Greek Lands and Letters

by Francis Greenleaf Allinson; Anne C. E. Allinson

Later, when it was regarded as a political asset to have opposed the Persians, the Thebans defended their failure on the ground that they had had neither constitutional government nor popular freedom. A cabal of selfish nobles had forced them into an action abhorrent to themselves. Certainly it is true that Thebes was always aristocratic rather than democratic. And it is worth noting that Pindar in his art was the true son of such a city. The great festivals of Greece were the immediate inspiration of his extant odes, while his life in Athens and his journeys to Sicily and to the eastern islands furnished him with much poetic material. But as far as the “soaring eagle” is to be identified with a birthplace, we may ascribe to his aristocratic origin and early environment his persistent selection of the things that were distinguished and splendid.

At the time of the Peloponnesian War Thebes appears as the bitter opponent of Athens. But later the shifting politics of the time brought about an alliance between these two ancient enemies and set Thebes against Sparta. Her position, however, was one of difficulty and humiliation, buffeted about as she was between the greater powers. Finally, in the first quarter of the fourth century, under the influence of one man, Thebes entered upon a period of power and distinction. Brief as it was, it served to awaken the sleeping glory of the old days and to make men once more mindful of Thebes of the golden shield. Epaminondas inspired a young Bœotian party, roused the Theban people, opposed Sparta and defeated her by new strategic skill at Leuctra in 371 B. C., renewed the ancient confederacy of Bœotian towns, won the support of neighbouring states and the sympathy of Delphi, and finally marched into the Peloponnesus to oppose the unrighteous designs of Sparta. At the battle of Mantinea in Arcadia he lost his life, before his work for Thebes and Hellas was finished. It is greatly to be regretted that a career so admirable and a personality so original should not have been interpreted by some adequate historian or poet. He lived too late for the enthusiasm of Herodotus or the justice of Thucydides. That Xenophon, through his hatred of Thebes, failed to talk much of the Theban general is no great loss to our imaginative understanding of a great man. Pausanias in his sincere admiration contributes something: “Of the famous captains of Greece Epaminondas may well rank as the first or at least as second to none. For whereas the Lacedæmonian and Athenian generals were seconded by the ancient glories of their countries as well as by soldiers of a temper to match, Epaminondas found his country disheartened and submissive to foreign dictation, yet he soon raised them to the highest place.” Plutarch’s “Life of Epaminondas” has not been preserved, but this loss is partially repaired by his “Life of Pelopidas,” the companion in arms and the passionate imitator of the hero, and by his return now and again in other writings to a contemplation of the character of Epaminondas. Out of slight sketches like these and out of the second-rate histories we must fashion our portrait.

Epaminondas was a great soldier and a leader of men. These facts need not be obscured by the other fact that he did not, probably could not, establish a national unity strong enough to live on after him. With him died the hopes of Thebes. His fear of this must have been his heaviest burden. Patriotism with him not only excluded satisfaction in his own power, but included patience under attack. To us, familiarized with magnanimous patriotism in many nations, this seems more admirable than strange. But against the background of Greek history the statesmen are conspicuous who could have entirely understood the obedient spirit in which Socrates accepted condemnation from the city he had tried to serve. In Epaminondas also appear some of those qualities which his contemporary Plato thought essential to a wise king. He loved philosophy more than power, and his early training had been intellectual and moral rather than martial. Like Pindar, he belonged to the oldest nobility of Thebes, tracing his pedigree to Cadmus, but his family had long lived modestly, dissociated from the more vulgar aristocracy, and devoted to the intellectual life. Philosophers exiled from Southern Italy came to Thebes as well as Athens, and among them Lysis of Tarentum exercised a great influence upon the young Epaminondas. The boy’s gentle nature and hardy will furnished an ideal soil for the seeds of the Pythagorean doctrine, which, before the days of St. Francis of Assisi, taught the beauty of poverty, of temperance, and of humility, and insisted upon a moral earnestness and devotion to duty. Epaminondas, the conqueror and liberator, was at all times a “practical” follower of the religion in which he had been nurtured. And with something of his own fervour he inflamed the Sacred Band, that company of “friends” like Epaminondas and Pelopidas, who inspired each other to valour and to virtue and were united in the cause of patriotism. In this appeal to the chivalric gallantry of youth Epaminondas was thoroughly Greek. In the unmarred consistency of his own life he was unapproached even by his closest followers. As Pindar in his generation was “heavy at heart” over Thebes, so the martial leader must often have brooded in lonely impotence over the same city. To travellers he may appear, as dusk comes on, in the guise in which men found him on an ancient holiday, walking aloof, ungarlanded and thoughtful. “I am keeping guard,” he said, “that all of you may be drunk and revel securely.”

The visible remains of ancient Thebes are at present very few, and although archæological research may reveal sites and fragments of great interest, we shall never see here ruins still clothed upon with beauty. Nor is the situation of the town impressive enough to attract travellers who are indifferent to memories of the past. The chief charm of the place is its view of an horizon broken by Cithæron, Helicon, and distant Parnassus; by Mount Ptoön, where men listened to Apollo, and the Mountain of the Sphinx.

Fragments of walls are all that remain of the city’s fortifications. Of the gates no traces have been found. Pausanias speaks of seeing all seven gates, but he describes only three of them, and some scholars have argued that the other four were invented by the lost epic writers who first gave literary form to the Theban legends. Certainly the poets themselves, Æschylus, Euripides, and the later Alexandrians, differ in their lists. The only important ruins of a building are those recently reported to have been discovered by the Greek archæologists near the Agora. They represent a palace of the “Mycenæan” period which met its destruction by fire and which has been identified, under the name of “The House of Cadmus,” with the ruins of “the bridal chambers of Harmonia and Semele” seen by Pausanias. From the historic period nothing remains, although with the help of broken pieces of marble and stone we may try to imagine the Temple of Ismenian Apollo, second only to Delphi as the seat of this oracular god, in the place of the present church of St. Luke on the hill that rises by the river St. John.

Dismantled as Thebes was in the time of Pausanias, his guides showed him many places which were associated with Pindar or with the legends embodied in the Attic drama. There was the Observatory of Tiresias, where the blind prophet had listened intently to the sharp cries and whirring wings of the prescient birds. As if ageless in sorrow, he pervades each drama on the curse of Cadmus with his futile vision of the truth,—

“His robe drawn over

His old, sightless head,

Revolving inly

The doom of Thebes.”