with either side, were alike the objects of their resentment or envy, and equally destroyed without mercy by either faction.[70]
Historians unanimously agree, that the Athenians were instigated to this fatal war by the celebrated Pericles. Thucydides, who was not only cotemporary with Pericles, but actually bore a command in that war, does real honour to that great man's character; for he assigns his desire of humbling the Spartans, and his zeal for the glory and interest of his country, as the real motives of his conduct upon that occasion.[71] But, as a detail of this tedious and ruinous war is wholly foreign to my purpose, I shall only remark, that if ever union and harmony are necessary to the preservation of a state, they are more essentially so when that state is engaged in a dubious war with a powerful enemy. For not only the continuation, but the event, of that long war, so fatal to the Athenians, must (humanly speaking) be wholly attributed to the disunion of their counsels, and the perpetual fluctuation in their measures, occasioned by the influence of the ambitious and factious demagogues. Not the calamities of war, nor the most dreadful plague, ever yet recorded in history, were able to fix the volatile temper of that unsteady people.[72] Elate beyond measure with any good success, they were deaf to the most reasonable overtures of peace from their enemies, and their views were unbounded. Equally dejected with any defeat, they thought the enemy just at their doors, and threw the whole blame upon their commanders, who were always treated as unpardonably criminal when unsuccessful. The demagogues, who watched every turn of temper in that variable people, took care to adapt every circumstance that offered to their own ambitious views, either of gaining or supporting an ascendency in the state, which kept up a perpetual spirit of faction in that unhappy republick. Thus, in the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, Cleon, a noisy seditious demagogue, declaimed violently against Pericles, and was the constant opposer of all his measures:[73] but the firmness and superior abilities of that great man enabled him to baffle all his antagonists. When Pericles was carried off by that fatal pestilence which almost depopulated Athens, the nobility, jealous of that sway which Cleon had acquired over the people, set up Nicias in opposition. Nicias was honest, and a real lover of his country, but a man of no great abilities; and though an experienced officer, yet cautious and diffident even to timidity.[74] In his temper he was mild, humane, and averse to bloodshed, and laboured to put an end to a war which spread such general destruction: but all his measures were opposed by the turbulent Cleon; for when the Spartans proposed an accommodation, Cleon persuaded the Athenians to insist upon such high terms that the treaty broke off, and war was again renewed with the same inveterate fury: but the incendiary Cleon, the chief obstacle to all pacifick measures, falling in battle in the tenth year of that war, negociations were again set on foot, and a peace for fifty years concluded between the Athenians and the Spartans by the unwearied endeavours of Nicias.[75] But whilst Nicias was intent upon the enjoyment of that repose which he had procured, a new and infinitely more formidable rival started up, and again involved his country and all Greece in the same calamities by his restless and insatiable ambition.