HISTORY OF GREECE.
BY
GEORGE GROTE, Esq.
VOL. IV.
REPRINTED FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS.
329 AND 331 PEARL STREET.
1880.
CONTENTS.
VOL. IV.
PART II.
CONTINUATION OF HISTORICAL GREECE.
CHAPTER XXV.
ILLYRIANS, MACEDONIANS, PÆONIANS.
Different tribes of Illyrians. — Conflicts and contrast of Illyrians with Greeks. — Epidamnus and Apollonia in relation to the Illyrians. — Early Macedonians. — Their original seats. — General view of the country which they occupied — eastward of Pindus and Skardus. — Distribution and tribes of the Macedonians. — Macedonians round Edessa — the leading portion of the nation. — Pierians and Bottiæans — originally placed on the Thermaic gulf, between the Macedonians and the sea. — Pæonians. — Argeian Greeks who established the dynasty of Edessa — Perdikkas. — Talents for command manifested by Greek chieftains over barbaric tribes. — Aggrandizement of the dynasty of Edessa — conquests as far as the Thermaic gulf, as well as over the interior Macedonians. — Friendship between king Amyntas and the Peisistratids.
pages [1-19]
CHAPTER XXVI.
THRACIANS AND GREEK COLONIES IN THRACE.
Thracians — their numbers and abode. — Many distinct tribes, yet little diversity of character. — Their cruelty, rapacity, and military efficiency. — Thracian worship and character Asiatic. — Early date of the Chalkidic colonies in Thrace. — Methônê the earliest — about 720 B. C. — Several other small settlements on the Chalkidic peninsula and its three projecting headlands. — Chalkidic peninsula — Mount Athos. — Colonies in Pallênê, or the westernmost of the three headlands. — In Sithonia, or the middle headland. — In the headland of Athos — Akanthus, Stageira, etc. — Greek settlements east of the Strymôn in Thrace. — Island of Thasus. — Thracian Chersonesus. — Perinthus, Selymoria, and Byzantium. — Grecian settlements on the Euxine, south of the Danube. — Lemnos and Imbros.
CHAPTER XXVII.
KYRENE AND BARKA. — HESPERIDES.
First voyages of the Greeks to Libya. — Foundation of Kyrênê. — Founded by Battus from the island of Thêra. — Colony first settled in the island of Platea — afterwards removed to Kyrênê. — Situation of Kyrênê. — Fertility, produce, and prosperity. — Libyan tribes near Kyrênê. — Extensive dominion of Kyrênê and Barka over the Libyans. — Connection of the Greek colonies with the Nomads of Libya. — Manners of the Libyan Nomads. — Mixture of Greeks and Libyan inhabitants at Kyrênê. — Dynasty of Battus, Arkesilaus, Battus the Second, at Kyrênê — fresh colonists from Greece. — Disputes with the native Libyans. — Arkesilaus the Second, prince of Kyrênê — misfortunes of the city — foundation of Barka. — Battus the Third, a lame man — reform by Demônax, who takes away the supreme power from the Battiads. — New emigration — restoration of the Battiad Arkesilaus the Third. — Oracle limiting the duration of the Battiad dynasty. — Violences at Kyrênê under Arkesilaus the Third. — Arkesilaus sends his submission to Kambysês, king of Persia. — Persian expedition from Egypt against Barka — Pheretimê, mother of Arkesilaus. — Capture of Barka by perfidy — cruelty of Pheretimê. — Battus the Fourth and Arkesilaus the Fourth — final extinction of the dynasty about 460-450 B. C. — Constitution of Demônax not durable.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
PAN-HELLENIC FESTIVALS — OLYMPIC, PYTHIAN, NEMEAN, AND ISTHMIAN.
Want of grouping and unity in the early period of Grecian history. — New causes, tending to favor union, begin after 560 B. C. — no general war between 776 and 560 B. C. known to Thucydidês. — Increasing disposition to religious, intellectual, and social union. — Reciprocal admission of cities to the religious festivals of each other. — Early splendor of the Ionic festival at Delos — its decline. — Olympic games — their celebrity and long continuance. — Their gradual increase — new matches introduced. — Olympic festival — the first which passes from a local to a Pan-Hellenic character. — Pythian games, or festival. — Early state and site of Delphi. — Phocian town of Krissa. — Kirrha, the seaport of Krissa. — Growth of Delphi and Kirrha — decline of Krissa. — Insolence of the Kirrhæans punished by the Amphiktyons. — First Sacred War, in 595 B. C. — Destruction of Kirrha. — Pythian games founded by the Amphiktyons. — Nemean and Isthmian games. — Pan-Hellenic character acquired by all the four festivals — Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian. — Increased frequentation of the other festivals in most Greek cities. — All other Greek cities, except Sparta, encouraged such visits. — Effect of these festivals upon the Greek mind.
CHAPTER XXIX.
LYRIC POETRY. — THE SEVEN WISE MEN.
Age and duration of the Greek lyric poetry. — Epical age preceding the lyrical. — Wider range of subjects for poetry — new metres — enlarged musical scale. — Improvement of the harp by Terpander — of the flute by Olympus and others. — Archilochus, Kallinus, Tyrtæus, and Alkman — 670-600 B. C. — New metres superadded to the Hexameter — Elegiac, Iambic, Trochaic. — Archilochus. — Simonidês of Amorgos, Kallinus, Tyrtæus. — Musical and poetical tendencies at Sparta. — Choric training — Alkman, Thalêtas. — Doric dialect employed in the choric compositions. — Arion and Stêsichorus — substitution of the professional in place of the popular chorus. — Distribution of the chorus by Stêsichorus — Strophê — Antistrophê — Epôdus. — Alkæus and Sappho. — Gnomic or moralizing poets. — Solon and Theognis. — Subordination of musical and orchestrical accompaniment to the words and meaning. — Seven Wise Men. — They were the first men who acquired an Hellenic reputation, without poetical genius. — Early manifestation of philosophy — in the form of maxims. — Subsequent growth of dialectics and discussion. — Increase of the habit of writing — commencement of prose compositions. — First beginnings of Grecian art. — Restricted character of early art, from religious associations. — Monumental ornaments in the cities — begin in the sixth century B. C. — Importance of Grecian art as a means of Hellenic union.
CHAPTER XXX.
GRECIAN AFFAIRS DURING THE GOVERNMENT OF PEISISTRATUS AND HIS SONS AT ATHENS.
Peisistratus and his sons at Athens — B. C. 500-510 — uncertain chronology as to Peisistratus. — State of feeling in Attica at the accession of Peisistratus. — Retirement of Peisistratus, and stratagem whereby he is reinstated. — Quarrel of Peisistratus with the Alkmæônids — his second retirement. — His second and final restoration. — His strong government — mercenaries — purification of Delos. — Mild despotism of Peisistratus. — His sons Hippias and Hipparchus. — Harmodius and Aristogeitôn. — They conspire and kill Hipparchus. B. C. 514. — Strong and lasting sentiment, coupled with great historical mistake, in the Athenian public. — Hippias despot alone — 514-510 B. C. — his cruelty and conscious insecurity. — Connection of Athens with the Thracian Chersonesus and the Asiatic coast of the Hellespont. — First Miltiadês — œkist of the Chersonese. — Second Miltiadês — sent out thither by the Peisistratids. — Proceedings of the exiled Alkmæônids against Hippias. — Conflagration and rebuilding of the Delphian temple. — The Alkmæônids rebuild the temple with magnificence. — Gratitude of the Delphians towards them — they procure from the oracle directions to Sparta, enjoining the expulsion of Hippias. — Spartan expeditions into Attica. — Expulsion of Hippias, and liberation of Athens.
CHAPTER XXXI.
GRECIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE EXPULSION OF THE PEISISTRATIDS. — REVOLUTION OF KLEISTHENES AND ESTABLISHMENT OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS.
State of Athens after the expulsion of Hippias. — Opposing party-leaders — Kleisthenês — Isagoras. — Democratical revolution headed by Kleisthenês. — Rearrangement and extension of the political franchise. — Suppression of the four old tribes, and formation of ten new tribes, including an increased number of the population. — Imperfect description of this event in Herodotus — its real bearing. — Grounds of opposition to it in ancient Athenian feeling. — Names of the new tribes — their relation to the demes. — Demes belonging to each tribe usually not adjacent to each other. — Arrangements and functions of the deme. — Solonian constitution preserved, with modifications. — Change of military arrangement in the state. — The ten stratêgi, or generals. — The judicial assembly of citizens, or Heliæa, subsequently divided into fractions, each judging separately. — The political assembly, or ekklesia. — Financial arrangements. — Senate of Five Hundred. — Ekklesia, or political assembly. — Kleisthenês the real author of the Athenian democracy. — Judicial attributes of the people — their gradual enlargement. — Three points in Athenian constitutional law, hanging together: — Universal admissibility of citizens to magistracy — choice by lot — reduced functions of the magistrates chosen by lot. — Universal admissibility of citizens to the archonship — not introduced until after the battle of Platæa. — Constitution of Kleisthenês retained the Solonian law of exclusion as to individual office. — Difference between that constitution and the political state of Athens after Periklês. — Senate of Areopagus. — The ostracism. — Weakness of the public force in the Grecian governments. — Past violences of the Athenian nobles. — Necessity of creating a constitutional morality. — Purpose and working of the ostracism. — Securities against its abuse. — Ostracism necessary as a protection to the early democracy — afterwards dispensed with. — Ostracism analogous to the exclusion of a known pretender to the throne in a monarchy. — Effect of the long ascendency of Periklês, in strengthening constitutional morality. — Ostracism in other Grecian cities. — Striking effect of the revolution of Kleisthenês on the minds of the citizens. — Isagoras calls in Kleomenês and the Lacedæmonians against it. — Kleomenês and Isagoras are expelled from Athens. — Recall of Kleisthenês — Athens solicits the alliance of the Persians. — First connection between Athens and Platæa. — Disputes between Platæa and Thebes — decision of Corinth as arbitrator. — Second march of Kleomenês against Athens — desertion of his allies. — First appearance of Sparta as acting head of Peloponnesian allies. — Signal successes of Athens against Bœotians and Chalkidians. — Plantation of Athenian settlers, or klêruchs, in the territory of Chalkis. — Distress of the Thebans — they ask assistance from Ægina. — The Æginetans make war on Athens. — Preparations at Sparta to attack Athens anew — the Spartan allies are summoned, together with Hippias. — First formal convocation at Sparta — advance of Greece towards a political system. — Proceedings of the convocation — animated protest of Corinth against any interference in favor of Hippias — the Spartan allies refuse to interfere. — Aversion to single-headed rule — now predominant in Greece. — Striking development of Athenian energy after the revolution of Kleisthenês — language of Herodotus. — Effect of the idea or theory of democracy in exciting Athenian sentiment. — Patriotism of an Athenian between 500-400 B. C. — combined with an eager spirit of personal military exertion and sacrifice. — Diminution of this active sentiment in the restored democracy after the Thirty Tyrants.
CHAPTER XXXII.
RISE OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. — CYRUS.
State of Asia before the rise of the Persian monarchy. — Great power and alliances of Crœsus. — Rise of Cyrus — uncertainty of his early history. — Story of Astyagês. — Herodotus and Ktêsias. — Condition of the native Persians at the first rise of Cyrus. — Territory of Iran — between Tigris and Indus. — War between Cyrus and Crœsus. — Crœsus tests the oracles — triumphant reply from Delphi — munificence of Crœsus to the oracle. — Advice given to him by the oracle. — He solicits the alliance of Sparta. — He crosses the Halys and attacks the Persians. — Rapid march of Cyrus to Sardis. — Siege and capture of Sardis. — Crœsus becomes prisoner of Cyrus — how treated. — Remonstrance addressed by Crœsus to the Delphian god. — Successful justification of the oracle. — Fate of Crœsus impressive to the Greek mind. — The Mœræ, or Fates. — State of the Asiatic Greeks after the conquest of Lydia by Cyrus. — They apply in vain to Sparta for aid. — Cyrus quits Sardis — revolt of the Lydians suppressed. — The Persian general Mazarês attacks Ionia — the Lydian Paktyas. — Harpagus succeeds Mazarês — conquest of Ionia by the Persians. — Fate of Phôkæa. — Emigration of the Phôkæans vowed by all, executed only by one half. — Phôkæan colony first at Alalia, then at Elea. — Proposition of Bias for a Pan-Ionic emigration not adopted. — Entire conquest of Asia Minor by the Persians.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
GROWTH OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.
Conquests of Cyrus in Asia. — His attack of Babylon. — Difficult approach to Babylon — no resistance made to the invaders. — Cyrus distributes the river Gyndês into many channels. — He takes Babylon, by drawing off for a time the waters of the Euphrates. — Babylon left in undiminished strength and population. — Cyrus attacks the Massagetæ — is defeated and slain. — Extraordinary stimulus to the Persians, from the conquests of Cyrus. — Character of the Persians. — Thirst for foreign conquest among the Persians, for three reigns after Cyrus. — Kambysês succeeds his father Cyrus — his invasion of Egypt. — Death of Amasis, king of Egypt, at the time when the Persian expedition was preparing — his son Psammenitus succeeds. — Conquest of Egypt by Kambysês. — Submission of Kyrênê and Barka to Kambysês — his projects for conquering Libya and Ethiopia disappointed. — Insults of Kambysês to the Egyptian religion. — Madness of Kambysês — he puts to death his younger brother, Smerdis. — Conspiracy of the Magian Patizeithês who sets up his brother as king under the name of Smerdis. — Death of Kambysês. — Reign of the false Smerdis — conspiracy of the seven Persian noblemen against him — he is slain. — Darius succeeds to the throne. — Political bearing of this conspiracy — Smerdis represents Median preponderance, which is again put down by Darius. — Revolt of the Medes — suppressed. — Discontents of the satraps. — Revolt of Babylon. — Reconquered and dismantled by Darius. — Organization of the Persian empire by Darius. — Twenty satrapies with a fixed tribute apportioned to each. — Imposts upon the different satrapies. — Organizing tendency of Darius — first imperial coinage — imperial roads and posts. — Island of Samos — its condition at the accession of Darius. — Polykratês. — Polykratês breaks with Amasis, king of Egypt, and allies himself with Kambysês. — The Samian exiles, expelled by Polykratês, apply to Sparta for aid. — The Lacedæmonians attack Samos, but are repulsed. — Attack on Siphnos by the Samian exiles. — Prosperity of Polykratês. — He is slain by the Persian satrap Orœtês. — Mæandrius, lieutenant of Polykratês in Samos — he desires to establish a free government after the death of Polykratês — conduct of the Samians. — Mæandrius becomes despot. — Contrast between the Athenians and the Samians. — Sylosôn, brother of Polykratês, lands with a Persian army in Samos — his history. — Mæandrius agrees to evacuate the island. — Many Persian officers slain — slaughter of the Samians. — Sylosôn despot at Samos. — Application of Mæandrius to Sparta for aid — refused.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
DEMOKEDES. — DARIUS INVADES SCYTHIA.
Conquering dispositions of Darius. — Influence of his wife, Atossa. — Dêmokêdês, the Krotoniate surgeon — his adventures — he is carried a slave to Susa. — He cures Darius, who rewards him munificently. — He procures permission by artifice, and through the influence of Atossa, to return to Greece. — Atossa suggests to Darius an expedition against Greece. — Dêmokêdês, with some Persians, is sent to procure information for him. — Voyage of Dêmokêdês along the coast of Greece — he stays at Kroton — fate of his Persian companions. — Consequences which might have been expected to happen if Darius had then undertaken his expedition against Greece. — Darius marches against Scythia. — His naval force formed of Asiatic and insular Greeks. — He directs the Greeks to throw a bridge over the Danube and crosses the river. — He marches into Scythia — narrative of his march impossible and unintelligible, considered as history. — The description of his march is rather to be looked upon as a fancy-picture, illustrative of Scythian warfare. — Poetical grouping of the Scythians and their neighbors by Herodotus. — Strong impression produced upon the imagination of Herodotus by the Scythians. — Orders given by Darius to the Ionians at the bridge over the Danube. — The Ionians are left in guard of the bridge; their conduct when Darius’s return is delayed. — The Ionian despots preserve the bridge and enable Darius to recross the river, as a means of support to their own dominion at home. — Opportunity lost of emancipation from the Persians — Conquest of Thrace by the Persians as far as the river Strymon — Myrkinus near that river given to Histiæus. — Macedonians and Pæonians are conquered by Megabazus. — Insolence of the Persian envoys in Macedonia — they are murdered. — Histiæus founds a prosperous colony at Myrkinus — Darius sends for him into Asia. — Otanês Persian general on the Hellespont — he conquers the Pelasgian population of Lemnos, Imbros, etc. — Lemnos and Imbros captured by the Athenians and Miltiadês.
CHAPTER XXXV.
IONIC REVOLT.
Darius carries Histiæus to Susa. — Application of the banished Hippias to Artaphernês, satrap of Sardis. — State of the island of Naxos — Naxian exiles solicit aid from Aristagoras of Milêtus. — Expedition against Naxos, undertaken by Aristagoras with the assistance of Artaphernês the satrap. — Its failure, through dispute between Aristagoras and the Persian general, Megabatês. — Alarm of Aristagoras — he determines to revolt against Persia — instigation to the same effect from Histiæus. — Revolt of Aristagoras and the Milesians — the despots in the various cities deposed and seized. — Extension of the revolt throughout Asiatic Greece — Aristagoras goes to solicit aid from Sparta. — Refusal of the Spartans to assist him. — Aristagoras applies to Athens — obtains aid both from Athens and Eretria. — March of Aristagoras up to Sardis with the Athenian and Eretrian allies — burning of the town — retreat and defeat of these Greeks by the Persians. — The Athenians abandon the alliance. — Extension of the revolt to Cyprus and Byzantium. — Phenician fleet called forth by the Persians — Persian and Phenician armament sent against Cyprus — the Ionians send aid thither — victory of the Persians — they reconquer the island. — Successes of the Persians against the revolted coast of Asia Minor. — Aristagoras loses courage and abandons the country. — Appearance of Histiæus, who had obtained leave of departure from Susa. — Histiæus is suspected by Artaphernês — flees to Chios. — He attempts in vain to procure admission into Milêtus — puts himself at the head of a small piratical squadron. — Large Persian force assembled, aided by the Phenician fleet, for the siege of Milêtus. — The allied Grecian fleet mustered at Ladê. — Attempts of the Persians to disunite the allies, by means of the exiled despots. — Want of command and discipline in the Grecian fleet. — Energy of the Phôkæan Dionysius — he is allowed to assume the command. — Discontent of the Grecian crews — they refuse to act under Dionysius. — Contrast of this incapacity of the Ionic crews with the subsequent severe discipline of the Athenian seamen. — Disorder and mistrust grow up in the fleet — treachery of the Samian captains. — Complete victory of the Persian fleet at Ladê — ruin of the Ionic fleet — severe loss of the Chians. — Voluntary exile and adventures of Dionysius. — Siege, capture, and ruin of Milêtus by the Persians. — The Phenician fleet reconquers all the coast-towns and islands. — Narrow escape of Miltiadês from their pursuit. — Cruelties of the Persians after the reconquest. — Movements and death of Histiæus. — Sympathy and terror of the Athenians at the capture of Milêtus — the tragic writer Phrynichus is fined.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
FROM THE IONIC REVOLT TO THE BATTLE OF MARATHON.
Proceedings of the satrap Artaphernês after the reconquest of Ionia — Mardonius comes with an army into Ionia — he puts down the despots in the Greek cities. — He marches into Thrace and Macedonia — his fleet destroyed by a terrible storm near Mount Athos — he returns into Asia. — Island of Thasos — prepares to revolt from the Persians — forced to submit. — Preparations of Darius for invading Greece — he sends heralds round the Grecian towns to demand earth and water — many of them submit. — Ægina among those towns which submitted — state and relations of this island. — Heralds from Darius are put to death, both at Athens and Sparta. — Effects of this act in throwing Sparta into a state of hostility against Persia. — The Athenians appeal to Sparta, in consequence of the medism (or submission to the Persians) of Ægina. — Interference of Sparta — her distinct acquisition and acceptance of the leadership of Greece. — One condition of recognized Spartan leadership was the extreme weakness of Argos at this moment. — Victorious war of Sparta against Argos. — Destruction of the Argeians by Kleomenês, in the grove of the hero Argus. — Kleomenês returns without having attacked the city of Argos. — He is tried — his peculiar mode of defence — acquitted. — Argos unable to interfere with Sparta in the affair of Ægina and in her presidential power. — Kleomenês goes to Ægina to seize the medizing leaders — resistance made to him, at the instigation of his colleague Demaratus. — Demaratus is deposed, and Leotychidês chosen king, by the intrigues of Kleomenês. — Demaratus leaves Sparta and goes to Darius. — Kleomenês and Leotychidês go to Ægina, seize ten hostages, and convey them as prisoners to Athens. — Important effect of this proceeding upon the result of the first Persian invasion of Greece. — Assemblage of the vast Persian armament under Datis at Samos. — He crosses the Ægean — carries the island of Naxos without resistance — respects Delos. — He reaches Eubœa — siege and capture of Eretria. — Datis lands at Marathon. — Existing condition and character of the Athenians. — Miltiadês — his adventures — chosen one of the ten generals in the year in which the Persians landed at Marathon. — Themistoklês and Aristeidês. — Miltiadês, Aristeidês, and perhaps Themistoklês, were now among the ten stratêgi, or generals, in 490 B. C. — The Athenians ask aid from Sparta — delay of the Spartans. — Difference of opinion among the ten Athenian generals — five of them recommend an immediate battle, the other five are adverse to it. — Urgent instances of Miltiadês in favor of an immediate battle — casting-vote of the polemarch determines it. — March of the Athenians to Marathon — the Platæans spontaneously join them there. — Numbers of the armies. — Locality of Marathon. — Battle of Marathon — rapid charge of Miltiadês — defeat of the Persians. — Loss on both sides. — Ulterior plans of the Persians against Athens — party in Attica favorable to them. — Rapid march of Miltiadês back to Athens on the day of the battle. — The Persians abandon the enterprise, and return home. — Athens rescued through the speedy battle brought on by Miltiadês. — Change of Grecian feeling as to the Persians — terror which the latter inspired at the time of the battle of Marathon. — Immense effect of the Marathonian victory on the feelings of the Greeks — especially of the Athenians. — Who were the traitors that invited the Persians to Athens after the battle — false imputation on the Alkmæônids. — Supernatural belief connected with the battle — commemorations of it. — Return of Datis to Asia — fate of the Eretrian captives. — Glory of Miltiadês — his subsequent conduct — unsuccessful expedition against Paros — bad hurt of Miltiadês. — Disgrace of Miltiadês on his return. — He is fined — dies of his wound — the fine is paid by his son Kimon. — Reflections on the closing adventures of the life of Miltiadês. — Fickleness and ingratitude imputed to the Athenians — how far they deserve the charge. — Usual temper of the Athenian dikasts in estimating previous services. — Tendency of eminent Greeks to be corrupted by success. — In what sense it is apparently true that fickleness was an attribute of the Athenian democracy.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. — PYTHAGORAS. — KROTON AND SYBARIS.
Phalaris despot of Agrigentum. — Thalês. — Ionic philosophers — not a school or succession. — Step in philosophy commenced by Thalês. — Vast problems with scanty means of solution. — One cause of the vein of skepticism which runs through Grecian philosophy. — Thalês — primeval element of water, or the fluid. — Anaximander. — Problem of the One and the Many — the Permanent and the Variable. — Xenophanês — his doctrine the opposite of that of Anaximander. — The Eleatic school, Parmenidês and Zeno, springing from Xenophanês — their dialectics — their great influence on Grecian speculation. — Pherekydês. — History of Pythagoras. — His character and doctrines. — Pythagoras more a missionary and schoolmaster than a politician — his political efficiency exaggerated by later witnesses. — His ethical training — probably not applied to all the members of his order. — Decline and subsequent renovation of the Pythagorean order. — Pythagoras not merely a borrower, but an original and ascendent mind. — He passes from Samos to Kroton. — State of Kroton — oligarchical government — excellent gymnastic training and medical skill. — Rapid and wonderful effects said to have been produced by the exhortations of Pythagoras. — He forms a powerful club, or society, consisting of three hundred men taken from the wealthy classes at Kroton. — Political influence of Pythagoras — was an indirect result of the constitution of the order. — Causes which led to the subversion of the Pythagorean order. — Violences which accompanied its subversion. — The Pythagorean order is reduced to a religious and philosophical sect, in which character it continues. — War between Sybaris and Kroton. — Defeat of the Sybarites, and destruction of their city, partly through the aid of the Spartan prince Dorieus. — Sensation excited in the Hellenic world by the destruction of Sybaris. — Gradual decline of the Greek power in Italy. — Contradictory statements and arguments respecting the presence of Dorieus. — Herodotus does not mention the Pythagoreans, when he alludes to the war between Sybaris and Kroton. — Charondas, lawgiver of Katana, Naxos, Zanklê, Rhegium, etc.
HISTORY OF GREECE.
PART II.
CONTINUATION OF HISTORICAL GREECE.
CHAPTER XXV.
ILLYRIANS, MACEDONIANS, PÆONIANS.
Northward of the tribes called Epirotic lay those more numerous and widely extended tribes who bore the general name of Illyrians; bounded on the west by the Adriatic, on the east by the mountain-range of Skardus, the northern continuation of Pindus,—and thus covering what is now called Middle and Upper Albania, together with the more northerly mountains of Montenegro, Herzegovina, and Bosnia. Their limits to the north and north-east cannot be assigned, but the Dardani and Autariatæ must have reached to the north-east of Skardus and even east of the Servian plain of Kossovo; while along the Adriatic coast, Skylax extends the race so far northward as to include Dalmatia, treating the Liburnians and Istrians beyond them as not Illyrian: yet Appian and others consider the Liburnians and Istrians as Illyrian, and Herodotus even includes under that name the Eneti, or Veneti, at the extremity of the Adriatic gulf.[1] The Bulini, according to Skylax, were the northernmost Illyrian tribe: the Amantini, immediately northward of the Epirotic Chaonians, were the southernmost. Among the southern Illyrian tribes are to be numbered the Taulantii,—originally the possessors, afterwards the immediate neighbors, of the territory on which Epidamnus was founded. The ancient geographer Hekatæus[2] (about 500 B. C.), is sufficiently well acquainted with them to specify their town Sesarêthus: he also named the Chelidonii as their northern, the Encheleis as their southern neighbors; and the Abri also as a tribe nearly adjoining. We hear of the Illyrian Parthini, nearly in the same regions,—of the Dassaretii,[3] near Lake Lychnidus,—of the Penestæ, with a fortified town Uscana, north of the Dassaretii,—of the Ardiæans, the Autariatæ, and the Dardanians, throughout Upper Albania eastward as far as Upper Mœsia, including the range of Skardus itself; so that there were some Illyrian tribes conterminous on the east with Macedonians, and on the south with Macedonians as well as with Pæonians. Strabo even extends some of the Illyrian tribes much farther northward, nearly to the Julian Alps.[4]
With the exception of some portions of what is now called Middle Albania, the territory of these tribes consisted principally of mountain pastures with a certain proportion of fertile valley, but rarely expanding into a plain. The Autariatæ had the reputation of being unwarlike, but the Illyrians generally were poor, rapacious, fierce, and formidable in battle. They shared with the remote Thracian tribes the custom of tattooing[5] their bodies and of offering human sacrifices: moreover, they were always ready to sell their military service for hire, like the modern Albanian Schkipetars, in whom probably their blood yet flows, though with considerable admixture from subsequent emigrations. Of the Illyrian kingdom on the Adriatic coast, with Skodra (Scutari) for its capital city, which became formidable by its reckless piracies in the third century B. C., we hear nothing in the flourishing period of Grecian history. The description of Skylax notices in his day, all along the northern Adriatic, a considerable and standing traffic between the coast and the interior, carried on by Liburnians, Istrians, and the small Grecian insular settlements of Pharus and Issa. But he does not name Skodra, and probably this strong post—together with the Greek town Lissus, founded by Dionysius of Syracuse—was occupied after his time by conquerors from the interior,[6] the predecessors of Agrôn and Gentius,—just as the coast-land of the Thermaic gulf was conquered by inland Macedonians.
Once during the Peloponnesian war, a detachment of hired Illyrians, marching into Macedonia Lynkêstis (seemingly over the pass of Skardus a little east of Lychnidus, or Ochrida), tried the valor of the Spartan Brasidas; and on that occasion—as in the expedition above alluded to of the Epirots against Akarnania—we shall notice the marked superiority of the Grecian character, even in the case of an armament chiefly composed of helots newly enfranchised, over both Macedonians and Illyrians,—we shall see the contrast between brave men acting in concert and obedience to a common authority, and an assailing host of warriors, not less brave individually, but in which every man is his own master,[7] and fights as he pleases. The rapid and impetuous rush of the Illyrians, if the first shock failed of its effect, was succeeded by an equally rapid retreat or flight. We hear nothing afterwards respecting these barbarians until the time of Philip of Macedon, whose vigor and military energy first repressed their incursions, and afterwards partially conquered them. It seems to have been about this period (400-350 B. C.) that the great movement of the Gauls from west to east took place, which brought the Gallic Skordiski and other tribes into the regions between the Danube and the Adriatic sea, and which probably dislodged some of the northern Illyrians so as to drive them upon new enterprises and fresh abodes.
What is now called Middle Albania, the Illyrian territory immediately north of Epirus, is much superior to the latter in productiveness.[8] Though mountainous, it possesses more both of low hill and valley, and ampler as well as more fertile cultivable spaces. Epidamnus and Apollonia formed the seaports of this territory, and the commerce with the southern Illyrians, less barbarous than the northern, was one of the sources[9] of their great prosperity during the first century of their existence,—a prosperity interrupted in the case of the Epidamnians by internal dissensions, which impaired their ascendency over their Illyrian neighbors, and ultimately placed them at variance with their mother-city Korkyra. The commerce between these Greek seaports and the interior tribes, when once the former became strong enough to render violent attack from the latter hopeless, was reciprocally beneficial to both of them. Grecian oil and wine were introduced among these barbarians, whose chiefs at the same time learned to appreciate the woven fabrics,[10] the polished and carved metallic work, the tempered weapons, and the pottery, which issued from Grecian artisans. Moreover, the importation sometimes of salt-fish, and always that of salt itself, was of the greatest importance to these inland residents, especially for such localities as possessed lakes abounding in fish, like that of Lychnidus. We hear of wars between the Autariatæ and the Ardiæi, respecting salt-springs near their boundaries, and also of other tribes whom the privation of salt reduced to the necessity of submitting to the Romans.[11] On the other hand, these tribes possessed two articles of exchange so precious in the eyes of the Greeks, that Polybius reckons them as absolutely indispensable,[12]—cattle and slaves; which latter were doubtless procured from Illyria, often in exchange for salt, as they were from Thrace and from the Euxine and from Aquileia in the Adriatic, through the internal wars of one tribe with another. Silver-mines were worked at Damastium in Illyria. Wax and honey were probably also articles of export, and it is a proof that the natural products of Illyria were carefully sought out, when we find a species of iris peculiar to the country collected and sent to Corinth, where its root was employed to give the special flavor to a celebrated kind of aromatic unguent.[13]
Nor was the intercourse between the Hellenic ports and Illyrians inland exclusively commercial. Grecian exiles also found their way into Illyria, and Grecian mythes became localized there, as may be seen by the tale of Kadmus and Harmonia, from whom the chiefs of the Illyrian Encheleis professed to trace their descent.[14]
The Macedonians of the fourth century B. C. acquired, from the ability and enterprise of two successive kings, a great perfection in Greek military organization without any of the loftier Hellenic qualities. Their career in Greece is purely destructive, extinguishing the free movement of the separate cities, and disarming the citizen-soldier to make room for the foreign mercenary, whose sword was unhallowed by any feelings of patriotism,—yet totally incompetent to substitute any good system of central or pacific administration. But the Macedonians of the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. are an aggregate only of rude inland tribes, subdivided into distinct petty principalities, and separated from the Greeks by a wider ethnical difference even than the Epirots; since Herodotus, who considers the Epirotic Molossians and Thesprotians as children of Hellen, decidedly thinks the contrary respecting the Macedonians.[15] In the main, however, they seem at this early period analogous to the Epirots in character and civilization. They had some few towns, but were chiefly village residents, extremely brave and pugnacious. The customs of some of their tribes enjoined that the man who had not yet slain an enemy should be distinguished on some occasions by a badge of discredit.[16]
The original seats of the Macedonians were in the regions east of the chain of Skardus (the northerly continuation of Pindus)—north of the chain called the Cambunian mountains, which connects Olympus with Pindus, and which forms the north-western boundary of Thessaly. But they did not reach so far eastward as the Thermaic gulf; apparently not farther eastward than Mount Bermius, or about the longitude of Edessa and Berrhoia. They thus covered the upper portions of the course of the rivers Haliakmôn and Erigôn, before the junction of the latter with the Axius; while the upper course of the Axius, higher than this point of junction, appears to have belonged to Pæonia,—though the boundaries of Macedonia and Pæonia cannot be distinctly marked out at any time.
The large space of country included between the above-mentioned boundaries is in great part mountainous, occupied by lateral ridges, or elevations, which connect themselves with the main line of Skardus. But it also comprises three wide alluvial basins, or plains, which are of great extent and well-adapted to cultivation,—the plain of Tettovo, or Kalkandele (northernmost of the three), which contains the sources and early course of the Axius, or Vardar,—that of Bitolia, coinciding to a great degree with the ancient Pelagonia, wherein the Erigon flows towards the Axius,—and the larger and more undulating basin of Greveno and Anaselitzas, containing the upper Haliakmôn with its confluent streams. This latter region is separated from the basin of Thessaly by a mountainous line of considerable length, but presenting numerous easy passes.[17] Reckoning the basin of Thessaly as a fourth, here are four distinct inclosed plains on the east side of this long range of Skardus and Pindus,—each generally bounded by mountains which rise precipitously to an alpine height, and each leaving only one cleft for drainage by a single river,—the Axius, the Erigôn, the Haliakmôn, and the Peneius respectively. All four, moreover, though of high level above the sea, are yet for the most part of distinguished fertility, especially the plains of Tettovo, of Bitolia, and Thessaly. The fat, rich land to the east of Pindus and Skardus is described as forming a marked contrast with the light calcareous soil of the Albanian plains and valleys on the western side. The basins of Bitolia and of the Haliakmôn, with the mountains around and adjoining, were possessed by the original Macedonians; that of Tettovo, on the north, by a portion of the Pæonians. Among the four, Thessaly is the most spacious; yet the two comprised in the primitive seats of the Macedonians, both of them very considerable in magnitude, formed a territory better calculated to nourish and to generate a considerable population, than the less favored home, and smaller breadth of valley and plain, occupied by Epirots or Illyrians. Abundance of corn easily raised, of pasture for cattle, and of new fertile land open to cultivation, would suffice to increase the numbers of hardy villagers, indifferent to luxury as well as to accumulation, and exempt from that oppressive extortion of rulers which now harasses the same fine regions.[18]
The inhabitants of this primitive Macedonia doubtless differed much in ancient times, as they do now, according as they dwelt on mountain or plain, and in soil and climate more or less kind; but all acknowledged a common ethnical name and nationality, and the tribes were in many cases distinguished from each other, not by having substantive names of their own, but merely by local epithets of Grecian origin. Thus we find Elymiotæ Macedonians, or Macedonians of Elymeia,—Lynkestæ Macedonians, or Macedonians of Lynkus, etc. Orestæ is doubtless an adjunct name of the same character. The inhabitants of the more northerly tracts, called Pelagonia and Deuriopis, were also portions of the Macedonian aggregate, though neighbors of the Pæonians, to whom they bore much affinity: whether the Eordi and Almopians were of Macedonian race, it is more difficult to say. The Macedonian language was different from Illyrian,[19] from Thracian, and seemingly also from Pæonian. It was also different from Greek, yet apparently not more widely distinct than that of the Epirots,—so that the acquisition of Greek was comparatively easy to the chiefs and people, though there were always some Greek letters which they were incapable of pronouncing. And when we follow their history, we shall find in them more of the regular warrior, conquering in order to maintain dominion and tribute, and less of the armed plunderer,—than in the Illyrians, Thracians, or Epirots, by whom it was their misfortune to be surrounded. They approach nearer to the Thessalians,[20] and to the other ungifted members of the Hellenic family.
The large and comparatively productive region covered by the various sections of Macedonians, helps to explain that increase of ascendency which they successively acquired over all their neighbors. It was not, however, until a late period that they became united under one government. At first each section, how many we do not know, had its own prince, or chief. The Elymiots, or inhabitants of Elymeia, the southernmost portion of Macedonia, were thus originally distinct and independent; also the Orestæ, in mountain-seats somewhat north-west of the Elymiots,—the Lynkêstæ and Eordi, who occupied portions of territory on the track of the subsequent Egnatian way, between Lychnidus (Ochrida) and Edessa,—the Pelagonians,[21] with a town of the same name, in the fertile plain of Bitolia,—and the more northerly Deuriopians. And the early political union was usually so loose, that each of these denominations probably includes many petty independencies, small towns, and villages. That section of the Macedonian name who afterwards swallowed up all the rest and became known as The Macedonians, had their original centre at Ægæ, or Edessa,—the lofty, commanding, and picturesque site of the modern Vodhena. And though the residence of the kings was in later times transferred to the marshy Pella, in the maritime plain beneath, yet Edessa was always retained as the regal burial-place, and as the hearth to which the religious continuity of the nation, so much reverenced in ancient times, was attached. This ancient town, which lay on the Roman Egnatian way from Lychnidus to Pella and Thessalonika, formed the pass over the mountain-ridge called Bermius, or that prolongation to the northward of Mount Olympus, through which the Haliakmôn makes its way out into the maritime plain at Verria, by a cleft more precipitous and impracticable than that of the Peneius in the defile of Tempê.
