Athens. We now turn to Athens, long the principal seat of Grecian learning. Athens is said to have been founded by Cecrops, 1550 B. C., and in the most ancient times was called Cecropia. It probably received the name of Athens from the goddess Minerva, who was called also Athena, by the Greeks, and to whom an elegant temple had been erected in the city. The old city spread from the mount of the Acropolis over a wide and pleasant vale or low peninsula, formed by the junction of the Cephesus and Ilissus. Its distance from the sea-coast was about five miles. In the course of time Athens became populous and surpassingly elegant in its architecture, while its citizens contrived to take a lead in the affairs of the communities around. At first they were governed by kings, but, as in the case of the Spartan citizens, they became dissatisfied with their existing constitution, and about the year 600 B. C. invited Solon, one of the wisest men in Greece, to reörganize their political constitution. Solon obeyed the summons, and constituted the government on a broad republican basis, with a council of state, forming a judicial court, consisting of 400 members, and called the Areopagus. This court of Areopagus besides its other duties, exercised a censorship over public morals, and was empowered to punish impiety, profligacy, and even idleness. To this court every citizen was bound to make an annual statement of his income, and the sources from which it was derived. The court was long regarded with very great respect, and the right was accorded to it of not only revising the sentences pronounced by the other criminal tribunals, but even of annulling the judicial decrees of the general assembly of the people. The regulations of Solon were not maintained for any great length of time, although the republican form of government, in one shape or other, continued as long as the country maintained its independence. Clesthenes, the leader of a party, enlarged the democratic principle in the state; he introduced the practice of ostracism, by which any person might be banished for ten years, without being accused of any crime, if the Athenians apprehended that he had acquired too much influence, or harbored designs against the public liberty. Ostracism was so called, because the citizens, in voting for its infliction, wrote the name of the obnoxious individual upon a shell (ostreon). It is said that Clesthenes was the first victim of his own law, as has happened in several other remarkable cases, ancient and modern.

For a period of about two centuries after the settlement of a republican constitution, there is little of importance to relate in Athenian history. Athens was gradually enlarged, the taste for refinement increased, and various men of sagacious understanding, entitled Philosophers, began to devote themselves to inquiries into the nature of the human mind and the character of the Deity. The principal Grecian philosopher who flourished in this era (550 B. C.) was Pythagoras, a man of pure and exalted ideas, and an able expounder of the science of mind.

THIRD PERIOD OF HISTORY

The year 490 B. C. closes the gradually-improving period in Grecian history, or second period, as it has been termed; and now commenced an era marked by the important event of an invasion from a powerful Asiatic sovereign.

Persian Invasion. Darius, king of Persia, having imagined the possibility of conquering Greece, sent an immense army against it in the year just mentioned. Greatly alarmed at the approach of such an enemy, the Athenians applied to the Spartans for aid; but that people had a superstition which prohibited their taking the field before the moon was at the full, and as at the time of the application it still wanted five days of that period, they therefore delayed the march of their troops. Being thus refused all assistance from their neighbors, the Athenians were left to depend entirely on their own courage and resources. A more remarkable instance of a small state endeavoring to oppose the wicked aggression of an overgrown power, has seldom occurred in ancient or modern times; but the constant exercises and training of the Athenian population enabled them to present a bold and by no means contemptible front to the invader. War had been their principal employment, and in the field they displayed their noblest qualities. They were unacquainted with those highly-disciplined evolutions which give harmony and concert to numerous bodies of men; but what was wanting in skill they supplied by courage. The Athenian, and also other Greek soldiers, marched to the field in a deep phalanx, rushed impetuously to the attack, and bravely closed with their enemies. Each warrior was firmly opposed to his antagonist, and compelled by necessity to the same exertions of valor as if the fortune of the day depended on his single arm. The principal weapon was a spear, which, thrown by the nervous and well-directed vigor of a steady hand, often penetrated the firmest shields and bucklers. When they missed their aim, or when the stroke proved ineffectual through want of force, they drew their swords, and summoning their utmost resolution, darted impetuously on the foe. This mode of war was common to the soldiers and generals, the latter being as much distinguished in battle by their strength and courage as their skill and conduct. The Greeks had bows, slings, and darts, intended for the practice of distant hostility; but their chief dependence was on the spear and sword. Their defensive armor consisted of a bright helmet, adorned with plumes, and covering the head, a strong corslet defending the breast, greaves of brass decending the leg to the feet, and an ample shield, loosely attached to the left shoulder and arm, which turned in all directions, and opposed its firm resistance to every hostile assault. With men thus organized and accoutred, a battle consisted of so many duels, and the combatants fought with all the keenness of personal resentment. The slaughter in such engagements was correspondingly great, the fight seldom terminating till one of the parties was nearly destroyed, or at least greatly reduced in numbers.

