"This story would indeed be singular," writes Dr Thirlwall, "if we consider the expedient in the light of a stratagem, on which the confederates relied for overcoming the resistance which they might otherwise have expected from their adversaries. But it seems quite as possible that the pageant was only designed to add extraordinary solemnity to the entrance of Pisistratus, and to suggest the reflection that it was by the special favour of Heaven he had been so unexpectedly restored."—(Vol. ii. p. 67.)
If this story stood alone in spirit and character, and there were no other contemporary events to occasion us the same kind of surprise, some such interpretation might not be unreasonable. But other facts which the historian himself relates with their unabated and literal significance, testify equally to the gross apprehension of the Athenian people at this epoch. What shall we say, of the visit of Epimenides to purify the city? The guilt, it seems, of sacrilege had, some time past, been incurred by Megacles and his associates, who had put to death certain of their enemies within the precincts of the temple of Minerva, whither they had fled for refuge. Megacles might have starved them there, but was scrupulous to bring this defilement upon the temple. He therefore promised to spare their lives if they would quit the sanctuary. Upon this they came forth, holding however, as an additional safeguard, a rope in their hands which was fastened to the statue of Minerva. Better not have trusted to the rope, for it broke. Megacles, seeing this, pronounced aloud that the goddess had evidently withdrawn her protection, and ordered them to be put to death. For this sacrilege—not for the promise-breaking or bloodshed—a curse hung over the city. Superstitious terrors haunted the inhabitants; the scarcity, the sickness, every evil that afflicted them, was attributed to this cause; and the women especially, gave themselves up to frantic demonstrations of fear and piety.
There was a man of Crete, born of a nymph, fed by the nymphs, if indeed he was fed at all, for no one saw him eat. In his youth, this marvellous Cretan had been sent by his father to bring home some stray sheep, and turning aside into a cave for shelter from the noontide heat, had fallen asleep. He slept on for fifty years. Either supernatural knowledge comes in sleep, or Epimenides invented this fable to stop all inquiries as to where, or how, he had passed the early period of his life. He attained the age of one hundred and fifty-four—some say three hundred years.
This remarkable person, supposed to know by what means the anger of the gods might be propitiated, was called to Athens. What means he devised for this purpose may easily be conjectured. After the performance of certain religious ceremonies, the foundation of a new temple, and the sacrifice of a human victim, the Athenians were restored to their usual tranquillity.
"The religious mission of Epimenides to Athens," observes Mr Grote, "and its efficacious as well as healing influence on the public mind, deserve notice as characteristics of the age in which they occurred. If we transport ourselves two centuries forward to the Peloponnesian war, when rational influences and positive habits of thought had acquired a durable hold upon the superior minds, and when practical discussion on political and judicial matters were familiar to every Athenian citizen, no such uncontrollable religious misery could well have subdued the entire public; and if it had, no living man could have drawn to himself such universal veneration as to be capable of effecting a cure. Plato, admitting the real healing influence of rites and ceremonies, fully believed in Epimenides as an inspired prophet during the past, but towards those who preferred claims to supernatural power in his own day, he was not so easy of faith: he, as well as Euripides and Theophrastus, treated with indifference, and even with contempt, the Orpheotelestæ of the later times, who advertised themselves as possessing the same patent knowledge of ceremonial rites, and the same means of guiding the will of the gods, as Epimenides had wielded before them.... Had Epimenides himself come to Athens in those days, his visit would probably have been as much inoperative to all public purposes as a repetition of the stratagem of Phyê, clothed and equipped as the goddess Athena, which had succeeded so completely in the days of Peisistratus—a stratagem which even Herodotus treats as incredibly absurd, although a century before his time both the city of Athens and the Demas of Attica had obeyed, as a divine mandate, the orders of this magnificent and stately woman to restore Peisistratus."—(Vol. iii. p. 116.)