This mountain-chain called Bermius, extending from Olympus considerably to the north of Edessa, formed the original eastern boundary of the Macedonian tribes; who seem at first not to have reached the valley of the Axius in any part of its course, and who certainly did not reach at first to the Thermaic gulf. Between the last-mentioned gulf and the eastern counterforts of Olympus and Bermius there exists a narrow strip of plain land or low hill, which reaches from the mouth of the Peneius to the head of the Thermaic gulf. It there widens into the spacious and fertile plain of Salonichi, comprising the mouths of the Haliakmôn, the Axius, and the Echeidôrus: the river Ludias, which flows from Edessa into the marshes surrounding Pella, and which in antiquity joined the Haliakmôn near its mouth, has now altered its course so as to join the Axius. This narrow strip, between the mouths of the Peneius and the Haliakmôn, was the original abode of the Pierian Thracians, who dwelt close to the foot of Olympus, and among whom the worship of the Muses seems to have been a primitive characteristic; Grecian poetry teems with local allusions and epithets which appear traceable to this early fact, though we are unable to follow it in detail. North of the Pierians, from the mouth of the Haliakmôn to that of the Axius, dwelt the Bottiæans.[22] Beyond the river Axius, at the lower part of its course, began the tribes of the great Thracian race,—Mygdonians, Krestônians, Edônians, Bisaltæ, Sithonians: the Mygdonians seem to have been originally the most powerful, since the country still continued to be called by their name, Mygdonia, even after the Macedonian conquest. These, and various other Thracian tribes, originally occupied most part of the country between the mouth of the Axius and that of the Strymon; together with that memorable three-pronged peninsula which derived from the Grecian colonies its name of Chalkidikê. It will thus appear, if we consider the Bottiæans as well as the Pierians to be Thracians, that the Thracian race extended originally southward as far as the mouth of the Peneius: the Bottiæans professed, indeed, a Kretan origin, but this pretension is not noticed by either Herodotus or Thucydidês. In the time of Skylax,[23] seemingly during the early reign of Philip the son of Amyntas, Macedonia and Thrace were separated by the Strymon.
We have yet to notice the Pæonians, a numerous and much-divided race,—seemingly neither Thracian nor Macedonian nor Illyrian, but professing to be descended from the Teukri of Troy,—who occupied both banks of the Strymon, from the neighborhood of Mount Skomius, in which that river rises, down to the lake near its mouth. Some of their tribes possessed the fertile plain of Siris (now Seres),—the land immediately north of Mount Pangæus,—and even a portion of the space through which Xerxês marched on his route from Akanthus to Therma. Besides this, it appears that the upper parts of the valley of the Axius were also occupied by Pæonian tribes; how far down the river they extended, we are unable to say. We are not to suppose that the whole territory between Axius and Strymon was continuously peopled by them. Continuous population is not the character of the ancient world, and it seems, moreover, that while the land immediately bordering on both rivers is in very many places of the richest quality, the spaces between the two are either mountain or barren low hill,—forming a marked contrast with the rich alluvial basin of the Macedonian river Erigon.[24] The Pæonians, in their north-western tribes, thus bordered upon the Macedonian Pelagonia,—in their northern tribes, upon the Illyrian Dardani and Autariatæ,—in their eastern, southern, and south-eastern tribes, upon the Thracians and Pierians;[25] that is, upon the second seats occupied by the expelled Pierians under Mount Pangæus.
Such was, as far as we can make it out, the position of the Macedonians and their immediate neighbors, in the seventh century B. C. It was first altered by the enterprise and ability of a family of exiled Greeks, who conducted a section of the Macedonian people to those conquests which their descendants, Philip and Alexander the Great, afterwards so marvellously multiplied.
Respecting the primitive ancestry of these two princes, there were different stories, but all concurred in tracing the origin of the family to the Herakleid or Temenid race of Argos. According to one story (which apparently cannot be traced higher than Theopompus), Karanus, brother of the despot Pheidon, had migrated from Argos to Macedonia, and established himself as conqueror at Edessa; according to another tale, which we find in Herodotus, there were three exiles of the Temenid race, Gauanês, Aëropus, and Perdikkas, who fled from Argos to Illyria, from whence they passed into Upper Macedonia, in such poverty as to be compelled to serve the petty king of the town Lebæa in the capacity of shepherds. A remarkable prodigy happening to Perdikkas foreshadows the future eminence of his family, and leads to his dismissal by the king of Lebæa,—from whom he makes his escape with difficulty, by the sudden rise of a river immediately after he had crossed it, so as to become impassable by the horsemen who pursued him. To this river, as to the saviour of the family, solemn sacrifices were still offered by the kings of Macedonia in the time of Herodotus. Perdikkas with his two brothers having thus escaped, established himself near the spot called the Garden of Midas on Mount Bermius, and from the loins of this hardy young shepherd sprang the dynasty of Edessa.[26] This tale bears much more the marks of a genuine local tradition than that of Theopompus. And the origin of the Macedonian family, or Argeadæ, from Argos, appears to have been universally recognized by Grecian inquirers,[27]—so that Alexander the son of Amyntas, the contemporary of the Persian invasion, was admitted by the Hellanodikæ to contend at the Olympic games as a genuine Greek, though his competitors sought to exclude him as a Macedonian.
The talent for command was so much more the attribute of the Greek mind than of any of the neighboring barbarians, that we easily conceive a courageous Argeian adventurer acquiring to himself great ascendency in the local disputes of the Macedonian tribes, and transmitting the chieftainship of one of those tribes to his offspring. The influence acquired by Miltiadês among the Thracians of the Chersonese, and by Phormion among the Akarnanians (who specially requested that, after his death, his son, or some one of his kindred, might be sent from Athens to command them),[28] was very much of this character: we may add the case of Sertorius among the native Iberians. In like manner, the kings of the Macedonian Lynkêstæ professed to be descended from the Bacchiadæ[29] of Corinth; and the neighborhood of Epidamnus and Apollonia, in both of which doubtless members of that great gens were domiciliated, renders this tale even more plausible than that of an emigration from Argos. The kings of the Epirotic Molossi pretended also to a descent from the heroic Æakid race of Greece. In fact, our means of knowledge do not enable us to discriminate the cases in which these reigning families were originally Greeks, from those in which they were Hellenized natives pretending to Grecian blood.
After the foundation-legend of the Macedonian kingdom, we have nothing but a long blank until the reign of king Amyntas (about 520-500 B. C.), and his son Alexander, (about 480 B. C.) Herodotus gives us five successive kings between the founder Perdikkas and Amyntas,—Perdikkas, Argæus, Philippus, Aëropus, Alketas, Amyntas, and Alexander,—the contemporary and to a certain extent the ally of Xerxês.[30] Though we have no means of establishing any dates in this early series, either of names or of facts, yet we see that the Temenid kings, beginning from a humble origin, extended their dominions successively on all sides. They conquered the Briges,[31]—originally their neighbors on Mount Bermius,—the Eordi, bordering on Edessa to the westward, who were either destroyed or expelled from the country, leaving a small remnant still existing in the time of Thucydidês at Physka between Strymon and Axius,—the Almopians, an inland tribe of unknown site,—and many of the interior Macedonian tribes who had been at first autonomous. Besides these inland conquests, they had made the still more important acquisition of Pieria, the territory which lay between Mount Bermius and the sea, from whence they expelled the original Pierians, who found new seats on the eastern bank of the Strymon between Mount Pangæus and the sea. Amyntas king of Macedon was thus master of a very considerable territory, comprising the coast of the Thermaic gulf as far north as the mouth of the Haliakmôn, and also some other territory on the same gulf from which the Bottiæans had been expelled; but not comprising the coast between the mouths of the Axius and the Haliakmôn, nor even Pella, the subsequent capital, which were still in the hands of the Bottiæans at the period when Xerxês passed through.[32] He possessed also Anthemus, a town and territory in the peninsula of Chalkidikê, and some parts of Mygdonia, the territory east of the mouth of the Axius; but how much, we do not know. We shall find the Macedonians hereafter extending their dominion still farther, during the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian war.
We hear of king Amyntas in friendly connection with the Peisistratid princes at Athens, whose dominion was in part sustained by mercenaries from the Strymon, and this amicable sentiment was continued between his son Alexander and the emancipated Athenians.[33] It is only in the reigns of these two princes that Macedonia begins to be implicated in Grecian affairs: the regal dynasty had become so completely Macedonized, and had so far renounced its Hellenic brotherhood, that the claim of Alexander to run at the Olympic games was contested by his competitors, and he was called upon to prove his lineage before the Hellanodikæ.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THRACIANS AND GREEK COLONIES IN THRACE.
That vast space comprised between the rivers Strymon and Danube, and bounded to the west by the easternmost Illyrian tribes, northward of the Strymon, was occupied by the innumerable subdivisions of the race called Thracians, or Threïcians. They were the most numerous and most terrible race known to Herodotus: could they by possibility act in unison or under one dominion (he says), they would be irresistible. A conjunction thus formidable once seemed impending, during the first years of the Peloponnesian war, under the reign of Sitalkês king of the Odrysæ, who reigned from Abdêra at the mouth of the Nestus to the Euxine, and compressed under his sceptre a large proportion of these ferocious but warlike plunderers; so that the Greeks even down to Thermopylæ trembled at his expected approach. But the abilities of that prince were not found adequate to bring the whole force of Thrace into effective coöperation and aggression against others.
Numerous as the tribes of Thracians were, their customs and character (according to Herodotus) were marked by great uniformity: of the Getæ, the Trausi, and others, he tells us a few particularities. And the large tract over which the race were spread, comprising as it did the whole chain of Mount Hæmus and the still loftier chain of Rhodopê, together with a portion of the mountains Orbêlus and Skomius, was yet partly occupied by level and fertile surface,—such as the great plain of Adrianople, and the land towards the lower course of the rivers Nestus and Hebrus. The Thracians of the plain, though not less warlike, were at least more home-keeping, and less greedy of foreign plunder, than those of the mountains. But the general character of the race presents an aggregate of repulsive features unredeemed by the presence of even the commonest domestic affections.[34] The Thracian chief deduced his pedigree from a god called by the Greeks Hermês, to whom he offered up worship apart from the rest of his tribe, sometimes with the acceptable present of a human victim. He tattooed his body,[35] and that of the women belonging to him, as a privilege of honorable descent: he bought his wives from their parents, and sold his children for exportation to the foreign merchant: he held it disgraceful to cultivate the earth, and felt honored only by the acquisitions of war and robbery. The Thracian tribes worshipped deities whom the Greeks assimilate to Arês, Dionysus, and Artemis: the great sanctuary and oracle of their god Dionysus was in one of the loftiest summits of Rhodopê, amidst dense and foggy thickets,—the residence of the fierce and unassailable Satræ. To illustrate the Thracian character, we may turn to a deed perpetrated by the king of the Bisaltæ,—perhaps one out of several chiefs of that extensive Thracian tribe,—whose territory, between Strymon and Axius, lay in the direct march of Xerxês into Greece, and who fled to the desolate heights of Rhodopê, to escape the ignominy of being dragged along amidst the compulsory auxiliaries of the Persian invasion, forbidding his six sons to take any part in it. From recklessness, or curiosity, the sons disobeyed his commands, and accompanied Xerxês into Greece; they returned unhurt by the Greek spear; but the incensed father, when they again came into his presence, caused the eyes of all of them to be put out. Exultation of success manifested itself in the Thracians by increased alacrity in shedding blood; but as warriors, the only occupation which they esteemed, they were not less brave than patient of hardship, and maintained a good front, under their own peculiar array, against forces much superior in all military efficacy.[36] It appears that the Thynians and Bithynians,[37] on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, perhaps also the Mysians, were members of this great Thracian race, which was more remotely connected, also, with the Phrygians. And the whole race may be said to present a character more Asiatic than European, especially in those ecstatic and maddening religious rites, which prevailed not less among the Edonian Thracians than in the mountains of Ida and Dindymon of Asia, though with some important differences. The Thracians served to furnish the Greeks with mercenary troops and slaves, and the number of Grecian colonies planted on the coast had the effect of partially softening the tribes in the immediate vicinity, between whose chiefs and the Greek leaders intermarriages were not unfrequent. But the tribes in the interior seem to have retained their savage habits with little mitigation, so that the language in which Tacitus[38] describes them is an apt continuation to that of Herodotus, though coming more than five centuries after.
To note the situation of each one among these many different tribes, in the huge territory of Thrace, which is even now so imperfectly known and badly mapped, would be unnecessary, and, indeed, impracticable. I shall proceed to mention the principal Grecian colonies which were formed in the country, noticing occasionally the particular Thracian tribes with which they came in contact.
The Grecian colonies established on the Thermaic gulf, as well as in the peninsula of Chalkidikê, emanating principally from Chalkis and Eretria, though we do not know their precise epoch, appear to have been of early date, and probably preceded the time when the Macedonians of Edessa extended their conquests to the sea. At that early period, they would find the Pierians still between the Peneius and Haliakmôn,—also a number of petty Thracian tribes throughout the broad part of the Chalkidic peninsula; they would find Pydna a Pierian town, and Therma, Anthemus, Chalastra, etc. Mygdonian.
The most ancient Grecian colony in these regions seems to have been Methônê, founded by the Eretrians in Pieria; nearly at the same time (if we may trust a statement of rather suspicious character, though the date itself is noway improbable) as Korkyra was settled by the Corinthians (about 730-720 B. C.).[39] It was a little to the north of the Pierian town of Pydna, and separated by about ten miles from the Bottiæan town of Alôrus, which lay north of the Haliakmôn.[40] We know very little about Methônê, except that it preserved its autonomy and its Hellenism until the time of Philip of Macedon, who took and destroyed it. But though, when once established, it was strong enough to maintain itself in spite of conquests made all around by the Macedonians of Edessa, we may fairly presume that it could not have been originally planted on Macedonian territory. Nor in point of fact was the situation peculiarly advantageous for Grecian colonists, inasmuch as there were other maritime towns, not Grecian, in its neighborhood,—Pydna, Alôrus, Therma, Chalastra; whereas the point of advantage for a Grecian colony was, to become the exclusive seaport for inland indigenous people.
The colonies, founded by Chalkis and Eretria on all the three projections of the Chalkidic peninsula, were numerous, though for a long time inconsiderable. We do not know how far these projecting headlands were occupied before the arrival of the settlers from Eubœa,—an event which we may probably place at some period earlier than 600 B. C.; for after that period Chalkis and Eretria seem rather on the decline,—and it appears too, that the Chalkidian colonists in Thrace aided their mother-city Chalkis in her war against Eretria, which cannot be much later than 600 B. C., though it may be considerably earlier.
The range of mountains which crosses from the Thermaic to the Strymonic gulf, and forms the northern limit of the Chalkidic peninsula, slopes down towards the southern extremity, so as to leave a considerable tract of fertile land between the Torônaic and the Thermaic gulfs, including the fertile headland called Pallênê,—the westernmost of those three prongs of Chalkidikê which run out into the Ægean. Of the other two prongs, or projections, the easternmost is terminated by the sublime Mount Athos, which rises out of the sea as a precipitous rock six thousand four hundred feet in height, connected with the mainland by a ridge not more than half the height of the mountain itself, yet still high, rugged, and woody from sea to sea, leaving only little occasional spaces fit to be occupied or cultivated. The intermediate or Sithonian headland is also hilly and woody, though in a less degree,—both less inviting and less productive than Pallênê.[41]
Æneia, near that cape which marks the entrance of the inner Thermaic gulf,—and Potidæa, at the narrow isthmus of Pallênê,—were both founded by Corinth. Between these two towns lay the fertile territory called Krusis, or Krossæa, forming in after-times a part of the domain of Olynthus, but in the sixth century B. C. occupied by petty Thracian townships.[42] Within Pallênê were the towns of Mendê, a colony from Eretria,—Skiônê, which, having no legitimate mother-city traced its origin to Pellenian warriors returning from Troy,—Aphytis, Neapolis, Ægê, Therambôs, and Sanê,[43] either wholly or partly colonies from Eretria. In the Sithonian peninsula were Assa, Pilôrus, Singus, Sartê, Torônê, Galêpsus, Sermylê, and Mekyberna; all or most of these seem to have been of Chalkidic origin. But at the head of the Torônaic gulf (which lies between Sithonia and Pallênê) was placed Olynthus, surrounded by an extensive and fertile plain. Originally a Bottiæan town, Olynthus will be seen at the time of the Persian invasion to pass into the hands of the Chalkidian Greeks,[44] and gradually to incorporate with itself several of the petty neighboring establishments belonging to that race; whereby the Chalkidians acquired that marked preponderance in the peninsula which they retained, even against the efforts of Athens, until the days of Philip of Macedon.
On the scanty spaces, admitted by the mountainous promontory, or ridge, ending in Athos, were planted some Thracian and some Pelasgic settlements of the same inhabitants as those who occupied Lemnos and Imbros; a few Chalkidic citizens being domiciliated with them, and the people speaking both Pelasgic and Hellenic. But near the narrow isthmus which joins this promontory to Thrace, and along the north-western coast of the Strymonic gulf, were Grecian towns of considerable importance,—Sanê, Akanthus, Stageira, and Argilus, all colonies from Andros, which had itself been colonized from Eretria.[45] Akanthus and Stageira are said to have been founded in 654 B. C.
Following the southern coast of Thrace, from the mouth of the river Strymôn towards the east, we may doubt whether, in the year 560 B. C., any considerable independent colonies of Greeks had yet been formed upon it. The Ionic colony of Abdêra, eastward of the mouth of the river Nestus, formed from Teôs in Ionia, is of more recent date, though the Klazomenians[46] had begun an unsuccessful settlement there as early as the year 651 B. C.; while Dikæa—the Chian settlement of Marôneia—and the Lesbian settlement of Ænus at the mouth of the Hebrus, are of unknown date.[47] The important and valuable territory near the mouth of the Strymôn, where, after many ruinous failures,[48] the Athenian colony of Amphipolis afterwards maintained itself, was at the date here mentioned possessed by Edonian Thracians and Pierians: the various Thracian tribes,—Satræ, Edonians, Dersæans, Sapæans, Bistones, Kikones, Pætians, etc.—were in force on the principal part of the tract between Strymôn and Hebrus, even to the sea-coast. It is to be remarked, however, that the island of Thasus, and that of Samothrace, each possessed what in Greek was called a Peræa,[49]—a strip of the adjoining mainland cultivated and defended by means of fortified posts, or small towns: probably, these occupations are of very ancient date, since they seem almost indispensable as a means of support to the islands. For the barren Thasus, especially, merits even at this day the uninviting description applied to it by the poet Archilochus, in the seventh century B. C.,—“an ass’s backbone, overspread with wild wood:”[50] so wholly is it composed of mountain, naked or wooded, and so scanty are the patches of cultivable soil left in it, nearly all close to the sea-shore. This island was originally occupied by the Phenicians, who worked the gold mines in its mountains with a degree of industry which, even in its remains, excited the admiration of Herodotus. How and when it was evacuated by them, we do not know; but the poet Archilochus[51] formed one of a body of Parian colonists who planted themselves on it in the seventh century B. C., and carried on war, not always successful, against the Thracian tribe called Saians: on one occasion, Archilochus found himself compelled to throw away his shield. By their mines and their possessions on the mainland (which contained even richer mines, at Skaptê Hylê, and elsewhere, than those in the island), the Thasian Greeks rose to considerable power and population. And as they seem to have been the only Greeks, until the settlement of the Milesian Histiæus on the Strymôn about 510 B. C., who actively concerned themselves in the mining districts of Thrace opposite to their island, we cannot be surprised to hear that their clear surplus revenue before the Persian conquest, about 493 B. C., after defraying the charges of their government without any taxation, amounted to the large sum of two hundred talents, sometimes even to three hundred talents, in each year (from forty-six thousand to sixty-six thousand pounds).
On the long peninsula called the Thracian Chersonese there may probably have been small Grecian settlements at an early date, though we do not know at what time either the Milesian settlement of Kardia, on the western side of the isthmus of that peninsula, near the Ægean sea,—or the Æolic colony of Sestus on the Hellespont,—were founded; while the Athenian ascendency in the peninsula begins only with the migration of the first Miltiadês, during the reign of Peisistratus at Athens. The Samian colony of Perinthus, on the northern coast of the Propontis,[52] is spoken of as ancient in date, and the Megarian colonies, Selymbria and Byzantium, belong to the seventh century B. C.: the latter of these two is assigned to the 30th Olympiad (657 B. C.), and its neighbor Chalkêdôn, on the opposite coast, was a few years earlier. The site of Byzantium in the narrow strait of the Bosphorus, with its abundant thunny-fishery,[53] which both employed and nourished a large proportion of the poorer freemen, was alike convenient either for maritime traffic, or for levying contributions on the numerous corn ships which passed from the Euxine into the Ægean; and we are even told that it held a considerable number of the neighboring Bithynian Thracians as tributary Periœki. Such dominion, though probably maintained during the more vigorous period of Grecian city life, became in later times impracticable, and we even find the Byzantines not always competent to the defence of their own small surrounding territory. The place, however, will be found to possess considerable importance during all the period of this history.[54]
The Grecian settlements on the inhospitable south-western coast of the Euxine, south of the Danube, appear never to have attained any consideration: the principal traffic of Greek ships in that sea tended to more northerly ports, on the banks of the Borysthenês and in the Tauric Chersonese. Istria was founded by the Milesians near the southern embouchure of the Danube,—Apollonia and Odêssus on the same coast, more to the south,—all probably between 600-560 B. C. The Megarian or Byzantine colony of Mesambria, seems to have been later than the Ionic revolt; of Kallatis the age is not known. Tomi, north of Kallatis and south of Istria, is renowned as the place of Ovid’s banishment.[55] The picture which he gives of that uninviting spot, which enjoyed but little truce from the neighborhood of the murderous Getæ, explains to us sufficiently why these towns acquired little or no importance.
The islands of Lemnos and Imbros, in the Ægean, were at this early period occupied by Tyrrhenian Pelasgi, were conquered by the Persians about 508 B. C., and seem to have passed into the power of the Athenians at the time when Ionia revolted from the Persians. If the mythical or poetical stories respecting these Tyrrhenian Pelasgi contain any basis of truth, they must have been a race of buccaneers not less rapacious than cruel. At one time, these Pelasgi seem also to have possessed Samothrace, but how or when they were supplanted by Greeks, we find no trustworthy account; the population of Samothrace at the time of the Persian war was Ionic.[56]
CHAPTER XXVII.
KYRENE AND BARKA. — HESPERIDES.
It has been already mentioned, in a former chapter, that Psammetichus king of Egypt, about the middle of the seventh century B. C., first removed those prohibitions which had excluded Grecian commerce from his country. In his reign, Grecian mercenaries were first established in Egypt, and Grecian traders admitted, under certain regulations, into the Nile. The opening of this new market emboldened them to traverse the direct sea which separates Krête from Egypt,—a dangerous voyage with vessels which rarely ventured to lose sight of land,—and seems to have first made them acquainted with the neighboring coast of Libya, between the Nile and the gulf called the Great Syrtis. Hence arose the foundation of the important colony called Kyrênê.
As in the case of most other Grecian colonies, so in that of Kyrênê, both the foundation and the early history are very imperfectly known. The date of the event, as far as can be made out amidst much contradiction of statement, was about 630 B. C.:[57] Thêra was the mother-city, herself a colony from Lacedæmon; and the settlements formed in Libya became no inconsiderable ornaments to the Dorian name in Hellas.
According to the account of a lost historian, Meneklês,[58]—political dissension among the inhabitants of Thêra led to that emigration which founded Kyrênê; and the more ample legendary details which Herodotus collected, partly from Theræan, partly from Kyrenæan informants, are not positively inconsistent with this statement, though they indicate more particularly bad seasons, distress, and over-population. Both of them dwell emphatically on the Delphian oracle as the instigator as well as the director of the first emigrants, whose apprehensions of a dangerous voyage and an unknown country were very difficult to overcome. Both of them affirmed that the original œkist Battus was selected and consecrated to the work by the divine command: both called Battus the son of Polymnêstus, of the mythical breed called Minyæ. But on other points there was complete divergence between the two stories, and the Kyrenæans themselves, whose town was partly peopled by emigrants from Krête, described the mother of Battus as daughter of Etearchus, prince of the Kretan town of Axus.[59] Battus had an impediment in his speech, and it was on his intreating from the Delphian oracle a cure for this infirmity that he received directions to go as “a cattle-breeding œkist to Libya.” The suffering Theræans were directed to assist him, but neither he nor they knew where Libya was, nor could they find any resident in Krête who had ever visited it. Such was the limited reach of Grecian navigation to the south of the Ægean sea, even a century after the foundation of Syracuse. At length, by prolonged inquiry, they discovered a man employed in catching the purple shellfish, named Korôbius,—who said that he had been once forced by stress of weather to the island of Platea, close to the shores of Libya, and on the side not far removed from the western limit of Egypt. Some Theræans being sent along with Korôbius to inspect this island, left him there with a stock of provisions, and returned to Thêra to conduct the emigrants. From the seven districts into which Thêra was divided, emigrants were drafted for the colony, one brother being singled out by lot from the different numerous families. But so long was their return to Platea deferred, that the provisions of Korôbius were exhausted, and he was only saved from starvation by the accidental arrival of a Samian ship, driven by contrary winds out of her course on the voyage to Egypt. Kôlæus, the master of this ship (whose immense profits made by the first voyage to Tartêssus have been noticed in a former chapter), supplied him with provisions for a year,—an act of kindness, which is said to have laid the first foundation of the alliance and good feeling afterwards prevalent between Thêra, Kyrênê, and Samos. At length the expected emigrants reached the island, having found the voyage so perilous and difficult, that they once returned in despair to Thêra, where they were only prevented by force from relanding. The band which accompanied Battus was all conveyed in two pentekonters,—armed ships, with fifty rowers each. Thus humble was the start of the mighty Kyrênê, which, in the days of Herodotus, covered a city-area equal to the entire island of Platea.[60]
That island, however, though near to Libya, and supposed by the colonists to be Libya, was not so in reality: the commands of the oracle had not been literally fulfilled. Accordingly, the settlement carried with it nothing but hardship for the space of two years, and Battus returned with his companions to Delphi, to complain that the promised land had proved a bitter disappointment. The god, through his priestess, returned for answer, “If you, who have never visited the cattle-breeding Libya, know it better than I, who have, I greatly admire your cleverness.” Again the inexorable mandate forced them to return; and this time they planted themselves on the actual continent of Libya, nearly over against the island of Platea, in a district called Aziris, surrounded on both sides by fine woods, and with a running stream adjoining. After six years of residence in this spot, they were persuaded by some of the indigenous Libyans to abandon it, under the promise that they should be conducted to a better situation: and their guides now brought them to the actual site of Kyrênê, saying, “Here, men of Hellas, is the place for you to dwell, for here the sky is perforated.”[61] The road through which they passed had led through the tempting region of Irasa with its fountain Thestê, and their guides took the precaution to carry them through it by night, in order that they might remain ignorant of its beauties.
Such were the preliminary steps, divine and human, which brought Battus and his colonists to Kyrênê. In the time of Herodotus, Irasa was an outlying portion of the eastern territory of this powerful city. But we trace in the story just related an opinion prevalent among his Kyrenæan informants, that Irasa with its fountain Thestê was a more inviting position than Kyrênê with its fountain of Apollo, and ought in prudence to have been originally chosen; out of which opinion, according to the general habit of the Greek mind, an anecdote is engendered and accredited, explaining how the supposed mistake was committed. What may have been the recommendations of Irasa, we are not permitted to know: but descriptions of modern travellers, no less than the subsequent history of Kyrênê, go far to justify the choice actually made. The city was placed at the distance of about ten miles from the sea, having a sheltered port called Apollonia, itself afterwards a considerable town,—it was about twenty miles from the promontory Phykus, which forms the northernmost projection of the African coast, nearly in the longitude of the Peloponnesian Cape Tænarus (Matapan). Kyrênê was situated about eighteen hundred feet above the level of the Mediterranean, of which it commanded a fine view, and from which it was conspicuously visible, on the edge of a range of hills which slope by successive terraces down to the port. The soil immediately around, partly calcareous, partly sandy, is described by Captain Beechey to present a vigorous vegetation and remarkable fertility, though the ancients considered it inferior in this respect both to Barka[62] and Hesperides, and still more inferior to the more westerly region near Kinyps. But the abundant periodical rains, attracted by the lofty heights around, and justifying the expression of the “perforated sky,” were even of greater importance, under an African sun, than extraordinary richness of soil.[63] The maritime regions near Kyrênê and Barka, and Hesperides, produced oil and wine as well as corn, while the extensive district between these towns, composed of alternate mountain, wood, and plain, was eminently suited for pasture and cattle-breeding; and the ports were secure, presenting conveniences for the intercourse of the Greek trader with Northern Africa, such as were not to be found along all the coasts of the Great Syrtis westward of Hesperides. Abundance of applicable land,—great diversity both of climate and of productive season, between the sea-side, the low hill, and the upper mountain, within a small space, so that harvest was continually going on, and fresh produce coming in from the earth, during eight months of the year,—together with the monopoly of the valuable plant called the Silphium, which grew nowhere except in the Kyrenaic region, and the juice of which was extensively demanded throughout Greece and Italy,—led to the rapid growth of Kyrênê, in spite of serious and renewed political troubles. And even now, the immense remains which still mark its desolate site, the evidences of past labor and solicitude at the Fountain of Apollo, and elsewhere, together with the profusion of excavated and ornamented tombs,—attest sufficiently what the grandeur of the place must have been in the days of Herodotus and Pindar. So much did the Kyrenæans pride themselves on the Silphium, found wild in their back country, from the island of Platea on the east to the inner recess of the Great Syrtis westward,—the leaves of which were highly salubrious for cattle, and the stalk for man, while the root furnished the peculiar juice for export,—that they maintained it to have first appeared seven years prior to the arrival of the first Grecian colonists in their city.[64]
But it was not only the properties of the soil which promoted the prosperity of Kyrênê. Isokratês[65] praises the well-chosen site of that colony because it was planted in the midst of indigenous natives apt for subjection, and far distant from any formidable enemies. That the native Libyan tribes were made conducive in an eminent degree to the growth of the Greco-Libyan cities, admits of no doubt; and in reviewing the history of these cities, we must bear in mind that their population was not pure Greek, but more or less mixed, like that of the colonies in Italy, Sicily, or Ionia. Though our information is very imperfect, we see enough to prove that the small force brought over by Battus the Stammerer was enabled first to fraternize with the indigenous Libyans,—next, reinforced by additional colonists and availing themselves of the power of native chiefs, to overawe and subjugate them. Kyrênê—combined with Barka and Hesperides, both of them sprung from her root[66]—exercised over the Libyan tribes between the borders of Egypt and the inner recess of the Great Syrtis, for a space of three degrees of longitude, an ascendency similar to that which Carthage possessed over the more westerly Libyans near the Lesser Syrtis. Within these Kyrenæan limits, and further westward along the shores of the Great Syrtis, the Libyan tribes were of pastoral habits; westward, beyond the Lake Tritônis and the Lesser Syrtis,[67] they began to be agricultural. Immediately westward of Egypt were the Adyrmachidæ, bordering upon Apis and Marea, the Egyptian frontier towns;[68] they were subject to the Egyptians, and had adopted some of the minute ritual and religious observances which characterized the region of the Nile. Proceeding westward from the Adyrmachidæ were found the Giligammæ, the Asbystæ, the Auschisæ, the Kabales, and the Nasamônes,—the latter of whom occupied the south-eastern corner of the Great Syrtis;—next, the Makæ, Gindânes, Lotophagi, Machlyes, as far as a certain river and lake called Tritôn and Tritônis, which seems to have been near the Lesser Syrtis. These last-mentioned tribes were not dependent either on Kyrênê or on Carthage, at the time of Herodotus, nor probably during the proper period of free Grecian history, (600-300 B. C.) In the third century B. C., the Ptolemaic governors of Kyrênê extended their dominion westward, while Carthage pushed her colonies and castles eastward, so that the two powers embraced between them the whole line of coast between the Greater and Lesser Syrtis, meeting at the spot called the Altars of the Brothers Philæni,—so celebrated for its commemorative legend.[69] But even in the sixth century B. C., Carthage was jealous of the extension of Grecian colonies along this coast, and aided the Libyan Makæ (about 510 B. C.) to expel the Spartan prince Dorieus from his settlement near the river Kinyps. Near that spot was afterwards planted, by Phenician or Carthaginian exiles, the town of Leptis Magna[70] (now Lebida), which does not seem to have existed in the time of Herodotus. Nor does the latter historian notice the Marmaridæ, who appear as the principal Libyan tribe near the west of Egypt, between the age of Skylax and the third century of the Christian era. Some migration or revolution subsequent to the time of Herodotus must have brought this name into predominance.[71]
The interior country, stretching westward from Egypt along the thirtieth and thirty-first parallel of latitude, to the Great Syrtis, and then along the southern shore of that gulf, is to a great degree low and sandy, and quite destitute of trees; yet affording in many parts water, herbage, and a fertile soil.[72] But the maritime region north of this, constituting the projecting bosom of the African coast from the island of Platea (Gulf of Bomba) on the east to Hesperides (Bengazi) on the west, is of a totally different character; covered with mountains of considerable elevation, which reach their highest point near Kyrênê, interspersed with productive plain and valley, broken by frequent ravines which carry off the winter torrents into the sea, and never at any time of the year destitute of water. It is this latter advantage that causes them to be now visited every summer by the Bedouin Arabs, who flock to the inexhaustible Fountain of Apollo and to other parts of the mountainous region from Kyrênê to Hesperides, when their supply of water and herbage fails in the interior:[73] and the same circumstance must have operated in ancient times to hold the nomadic Libyans in a sort of dependence on Kyrênê and Barka. Kyrênê appropriated the maritime portion of the territory of the Libyan Asbystæ;[74] the Auschisæ occupied the region south of Barka, touching the sea near Hesperides,—the Kabales near Teucheira in the territory of Barka. Over the interior spaces these Libyan Nomads, with their cattle and twisted tents, wandered unrestrained, amply fed upon meat and milk,[75] clothed in goatskins, and enjoying better health than any people known to Herodotus. Their breed of horses was excellent, and their chariots or wagons with four horses could perform feats admired even by Greeks: it was to these horses that the princes[76] and magnates of Kyrênê and Barka often owed the success of their chariots in the games of Greece. The Libyan Nasamônes, leaving their cattle near the sea, were in the habit of making an annual journey up the country to the Oasis of Augila, for the purpose of gathering the date-harvest,[77] or of purchasing dates,—a journey which the Bedouin Arabs from Bengazi still make annually, carrying up their wheat and barley, for the same purpose. Each of the Libyan tribes was distinguished by a distinct mode of cutting the hair, and by some peculiarities of religious worship, though generally all worshipped the Sun and the Moon.[78] But in the neighborhood of the Lake Tritônis (seemingly the western extremity of Grecian coasting trade in the time of Herodotus, who knows little beyond, and begins to appeal to Carthaginian authorities), the Grecian deities Poseidôn and Athênê, together with the legend of Jason and the Argonauts, had been localized. There were, moreover, current prophecies announcing that one hundred Hellenic cities were destined one day to be founded round the lake,—and that one city in the island Phla, surrounded by the lake, was to be planted by the Lacedæmonians.[79] These, indeed, were among the many unfulfilled prophecies which from every side cheated the Grecian ear,—proceeding in this case probably from Kyrenæan or Theræan traders, who thought the spot advantageous for settlement, and circulated their own hopes under the form of divine assurances. It was about the year 510 B. C.[80] that some of these Theræans conducted the Spartan prince Dorieus to found a colony in the fertile region of Kinyps, belonging to the Libyan Makæ. But Carthage, interested in preventing the extension of Greek settlements westward, aided the Libyans in driving him out.
The Libyans in the immediate neighborhood of Kyrênê were materially changed by the establishment of that town, and constituted a large part—at first, probably, far the largest part—of its constituent population. Not possessing that fierce tenacity of habits which the Mohammedan religion has impressed upon the Arabs of the present day, they were open to the mingled influence of constraint and seduction applied by Grecian settlers; so that in the time of Herodotus, the Kabales and the Asbystæ of the interior had come to copy Kyrenæan tastes and customs.[81] The Theræan colonists, having obtained not merely the consent but even the guidance of the natives to their occupation of Kyrênê, constituted themselves like privileged Spartan citizens in the midst of Libyan Periœki.[82] They seem to have married Libyan wives, whence Herodotus describes the women of Kyrênê and Barka as following, even in his time, religious observances indigenous and not Hellenic.[83] Even the descendants of the primitive œkist Battus were semi-Libyan. For Herodotus gives us the curious information that Battus was the Libyan word for a king, deducing from it the just inference, that the name Battus was not originally personal to the œkist, but acquired in Libya first as a title,[84]—and that it afterwards passed to his descendants as a proper name. For eight generations the reigning princes were called Battus and Arkesilaus, the Libyan denomination alternating with the Greek, until the family was finally deprived of its power. Moreover, we find the chief of Barka, kinsman of Arkesilaus of Kyrênê bearing the name of Alazir; a name certainly not Hellenic, and probably Libyan.[85] We are, therefore, to conceive the first Theræan colonists as established in their lofty fortified post Kyrênê, in the centre of Libyan Periœki, till then strangers to walls, to arts, and perhaps even to cultivated land. Probably these Periœki were always subject and tributary, in a greater or less degree, though they continued for half a century to retain their own king.