It was a people so animated and prepared that the hosts of Persia were about to encounter. Compelled to meet the invaders unassisted, the Athenians were able to march an army of only 9000 men, exclusive of about as many light-armed slaves, into the field. With Miltiades as their leader and commander-in-chief, they met the Persians in battle on the plain of Marathon, thirty miles from Athens, and by great skill and courage, and the force of their close phalanx of spearmen, completely conquered them. Upwards of 6000 Persians were slain on the field, while the number killed of the Athenians was but 192. This is reckoned by historians one of the most important victories in ancient times, for it saved the independence of the whole of Greece. To the disgrace of the fickle Athenians, they afterwards showed the greatest ingratitude to Miltiades, and put him in prison on a charge of favoring the Persians. He died there the year after his great victory. Soon after, the citizens of Athens, on a plea equally unfounded, banished Aristides, an able leader of the aristocratic party in the state, and who, from his strict integrity and wisdom, was usually entitled ‘Aristides the Just.’ On the banishment of this eminent individual, Themistocles, a person who was more democratic in his sentiments, became the leader of the councils of the Athenians. Meanwhile the Grecian liberties were again menaced by the Persians. Xerxes, son of Darius, marched an army across the Hellespont by a bridge of boats from the Asiatic shore, and led it towards the southern part of Greece. The utmost force that the confederate Greeks could oppose to the countless host of Persians, did not exceed 60,000 men. Of these, a band of Spartans, numbering 8,000 soldiers, under Leonidas their king, was posted at the pass of Thermopylae, to intercept the enemy, and here they discomfited every successive column of the Persians as it entered the defile. Ultimately, foreseeing certain destruction, Leonidas commanded all to retire but 300, with whom he proposed to give the Persians some idea of what the Greeks could submit to for the sake of their country. He and his 300 were cut off to a man. Xerxes took possession of Attica and Athens, but in the naval battle with the Athenian fleet at Salamis, which occurred soon after [October 20, 480 B. C.], his army was utterly routed, and its scattered remains retreated into Asia.

By this splendid victory the naval power of Persia was almost annihilated, and the spirit of its monarch so completely humbled, that he durst no longer undertake offensive operations against Greece. Here, therefore, the war ought to have terminated; but so great and valuable had been the spoils obtained by the confederate forces, that they were unwilling to relinquish such a profitable contest. The war, therefore, was continued for twenty years longer, less, apparently, for the chastisement of Persia, than for the plunder of her conquered provinces.

But now that all danger was over, many of the smaller states, whose population was scanty, began to grow weary of the contest, and to furnish with reluctance their annual contingent of men to reinforce the allied fleet. It was, in consequence, arranged that those states whose citizens were unwilling to perform personal service, should send merely their proportion of vessels, and pay into the common treasury an annual subsidy, for the maintenance of the sailors with whom the Athenians undertook to man the fleet. The unforeseen but natural consequence of this was the establishment of the complete supremacy of Athens. The annual subsidies gradually assumed the character of a regular tribute, and were compulsorily levied as such; while the recusant communities, deprived of their fleets, which had been given up to the Athenians, were unable to offer effectual resistance to the oppressive exactions of the dominant state. The Athenians were thus raised to an unprecedented pitch of power and opulence, and enabled to adorn their city, to live in dignified idleness, and to enjoy a constant succession of the most costly public amusements, at the expense of the vanquished Persians, and of the scarcely more leniently-treated communities of the dependent confederacy.

