But about 560 B. C., two important changes are seen to come into operation, which alter the character of Grecian history,—extricating it out of its former chaos of detail, and centralizing its isolated phenomena: 1. The subjugation of the Asiatic Greeks by Lydia and by Persia, followed by their struggles for emancipation,—wherein the European Greeks became implicated, first as accessories, and afterwards as principals. 2. The combined action of the large mass of Greeks under Sparta, as their most powerful state and acknowledged chief, succeeded by the rapid and extraordinary growth of Athens, the complete development of Grecian maritime power, and the struggle between Athens and Sparta for the headship. These two causes, though distinct in themselves, must, nevertheless, be regarded as working together to a certain degree,—or rather, the second grew out of the first. For it was the Persian invasions of Greece which first gave birth to a wide-spread alarm and antipathy among the leading Greeks (we must not call it Pan-Hellenic, since more than half of the Amphiktyonic constituency gave earth and water to Xerxes) against the barbarians of the East, and impressed them with the necessity of joint active operations under a leader. The idea of a leadership or hegemony of collective Hellas, as a privilege necessarily vested in some one state for common security against the barbarians, thus became current,—an idea foreign to the mind of Solôn, or any one of the same age. Next, came the miraculous development of Athens, and the violent contest between her and Sparta, which should be the leader; the larger portion of Hellas taking side with one or the other, and the common quarrel against the Persian being for the time put out of sight. Athens is put down, Sparta acquires the undisputed hegemony, and again the anti-barbaric feeling manifests itself, though faintly, in the Asiatic expeditions of Agesilaus. But the Spartans, too incompetent either to deserve or maintain this exalted position, are overthrown by the Thebans,—themselves not less incompetent, with the single exception of Epameinondas. The death of that single man extinguishes the pretensions of Thebes to the hegemony, and Hellas is left, like the deserted Penelopê in the Odyssey, worried by the competition of several suitors, none of whom is strong enough to stretch the bow on which the prize depends.[430] Such a manifestation of force, as well as the trampling down of the competing suitors, is reserved, not for any legitimate Hellenic arm, but for a semi-Hellenized[431] Macedonian, “brought up at Pella,” and making good his encroachments gradually from the north of Olympus. The hegemony of Greece thus passes forever out of Grecian hands; but the conqueror finds his interest in rekindling the old sentiment under the influence of which it had first sprung up. He binds to him the discordant Greeks, by the force of their ancient and common antipathy against the Great King, until the desolation and sacrilege once committed by Xerxes at Athens is avenged by annihilation of the Persian empire. And this victorious consummation of Pan-Hellenic antipathy,—the dream of Xenophon[432] and the Ten Thousand Greeks after the battle of Kunaxa,—the hope of Jason of Pheræ,—the exhortation of Isokratês,[433]—the project of Philip, and the achievement of Alexander,—while it manifests the irresistible might of Hellenic ideas and organization in the then existing state of the world, is at the same time the closing scene of substantive Grecian life. The citizen-feelings of Greece become afterwards merely secondary forces, subordinate to the preponderance of Greek mercenaries under Macedonian order, and to the rudest of all native Hellens,—the Ætolian mountaineers. Some few individuals are indeed found, even in the third century B. C., worthy of the best times of Hellas, and the Achæan confederation of that century is an honorable attempt to contend against irresistible difficulties: but on the whole, that free, social, and political march, which gives so much interest to the earlier centuries, is irrevocably banished from Greece after the generation of Alexander the Great.
The foregoing brief sketch will show that, taking the period from Crœsus and Peisistratus down to the generation of Alexander (560-300 B. C.), the phenomena of Hellas generally, and her relations both foreign and interpolitical, admit of being grouped together in masses, with continued dependence on one or a few predominant circumstances. They may be said to constitute a sort of historical epopee, analogous to that which Herodotus has constructed out of the wars between Greeks and barbarians, from the legends of Iô and Eurôpa down to the repulse of Xerxes. But when we are called back to the period between 776 and 560 B. C., the phenomena brought to our knowledge are scanty in number,—exhibiting few common feelings or interests, and no tendency towards any one assignable purpose. To impart attraction to this first period, so obscure and unpromising, we shall be compelled to consider it in its relation with the second; partly as a preparation, partly as a contrast.