To these rude men the Theræans communicated the elements of Hellenism and civilization, not without receiving themselves much that was non-Hellenic in return; and perhaps the reactionary influence of the Libyan element against the Hellenic might have proved the stronger of the two, had they not been reinforced by new-comers from Greece. After forty years of Battus the œkist (about 630-590 B. C.), and sixteen years of his son Arkesilaus (about 590-574 B. C.), a second Battus[86] succeeded, called Battus the Prosperous, to mark the extraordinary increase of Kyrênê during his presidency. The Kyrenæans under him took pains to invite new settlers from all parts of Greece without distinction,—a circumstance deserving notice in Grecian colonization, which usually manifested a preference for certain races, if it did not positively exclude the rest. To every new-comer was promised a lot of land, and the Delphian priestess strenuously seconded the wishes of the Kyrenæans, proclaiming that “whosoever should reach the place too late for the land-division, would have reason to repent it.” Such promise of new land, as well as the sanction of the oracle, were doubtless made public at all the games and meetings of Greeks, and a large number of new colonists embarked for Kyrênê. The exact number is not mentioned, but we must conceive it to have been very great, when we are told that during the succeeding generation, not less than seven thousand Grecian hoplites of Kyrênê perished by the hands of the revolted Libyans,—yet leaving both the city itself and its neighbor Barka still powerful. The loss of so great a number as seven thousand Grecian hoplites has very few parallels throughout the whole history of Greece. In fact, this second migration, during the government of Battus the Prosperous, which must have taken place between 574-554 B. C., ought to be looked upon as the moment of real and effective colonization for Kyrênê. It was on this occasion, probably, that the port of Apollonia, which afterwards came to equal the city itself in importance, was first occupied and fortified,—for this second swarm of emigrants came by sea direct, while the original colonists had reached Kyrênê by land from the island of Platea through Irasa. The fresh emigrants came from Peloponnesus, Krete, and some other islands of the Ægean.
To furnish so many new lots of land, it was either necessary, or it was deemed expedient, to dispossess many of the Libyan Periœki, who found their situation in other respects also greatly changed for the worse. The Libyan king Adikran, himself among the sufferers, implored aid from Apriês king of Egypt, then in the height of his power; sending to declare himself and his people Egyptian subjects, like their neighbors the Adyrmachidæ. The Egyptian prince, accepting the offer, despatched a large military force of the native soldier-caste, who were constantly in station at the western frontier-town Marea, by the route along shore to attack Kyrênê. They were met at Irasa by the Greeks of Kyrênê, and, being totally ignorant of Grecian arms and tactics, experienced a defeat so complete that few of them reached home.[87] The consequences of this disaster in Egypt, where it caused the transfer of the throne from Apriês to Amasis, have been noticed in a former chapter.
Of course the Libyan Periœki were put down, and the redivision of lands near Kyrênê among the Greek settlers accomplished, to the great increase of the power of the city. And the reign of Battus the Prosperous marks a flourishing era in the town, and a large acquisition of land-dominion, antecedent to years of dissension and distress. The Kyrenæans came into intimate alliance with Amasis king of Egypt, who encouraged Grecian connection in every way, and who even took to wife Ladikê, a woman of the Battiad family at Kyrênê, so that the Libyan Periœki lost all chance of Egyptian aid against the Greeks.[88]
New prospects, however, were opened to them during the reign of Arkesilaus the Second, son of Battus the Prosperous, (about 554-544 B. C.). The behavior of this prince incensed and alienated his own brothers, who raised a revolt against him, seceded with a portion of the citizens, and induced a number of the Libyan Periœki to take part with them. They founded the Greco-Libyan city of Barka, in the territory of the Libyan Auschisæ, about twelve miles from the coast, distant from Kyrênê by sea about seventy miles to the westward. The space between the two, and even beyond Barka, as far as the more westerly Grecian colony called Hesperides, was in the days of Skylax provided with commodious ports for refuge or landing:[89] at what time Hesperides was founded we do not know, but it existed about 510 B. C.[90] Whether Arkesilaus obstructed the foundation of Barka is not certain; but he marched the Kyrenæan forces against those revolted Libyans who had joined it. Unable to resist, the latter fled for refuge to their more easterly brethren near the borders of Egypt, and Arkesilaus pursued them. At length, in a district called Leukôn, the fugitives found an opportunity of attacking him at such prodigious advantage, that they almost destroyed the Kyrenæan army, seven thousand hoplites (as has been before intimated) being left dead on the field. Arkesilaus did not long survive this disaster. He was strangled during sickness by his brother Learchus, who aspired to the throne; but Eryxô, widow of the deceased prince,[91] avenged the crime, by causing Learchus to be assassinated.
That the credit of the Battiad princes was impaired by such a series of disasters and enormities, we can readily believe. But it received a still greater shock from the circumstance, that Battus the Third, son and successor of Arkesilaus, was lame and deformed in his feet. To be governed by a man thus personally disabled, was in the minds of the Kyrenæans an indignity not to be borne, as well as an excuse for preëxisting discontents; and the resolution was taken to send to the Delphian oracle for advice. They were directed by the priestess to invite from Mantineia, a moderator, empowered to close discussions and provide a scheme of government,—the Mantineans selecting Demônax, one of the wisest of their citizens, to solve the same problem which had been committed to Solon at Athens. By his arrangement, the regal prerogative of the Battiad line was terminated, and a republican government established seemingly about 543 B. C.; the dispossessed prince retaining both the landed domains[92] and the various sacerdotal functions which had belonged to his predecessors.
Respecting the government, as newly framed, however, Herodotus unfortunately gives us hardly any particulars. Demônax classified the inhabitants of Kyrênê into three tribes; composed of: 1. Theræans with their Libyan Periœki; 2. Greeks who had come from Peloponnesus and Krete; 3. Such Greeks as had come from all other islands in the Ægean. It appears, too, that a senate was constituted, taken doubtless from these three tribes, and we may presume, in equal proportion. It seems probable that there had been before no constitutional classification, nor political privilege, except what was vested in the Theræans,—that these latter, the descendants of the original colonists were the only persons hitherto known to the constitution,—and that the remaining Greeks, though free landed proprietors and hoplites, were not permitted to act as an integral part of the body politic, nor distributed in tribes at all.[93] The whole powers of government,—up to this time vested in the Battiad princes, subject only to such check, how effective we know not, which the citizens of Theræan origin might be able to interpose,—were now transferred from the prince to the people; that is, to certain individuals or assemblies chosen somehow from among all the citizens. There existed at Kyrênê, as at Thêra and Sparta, a board of Ephors, and a band of three hundred armed police,[94] analogous to those who were called the Hippeis, or Horsemen, at Sparta: whether these were instituted by Demônax, we do not know, nor does the identity of titular office, in different states, afford safe ground for inferring identity of power. This is particularly to be remarked with regard to the Periœki at Kyrênê, who were perhaps more analogous to the Helots than to the Periœki of Sparta. The fact that the Periœki were considered in the new constitution as belonging specially to the Theræan branch of citizens, shows that these latter still continued a privileged order, like the Patricians with their Clients at Rome in relation to the Plebs.
That the rearrangement introduced by Demônax was wise, consonant to the general current of Greek feeling, and calculated to work well, there is good reason to believe: and no discontent within would have subverted it without the aid of extraneous force. Battus the Lame acquiesced in it peaceably during his life; but his widow and his son, Pheretimê and Arkesilaus, raised a revolt after his death, and tried to regain by force the kingly privileges of the family. They were worsted and obliged to flee,—the mother to Cyprus, the son to Samos,—where both employed themselves in procuring foreign arms to invade and conquer Kyrênê. Though Pheretimê could obtain no effective aid from Euelthôn prince of Salamis in Cyprus, her son was more successful in Samos, by inviting new Greek settlers to Kyrênê, under promise of a redistribution of the land. A large body of emigrants joined him on this promise; the period seemingly being favorable to it, since the Ionian cities had not long before become subject to Persia, and were discontented with the yoke. But before he conducted this numerous band against his native city, he thought proper to ask the advice of the Delphian oracle. Success in the undertaking was promised to him, but moderation and mercy after success was emphatically enjoined, on pain of losing his life; and the Battiad race was declared by the god to be destined to rule at Kyrênê for eight generations, but no longer,—as far as four princes named Battus and four named Arkesilaus.[95] “More than such eight generations (said the Pythia), Apollo forbids the Battiads even to aim at.” This oracle was doubtless told to Herodotus by Kyrenæan informants when he visited their city after the final deposition of the Battiad princes, which took place in the person of the fourth Arkesilaus, between 460-450 B. C.; the invasion of Kyrênê by Arkesilaus the Third, sixth prince of the Battiad race, to which the oracle professed to refer, having occurred about 530 B. C. The words placed in the mouth of the priestess doubtless date from the later of these two periods, and afford a specimen of the way in which pretended prophecies are not only made up by antedating after-knowledge, but are also so contrived as to serve a present purpose. For the distinct prohibition of the god, “not even to aim at a longer lineage than eight Battiad princes,” seems plainly intended to deter the partisans of the dethroned family from endeavoring to reinstate them.
Arkesilaus the Third, to whom this prophecy purports to have been addressed, returned with his mother Pheretimê and his army of new colonists to Kyrênê. He was strong enough to carry all before him,—to expel some of his chief opponents and seize upon others, whom he sent to Cyprus to be destroyed; though the vessels were driven out of their course by storms to the peninsula of Knidus, where the inhabitants rescued the prisoners and sent them to Thêra. Other Kyrenæans, opposed to the Battiads, took refuge in a lofty private tower, the property of Aglômachus, wherein Arkesilaus caused them all to be burned, heaping wood around and setting it on fire. But after this career of triumph and revenge, he became conscious that he had departed from the mildness enjoined to him by the oracle, and sought to avoid the punishment which it had threatened by retiring from Kyrênê. At any rate, he departed from Kyrênê to Barka, to the residence of the Barkæan prince, his kinsman Alazir, whose daughter he had married. But he found in Barka some of the unfortunate men who had fled from Kyrênê to escape him: these exiles, aided by a few Barkæans, watched for a suitable moment to assail him in the market-place, and slew him, together with his kinsman the prince Alazir.[96]
The victory of Arkesilaus at Kyrênê, and his assassination at Barka, are doubtless real facts; but they seem to have been compressed together and incorrectly colored, in order to give to the death of the Kyrenæan prince the appearance of a divine judgment. For the reign of Arkesilaus cannot have been very short, since events of the utmost importance occurred within it. The Persians under Kambysês conquered Egypt, and both the Kyrenæan and the Barkæan prince sent to Memphis to make their submission to the conqueror,—offering presents and imposing upon themselves an annual tribute. The presents of the Kyrenæans, five hundred minæ of silver, were considered by Kambysês so contemptibly small, that he took hold of them at once and threw them among his soldiers. And at the moment when Arkesilaus died, Aryandes, the Persian satrap after the death of Kambysês, is found established in Egypt.[97]
During the absence of Arkesilaus at Barka, his mother Pheretimê had acted as regent, taking her place at the discussions in the senate; but when his death took place, and the feeling against the Battiads manifested itself strongly at Barka, she did not feel powerful enough to put it down, and went to Egypt to solicit aid from Aryandes. The satrap, being made to believe that Arkesilaus had met his death in consequence of steady devotion to the Persians, sent a herald to Barka to demand the men who had slain him. The Barkæans assumed the collective responsibility of the act, saying that he had done them injuries both numerous and severe,—a farther proof that his reign cannot have been very short. On receiving this reply, the satrap immediately despatched a powerful Persian armament, land-force as well as sea-force, in fulfilment of the designs of Pheretimê against Barka. They besieged the town for nine months, trying to storm, to batter, and to undermine the walls;[98] but their efforts were vain, and it was taken at last only by an act of the grossest perfidy. Pretending to relinquish the attempt in despair, the Persian general concluded a treaty with the Barkæans, wherein it was stipulated that the latter should continue to pay tribute to the Great King, but that the army should retire without farther hostilities: “I swear it (said the Persian general), and my oath shall hold good, as long as this earth shall keep its place.” But the spot on which the oaths were exchanged had been fraudulently prepared: a ditch had been excavated and covered with hurdles, upon which again a surface of earth had been laid. The Barkæans, confiding in the oath, and overjoyed at their liberation, immediately opened their gates and relaxed their guard; while the Persians, breaking down the hurdles and letting fall the superimposed earth, so that they might comply with the letter of their oath, assaulted the city and took it without difficulty.
Miserable was the fate which Pheretimê had in reserve for these entrapped prisoners. She crucified the chief opponents of herself and her late son around the walls, on which were also affixed the breasts of their wives: then, with the exception of such of the inhabitants as were Battiads, and noway concerned in the death of Arkesilaus, she consigned the rest to slavery in Persia. They were carried away captive into the Persian empire, where Darius assigned to them a village in Baktria as their place of abode, which still bore the name of Barka, even in the days of Herodotus.
During the course of this expedition, it appears, the Persian army advanced as far as Hesperides, and reduced many of the Libyan tribes to subjection: these, together with Kyrênê and Barka, figure among the tributaries and auxiliaries of Xerxês in his expedition against Greece. And when the army returned to Egypt, by order of Aryandês, they were half inclined to seize Kyrênê itself in their way, though the opportunity was missed and the purpose left unaccomplished.[99]
Pheretimê accompanied the retreating army to Egypt, where she died shortly of a loathsome disease, consumed by worms; thus showing, says Herodotus,[100] that “excessive cruelty in revenge brings down upon men the displeasure of the gods.” It will be recollected that in the veins of this savage woman the Libyan blood was intermixed with the Grecian. Political enmity in Greece proper kills, but seldom if ever mutilates or sheds the blood, of women.
We thus leave Kyrênê and Barka again subject to Battiad princes, at the same time that they are tributaries of Persia. Another Battus and another Arkesilaus have to intervene before the glass of this worthless dynasty is run out, between 460-450 B. C. I shall not at present carry the reader’s attention to this last Arkesilaus, who stands honored by two chariot victories in Greece, and two fine odes of Pindar.
The victory of the third Arkesilaus, and the restoration of the Battiads, broke up the equitable constitution established by Demônax. His triple classification into tribes must have been completely remodelled, though we do not know how. For the number of new colonists whom Arkesilaus introduced must have necessitated a fresh distribution of land, and it is extremely doubtful whether the relation of the Theræan class of citizens with their Periœki, as established by Demônax, still continued to subsist. It is necessary to notice this fact, because the arrangements of Demônax are spoken of by some authors as if they formed the permanent constitution of Kyrênê; whereas they cannot have outlived the restoration of the Battiads, nor can they even have been revived after that dynasty was finally expelled, since the number of new citizens and the large change of property, introduced by Arkesilaus the Third, would render them inapplicable to the subsequent city.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
PAN-HELLENIC FESTIVALS — OLYMPIC, PYTHIAN, NEMEAN, AND ISTHMIAN.
In the preceding chapters I have been under the necessity of presenting to the reader a picture altogether incoherent and destitute of central effect,—to specify briefly each of the two or three hundred towns which agreed in bearing the Hellenic name, and to recount its birth and early life, as far as our evidence goes,—but without being able to point out any action and reaction, exploits or sufferings, prosperity or misfortune, glory or disgrace, common to all. To a great degree, this is a characteristic inseparable from the history of Greece from its beginning to its end, for the only political unity which it ever receives is the melancholy unity of subjection under all-conquering Rome. Nothing short of force will efface in the mind of a free Greek the idea of his city as an autonomous and separate organization; the village is a fraction, but the city is an unit,—and the highest of all political units, not admitting of being consolidated with others into a ten or a hundred, to the sacrifice of its own separate and individual mark. Such is the character of the race, both in their primitive country and in their colonial settlements,—in their early as well as in their late history,—splitting by natural fracture into a multitude of self-administering, indivisible cities. But that which marks the early historical period before Peisistratus, and which impresses upon it an incoherence at once so fatiguing and so irremediable, is, that as yet no causes have arisen to counteract this political isolation. Each city, whether progressive or stationary, prudent or adventurous, turbulent or tranquil, follows out its own thread of existence, having no partnership or common purposes with the rest, and not yet constrained into any active partnership with them by extraneous forces. In like manner, the races which on every side surround the Hellenic world appear distinct and unconnected, not yet taken up into any coöperating mass or system.
Contemporaneously with the accession of Peisistratus, this state of things becomes altered both in and out of Hellas,—the former as a consequence of the latter: for at that time begins the formation of the great Persian empire, which absorbs into itself not only Upper Asia and Asia Minor, but also Phenicia, Egypt, Thrace, Macedonia, and a considerable number of the Grecian cities themselves; and the common danger, threatening the greater states of Greece proper from this vast aggregate, drives them, in spite of great reluctance and jealousy, into active union. Hence arises a new impulse, counterworking the natural tendency to political isolation in the Hellenic cities, and centralizing their proceedings to a certain extent for the two centuries succeeding 560 B. C.; Athens and Sparta both availing themselves of the centralizing tendencies which had grown out of the Persian war. But during the interval between 776-560 B. C., no such tendency can be traced even in commencement, nor any constraining force calculated to bring it about. Even Thucydidês, as we may see by his excellent preface, knew of nothing during these two centuries except separate city-politics and occasional wars between neighbors: the only event, according to him, in which any considerable number of Grecian cities were jointly concerned, was the war between Chalkis and Eretria, the date of which we do not know. In this war, several cities took part as allies; Samos, among others, with Eretria,—Milêtus with Chalkis:[101] how far the alliances of either may have extended, we have no evidence to inform us, but the presumption is that no great number of Grecian cities was comprehended in them. Such as it was, however, this war between Chalkis and Eretria was the nearest approach, and the only approach, to a Pan-Hellenic proceeding which Thucydidês indicates between the Trojan and the Persian wars. Both he and Herodotus present this early period only by way of preface and contrast to that which follows,—when the Pan-Hellenic spirit and tendencies, though never at any time predominant, yet counted for a powerful element in history, and sensibly modified the universal instinct of city-isolation. They tell us little about it, either because they could find no trustworthy informants, or because there was nothing in it to captivate the imagination in the same manner as the Persian or the Peloponnesian wars. From whatever cause their silence arises, it is deeply to be regretted, since the phenomena of the two centuries from 776-560 B. C., though not susceptible of any central grouping, must have presented the most instructive matter for study, had they been preserved. In no period of history have there ever been formed a greater number of new political communities, under such variety of circumstances, personal as well as local. And a few chronicles, however destitute of philosophy, reporting the exact march of some of these colonies from their commencement,—amidst all the difficulties attendant on amalgamation with strange natives, as well as on a fresh distribution of land,—would have added greatly to our knowledge both of Greek character and Greek social existence.
Taking the two centuries now under review, then, it will appear that there is not only no growing political unity among the Grecian states, but a tendency even to the contrary,—to dissemination and mutual estrangement. Not so, however, in regard to the other feelings of unity capable of subsisting between men who acknowledge no common political authority,—sympathies founded on common religion, language, belief of race, legends, tastes and customs, intellectual appetencies, sense of proportion and artistic excellence, recreative enjoyments, etc. On all these points the manifestations of Hellenic unity become more and more pronounced and comprehensive, in spite of increased political dissemination, throughout the same period. The breadth of common sentiment and sympathy between Greek and Greek, together with the conception of multitudinous periodical meetings as an indispensable portion of existence, appears decidedly greater in 560 B. C. than it had been a century before. It was fostered by the increased conviction of the superiority of Greeks as compared with foreigners,—a conviction gradually more and more justified as Grecian art and intellect improved, and as the survey of foreign countries became extended,—as well as by the many new efforts of men of genius in the field of music, poetry, statuary, and architecture, each of whom touched chords of feeling belonging to other Greeks hardly less than to his own peculiar city. At the same time, the life of each peculiar city continues distinct, and even gathers to itself a greater abundance of facts and internal interests. So that during the two centuries now under review there was in the mind of every Greek an increase both of the city-feeling and of the Pan-Hellenic feeling, but on the other hand a decline of the old sentiment of separate race,—Doric, Ionic, Æolic.
I have already, in my former volume, touched upon the many-sided character of the Grecian religion, entering as it did into all the enjoyments and sufferings, the hopes and fears, the affections and antipathies, of the people,—not simply imposing restraints and obligations, but protecting, multiplying, and diversifying all the social pleasures and all the decorations of existence. Each city and even each village had its peculiar religious festivals, wherein the sacrifices to the gods were usually followed by public recreations of one kind or other,—by feasting on the victims, processional marches, singing and dancing, or competition in strong and active exercises. The festival was originally local, but friendship or communion of race was shown by inviting others, non-residents, to partake in its attractions. In the case of a colony and its metropolis, it was a frequent practice that citizens of the metropolis were honored with a privileged seat at the festivals of the colony, or that one of their number was presented with the first taste of the sacrificial victim.[102] Reciprocal frequentation of religious festivals was thus the standing evidence of friendship and fraternity among cities not politically united. That it must have existed to a certain degree from the earliest days, there can be no reasonable doubt; though in Homer and Hesiod we find only the celebration of funeral games, by a chief at his own private expense, in honor of his deceased father or friend,—with all the accompanying recreations, however, of a public festival, and with strangers not only present, but also contending for valuable prizes.[103] Passing to historical Greece during the seventh century B. C., we find evidence of two festivals, even then very considerable, and frequented by Greeks from many different cities and districts,—the festival at Delos, in honor of Apollo, the great place of meeting for Ionians throughout the Ægean,—and the Olympic games. The Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo, which must be placed earlier than 600 B. C., dwells with emphasis on the splendor of the Delian festival,—unrivalled throughout Greece, as it would appear, during all the first period of this history, for wealth, finery of attire, and variety of exhibitions as well in poetical genius as in bodily activity,[104]—equalling probably at that time, if not surpassing, the Olympic games. The complete and undiminished grandeur of this Delian Pan-Ionic festival is one of our chief marks of the first period of Grecian history, before the comparative prostration of the Ionic Greeks through the rise of Persia: it was celebrated periodically in every fourth year, to the honor of Apollo and Artemis. It was distinguished from the Olympic games by two circumstances both deserving of notice,—first, by including solemn matches not only of gymnastic, but also of musical and poetical excellence, whereas the latter had no place at Olympia; secondly, by the admission of men, women, and children indiscriminately as spectators, whereas women were formally excluded from the Olympic ceremony.[105] Such exclusion may have depended in part on the inland situation of Olympia, less easily approachable by females than the island of Delos; but even making allowance for this circumstance, both the one distinction and the other mark the rougher character of the Ætolo-Dorians in Peloponnesus. The Delian festival, which greatly dwindled away during the subjection of the Asiatic and insular Greeks to Persia, was revived afterwards by Athens during the period of her empire, when she was seeking in every way to strengthen her central ascendency in the Ægean. But though it continued to be ostentatiously celebrated under her management, it never regained that commanding sanctity and crowded frequentation which we find attested in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo for its earlier period.
Very different was the fate of the Olympic festival,—on the banks of the Alpheius[106] in Peloponnesus, near the old oracular temple of the Olympian Zeus,—which not only grew up uninterruptedly from small beginnings to the maximum of Pan-Hellenic importance, but even preserved its crowds of visitors and its celebrity for many centuries after the extinction of Greek freedom, and only received its final abolition, after more than eleven hundred years of continuance, from the decree of the Christian emperor Theodosius in 394 A. D. I have already recounted, in the preceding volume of this history, the attempt made by Pheidon, despot of Argos, to restore to the Pisatans, or to acquire for himself, the administration of this festival,—an event which proves the importance of the festival in Peloponnesus, even so early as 740 B. C. At that time, and for some years afterwards, it seems to have been frequented chiefly, if not exclusively, by the neighboring inhabitants of central and western Peloponnesus,—Spartans, Messenians, Arkadians, Triphylians, Pisatans, Eleians, and Achæans,[107]—and it forms an important link connecting the Etolo-Eleians, and their privileges as Agonothets to solemnize and preside over it, with Sparta. From the year 720 B. C., we trace positive evidences of the gradual presence of more distant Greeks,—Corinthians, Megarians, Bœotians, Athenians, and even Smyrnæans from Asia.
We observe also another proof of growing importance, in the increased number and variety of matches exhibited to the spectators, and in the substitution of the simple crown of olive, an honorary reward, in place of the more substantial present which the Olympic festival and all other Grecian festivals began by conferring upon the victor. The humble constitution of the Olympic games presented originally nothing more than a match of runners in the measured course called the Stadium: a continuous series of the victorious runners was formally inscribed and preserved by the Eleians, beginning with Korœbus in 776 B. C., and was made to serve by chronological inquirers from the third century B. C. downwards, as a means of measuring the chronological sequence of Grecian events. It was on the occasion of the 7th Olympiad after Korœbus, that Daiklês the Messenian first received for his victory in the stadium no farther recompense than a wreath from the sacred olive-tree near Olympia:[108] the honor of being proclaimed victor was found sufficient, without any pecuniary addition. But until the 14th Olympiad, there was no other match for the spectators to witness beside that of simple runners in the stadium. On that occasion a second race was first introduced, of runners in the double stadium, or up and down the course; in the next, or 15th Olympiad (720 B. C.), a third match, the long course for runners, or several times up and down the stadium. There were thus three races,—the simple stadium, the double stadium, or diaulos, and the long course, or dolichos, all for runners,—which continued without addition until the 18th Olympiad, when the wrestling-match and the complicated pentathlon—including jumping, running, the quoit, the javelin, and wrestling—were both added. A farther novelty appears in the 23rd Olympiad (688 B. C.), the boxing-match; and another, still more important, in the 25th (680 B. C.), the chariot with four full-grown horses. This last-mentioned addition is deserving of special notice, not merely as it diversified the scene by the introduction of horses, but also as it brought in a totally new class of competitors,—rich men and women, who possessed the finest horses and could hire the most skilful drivers, without any personal superiority, or power of bodily display, in themselves.[109] The prodigious exhibition of wealth in which the chariot proprietors indulged, is not only an evidence of growing importance in the Olympic games, but also served materially to increase that importance, and to heighten the interest of spectators. Two farther matches were added in the 33rd Olympiad (648 B. C.),—the pankration, or boxing and wrestling conjoined,[110] with the hand unarmed or divested of that hard leather cestus[111] worn by the pugilist, which rendered the blow of the latter more terrible, but at the same time prevented him from grasping or keeping hold of his adversary,—and the single race-horse. Many other novelties were introduced one after the other, which it is unnecessary fully to enumerate,—the race between men clothed in full panoply, and bearing each his shield,—the different matches between boys, analogous to those between full-grown men, and between colts, of the same nature as between full-grown horses. At the maximum of its attraction the Olympic solemnity occupied five days, but until the 77th Olympiad, all the various matches had been compressed into one,—beginning at daybreak and not always closing before dark.[112] The 77th Olympiad follows immediately after the successful expulsion of the Persian invaders from Greece, when the Pan-Hellenic feeling had been keenly stimulated by resistance to a common enemy; and we may easily conceive that this was a suitable moment for imparting additional dignity to the chief national festival.
We are thus enabled partially to trace the steps by which, during the two centuries succeeding 776 B. C., the festival of the Olympic Zeus in the Pisatid gradually passed from a local to a national character, and acquired an attractive force capable of bringing together into temporary union the dispersed fragments of Hellas, from Marseilles to Trebizond. In this important function it did not long stand alone. During the sixth century B. C., three other festivals, at first local, became successively nationalized,—the Pythia near Delphi, the Isthmia, near Corinth, the Nemea near Kleônæ, between Sikyôn and Argos.
In regard to the Pythian festival, we find a short notice of the particular incidents and individuals by whom its reconstitution and enlargement were brought about,—a notice the more interesting, inasmuch as these very incidents are themselves a manifestation of something like Pan-Hellenic patriotism, standing almost alone in an age which presents little else in operation except distinct city-interests. At the time when the Homeric Hymn to the Delphinian Apollo was composed (probably in the seventh century B. C.), the Pythian festival had as yet acquired little eminence. The rich and holy temple of Apollo was then purely oracular, established for the purpose of communicating to pious inquirers “the counsels of the immortals.” Multitudes of visitors came to consult it, as well as to sacrifice victims and to deposit costly offerings; but while the god delighted in the sound of the harp as an accompaniment to the singing of pæans, he was by no means anxious to encourage horse-races and chariot-races in the neighborhood,—nay, this psalmist considers that the noise of horses would be “a nuisance,” the drinking of mules a desecration to the sacred fountains, and the ostentation of fine-built chariots objectionable,[113] as tending to divert the attention of spectators away from the great temple and its wealth.
From such inconveniences the god was protected by placing his sanctuary “in the rocky Pytho,”—a rugged and uneven recess, of no great dimensions, embosomed in the southern declivity of Parnassus, and about two thousand feet above the level of the sea, while the topmost Parnassian summits reach a height of near eight thousand feet. The situation was extremely imposing, but unsuited by nature for the congregation of any considerable number of spectators,—altogether impracticable for chariot-races,—and only rendered practicable by later art and outlay for the theatre as well as for the stadium; the original stadium, when first established, was placed in the plain beneath. It furnished little means of subsistence, but the sacrifices and presents of visitors enabled the ministers of the temple to live in abundance,[114] and gathered together by degrees a village around it. Near the sanctuary of Pytho, and about the same altitude, was situated the ancient Phocian town of Krissa, on a projecting spur of Parnassus,—overhung above by the line of rocky precipice called the Phædriades, and itself overhanging below the deep ravine through which flows the river Pleistus. On the other side of this river rises the steep mountain Kirphis, which projects southward into the Corinthian gulf,—the river reaching that gulf through the broad Krissæan or Kirrhæan plain, which stretches westward nearly to the Lokrian town of Amphissa; a plain for the most part fertile and productive, though least so in its eastern part immediately under the Kirphis, where the seaport Kirrha was placed.[115] The temple, the oracle, and the wealth of Pytho, belong to the very earliest periods of Grecian antiquity; but the octennial solemnity in honor of the god included at first no other competition except that of bards, who sang each a pæan with the harp. It has been already mentioned, in my preceding volume, that the Amphiktyonic assembly held one of its half-yearly meetings near the temple of Pytho, the other at Thermopylæ.
In those early times when the Homeric Hymn to Apollo was composed, the town of Krissa appears to have been great and powerful, possessing all the broad plain between Parnassus, Kirphis, and the gulf, to which latter it gave its name,—and possessing also, what was a property not less valuable, the adjoining sanctuary of Pytho itself, which the Hymn identifies with Krissa, not indicating Delphi as a separate place. The Krissæans, doubtless, derived great profits from the number of visitors who came to visit Delphi, both by land and by sea, and Kirrha was originally only the name for their seaport. Gradually, however, the port appears to have grown in importance at the expense of the town, just as Apollonia and Ptolemais came to equal Kyrênê and Barka, and as Plymouth Dock has swelled into Devonport; while at the same time, the sanctuary of Pytho with its administrators expanded into the town of Delphi, and came to claim an independent existence of its own. The original relations between Krissa, Kirrha, and Delphi, were in this manner at length subverted, the first declining and the two latter rising. The Krissæans found themselves dispossessed of the management of the temple, which passed to the Delphians, as well as of the profits arising from the visitors, whose disbursements went to enrich the inhabitants of Kirrha. Krissa was a primitive city of the Phocian name, and could boast of a place as such in the Homeric Catalogue, so that her loss of importance was not likely to be quietly endured. Moreover, in addition to the above facts, already sufficient in themselves as seeds of quarrel, we are told that the Kirrhæans abused their position as masters of the avenue to the temple by sea, and levied exorbitant tolls on the visitors who landed there,—a number constantly increasing from the multiplication of the transmarine colonies, and from the prosperity of those in Italy and Sicily. Besides such offence against the general Grecian public, they had also incurred the enmity of their Phocian neighbors by outrages upon women, Phocian as well as Argeian, who were returning from the temple.[116]
Thus stood the case, apparently, about 595 B. C., when the Amphiktyonic meeting interfered—either prompted by the Phocians, or perhaps on their own spontaneous impulse, out of regard to the temple—to punish the Kirrhæans. After a war of ten years, the first Sacred War in Greece, this object was completely accomplished, by a joint force of Thessalians under Eurylochus, Sikyonians under Kleisthenês, and Athenians under Alkmæon; the Athenian Solon being the person who originated and enforced, in the Amphiktyonic council, the proposition of interference. Kirrha appears to have made a strenuous resistance until its supplies from the sea were intercepted by the naval force of the Sikyonian Kleisthenês; and even after the town was taken, its inhabitants defended themselves for some time on the heights of Kirphis.[117] At length, however, they were thoroughly subdued. Their town was destroyed, or left to subsist merely as a landing-place; and the whole adjoining plain was consecrated to the Delphian god, whose domains thus touched the sea. Under this sentence, pronounced by the religious feeling of Greece, and sanctified by a solemn oath publicly sworn and inscribed at Delphi, the land was condemned to remain untilled and unplanted, without any species of human care, and serving only for the pasturage of cattle. The latter circumstance was convenient to the temple, inasmuch as it furnished abundance of victims for the pilgrims who landed and came to sacrifice,—for without preliminary sacrifice no man could consult the oracle;[118] while the entire prohibition of tillage was the only means of obviating the growth of another troublesome neighbor on the sea-board. The fate of Kirrha in this war is ascertained: that of Krissa is not so clear, nor do we know whether it was destroyed, or left subsisting in a position of inferiority with regard to Delphi. From this time forward, however, the Delphian community appears as substantive and autonomous, exercising in their own right the management of the temple; though we shall find, on more than one occasion, that the Phocians contest this right, and lay claim to the management of it for themselves,[119]—a remnant of that early period when the oracle stood in the domain of the Phocian Krissa. There seems, moreover, to have been a standing antipathy between the Delphians and the Phocians.
The Sacred War just mentioned, emanating from a solemn Amphiktyonic decree, carried on jointly by troops of different states whom we do not know to have ever before coöperated, and directed exclusively towards an object of common interest, is in itself a fact of high importance as manifesting a decided growth of Pan-Hellenic feeling. Sparta is not named as interfering,—a circumstance which seems remarkable when we consider both her power, even as it then stood, and her intimate connection with the Delphian oracle,—while the Athenians appear as the prime movers, through the greatest and best of their citizens: the credit of a large-minded patriotism rests prominently upon them.
But if this Sacred War itself is a proof that the Pan-Hellenic spirit was growing stronger, the positive result in which it ended reinforced that spirit still farther. The spoils of Kirrha were employed by the victorious allies in founding the Pythian games. The octennial festival hitherto celebrated at Delphi in honor of the god, including no other competition except in the harp and the pæan, was expanded into comprehensive games on the model of the Olympic, with matches not only of music, but also of gymnastics and chariots,—celebrated, not at Delphi itself, but on the maritime plain near the ruined Kirrha,—and under the direct superintendence of the Amphiktyons themselves. I have already mentioned that Solon provided large rewards for such Athenians as gained victories in the Olympic and Isthmian games, thereby indicating his sense of the great value of the national games as a means of promoting Hellenic intercommunion. It was the same feeling which instigated the foundation of the new games on the Kirrhæan plain, in commemoration of the vindicated honor of Apollo, and in the territory newly made over to him. They were celebrated in the latter half of summer, or first half of every third Olympic year,—the Amphiktyons being the ostensible agonothets, or administrators, and appointing persons to discharge the duty in their names.[120] At the first Pythian ceremony (in 586 B. C.), valuable rewards were given to the different victors; at the second (582 B. C.), nothing was conferred but wreaths of laurel,—the rapidly attained celebrity of the games being such as to render any farther reward superfluous. The Sikyonian despot Kleisthenês himself, one of the leaders in the conquest of Kirrha, gained the prize at the chariot-race of the second Pythia. We find other great personages in Greece frequently mentioned as competitors, and the games long maintained a dignity second only to the Olympic, over which, indeed, they had some advantages; first, that they were not abused for the purpose of promoting petty jealousies and antipathies of any administering state, as the Olympic games were perverted by the Eleians, on more than one occasion; next, that they comprised music and poetry as well as bodily display. From the circumstances attending their foundation, the Pythian games deserved, even more than the Olympic, the title bestowed on them by Demosthenês,—“The common Agôn of the Greeks.”[121]
The Olympic and Pythian games continued always to be the most venerated solemnities in Greece: yet the Nemea and Isthmia acquired a celebrity not much inferior; the Olympic prize counting for the highest of all.[122] Both the Nemea and the Isthmia were distinguished from the other two festivals by occurring, not once in four years, but once in two years; the former in the second and fourth years of each Olympiad, the latter in the first and third years. To both is assigned, according to Greek custom, an origin connected with the interesting persons and circumstances of Grecian antiquity: but our historical knowledge of both begins with the sixth century B. C. The first historical Nemead is presented as belonging to Olympiad 52 or 53 (572-568 B. C.), a few years subsequent to the Sacred War above mentioned and to the origin of the Pythia. The festival was celebrated in honor of the Nemean Zeus, in the valley of Nemea, between Phlius and Kleônæ,—and originally by the Kleônæans themselves, until, at some period after 460 B. C., the Argeians deprived them of that honor and assumed the honors of administration to themselves.[123] The Nemean games had their Hellanodikæ[124] to superintend, to keep order, and to distribute the prizes, as well as the Olympic. Respecting the Isthmian festival, our first historical information is a little earlier, for it has already been stated that Solon conferred a premium upon every Athenian citizen who gained a prize at that festival as well as at the Olympian,—in or after 594 B. C. It was celebrated by the Corinthians at their isthmus, in honor of Poseidôn; and if we may draw any inference from the legends respecting its foundation, which is ascribed sometimes to Theseus, the Athenians appear to have identified it with the antiquities of their own state.[125]
We thus perceive that the interval between 600-560 B. C. exhibits the first historical manifestation of the Pythia, Isthmia, and Nemea,—the first expansion of all the three from local into Pan-Hellenic festivals. To the Olympic games, for some time the only great centre of union among all the widely dispersed Greeks, are now added three other sacred agônes of the like public, open, national character; constituting visible marks, as well as tutelary bonds, of collective Hellenism, and insuring to every Greek who went to compete in the matches, a safe and inviolate transit even through hostile Hellenic states.[126] These four, all in or near Peloponnesus, and one of which occurred in each year, formed the period, or cycle, of sacred games, and those who had gained prizes at all the four received the enviable designation of periodonikes:[127] the honors paid to Olympic victors on their return to their native city were prodigious, even in the sixth century B. C., and became even more extravagant afterwards. We may remark that in the Olympic games alone, the oldest as well as the most illustrious of the four, the musical and intellectual element was wanting: all the three more recent agônes included crowns for exercises of music and poetry, along with gymnastics, chariots, and horses.
