Comparing the several states of Greece together, it is customary to bestow the palm of energy and military valour upon the Spartans, who made war their sole profession, and passed their lives as it were in the camp from the cradle to the grave. But, in thus deciding, justice is scarcely done to the character of Athens; for, if the former excelled in discipline, to the latter belonged, indisputably, the superiority in native courage. Trained or not trained they faced whatever enemy presented himself, and won at least as many laurels from Sparta, on the ocean, as the Doric State, in all its wars, ever gathered on land. And, lastly, at Platæa, among which race, among Ionians or Dorians, was most activity manifested? In whose ranks was found the greatest ardour to engage? Who bore the first brunt of the Median horse, and broke the dreaded shock of that vaunted Asiatic chivalry which the Barbarian hoped would have trampled down with its innumerable hoofs the spirit of Grecian freedom? This was effected by the Athenians; by those gay and seemingly effeminate soldiers, who went forth from their beautiful city curled, perfumed, clad in purple, as to the mimic combats of the theatre. The spirit of their commonwealth, all splendour without and all energy within, urged them to the field. Their cry at the approach of the king was “Freedom or honourable graves!”—such as their countrymen had ever been wont to repose in.
In fact, the Athenians, under a free government, had learned what it was to live—had imbibed from their education the feeling, that if deprived of such a government, if reduced to bow beneath the yoke of despotism, to die, if the Apostle’s words may without blame be thus applied, would be gain. It will readily be conceived that the citizens of such a state felt an impassioned attachment to their country,—an attachment unintelligible to persons living under any other form of civil polity. Athens was the cradle of their freedom and their happiness. There was a religion in the love they bore it; they had, according to mythical traditions, which they believed, sprung on that spot from the bosom of the earth. It stood, therefore to them in the dearest of all relations, being, to sum up everything holy in one word,—their Mother; and they embodied their profound veneration for the sacred spot in every fond, every endearing, epithet their matchless language could supply. Even the gods, in their patriotic partiality, were believed to look on Athens as the most lovely, no less than the most glorious city on the broad earth,—an idea which they expressed by representing Poseidon and Athena contending for the honour of becoming their tutelar divinity.
To persons so thinking no calamity short of the entire extinction of their race could appear so intolerable as beholding that sacred city, with the tombs of their ancestors, the sanctuaries of their gods, the venerable but immoveable symbols of their faith and mythological history, delivered over to be trodden down or obliterated with sword and fire by barbarian slaves, strong only from their countless numbers. Yet even to this did the love of freedom reconcile the Athenian people. They abandoned their holy place, and, embarking on board the fleet with their wives and children, took refuge in Trœzen and Salamis. History has described in touching language the circumstances of this event, than which it has nothing more pathetic to record save, peradventure, the carrying away of Judea and her children into captivity. I will not disturb its archaic simplicity. No eloquence could heighten its effect. It goes at once to the heart and rouses our noblest sympathies. “The embarkation of the people of Athens was a very affecting scene. What pity, what admiration of the firmness of those men who, sending their parents and families to a distant place, unmoved with their cries and embraces, had the fortitude to leave the city and embark for Salamis! What greatly heightened the distress was the number of citizens whom, on account of their extreme old age, they were forced to leave behind. And some emotions of tenderness were due even to the tame domestic animals which, running to the shore with lamentable howlings, expressed their affection and regret for the persons by whom they had been fed. One of these, a dog belonging to Xanthippos, the father of Pericles, unwilling to be left, is said to have leaped into the sea and to have swam by the side of the galley till it reached Salamis, where, quite spent with toil, it immediately died. And they show, to this day, a place called Cynossema—‘the dog’s grave’—where they tell us it was buried.”[[1]]
The Athenian people, on this and similar occasions, were enabled to resolve and perform boldly from the generous spirit inspired by their national system of education. Their institutions, also, were eminently calculated to bring into play the energies of every individual citizen, and to diffuse in consequence through the whole community a grandeur of sentiment and an heroic enthusiasm peculiar to free states. At Athens whoever possessed the means of serving his country could easily, whatever might be his rank, make those means known, and bring them into operation. If he were virtuous his virtue was remarked and placed him on the road to promotion. If genius constituted his title to distinction, if nature had gifted him with the power to serve the state, the state, without inquiry whether he were poor or rich, readily availed itself of his capacity, rewarded him during his life with political honours and authority, and, after his death, with imperishable glory. If in war he performed any act of superior conduct or courage, a general’s name was his reward; if he received wounds that name, or the hope of it, healed them; if in the achieving of any heroic deed he perished, his country, he knew, would honour his ashes, watch over his memory, and, with words powerfully soothing because embodying a nation’s sympathy, dry up the tears of his parents and beloved children. He knew that his glory, heightened by matchless masters of eloquence, would flash like lightning from the bema; that lovely bosoms would beat high at his name; that hands, the fairest in Greece, would yearly wreath his tomb with garlands; and that tears would be shed for ever on the spot by the brave.