There is nothing to which we are more averse than the converting ancient history into a field for the discussion of modern party politics. We are fully persuaded that the most thorough English Conservative may admire the Athenian republic; so far at least admire as to admit that it is impossible to conceive how, under any other form of government, the peculiar glories of Athens could have shone forth. And, indeed, an Athenian democracy differs so entirely from any political institution which the world sees at present, or will ever see again, that to carry the strife of our politics back into those times, in other than a quite general manner, is as futile as it is tasteless and vexatious. After this avowal, we shall not be thought disposed to enter into any needless cavil, upon this topic, with Mr Grote; we shall not, certainly, be upon the watch to detect the too liberal politician in the historian of Greece. An interest in the working of popular institutions is a qualification the more for his task; and the historian himself must have felt that it was no mean advantage he had acquired by having taken his seat in our house of parliament, and mingled personally in the affairs of a popular government. What the future volumes of the history may disclose, we will not venture to prognosticate; but, hitherto, we have met with nothing which deserves the opprobrium of being attributed to party spirit. There is a certain tone in some of his political observations which, as may be supposed, we should not altogether adopt; but many of them are excellent and instructive. Nothing could be better than the following remarks on the necessity of a "constitutional morality." He is speaking of the reforms of Cleisthenes.
"It was necessary to create in the multitude, and through them to force upon the leading ambitious men, that rare and difficult sentiment which we may term a constitutional morality,—a paramount reverence for the forms of the constitution, enforcing obedience to the authorities acting under and within those forms, yet combined with the habit of open speech, of action, subject only to definite legal control, and unrestrained censure of those very authorities as to all their public acts,—combined, too, with the perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the constitution will not be less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own. This co-existence of freedom and self-imposed restraint—of obedience to authority with unmeasured censure of the persons exercising it—may be found in the aristocracy of England, (since about 1688,) as well as in the democracy of the American United States; and, because we are familiar with it, we are apt to suppose it a natural sentiment; though there seem to be few sentiments more difficult to establish and diffuse among a community, judging by the experience of history. We may see how imperfectly it exists, at this day, in the Swiss cantons; and the many violences of the French Revolution illustrate, amongst various other lessons, the fatal effects arising from its absence, even among a people high in the scale of intelligence. Yet the diffusion of such constitutional morality, not merely among the majority of any community, but throughout the whole, is the indispensable condition of a government at once free and peaceable; since even any powerful and obstinate minority may render the working of free institutions impracticable, without being strong enough to conquer ascendency for themselves."—Vol. iv. p. 205.
Then follow, close on the extract we have just made, some observations upon the famous law of Ostracism, which are well deserving of attention, and which we would willingly quote did our space allow of it. Perhaps it would be difficult, in following out the several applications of this law, to show that it had exactly the beneficial operation which—arguing on the theory of the institution,—is here assigned to it. But, at the very lowest, this much may be said of the law of Ostracism, that it gives to the stronger of two factions a means of deciding the contest without appeal to force, before the contest rose to its maximum of bitterness, and without necessity or excuse for those wholesale banishments which afflicted the republics of Italy. If such an institution had existed in the Florentine republic, we should not have heard of those cruel banishments that Guelph and Ghibelline, Bianchi and Neri, inflicted upon each other; such banishments as that, for instance, in which its great poet Dante was involved.
Of one remarkable event, characterising the working of the Athenian government, we do not assent to the view presented to us by Mr Grote. His last published volume brings down the affairs of Greece to the battle of Marathon and the death of Miltiades. In the sentence passed on the hero of Marathon, the operation of a popular government has been often disadvantageously traced; the Athenians have been accused of fickleness and ingratitude. Mr Grote repels the charge. With some observations upon this defence, which forms the conclusion of the fourth and last of the published volumes, we shall bring our own notice to a close.
Ingratitude, we readily admit, is not the proper word to be used on such an occasion. A citizen serves the state, and is honoured; if he commits a crime against the state he is not, on this account, to go unpunished. His previous services invest him with no privilege to break the laws, or act criminally. What man, capable of doing, a patriotic action, would wish for such a privilege, or dream of laying claim to it?