Nor was it only in the distinguishing national stamp set upon these four great festivals that the gradual increase of Hellenic family-feeling exhibited itself, during the course of this earliest period of our history. Pursuant to the same tendencies, religious festivals in all the considerable towns gradually became more and more open and accessible, and attracted guests as well as competitors from beyond the border; the dignity of the state, as well as the honor rendered to the presiding god, being measured by numbers, admiration, and envy, in the frequenting visitors.[128] There is no positive evidence, indeed, of such expansion in the Attic festivals earlier than the reign of Peisistratus, who first added the quadrennial or greater Panathenæa to the ancient annual or lesser Panathenæa; nor can we trace the steps of progress in regard to Thebes, Orchomenus, Thespiæ, Megara, Sikyôn, Pellênê, Ægina, Argos, etc., but we find full reason for believing that such was the general reality. Of the Olympic or Isthmian victors whom Pindar and Simonidês celebrated, many derived a portion of their renown from previous victories acquired at several of these local contests,[129]—victories sometimes so numerous, as to prove how wide-spread the habit of mutual frequentation had become;[130] though we find, even in the third century B. C., treaties of alliance between different cities, in which it is thought necessary to confer this mutual right by express stipulation. Temptation was offered, to the distinguished gymnastic or musical competitors, by prizes of great value; and Timæus even asserted, as a proof of the overweening pride of Kroton and Sybaris, that these cities tried to supplant the preëminence of the Olympic games, by instituting games of their own with the richest prizes, to be celebrated at the same time,[131]—a statement in itself not worthy of credit, but nevertheless illustrating the animated rivalry known to prevail among the Grecian cities in procuring for themselves splendid and crowded games. At the time when the Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr was composed, the worship of that goddess seems to have been purely local at Eleusis; but before the Persian war, the festival celebrated by the Athenians every year, in honor of the Eleusinian Dêmêtêr, admitted Greeks of all cities to be initiated, and was attended by vast crowds of them.[132]
It was thus that the simplicity and strict local application of the primitive religious festival, among the greater states in Greece, gradually expanded, on certain great occasions periodically recurring, into an elaborate and regulated series of exhibitions,—not merely admitting, but soliciting the fraternal presence of all Hellenic spectators. In this respect Sparta seems to have formed an exception to the remaining states: her festivals were for herself alone, and her general rudeness towards other Greeks was not materially softened even at the Karneia,[133] or Hyakinthia, or Gymnopædiæ. On the other hand, the Attic Dionysia were gradually exalted, from their original rude spontaneous outburst of village feeling in thankfulness to the god, followed by song, dance, and revelry of various kinds,—into costly and diversified performances, first, by a trained chorus, next, by actors superadded to it;[134] and the dramatic compositions thus produced, as they embodied the perfection of Grecian art, so they were eminently calculated to invite a Pan-Hellenic audience and to encourage the sentiment of Hellenic unity. The dramatic literature of Athens, however, belongs properly to a later period; previous to the year 560 B. C., we see only those commencements of innovation which drew upon Thespis[135] the rebuke of Solon, who himself contributed to impart to the Panathenaic festival a more solemn and attractive character, by checking the license of the rhapsodes, and insuring to those present a full, orderly recital of the Iliad.
The sacred games and festivals, here alluded to as a class, took hold of the Greek mind by so great a variety of feelings,[136] as to counterbalance in a high degree the political disseverance, and to keep alive among their wide-spread cities, in the midst of constant jealousy and frequent quarrel, a feeling of brotherhood and congenial sentiment such as must otherwise have died away. The Theôrs, or sacred envoys, who came to Olympia or Delphi from so many different points, all sacrificed to the same god and at the same altar, witnessed the same sports, and contributed by their donatives to enrich or adorn one respected scene. Nor must we forget that the festival afforded opportunity for a sort of fair, including much traffic amid so large a mass of spectators,[137] and besides the exhibitions of the games themselves, there were recitations and lectures in a spacious council-room for those who chose to listen to them, by poets, rhapsodes, philosophers, and historians,—among which last, the history of Herodotus is said to have been publicly read by its author.[138] Of the wealthy and great men in the various cities, many contended simply for the chariot victories and horse victories. But there were others whose ambition was of a character more strictly personal, and who stripped naked as runners, wrestlers, boxers, or pankratiasts, having gone through the extreme fatigue of a complete previous training. Kylon, whose unfortunate attempt to usurp the sceptre at Athens has been recounted, had gained the prize in the Olympic stadium: Alexander son of Amyntas, the prince of Macedon, had run for it.[139] The great family of the Diagoridæ at Rhodes, who furnished magistrates and generals to their native city, supplied a still greater number of successful boxers and pankratiasts at Olympia, while other instances also occur of generals named by various cities from the lists of successful Olympic gymnasts; and the odes of Pindar, always dearly purchased, attest how many of the great and wealthy were found in that list.[140] The perfect popularity and equality of persons at these great games, is a feature not less remarkable than the exact adherence to predetermined rule, and the self-imposed submission of the immense crowd to a handful of servants armed with sticks,[141] who executed the orders of the Eleian Hellanodikæ. The ground upon which the ceremony took place, and even the territory of the administering state, was protected by a “Truce of God,” during the month of the festival, the commencement of which was formally announced by heralds sent round to the different states. Treaties of peace between different cities were often formally commemorated by pillars there erected, and the general impression of the scene suggested nothing but ideas of peace and brotherhood among Greeks.[142] And I may remark that the impression of the games as belonging to all Greeks, and to none but Greeks, was stronger and clearer during the interval between 600-300 B. C., than it came to be afterwards. For the Macedonian conquests had the effect of diluting and corrupting Hellenism, by spreading an exterior varnish of Hellenic tastes and manners over a wide area of incongruous foreigners, who were incapable of the real elevation of the Hellenic character; so that although in later times the games continued undiminished, both in attraction and in number of visitors, the spirit of Pan-Hellenic communion, which had once animated the scene, was gone forever.
CHAPTER XXIX.
LYRIC POETRY. — THE SEVEN WISE MEN.
The interval between 776-560 B. C. presents to us a remarkable expansion of Grecian genius in the creation of their elegiac, iambic, lyric, choric, and gnomic poetry, which was diversified in a great many ways and improved by many separate masters. The creators of all these different styles—from Kallinus and Archilochus down to Stesichorus—fall within the two centuries here included; though Pindar and Simonidês, “the proud and high-crested bards,”[143] who carried lyric and choric poetry to the maximum of elaboration consistent with full poetical effect, lived in the succeeding century, and were contemporary with the tragedian Æschylus. The Grecian drama, comic as well as tragic, of the fifth century B. C., combined the lyric and choric song with the living action of iambic dialogue,—thus constituting the last ascending movement in the poetical genius of the race. Reserving this for a future time, and for the history of Athens, to which it more particularly belongs, I now propose to speak only of the poetical movement of the two earlier centuries, wherein Athens had little or no part. So scanty are the remnants, unfortunately, of these earlier poets, that we can offer little except criticisms borrowed at second-hand, and a few general considerations on their workings and tendency.[144]
Archilochus and Kallinus both appear to fall about the middle of the seventh century B. C., and it is with them that the innovations in Grecian poetry commence. Before them, we are told, there existed nothing but the epos, or daktylic hexameter poetry, of which much has been said in my former volume,—being legendary stories or adventures narrated, together with addresses or hymns to the gods. We must recollect, too, that this was not only the whole poetry, but the whole literature of the age: prose composition was altogether unknown, and writing, if beginning to be employed as an aid to a few superior men, was at any rate generally unused, and found no reading public. The voice was the only communicant, and the ear the only recipient, of all those ideas and feelings which productive minds in the community found themselves impelled to pour out; both voice and ear being accustomed to a musical recitation, or chant, apparently something between song and speech, with simple rhythm and a still simpler occasional accompaniment from the primitive four-stringed harp. Such habits and requirements of the voice and ear were, at that time, inseparably associated with the success and popularity of the poet, and contributed doubtless to restrict the range of subjects with which he could deal. The type was to a certain extent consecrated, like the primitive statues of the gods, from which men only ventured to deviate by gradual and almost unconscious innovations. Moreover, in the first half of the seventh century B. C., that genius which had once created an Iliad and an Odyssey was no longer to be found, and the work of hexameter narrative had come to be prosecuted by less gifted persons,—by those Cyclic poets of whom I have spoken in the preceding volumes.
Such, as far as we can make it out amidst very uncertain evidence, was the state of the Greek mind immediately before elegiac and lyric poets appeared; while at the same time its experience was enlarging by the formation of new colonies, and the communion among its various states tended to increase by the freer reciprocity of religious games and festivals. There arose a demand for turning the literature of the age—I use this word as synonymous with the poetry—to new feelings and purposes, and for applying the rich, plastic, and musical language of the old epic, to present passion and circumstance, social as well as individual. Such a tendency had become obvious in Hesiod, even within the range of hexameter verse; but the same causes which led to an enlargement of the subjects of poetry inclined men also to vary the metre.
In regard to this latter point, there is reason to believe that the expansion of Greek music was the immediate determining cause; for it has been already stated that the musical scale and instruments of the Greeks, originally very narrow, were materially enlarged by borrowing from Phrygia and Lydia, and these acquisitions seem to have been first realized about the beginning of the seventh century B. C., through the Lesbian harper Terpander,—the Phrygian (or Greco-Phrygian) flute-player Olympus,—and the Arkadian or Bœotian flute-player Klonas. Terpander made the important advance of exchanging the original four-stringed harp for one of seven strings, embracing the compass of one octave or two Greek tetrachords, and Olympus as well as Klonas taught many new nomes, or tunes, on the flute, to which the Greeks had before been strangers,—probably also the use of a flute of more varied musical compass. Terpander is said to have gained the prize at the first recorded celebration of the Lacedæmonian festival of the Karneia, in 676 B. C.: this is one of the best-ascertained points among the obscure chronology of the seventh century; and there seem grounds for assigning Olympus and Klonas to nearly the same period, a little before Archilochus and Kallinus.[145] To Terpander, Olympus, and Klonas, are ascribed the formation of the earliest musical nomes known to the inquiring Greeks of later times: to the first, nomes on the harp; to the two latter, on the flute,—every nome being the general scheme, or basis, of which the airs actually performed constituted so many variations, within certain defined limits.[146] Terpander employed his enlarged instrumental power as a new accompaniment to the Homeric poems, as well as to certain epic proœmia or hymns to the gods of his own composition. But he does not seem to have departed from the hexameter verse and the daktylic rhythm, to which the new accompaniment was probably not quite suitable; and the idea may thus have been suggested of combining the words also according to new rhythmical and metrical laws.
It is certain, at least, that the age (670-600) immediately succeeding Terpander,—comprising Archilochus, Kallinus, Tyrtæus, and Alkman, whose relations of time one to another we have no certain means of determining,[147] though Alkman seems to have been the latest,—presents a remarkable variety both of new metres and of new rhythms, superinduced upon the previous daktylic hexameter. The first departure from this latter is found in the elegiac verse, employed seemingly more or less by all the four above-mentioned poets, but chiefly by the first two, and even ascribed by some to the invention of Kallinus. Tyrtæus in his military march-songs employed the anapæstic metre, but in Archilochus as well as in Alkman we find traces of a much larger range of metrical variety,—iambic, trochaic, anapæstic, ionic, etc.,—sometimes even asynartetic or compound metres, anapæstic or daktylic, blended with trochaic or iambic. What we have remaining from Mimnermus, who comes about the close of the preceding four, is elegiac; his contemporaries Alkæus and Sappho, besides employing most of those metres which they found existing, invented each a peculiar stanza of their own, which is familiarly known under a name derived from each. In Solon, the younger contemporary of Mimnermus, we have the elegiac, iambic, and trochaic: in Theognis, yet later, the elegiac only. But both Arion and Stesichorus appear to have been innovators in this department, the former by his improvement in the dithyrambic chorus or circular song and dance in honor of Dionysus,—the latter by his more elaborate choric compositions, containing not only a strophê and antistrophê, but also a third division or epode succeeding them, pronounced by the chorus standing still. Both Anakreon and Ibykus likewise added to the stock of existing metrical varieties. And we thus see that, within the century and a half succeeding Terpander, Greek poetry (or Greek literature, which was then the same thing) became greatly enriched in matter as well as diversified in form.
To a certain extent there seems to have been a real connection between the two: new forms were essential for the expression of new wants and feelings,—though the assertion that elegiac metre is especially adapted for one set of feelings,[148] trochaic for a second, and iambic for a third, if true at all, can only be admitted with great latitude of exception, when we find so many of them employed by the poets for very different subjects,—gay or melancholy, bitter or complaining, earnest or sprightly,—seemingly with little discrimination.
But the adoption of some new metre, different from the perpetual series of hexameters, was required when the poet desired to do something more than recount a long story or fragment of heroic legend,—when he sought to bring himself, his friends, his enemies, his city, his hopes and fears with regard to matters recent or impending, all before the notice of the hearer, and that, too, at once with brevity and animation. The Greek hexameter, like our blank verse, has all its limiting conditions bearing upon each separate line, and presents to the hearer no predetermined resting-place or natural pause beyond.[149] In reference to any long composition, either epic or dramatic, such unrestrained license is found convenient, and the case was similar for Greek epos and drama,—the single-lined iambic trimeter being generally used for the dialogue of tragedy and comedy, just as the daktylic hexameter had been used for the epic. The metrical changes introduced by Archilochus and his contemporaries may be compared to a change from our blank verse to the rhymed couplet and quatrain: the verse was thrown into little systems of two, three, or four lines, with a pause at the end of each; and the halt thus assured to, as well as expected and relished by, the ear, was generally coincident with a close, entire or partial, in the sense, which thus came to be distributed with greater point and effect. The elegiac verse, or common hexameter and pentameter (this second line being an hexameter with the third and sixth thesis,[150] or the last half of the third and sixth foot, suppressed, and a pause left in place of it), as well as the epode (or iambic trimeter followed by an iambic dimeter) and some other binary combinations of verse which we trace among the fragments of Archilochus, are conceived with a view to such increase of effect both on the ear and the mind, not less than to the direct pleasures of novelty and variety.
The iambic metre, built upon the primitive iambus, or coarse and licentious jesting,[151] which formed a part of some Grecian festivals (especially of the festivals of Dêmêtêr as well in Attica as in Paros, the native country of the poet), is only one amongst many new paths struck out by his inventive genius; whose exuberance astonishes us, when we consider that he takes his start from little more than the simple hexameter,[152] in which, too, he was a distinguished composer,—for even of the elegiac verse he is as likely to have been the inventor as Kallinus, just as he was the earliest popular and successful composer of table-songs, or Skolia, though Terpander may have originated some such before him. The entire loss of his poems, excepting some few fragments, enables us to recognize little more than one characteristic,—the intense personality which pervaded them, as well as that coarse, direct, and out-spoken license, which afterwards lent such terrible effect to the old comedy at Athens. His lampoons are said to have driven Lykambês, the father of Neobulê, to hang himself: the latter had been promised to Archilochus in marriage, but that promise was broken, and the poet assailed both father and daughter with every species of calumny.[153] In addition to this disappointment, he was poor, the son of a slave-mother, and an exile from his country, Paros, to the unpromising colony of Thasos. The desultory notices respecting him betray a state of suffering combined with loose conduct which vented itself sometimes in complaint, sometimes in libellous assault; and he was at last slain by some whom his muse had thus exasperated. His extraordinary poetical genius finds but one voice of encomium throughout antiquity. His triumphal song to Hêraklês was still popularly sung by the victors at Olympia, near two centuries after his death, in the days of Pindar; but that majestic and complimentary poet at once denounces the malignity, and attests the retributive suffering, of the great Parian iambist.[154]
Amidst the multifarious veins in which Archilochus displayed his genius, moralizing or gnomic poetry is not wanting, while his contemporary Simonides, of Amorgos, devotes the iambic metre especially to this destination, afterwards followed out by Solon and Theognis. But Kallinus, the earliest celebrated elegiac poet, so far as we can judge from his few fragments, employed the elegiac metre for exhortations of warlike patriotism; and the more ample remains which we possess of Tyrtæus are sermons in the same strain, preaching to the Spartans bravery against the foe, and unanimity as well as obedience to the law at home. They are patriotic effusions, called forth by the circumstances of the time, and sung by single voice, with accompaniment of the flute,[155] to those in whose bosoms the flame of courage was to be kindled. For though what we peruse is in verse, we are still in the tide of real and present life, and we must suppose ourselves rather listening to an orator addressing the citizens when danger or dissension is actually impending. It is only in the hands of Mimnermus that elegiac verse comes to be devoted to soft and amatory subjects. His few fragments present a vein of passive and tender sentiment, illustrated by appropriate matter of legend, such as would be cast into poetry in all ages, and quite different from the rhetoric of Kallinus and Tyrtæus.
The poetical career of Alkman is again distinct from that of any of his above-mentioned contemporaries. Their compositions, besides hymns to the gods, were principally expressions of feeling intended to be sung by individuals, though sometimes also suited for the kômus, or band of festive volunteers, assembled on some occasion of common interest: those of Alkman were principally choric, intended for the song and accompanying dance of the chorus. He was a native of Sardis in Lydia, or at least his family were so; and he appears to have come in early life to Sparta, though his genius and mastery of the Greek language discountenance the story that he was brought over to Sparta as a slave. The most ancient arrangement of music at Sparta, generally ascribed to Terpander,[156] underwent considerable alteration, not only through the elegiac and anapæstic measures of Tyrtæus, but also through the Kretan Thalêtas and the Lydian Alkman. The harp, the instrument of Terpander, was rivalled and in part superseded by the flute or pipe, which had been recently rendered more effective in the hands of Olympus, Klonas, and Polymnêstus, and which gradually became, for compositions intended to raise strong emotion, the favorite instrument of the two,—being employed as accompaniment both to the elegies of Tyrtæus, and to the hyporchemata (songs, or hymns, combined with dancing) of Thalêtas; also, as the stimulus and regulator to the Spartan military march.[157]
These elegies (as has been just remarked) were sung by one person, in the midst of an assembly of listeners, and there were doubtless other compositions intended for the individual voice. But in general such was not the character of music and poetry at Sparta; everything done there, both serious and recreative, was public and collective, so that the chorus and its performances received extraordinary development. It has been already stated, that the chorus usually, with song and dance combined, constituted an important part of divine service throughout all Greece, and was originally a public manifestation of the citizens generally,—a large proportion of them being actively engaged in it,[158] and receiving some training for the purpose as an ordinary branch of education. Neither the song nor the dance, under such conditions, could be otherwise than extremely simple. But in process of time, the performance at the chief festivals tended to become more elaborate, and to fall into the hands of persons expressly and professionally trained,—the mass of the citizens gradually ceasing to take active part, and being present merely as spectators. Such was the practice which grew up in most parts of Greece, and especially at Athens, where the dramatic chorus acquired its highest perfection. But the drama never found admission at Sparta, and the peculiarity of Spartan life tended much to keep up the popular chorus on its ancient footing. It formed, in fact, one element in that never-ceasing drill to which the Spartans were subject from their boyhood, and it served a purpose analogous to their military training, in accustoming them to simultaneous and regulated movement,—insomuch that the comparison between the chorus, especially in its Pyrrhic, or war-dances, and the military enomoty, seems to have been often dwelt upon.[159] In the singing of the solemn pæan in honor of Apollo, at the festival of the Hyakinthia, king Agesilaus was under the orders of the chorus-master, and sang in the place allotted to him;[160] while the whole body of Spartans without exception,—the old, the middle-aged, and the youth, the matrons, and the virgins,—were distributed in various choric companies,[161] and trained to harmony both of voice and motion, which was publicly exhibited at the solemnities of the Gymnopædiæ. The word dancing must be understood in a larger sense than that in which it is now employed, and as comprising every variety of rhythmical, accentuated, conspiring movements, or gesticulations, or postures of the body, from the slowest to the quickest;[162] cheironomy, or the decorous and expressive movement of the hands, being especially practised.
We see thus that both at Sparta and in Krête (which approached in respect to publicity of individual life most nearly to Sparta), the choric aptitudes and manifestations occupied a larger space than in any other Grecian city. And as a certain degree of musical and rhythmical variety was essential to meet this want,[163] while music was never taught to Spartan citizens individually,—we farther understand how strangers like Terpander, Polymnêstus, Thalêtas, Tyrtæus, Alkman, etc., were not only received, but acquired great influence at Sparta, in spite of the preponderant spirit of jealous seclusion in the Spartan character. All these masters appear to have been effective in their own special vocation,—the training of the chorus,—to which they imparted new rhythmical action, and for which they composed new music. But Alkman did this, and something more; he possessed the genius of a poet, and his compositions were read afterwards with pleasure by those who could not hear them sung or see them danced. In the little of his poems which remains, we recognize that variety of rhythm and metre for which he was celebrated. In this respect he (together with the Kretan Thalêtas, who is said to have introduced a more vehement style both of music and dance, with the Kretic and Pæonic rhythm, into Sparta[164]) surpassed Archilochus, and prepared the way for the complicated choric movements of Stesichorus and Pindar: some of the fragments, too, manifest that fresh outpouring of individual sentiment and emotion which constitutes so much of the charm of popular poetry. Besides his touching address in old age to the Spartan virgins, over whose song and dance he had been accustomed to preside.—he is not afraid to speak of his hearty appetite, satisfied with simple food and relishing a bowl of warm broth at the winter tropic.[165] And he has attached to the spring an epithet, which comes home to the real feelings of a poor country more than those captivating pictures which abound in verse, ancient as well as modern: he calls it “the season of short fare,”—the crop of the previous year being then nearly consumed, the husbandman is compelled to pinch himself until his new harvest comes in.[166] Those who recollect that in earlier periods of our history, and in all countries where there is little accumulated stock, an exorbitant difference is often experienced in the price of corn before and after the harvest, will feel the justice of Alkman’s description.
Judging from these and from a few other fragments of this poet, Alkman appears to have combined the life and exciting vigor of Archilochus in the song properly so called, sung by himself individually,—with a larger knowledge of musical and rhythmical effect in regard to the choric performance. He composed in the Laconian dialect,—a variety of the Doric with some intermixture of Æolisms. And it was from him, jointly with those other composers who figured at Sparta during the century after Terpander, as well as from the simultaneous development of the choric muse[167] in Argos, Sikyôn, Arcadia, and other parts of Peloponnesus, that the Doric dialect acquired permanent footing in Greece, as the only proper dialect for choric compositions. Continued by Stesichorus and Pindar, this habit passed even to the Attic dramatists, whose choric songs are thus in a great measure Doric, while their dialogue is Attic. At Sparta, as well as in other parts of Peloponnesus,[168] the musical and rhythmical style appears to have been fixed by Alkman and his contemporaries, and to have been tenaciously maintained, for two or three centuries, with little or no innovation; the more so, as the flute-players at Sparta formed an hereditary profession, who followed the routine of their fathers.[169]
Alkman was the last poet who addressed himself to the popular chorus. Both Arion and Stesichorus composed for a body of trained men, with a degree of variety and involution such as could not be attained by a mere fraction of the people. The primitive dithyrambus was a round choric dance and song in honor of Dionysus,[170] common to Naxos, Thebes, and seemingly to many other places, at the Dionysiac festival,—a spontaneous effusion of drunken men in the hour of revelry, wherein the poet Archilochus, “with the thunder of wine full upon his mind,” had often taken the chief part.[171] Its exciting character approached to the worship of the Great Mother in Asia, and stood in contrast with the solemn and stately pæan addressed to Apollo. Arion introduced into it an alteration such as Archilochus had himself brought about in the scurrilous iambus. He converted it into an elaborate composition in honor of the god, sung and danced by a chorus of fifty persons, not only sober, but trained with great strictness; though its rhythm and movements, and its equipment in the character of satyrs, presented more or less an imitation of the primitive license. Born at Methymna in Lesbos, Arion appears as a harper, singer, and composer, much favored by Periander at Corinth, in which city he first “composed, denominated, and taught the dithyramb,” earlier than any one known to Herodotus.[172] He did not, however, remain permanently there, but travelled from city to city, exhibiting at the festivals for money,—especially to Sicilian and Italian Greece, where he acquired large gains. We may here again remark how the poets as well as the festivals served to promote a sentiment of unity among the dispersed Greeks. Such transfer of the dithyramb, from the field of spontaneous nature into the garden of art,[173] constitutes the first stage in the refinement of Dionysiac worship; which will hereafter be found still farther exalted in the form of the Attic drama.
The date of Arion seems about 600 B. C., shortly after Alkman: that of Stesichorus is a few years later. To the latter the Greek chorus owed a high degree of improvement, and in particular the last finished distribution of its performance into the strophê, the antistrophê, and the epôdus: the turn, the return, and the rest,—the rhythm and metre of the song during each strophê corresponded with that during the antistrophê, but was varied during the epôdus, and again varied during the following strophês. Until this time the song had been monostrophic, consisting of nothing more than one uniform stanza, repeated from the beginning to the end of the composition;[174] so that we may easily see how vast was the new complication and difficulty introduced by Stesichorus,—not less for the performers than for the composer, himself at that time the teacher and trainer of performers. Both this poet and his contemporary the flute-player Sakadas of Argos,—who gained the prize at the first three Pythian games founded after the Sacred War,—seem to have surpassed their predecessors in the breadth of subject which they embraced, borrowing from the inexhaustible province of ancient legend, and expanding the choric song into a well-sustained epical narrative.[175] Indeed, these Pythian games opened a new career to musical composers just at the time when Sparta began to be closed against musical novelties.
Alkæus and Sappho, both natives of Lesbos, appear about contemporaries with Arion, B. C. 610-580. Of their once celebrated lyric compositions, scarcely anything remains. But the criticisms which are preserved on both of them place them in strong contrast with Alkman, who lived and composed under the more restrictive atmosphere of Sparta,—and in considerable analogy with the turbulent vehemence of Archilochus,[176] though without his intense private malignity. Both composed for their own local audience, and in their own Lesbian Æolic dialect; not because there was any peculiar fitness in that dialect to express their vein of sentiment, but because it was more familiar to their hearers. Sappho herself boasts of the preëminence of the Lesbian bards;[177] and the celebrity of Terpander, Perikleitas, and Arion, permits us to suppose that there may have been before her many popular bards in the island who did not attain to Hellenic celebrity. Alkæus included in his songs the fiercest bursts of political feeling, the stirring alternations of war and exile, and all the ardent relish of a susceptible man for wine and love.[178] The love-song seems to have formed the principal theme of Sappho, who, however, also composed odes or songs[179] on a great variety of other subjects, serious as well as satirical, and is said farther to have first employed the Mixolydian mode in music. It displays the tendency of the age to metrical and rhythmical novelty, that Alkæus and Sappho are said to have each invented the peculiar stanza, well-known under their respective names,—combinations of the dactyl, trochee, and iambus, analogous to the asynartetic verses of Archilochus; they by no means confined themselves, however, to Alkaic and Sapphic metre. Both the one and the other composed hymns to the gods; indeed, this is a theme common to all the lyric and choric poets, whatever may be their peculiarities in other ways. Most of their compositions were songs for the single voice, not for the chorus. The poetry of Alkæus is the more worthy of note, as it is the earliest instance of the employment of the Muse in actual political warfare, and shows the increased hold which that motive was acquiring on the Grecian mind.
The gnomic poets, or moralists in verse, approach by the tone of their sentiments more to the nature of prose. They begin with Simonidês of Amorgos or of Samos, the contemporary of Archilochus: indeed, the latter himself devoted some compositions to the illustrative fable, which had not been unknown even to Hesiod. In the remains of Simonidês of Amorgos we trace nothing relative to the man personally, though he too, like Archilochus, is said to have had an individual enemy, Orodœkidês, whose character was aspersed by his muse.[180] His only considerable poem extant is devoted to a survey of the characters of women, in iambic verse, and by way of comparison with various animals,—the mare, the ass, the bee, etc. It follows out the Hesiodic vein respecting the social and economical mischief usually caused by women, with some few honorable exceptions; but the poet shows a much larger range of observation and illustration, if we compare him with his predecessor Hesiod; moreover, his illustrations come fresh from life and reality. We find in this early iambist the same sympathy with industry and its due rewards which are observable in Hesiod, together with a still more melancholy sense of the uncertainty of human events.
Of Solon and Theognis I have spoken in former chapters. They reproduce in part the moralizing vein of Simonidês, though with a strong admixture of personal feeling and a direct application to passing events. The mixture of political with social morality, which we find in both, marks their more advanced age: Solon bears in this respect the same relation to Simonidês, as his contemporary Alkæus bears to Archilochus. His poems, as far as we can judge by the fragments remaining, appear to have been short occasional effusions,—with the exception of the epic poem respecting the submerged island of Atlantis; which he began towards the close of his life, but never finished. They are elegiac, trimeter iambic, and trochaic tetrameter: in his hands certainly neither of these metres can be said to have any special or separate character. If the poems of Solon are short, those of Theognis are much shorter, and are indeed so much broken (as they stand in our present collection), as to read like separate epigrams or bursts of feeling, which the poet had not taken the trouble to incorporate in any definite scheme or series. They form a singular mixture of maxim and passion,—of general precept with personal affection towards the youth Kyrnus,—which surprises us if tried by the standard of literary composition, but which seems a very genuine manifestation of an impoverished exile’s complaints and restlessness. What remains to us of Phokylidês, another of the gnomic poets nearly contemporary with Solon, is nothing more than a few maxims in verse,—couplets, with the name of the author in several cases embodied in them.
Amidst all the variety of rhythmical and metrical innovations which have been enumerated, the ancient epic continued to be recited by the rhapsodes as before, and some new epical compositions were added to the existing stock: Eugammon of Kyrênê, about the 50th Olympiad, (580 B. C.) appears to be the last of the series. At Athens, especially, both Solon and Peisistratus manifested great solicitude as well for the recitation as for the correct preservation of the Iliad. Perhaps its popularity may have been diminished by the competition of so much lyric and choric poetry, more showy and striking in its accompaniments, as well as more changeful in its rhythmical character. Whatever secondary effect, however, this newer species of poetry may have derived from such helps, its primary effect was produced by real intellectual or poetical excellence,—by the thoughts, sentiment, and expression, not by the accompaniment. For a long time the musical composer and the poet continued generally to be one and the same person; and besides those who have acquired sufficient distinction to reach posterity, we cannot doubt that there were many known only to their own contemporaries. But with all of them the instrument and the melody constituted only the inferior part of that which was known by the name of music,—altogether subordinate to the “thoughts that breathe and words that burn.”[181] Exactness and variety of rhythmical pronunciation gave to the latter their full effect upon a delicate ear; but such pleasure of the ear was ancillary to the emotion of mind arising out of the sense conveyed. Complaints are made by the poets, even so early as 500 B. C., that the accompaniment was becoming too prominent. But it was not until the age of the comic poet Aristophanês, towards the end of the fifth century B. C., that the primitive relation between the instrumental accompaniment and the words was really reversed,—and loud were the complaints to which it gave rise;[182] the performance of the flute or harp then became more elaborate, showy, and overpowering, while the words were so put together as to show off the player’s execution. I notice briefly this subsequent revolution for the purpose of setting forth, by contrast, the truly intellectual character of the original lyric and choric poetry of Greece; and of showing how much the vague sentiment arising from mere musical sound was lost in the more definite emotion, and in the more lasting and reproductive combinations, generated by poetical meaning.
The name and poetry of Solon, and the short maxims, or sayings, of Phokylidês, conduct us to the mention of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. Solon was himself one of the seven, and most if not all of them were poets, or composers in verse.[183] To most of them is ascribed also an abundance of pithy repartees, together with one short saying, or maxim, peculiar to each, serving as a sort of distinctive motto;[184] indeed, the test of an accomplished man about this time was his talent for singing or reciting poetry, and for making smart and ready answers. Respecting this constellation of wise men,—who in the next century of Grecian history, when philosophy came to be a matter of discussion and argumentation, were spoken of with great eulogy,—all the statements are confused, in part even contradictory. Neither the number, nor the names, are given by all authors alike. Dikæarchus numbered ten, Hermippus seventeen: the names of Solon the Athenian, Thalês the Milesian, Pittakus the Mitylenean, and Bias the Prienean, were comprised in all the lists,—and the remaining names as given by Plato[185] were, Kleobulus of Lindus in Rhodes, Myson of Chênæ, and Cheilon of Sparta. By others, however, the names are differently stated: nor can we certainly distribute among them the sayings, or mottoes, upon which in later days the Amphiktyons conferred the honor of inscription in the Delphian temple: Know thyself,—Nothing too much,—Know thy opportunity,—Suretyship is the precursor of ruin. Bias is praised as an excellent judge, and Myson was declared by the Delphian oracle to be the most discreet man among the Greeks, according to the testimony of the satirical poet Hippônax. This is the oldest testimony (540 B. C.) which can be produced in favor of any of the seven; but Kleobulus of Lindus, far from being universally extolled, is pronounced by the poet Simonidês to be a fool.[186] Dikæarchus, however, justly observed, that these seven or ten persons were not wise men, or philosophers, in the sense which those words bore in his day, but persons of practical discernment in reference to man and society,[187]—of the same turn of mind as their contemporary the fabulist Æsop, though not employing the same mode of illustration. Their appearance forms an epoch in Grecian history, inasmuch as they are the first persons who ever acquired an Hellenic reputation grounded on mental competency apart from poetical genius or effect,—a proof that political and social prudence was beginning to be appreciated and admired on its own account. Solon, Pittakus, Bias, and Thalês, were all men of influence—the first two even men of ascendency,[188]—in their respective cities. Kleobulus was despot of Lindus, and Periander (by some numbered among the seven) of Corinth. Thalês stands distinguished as the earliest name in physical philosophy, with which the other contemporary wise men are not said to have meddled; their celebrity rests upon moral, social, and political wisdom exclusively, which came into greater honor as the ethical feeling of the Greeks improved and as their experience became enlarged.
In these celebrated names we have social philosophy in its early and infantine state,—in the shape of homely sayings or admonitions, either supposed to be self-evident, or to rest upon some great authority divine or human, but neither accompanied by reasons nor recognizing any appeal to inquiry and discussion as the proper test of their rectitude. From such unsuspecting acquiescence, the sentiment to which these admonitions owe their force, we are partially liberated even in the poet Simonidês of Keôs, who (as before alluded to) severely criticizes the song of Kleobulus as well as its author. The half-century which followed the age of Simonidês (the interval between about 480-430 B. C.) broke down that sentiment more and more, by familiarizing the public with argumentative controversy in the public assembly, the popular judicature, and even on the dramatic stage. And the increased self-working of the Grecian mind, thus created, manifested itself in Sokratês, who laid open all ethical and social doctrines to the scrutiny of reason, and who first awakened among his countrymen that love of dialectics which never left them,—an analytical interest in the mental process of inquiring out, verifying, proving, and expounding truth. To this capital item of human progress, secured through the Greeks—and through them only—to mankind generally, our attention will be called at a later period of the history; at present, it is only mentioned in contrast with the naked, dogmatical laconism of the Seven Wise Men, and with the simple enforcement of the early poets: a state in which morality has a certain place in the feelings,—but no root, even among the superior minds, in the conscious exercise of reason.
