The fact that we are now to trace the very distinct development of Athens and of Sparta points out an essential characteristic of the Greek race: their division into rival and warring states. A fine question to arouse thought on the part of pupils is: How could little states so near together as Attica, Laconia, Arcadia and Bœotia come to differ so in their characteristics? Why were they not all developed nearly along the same lines, like the people of the United States? Let the children be brought to see that the lack of means of communication, in contrast with our post and telegraph and newspaper, goes far to explain this. This isolated development, in spite of the common language, games and festivities, was the perpetual weakness of Greece.
Sparta; Her Strength and Her Limitations.
Sparta, unlike Attica, was essentially a military State. Her chief town needed no walls because it was always an armed camp. Botsford well points out that in earlier times the Spartans were probably the superiors of the Athenians in culture and refinement; but their self-imposed discipline made them a race of soldiers. We know that the Periœci were successful artisans and traders; but the controlling passion of the little nation was military efficiency. Everything seems to have been sacrificed to that. When the classes come to the glories of the Athenian golden age, it will be well to point out that while she has her scores of names which are luminous in art, literature, science and philosophy, from the annals of Sparta the world knows mainly Lycurgus, the lawgiver, and Leonidas, the hero of Thermopylæ. If a teacher is inclined to cultivate in his pupils the idea that military glory is not to be the main concern, he may well use the Spartan record. Yet Sparta with these limitations played a mighty part in the story of the Greek struggle. Her armed efficiency more than once saved Greece as a whole when the less practical Athenian system had broken down.
The Persian Wars.
The names of the famous contests are enshrined in the world’s admiration. Aside from a formal knowledge of the fascinating struggle, deeper things are to be considered. What was the danger to Europe in this Persian attack? Persians were of the same race as Greeks. Why would it not have been well for them in their might to tack the little Greek city states on as part of a great world empire? And the secret of the success of Greece in repelling them is to be found in the essential difference between the thoughtful self-respecting Greek, and the flogged and servile Persian. We speak of the “man behind the gun.” In those days it was the “man who held the sword.”
Athenian Development.
Athens and Switzerland are popular synonyms for democracy. Yet Switzerland has only become truly democratic within the past century, and Athens never was truly so. This has been alluded to in a preceding article. What did happen in Athens was a wonderful growth from aristocratic exclusiveness toward democracy. The gains that were made brought about finally a state of things that was never approached elsewhere in the ancient world save possibly in the Hebrew commonwealth. For this advance all honor is due the men of Athens. A comparative study of the earlier constitution with the successive reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes may well be used to point out that the common people were more and more coming into their own. West, on p. 125 of his “Ancient World,” has a table of some of these constitutions which might well be completed as a blackboard exercise. It will then at once become apparent what direction reform was taking. Note, however, the weakness of the executive and the reason for it, i. e., the Greek jealousy of individual or continued power. Show how the tyranny of Peisistratos was almost the inevitable result of this weakness of the executive. The exclusion of foreign (even Greek) settlers from citizenship, save in exceptional cases, was entirely contrary to our ideas. And the existence of slavery in the person of captives in war and of poor debtors was a fatal blot on the democracy and the welfare of Athens, as of all the Greek States. The social struggle, with its various mitigations of the lot of the very poor parallels the political strife. Our children are breathing in from the papers and from current discussions the idea that our social inequalities and our contest between capital and labor are a new phenomenon. They ought to learn that such contest is almost world old. We have new elements such as the vast individual fortune and the part taken by the corporations, both unknown in old Greece, but the essential features of the struggle were the same. And the tendency of twenty-four hundred years ago as well as of to-day was and is to give larger right and opportunity to the common man.
Greek Poetry and Architecture.
Some school historians and teachers decry the effort to mingle with the political history any study of Greek art. But to the writer’s mind that would be a robbery of the children. Our modern life is so saturated with things almost purely Greek in origin that our budding citizens, who may never get elsewhere a glimpse of the origins of so much that is beautiful, ought surely to get such glimpses now.
In towns large enough to contain varied examples the teacher can show the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian styles by going with his classes to the buildings illustrative of each, or at least by telling where such may be found. In the smaller towns pictures of famous buildings may be used. (Remember that the dome is not Greek, but Roman.) In like manner the poetry of the Greeks may be used. The epic, the elegy, the lyric and their great exemplars call for mention. The drama comes a little later. Meter appears to have been of Greek origin. Some of its distinctions are worth a few minutes. And here is opportunity for correlation with the work in English literature. Our poetic forms go back to the people we are studying now. A recent writer makes the caustic comment that with most teachers correlation is “a poor relation.” Rightly viewed, it would appear that no subject better than history furnishes the opportunity for side lights on other branches of the student’s work. For here we get the beginnings of so many things that are commonplaces with us. But they were new once, and so many of the choicest of them had their birth in the little land and among the wonderful people of our present study.