The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 03

by Unknown

So much Pausanias has asserted; apparently from the Olympian register, which on other occasions he has quoted. Originally the sacrifices, processions, and various religious ceremonies apparently formed the principal pageantry of the meeting. Afterwards perhaps the games became the greater inducement for the extraordinary resort of company to Olympia; though the religious ceremonies continued still to increase in magnificence as the festival gained importance. The temple, like that of Delphi, became an advantageous repository for treasure. A mart or fair was a natural consequence of a periodical assembly of multitudes in one place; and whatever required extensive publicity, whatever was important for all the scattered members of the Greek nation to know, would be most readily communicated, and most solemnly, by proclamation at the Olympian festival. Hence treaties by mutual agreement were often proclaimed at Olympia; and sometimes columns were erected there at the joint expense of the contracting parties, with the treaties engraved.

Thus the Olympian meeting to a not inconsiderable degree supplied the want of a common capital for the Greek nation; and, with a success far beyond what the worthy founder’s imagination, urged by his warmest wishes, could reach, contributed to the advancement of arts, particularly of the fine arts, of commerce, of science, of civilised manners, of liberal sentiments, and of friendly communication among all the Grecian people. Such was the common feeling of these various advantages, it became established as a divine law that, whatever wars were going forward among the republics, there should be a truce, not only during the festival, but also for some days before and after; so that persons from all parts of Greece might safely attend it.

The advantages and gratifications in which the whole nation thus became interested, and the particular benefits accruing to the Eleans, excited attempts to establish or improve other similar meetings in different parts of Greece. Three of these, the Delphian, Isthmian, and Nemean, though they never equalled the celebrity and splendour of the Olympian, acquired considerable fame and importance. Each was consecrated to a different deity. In the Delphic, next in consideration to the Olympic, Apollo was honoured; the Delphian people were esteemed his ministers; the Amphictyonic council were the allowed protectors and regulators of the institution. The Isthmian had its name from the Corinthian Isthmus, near the middle of which, overlooking the scene of the solemnity, stood a temple of the god Neptune, venerated by the Corinthian people, administrators of the ceremonies, as their patron.

At the Nemean, sacred to Juno, the Argives (who esteemed her the tutelary deity of their state) presided. All these meetings, like the Olympian, were, in war as in peace, open to all Grecian people; the faith of gods as well as of men being considered as plighted for protection of all, under certain rules, going to, staying at, and returning from them. All were also, like the Olympian, held at intervals of four years; so that, taking their years in turn, it was provided that in every summer, in the midst of the military season, there should be a respite of those hostilities among the republics which were otherwise so continually desolating Greece; and though this beneficial regulation was under some pretences occasionally overborne by powerful states, yet the sequel of history shows it to have been of very advantageous efficacy.[c]

MONARCHIES AND OLIGARCHIES

The enterprises of the heroic age, as we see from the example of the Trojan War itself, often led to the extinction, or expulsion, of a royal family, or of its principal members; and no principle appears to have been generally recognised which rendered it necessary, in such cases, to fill a vacant throne or to establish a new dynasty, while every such calamity inevitably weakened the authority of the kings, and made them more dependent on the nobles, who, as an order, were not affected by any disasters to individuals. But the great convulsions which attended the Thessalian, Bœotian, and Dorian migrations, contributed still more effectually to the same end. In most parts of Greece they destroyed or dislodged the line of the ancient kings, who, when they were able to seek new seats, left behind them the treasures and the strongholds which formed the main supports of their power: and, though the conquerors were generally accustomed to a kingly government, it must commonly have lost something of its vigour when transplanted to a new country, where it was subject to new conditions, and where the prince was constantly reminded, by new dangers, of the obligations which he owed to his companions in arms. Yet, even this must be considered rather as the occasion which led to the abolition of the heroic monarchy, than as the cause: that undoubtedly lay much deeper, and is to be sought in the character of the people—in that same energy and versatility which prevented it from ever stiffening, even in its infancy, in the mould of oriental institutions, and from stopping short, in any career which it had once opened, before it had passed through every stage.

It seems to have been seldom, if ever, that royalty was abolished by a sudden and violent revolution; the title often long survived the substance, and this was extinguished only by slow successive steps. These consisted in dividing it among several persons, in destroying its inheritable quality, and making it elective, first in one family, then in more; first for life, then for a certain term; in separating its functions, and distributing them into several hands. In the course of these changes it became more and more responsible to the nobles, and frequently, at a very early stage, the name itself was exchanged for one simply equivalent to ruler, or chief magistrate. The form of government which thus ensued might, with equal propriety, be termed either aristocracy or oligarchy, but, in the use of the terms to which these correspond, the Greek political writers made a distinction, which may at first sight appear more arbitrary than it really is. They taught—not a very recondite truth—that the three forms of government, that of one, that of a few, and that of the many, are all alike right and good, so long as they are rightly administered, with a view, that is, to the welfare of the state, and not to the interest of an individual or of a particular class. But, when any of the three loses sight of its legitimate object, it degenerates into a vicious species, which requires to be marked by a peculiar name. Thus a monarchy, in which selfish aims predominate becomes a tyranny. The government of a few, conducted on like principles, is properly called an oligarchy. But to constitute an aristocracy, it is not sufficient that the ruling few should be animated by a desire to promote the public good: they must also be distinguished by a certain character; for aristocracy signifies the rule of the best men.

More distinctly to understand the peculiar nature of the Greek oligarchies, it is necessary to consider the variety of circumstances under which they arose. By the migrations which took place in the century following the Trojan War, most parts of Greece were occupied by a new race of conquerors. Everywhere their first object was to secure a large portion of the conquered land; but the footing on which they placed themselves, with regard to the ancient inhabitants, was not everywhere the same; it varied according to the temper of the invaders, or of their chiefs, to their relative strength, means, and opportunities. In Sparta, and in most of the Dorian states, the invaders shunned all intermixture with the conquered, and deprived them, if not of personal freedom, of all political rights. But elsewhere, as in Elis, and probably in Bœotia, no such distinction appears to have been made; the old and the new people gradually melted into one.

An oligarchy, in the sense which we have assigned to the word, could only exist where there was an inferior body which felt itself aggrieved by being excluded from the political rights which were reserved to the privileged few. Such a feeling of discontent might be roused by the rapacity or insolence of the dominant order, as we shall find to have happened at Athens, and as was the case at Mytilene, where some members of the ruling house of the Penthilids went about with clubs, committing outrages like those which Nero practised for a short time in the streets of Rome. But, without any such provocation, disaffection might arise from the cause which we shall see producing a revolution at Corinth, where the aristocracy was originally established on a basis too narrow to be durable: as Aristotle relates of the Basilids at Erythræ, that, though they exercised their power well, they could not retain it, because the people would no longer endure that it should be lodged in so few hands. In general however it was a gradual, inevitable change in the relative position of the higher and lower orders, which converted the aristocracy into an oligarchical faction, and awakened an opposition which usually ended in its overthrow.