The interval between Archilochus and Solon (660-580 B. C.) seems, as has been remarked in my former volume, to be the period in which writing first came to be applied to Greek poems,—to the Homeric poems among the number; and shortly after the end of that period, commences the era of compositions without metre or prose. The philosopher Pherekydês of Syros, about 550 B. C., is called by some the earliest prose-writer; but no prose-writer for a considerable time afterwards acquired any celebrity,—seemingly none earlier than Hekatæus of Milêtus,[189] about 510-490 B. C.,—prose being a subordinate and ineffective species of composition, not always even perspicuous, but requiring no small practice before the power was acquired of rendering it interesting.[190] Down to the generation preceding Sokratês, the poets continued to be the grand leaders of the Greek mind: until then, nothing was taught to youth except to read, to remember, to recite musically and rhythmically, and to comprehend poetical composition. The comments of preceptors, addressed to their pupils, may probably have become fuller and more instructive, but the text still continued to be epic or lyric poetry. We must recollect also that these poets, so enunciated, were the best masters for acquiring a full command of the complicated accent and rhythm of the Greek language,—essential to an educated man in ancient times, and sure to be detected if not properly acquired. Not to mention the Choliambist Hippônax, who seems to have been possessed with the devil of Archilochus, and in part also with his genius,—Anakreon, Ibykus, Pindar, Bacchylidês, Simonidês, and the dramatists of Athens, continue the line of eminent poets without intermission. After the Persian war, the requirements of public speaking created a class of rhetorical teachers, while the gradual spread of physical philosophy widened the range of instruction: so that prose composition, for speech or for writing, occupied a larger and larger share of the attention of men, and was gradually wrought up to high perfection, such as we see for the first time in Herodotus. But before it became thus improved, and acquired that style which was the condition of wide-spread popularity, we may be sure that it had been silently used as a means of recording information; and that neither the large mass of geographical matter contained in the Periegêsis of Hekatæus, nor the map first prepared by his contemporary, Anaximander, could have been presented to the world, without the previous labors of unpretending prose writers, who set down the mere results of their own experience. The acquisition of prose-writing, commencing as it does about the age of Peisistratus, is not less remarkable as an evidence of past, than as a means of future, progress.
Of that splendid genius in sculpture and architecture, which shone forth in Greece after the Persian invasion, the first lineaments only are discoverable between 600-560 B. C., in Corinth, Ægina, Samos, Chios, Ephesus, etc.,—enough, however, to give evidence of improvement and progress. Glaukus of Chios is said to have discovered the art of welding iron, and Rhœkus, or his son Theodôrus of Samos, the art of casting copper or brass in a mould: both these discoveries, as far as can be made out, appear to date a little before 600 B. C.[191] The primitive memorial, erected in honor of a god, did not even pretend to be an image, but was often nothing more than a pillar, a board, a shapeless stone, a post, etc., fixed so as to mark and consecrate the locality, and receiving from the neighborhood respectful care and decoration, as well as worship. Sometimes there was a real statue, though of the rudest character, carved in wood; and the families of carvers,—who, from father to son, exercised this profession, represented in Attica by the name of Dædalus, and in the Ægina by the name of Smilis,—adhered long, with strict exactness, to the consecrated type of each particular god. Gradually, the wish grew up to change the material, as well as to correct the rudeness, of such primitive idols; sometimes the original wood was retained as the material, but covered in part with ivory or gold,—in other cases, marble or metal was substituted. Dipœnos and Skyllis of Krête acquired renown as workers in marble, about the 50th Olympiad (580 B. C.), and from them downwards a series of names may be traced, more or less distinguished; moreover, it seems about the same period that the earliest temple-offerings, in works of art, properly so called, commence,—the golden statue of Zeus, and the large carved chest, dedicated by the Kypselids of Corinth at Olympia.[192] The pious associations, however, connected with the old type were so strong, that the hand of the artist was greatly restrained in dealing with statues of the gods. It was in statues of men, especially in those of the victors at Olympia and other sacred games, that genuine ideas of beauty were first aimed at and in part attained, from whence they passed afterwards to the statues of the gods. Such statues of the athletes seem to commence somewhere between Olympiad 53-58, (568-548 B. C.).
Nor is it until the same interval of time (between 600-550 B. C.) that we find any traces of these architectural monuments, by which the more important cities in Greece afterwards attracted to themselves so much renown. The two greatest temples in Greece known to Herodotus were, the Artemision at Ephesus, and the Heræon at Samos: the former of these seems to have been commenced, by the Samian Theodorus, about 600 B. C.,—the latter, begun by the Samian Rhœkus, can hardly be traced to any higher antiquity. The first attempts to decorate Athens by such additions proceeded from Peisistratus and his sons, near the same time. As far as we can judge, too, in the absence of all direct evidence, the temples of Pæstum in Italy and Selinus in Sicily seem to fall in this same century. Of painting, during these early centuries, nothing can be affirmed; it never at any time reached the same perfection as sculpture, and we may presume that its years of infancy were at least equally rude.
The immense development of Grecian art subsequently, and the great perfection of Grecian artists, are facts of great importance in the history of the human race. And in regard to the Greeks themselves, they not only acted powerfully on the taste of the people, but were also valuable indirectly as the common boast of Hellenism, and as supplying one bond of fraternal sympathy as well as of mutual pride, among its widely-dispersed sections. It is the paucity and weakness of these bonds which renders the history of Greece, prior to 560 B. C., little better than a series of parallel, but isolated threads, each attached to a separate city; and that increased range of joint Hellenic feeling and action, upon which we shall presently enter, though arising doubtless in great measure from new and common dangers threatening many cities at once,—also springs in part from those other causes which have been enumerated in this chapter as acting on the Grecian mind. It proceeds from the stimulus applied to all the common feelings in religion, art, and recreation,—from the gradual formation of national festivals, appealing in various ways to tastes and sentiments which animated every Hellenic bosom,—from the inspirations of men of genius, poets, musicians, sculptors, architects, who supplied more or less in every Grecian city, education for the youth, training for the chorus, and ornament for the locality,—from the gradual expansion of science, philosophy, and rhetoric, during the coming period of this history, which rendered one city the intellectual capital of Greece, and brought to Isokratês and Plato pupils from the most distant parts of the Grecian world. It was this fund of common tastes, tendencies, and aptitudes, which caused the social atoms of Hellas to gravitate towards each other, and which enabled the Greeks to become something better and greater than an aggregate of petty disunited communities like the Thracians or Phrygians. And the creation of such common, extra-political Hellenism, is the most interesting phenomenon which the historian has to point out in the early period now under our notice. He is called upon to dwell upon it the more forcibly, because the modern reader has generally no idea of national union without political union,—an association foreign to the Greek mind. Strange as it may seem to find a song-writer put forward as an active instrument of union among his fellow-Hellens, it is not the less true, that those poets, whom we have briefly passed in review, by enriching the common language, and by circulating from town to town either in person or in their compositions, contributed to fan the flame of Pan-Hellenic patriotism at a time when there were few circumstances to coöperate with them, and when the causes tending to perpetuate isolation seemed in the ascendant.
CHAPTER XXX.
GRECIAN AFFAIRS DURING THE GOVERNMENT OF PEISISTRATUS AND HIS SONS AT ATHENS.
We now arrive at what may be called the second period of Grecian history, beginning with the rule of Peisistratus at Athens and of Crœsus in Lydia.
It has been already stated that Peisistratus made himself despot of Athens in 560 B. C.: he died in 527 B. C., and was succeeded by his son Hippias, who was deposed and expelled in 510 B. C., thus making an entire space of fifty years between the first exaltation of the father and the final expulsion of the son. These chronological points are settled on good evidence: but the thirty-three years covered by the reign of Peisistratus are interrupted by two periods of exile,—one of them lasting not less than ten years,—the other, five years. And the exact place of the years of exile, being nowhere laid down upon authority, has been differently determined by the conjectures of chronologers.[193] Partly from this half-known chronology, partly from a very scanty collection of facts, the history of the half-century now before us can only be given very imperfectly: nor can we wonder at our ignorance, when we find that even among the Athenians themselves, only a century afterwards, statements the most incorrect and contradictory respecting the Peisistratids were in circulation, as Thucydidês distinctly, and somewhat reproachfully, acquaints us.
More than thirty years had now elapsed since the promulgation of the Solonian constitution, whereby the annual senate of Four Hundred had been created, and the public assembly (preceded in its action as well as aided and regulated by this senate) invested with a power of exacting responsibility from the magistrates after their year of office. The seeds of the subsequent democracy had thus been sown, and no doubt the administration of the archons had been practically softened by it; but nothing in the nature of a democratical sentiment had yet been created. A hundred years hence, we shall find that sentiment unanimous and potent among the enterprising masses of Athens and Peiræeus, and shall be called upon to listen to loud complaints of the difficulty of dealing with “that angry, waspish, intractable little old man, Dêmus of Pnyx,”—so Aristophanes[194] calls the Athenian people to their faces, with a freedom which shows that he at least counted on their good temper. But between 560-510 B. C. the people are as passive in respect to political rights and securities as the most strenuous enemy of democracy could desire, and the government is transferred from hand to hand by bargains and cross-changes between two or three powerful men,[195] at the head of partisans who echo their voices, espouse their personal quarrels, and draw the sword at their command. It was this ancient constitution—Athens as it stood before the Athenian democracy—which the Macedonian Antipater professed to restore in 322 B. C., when he caused the majority of the poorer citizens to be excluded altogether from the political franchise.[196]
By the stratagem recounted in a former chapter,[197] Peisistratus had obtained from the public assembly a guard which he had employed to acquire forcible possession of the acropolis. He thus became master of the administration; but he employed his power honorably and well, not disturbing the existing forms farther than was necessary to insure to himself full mastery. Nevertheless, we may see by the verses of Solon[198] (the only contemporary evidence which we possess), that the prevalent sentiment was by no means favorable to his recent proceeding, and that there was in many minds a strong feeling both of terror and aversion, which presently manifested itself in the armed coalition of his two rivals,—Megaklês at the head of the Parali, or inhabitants of the sea-board, and Lykurgus at the head of those in the neighboring plain. As the conjunction of the two formed a force too powerful for Peisistratus to withstand, he was driven into exile, after no long possession of his despotism.
But the time came, how soon we cannot tell, when the two rivals who had expelled him quarrelled, and Megaklês made propositions to Peisistratus, inviting him to resume the sovereignty, promising his own aid, and stipulating that Peisistratus should marry his daughter. The conditions being accepted, a plan was laid between the two new allies for carrying them into effect, by a novel stratagem,—since the simulated wounds and pretence of personal danger were not likely to be played off a second time with success. The two conspirators clothed a stately woman, six feet high, named Phyê, in the panoply and costume of Athênê,—surrounded her with the processional accompaniments belonging to the goddess,—and placed her in a chariot with Peisistratus by her side. In this guise the exiled despot and his adherents approached the city and drove up to the acropolis, preceded by heralds, who cried aloud to the people: “Athenians, receive ye cordially Peisistratus, whom Athênê has honored above all other men, and is now bringing back into her own acropolis.” The people in the city received the reputed goddess with implicit belief and demonstrations of worship, while among the country cantons the report quickly spread that Athênê had appeared in person to restore Peisistratus, who thus found himself, without even a show of resistance, in possession of the acropolis and of the government. His own party, united with that of Megaklês, were powerful enough to maintain him, when he had once acquired possession; and probably all, except the leaders, sincerely believed in the epiphany of the goddess, which came to be divulged as having been a deception, only after Peisistratus and Megaklês had quarrelled.[199]
The daughter of Megaklês, according to agreement, quickly became the wife of Peisistratus, but she bore him no children; and it became known that her husband, having already adult sons by a former marriage, and considering that the Kylonian curse rested upon all the Alkmæônid family, did not intend that she should become a mother.[200] Megaklês was so incensed at this behavior, that he not only renounced his alliance with Peisistratus, but even made his peace with the third party, the adherents of Lykurgus,—and assumed so menacing an attitude, that the despot was obliged to evacuate Attica. He retired to Eretria in Eubœa, where he remained no less than ten years; but a considerable portion of that time was employed in making preparations for a forcible return, and he seems to have exercised, even while in exile, a degree of influence much exceeding that of a private man. He lent valuable aid to Lygdamis of Naxos,[201] in constituting himself despot of that island, and he possessed, we know not how, the means of rendering valuable service to different cities, Thebes in particular. They repaid him by large contributions of money to aid in his reëstablishment: mercenaries were hired from Argos, and the Naxian Lygdamis came himself, both with money and with troops. Thus equipped and aided, Peisistratus landed at Marathon in Attica. How the Athenian government had been conducted during his ten years’ absence, we do not know; but the leaders of it permitted him to remain undisturbed at Marathon, and to assemble his partisans both from the city and from the country: nor was it until he broke up from Marathon and had reached Pallênê on his way to Athens, that they took the field against him. Moreover, their conduct, even when the two armies were near together, must have been either extremely negligent or corrupt; for Peisistratus found means to attack them unprepared, routing their forces almost without resistance. In fact, the proceedings have altogether the air of a concerted betrayal: for the defeated troops, though unpursued, are said to have dispersed and returned to their homes forthwith, in obedience to the proclamation of Peisistratus, who marched on to Athens, and found himself a third time ruler.[202]
On this third successful entry, he took vigorous precautions for rendering his seat permanent. The Alkmæônidæ and their immediate partisans retired into exile; but he seized the children of those who remained, and whose sentiments he suspected, as hostages for the behavior of their parents, and placed them in Naxos, under the care of Lygdamis. Moreover, he provided himself with a powerful body of Thracian mercenaries, paid by taxes levied upon the people:[203] nor did he omit to conciliate the favor of the gods by a purification of the sacred island of Delos: all the dead bodies which had been buried within sight of the temple of Apollo were exhumed and reinterred farther off. At this time the Delian festival,—attended by the Asiatic Ionians and the islanders, and with which Athens was of course peculiarly connected,—must have been beginning to decline from its pristine magnificence; for the subjugation of the continental Ionic cities by Cyrus had been already achieved, and the power of Samos, though increased under the despot Polykratês, seems to have increased at the expense and to the ruin of the smaller Ionic islands. From the same feelings, in part, which led to the purification of Delos,—partly as an act of party revenue,—Peisistratus caused the houses of the Alkmæônids to be levelled with the ground, and the bodies of the deceased members of that family to be disinterred and cast out of the country.[204]
This third and last period of the rule of Peisistratus lasted several years, until his death in 527 B. C.: it is said to have been so mild in its character, that he once even suffered himself to be cited for trial before the Senate of Areopagus; yet as we know that he had to maintain a large body of Thracian mercenaries out of the funds of the people, we shall be inclined to construe this eulogium comparatively rather than positively. Thucydidês affirms that both he and his sons governed in a wise and virtuous spirit, levying from the people only an income-tax of five per cent.[205] This is high praise coming from such an authority, though it seems that we ought to make some allowance for the circumstance of Thucydidês being connected by descent with the Peisistratid family.[206] The judgment of Herodotus is also very favorable respecting Peisistratus; that of Aristotle favorable, yet qualified,—since he includes these despots among the list of those who undertook public and sacred works with the deliberate view of impoverishing as well as of occupying their subjects. This supposition is countenanced by the prodigious scale upon which the temple of Zeus Olympius at Athens was begun by Peisistratus,—a scale much exceeding either the Parthenôn or the temple of Athênê Polias, both of which were erected in later times, when the means of Athens were decidedly larger,[207] and her disposition to demonstrative piety certainly no way diminished. It was left by him unfinished, nor was it ever completed until the Roman emperor Hadrian undertook the task. Moreover, Peisistratus introduced the greater Panathenaic festival, solemnized every four years, in the third Olympic year: the annual Panathenaic festival, henceforward called the Lesser, was still continued.
I have already noticed, at considerable length, the care which he bestowed in procuring full and correct copies of the Homeric poems, as well as in improving the recitation of them at the Panathenaic festival,—a proceeding for which we owe him much gratitude, but which has been shown to be erroneously interpreted by various critics. He probably also collected the works of other poets,—called by Aulus Gellius,[208] in language not well suited to the sixth century B. C., a library thrown open to the public; and the service which he thus rendered must have been highly valuable at a time when writing and reading were not widely extended. His son Hipparchus followed up the same taste, taking pleasure in the society of the most eminent poets of the day,[209]—Simonidês, Anakreon, and Lasus; not to mention the Athenian mystic Onomakritus, who, though not pretending to the gift of prophecy himself, passed for the proprietor and editor of the various prophecies ascribed to the ancient name of Musæus. The Peisistratids were well versed in these prophecies, and set great value upon them; but Onomakritus, being detected on one occasion in the act of interpolating the prophecies of Musæus, was banished by Hipparchus in consequence.[210] The statues of Hermês, erected by this prince or by his personal friends in various parts of Attica,[211] and inscribed with short moral sentences, are extolled by the author of the Platonic dialogue called Hipparchus, with an exaggeration which approaches to irony; but it is certain that both the sons of Peisistratus, as well as himself, were exact in fulfilling the religious obligations of the state, and ornamented the city in several ways, especially the public fountain Kallirrhoê. They are said to have maintained the preëxisting forms of law and justice, merely taking care always to keep themselves and their adherents in the effective offices of state, and in the full reality of power. They were, moreover, modest and popular in their personal demeanor, and charitable to the poor; yet one striking example occurs of unscrupulous enmity, in their murder of Kimôn, by night, through the agency of hired assassins.[212] There is good reason, however, for believing that the government both of Peisistratus and of his sons was in practice generally mild until after the death of Hipparchus by the hands of Harmodius and Aristogeitôn, after which event the surviving Hippias became alarmed, cruel, and oppressive during his last four years. And the harshness of this concluding period left upon the Athenian mind[213] that profound and imperishable hatred, against the dynasty generally, which Thucydidês attests,—though he labors to show that it was not deserved by Peisistratus, nor at first by Hippias.
Peisistratus left three legitimate sons,—Hippias, Hipparchus, and Thessalus: the general belief at Athens among the contemporaries of Thucydidês was, that Hipparchus was the eldest of the three and had succeeded him; but the historian emphatically pronounces this to be a mistake, and certifies, upon his own responsibility, that Hippias was both eldest son and successor. Such an assurance from him, fortified by certain reasons in themselves not very conclusive, is sufficient ground for our belief,—the more so as Herodotus countenances the same version. But we are surprised at such a degree of historical carelessness in the Athenian public, and seemingly even in Plato,[214] about a matter both interesting and comparatively recent. In order to abate this surprise, and to explain how the name of Hipparchus came to supplant that of Hippias in the popular talk, Thucydidês recounts the memorable story of Harmodius and Aristogeitôn.
Of these two Athenian citizens,[215] both belonging to the ancient gens called Gephyræi, the former was a beautiful youth, attached to the latter by a mutual friendship and devoted intimacy, which Grecian manners did not condemn. Hipparchus made repeated propositions to Harmodius, which were repelled, but which, on becoming known to Aristogeitôn, excited both his jealousy and his fears lest the disappointed suitor should employ force,—fears justified by the proceedings not unusual with Grecian despots,[216] and by the absence of all legal protection against outrage from such a quarter. Under these feelings, he began to look about, in the best way that he could, for some means of putting down the despotism. Meanwhile Hipparchus, though not entertaining any designs of violence, was so incensed at the refusal of Harmodius, that he could not be satisfied without doing something to insult or humiliate him. In order to conceal the motive from which the insult really proceeded, he offered it, not directly to Harmodius, but to his sister. He caused this young maiden to be one day summoned to take her station in a religious procession as one of the kanêphoræ, or basket carriers, according to the practice usual at Athens; but when she arrived at the place where her fellow-maidens were assembled, she was dismissed with scorn as unworthy of so respectable a function, and the summons addressed to her was disavowed.[217] An insult thus publicly offered filled Harmodius with indignation, and still farther exasperated the feelings of Aristogeitôn: both of them, resolving at all hazards to put an end to the despotism, concerted means for aggression with a few select associates. They awaited the festival of the Great Panathenæa, wherein the body of the citizens were accustomed to march up in armed procession, with spear and shield, to the acropolis; this being the only day on which an armed body could come together without suspicion. The conspirators appeared armed like the rest of the citizens, but carrying concealed daggers besides. Harmodius and Aristogeitôn undertook with their own hands to kill the two Peisistratids, while the rest promised to stand forward immediately for their protection against the foreign mercenaries; and though the whole number of persons engaged was small, they counted upon the spontaneous sympathies of the armed bystanders in an effort to regain their liberties, so soon as the blow should once be struck. The day of the festival having arrived, Hippias, with his foreign body-guard around him, was marshalling the armed citizens for procession, in the Kerameikus without the gates, when Harmodius and Aristogeitôn approached with concealed daggers to execute their purpose. On coming near, they were thunderstruck to behold one of their own fellow-conspirators talking familiarly with Hippias, who was of easy access to every man, and they immediately concluded that the plot was betrayed. Expecting to be seized, and wrought up to a state of desperation, they resolved at least not to die without having revenged themselves on Hipparchus, whom they found within the city gates near the chapel called the Leôkorion, and immediately slew him. His attendant guards killed Harmodius on the spot; while Aristogeitôn, rescued for the moment by the surrounding crowd, was afterwards taken, and perished in the tortures applied to make him disclose his accomplices.[218]
The news flew quickly to Hippias in the Kerameikus, who heard it earlier than the armed citizens near him, awaiting his order for the commencement of the procession. With extraordinary self-command, he took advantage of this precious instant of foreknowledge, and advanced towards them,—commanding them to drop their arms for a short time, and assemble on an adjoining ground. They unsuspectingly obeyed, and he immediately directed his guards to take possession of the vacant arms. He was now undisputed master, and enabled to seize the persons of all those citizens whom he mistrusted,—especially all those who had daggers about them, which it was not the practice to carry in the Panathenaic procession.
Such is the memorable narrative of Harmodius and Aristogeitôn, peculiarly valuable inasmuch as it all comes from Thucydidês.[219] To possess great power,—to be above legal restraint,—to inspire extraordinary fear,—is a privilege so much coveted by the giants among mankind, that we may well take notice of those cases in which it brings misfortune even upon themselves. The fear inspired by Hipparchus,—of designs which he did not really entertain, but was likely to entertain, and competent to execute without hindrance,—was here the grand cause of his destruction.
The conspiracy here detailed happened in 514 B. C., during the thirteenth year of the reign of Hippias,—which lasted four years longer, until 510 B. C. And these last four years, in the belief of the Athenian public, counted for his whole reign; nay, many of them made the still greater historical mistake of eliding these last four years altogether, and of supposing that the conspiracy of Harmodius and Aristogeitôn had deposed the Peisistratid government and liberated Athens. Both poets and philosophers shared this faith, which is distinctly put forth in the beautiful and popular Skolion or song on the subject: the two friends are there celebrated as the authors of liberty at Athens,—“they slew the despot and gave to Athens equal laws.”[220] So inestimable a present was alone sufficient to enshrine in the minds of the subsequent democracy those who had sold their lives to purchase it: and we must farther recollect that the intimate connection between the two, so repugnant to the modern reader, was regarded at Athens with sympathy,—so that the story took hold of the Athenian mind by the vein of romance conjointly with that of patriotism. Harmodius and Aristogeitôn were afterwards commemorated both as the winners and as the protomartyrs of Athenian liberty. Statues were erected in their honor shortly after the final expulsion of the Peisistratids; immunity from taxes and public burdens was granted to the descendants of their families; and the speaker who proposed the abolition of such immunities, at a time when the number had been abusively multiplied, made his only special exception in favor of this respected lineage.[221] And since the name of Hipparchus was universally notorious as the person slain, we discover how it was that he came to be considered by an uncritical public as the predominant member of the Peisistratid family,—the eldest son and successor of Peisistratus,—the reigning despot,—to the comparative neglect of Hippias. The same public probably cherished many other anecdotes,[222] not the less eagerly believed because they could not be authenticated, respecting this eventful period.
Whatever may have been the moderation of Hippias before, indignation at the death of his brother, and fear for his own safety,[223] now induced him to drop it altogether. It is attested both by Thucydidês and Herodotus, and admits of no doubt, that his power was now employed harshly and cruelly,—that he put to death a considerable number of citizens. We find also a statement, noway improbable in itself, and affirmed both in Pausanias and in Plutarch,—inferior authorities, yet still in this case sufficiently credible,—that he caused Leæna, the mistress of Aristogeitôn, to be tortured to death, in order to extort from her a knowledge of the secrets and accomplices of the latter.[224] But as he could not but be sensible that this system of terrorism was full of peril to himself, so he looked out for shelter and support in case of being expelled from Athens; and with this view he sought to connect himself with Darius king of Persia,—a connection full of consequences to be hereafter developed. Æantidês, son of Hippoklus the despot of Lampsakus on the Hellespont, stood high at this time in the favor of the Persian monarch, which induced Hippias to give him his daughter Archedikê in marriage; no small honor to the Lampsakene, in the estimation of Thucydidês.[225] To explain how Hippias came to fix upon this town, however, it is necessary to say a few words on the foreign policy of the Peisistratids.
It has already been mentioned that the Athenians, even so far back as the days of the poet Alkæus, had occupied Sigeium in the Troad, and had there carried on war with the Mityleneans; so that their acquisitions in these regions date much before the time of Peisistratus. Owing probably to this circumstance, an application was made to them in the early part of his reign from the Dolonkian Thracians, inhabitants of the Chersonese on the opposite side of the Hellespont, for aid against their powerful neighbors the Absinthian tribe of Thracians; and opportunity was thus offered for sending out a colony to acquire this valuable peninsula for Athens. Peisistratus willingly entered into the scheme, and Miltiadês son of Kypselus, a noble Athenian, living impatiently under his despotism, was no less pleased to take the lead in executing it: his departure and that of other malcontents as founders of a colony suited the purpose of all parties. According to the narrative of Herodotus,—alike pious and picturesque,—and doubtless circulating as authentic at the annual games which the Chersonesites, even in his time, celebrated to the honor of their œkist,—it is the Delphian god who directs the scheme and singles out the individual. The chiefs of the distressed Dolonkians went to Delphi to crave assistance towards procuring Grecian colonists, and were directed to choose for their œkist the individual who should first show them hospitality on their quitting the temple. They departed and marched all along what was called the Sacred Road, through Phocis and Bœotia to Athens, without receiving a single hospitable invitation; at length they entered Athens, and passed by the house of Miltiadês, while he himself was sitting in front of it. Seeing men whose costume and arms marked them out as strangers, he invited them into his house and treated them kindly: they then apprized him that he was the man fixed upon by the oracle, and abjured him not to refuse his concurrence. After asking for himself personally the opinion of the oracle, and receiving an affirmative answer, he consented; sailing as œkist, at the head of a body of Athenian emigrants, to the Chersonese.[226]
Having reached this peninsula, and having been constituted despot of the mixed Thracian and Athenian population, he lost no time in fortifying the narrow isthmus by a wall reaching all across from Kardia to Paktya, a distance of about four miles and a half; so that the Absinthian invaders were for the time effectually shut out,[227] though the protection was not permanently kept up. He also entered into a war with Lampsakus, on the Asiatic side of the strait, but was unfortunate enough to fall into an ambuscade and become a prisoner. Nothing preserved his life except the immediate interference of Crœsus king of Lydia, coupled with strenuous menaces addressed to the Lampsakenes, who found themselves compelled to release their prisoner; Miltiadês having acquired much favor with this prince, in what manner we are not told. He died childless some time afterwards, while his nephew Stesagoras, who succeeded him, perished by assassination, some time subsequent to the death of Peisistratus at Athens.[228]
The expedition of Miltiadês to the Chersonese must have occurred early after the first usurpation of Peisistratus, since even his imprisonment by the Lampsakenes happened before the ruin of Crœsus, (546 B. C.). But it was not till much later,—probably during the third and most powerful period of Peisistratus,—that the latter undertook his expedition against Sigeium in the Troad. This place appears to have fallen into the hands of the Mityleneans: Peisistratus retook it,[229] and placed there his illegitimate son Hegesistratus as despot. The Mityleneans may have been enfeebled at this time (somewhere between 537-527 B. C.) not only by the strides of Persian conquest on the mainland, but also by the ruinous defeat which they suffered from Polykratês and the Samians.[230] Hegesistratus maintained the place against various hostile attempts, throughout all the reign of Hippias, so that the Athenian possessions in those regions comprehended at this period both the Chersonese and Sigeium.[231] To the former of the two, Hippias sent out Miltiadês, nephew of the first œkist, as governor, after the death of his brother Stesagoras. The new governor found much discontent in the peninsula, but succeeded in subduing it by entrapping and imprisoning the principal men in each town. He farther took into his pay a regiment of five hundred mercenaries, and married Hegesipylê, daughter of the Thracian king Olorus.[232] It appears to have been about 515 B. C. that this second Miltiadês went out to the Chersonese.[233] He seems to have been obliged to quit it for a time, after the Scythian expedition of Darius, in consequence of having incurred the hostility of the Persians; but he was there from the beginning of the Ionic revolt until about 493 B. C., or two or three years before the battle of Marathon, on which occasion we shall find him acting commander of the Athenian army.
Both the Chersonese and Sigeium, though Athenian possessions, were however now tributary and dependent on Persia. And it was to this quarter that Hippias, during his last years of alarm, looked for support in the event of being expelled from Athens: he calculated upon Sigeium as a shelter, and upon Æantidês, as well as Darius, as an ally. Neither the one nor the other failed him.
The same circumstances which alarmed Hippias, and rendered his dominion in Attica at once more oppressive and more odious, tended of course to raise the hopes of his enemies, the Athenian exiles, with the powerful Alkmæônids at their head. Believing the favorable moment to be come, they even ventured upon an invasion of Attica, and occupied a post called Leipsydrion in the mountain range of Parnês, which separates Attica from Bœotia.[234] But their schemes altogether failed: Hippias defeated and drove them out of the country. His dominion now seemed confirmed, for the Lacedæmonians were on terms of intimate friendship with him; and Amyntas king of Macedon, as well as the Thessalians, were his allies. Yet the exiles whom he had beaten in the open field succeeded in an unexpected manœuvre, which, favored by circumstances, proved his ruin.
By an accident which had occurred in the year 548 B. C.,[235] the Delphian temple was set on fire and burnt. To repair this grave loss was an object of solicitude to all Greece; but the outlay required was exceedingly heavy, and it appears to have been long before the money could be collected. The Amphiktyons decreed that one-fourth of the cost should be borne by the Delphians themselves, who found themselves so heavily taxed by this assessment, that they sent envoys throughout all Greece to collect subscriptions in aid, and received, among other donations, from the Greek settlers in Egypt twenty minæ, besides a large present of alum from the Egyptian king Amasis: their munificent benefactor Crœsus fell a victim to the Persians in 546 B. C., so that his treasure was no longer open to them. The total sum required was three hundred talents (equal probably to about one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds sterling),[236]—a prodigious amount to be collected from the dispersed Grecian cities, who acknowledged no common sovereign authority, and among whom the proportion reasonable to ask from each was so difficult to determine with satisfaction to all parties. At length, however, the money was collected, and the Amphiktyons were in a situation to make a contract for the building of the temple. The Alkmæônids, who had been in exile ever since the third and final acquisition of power by Peisistratus, took the contract; and in executing it, they not only performed the work in the best manner, but even went much beyond the terms stipulated; employing Parian marble for the frontage, where the material prescribed to them was coarse stone.[237] As was before remarked in the case of Peisistratus when he was in banishment, we are surprised to find exiles whose property had been confiscated so amply furnished with money,—unless we are to suppose that Kleisthenês the Alkmæônid, grandson of the Sikyonian Kleisthenês,[238] inherited through his mother wealth independent of Attica, and deposited it in the temple of the Samian Hêrê. But the fact is unquestionable, and they gained signal reputation throughout the Hellenic world for their liberal performance of so important an enterprise. That the erection took considerable time, we cannot doubt. It seems to have been finished, as far as we can conjecture, about a year or two after the death of Hipparchus,—512 B. C.,—more than thirty years after the conflagration.
To the Delphians, especially, the rebuilding of their temple on so superior a scale was the most essential of all services, and their gratitude towards the Alkmæônids was proportionally great. Partly through such a feeling, partly through pecuniary presents, Kleisthenês was thus enabled to work the oracle for political purposes, and to call forth the powerful arm of Sparta against Hippias. Whenever any Spartan presented himself to consult the oracle, either on private or public business, the answer of the priestess was always in one strain, “Athens must be liberated.” The constant repetition of this mandate at length extorted from the piety of the Lacedæmonians a reluctant compliance. Reverence for the god overcame their strong feeling of friendship towards the Peisistratids, and Anchimolius son of Aster was despatched by sea to Athens, at the head of a Spartan force to expel them. On landing at Phalêrum, however, he found them already forewarned and prepared, as well as farther strengthened by one thousand horse specially demanded from their allies in Thessaly. Upon the plain of Phalêrum, this latter force was found peculiarly effective, so that the division of Anchimolius was driven back to their ships with great loss and he himself slain.[239] The defeated armament had probably been small, and its repulse only provoked the Lacedæmonians to send a larger, under the command of their king Kleomenês in person, who on this occasion marched into Attica by land. On reaching the plain of Athens, he was assailed by the Thessalian horse, but repelled them in so gallant a style, that they at once rode off and returned to their native country; abandoning their allies with a faithlessness not unfrequent in the Thessalian character. Kleomenês marched on to Athens without farther resistance, and found himself, together with the Alkmæônids and the malcontent Athenians generally, in possession of the town. At that time there was no fortification except around the acropolis, into which Hippias retired with his mercenaries and the citizens most faithful to him; having taken care to provision it well beforehand, so that it was not less secure against famine than against assault. He might have defied the besieging force, which was noway prepared for a long blockade; but, not altogether confiding in his position, he tried to send his children by stealth out of the country; and in this proceeding the children were taken prisoners. To procure their restoration, Hippias consented to all that was demanded of him, and withdrew from Attica to Sigeium in the Troad within the space of five days.
Thus fell the Peisistratid dynasty in 510 B. C., fifty years after the first usurpation of its founder.[240] It was put down through the aid of foreigners,[241] and those foreigners, too, wishing well to it in their hearts, though hostile from a mistaken feeling of divine injunction. Yet both the circumstances of its fall, and the course of events which followed, conspire to show that it possessed few attached friends in the country, and that the expulsion of Hippias was welcomed unanimously by the vast majority of Athenians. His family and chief partisans would accompany him into exile,—probably as a matter of course, without requiring any formal sentence of condemnation; and an altar was erected in the acropolis, with a column hard by, commemorating both the past iniquity of the dethroned dynasty, and the names of all its members.[242]
CHAPTER XXXI.
GRECIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE EXPULSION OF THE PEISISTRATIDS. — REVOLUTION OF KLEISTHENES AND ESTABLISHMENT OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS.
With Hippias disappeared the mercenary Thracian garrison, upon which he and his father before him had leaned for defence as well as for enforcement of authority; and Kleomenês with his Lacedæmonian forces retired also, after staying only long enough to establish a personal friendship, productive subsequently of important consequences, between the Spartan king and the Athenian Isagoras. The Athenians were thus left to themselves, without any foreign interference to constrain them in their political arrangements.
It has been mentioned in the preceding chapter, that the Peisistratids had for the most part respected the forms of the Solonian constitution: the nine archons, and the probouleutic or preconsidering Senate of Four Hundred (both annually changed), still continued to subsist, together with occasional meetings of the people,—or rather of such portion of the people as was comprised in the gentes, phratries, and four Ionic tribes. The timocratic classification of Solon (or quadruple scale of income and admeasurement of political franchises according to it) also continued to subsist,—but all within the tether and subservient to the purposes of the ruling family, who always kept one of their number as real master, among the chief administrators, and always retained possession of the acropolis as well as of the mercenary force.
That overawing pressure being now removed by the expulsion of Hippias, the enslaved forms became at once endued with freedom and reality. There appeared again, what Attica had not known for thirty years, declared political parties, and pronounced opposition between two men as leaders,—on one side, Isagoras son of Tisander, a person of illustrious descent,—on the other, Kleisthenês the Alkmæônid, not less illustrious, and possessing at this moment a claim on the gratitude of his countrymen as the most persevering as well as the most effective foe of the dethroned despots. In what manner such opposition was carried on we are not told. It would seem to have been not altogether pacific; but at any rate, Kleisthenês had the worst of it, and in consequence of this defeat, says the historian, “he took into partnership the people, who had been before excluded from everything.”[243] His partnership with the people gave birth to the Athenian democracy: it was a real and important revolution.
The political franchise, or the character of an Athenian citizen, both before and since Solon, had been confined to the primitive four Ionic tribes, each of which was an aggregate of so many close corporations or quasi-families,—the gentes and the phratries. None of the residents in Attica, therefore, except those included in some gens or phratry, had any part in the political franchise. Such non-privileged residents were probably at all times numerous, and became more and more so by means of fresh settlers: moreover, they tended most to multiply in Athens and Peiræus, where emigrants would commonly establish themselves. Kleisthenês broke down the existing wall of privilege, and imparted the political franchise to the excluded mass. But this could not be done by enrolling them in new gentes or phratries, created in addition to the old; for the gentile tie was founded upon old faith and feeling, which, in the existing state of the Greek mind, could not be suddenly conjured up as a bond of union for comparative strangers: it could only be done by disconnecting the franchise altogether from the Ionic tribes as well as from the gentes which constituted them, and by redistributing the population into new tribes with a character and purpose exclusively political. Accordingly, Kleisthenês abolished the four Ionic tribes, and created in their place ten new tribes founded upon a different principle, independent of the gentes and phratries. Each of his new tribes comprised a certain number of demes or cantons, with the enrolled proprietors and residents in each of them. The demes taken altogether included the entire surface of Attica, so that the Kleisthenean constitution admitted to the political franchise all the free native Athenians; and not merely these, but also many Metics, and even some of the superior order of slaves.[244] Putting out of sight the general body of slaves, and regarding only the free inhabitants, it was in point of fact a scheme approaching to universal suffrage, both political and judicial.