Of the extra-Peloponnesian Greeks north of Attica, during these two centuries, we know absolutely nothing; but it will be possible to furnish some information respecting the early condition and struggles of the great Dorian states in Peloponnesus, and respecting the rise of Sparta from the second to the first place in the comparative scale of Grecian powers. Athens becomes first known to us at the legislation of Drako and the attempt of Kylôn (620 B. C.) to make himself despot; and we gather some facts concerning the Ionic cities in Eubœa and Asia Minor, during the century of their chief prosperity, prior to the reign and conquests of Crœsus. In this way, we shall form to ourselves some idea of the growth of Sparta and Athens,—of the short-lived and energetic development of the Ionic Greeks,—and of the slow working of those causes which tended to bring about increased Hellenic intercommunication,—as contrasted with the enlarged range of ambition, the grand Pan-Hellenic ideas, the systematized party-antipathies, and the intensified action, both abroad and at home, which grew out of the contest with Persia.
There are also two or three remarkable manifestations which will require special notice during this first period of Grecian history: 1. The great multiplicity of colonies sent forth by individual cities, and the rise and progress of these several colonies; 2. The number of despots who arose in the various Grecian cities; 3. The lyric poetry; 4. The rudiments of that which afterwards ripened into moral philosophy, as manifested in gnomes, or aphorisms,—or the age of the Seven Wise Men.
But before I proceed to relate those earliest proceedings (unfortunately too few) of the Dorians and Ionians during the historical period, together with the other matters just alluded to, it will be convenient to go over the names and positions of those other Grecian states respecting which we have no information during these first two centuries. Some idea will thus be formed of the less important members of the Hellenic aggregate, previous to the time when they will be called into action. We begin by the territory north of the pass of Thermopylæ.
Of the different races who dwelt between this celebrated pass and the mouth of the river Peneius, by far the most powerful and important were the Thessalians. Sometimes, indeed, the whole of this area passes under the name of Thessaly,—since nominally, though not always really, the power of the Thessalians extended over the whole. We know that the Trachinian Herakleia, founded by the Lacedæmonians in the early years of the Peloponnesian war, close at the pass of Thermopylæ, was planted upon the territory of the Thessalians.[434] But there were also within these limits other races, inferior and dependent on the Thessalians, yet said to be of more ancient date, and certainly not less genuine subdivisions of the Hellenic name. The Perrhæbi[435] occupied the northern portion of the territory between the lower course of the river Peneius and Mount Olympus. The Magnêtes[436] dwelt along the eastern coast, between Mount Ossa and Pelion on one side and the Ægean on the other, comprising the south-eastern cape and the eastern coast of the gulf of Pagasæ as far as Iôlkos. The Achæans occupied the territory called Phthiôtis, extending from near Mount Pindus on the west to the gulf of Pagasæ on the east,[437]—along the mountain chain of Othrys with its lateral projections northerly into the Thessalian plain, and southerly even to its junction with Œta. The three tribes of the Malians dwelt between Achæa Phthiôtis and Thermopylæ, including both Trachin and Herakleia. Westward of Achæa Phthiôtis, the lofty region of Pindus or Tymphrêstus, with its declivities both westward and eastward, was occupied by the Dolopes.
