Ruins of the Temple of Apollo Epicurius, Arcadia
CHAPTER X. THE SMALLER CITIES AND STATES
Aristotle’s survey of the Greek forms of government was founded on a vast store of information which he had collected on the history and constitution of more than a hundred and fifty states, in the mother country and the colonies, and which he had consigned to a great work now unfortunately lost. Our knowledge of the internal conditions and vicissitudes of almost all these states is very scanty and fragmentary: but some of the main facts concerning them, which have been saved from oblivion, will serve to throw light on several parts of the ensuing history.
ARCADIA, ELIS, AND ACHAIA
We have scarcely anything to say, during this period, of the state of parties, or even the forms of government, in Arcadia, Elis, and Achaia. If Arcadia was ever subject to a single king, which seems to be intimated by some accounts of its early history, it was probably only, as in Thessaly, by an occasional election, or a temporary usurpation. The title of king however appears not to have been everywhere abolished down to a much later time, as we find a hint that it was retained at Orchomenos even in the fifth century before our era. That the republican constitutions were long aristocratical can scarcely be doubted, as the two principal Arcadian cities, Tegea and Mantinea, were at first only the chief among several small hamlets, which were at length united in one capital. This, whenever it happened, was a step towards the subversion of aristocratical privileges; and it was no doubt with this view that the five Mantinean villages were incorporated by the Argives, as Strabo mentions without assigning the date of the event. But it is not probable that Argos thus interfered before her own institutions had undergone a like change, which, as we shall see, did not take place before a later period than our history has yet reached. Whether the union of the nine villages, which included Tegea as their chief, was effected earlier or later, does not appear. But, after she had once acknowledged the supremacy of Sparta, Tegea was sheltered by Spartan influence from popular innovations, and was always the less inclined to adopt them when they prevailed at Mantinea: for as the position of the two Arcadian neighbours tended to connect the one with Sparta, and the other with Argos, so it supplied occasion for interminable feuds between them. But, in general, the history of the western states of Arcadia is wrapt in deep obscurity, which was only broken, in the fourth century B.C., by the foundation of a new Arcadian capital.
In Elis the monarchical form of government continued for some generations in the line of Oxylus, but appears to have ceased there earlier than at Pisa, which, at the time when it was conquered and destroyed by the Eleans, was ruled by chiefs, who were probably legitimate kings. Immediately after the conquest, in the fiftieth Olympiad, the dignity of hellanodicæ, which had been held by the kings of Elis, or shared by them with those of Pisa, was assigned to two Elean officers by lot, a proof that royalty was then extinct. The constitution by which it was replaced seems to have been rigidly aristocratical, perhaps no other than the narrow oligarchy described by Aristotle,—who observes that the whole number of citizens exercising any political functions was small—confined, perhaps to the six hundred mentioned by Thucydides; and that the senate, originally composed of ninety members, who held their office for life, and filled up vacancies at their pleasure, had been gradually reduced to a very few. Elis, the capital, remained in a condition like that of the above-mentioned Arcadian towns until the Persian War, when the inhabitants of many villages were collected in its precincts. This was probably attended by other changes of a democratical nature—perhaps by the limitation which one Phormis is said to have effected in the power of the senate—and henceforth the number of the hellanodicæ corresponded to that of the tribes or regions into which the Elean territory was divided; so that, whenever any of these regions was lost by the chance of war, the number of the hellanodicæ was proportionately reduced. So too the matrons who presided at the games in honour of Hera, in which the Elean virgins contended at Olympia, were chosen in equal number from each of the tribes.