The slight and cursory manner in which Herodotus announces this memorable revolution tends to make us overlook its real importance. He dwells chiefly on the alteration in the number and names of the tribes: Kleisthenês, he says, despised the Ionians so much, that he would not tolerate the continuance in Attica of the four tribes which prevailed in the Ionic cities,[245] deriving their names from the four sons of Ion,—just as his grandfather, the Sikyonian Kleisthenês, hating the Dorians, had degraded and nicknamed the three Dorian tribes at Sikyôn. Such is the representation of Herodotus, who seems himself to have entertained some contempt for the Ionians,[246] and therefore to have suspected a similar feeling where it had no real existence. But the scope of Kleisthenês was something far more extensive: he abolished the four ancient tribes, not because they were Ionic, but because they had become incommensurate with the existing condition of the Attic people, and because such abolition procured both for himself and for his political scheme new as well as hearty allies. And indeed, if we study the circumstances of the case, we shall see very obvious reasons to suggest the proceeding. For more than thirty years—an entire generation—the old constitution had been a mere empty formality, working only in subservience to the reigning dynasty, and stripped of all real controlling power. We may be very sure, therefore, that both the Senate of Four Hundred and the popular assembly, divested of that free speech which imparted to them not only all their value but all their charm, had come to be of little public estimation, and were probably attended only by a few partisans; and thus the difference between qualified citizens and men not so qualified,—between members of the four old tribes, and men not members,—became during this period practically effaced. This, in fact, was the only species of good which a Grecian despotism ever seems to have done: it confounded the privileged and the non-privileged under one coercive authority common to both, so that the distinction between the two was not easy to revive when the despotism passed away. As soon as Hippias was expelled, the senate and the public assembly regained their efficiency. But had they been continued on the old footing, including none except members of the four tribes, these tribes would have been reinvested with a privilege which in reality they had so long lost, that its revival would have seemed an odious novelty, and the remaining population would probably not have submitted to it. If, in addition, we consider the political excitement of the moment,—the restoration of one body of men from exile, and the departure of another body into exile,—the outpouring of long-suppressed hatred, partly against these very forms, by the corruption of which the despot had reigned,—we shall see that prudence as well as patriotism dictated the adoption of an enlarged scheme of government. Kleisthenês had learned some wisdom during his long exile; and as he probably continued, for some time after the introduction of his new constitution, to be the chief adviser of his countrymen, we may consider their extraordinary success as a testimony to his prudence and skill not less than to their courage and unanimity.
Nor does it seem unreasonable to give him credit for a more generous forward movement than what is implied in the literal account of Herodotus. Instead of being forced against his will to purchase popular support by proposing this new constitution, Kleisthenês may have proposed it before, during the discussions which immediately followed the retirement of Hippias; so that the rejection of it formed the ground of quarrel—and no other ground is mentioned—between him and Isagoras. The latter doubtless found sufficient support, in the existing senate and public assembly, to prevent it from being carried without an actual appeal to the people, and his opposition to it is not difficult to understand. For, necessary as the change had become, it was not the less a shock to ancient Attic ideas. It radically altered the very idea of a tribe, which now became an aggregation of demes, not of gentes,—of fellow-demots, not of fellow-gentiles; and it thus broke up those associations, religious, social, and political, between the whole and the parts of the old system, which operated powerfully on the mind of every old-fashioned Athenian. The patricians at Rome, who composed the gentes and curiæ,—and the plebs, who had no part in these corporations,—formed for a long time two separate and opposing fractions in the same city, each with its own separate organization. It was only by slow degrees that the plebs gained ground, and the political value of the patrician gens was long maintained alongside of and apart from the plebeian tribe. So too in the Italian and German cities of the Middle Ages, the patrician families refused to part with their own separate political identity, when the guilds grew up by the side of them; even though forced to renounce a portion of their power, they continued to be a separate fraternity, and would not submit to be regimented anew, under an altered category and denomination, along with the traders who had grown into wealth and importance.[247] But the reform of Kleisthenês effected this change all at once, both as to the name and as to the reality. In some cases, indeed, that which had been the name of a gens was retained as the name of a deme, but even then the old gentiles were ranked indiscriminately among the remaining demots; and the Athenian people, politically considered, thus became one homogeneous whole, distributed for convenience into parts, numerical, local, and politically equal. It is, however, to be remembered, that while the four Ionic tribes were abolished, the gentes and phratries which composed them were left untouched, and continued to subsist as family and religious associations, though carrying with them no political privilege.
The ten newly-created tribes, arranged in an established order of precedence, were called,—Erechthêis, Ægêis, Pandiŏnis, Leontis, Akamantis, Œnêis, Kekrŏpis, Hippothoöntis, Æantis, Antiochis; names borrowed chiefly from the respected heroes of Attic legend.[248] This number remained unaltered until the year 305 B. C., when it was increased to twelve by the addition of two new tribes, Antigonias and Demetrias, afterwards designated anew by the names of Ptolemais and Attalis. The mere names of these last two, borrowed from living kings, and not from legendary heroes, betray the change from freedom to subservience at Athens. Each tribe comprised a certain number of demes,—cantons, parishes, or townships,—in Attica. But the total number of these demes is not distinctly ascertained; for though we know that, in the time of Polemô (the third century B. C.), it was one hundred and seventy-four, we cannot be sure that it had always remained the same; and several critics construe the words of Herodotus to imply that Kleisthenês at first recognized exactly one hundred demes, distributed in equal proportion among his ten tribes.[249] But such construction of the words is more than doubtful, while the fact itself is improbable; partly because if the change of number had been so considerable as the difference between one hundred and one hundred and seventy-four, some positive evidence of it would probably be found,—partly because Kleisthenês would, indeed, have a motive to render the amount of citizen population nearly equal, but no motive to render the number of demes equal, in each of the ten tribes. It is well known how great is the force of local habits, and how unalterable are parochial or cantonal boundaries. In the absence of proof to the contrary, therefore, we may reasonably suppose the number and circumscription of the demes, as found or modified by Kleisthenês, to have subsisted afterwards with little alteration, at least until the increase in the number of the tribes.
There is another point, however, which is at once more certain, and more important to notice. The demes which Kleisthenês assigned to each tribe were in no case all adjacent to each other; and therefore the tribe, as a whole, did not correspond with any continuous portion of the territory, nor could it have any peculiar local interest, separate from the entire community. Such systematic avoidance of the factions arising out of neighborhood will appear to have been more especially necessary, when we recollect that the quarrels of the Parali, the Diakrii, the Pediaki, during the preceding century, had all been generated from local feud, though doubtless artfully fomented by individual ambition. Moreover, it was only by this same precaution that the local predominance of the city, and the formation of a city-interest distinct from that of the country, was obviated; which could hardly have failed to arise had the city by itself constituted either one deme or one tribe. Kleisthenês distributed the city (or found it already distributed) into several demes, and those demes among several tribes; while Peiræus and Phalêrum, each constituting a separate deme, were also assigned to different tribes; so that there were no local advantages either to bestow predominance, or to create a struggle for predominance, of one tribe over the rest.[250] Each deme had its own local interests to watch over; but the tribe was a mere aggregate of demes for political, military, and religious purposes, with no separate hopes or fears, apart from the whole state. Each tribe had a chapel, sacred rites and festivals, and a common fund for such meetings, in honor of its eponymous hero, administered by members of its own choice;[251] and the statues of all the ten eponymous heroes, fraternal patrons of the democracy, were planted in the most conspicuous part of the agora of Athens. In the future working of the Athenian government, we shall trace no symptom of disquieting local factions,—a capital amendment, compared with the disputes of the preceding century, and traceable, in part, to the absence of border-relations between demes of the same tribe.
The deme now became the primitive constituent element of the commonwealth, both as to persons and as to property. It had its own demarch, its register of enrolled citizens, its collective property, its public meetings and religious ceremonies, its taxes levied and administered by itself. The register of qualified citizens[252] was kept by the demarch, and the inscription of new citizens took place at the assembly of the demots, whose legitimate sons were enrolled on attaining the age of eighteen, and their adopted sons at any time when presented and sworn to by the adopting citizen. The citizenship could only be granted by a public vote of the people, but wealthy non-freemen were enabled sometimes to evade this law and purchase admission upon the register of some poor deme, probably by means of a fictitious adoption. At the meetings of the demots, the register was called over, and it sometimes happened that some names were expunged,—in which case the party thus disfranchised had an appeal to the popular judicature.[253] So great was the local administrative power, however, of these demes, that they are described as the substitute,[254] under the Kleisthenean system, for the naukraries under the Solonian and ante-Solonian. The trittyes and naukraries, though nominally preserved, and the latter (as some affirm) augmented in number from forty-eight to fifty, appear henceforward as of little public importance.
Kleisthenês preserved, but at the same time modified and expanded, all the main features of Solon’s political constitution; the public assembly, or ekklesia,—the preconsidering senate, composed of members from all the tribes,—and the habit of annual election, as well as annual responsibility of magistrates, by and to the ekklesia. The full value must now have been felt of possessing such preëxisting institutions to build upon, at a moment of perplexity and dissension. But the Kleisthenean ekklesia acquired new strength, and almost a new character, from the great increase of the number of citizens qualified to attend it; while the annually-changed senate, instead of being composed of four hundred members taken in equal proportion from each of the old four tribes, was enlarged to five hundred, taken equally from each of the new ten tribes. It now comes before us, under the name of Senate of Five Hundred, as an active and indispensable body throughout the whole Athenian democracy: and the practice now seems to have begun (though the period of commencement cannot be decisively proved), of determining the names of the senators by lot. Both the senate thus constituted, and the public assembly, were far more popular and vigorous than they had been under the original arrangement of Solon.
The new constitution of the tribes, as it led to a change in the annual senate, so it transformed, no less directly, the military arrangements of the state, both as to soldiers and as to officers. The citizens called upon to serve in arms were now marshalled according to tribes,—each tribe having its own taxiarchs as officers for the hoplites, and its own phylarch at the head of the horsemen. Moreover, there were now created for the first time ten strategi, or generals, one from each tribe; and two hipparchs, for the supreme command of the horsemen. Under the prior Athenian constitution it appears that the command of the military force had been vested in the third archon, or polemarch, no strategi then existing; and even after the latter had been created, under the Kleisthenean constitution, the polemarch still retained a joint right of command along with them,—as we are told at the battle of Marathon, where Kallimachus the polemarch not only enjoyed an equal vote in the council of war along with the ten strategi, but even occupied the post of honor on the right wing.[255] The ten generals, annually changed, are thus (like the ten tribes) a fruit of the Kleisthenean constitution, which was at the same time powerfully strengthened and protected by such remodelling of the military force. The functions of the generals becoming more extensive as the democracy advanced, they seem to have acquired gradually not merely the direction of military and naval affairs, but also that of the foreign relations of the city generally,—while the nine archons, including the polemarch, were by degrees lowered down from that full executive and judicial competence which they had once enjoyed, to the simple ministry of police and preparatory justice. Encroached upon by the strategi on one side, they were also restricted in efficiency by the rise of the popular dikasteries or numerous jury-courts, on the other. We may be very sure that these popular dikasteries had not been permitted to meet or to act under the despotism of the Peisistratids, and that the judicial business of the city must then have been conducted partly by the Senate of Areopagus, partly by the archons; perhaps with a nominal responsibility of the latter at the end of their year of office to an acquiescent ekklesia. And if we even assume it to be true, as some writers contend, that the habit of direct popular judicature, over and above this annual trial of responsibility, had been partially introduced by Solon, it must have been discontinued during the long coercion exercised by the supervening dynasty. But the outburst of popular spirit, which lent force to Kleisthenês, doubtless carried the people into direct action as jurors in the aggregate Heliæa, not less than as voters in the ekklesia,—and the change was thus begun which contributed to degrade the archons from their primitive character as judges, into the lower function of preliminary examiners and presidents of a jury. Such convocation of numerous juries, beginning first with the aggregate body of sworn citizens above thirty years of age, and subsequently dividing them into separate bodies or pannels, for trying particular causes, became gradually more frequent and more systematized: until at length, in the time of Periklês, it was made to carry a small pay, and stood out as one of the most prominent features of Athenian life. We cannot particularize the different steps whereby such final development was attained, and the judicial competence of the archon cut down to the mere power of inflicting a small fine; but the first steps of it are found in the revolution of Kleisthenês, and it seems to have been consummated by the reforms of Periklês. Of the function exercised by the nine archons as well as by many other magistrates and official persons at Athens, in convoking a dikastery, or jury-court, bringing on causes for trial,—and presiding over the trial,—a function constituting one of the marks of superior magistracy, and called the Hegemony, or presidency of a dikastery,—I shall speak more at length hereafter. At present, I wish merely to bring to view the increased and increasing sphere of action on which the people entered at the memorable turn of affairs now before us.
The financial affairs of the city underwent at this epoch as complete a change as the military: in fact, the appointment of magistrates and officers by tens, one from each tribe, seems to have become the ordinary practice. A board of ten, called Apodektæ, were invested with the supreme management of the exchequer, dealing with the contractors as to those portions of the revenue which were farmed, receiving all the taxes from the collectors, and disbursing them under competent authority. The first nomination of this board is expressly ascribed to Kleisthenês,[256] as a substitute for certain persons called Kôlakretæ, who had performed the same function before, and who were now retained only for subordinate services. The duties of the apodektæ were afterwards limited to receiving the public income, and paying it over to the ten treasurers of the goddess Athênê, by whom it was kept in the inner chamber of the Parthenon, and disbursed as needed; but this more complicated arrangement cannot be referred to Kleisthenês. From his time forward too, the Senate of Five Hundred steps far beyond its original duty of preparing matters for the discussion of the ekklesia: it embraces, besides, a large circle of administrative and general superintendence, which hardly admits of any definition. Its sittings become constant, with the exception of special holidays, and the year is distributed into ten portions called Prytanies,—the fifty senators of each tribe taking by turns the duty of constant attendance during one prytany, and receiving during that time the title of The Prytanes: the order of precedence among the tribes in these duties was annually determined by lot. In the ordinary Attic year of twelve lunar months, or three hundred and fifty-four days, six of the prytanies contained thirty-five days, four of them contained thirty-six: in the intercalated years of thirteen months, the number of days was thirty-eight and thirty-nine respectively. Moreover, a farther subdivision of the prytany into five periods of seven days each, and of the fifty tribe-senators into five bodies of ten each, was recognized: each body of ten presided in the senate for one period of seven days, drawing lots every day among their number for a new chairman, called Epistatês, to whom during his day of office were confided the keys of the acropolis and the treasury, together with the city seal. The remaining senators, not belonging to the prytanizing tribe, might of course attend if they chose; but the attendance of nine among them, one from each of the remaining nine tribes, was imperatively necessary to constitute a valid meeting, and to insure a constant representation of the collective people.
During those later times known to us through the great orators, the ekklesia, or formal assembly of the citizens, was convoked four times regularly during each prytany, or oftener if necessity required,—usually by the senate, though the stratêgi had also the power of convoking it by their own authority. It was presided over by the prytanes, and questions were put to the vote by their epistatês, or chairman; but the nine representatives of the non-prytanizing tribes were always present as a matter of course, and seem, indeed, in the days of the orators, to have acquired to themselves the direction of it, together with the right of putting questions for the vote,[257]—setting aside wholly or partially the fifty prytanes. When we carry our attention back, however, to the state of the ekklesia, as first organized by Kleisthenês (I have already remarked that expositors of the Athenian constitution are too apt to neglect the distinction of times, and to suppose that what was the practice between 400-330 B. C. had been always the practice), it will appear probable that he provided one regular meeting in each prytany, and no more; giving to the senate and the stratêgi power of convening special meetings if needful, but establishing one ekklesia during each prytany, or ten in the year, as a regular necessity of state. How often the ancient ekklesia had been convoked during the interval between Solon and Peisistratus, we cannot exactly say,—probably but seldom during the year. But under the Peisistratids, its convocation had dwindled down into an inoperative formality; and the reëstablishment of it by Kleisthenês, not merely with plenary determining powers, but also under full notice and preparation of matters beforehand, together with the best securities for orderly procedure, was in itself a revolution impressive to the mind of every Athenian citizen. To render the ekklesia efficient, it was indispensable that its meetings should be both frequent and free. Men thus became trained to the duty both of speakers and hearers, and each man, while he felt that he exercised his share of influence on the decision, identified his own safety and happiness with the vote of the majority, and became familiarized with the notion of a sovereign authority which he neither could nor ought to resist. This is an idea new to the Athenian bosom; and with it came the feelings sanctifying free speech and equal law,—words which no Athenian citizen ever afterwards heard unmoved: together with that sentiment of the entire commonwealth as one and indivisible, which always overruled, though it did not supplant, the local and cantonal special ties. It is not too much to say that these patriotic and ennobling impulses were a new product in the Athenian mind, to which nothing analogous occurs even in the time of Solon. They were kindled in part doubtless by the strong reaction against the Peisistratids, but still more by the fact that the opposing leader, Kleisthenês, turned that transitory feeling to the best possible account, and gave to it a vigorous perpetuity, as well as a well-defined positive object, by the popular elements conspicuous in his constitution. His name makes less figure in history than we should expect, because he passed for the mere renovator of Solon’s scheme of government after it had been overthrown by Peisistratus. Probably he himself professed this object, since it would facilitate the success of his propositions: and if we confine ourselves to the letter of the case, the fact is in a great measure true, since the annual senate and the ekklesia are both Solonian,—but both of them under his reform were clothed in totally new circumstances, and swelled into gigantic proportions. How vigorous was the burst of Athenian enthusiasm, altering instantaneously the position of Athens among the powers of Greece, we shall hear presently from the lips of Herodotus, and shall find still more unequivocally marked in the facts of his history.
But it was not only the people formally installed in their ekklesia, who received from Kleisthenês the real attributes of sovereignty,—it was by him also that the people were first called into direct action as dikasts, or jurors. I have already remarked, that this custom may be said, in a certain limited sense, to have begun in the time of Solon, since that lawgiver invested the popular assembly with the power of pronouncing the judgment of accountability upon the archons after their year of office. Here, again, the building, afterwards so spacious and stately, was erected on a Solonian foundation, though it was not itself Solonian. That the popular dikasteries, in the elaborate form in which they existed from Periklês downward, were introduced all at once by Kleisthenês, it is impossible to believe; yet the steps by which they were gradually wrought out are not distinctly discoverable. It would rather seem, that at first only the aggregate body of citizens above thirty years of age exercised judicial functions, being specially convoked and sworn to try persons accused of public crimes, and when so employed bearing the name of the heliæa, or heliasts; private offences and disputes between man and man being still determined by individual magistrates in the city, and a considerable judicial power still residing in the Senate of Areopagus. There is reason to believe that this was the state of things established by Kleisthenês, and which afterwards came to be altered by the greater extent of judicial duty gradually accruing to the heliasts, so that it was necessary to subdivide the collective heliæa. According to the subdivision, as practised in the times best known, six thousand citizens above thirty years of age were annually selected by lot out of the whole number, six hundred from each of the ten tribes: five thousand of these citizens were arranged in ten pannels or decuries of five hundred each, the remaining one thousand being reserved to fill up vacancies in case of death or absence among the former. The whole six thousand took a prescribed oath, couched in very striking words, and every man received a ticket inscribed with his own name as well as with a letter designating his decury. When there were causes or crimes ripe for trial, the thesmothets, or six inferior archons, determined by lot, first, which decuries should sit, according to the number wanted,—next, in which court, or under the presidency of what magistrate, the decury B or E should sit, so that it could not be known beforehand in what cause each would be judge. In the number of persons who actually attended and sat, however, there seems to have been much variety, and sometimes two decuries sat together.[258] The arrangement here described, we must recollect, is given to us as belonging to those times when the dikasts received a regular pay, after every day’s sitting; and it can hardly have long continued without that condition, which was not realized before the time of Periklês. Each of these decuries sitting in judicature was called The Heliæa,—a name which belongs properly to the collective assembly of the people; this collective assembly having been itself the original judicature. I conceive that the practice of distributing this collective assembly, or heliæa, into sections of jurors for judicial duty, may have begun under one form or another soon after the reform of Kleisthenês, since the direct interference of the people in public affairs tended more and more to increase. But it could only have been matured by degrees into that constant and systematic service which the pay of Periklês called forth at last in completeness. Under the last-mentioned system the judicial competence of the archons was annulled, and the third archon, or polemarch, withdrawn from all military functions. Still, this had not been yet done at the time of the battle of Marathon, in which Kallimachus the polemarch not only commanded along with the stratêgi, but enjoyed a sort of preëminence over them: nor had it been done during the year after the battle of Marathon, in which Aristeidês was archon,—for the magisterial decisions of Aristeidês formed one of the principal foundations of his honorable surname, the Just.[259]
With this question, as to the comparative extent of judicial power vested by Kleisthenês in the popular dikastery and the archons, are in reality connected two others in Athenian constitutional law; relating, first, to the admissibility of all citizens for the post of archon,—next, to the choosing of archons by lot. It is well known that, in the time of Periklês, the archons, and various other individual functionaries, had come to be chosen by lot,—moreover, all citizens were legally admissible, and might give in their names to be drawn for by lot, subject to what was called the dokimasy, or legal examination into their status of citizen, and into various moral and religious qualifications, before they took office; while at the same time the function of the archon had become nothing higher than preliminary examination of parties and witnesses for the dikastery, and presidence over it when afterwards assembled, together with the power of imposing by authority a fine of small amount upon inferior offenders.
Now all these three political arrangements hang essentially together. The great value of the lot, according to Grecian democratical ideas, was that it equalized the chance of office between rich and poor. But so long as the poor citizens were legally inadmissible, choice by lot could have no recommendation either to the rich or to the poor; in fact, it would be less democratical than election by the general mass of citizens, because the poor citizen would under the latter system enjoy an important right of interference by means of his suffrage, though he could not be elected himself.[260] Again, choice by lot could never under any circumstances be applied to those posts where special competence, and a certain measure of attributes possessed only by a few, could not be dispensed with without obvious peril,—nor was it ever applied, throughout the whole history of democratical Athens, to the stratêgi, or generals, who were always elected by show of hands of the assembled citizens. Accordingly, we may regard it as certain that, at the time when the archons first came to be chosen by lot, the superior and responsible duties once attached to that office had been, or were in course of being, detached from it, and transferred either to the popular dikasts or to the ten elected stratêgi: so that there remained to these archons only a routine of police and administration, important indeed to the state, yet such as could be executed by any citizen of average probity, diligence, and capacity. At least there was no obvious absurdity in thinking so; and the dokimasy excluded from the office men of notoriously discreditable life, even after they might have drawn the successful lot. Periklês,[261] though chosen stratêgus, year after year successively, was never archon; and it may even be doubted whether men of first-rate talents and ambition often gave in their names for the office. To those of smaller aspirations[262] it was doubtless a source of importance, but it imposed troublesome labor, gave no pay, and entailed a certain degree of peril upon any archon who might have given offence to powerful men, when he came to pass through the trial of accountability which followed immediately upon his year of office. There was little to make the office acceptable either to very poor men, or to very rich and ambitious men; and between the middling persons who gave in their names, any one might be taken without great practical mischief, always assuming the two guarantees of the dokimasy before, and accountability after, office. This was the conclusion—in my opinion a mistaken conclusion, and such as would find no favor at present—to which the democrats of Athens were conducted by their strenuous desire to equalize the chances of office for rich and poor. But their sentiment seems to have been satisfied by a partial enforcement of the lot to the choice of some offices,—especially the archons, as the primitive chief magistrates of the state,—without applying it to all, or to the most responsible and difficult. Nor would they have applied it to the archons, if it had been indispensably necessary that these magistrates should retain their original very serious duty of judging disputes and condemning offenders.
I think, therefore, that these three points: 1. The opening of the post of archon to all citizens indiscriminately; 2. The choice of archons by lot; 3. The diminished range of the archon’s duties and responsibilities, through the extension of those belonging to the popular courts of justice on the one hand and to the stratêgi on the other—are all connected together, and must have been simultaneous, or nearly simultaneous, in the time of introduction: the enactment of universal admissibility to office certainly not coming after the other two, and probably coming a little before them.
Now in regard to the eligibility of all Athenians indiscriminately to the office of archon, we find a clear and positive testimony as to the time when it was first introduced. Plutarch tells us[263] that the oligarchical,[264] but high-principled Aristeidês, was himself the proposer of this constitutional change,—shortly after the battle of Platæa, with the consequent expulsion of the Persians from Greece, and the return of the refugee Athenians to their ruined city. Seldom has it happened in the history of mankind, that rich and poor have been so completely equalized as among the population of Athens in that memorable expatriation and heroic struggle. Nor are we at all surprised to hear that the mass of the citizens, coming back with freshly-kindled patriotism as well as with the consciousness that their country had only been recovered by the equal efforts of all, would no longer submit to be legally disqualified from any office of state. It was on this occasion that the constitution was first made really “common” to all, and that the archons, stratêgi, and all functionaries, first began to be chosen from all Athenians without any difference of legal eligibility.[265] No mention is made of the lot, in this important statement of Plutarch, which appears to me every way worthy of credit, and which teaches us that, down to the invasion of Xerxês, not only had the exclusive principle of the Solonian law of qualification continued in force (whereby the first three classes on the census were alone admitted to all individual offices, and the fourth or Thêtic class excluded), but also the archons had hitherto been elected by the citizens,—not taken by lot.
Now for financial purposes, the quadruple census of Solon was retained long after this period, even beyond the Peloponnesian war and the oligarchy of Thirty. But we thus learn that Kleisthenês in his constitution retained it for political purposes also, in part at least: he recognized the exclusion of the great mass of the citizens from all individual offices,—such as the archon, the stratêgus, etc. In his time, probably, no complaints were raised on the subject. His constitution gave to the collective bodies—senate, ekklesia, and heliæa, or dikastery—a degree of power and importance such as they had never before known or imagined: and we may well suppose that the Athenian people of that day had no objection even to the proclaimed system and theory of being exclusively governed by men of wealth and station as individual magistrates,—especially since many of the newly-enfranchised citizens had been previously metics and slaves. Indeed, it is to be added that, even under the full democracy of later Athens, though the people had then become passionately attached to the theory of equal admissibility of all citizens to office, yet, in practice, poor men seldom obtained offices which were elected by the general vote, as will appear more fully in the course of this history.[266]
The choice of the stratêgi remained ever afterwards upon the footing on which Aristeidês thus placed it. But the lot for the choice of archon must have been introduced shortly after his proposition of universal eligibility, and in consequence too of the same tide of democratical feeling,—introduced as a farther corrective, because the poor citizen, though he had become eligible, was nevertheless not elected. And at the same time, I imagine, that elaborate distribution of the Heliæa, or aggregate body of dikasts, or jurors, into separate pannels, or dikasteries, for the decision of judicial matters, was first regularized. It was this change that stole away from the archons so important a part of their previous jurisdiction: it was this change that Periklês more fully consummated by insuring pay to the dikasts. But the present is not the time to enter into the modifications which Athens underwent during the generation after the battle of Platæa. They have been here briefly noticed for the purpose of reasoning back, in the absence of direct evidence, to Athens as it stood in the generation before that memorable battle, after the reform of Kleisthenês. His reform, though highly democratical, stopped short of the mature democracy which prevailed from Periklês to Demosthenês, in three ways especially, among various others; and it is therefore sometimes considered by the later writers as an aristocratical constitution:[267] 1. It still recognized the archons as judges to a considerable extent, and the third archon, or polemarch, as joint military commander along with the stratêgi. 2. It retained them as elected annually by the body of citizens, not as chosen by lot.[268] 3. It still excluded the fourth class of the Solonian census from all individual office, the archonship among the rest. The Solonian law of exclusion, however, though retained in principle, was mitigated in practice thus far,—that whereas Solon had rendered none but members of the highest class on the census (the Pentakosiomedimni) eligible to the archonship, Kleisthenês opened that dignity to all the first three classes, shutting out only the fourth. That he did this may be inferred from the fact that Aristeidês, assuredly not a rich man, became archon.
I am also inclined to believe that the Senate of Five Hundred, as constituted by Kleisthenês, was taken, not by election, but by lot, from the ten tribes,—and that every citizen became eligible to it. Election for this purpose—that is, the privilege of annually electing a batch of fifty senators, all at once, by each tribe—would probably be thought more troublesome than valuable; nor do we hear of separate meetings of each tribe for purposes of election. Moreover, the office of senator was a collective, not an individual office; the shock, therefore, to the feelings of semi-democratized Athens, from the unpleasant idea of a poor man sitting among the fifty prytanes, would be less than if they conceived him as polemarch at the head of the right wing of the army, or as an archon administering justice.
A farther difference between the constitution of Solon and that of Kleisthenês is to be found in the position of the Senate of Areopagus. Under the former, that senate had been the principal body in the state, and he had even enlarged its powers; under the latter, it must have been treated at first as an enemy, and kept down. For as it was composed only of all the past archons, and as, during the preceding thirty years, every archon had been a creature of the Peisistratids, the Areopagites collectively must have been both hostile and odious to Kleisthenês and his partisans,—perhaps a fraction of its members might even retire into exile with Hippias. Its influence must have been sensibly lessened by the change of party, until it came to be gradually filled by fresh archons springing from the bosom of the Kleisthenean constitution. But during this important interval, the new-modelled Senate of Five Hundred, and the popular assembly, stepped into that ascendency which they never afterwards lost. From the time of Kleisthenês forward, the Areopagites cease to be the chief and prominent power in the state: yet they are still considerable; and when the second fill of the democratical tide took place, after the battle of Platæa, they became the focus of that which was then considered as the party of oligarchical resistance. I have already remarked that the archons, during the intermediate time (about 509-477 B. C.), were all elected by the ekklesia, not chosen by lot,—and that the fourth (or poorest and most numerous) class on the census were by law then ineligible; while election at Athens, even when every citizen without exception was an elector and eligible, had a natural tendency to fall upon men of wealth and station. We thus see how it happened that the past archons, when united in the Senate of Areopagus, infused into that body the sympathies, prejudices, and interests of the richer classes. It was this which brought them into conflict with the more democratical party headed by Periklês and Ephialtês, in times when portions of the Kleisthenean constitution had come to be discredited as too much imbued with oligarchy.
One other remarkable institution, distinctly ascribed to Kleisthenês, yet remains to be noticed,—the Ostracism; upon which I have already made some remarks,[269] in touching upon the memorable Solonian proclamation against neutrality in a sedition. It is hardly too much to say that, without this protective process, none of the other institutions would have reached maturity.
By the ostracism, a citizen was banished without special accusation, trial, or defence, for a term of ten years,—subsequently diminished to five. His property was not taken away, nor his reputation tainted; so that the penalty consisted solely in the banishment from his native city to some other Greek city. As to reputation, the ostracism was a compliment rather than otherwise;[270] and so it was vividly felt to be, when, about ninety years after Kleisthenês, the conspiracy between Nikias and Alkibiadês fixed it upon Hyperbolus. The two former had both recommended the taking of an ostracizing vote, each hoping to cause the banishment of the other; but before the day arrived, they accommodated the difference. To fire off the safety-gun of the republic against a person so little dangerous as Hyperbolus, was denounced as the prostitution of a great political ceremony: “it was not against such men as him (said the comic writer, Plato),[271] that the oyster-shell (or potsherd) was intended to be used.” The process of ostracism was carried into effect by writing upon a shell, or potsherd, the name of the person whom a citizen thought it prudent for a time to banish; which shell, when deposited in the proper vessel, counted for a vote towards the sentence.
I have already observed that all the governments of the Grecian cities, when we compare them with that idea which a modern reader is apt to conceive of the measure of force belonging to a government, were essentially weak, the good as well as the bad,—the democratical, the oligarchical, and the despotic. The force in the hands of any government, to cope with conspirators or mutineers, was extremely small, with the single exception of a despot surrounded by his mercenary troop; so that no tolerably sustained conspiracy or usurper could be put down except by the direct aid of the people in support of the government; which amounted to a dissolution, for the time, of constitutional authority, and was pregnant with reactionary consequences such as no man could foresee. To prevent powerful men from attempting usurpation was, therefore, of the greatest possible moment; and a despot or an oligarchy might exercise preventive means at pleasure,[272] much sharper than the ostracism, such as the assassination of Kimon, mentioned in my last chapter, as directed by the Peisistratids. At the very least, they might send away any one, from whom they apprehended attack or danger, without incurring even so much as the imputation of severity. But in a democracy, where arbitrary action of the magistrate was the thing of all others most dreaded, and where fixed laws, with trial and defence as preliminaries to punishment, were conceived by the ordinary citizen as the guarantees of his personal security and as the pride of his social condition,—the creation of such an exceptional power presented serious difficulty. If we transport ourselves to the times of Kleisthenês, immediately after the expulsion of the Peisistratids, when the working of the democratical machinery was as yet untried, we shall find this difficulty at its maximum; but we shall also find the necessity of vesting such a power somewhere absolutely imperative. For the great Athenian nobles had yet to learn the lesson of respect for any constitution; their past history had exhibited continual struggles between the armed factions of Megaklês, Lykurgus, and Peisistratus, put down after a time by the superior force and alliances of the latter. And though Kleisthenês, the son of Megaklês, might be firmly disposed to renounce the example of his father, and to act as the faithful citizen of a fixed constitution,—he would know but too well that the sons of his father’s companions and rivals would follow out ambitious purposes without any regard to the limits imposed by law, if ever they acquired sufficient partisans to present a fair prospect of success. Moreover, when any two candidates for power, with such reckless dispositions, came into a bitter personal rivalry, the motives to each of them, arising as well out of fear as out of ambition, to put down his opponent at any cost to the constitution, might well become irresistible, unless some impartial and discerning interference could arrest the strife in time. “If the Athenians were wise (Aristeidês is reported to have said,[273] in the height and peril of his parliamentary struggle with Themistoklês), they would cast both Themistoklês and me into the barathrum.”[274] And whoever reads the sad narrative of the Korkyræan sedition, in the third book of Thucydidês, together with the reflections of the historian upon it,[275] will trace the gradual exasperation of these party feuds, beginning even under democratical forms, until at length they break down the barriers of public as well as of private morality.
Against this chance of internal assailants Kleisthenês had to protect the democratical constitution,—first, by throwing impediments in their way and rendering it difficult for them to procure the requisite support; next, by eliminating them before any violent projects were ripe for execution. To do either the one or the other, it was necessary to provide such a constitution as would not only conciliate the good-will, but kindle the passionate attachment, of the mass of citizens, insomuch that not even any considerable minority should be deliberately inclined to alter it by force. 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 a perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the constitution will be not less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own. This coexistence 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 first French revolution illustrate, among 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. Nothing less than unanimity, or so overwhelming a majority as to be tantamount to unanimity, on the cardinal point of respecting constitutional forms, even by those who do not wholly approve of them, can render the excitement of political passion bloodless, and yet expose all the authorities in the state to the full license of pacific criticism.
At the epoch of Kleisthenês, which by a remarkable coincidence is the same as that of the regifuge at Rome, such constitutional morality, if it existed anywhere else, had certainly no place at Athens; and the first creation of it in any particular society must be esteemed an interesting historical fact. By the spirit of his reforms,—equal, popular, and comprehensive, far beyond the previous experience of Athenians,—he secured the hearty attachment of the body of citizens; but from the first generation of leading men, under the nascent democracy, and with such precedents as they had to look back upon, no self-imposed limits to ambition could be expected: and the problem required was to eliminate beforehand any one about to transgress these limits, so as to escape the necessity of putting him down afterwards, with all that bloodshed and reaction, in the midst of which the free working of the constitution would be suspended at least, if not irrevocably extinguished. To acquire such influence as would render him dangerous under democratical forms, a man must stand in evidence before the public, so as to afford some reasonable means of judging of his character and purposes; and the security which Kleisthenês provided, was, to call in the positive judgment of the citizens respecting his future promise purely and simply, so that they might not remain too long neutral between two formidable political rivals,—pursuant in a certain way to the Solonian proclamation against neutrality in a sedition, as I have already remarked in a former chapter. He incorporated in the constitution itself the principle of privilegium (to employ the Roman phrase, which signifies, not a peculiar favor granted to any one, but a peculiar inconvenience imposed), yet only under circumstances solemn and well defined, with full notice and discussion beforehand, and by the positive secret vote of a large proportion of the citizens. “No law shall be made against any single citizen, without the same being made against all Athenian citizens; unless it shall so seem good to six thousand citizens voting secretly.”[276] Such was that general principle of the constitution, under which the ostracism was a particular case. Before the vote of ostracism could be taken, a case was to be made out in the senate and the public assembly to justify it. In the sixth prytany of the year, these two bodies debated and determined whether the state of the republic was menacing enough to call for such an exceptional measure.[277] If they decided in the affirmative, a day was named, the agora was railed round, with ten entrances left for the citizens of each tribe, and ten separate casks or vessels for depositing the suffrages, which consisted of a shell, or a potsherd, with the name of the person written on it whom each citizen designed to banish. At the end of the day, the number of votes was summed up, and if six thousand votes were found to have been given against any one person, that person was ostracized; if not, the ceremony ended in nothing.[278] Ten days were allowed to him for settling his affairs, after which he was required to depart from Attica for ten years, but retained his property, and suffered no other penalty.
