The Grecian inhabitants of the Chersonese readily joined the Athenians in expelling the Persians, who, taken altogether by surprise, had been constrained to throw themselves into Sestus, without stores of provisions or means of making a long defence. But of all the Chersonesites the most forward and exasperated were the inhabitants of Elæus,—the southernmost town of the peninsula, celebrated for its tomb, temple, and sacred grove of the hero Protesilaus, who figured in the Trojan legend as the foremost warrior in the host of Agamemnon to leap ashore, and as the first victim to the spear of Hektor. The temple of Protesilaus, conspicuously placed on the sea-shore,[413] was a scene of worship and pilgrimage not merely for the inhabitants of Elæus, but also for the neighboring Greeks generally, insomuch that it had been enriched with ample votive offerings, and probable deposits for security,—money, gold and silver saucers, brazen implements, robes, and various other presents. The story ran, that when Xerxes was on his march across the Hellespont into Greece, Artayktês, greedy of all this wealth, and aware that the monarch would not knowingly permit the sanctuary to be despoiled, preferred a wily request to him: “Master, here is the house of a Greek, who, in invading thy territory, met his just reward and perished: I pray thee give his house to me, in order that people may learn for the future not to invade thy land,”—the whole soil of Asia being regarded by the Persian monarchs as their rightful possession, and Protesilaus having been in this sense an aggressor against them. Xerxes, interpreting the request literally, and not troubling himself to ask who the invader was, consented: upon which, Artayktês, while the army were engaged in their forward march into Greece, stripped the sacred grove of Protesilaus, carrying all the treasures to Sestus. Nor was he content without still farther outraging Grecian sentiment: he turned cattle into the grove, ploughed and sowed it, and was even said to have profaned the sanctuary by visiting it with his concubines.[414] Such proceedings were more than enough to raise the strongest antipathy against him among the Chersonesite Greeks, who now crowded to reinforce the Athenians and blocked him up in Sestus. After a certain length of siege, the stock of provisions in the town failed, and famine began to make itself felt among the garrison, which nevertheless still held out, by painful shifts and endurance, until a late period in the autumn, when the patience even of the Athenian besiegers was well-nigh exhausted; nor was it without difficulty that the leaders repressed the clamorous desire manifested in their own camp to return to Athens.
Impatience having been appeased, and the seamen kept together, the siege was pressed without relaxation, and presently the privations of the garrison became intolerable; so that Artayktês and Œobazus were at last reduced to the necessity of escaping by stealth, letting themselves down with a few followers from the wall at a point where it was imperfectly blockaded. Œobazus found his way into Thrace, where, however, he was taken captive by the Absinthian natives and offered up as a sacrifice to their god Pleistôrus: Artayktês fled northward along the shores of the Hellespont, but was pursued by the Greeks, and made prisoner near Ægos Potamos, after a strenuous resistance. He was brought with his son in chains to Sestus, which immediately after his departure had been cheerfully surrendered by its inhabitants to the Athenians. It was in vain that he offered a sum of one hundred talents as compensation to the treasury of Protesilaus, and a farther sum of two hundred talents to the Athenians as personal ransom for himself and his son. So deep was the wrath inspired by his insults to the sacred ground, that both the Athenian commander Xanthippus and the citizens of Elæus disdained everything less than a severe and even cruel personal atonement for the outraged Protesilaus. Artayktês, after having first seen his son stoned to death before his eyes, was hung up to a lofty board fixed for the purpose, and left to perish, on the spot where the Xerxeian bridge had been fixed.[415] There is something in this proceeding more Oriental than Grecian: it is not in the Grecian character to aggravate death by artificial and lingering preliminaries.
After the capture of Sestus, the Athenian fleet returned home with their plunder, towards the commencement of winter, not omitting to carry with them the vast cables of the Xerxeian bridge, which had been taken in the town, as a trophy to adorn the acropolis of Athens.[416]
CHAPTER XLIII.
EVENTS IN SICILY DOWN TO THE EXPULSION OF THE GELONIAN DYNASTY AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF POPULAR GOVERNMENTS THROUGHOUT THE ISLAND.
I have already mentioned, in the third volume of this history, the foundation of the Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily, together with the general fact, that in the sixth century before the Christian era, they were among the most powerful and flourishing cities that bore the Hellenic name. Beyond this general fact, we obtain little insight into their history.
Though Syracuse, after it fell into the hands of Gelo, about 485 B. C., became the most powerful city in Sicily, yet in the preceding century Gela and Agrigentum, on the south side of the island, had been its superiors. The latter, within a few years of its foundation, fell under the dominion of one of its own citizens, named Phalaris; a despot energetic, warlike, and cruel. An exile from Astypalæa near Rhodes, but a rich man, and an early settler at Agrigentum, he contrived to make himself despot, seemingly, about the year 570 B. C. He had been named to one of the chief posts in the city, and having undertaken at his own cost the erection of a temple to Zeus Polieus in the acropolis (as the Athenian Alkmæônids rebuilt the burnt temple of Delphi), he was allowed on this pretence to assemble therein a considerable number of men; whom he armed, and availed himself of the opportunity of a festival of Dêmêtêr to turn them against the people. He is said to have made many conquests over the petty Sikan communities in the neighborhood: but exaction and cruelties towards his own subjects are noticed as his most prominent characteristic, and his brazen bull passed into imperishable memory. This piece of mechanism was hollow, and sufficiently capacious to contain one or more victims inclosed within it, to perish in tortures when the metal was heated: the cries of these suffering prisoners passed for the roarings of the animal. The artist was named Perillus, and is said to have been himself the first person burnt in it, by order of the despot. In spite of the odium thus incurred, Phalaris maintained himself as despot for sixteen years; at the end of which period a general rising of the people, headed by a leading man named Telemachus, terminated both his reign and his life.[417] Whether Telemachus became despot or not, we have no information: sixty years afterwards, we shall find his descendant Thêron established in that position.