In Achaia, the royal dignity was transmitted in the line of Tisamenus down to Ogyges, whose sons, affecting despotic power, were deposed, and the government was changed to a democracy, which is said to have possessed a high reputation. From Pausanias it would rather seem as if the title of king had been held by a number of petty chiefs at once. If so, the revolution must have had its origin in causes more general than those assigned to it by Polybius. It was probably accelerated by the number of Achæan emigrants who sought refuge in Achaia from other parts of the Peloponnesus, and who soon crowded the country, till it was relieved by its Italian colonies. What Polybius and Strabo term a democracy may however have been a polity, or a very liberal and well-tempered form of oligarchy. Of its details we know nothing; nor are we informed in what relation the twelve principal Achaian towns—a division adopted from the Ionians—stood to the hamlets, of which each had seven or eight in its territory, like those of Tegea and Mantinea. As little are we able to describe the constitution of the confederacy in which the twelve states were now united.
ARGOS, ÆGINA, AND EPIDAURUS
More light has been thrown by ancient authors on the history of the states in the northeast quarter of Peloponnesus, those of Argolis in the largest sense of the word. At Argos itself, regal government subsisted down to the Persian wars, although the line of the Heraclid princes appears to have become extinct toward the middle of the preceding century. Pausanias remarks, that, from a very early period, the Argives were led by their peculiarly independent spirit to limit the prerogatives of their kings so narrowly as to leave them little more than the name. We cannot however place much reliance on such a general reflection of a late writer. But we have seen that Phidon, who, about the year 750 B.C., extended the power of Argos farther than any of his predecessors, also stretched the royal authority so much beyond its legitimate bounds, that he is sometimes called a tyrant, though he was rightful heir of Temenus. After his death, as his conquests appear to have been speedily lost, so it is probable that his successors were unable to maintain the ascendancy which he had gained over his Dorian subjects, and the royal dignity may henceforth have been, as Pausanias describes it, little more than a title. Hence, too, on the failure of the ancient line, about B.C. 560, Ægon, though of a different family, may have met with the less opposition in mounting the throne. The substance of power rested with the Dorian freemen: in what manner it was distributed among them we can only conjecture from analogy. Their lands were cultivated by a class of serfs, corresponding to the Spartan helots, who served in war as light-armed troops, whence they derived their peculiar name, “gymnesii.” They were also sovereigns of a few towns, the inhabitants of which, like the Laconians subject to Sparta, though personally free, were excluded from all share in their political privileges. The events which put an end to this state of things, and produced an entire change in the form of government at Argos, will be hereafter related.
Among the states of the Argolic acte, Epidaurus deserves notice, not so much for the few facts which are known of its internal history, as on account of its relation to Ægina. This island, destined to take no inconsiderable part in the affairs of Greece, was long subject to Epidaurus, which was so jealous of her sovereignty as to compel the Æginetans to resort to her tribunals for the trial of their causes. It seems to have been as a dependency of Epidaurus that Ægina fell under the dominion of the Argive Phidon. After recovering her own independence, Epidaurus still continued mistress of the island. Whether she had any subjects on the main land standing on the same footing, we are not expressly informed. But here likewise the ruling class was supported by the services of a population of bondsmen, distinguished by a peculiar name (conipodes, the dusty-footed), designating indeed their rural occupations, but certainly expressive of contempt. Towards the end of the seventh century B.C., and the beginning of the next, Epidaurus was subject to a ruler named Procles, who is styled a tyrant, and was allied with Periander the tyrant of Corinth. But nothing is known as to the origin and nature of his usurpation. He incurred the resentment of his son-in-law Periander, who made himself master of Procles and of Epidaurus. It was perhaps this event which afforded Ægina an opportunity of shaking off the Epidaurian yoke. But, had it been otherwise, the old relation between the two states could not have subsisted much longer. Ægina was rapidly outgrowing the mother country, was engaged in a flourishing commerce, strong in an enterprising and industrious population, enriched and adorned by the arts of peace, and skilled in those of war. The separation which soon after took place was embittered by mutual resentment; and the Æginetans, whose navy soon became the most powerful in Greece, retaliated on Epidaurus for the degradation they had suffered by a series of insults. But the same causes to which they owed their national independence seem to have deprived the class which had been hitherto predominant in Ægina of its political privileges. The island was torn by the opposite claims and interests arising out of the old and the new order of things, and became the scene of a bloody struggle.