It was not the maxim at Athens to escape the errors of the people, by calling in the different errors, and the sinister interest besides, of an extra-popular or privileged few; nor was any third course open, since the principles of representative government were not understood, nor indeed conveniently applicable to very small communities. Beyond the judgment of the people—so the Athenians felt—there was no appeal; and their grand study was to surround the delivery of that judgment with the best securities for rectitude and the best preservatives against haste, passion, or private corruption. Whatever measure of good government could not be obtained in that way, could not, in their opinion, be obtained at all. I shall illustrate the Athenian proceedings on this head more fully when I come to speak of the working of their mature democracy: meanwhile, in respect to this grand protection of the nascent democracy,—the vote of ostracism,—it will be found that the securities devised by Kleisthenês, for making the sentence effectual against the really dangerous man, and against no one else, display not less foresight than patriotism. The main object was, to render the voting an expression of deliberate public feeling, as distinguished from mere factious antipathy: the large minimum of votes required, one-fourth of the entire citizen population, went far to insure this effect,—the more so, since each vote, taken as it was in a secret manner, counted unequivocally for the expression of a genuine and independent sentiment, and could neither be coerced nor bought. Then again, Kleisthenês did not permit the process of ostracizing to be opened against any one citizen exclusively. If opened at all, every one without exception was exposed to the sentence; so that the friends of Themistoklês could not invoke it against Aristeidês,[279] nor those of the latter against the former, without exposing their own leader to the same chance of exile. It was not likely to be invoked at all, therefore, until exasperation had proceeded so far as to render both parties insensible to this chance,—the precise index of that growing internecive hostility, which the ostracism prevented from coming to a head. Nor could it even then be ratified, unless a case was shown to convince the more neutral portion of the senate and the ekklesia: moreover, after all, the ekklesia did not itself ostracize, but a future day was named, and the whole body of the citizens were solemnly invited to vote. It was in this way that security was taken not only for making the ostracism effectual in protecting the constitution, but to hinder it from being employed for any other purpose. And we must recollect that it exercised its tutelary influence, not merely on those occasions when it was actually employed, but by the mere knowledge that it might be employed, and by the restraining effect which that knowledge produced on the conduct of the great men. Again, the ostracism, though essentially of an exceptional nature, was yet an exception sanctified and limited by the constitution itself; so that the citizen, in giving his ostracizing vote, did not in any way depart from the constitution or lose his reverence for it. The issue placed before him—“Is there any man whom you think vitally dangerous to the state? if so, whom?”—though vague, was yet raised directly and legally. Had there been no ostracism, it might probably have been raised both indirectly and illegally, on the occasion of some special imputed crime of a suspected political leader, when accused before a court of justice, —a perversion, involving all the mischief of the ostracism, without its protective benefits.
Care was taken to divest the ostracism of all painful consequence except what was inseparable from exile; and this is not one of the least proofs of the wisdom with which it was devised. Most certainly, it never deprived the public of candidates for political influence: and when we consider the small amount of individual evil which it inflicted,—evil too diminished, in the cases of Kimon and Aristeidês, by a reactionary sentiment which augmented their subsequent popularity after return,—two remarks will be quite sufficient to offer in the way of justification. First, it completely produced its intended effect; for the democracy grew up from infancy to manhood without a single attempt to overthrow it by force,[280]—a result, upon which no reflecting contemporary of Kleisthenês could have ventured to calculate. Next, through such tranquil working of the democratical forms, a constitutional morality quite sufficiently complete was produced among the leading Athenians, to enable the people after a certain time to dispense with that exceptional security which the ostracism offered.[281] To the nascent democracy, it was absolutely indispensable; to the growing yet militant democracy, it was salutary; but the full-grown democracy both could and did stand without it. The ostracism passed upon Hyperbolus, about ninety years after Kleisthenês, was the last occasion of its employment. And even this can hardly be considered as a serious instance: it was a trick concerted between two distinguished Athenians (Nikias and Alkibiadês), to turn to their own political account a process already coming to be antiquated. Nor would such a manœuvre have been possible, if the contemporary Athenian citizens had been penetrated with the same, serious feeling of the value of ostracism as a safeguard of democracy, as had been once entertained by their fathers and grandfathers. Between Kleisthenês and Hyperbolus, we hear of about ten different persons as having been banished by ostracism. First of all, Hipparchus of the deme Cholargus, the son of Charmus, a relative of the recently-expelled Peisistratid despots;[282] then Aristeidês, Themistoklês, Kimon, and Thucydidês son of Melêsias, all of them renowned political leaders; also Alkibiadês and Megaklês (the paternal and maternal grandfathers of the distinguished Alkibiadês), and Kallias, belonging to another eminent family at Athens;[283] lastly, Damôn, the preceptor of Periklês in poetry and music, and eminent for his acquisitions in philosophy.[284] In this last case comes out the vulgar side of humanity, aristocratical as well as democratical; for with both, the process of philosophy and the persons of philosophers are wont to be alike unpopular. Even Kleisthenês himself is said to have been ostracized under his own law, and Xanthippus; but both upon authority too weak to trust.[285] Miltiadês was not ostracized at all, but tried and punished for misconduct in his command.
I should hardly have said so much about this memorable and peculiar institution of Kleisthenês, if the erroneous accusations against the Athenian democracy,—of envy, injustice, and ill-treatment of their superior men, had not been greatly founded upon it, and if such criticisms had not passed from ancient times to modern with little examination. In monarchical governments, a pretender to the throne, numbering a certain amount of supporters, is, as a matter of course, excluded from the country. The duke of Bordeaux cannot now reside in France,—nor could Napoleon after 1815,—nor Charles Edward in England during the last century. No man treats this as any extravagant injustice, yet it is the parallel of the ostracism,—with a stronger case in favor of the latter, inasmuch as the change from one regal dynasty to another does not of necessity overthrow all the collateral institutions and securities of the country. Plutarch has affirmed that the ostracism arose from the envy and jealousy inherent in a democracy,[286] and not from justifiable fears,—an observation often repeated, yet not the less demonstrably untrue. Not merely because ostracism so worked as often to increase the influence of that political leader whose rival it removed,—but still more, because, if the fact had been as Plutarch says, this institution would have continued as long as the democracy; whereas it finished with the banishment of Hyperbolus, at a period when the government was more decisively democratical than it had been in the time of Kleisthenês. It was, in truth, a product altogether of fear and insecurity,[287] on the part both of the democracy and its best friends,—fear perfectly well-grounded, and only appearing needless because the precautions taken prevented attack. So soon as the diffusion of a constitutional morality had placed the mass of the citizens above all serious fear of an aggressive usurper the ostracism was discontinued. And doubtless the feeling, that it might safely be dispensed with, must have been strengthened by the long ascendency of Periklês,—by the spectacle of the greatest statesman whom Athens ever produced, acting steadily within the limits of the constitution; as well as by the ill-success of his two opponents, Kimon and Thucydidês,—aided by numerous partisans and by the great comic writers, at a period when comedy was a power in the state such as it has never been before or since,—in their attempts to get him ostracized. They succeeded in fanning up the ordinary antipathy of the citizens towards philosophers, so far as to procure the ostracism of his friend and teacher Damôn: but Periklês himself, to repeat the complaint of his bitter enemy, the comic poet Kratinus,[288] “was out of the reach of the oyster-shell.” If Periklês was not conceived to be dangerous to the constitution, none of his successors were at all likely to be so regarded. Damôn and Hyperbolus were the two last persons ostracized: both of them were cases, and the only cases, of an unequivocal abuse of the institution, because, whatever the grounds of displeasure against them may have been, it is impossible to conceive either of them as menacing to the state,—whereas all the other known sufferers were men of such position and power, that the six or eight thousand citizens who inscribed each name on the shell, or at least a large proportion of them, may well have done so under the most conscientious belief that they were guarding the constitution against real danger. Such a change, in the character of the persons ostracized, plainly evinces that the ostracism had become dissevered from that genuine patriotic prudence which originally rendered it both legitimate and popular. It had served for two generations an inestimable tutelary purpose,—it lived to be twice dishonored,—and then passed, by universal acquiescence, into matter of history.
A process analogous to the ostracism subsisted at Argos,[289] at Syracuse, and in some other Grecian democracies. Aristotle states that it was abused for factious purposes: and at Syracuse, where it was introduced after the expulsion of the Gelonian dynasty, Diodorus affirms that it was so unjustly and profusely applied, as to deter persons of wealth and station from taking any part in public affairs; for which reason it was speedily discontinued. We have no particulars to enable us to appreciate this general statement. But we cannot safely infer that because the ostracism worked on the whole well at Athens, it must necessarily have worked well in other states,—the more so, as we do not know whether it was surrounded with the same precautionary formalities, nor whether it even required the same large minimum of votes to make it effective. This latter guarantee, so valuable in regard to an institution essentially easy to abuse, is not noticed by Diodorus in his brief account of the Petalism,—so the process was denominated at Syracuse.[290]
Such was the first Athenian democracy, engendered as well by the reaction against Hippias and his dynasty as by the memorable partnership, whether spontaneous or compulsory, between Kleisthenês and the unfranchised multitude. It is to be distinguished, both from the mitigated oligarchy established by Solon before, and from the full-grown and symmetrical democracy which prevailed afterwards from the beginning of the Peloponnesian war towards the close of the career of Periklês. It was, indeed, a striking revolution, impressed upon the citizen not less by the sentiments to which it appealed than by the visible change which it made in political and social life. He saw himself marshalled in the ranks of hoplites, alongside of new companions in arms,—he was enrolled in a new register, and his property in a new schedule, in his deme and by his demarch, an officer before unknown,—he found the year distributed afresh, for all legal purposes, into ten parts bearing the name of prytanies, each marked by a solemn and free-spoken ekklesia, at which he had a right to be present,—that ekklesia was convoked and presided by senators called prytanes, members of a senate novel both as to number and distribution,—his political duties were now performed as member of a tribe, designated by a name not before pronounced in common Attic life, connected with one of ten heroes whose statues he now for the first time saw in the agora, and associating him with fellow-tribemen from all parts of Attica. All these and many others were sensible novelties, felt in the daily proceedings of the citizen. But the great novelty of all was, the authentic recognition of the ten new tribes as a sovereign dêmos, or people, apart from all specialties of phratric or gentile origin, with free speech and equal law; retaining no distinction except the four classes of the Solonian property-schedule with their gradations of eligibility. To a considerable proportion of citizens this great novelty was still farther endeared by the fact that it had raised them out of the degraded position of metics and slaves; and to the large majority of all the citizens, it furnished a splendid political idea, profoundly impressive to the Greek mind,—capable of calling forth the most ardent attachment as well as the most devoted sense of active obligation and obedience. We have now to see how their newly-created patriotism manifested itself.
Kleisthenês and his new constitution carried with them so completely the popular favor, that Isagoras had no other way of opposing it except by calling in the interference of Kleomenês and the Lacedæmonians. Kleomenês listened the more readily to this call, as he was reported to have been on an intimate footing with the wife of Isagoras. He prepared to come to Athens; but his first aim was to deprive the democracy of its great leader Kleisthenês, who, as belonging to the Alkmæônid family, was supposed to be tainted with the inherited sin of his great-grandfather Megaklês, the destroyer of the usurper Kylôn. Kleomenês sent a herald to Athens, demanding the expulsion “of the accursed,”—so this family were called by their enemies, and so they continued to be called eighty years afterwards, when the same manœuvre was practised by the Lacedæmonians of that day against Periklês. This requisition had been recommended by Isagoras, and was so well-timed that Kleisthenês, not venturing to disobey it, retired voluntarily, so that Kleomenês, though arriving at Athens only with a small force, found himself master of the city. At the instigation of Isagoras, he sent into exile seven hundred families, selected from the chief partisans of Kleisthenês: his next attempt was to dissolve the new Senate of Five Hundred and place the whole government in the hands of three hundred adherents of the chief whose cause he espoused. But now was seen the spirit infused into the people by their new constitution. At the time of the first usurpation of Peisistratus, the Senate of that day had not only not resisted, but even lent themselves to the scheme. But the new Senate of Kleisthenês resolutely refused to submit to dissolution, and the citizens manifested themselves in a way at once so hostile and so determined, that Kleomenês and Isagoras were altogether baffled. They were compelled to retire into the acropolis and stand upon the defensive; and this symptom of weakness was the signal for a general rising of the Athenians, who besieged the Spartan king on the holy rock. He had evidently come without any expectation of finding, or any means of overpowering, resistance; for at the end of two days his provisions were exhausted, and he was forced to capitulate. He and his Lacedæmonians, as well as Isagoras, were allowed to retire to Sparta; but the Athenians of the party captured along with him were imprisoned, condemned,[291] and executed by the people.
Kleisthenês, with the seven hundred exiled families, was immediately recalled, and his new constitution materially strengthened by this first success. Yet the prospect of renewed Spartan attack was sufficiently serious to induce him to send envoys to Artaphernês, the Persian satrap at Sardis, soliciting the admission of Athens into the Persian alliance: he probably feared the intrigues of the expelled Hippias in the same quarter. Artaphernês, having first informed himself who the Athenians were, and where they dwelt,—replied that, if they chose to send earth and water to the king of Persia, they might be received as allies, but upon no other condition. Such were the feelings of alarm under which the envoys had quitted Athens, that they went the length of promising this unqualified token of submission. But their countrymen, on their return, disavowed them with scorn and indignation.[292]
It was at this time that the first connection began between Athens and the little Bœotian town of Platæa, situated on the northern slope of the range of Kithæron, between that mountain and the river Asôpus,—on the road from Athens to Thebes; and it is upon this first occasion that we become acquainted with the Bœotians and their polities. In one of my preceding volumes,[293] the Bœotian federation has already been briefly described, as composed of some twelve or thirteen autonomous towns under the headship of Thebes, which was, or professed to have been, their mother-city. Platæa had been, so the Thebans affirmed, their latest foundation;[294] it was ill-used by them, and discontented with the alliance. Accordingly, as Kleomenês was on his way back from Athens, the Platæans took the opportunity of addressing themselves to him, craved the protection of Sparta against Thebes, and surrendered their town and territory without reserve. The Spartan king, having no motive to undertake a trust which promised nothing but trouble, advised them to solicit the protection of Athens, as nearer and more accessible for them in case of need. He foresaw that this would embroil the Athenians with Bœotia; and such anticipation was in fact his chief motive for giving the advice, which the Platæans followed. Selecting an occasion of public sacrifice at Athens, they dispatched thither envoys, who sat down as suppliants at the altar, surrendered their town to Athens, and implored protection against Thebes. Such an appeal was not to be resisted, and protection was promised; it was soon needed, for the Thebans invaded the Platæan territory, and an Athenian force marched to defend it. Battle was about to be joined, when the Corinthians interposed with their mediation, which was accepted by both parties. They decided altogether in favor of Platæa, pronouncing that the Thebans had no right to employ force against any seceding member of the Bœotian federation.[295] But the Thebans, finding the decision against them, refused to abide by it, and, attacking the Athenians on their return, sustained a complete defeat: the latter avenged this breach of faith by joining to Platæa the portion of Theban territory south of the Asôpus, and making that river the limit between the two. By such success, however, the Athenians gained nothing, except the enmity of Bœotia,—as Kleomenês had foreseen. Their alliance with Platæa, long continued, and presenting in the course of this history several incidents touching to our sympathies, will be found, if we except one splendid occasion,[296] productive only of burden to the one party, yet insufficient as a protection to the other.
Meanwhile Kleomenês had returned to Sparta full of resentment against the Athenians, and resolved on punishing them, as well as on establishing his friend Isagoras as despot over them. Having been taught, however, by humiliating experience, that this was no easy achievement, he would not make the attempt, without having assembled a considerable force; he summoned allies from all the various states of Peloponnesus, yet without venturing to inform them what he was about to undertake. He at the same time concerted measures with the Bœotians, and with the Chalkidians of Eubœa, for a simultaneous invasion of Attica on all sides. It appears that he had greater confidence in their hostile dispositions towards Athens than in those of the Peloponnesians, for he was not afraid to acquaint them with his design,—and probably the Bœotians were incensed with the recent interference of Athens in the affair of Platæa. As soon as these preparations were completed, the two kings of Sparta, Kleomenês and Demaratus, put themselves at the head of the united Peloponnesian force, marched into Attica, and advanced as far as Eleusis on the way to Athens. But when the allies came to know the purpose for which they were to be employed, a spirit of dissatisfaction manifested itself among them. They had no unfriendly sentiment towards Athens; and the Corinthians especially, favorably disposed rather than otherwise towards that city, resolved to proceed no farther, withdrew their contingent from the camp, and returned home. At the same time, king Demaratus, either sharing in the general dissatisfaction, or moved by some grudge against his colleague which had not before manifested itself, renounced the undertaking also. And these two examples, operating upon the preëxisting sentiment of the allies generally, caused the whole camp to break up and return home without striking a blow.[297]
We may here remark that this is the first instance known in which Sparta appears in act as recognized head of an obligatory Peloponnesian alliance,[298] summoning contingents from the cities to be placed under the command of her king. Her headship, previously recognized in theory, passes now into act, but in an unsatisfactory manner, so as to prove the necessity of precaution and concert beforehand,—which will be found not long wanting.
Pursuant to the scheme concerted, the Bœotians and Chalkidians attacked Attica at the same time that Kleomenês entered it. The former seized Œnoê and Hysiæ, the frontier demes of Attica on the side towards Platæa, while the latter assailed the north-eastern frontier, which faces Eubœa. Invaded on three sides, the Athenians were in serious danger, and were compelled to concentrate all their forces at Eleusis against Kleomenês, leaving the Bœotians and Chalkidians unopposed. But the unexpected breaking up of the invading army from Peloponnesus proved their rescue, and enabled them to turn the whole of their attention to the other frontier. They marched into Bœotia to the strait called Euripus, which separates it from Eubœa, intending to prevent the junction of the Bœotians and Chalkidians, and to attack the latter first apart. But the arrival of the Bœotians caused an alteration in their scheme; they attacked the Bœotians first, and gained a victory of the most complete character,—killing a large number, and capturing seven hundred prisoners. On the very same day they crossed over to Eubœa, attacked the Chalkidians, and gained another victory so decisive that it at once terminated the war. Many Chalkidians were taken, as well as Bœotians, and conveyed in chains to Athens, where after a certain detention they were at last ransomed for two minæ per man; and the tenth of the sum thus raised was employed in the fabrication of a chariot and four horses in bronze, which was placed in the acropolis to commemorate the victory. Herodotus saw this trophy when he was at Athens. He saw too, what was a still more speaking trophy, the actual chains in which the prisoners had been fettered, exhibiting in their appearance the damage undergone when the acropolis was burnt by Xerxês: an inscription of four lines described the offerings and recorded the victory out of which they had sprung.[299]
Another consequence of some moment arose out of this victory. The Athenians planted a body of four thousand of their citizens as klêruchs (lot-holders) or settlers upon the lands of the wealthy Chalkidian oligarchy called the Hippobotæ,—proprietors probably in the fertile plain of Lêlantum, between Chalkis and Eretria. This is a system which we shall find hereafter extensively followed out by the Athenians in the days of their power; partly with the view of providing for their poorer citizens,—partly to serve as garrison among a population either hostile or of doubtful fidelity. These Attic klêruchs (I can find no other name by which to speak of them) did not lose their birthright as Athenian citizens: they were not colonists in the Grecian sense, and they are known by a totally different name,—but they corresponded very nearly to the colonies formally planted out on the conquered lands by Rome. The increase of the poorer population was always more or less painfully felt in every Grecian city. For though the aggregate population never seems to have increased very fast, yet the multiplication of children in poor families caused the subdivision of the smaller lots of land, until at last they became insufficient for a maintenance; and the persons thus impoverished found it difficult to obtain subsistence in other ways, more especially as the labor for the richer classes was so much performed by imported slaves. Doubtless some families possessed of landed property became extinct; but this did not at all benefit the smaller and poorer proprietors; for the lands thus rendered vacant passed, not to them, but by inheritance, or bequest, or intermarriage, to other proprietors, for the most part in easy circumstances,—since one opulent family usually intermarried with another. I shall enter more fully at a future opportunity into this question,—the great and serious problem of population, as it affected the Greek communities generally, and as it was dealt with in theory by the powerful minds of Plato and Aristotle. At present it is sufficient to notice that the numerous klêruchies sent out by Athens, of which this to Eubœa was the first, arose in a great measure out of the multiplication of the poorer population, which her extended power was employed in providing for. Her subsequent proceedings with a view to the same object will not be always found so justifiable as this now before us, which grew naturally, according to the ideas of the time, out of her success against the Chalkidians.
The war between Athens, however, and Thebes with her Bœotian allies, still continued, to the great and repeated disadvantage of the latter, until at length the Thebans in despair sent to ask advice of the Delphian oracle, and were directed to “solicit aid from those nearest to them.”[300] “How (they replied) are we to obey? Our nearest neighbors, of Tanagra, Korôneia, and Thespiæ, are now, and have been from the beginning, lending us all the aid in their power.” An ingenious Theban, however, coming to the relief of his perplexed fellow-citizens, dived into the depths of legend and brought up a happy meaning. “Those nearest to us (he said) are the inhabitants of Ægina: for Thêbê (the eponym of Thebes) and Ægina (the eponym of that island) were both sisters, daughters of Asôpus: let us send to crave assistance from the Æginetans.” If his subtle interpretation (founded upon their descent from the same legendary progenitors) did not at once convince all who heard it, at least no one had any better to suggest; and envoys were at once sent to the Æginetans,—who, in reply to a petition founded on legendary claims, sent to the help of the Thebans a reinforcement of legendary, but venerated, auxiliaries,—the Æakid heroes. We are left to suppose that their effigies are here meant. It was in vain, however, that the glory and the supposed presence of the Æakids Telamôn and Pêleus were introduced into the Theban camp. Victory still continued on the side of Athens; and the discouraged Thebans again sent to Ægina, restoring the heroes,[301] and praying for aid of a character more human and positive. Their request was granted, and the Æginetans commenced war against Athens without even the decent preliminary of a herald and declaration.[302]
This remarkable embassy first brings us into acquaintance with the Dorians of Ægina,—oligarchical, wealthy, commercial, and powerful at sea, even in the earliest days; more analogous to Corinth than to any of the other cities called Dorian. The hostility which they now began without provocation against Athens,—repressed by Sparta at the critical moment of the battle of Marathon,—then again breaking out,—and hushed for a while by the common dangers of the Persian invasion under Xerxês, was appeased only with the conquest of the island about twenty years after that event, and with the expulsion and destruction of its inhabitants some years later. There had been indeed, according to Herodotus,[303] a feud of great antiquity between Athens and Ægina,—of which he gives the account in a singular narrative, blending together religion, politics, exposition of ancient customs, etc.; but at the time when the Thebans solicited aid from Ægina, the latter was at peace with Athens. The Æginetans employed their fleet, powerful for that day, in ravaging Phalêrum and the maritime demes of Attica; nor had the Athenians as yet any fleet to resist them.[304] It is probable that the desired effect was produced, of diverting a portion of the Athenian force from the war against Bœotia, and thus partially relieving Thebes. But the war of Athens against both of them continued for a considerable time, though we have no information respecting its details.
Meanwhile the attention of Athens was called off from these combined enemies by a more menacing cloud, which threatened to burst upon her from the side of Sparta. Kleomenês and his countrymen, full of resentment at the late inglorious desertion of Eleusis, were yet more incensed by the discovery, which appears to have been then recently made, that the injunctions of the Delphian priestess for the expulsion of Hippias from Athens had been fraudulently procured.[305] Moreover, Kleomenês, when shut up in the acropolis of Athens with Isagoras, had found there various prophecies previously treasured up by the Peisistratids, many of which foreshadowed events highly disastrous to Sparta. And while the recent brilliant manifestations of courage, and repeated victories, on the part of Athens, seemed to indicate that such prophecies might perhaps be realized,—Sparta had to reproach herself, that, from the foolish and mischievous conduct of Kleomenês, she had undone the effect of her previous aid against the Peisistratids, and thus lost that return of gratitude which the Athenians would otherwise have testified. Under such impressions, the Spartan authorities took the remarkable step of sending for Hippias from his residence at Sigeium to Peloponnesus, and of summoning deputies from all their allies to meet him at Sparta.
The convocation thus summoned deserves notice as the commencement of a new era in Grecian politics. The previous expedition of Kleomenês against Attica presents to us the first known example of Spartan headship passing from theory into act: that expedition miscarried because the allies, though willing to follow, would not follow blindly, nor be made the instruments of executing purposes repugnant to their feelings. Sparta had now learned the necessity, in order to insure their hearty concurrence, of letting them know what she contemplated, so as to ascertain at least that she had no decided opposition to apprehend. Here, then, is the third stage in the spontaneous movement of Greece towards a systematic conjunction, however imperfect, of its many autonomous units. First we have Spartan headship suggested in theory, from a concourse of circumstances which attract to her the admiration of all Greece,—power, unrivalled training, undisturbed antiquity, etc.: next, the theory passes into act, yet rude and shapeless: lastly, the act becomes clothed with formalities, and preceded by discussion and determination. The first convocation of the allies at Sparta, for the purpose of having a common object submitted to their consideration, may well be regarded as an important event in Grecian political history. The proceedings at the convocation are no less important, as an indication of the way in which the Greeks of that day felt and acted, and must be borne in mind as a contrast with times hereafter to be described.
Hippias having been presented to the assembled allies, the Spartans expressed their sorrow for having dethroned him,—their resentment and alarm at the new-born insolence of Athens,[306] already tasted by her immediate neighbors, and menacing to every state represented in the convocation,—and their anxiety to restore Hippias, not less as a reparation for past wrong, than as a means, through his rule, of keeping Athens low and dependent. But the proposition, though emanating from Sparta, was listened to by the allies with one common sentiment of repugnance. They had no sympathy for Hippias,—no dislike, still less any fear, of Athens,—and a profound detestation of the character of a despot. The spirit which had animated the armed contingents at Eleusis now reappeared among the deputies at Sparta, and the Corinthians again took the initiative. Their deputy Sosiklês protested against the project in the fiercest and most indignant strain: no language can be stronger than that of the long harangue which Herodotus puts into his mouth, wherein the bitter recollections prevalent at Corinth respecting Kypselus and Periander are poured forth. “Surely, heaven and earth are about to change places,—the fish are coming to dwell on dry land, and mankind going to inhabit the sea,—when you, Spartans, propose to subvert the popular governments, and to set up in the cities that wicked and bloody thing called a Despot.[307] First try what it is, for yourselves at Sparta, and then force it upon others if you can: you have not tasted its calamities as we have, and you take very good care to keep it away from yourselves. We adjure you, by the common gods of Hellas,—plant not despots in her cities: if you persist in a scheme so wicked, know that the Corinthians will not second you.”
This animated appeal was received with a shout of approbation and sympathy on the part of the allies. All with one accord united with Sosiklês in adjuring the Lacedæmonians[308] “not to revolutionize any Hellenic city.” No one listened to Hippias when he replied, warning the Corinthians that the time would come, when they, more than any one else, would dread and abhor the Athenian democracy, and wish the Peisistratidæ back again. He knew well, says Herodotus, that this would be, for he was better acquainted with the prophecies than any man. But no one then believed him, and he was forced to take his departure back to Sigeium: the Spartans not venturing to espouse his cause against the determined sentiment of the allies.[309]
That determined sentiment deserves notice, because it marks the present period of the Hellenic mind: fifty years later it will be found materially altered. Aversion to single-headed rule, and bitter recollection of men like Kypselus and Periander, are now the chords which thrill in an assembly of Grecian deputies: the idea of a revolution, implying thereby a great and comprehensive change, of which the party using the word disapproves, consists in substituting a permanent One in place of those periodical magistrates and assemblies which were the common attribute of oligarchy and democracy: the antithesis between these last two is as yet in the background, nor does there prevail either fear of Athens or hatred of the Athenian democracy. But when we turn to the period immediately before the Peloponnesian war, we find the order of precedence between these two sentiments reversed. The anti-monarchical feeling has not perished, but has been overlaid by other and more recent political antipathies,—the antithesis between democracy and oligarchy having become, not indeed the only sentiment, but the uppermost sentiment, in the minds of Grecian politicians generally, and the soul of active party-movement. Moreover, a hatred of the most deadly character has grown up against Athens and her democracy, especially in the grandsons of those very Corinthians who now stand forward as her sympathizing friends. The remarkable change of feeling here mentioned is nowhere so strikingly exhibited as when we contrast the address of the Corinthian Sosiklês, just narrated, with the speech of the Corinthian envoys at Sparta, immediately antecedent to the Peloponnesian war, as given to us in Thucydidês.[310] It will hereafter be fully explained by the intermediate events, by the growth of Athenian power, and by the still more miraculous development of Athenian energy.
Such development, the fruit of the fresh-planted democracy as well as the seed for its sustentation and aggrandizement, continued progressive during the whole period just adverted to. But the first unexpected burst of it, under the Kleisthenean constitution, and after the expulsion of Hippias, is described by Herodotus in terms too emphatic to be omitted. After narrating the successive victories of the Athenians over both Bœotians and Chalkidians, that historian proceeds: “Thus did the Athenians grow in strength. And we may find proof, not merely in this instance but everywhere else, how valuable a thing freedom is: since even the Athenians, while under a despot, were not superior in war to any of their surrounding neighbors, but, so soon as they got rid of their despots, became by far the first of all. These things show that while kept down by one man, they were slack and timid, like men working for a master; but when they were liberated, every single man became eager in exertions for his own benefit.” The same comparison reappears a short time afterwards, where he tells us, that “the Athenians when free, felt themselves a match for Sparta; but while kept down by any man under a despotism, were feeble and apt for submission.”[311]
Stronger expressions cannot be found to depict the rapid improvement wrought in the Athenian people by their new democracy. Of course this did not arise merely from suspension of previous cruelties, or better laws, or better administration. These, indeed, were essential conditions, but the active transforming cause here was, the principle and system of which such amendments formed the detail: the grand and new idea of the sovereign People, composed of free and equal citizens,—or liberty and equality, to use words which so profoundly moved the French nation half a century ago. It was this comprehensive political idea which acted with electric effect upon the Athenians, creating within them a host of sentiments, motives, sympathies, and capacities, to which they had before been strangers. Democracy in Grecian antiquity possessed the privilege, not only of kindling an earnest and unanimous attachment to the constitution in the bosoms of the citizens, but also of creating an energy of public and private action, such as could never be obtained under an oligarchy, where the utmost that could be hoped for was a passive acquiescence and obedience. Mr. Burke has remarked that the mass of the people are generally very indifferent about theories of government; but such indifference—although improvements in the practical working of all governments tend to foster it—is hardly to be expected among any people who exhibit decided mental activity and spirit on other matters; and the reverse was unquestionably true, in the year 500 B. C., among the communities of ancient Greece. Theories of government were there anything but a dead letter: they were connected with emotions of the strongest as well as of the most opposite character. The theory of a permanent ruling One, for example, was universally odious: that of a ruling Few, though acquiesced in, was never positively attractive, unless either where it was associated with the maintenance of peculiar education and habits, as at Sparta, or where it presented itself as the only antithesis to democracy, the latter having by peculiar circumstances become an object of terror. But the theory of democracy was preëminently seductive; creating in the mass of the citizens an intense positive attachment, and disposing them to voluntary action and suffering on its behalf, such as no coercion on the part of other governments could extort. Herodotus,[312] in his comparison of the three sorts of government, puts in the front rank of the advantages of democracy, “its most splendid name and promise,”—its power of enlisting the hearts of the citizens in support of their constitution, and of providing for all a common bond of union and fraternity. This is what even democracy did not always do: but it was what no other government in Greece could do: a reason alone sufficient to stamp it as the best government, and presenting the greatest chance of beneficent results, for a Grecian community. Among the Athenian citizens, certainly, it produced a strength and unanimity of positive political sentiment, such as has rarely been seen in the history of mankind, which excites our surprise and admiration the more when we compare it with the apathy which had preceded,—and which is even implied as the natural state of the public mind in Solon’s famous proclamation against neutrality in a sedition.[313] Because democracy happens to be unpalatable to most modern readers, they have been accustomed to look upon the sentiment here described only in its least honorable manifestations,—in the caricatures of Aristophanês, or in the empty common-places of rhetorical declaimers. But it is not in this way that the force, the earnestness, or the binding value, of democratical sentiment at Athens is to be measured. We must listen to it as it comes from the lips of Periklês,[314] while he is strenuously enforcing upon the people those active duties for which it both implanted the stimulus and supplied the courage; or from the oligarchical Nikias in the harbor of Syracuse, when he is endeavoring to revive the courage of his despairing troops for one last death-struggle, and when he appeals to their democratical patriotism as to the only flame yet alive and burning even in that moment of agony.[315] From the time of Kleisthenês downward, the creation of this new mighty impulse makes an entire revolution in the Athenian character. And if the change still stood out in so prominent a manner before the eyes of Herodotus, much more must it have been felt by the contemporaries among whom it occurred.
The attachment of an Athenian citizen to his democratical constitution comprised two distinct veins of sentiment: first, his rights, protection, and advantages derived from it,—next, his obligations of exertion and sacrifice towards it and with reference to it. Neither of these two veins of sentiment was ever wholly absent; but according as the one or the other was present at different times in varying proportions, the patriotism of the citizen was a very different feeling. That which Herodotus remarks is, the extraordinary efforts of heart and hand which the Athenians suddenly displayed,—the efficacy of the active sentiment throughout the bulk of the citizens; and we shall observe even more memorable evidences of the same phenomenon in tracing down the history from Kleisthenês to the end of the Peloponnesian war: we shall trace a series of events and motives eminently calculated to stimulate that self-imposed labor and discipline which the early democracy had first called forth. But when we advance farther down, from the restoration of the democracy after the Thirty Tyrants to the time of Demosthenês,—I venture upon this brief anticipation, in the conviction that one period of Grecian history can only be thoroughly understood by contrasting it with another,—we shall find a sensible change in Athenian patriotism. The active sentiment of obligation is comparatively inoperative,—the citizen, it is true, has a keen sense of the value of the democracy as protecting him and insuring to him valuable rights, and he is, moreover, willing to perform his ordinary sphere of legal duties towards it; but he looks upon it as a thing established, and capable of maintaining itself in a due measure of foreign ascendency, without any such personal efforts as those which his forefathers cheerfully imposed upon themselves. The orations of Demosthenês contain melancholy proofs of such altered tone of patriotism,—of that languor, paralysis, and waiting for others to act, which preceded the catastrophe of Chæroneia, notwithstanding an unabated attachment to the democracy as a source of protection and good government.[316] That same preternatural activity which the allies of Sparta, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, both denounced and admired in the Athenians, is noted by the orator as now belonging to their enemy Philip.
Such variations in the scale of national energy pervade history, modern as well as ancient, but in regard to Grecian history, especially, they can never be overlooked. For a certain measure, not only of positive political attachment, but also of active self-devotion, military readiness, and personal effort, was the indispensable condition of maintaining Hellenic autonomy, either in Athens or elsewhere; and became so more than ever when the Macedonians were once organized under an enterprising and semi-Hellenized prince. The democracy was the first creative cause of that astonishing personal and many-sided energy which marked the Athenian character, for a century downward from Kleisthenês. That the same ultra-Hellenic activity did not longer continue, is referable to other causes, which will be hereafter in part explained. No system of government, even supposing it to be very much better and more faultless than the Athenian democracy, can ever pretend to accomplish its legitimate end apart from the personal character of the people, or to supersede the necessity of individual virtue and vigor. During the half-century immediately preceding the battle of Chæroneia, the Athenians had lost that remarkable energy which distinguished them during the first century of their democracy, and had fallen much more nearly to a level with the other Greeks, in common with whom they were obliged to yield to the pressure of a foreign enemy. I here briefly notice their last period of languor, in contrast with the first burst of democratical fervor under Kleisthenês, now opening,—a feeling which will be found, as we proceed, to continue for a longer period than could have been reasonably anticipated, but which was too high-strung to become a perpetual and inherent attribute of any community.
CHAPTER XXXII.
RISE OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. — CYRUS.
In the preceding chapter, I have followed the history of Central Greece very nearly down to the point at which the history of the Asiatic Greeks becomes blended with it, and after which the two streams begin to flow to a great degree in the same channel. I now revert to the affairs of the Asiatic Greeks, and of the Asiatic kings as connected with them, at the point in which they were left in my seventeenth chapter.
The concluding facts recounted in that chapter were of sad and serious moment to the Hellenic world. The Ionic and Æolic Greeks on the Asiatic coast had been conquered and made tributary by the Lydian king Crœsus: “down to that time (says Herodotus) all Greeks had been free.” Their conqueror Crœsus, who ascended the throne in 560 B. C., appeared to be at the summit of human prosperity and power in his unassailable capital, and with his countless treasures at Sardis. His dominions comprised nearly the whole of Asia Minor, as far as the river Halys to the east; on the other side of that river began the Median monarchy under his brother-in-law Astyagês, extending eastward to some boundary which we cannot define, but comprising in a south-eastern direction Persis proper, or Farsistan, and separated from the Kissians and Assyrians on the west by the line of Mount Zagros—the present boundary-line between Persia and Turkey. Babylonia, with its wondrous city, between the Euphrates and the Tigris, was occupied by the Assyrians, or Chaldæans, under their king Labynêtus: a territory populous and fertile, partly by nature, partly by prodigies of labor, to a degree which makes us mistrust even an honest eye-witness who describes it afterwards in its decline,—but which was then in its most flourishing condition. The Chaldæan dominion under Labynêtus reached to the borders of Egypt, including, as dependent territories, both Judæa and Phenicia. In Egypt reigned the native king Amasis, powerful and affluent, sustained in his throne by a large body of Grecian mercenaries, and himself favorably disposed to Grecian commerce and settlement. Both with Labynêtus and with Amasis, Crœsus was on terms of alliance; and as Astyagês was his brother-in-law, the four kings might well be deemed out of the reach of calamity. Yet within the space of thirty years or a little more, the whole of their territories had become embodied in one vast empire, under the son of an adventurer as yet not known even by name.