If children remained behind him, the state would become their parent; every Athenian would share with them his salt; would impart to them their best inheritance—the feeling of patriotism and an inextinguishable hatred of tyranny; would repeat to them with unenvious pride the eulogy of their father, and point daily to the laurels which kept his grave ever green. The Athenian was taught, from the cradle, to consider death beautiful when met on the red battle-field in defence of his home. And, according to the creed of his country, he believed that his spirit would in such an event be numbered among the objects of public worship. Hence the sublimity, the thrilling power of that oath in Demosthenes, who, in swearing by the souls of those that fell at Marathon, accomplished their apotheosis and placed them among the gods of Athens.
That such were the habitual feelings of this most gallant and generous-minded people appears even from the admission of their bitterest enemies. “They,” observe, in Thucydides, the Corinthian ambassadors, when urging Sparta into the Peloponnesian war,—"they push victory to the utmost, and are least of all men dejected by defeat; exposing their bodies for their country as if they had no interest in them, yet applying their minds in the public service as if that and their private interest were one. Disappointment of a proposed acquisition they consider as a loss of what already belonged to them; success in any pursuit they esteem only as a step towards farther advantages; and, defeated in any attempt, they turn immediately to some new project by which to make themselves amends: insomuch, that, through their celerity in executing whatever they propose, they seem to have the peculiar faculty of at the same time hoping and possessing. Thus they continue ever amid labours and dangers, enjoying nothing through sedulity to acquire; esteeming that only a time of festival in which they are prosecuting their projects; and holding rest as a greater evil than the most laborious business. To sum up their character, it may be truly said, that they were born neither to enjoy quiet themselves, nor to suffer others to enjoy it."[[2]]
The feeling that what they fought for was their own, which accounts for the heroism of Hellenic armies, likewise led, particularly at Athens, to the beautifying and adorning of the city, and the perfection of public taste. The people saw among them no palaces devoted to the private luxuries of a despotic court, where persons maintained at the public expense learn to look with contempt on the honest hands that support them. There, whatever was magnificent belonged to the people at large, no private individuals, during the best ages of the commonwealth, presuming, how great soever might be their talents or their influence, to arrogate to themselves more than can be due to individuals, or to enshrine their perishable bodies in buildings suited only to the worship of God. Yet, in genuine grandeur, no monarch, with the wealth of half a world at the disposal of his caprice, ever rivalled the Athenian people. True taste, the genuine sense of the beautiful and the sublime, will, while the world endures, refuse to be the subject of a tyrant, or to inhabit the same city with him; because no patronage, pensions, or lavish expenditure, can create in one state of society what belongs to another; and pure taste being nothing more than the cultivated popular feeling spontaneously expanding, can nowhere exist but in a free state. A prince may, doubtless, know what pleases him; but the people only can tell what pleases the people, which nothing certainly will unless it be produced expressly for them, without the slightest reference to any other person.
Such, in the best periods of Grecian history, were the Athenians. Among them Nature generally was allowed to make herself heard; from the cradle upwards it was their guide. A pure religion they had not, or pure morality. Far from it; they barely caught indistinct glimpses of what in faith and practice is true and beautiful. Nor could it be otherwise; for the sun had not then risen, and men but felt their way uncertainly and timidly amid the obscurities of the dawn. Nevertheless, the light vouchsafed them they did not spurn. According to the best notions then prevailing, they were of all men the most pious; and though of this piety much, nay, the greater part, was superstition, yet, doubtless, God, according to the saying of the Apostle, accounted it unto them for righteousness, that, having not the law, they were a law unto themselves.
The Spartans, on the other hand, were mere monastic soldiers, brave, indeed, and true as their swords, but ungifted with those loftier and more exquisite sympathies which properly constitute the beauty of human character, and are alone the parents of love. Few, perhaps, were all things within their reach, would choose to be citizens of Sparta; while no one, for whom the poetry of life has any charms, would hesitate, after his own country, perhaps, to select Athens for his home. And that this is no scholastic fancy created by literary preferences is clear from the practice of antiquity. Every man possessing superior genius, whether sprung from Ionic or Doric race, betook himself to Athens, as to the Greece of Greece—the common country of letters, sciences, and arts. Thither, too, as now to London, fled the oppressed and persecuted of all lands, and there they found welcome and encouragement. It was the great asylum, the common city of refuge to all men. Strangers who could be content with hospitality and generous protection were never driven from thence. There every man might live as he pleased, think as he pleased, and utter freely what he thought. The recorded instances of persecution are barely sufficiently numerous to serve as exceptions to the general rule; and in Gorgias of Leontium, Polos, Protagoras, Prodicos, Hippias, “and what the Cynic impudence uttered,” we discover to how great an extent the spirit of toleration was carried at Athens. It would be absurd to object the examples of Anaxagoras, Aspasia, and Socrates; for these were merely instances of the rage of party spirit, from which, while men continue men, no state will ever be free, and can no more be imputed to the Athenian people, or to the spirit of their government, than the execution of Sir Thomas More, or Cranmer, or Fisher, can be laid to the charge of the English Constitution.