It was about the period of the death of Phalaris that the Syracusans reconquered their revolted colony of Kamarina (in the southeast of the island between Syracuse and Gela), expelled or dispossessed the inhabitants, and resumed the territory.[418] With the exception of this accidental circumstance, we are without information about the Sicilian cities until a time rather before 500 B. C., just when the war between Kroton and Sybaris had extinguished the power of the latter, and when the despotism of the Peisistratids at Athens had been exchanged for the democratical constitution of Kleisthenês. The first forms of government among the Sicilian Greeks, as among the cities of Greece Proper in the early historical age, appear to have been all oligarchical: we do not know under what particular modifications, but probably all more or less resembling that of Syracuse, where the Gamori—or wealthy proprietors descended from the original colonizing chiefs—possessing large landed properties titled by a numerous Sikel serf population called Kyllyrii, formed the qualified citizens, out of whom, as well as by whom, magistrates and generals were chosen; while the Demos, or non-privileged freemen, comprised the small proprietary cultivators who maintained themselves, by manual labor and without slaves, from their own lands or gardens, together with the artisans and tradesmen. In the course of two or three generations, many individuals of the privileged class would have fallen into poverty and would find themselves more nearly on a par with the non-privileged; while such members of the latter as might rise to opulence were not for that reason admitted into the privileged body. Here were ample materials for discontent: ambitious leaders, often themselves members of the privileged body, put themselves at the head of the popular opposition, overthrew the oligarchy, and made themselves despots; democracy being at that time hardly known anywhere in Greece. The general fact of this change, preceded by occasional violent dissensions among the privileged class themselves,[419] is all that we are permitted to know, without those modifying circumstances by which it must have been accompanied in every separate city. Towards or near the year 500 B. C., we find Anaxilaus despot at Rhegium, Skythês at Zanklê, Têrillus at Himera, Peithagoras at Selinus, Kleander at Gela, and Panætius at Leontini.[420] It was about the year 509 B. C. that the Spartan prince Dorieus conducted a body of emigrants to the territories of Eryx and Egesta, near the northwestern corner of the island, in hopes of expelling the non-Hellenic inhabitants and founding a new Grecian colony. But the Carthaginians, whose Sicilian possessions were close adjoining, and who had already aided in driving Dorieus from a previous establishment at Kinyps in Libya,—now lent such vigorous assistance to the Egestæan inhabitants, that the Spartan prince, after a short period of prosperity, was defeated and slain with most of his companions: such of them as escaped, under the orders of Euryleon, took possession of Minoa, which bore from henceforward the name of Herakleia,[421]—a colony and dependency of the neighboring town of Selinus, of which Peithagoras was then despot. Euryleon joined the malcontents at Selinus, overthrew Peithagoras, and established himself as despot, until, after a short possession of power, he was slain in a popular mutiny.[422]
We are here introduced to the first known instance of that series of contests between the Phenicians and Greeks in Sicily, which, like the struggles between the Saracens and the Normans in the eleventh and twelfth centuries after the Christian era, were destined to determine whether the island should be a part of Africa or a part of Europe,—and which were only terminated, after the lapse of three centuries, by the absorption of both into the vast bosom of Rome. It seems that the Carthaginians and Egestæans not only overwhelmed Dorieus, but also made some conquests of the neighboring Grecian possessions, which were subsequently recovered by Gelo of Syracuse.[423]
Not long after the death of Dorieus, Kleander, despot of Gela, began to raise his city to ascendency over the other Sicilian Greeks, who had hitherto been, if not all equal, at least all independent. His powerful mercenary force, levied in part among the Sikel tribes,[424] did not preserve him from the sword of a Geloan citizen named Sabyllus, who slew him after a reign of seven years: but it enabled his brother and successor Hippokratês to extend his dominion over nearly half of the island. In that mercenary force two officers, Gelo and Ænesidêmus (the latter a citizen of Agrigentum, of the conspicuous family of the Emmenidæ, and descended from Telemachus, the deposer of Phalaris), particularly distinguished themselves. Gelo was descended from a native of Têlos near the Triopian cape, one of the original settlers who accompanied the Rhodian Antiphêmus to Sicily. His immediate ancestor, named Têlinês, had first raised the family to distinction, by valuable aid to a defeated political party, who had been worsted in a struggle, and forced to seek shelter in the neighboring town of Maktorium. Têlinês was possessed of certain peculiar sacred rites (or visible and portable holy symbols, with a privileged knowledge of the ceremonial acts and formalities of divine service under which they were to be shown) for propitiating the subterranean goddesses, Dêmêtêr and Persephonê; “from whom he obtained them, or how he got at them himself (says Herodotus) I cannot say:” but such was the imposing effect of his presence and manner of exhibiting them, that he ventured to march into Gela at the head of the exiles from Maktorium, and was enabled to reinstate them in power,—deterring the people from resistance in the same manner as the Athenians had been overawed by the spectacle of Phyê-Athênê in the chariot along with Peisistratus. The extraordinary boldness of this proceeding excites the admiration of Herodotus, especially as he had been informed that Têlinês was of an unwarlike temperament: the restored exiles rewarded it by granting to him, and to his descendants after him, the hereditary dignity of hierophants of the two goddesses,[425]—a function certainly honorable, and probably lucrative, connected with the administration of consecrated property and with the enjoyment of a large portion of its fruits.