All these five tribes, or subdivisions,—Perrhæbians, Magnetes, Achæans of Phthiôtis, Malians, and Dolopes, together with certain Epirotic and Macedonian tribes besides, beyond the boundaries of Pindus and Olympus,—were in a state of irregular dependence upon the Thessalians, who occupied the central plain or basin drained by the Peneius. That river receives the streams from Olympus, from Pindus, and from Othrys,—flowing through a region which was supposed by its inhabitants to have been once a lake, until Poseidôn cut open the defile of Tempê, through which the waters found an efflux. In travelling northward from Thermopylæ, the commencement of this fertile region—the amplest space of land continuously productive which Hellas presents—is strikingly marked by the steep rock and ancient fortress of Thaumaki;[438] from whence the traveller, passing over the mountains of Achæa Phthiôtis and Othrys, sees before him the plains and low declivities which reach northward across Thessaly to Olympus. A narrow strip of coast—in the interior of the gulf of Pagasæ, between the Magnêtes and the Achæans, and containing the towns of Amphanæum and Pagasæ[439]—belonged to this proper territory of Thessaly, but its great expansion was inland: within it were situated the cities of Pheræ, Pharsalus, Skotussa, Larissa, Krannôn, Atrax, Pharkadôn, Trikka, Metropolis, Pelinna, etc.
The abundance of corn and cattle from the neighboring plains sustained in these cities a numerous population, and above all a proud and disorderly noblesse, whose manners bore much resemblance to those of the heroic times. They were violent in their behavior, eager in armed feud, but unaccustomed to political discussion or compromise; faithless as to obligations, yet at the same time generous in their hospitalities, and much given to the enjoyments of the table.[440] Breeding the finest horses in Greece, they were distinguished for their excellence as cavalry; but their infantry is little noticed, nor do the Thessalian cities seem to have possessed that congregation of free and tolerably equal citizens, each master of his own arms, out of whom the ranks of hoplites were constituted,—the warlike nobles, such as the Aleuadæ at Larissa, or the Skopadæ at Krannon, despising everything but equestrian service for themselves, furnished, from their extensive herds on the plain, horses for the poorer soldiers. These Thessalian cities exhibit the extreme of turbulent oligarchy, occasionally trampled down by some one man of great vigor, but little tempered by that sense of political communion and reverence for established law, which was found among the better cities of Hellas. Both in Athens and Sparta, so different in many respects from each other, this feeling will be found, if not indeed constantly predominant, yet constantly present and operative. Both of them exhibit a contrast with Larissa or Pheræ not unlike that between Rome and Capua,—the former, with her endless civil disputes constitutionally conducted, admitting the joint action of parties against a common foe; the latter, with her abundant soil enriching a luxurious oligarchy, and impelled according to the feuds of her great proprietors, the Magii, Blossii, and Jubellii.[441]
The Thessalians are, indeed, in their character and capacity as much Epirotic or Macedonian as Hellenic, forming a sort of link between the two. For the Macedonians, though trained in aftertimes upon Grecian principles by the genius of Philip and Alexander, so as to constitute the celebrated heavy-armed phalanx, were originally (even in the Peloponnesian war) distinguished chiefly for the excellence of their cavalry, like the Thessalians;[442] while the broad-brimmed hat, or kausia, and the short spreading-mantle, or chlamys, were common to both.
We are told that the Thessalians were originally emigrants from Thesprotia in Epirus, and conquerors of the plain of the Peneius, which (according to Herodotus) was then called Æolis, and which they found occupied by the Pelasgi.[443] It may be doubted whether the great Thessalian families,—such as the Aleuadæ of Larissa, descendants from Hêraklês, and placed by Pindar on the same level as the Lacedæmonian kings[444]—would have admitted this Thesprotian origin; nor does it coincide with the tenor of those legends which make the eponym, Thessalus, son of Hêraklês. Moreover, it is to be remarked that the language of the Thessalians was Hellenic, a variety of the Æolic dialect;[445] the same (so far as we can make out) as that of the people whom they must have found settled in the country at their first conquest. If then it be true that, at some period anterior to the commencement of authentic history, a body of Thesprotian warriors crossed the passes of Pindus, and established themselves as conquerors in Thessaly, we must suppose them to have been more warlike than numerous, and to have gradually dropped their primitive language.