Pericles. We have arrived at the most flourishing period of Athenian history, during which Pericles rose to distinction, and greatly contributed to the beautifying of the capital. The talents of Pericles were of the very first order, and they had been carefully cultivated by the ablest tutorage which Greece could afford. After serving for several years in the Athenian army, he ventured to take a part in the business of the popular assembly, and his powerful eloquence soon gained him an ascendancy in the national councils; and his power, in fact, became as great as that of an absolute monarch (445 B. C.). Some of the most interesting events of Grecian history now occurred. After a number of years of general peace, a dispute between the state of Corinth and its dependency the island of Corcyra (now Corfu), gave rise to a war which again disturbed the repose of all the Grecian states. Corcyra was a colony of Corinth, but having, by its maritime skill and enterprise, raised itself to a higher pitch of opulence than its parent city, it not only refused to acknowledge Corinthian supremacy, but went to war with that state on a question respecting the government of Epidammus, a colony which the Corcyreans had planted on the coast of Illyria. Corinth applied for and obtained aid from several of the Peloponnesian states to reduce the Corcyreans to subjection; while Corcyra, on the other hand, concluded a defensive alliance with Athens, which sent a fleet to assist the island in vindicating its independence. By way of punishing the Athenians for intermeddling in the quarrel, the Corinthians stirred up a revolt in Potidæa, a town of Chalcidice, near the confines of Macedonia, which had originally been a colony of Corinth, but was at this time a tributary of Athens. The Athenians immediately despatched a fleet and army for the reduction of Potidæa, and the Peloponnesians were equally prompt in sending succors to the city. The Corinthians, meanwhile, were actively engaged in endeavoring to enlist in their cause those states which had not yet taken a decided part in the dispute. To Lacedæmon, in particular, they sent ambassadors to complain of the conduct of the Athenians, which they characterized as a violation of a universally-recognised law of Grecian policy—​that no state should interfere between another and its dependencies. The efforts of the Corinthians were successful, and almost all the Peloponnesian states, headed by Sparta, together with many of those beyond the isthmus, formed themselves into a confederacy for the purpose of going to war with Athens. Argos and Achaia at first remained neuter. Corcyra, Acarnania, some of the cities of Thessaly, and those of Platæa and Naupactus, were all that took part with the Athenians.

Pericles beheld without dismay the gathering of the storm, but his countrymen were not equally undaunted. They perceived that they were about to be called upon to exchange the idle and luxurious life they were at present leading for one of hardship and danger, and they began to murmur against their political leader for involving them in so alarming a quarrel. They had not at first the courage to impeach Pericles himself, but vented their displeasure against his friends and favorites. Phidias, a very eminent sculptor, whom the great statesman had appointed superintendent of public buildings, was condemned to imprisonment on a frivolous charge; and the philosopher Anaxagoras, the preceptor and friend of Pericles, was charged with disseminating opinions subversive of the national religion, and banished from Athens. Respecting another celebrated individual who at this time fell under persecution, it becomes necessary to say a few words. Aspasia of Miletus was a woman of remarkable beauty and brilliant talents, but she wanted that chastity which is the greatest of feminine graces, and by her dissolute life was rendered a reproach, as she would otherwise have been an ornament, to her sex. This remarkable woman having come to reside in Athens, attracted the notice of Pericles, who was so much fascinated by her beauty, wit and eloquence, that, after separating from his wife, with whom he had lived unhappily, he married Aspasïa. It was generally believed that for the gratification of a private grudge, she had instigated Pericles to quarrel with the Peloponnesian states, and her unpopularity on this score was the true cause of her being now accused, before the assembly of the people, of impiety and grossly-immoral practices. Pericles conducted her defense in person, and plead for her with so much earnestness, that he was moved even to tears. The people, either finding the accusations to be really unfounded, or unable to resist the eloquence of Pericles, acquitted Aspasia. His enemies next directed their attack against himself. They accused him of embezzling the public money; but he completely rebutted the charge, and proved that he had drawn his income from no other source than his private estate. His frugal and unostentatious style of living must have of itself gone far to convince the Athenians of the honesty with which he had administered the public affairs; for while he was filling the city with temples, porticoes, and other magnificent works of art, and providing many costly entertainments for the people, his own domestic establishment was regulated with such strict attention to economy, that the members of his family complained of a parsimony which formed a marked contrast to the splendor in which many of the wealthy Athenians then lived.