The situation of Sparta in these times is a strange one. The laws of Lycurgus and the old forms still linger there, but the old spirit has gone out, even to the last trace. It is a reign of the basest immorality. The citizens have dwindled to a few hundreds, the constitution of Lycurgus, formally observed, is a lie. The narrower the intellectual circle in which thought may move, the cruder must be the notions that obtain. Literature and science, the comfort and hope of the rest of Greece, were still, even to this day, proscribed in Sparta. Sparta had no other interest in the situation except that in her dominion was the universal recruiting ground for all parties—the peninsula of Tænarus—and distinguished Spartans were always glad to take the field as mercenaries. Even the son of the aged king Cleomenes II, Acrotatus, led a mercenary army to Tarentum and Sicily in 315, revolting those in whose pay he fought by his bloodthirsty savagery and his unnatural passions. He came home to Sparta dishonoured, and died before he could inherit from his father.
At the death of Cleomenes (309), Cleonymus, a worthy brother to Acrotatus in dissoluteness and arrogance, demanded the kingdom; the Gerousia decided in favour of the young son of Acrotatus, Areus, and after a few years Cleonymus entered the service of Tarentum with a force of mercenaries, to bring the name of Sparta into ignominy by behaving even worse than his brother. At home the power of the kings, since the state no longer existed for its business of war, was as good as gone. The ephorate ruled as an oligarchy, and the oligarchy wanted nothing but quiet and pleasure, wrapped up in the dead laws of Lycurgus; nothing was further from their thoughts than the idea of winning again their old hegemony, at least in the Peloponnese—an idea which might now have been justified by the distraction of Greece and the strife of parties that was bursting afresh into flames.
ATHENS UNDER DEMETRIUS; SPARTA BEHIND WALLS
Athens affords us the most vivid glimpse into this unhappy time. How often had the ruling party and the policy of the city changed since the battle of Chæronea. At last in the autumn of 318, after the victory of Cassander, the state was given a form which was anything but a democracy. The man whom the people chose, and Cassander confirmed, as state administrator, was Demetrius, the son of Phanostratus of Phalerus. He had grown up in the house of Timotheus and had been educated in science and for a political life by Theophrastus. He was a man as talented as he was vain, as versatile in the realm of letters as he was politically characterless—for the rest, a man of the world and its pleasures, who fell on his feet wherever he was.
It may be that in his early years he had lived like a philosopher, that his table was laid very frugally, “only with olives in vinegar and cheese from the islands.” And then too, when he became master of the state he showed himself, according to some, a humane, clear-sighted, excellent statesman; while others declare that he spent but a small proportion of the city’s income (which with subsidies from Egypt and Macedonia he had raised to twelve hundred talents) in administration and in keeping the city well prepared for war; the rest went partly in public festivities and splendour, and partly in his own riotous and dissolute living. He that would pose in his ordinances as a reformer of Athenian morals, corrupted morals by his more than doubtful example. Every day, it was said, he gave splendid dinners to which a great number of guests were always invited; in his expenditure on his table he surpassed even the Macedonians, in his elegance he outdid Cyprians and Phœnicians; spikenard and myrrh were sprinkled for perfume, the floor was strewn with flowers, costly carpets and paintings decorated the rooms; he kept so extravagant, so luxurious, a table, that his cook, who had what was left over, was able to buy three properties in two years out of the profits he made by his sales. Demetrius spent the greatest care upon his choice of dress, he dyed his hair fair, painted his face, anointed his head with precious oils; he always showed a smiling countenance, he wanted to please every one.
The most dainty and unbridled wantonness side by side with that subtle, gracious, and witty culture, which has ever since been described by the epithet Attic—both are characteristic of the life of Athens in those days. It was the fashion to attend the schools of philosophy.
Grecian Head-dresses.
Such words as home, chastity, modesty, were no longer heard in the Athens of that time, or they were only words. Life had all become phrases and epigrams, ostentation and occupied idleness. Athens distributed flattery and entertainment to the mighty ones of the earth, and permitted herself to receive in return their gifts and gratuities. She grew more servile as she grew more oligarchic. She played as a state the rôle of parasite to kings and such as held power, a sponging flatterer not at all ashamed to buy admiration and pleasures at the price of dignity. There were only two things her people were afraid of; they were afraid of being bored, and they were afraid of being ridiculous—and there were rich occasions for being both. Religion had disappeared, and with the indifference of enlightenment superstition came in—magic, witchcraft, astrology. Moral conduct, out of an old habit (for morality like the laws had been reasoned away), was theoretically handled in the schools and made a theme for debate and literary duels. The two standard philosophies of the next centuries, the Stoic and the Epicurean, were evolving in Athens at this period.