The rise and fall of Oriental dynasties has been in all times distinguished by the same general features. A brave and adventurous prince, at the head of a population at once poor, warlike, and greedy, acquires dominion,—while his successors, abandoning themselves to sensuality and sloth, probably also to oppressive and irascible dispositions, become in process of time victims to those same qualities in a stranger which had enabled their own father to seize the throne. Cyrus, the great founder of the Persian empire, first the subject and afterwards the dethroner of the Median Astyagês, corresponds to this general description, as far at least as we can pretend to know his history. For in truth, even the conquests of Cyrus, after he became ruler of Media, are very imperfectly known, whilst the facts which preceded his rise up to that sovereignty cannot be said to be known at all: we have to choose between different accounts at variance with each other, and of which the most complete and detailed is stamped with all the character of romance. The Cyropædia of Xenophon is memorable and interesting, considered with reference to the Greek mind, and as a philosophical novel:[317] that it should have been quoted so largely as authority on matters of history, is only one proof among many how easily authors have been satisfied as to the essentials of historical evidence. The narrative given by Herodotus of the relations between Cyrus and Astyagês, agreeing with Xenophon in little more than the fact that it makes Cyrus son of Kambysês and Mandanê, and grandson of Astyagês, goes even beyond the story of Romulus and Remus in respect to tragical incident and contrast. Astyagês, alarmed by a dream, condemns the new-born infant of his daughter Mandanê to be exposed: Harpagus, to whom the order is given, delivers the child to one of the royal herdsmen, who exposes it in the mountains, where it is miraculously suckled by a bitch.[318] Thus preserved, and afterwards brought up as the herdsman’s child, Cyrus manifests great superiority both physical and mental, is chosen king in play by the boys of the village, and in this capacity severely chastises the son of one of the courtiers; for which offence he is carried before Astyagês, who recognizes him for his grandson, but is assured by the Magi that his dream is out, and that he has no farther danger to apprehend from the boy,—and therefore permits him to live. With Harpagus, however, Astyagês is extremely incensed, for not having executed his orders: he causes the son of Harpagus to be slain, and served up to be eaten by his unconscious father at a regal banquet. The father, apprized afterwards of the fact, dissembles his feelings, but conceives a deadly vengeance against Astyagês for this Thyestean meal. He persuades Cyrus, who has been sent back to his father and mother in Persia, to head a revolt of the Persians against the Medes; whilst Astyagês—to fill up the Grecian conception of madness as a precursor to ruin—sends an army against the revolters, commanded by Harpagus himself. Of course the army is defeated,—Astyagês, after a vain resistance, is dethroned,—Cyrus becomes king in his place,—and Harpagus repays the outrage which he has undergone by the bitterest insults.
Such are the heads of a beautiful narrative which is given at some length in Herodotus. It will probably appear to the reader sufficiently romantic, though the historian intimates that he had heard three other narratives different from it, and that all were more full of marvels, as well as in wider circulation, than his own, which he had borrowed from some unusually sober-minded Persian informants.[319] In what points the other three stories departed from it, we do not hear.
To the historian of Halikarnassus, we have to oppose the physician of the neighboring town Knidus,—Ktêsias, who contradicted Herodotus, not without strong terms of censure, on many points, and especially upon that which is the very foundation of the early narrative respecting Cyrus; for he affirmed that Cyrus was noway related to Astyagês.[320] However indignant we may be with Ktêsias, for the disparaging epithets which he presumed to apply to an historian whose work is to us inestimable,—we must nevertheless admit that as surgeon, in actual attendance on king Artaxerxês Mnêmon, and healer of the wound inflicted on that prince at Kunaxa by his brother Cyrus the younger,[321] he had better opportunities even than Herodotus of conversing with sober-minded Persians; and that the discrepancies between the two statements are to be taken as a proof of the prevalence of discordant, yet equally accredited, stories. Herodotus himself was in fact compelled to choose one out of four. So rare and late a plant is historical authenticity.
That Cyrus was the first Persian conqueror, and that the space which he overran covered no less than fifty degrees of longitude, from the coast of Asia Minor to the Oxus and the Indus, are facts quite indisputable; but of the steps by which this was achieved, we know very little. The native Persians, whom he conducted to an empire so immense, were an aggregate of seven agricultural and four nomadic tribes,—all of them rude, hardy, and brave,[322]—dwelling in a mountainous region, clothed in skins, ignorant of wine or fruit, or any of the commonest luxuries of life, and despising the very idea of purchase or sale. Their tribes were very unequal in point of dignity, probably also in respect to numbers and powers, among one another: first in estimation among them stood the Pasargadæ; and the first phratry, or clan, among the Pasargadæ were the Achæmenidæ, to whom Cyrus himself belonged. Whether his relationship to the Median king whom he dethroned was a matter of fact, or a politic fiction, we cannot well determine. But Xenophon, in noticing the spacious deserted cities, Larissa and Mespila,[323] which he saw in his march with the Ten Thousand Greeks on the eastern side of the Tigris, gives us to understand that the conquest of Media by the Persians was reported to him as having been an obstinate and protracted struggle. However this may be, the preponderance of the Persians was at last complete: though the Medes always continued to be the second nation in the empire, after the Persians, properly so called; and by early Greek writers the great enemy in the East is often called “the Mede,[324]” as well as “the Persian.” Ekbatana always continued to be one of the capital cities, and the usual summer residence, of the kings of Persia; Susa on the Choaspês, on the Kissian plain farther southward, and east of the Tigris, being their winter abode.
The vast space of country comprised between the Indus on the east, the Oxus and Caspian sea to the north, the Persian gulf and Indian ocean to the south, and the line of Mount Zagros to the west, appears to have been occupied in these times by a great variety of different tribes and people, but all or most of them belonging to the religion of Zoroaster, and speaking dialects of the Zend language.[325] It was known amongst its inhabitants by the common name of Iran, or Aria: it is, in its central parts at least, a high, cold plateau, totally destitute of wood and scantily supplied with water; much of it, indeed, is a salt and sandy desert, unsusceptible of culture. Parts of it are eminently fertile, where water can be procured and irrigation applied; and scattered masses of tolerably dense population thus grew up. But continuity of cultivation is not practicable, and in ancient times, as at present, a large proportion of the population of Iran seems to have consisted of wandering or nomadic tribes, with their tents and cattle. The rich pastures, and the freshness of the summer climate, in the region of mountain and valley near Ekbatana, are extolled by modern travellers, just as they attracted the Great King in ancient times, during the hot months. The more southerly province called Persis proper (Farsistan) consists also in part of mountain land interspersed with valley and plain, abundantly watered, and ample in pasture, sloping gradually down to low grounds on the sea-coast which are hot and dry. The care bestowed, both by Medes and Persians, on the breeding of their horses, was remarkable.[326] There were doubtless material differences between different parts of the population of this vast plateau of Iran. Yet it seems that, along with their common language and religion, they had also something of a common character, which contrasted with the Indian population east of the Indus, the Assyrians west of Mount Zagros, and the Massagetæ and other Nomads of the Caspian and the sea of Aral,—less brutish, restless, and bloodthirsty, than the latter,—more fierce, contemptuous, and extortionate, and less capable of sustained industry, than the two former. There can be little doubt, at the time of which we are now speaking, when the wealth and cultivation of Assyria were at their maximum, that Iran also was far better peopled than ever it has been since European observers have been able to survey it; especially the north-eastern portion, Baktria and Sogdiana: so that the invasions of the nomads from Turkestan and Tartary, which have been so destructive at various intervals since the Mohammedan conquest, were before that period successfully kept back.
The general analogy among the population of Iran probably enabled the Persian conqueror with comparative ease to extend his empire to the east, after the conquest of Ekbatana, and to become the full heir of the Median kings. And if we may believe Ktêsias, even the distant province of Baktria had been before subject to those kings: it at first resisted Cyrus, but finding that he had become son-in-law of Astyagês as well as master of his person, it speedily acknowledged his authority.[327]
According to the representation of Herodotus, the war between Cyrus and Crœsus of Lydia began shortly after the capture of Astyagês, and before the conquest of Baktria.[328] Crœsus was the assailant, wishing to avenge his brother-in-law, to arrest the growth of the Persian conqueror, and to increase his own dominions: his more prudent councillors in vain represented to him that he had little to gain, and much to lose, by war with a nation alike hardy and poor. He is represented, as just at that time recovering from the affliction arising out of the death of his son. To ask advice of the oracle, before he took any final decision, was a step which no pious king would omit; but in the present perilous question, Crœsus did more,—he took a precaution so extreme, that, if his piety had not been placed beyond all doubt by his extraordinary munificence to the temples, he might have drawn upon himself the suspicion of a guilty skepticism.[329] Before he would send to ask advice respecting the project itself, he resolved to test the credit of some of the chief surrounding oracles,—Delphi, Dôdôna, Branchidæ near Milêtus, Amphiaraus at Thebes, Trophônius at Lebadeia, and Ammôn in Libya. His envoys started from Sardis on the same day, and were all directed on the hundredth day afterwards to ask at the respective oracles how Crœsus was at that precise moment employed. This was a severe trial: of the manner in which it was met by four out of the six oracles consulted, we have no information, and it rather appears that their answers were unsatisfactory. But Amphiaraus maintained his credit undiminished, and Apollo at Delphi, more omniscient than Apollo at Branchidæ, solved the question with such unerring precision, as to afford a strong additional argument against persons who might be disposed to scoff at divination. No sooner had the envoys put the question to the Delphian priestess, on the day named, “What is Crœsus now doing?” than she exclaimed, in the accustomed hexameter verse,[330] “I know the number of grains of sand, and the measures of the sea; I understand the dumb, and I hear the man who speaks not. The smell reaches me of a hard-skinned tortoise boiled in a copper with lamb’s flesh,—copper above and copper below.” Crœsus was awestruck on receiving this reply. It described with the utmost detail that which he had been really doing, insomuch that he accounted the Delphian oracle and that of Amphiaraus the only trustworthy oracles on earth,—following up these feelings with a holocaust of the most munificent character, in order to win the favor of the Delphian god. Three thousand cattle were offered up, and upon a vast sacrificial pile were placed the most splendid purple robes and tunics, together with couches and censers of gold and silver: besides which he sent to Delphi itself the richest presents in gold and silver,—ingots, statues, bowls, jugs, etc., the size and weight of which we read with astonishment; the more so as Herodotus himself saw them a century afterwards at Delphi.[331] Nor was Crœsus altogether unmindful of Amphiaraus, whose answer had been creditable, though less triumphant than that of the Pythian priestess. He sent to Amphiaraus a spear and shield of pure gold, which were afterwards seen at Thebes by Herodotus: this large donative may help the reader to conceive the immensity of those which he sent to Delphi.
The envoys who conveyed these gifts were instructed to ask, at the same time, whether Crœsus should undertake an expedition against the Persians,—and, if so, whether he should prevail on any allies to assist him. In regard to the second question, the answer both of Apollo and Amphiaraus was decisive, recommending him to invite the alliance of the most powerful Greeks. In regard to the first and most momentous question, their answer was as remarkable for circumspection as it had been before for detective sagacity: they told Crœsus that, if he invaded the Persians, he would subvert a mighty monarchy. The blindness of Crœsus interpreted this declaration into an unqualified promise of success. He sent farther presents to the oracle, and again inquired whether his kingdom would be durable. “When a mule shall become king of the Medes (replied the priestess), then must thou run away,—be not ashamed.”[332]
More assured than ever by such an answer, Crœsus sent to Sparta, under the kings Anaxandridês and Aristo, to tender presents and solicit their alliance.[333] His propositions were favorably entertained,—the more so, as he had before gratuitously furnished some gold to the Lacedæmonians, for a statue to Apollo. The alliance now formed was altogether general,—no express effort being as yet demanded from them, though it soon came to be. But the incident is to be noted, as marking the first plunge of the leading Grecian state into Asiatic politics; and that too without any of the generous Hellenic sympathy which afterwards induced Athens to send her citizens across the Ægean. Crœsus was the master and tribute-exactor of the Asiatic Greeks, and their contingents seem to have formed part of his army for the expedition now contemplated; which army consisted principally, not of native Lydians, but of foreigners.
The river Halys formed the boundary at this time between the Median and Lydian empires: and Crœsus, marching across that river into the territory of the Syrians or Assyrians of Kappadokia, took the city of Pteria and many of its surrounding dependencies, inflicting damage and destruction upon these distant subjects of Ekbatana. Cyrus lost no time in bringing an army to their defence considerably larger than that of Crœsus, and at the same time tried, though unsuccessfully, to prevail on the Ionians to revolt from him. A bloody battle took place between the two armies, but with indecisive result: and Crœsus, seeing that he could not hope to accomplish more with his forces as they stood, thought it wise to return to his capital, in order to collect a larger army for the next campaign. Immediately on reaching Sardis, he despatched envoys to Labynêtus king of Babylon; to Amasis king of Egypt; to the Lacedæmonians, and to other allies; calling upon all of them to send auxiliaries to Sardis during the course of the fifth coming month. In the mean time, he dismissed all the foreign troops who had followed him into Kappadokia.[334]
Had these allies appeared, the war might perhaps have been prosecuted with success; and on the part of the Lacedæmonians at least, there was no tardiness; for their ships were ready and their troops almost on board, when the unexpected news reached them that Crœsus was already ruined.[335] Cyrus had foreseen and forestalled the defensive plan of his enemy. He pushed on with his army to Sardis without delay, compelling the Lydian prince to give battle with his own unassisted subjects. The open and spacious plain before that town was highly favorable to the Lydian cavalry, which at that time, Herodotus tells us, was superior to the Persian. But Cyrus devised a stratagem whereby this cavalry was rendered unavailable,—placing in front of his line the baggage camels, which the Lydian horses could not endure either to smell or to behold.[336] The horsemen of Crœsus were thus obliged to dismount; nevertheless, they fought bravely on foot, and were not driven into the town till after a sanguinary combat.
Though confined within the walls of his capital, Crœsus had still good reason for hoping to hold out until the arrival of his allies, to whom he sent pressing envoys of acceleration: for Sardis was considered impregnable,—one assault had already been repulsed, and the Persians would have been reduced to the slow process of blockade. But on the fourteenth day of the siege, accident did for the besiegers that which they could not have accomplished either by skill or force. Sardis was situated on an outlying peak of the northern side of Tmôlus; it was well-fortified everywhere except towards the mountain; and on that side, the rock, was so precipitous and inaccessible, that fortifications were thought unnecessary, nor did the inhabitants believe assault to be possible. But Hyrœades, a Persian soldier, having accidentally seen one of the garrison descending this precipitous rock to pick up his helmet, which had rolled down, watched his opportunity, tried to climb up, and found it not impracticable. Others followed his example, the strong-hold was thus seized first, and the whole city was speedily taken by storm.[337]
Cyrus had given especial orders to spare the life of Crœsus, who was accordingly made prisoner. But preparations were made for a solemn and terrible spectacle. The captive king was destined to be burnt in chains, together with fourteen Lydian youths, on a vast pile of wood: and we are even told that the pile was already kindled and the victim beyond the reach of human aid, when Apollo sent a miraculous rain to preserve him. As to the general fact of supernatural interposition, in one way or another, Herodotus and Ktêsias both agree, though they describe differently the particular miracles wrought.[338] It is certain that Crœsus, after some time, was released and well treated by his conqueror, and lived to become the confidential adviser of the latter as well as of his son Kambysês:[339] Ktêsias also acquaints us that a considerable town and territory near Ekbatana, called Barênê, was assigned to him, according to a practice which we shall find not unfrequent with the Persian kings.
The prudent counsel and remarks as to the relations between Persians and Lydians, whereby Crœsus is said by Herodotus to have first earned this favorable treatment, are hardly worth repeating; but the indignant remonstrance sent by Crœsus to the Delphian god is too characteristic to be passed over. He obtained permission from Cyrus to lay upon the holy pavement of the Delphian temple the chains with which he had at first been bound. The Lydian envoys were instructed, after exhibiting to the god these humiliating memorials, to ask whether it was his custom to deceive his benefactors, and whether he was not ashamed to have encouraged the king of Lydia in an enterprise so disastrous? The god, condescending to justify himself by the lips of the priestess, replied: “Not even a god can escape his destiny. Crœsus has suffered for the sin of his fifth ancestor (Gygês), who, conspiring with a woman, slew his master and wrongfully seized the sceptre. Apollo employed all his influence with the Mœræ (Fates) to obtain that this sin might be expiated by the children of Crœsus, and not by Crœsus himself; but the Mœræ would grant nothing more than a postponement of the judgment for three years. Let Crœsus know that Apollo has thus procured for him a reign three years longer than his original destiny,[340] after having tried in vain to rescue him altogether. Moreover, he sent that rain which at the critical moment extinguished the burning pile. Nor has Crœsus any right to complain of the prophecy by which he was encouraged to enter on the war; for when the god told him, that he would subvert a great empire, it was his duty to have again inquired which empire the god meant; and if he neither understood the meaning, nor chose to ask for information, he has himself to blame for the result. Besides, Crœsus neglected the warning given to him, about the acquisition of the Median kingdom by a mule: Cyrus was that mule,—son of a Median mother of royal breed, by a Persian father, at once of different race and of lower position.”
This triumphant justification extorted even from Crœsus himself a full confession, that the sin lay with him, and not with the god.[341] It certainly illustrates, in a remarkable manner, the theological ideas of the time; and it shows us how much, in the mind of Herodotus, the facts of the centuries preceding his own, unrecorded as they were by any contemporary authority, tended to cast themselves into a sort of religious drama; the threads of the historical web being in part put together, in part originally spun, for the purpose of setting forth the religious sentiment and doctrine woven in as a pattern. The Pythian priestess predicts to Gygês that the crime which he had committed in assassinating his master would be expiated by his fifth descendant, though, as Herodotus tells us, no one took any notice of this prophecy until it was at last fulfilled:[342] we see thus that the history of the first Mermnad king is made up after the catastrophe of the last. There was something in the main facts of the history of Crœsus profoundly striking to the Greek mind: a king at the summit of wealth and power,—pious in the extreme, and munificent towards the gods,—the first destroyer of Hellenic liberty in Asia,—then precipitated, at once and on a sudden, into the abyss of ruin. The sin of the first parent helped much towards the solution of this perplexing problem, as well as to exalt the credit of the oracle, when made to assume the shape of an unnoticed prophecy. In the affecting story (discussed in a former chapter[343]) of Solon and Crœsus, the Lydian king is punished with an acute domestic affliction, because he thought himself the happiest of mankind,—the gods not suffering anyone to be arrogant except themselves;[344] and the warning of Solon is made to recur to Crœsus after he has become the prisoner of Cyrus, in the narrative of Herodotus. To the same vein of thought belongs the story, just recounted, of the relations of Crœsus with the Delphian oracle. An account is provided, satisfactory to the religious feelings of the Greeks, how and why he was ruined,—but nothing less than the overruling and omnipotent Mœræ could be invoked to explain so stupendous a result.
It is rarely that these supreme goddesses, or hyper-goddesses—since the gods themselves must submit to them—are brought into such distinct light and action. Usually, they are kept in the dark, or are left to be understood as the unseen stumbling-block in cases of extreme incomprehensibility; and it is difficult clearly to determine (as in the case of some complicated political constitutions) where the Greeks conceived sovereign power to reside, in respect to the government of the world. But here the sovereignty of the Mœræ, and the subordinate agency of the gods, are unequivocally set forth.[345] Yet the gods are still extremely powerful, because the Mœræ comply with their requests up to a certain point, not thinking it proper to be wholly inexorable; but their compliance is carried no farther than they themselves choose. Nor would they, even in deference to Apollo,[346] alter the original sentence of punishment for the sin of Gygês in the person of his fifth descendant,—a sentence, moreover, which Apollo himself had formally prophesied shortly after the sin was committed; so that, if the Mœræ had listened to his intercession on behalf of Crœsus, his own prophetic credit would have been endangered. Their unalterable resolution has predetermined the ruin of Crœsus, and the grandeur of the event is manifested by the circumstance, that even Apollo himself cannot prevail upon them to alter it, or to grant more than a three years’ respite. The religious element must here be viewed as giving the form—the historical element as giving the matter only, and not the whole matter—of the story; and these two elements will be found conjoined more or less throughout most of the history of Herodotus, though, as we descend to later times, we shall find the historical element in constantly increasing proportion. His conception of history is extremely different from that of Thucydidês, who lays down to himself the true scheme and purpose of the historian, common to him with the philosopher,—to recount and interpret the past, as a rational aid towards the prevision of the future.[347]
The destruction of the Lydian monarchy, and the establishment of the Persians at Sardis—an event pregnant with consequences to Hellas generally—took place in 546 B. C.[348] Sorely did the Ionic Greeks now repent that they had rejected the propositions made to them by Cyrus for revolting from Crœsus,—though at the time when these propositions were made, it would have been highly imprudent to listen to them, since the Lydian power might reasonably be looked upon as the stronger. As soon as Sardis had fallen, they sent envoys to the conqueror, entreating that they might be enrolled as his tributaries, on the footing which they had occupied under Crœsus. The reply was a stern and angry refusal, with the exception of the Milesians, to whom the terms which they asked were granted:[349] why this favorable exception was extended to them, we do not know. The other continental Ionians and Æolians (exclusive of Milêtus, and exclusive also of the insular cities which the Persians had no means of attacking), seized with alarm, began to put themselves in a condition of defence: it seems that the Lydian king had caused their fortifications to be wholly or partially dismantled, for we are told that they now began to erect walls; and the Phôkæans especially devoted to that purpose a present which they had received from the Iberian Arganthônius, king of Tartêssus. Besides thus strengthening their own cities, they thought it advisable to send a joint embassy entreating aid from Sparta; they doubtless were not unapprized that the Spartans had actually equipped an army for the support of Crœsus. Their deputies went to Sparta, where the Phôkæan Pythermus, appointed by the rest to be spokesman, clothing himself in a purple robe,[350] in order to attract the largest audience possible, set forth their pressing need of succor against the impending danger. The Lacedæmonians refused the prayer; nevertheless, they despatched to Phôkæa some commissioners to investigate the state of affairs,—who perhaps, persuaded by the Phôkæans, sent Lakrinês, one of their number, to the conqueror at Sardis, to warn him that he should not lay hands on any city of Hellas,—for the Lacedæmonians would not permit it. “Who are these Lacedæmonians? (inquired Cyrus from some Greeks who stood near him)—how many are there of them, that they venture to send me such a notice?” Having received the answer, wherein it was stated that the Lacedæmonians had a city and a regular market at Sparta, he exclaimed: “I have never yet been afraid of men like these, who have a set place in the middle of their city, where they meet to cheat one another and forswear themselves. If I live, they shall have troubles of their own to talk about, apart from the Ionians.” To buy or sell, appeared to the Persians a contemptible practice; for they carried out consistently, one step farther, the principle upon which even many able Greeks condemned the lending of money on interest; and the speech of Cyrus was intended as a covert reproach of Grecian habits generally.[351]
This blank menace of Lakrinês, an insulting provocation to the enemy rather than a real support to the distressed, was the only benefit which the Ionic Greeks derived from Sparta. They were left to defend themselves as best they could against the conqueror; who presently, however, quitted Sardis to prosecute in person his conquests in the East, leaving the Persian Tabalus with a garrison in the citadel, but consigning both the large treasure captured, and the authority over the Lydian population, to the Lydian Paktyas. As he carried away Crœsus along with him, he probably considered himself sure of the fidelity of those Lydians whom the deposed monarch recommended. But he had not yet arrived at his own capital, when he received the intelligence that Paktyas had revolted, arming the Lydian population, and employing the treasure in his charge to hire fresh troops. On hearing this news, Cyrus addressed himself to Crœsus, according to Herodotus, in terms of much wrath against the Lydians, and even intimated that he should be compelled to sell them all as slaves. Upon which Crœsus, full of alarm for his people, contended strenuously that Paktyas alone was in fault, and deserving of punishment; but he at the same time advised Cyrus to disarm the Lydian population, and to enforce upon them effeminate attire, together with habits of playing on the harp and shopkeeping. “By this process (he said) you will soon see them become women instead of men.”[352] This suggestion is said to have been accepted by Cyrus, and executed by his general Mazarês. The conversation here reported, and the deliberate plan for enervating the Lydian character supposed to be pursued by Cyrus, is evidently an hypothesis imagined by some of the contemporaries or predecessors of Herodotus,—to explain the contrast between the Lydians whom they saw before them, after two or three generations of slavery, and the old irresistible horsemen of whom they heard in fame, at the time when Crœsus was lord from the Halys to the Ægean sea.
To return to Paktyas,—he had commenced his revolt, come down to the sea-coast, and employed the treasures of Sardis in levying a Grecian mercenary force, with which he invested the place and blocked up the governor Tabalus. But he manifested no courage worthy of so dangerous an enterprise; for no sooner had he heard that the Median general Mazarês was approaching at the head of an army dispatched by Cyrus against him, than he disbanded his force and fled to Kymê for protection as a suppliant. Presently, arrived a menacing summons from Mazarês, demanding that he should be given up forthwith, which plunged the Kymæans into profound dismay; for the idea of giving up a suppliant to destruction was shocking to Grecian sentiment. They sent to solicit advice from the holy temple of Apollo, at Branchidæ near Milêtus; and the reply directed, that Paktyas should be surrendered. Nevertheless, so ignominious did such a surrender appear, that Aristodikus and some other Kymæan citizens denounced the messengers as liars, and required that a more trustworthy deputation should be sent to consult the god. Aristodikus himself, forming one of the second body, stated the perplexity to the oracle, and received a repetition of the same answer; whereupon he proceeded to rob the birds’-nests which existed in abundance in and about the temple. A voice from the inner oracular chamber speedily arrested him, exclaiming: “Most impious of men, how darest thou to do such things? Wilt thou snatch my suppliants from the temple itself?” Unabashed by the rebuke, Aristodikus replied: “Master, thus dost thou help suppliants thyself: and dost thou command the Kymæans to give up a suppliant?” “Yes, I do command it[353] (rejoined the god forthwith), in order that the crime may bring destruction upon you the sooner, and that you may not in future come to consult the oracle upon the surrender of suppliants.”
The ingenuity of Aristodikus completely nullified the oracular response, and left the Kymæans in their original perplexity. Not choosing to surrender Paktyas, nor daring to protect him against a besieging army, they sent him away to Mitylênê, whither the envoys of Mazarês followed and demanded him; offering a reward so considerable, that the Kymæans became fearful of trusting them, and again conveyed away the suppliant to Chios, where he took refuge in the temple of Athênê Poliuchus. But here again the pursuers followed, and the Chians were persuaded to drag him from the temple and surrender him, on consideration of receiving the territory of Atarneus (a district on the continent over against the island of Lesbos) as purchase-money. Paktyas was thus seized and sent prisoner to Cyrus, who had given the most express orders for this capture: hence the unusual intensity of the pursuit. But it appears that the territory of Atarneus was considered as having been ignominiously acquired by the Chians; none even of their own citizens would employ any article of its produce for holy or sacrificial purposes.[354]
Mazarês next proceeded to the attack and conquest of the Greeks on the coast; an enterprise which, since he soon died of illness, was completed by his successor Harpagus. The towns assailed successively made a gallant but ineffectual resistance: the Persian general by his numbers drove the defenders within their walls, against which he piled up mounds of earth, so as either to carry the place by storm or to compel surrender. All of them were reduced, one after the other: with all, the terms of subjection were doubtless harder than those which had been imposed upon them by Crœsus, because Cyrus had already refused to grant these terms to them, with the single exception of Milêtus, and because they had since given additional offence by aiding the revolt of Paktyas. The inhabitants of Priênê were sold into slavery: they were the first assailed by Mazarês, and had perhaps been especially forward in the attack made by Paktyas on Sardis.[355]
Among these unfortunate towns, thus changing their master and passing out into a harsher subjection, two deserve especial notice,—Teôs and Phôkæa. The citizens of the former, so soon as the mound around their walls had rendered farther resistance impossible, embarked and emigrated, some to Thrace, where they founded Abdêra,—others to the Cimmerian Bosphorus, where they planted Phanagoria; a portion of them, however, must have remained to take the chances of subjection, since the town appears in after-times still peopled and still Hellenic.[356]
The fate of Phôkæa, similar in the main, is given to us with more striking circumstances of detail, and becomes the more interesting, since the enterprising mariners who inhabited it had been the torch-bearers of Grecian geographical discovery in the west. I have already described their adventurous exploring voyages of former days into the interior of the Adriatic, and along the whole northern and western coasts of the Mediterranean as far as Tartêssus (the region around and adjoining to Cadiz),—together with the favorable reception given to them by old Arganthônius, king of the country, who invited them to emigrate in a body to his kingdom, offering them the choice of any site which they might desire. His invitation was declined, though probably the Phôkæans may have subsequently regretted the refusal; and he then manifested his good-will towards them by a large present to defray the expense of constructing fortifications round their town.[357] The walls, erected in part, by this aid, were both extensive and well built; yet they could not hinder Harpagus from raising his mounds of earth up against them, while he was politic enough at the same time to tempt them with offers of a moderate capitulation; requiring only that they should breach their walls in one place by pulling down one of the towers, and consecrate one building in the interior of the town as a token of subjection. To accept these terms, was to submit themselves to the discretion of the besieger, for there could be no security that they would be observed; and the Phôkæans, while they asked for one day to deliberate upon their reply, entreated that, during that day, Harpagus should withdraw his troops altogether from the walls. With this demand the latter complied, intimating, at the same time, that he saw clearly through the meaning of it. The Phôkæans had determined that the inevitable servitude impending over their town should not be shared by its inhabitants, and they employed their day of grace in preparation for collective exile, putting on ship-board their wives and children as well as their furniture and the movable decorations of their temples. They then set sail for Chios, leaving to the conqueror a deserted town for the occupation of a Persian garrison.[358]
It appears that the fugitives were not very kindly received at Chios; at least, when they made a proposition for purchasing from the Chians the neighboring islands of Œnussæ as a permanent abode, the latter were induced to refuse by apprehensions of commercial rivalry. It was necessary to look farther for a settlement: and Arganthônius their protector, being now dead, Tartêssus was no longer inviting. Twenty years before, however, the colony of Alalia in the island of Corsica had been founded from Phôkæa by the direction of the oracle, and thither the general body of Phôkæans now resolved to repair. Having prepared their ships for this distant voyage, they first sailed back to Phôkæa, surprised the Persian garrison whom Harpagus had left in the town, and slew them: they then sunk in the harbor a great lump of iron, and bound themselves by a solemn and unanimous oath never again to see Phôkæa until that iron should come up to the surface. Nevertheless, in spite of the oath, the voyage of exile had been scarcely begun when more than half of them repented of having so bound themselves,—and became homesick.[359] They broke their vow and returned to Phôkæa. But as Herodotus does not mention any divine judgment as having been consequent on the perjury, we may, perhaps, suspect that some gray-headed citizen, to whom transportation to Corsica might be little less than a sentence of death, both persuaded himself, and certified to his companions, that he had seen the sunken lump of iron raised up and floating for a while buoyant upon the waves. Harpagus must have been induced to pardon the previous slaughter of his Persian garrison, or at least to believe that it had been done by those Phôkæans who still persisted in exile. He wanted tribute-paying subjects, not an empty military post, and the repentant home-seekers were allowed to number themselves among the slaves of the Great King.
Meanwhile the smaller but more resolute half of the Phôkæans executed their voyage to Alalia in Corsica, with their wives and children, in sixty pentekontêrs, or armed ships, and established themselves along with the previous settlers. They remained there for five years,[360] during which time their indiscriminate piracies had become so intolerable (even at that time, piracy committed against a foreign vessel seems to have been both frequent and practised without much disrepute), that both the Tyrrhenian seaports along the Mediterranean coast of Italy, and the Carthaginians, united to put them down. There subsisted particular treaties between these two, for the regulation of the commercial intercourse between Africa and Italy, of which the ancient treaty preserved by Polybius between Rome and Carthage (made in 509 B. C.) may be considered as a specimen.[361] Sixty Carthaginian and as many Tuscan ships attacked the sixty Phôkæan ships near Alalia, and destroyed forty of them, yet not without such severe loss to themselves that the victory was said to be on the side of the latter; who, however, in spite of this Kadmeian victory (so a battle was denominated in which the victors lost more than the vanquished), were compelled to carry back their remaining twenty vessels to Alalia, and to retire with their wives and families, in so far as room could be found for them, to Rhegium. At last, these unhappy exiles found a permanent home by establishing the new settlement of Elea, or Velia, in the gulf of Policastro, on the Italian coast (then called Œnôtrian) southward from Poseidônia, or Pæstum. It is probable that they were here joined by other exiles from Ionia, in particular by the Kolophonian philosopher and poet Xenophanês, from whom what was afterwards called the Eleatic school of philosophy, distinguished both for bold consistency and dialectic acuteness, took its rise. The Phôkæan captives, taken prisoners in the naval combat by Tyrrhenians and Carthaginians, were stoned to death; but a divine judgment overtook the Tyrrhenian town of Agylla, in consequence of this cruelty; and even in the time of Herodotus, a century afterwards, the Agyllæans were still expiating the sin by a periodical solemnity and agon, pursuant to the penalty which the Delphian oracle had imposed upon them.[362]
Such was the fate of the Phôkæan exiles, while their brethren at home remained as subjects of Harpagus, in common with all the other Ionic and Æolic Greeks except Milêtus. For even the insular inhabitants of Lesbos and Chios, though not assailable by sea, since the Persians had no fleet, thought it better to renounce their independence and enrol themselves as Persian subjects,—both of them possessing strips of the mainland which they were unable to protect otherwise. Samos, on the other hand, maintained its independence, and even reached, shortly after this period, under the despotism of Polykratês, a higher degree of power than ever. Perhaps the humiliation of the other maritime Greeks around may have rather favored the ambition of this unscrupulous prince, to whom I shall revert presently. But we may readily conceive that the public solemnities in which the Ionic Greeks intermingled, in place of those gay and richly-decked crowds which the Homeric hymn describes in the preceding century as assembled at Delos, presented scenes of marked despondency: one of their wisest men, indeed, Bias of Priênê, went so far as to propose, at the Pan-Ionic festival, a collective emigration of the entire population of the Ionic towns to the island of Sardinia. Nothing like freedom, he urged, was now open to them in Asia; but in Sardinia, one great Pan-Ionic city might be formed, which would not only be free herself, but mistress of her neighbors. The proposition found no favor; the reason of which is sufficiently evident from the narrative just given respecting the unconquerable local attachment on the part of the Phôkæan majority. But Herodotus bestows upon it the most unqualified commendation, and regrets that it was not acted upon.[363] Had such been the case, the subsequent history of Carthage, Sicily, and even Rome, might have been sensibly altered.
Thus subdued by Harpagus, the Ionic and Æolic Greeks were employed as auxiliaries to him in the conquest of the south-western inhabitants of Asia Minor,—Karians, Kaunians, Lykians, and Doric Greeks of Knidus and Halikarnassus. Of the fate of the latter town, Herodotus tells us nothing, though it was his native place. The inhabitants of Knidus, a place situated on a long outlying tongue of land, at first tried to cut through the narrow isthmus which joined them to the continent, but abandoned the attempt with a facility which Herodotus explains by referring it to a prohibition of the oracle:[364] nor did either the Karians or the Kaunians offer any serious resistance. The Lykians only, in their chief town Xanthus, made a desperate defence. Having in vain tried to repel the assailants in the open field, and finding themselves blocked up in their city, they set fire to it with their own hands; consuming in the flames their women, children, and servants, while the armed citizens marched out and perished to a man in combat with the enemy.[365] Such an act of brave and even ferocious despair is not in the Grecian character. In recounting, however, the languid defence and easy submission of the Greeks of Knidus, it may surprise us to call to mind that they were Dorians and colonists from Sparta. So that the want of steadfast courage, often imputed to Ionic Greeks as compared to Dorian, ought properly to be charged on Asiatic Greeks as compared with European; or rather upon that mixture of indigenous with Hellenic population, which all the Asiatic colonies, in common with most of the other colonies, presented, and which in Halikarnassus was particularly remarkable; for it seems to have been half Karian, half Dorian, and was even governed by a line of Karian despots.
Harpagus and the Persians thus mastered, without any considerable resistance, the western and southern portions of Asia Minor; probably, also, though we have no direct account of it, the entire territory within the Halys which had before been ruled by Crœsus. The tributes of the conquered Greeks were transmitted to Ekbatana instead of to Sardis. While Harpagus was thus employed, Cyrus himself had been making still more extensive conquests in Upper Asia and Assyria, of which I shall speak in the coming chapter.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
GROWTH OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.
In the preceding chapter an account has been given, the best which we can pick out from Herodotus, of the steps by which the Asiatic Greeks became subject to Persia. And if his narrative is meagre, on a matter which vitally concerned not only so many of his brother Greeks, but even his own native city, we can hardly expect that he should tell us much respecting the other conquests of Cyrus. He seems to withhold intentionally various details which had come to his knowledge, and merely intimates in general terms that while Harpagus was engaged on the coast of the Ægean, Cyrus himself assailed and subdued all the nations of Upper Asia, “not omitting any one of them.”[366] He alludes to the Baktrians and the Sakæ,[367] who are also named by Ktêsias as having become subject partly by force, partly by capitulation; but he deems only two of the exploits of Cyrus worthy of special notice,—the conquest of Babylon, and the final expedition against the Massagetæ. In the short abstract which we now possess of the lost work of Ktêsias, no mention appears of the important conquest of Babylon; but his narrative, as far as the abstract enables us to follow it, diverges materially from that of Herodotus, and must have been founded on data altogether different.
“I shall mention (says Herodotus)[368] those conquests which gave Cyrus most trouble, and are most memorable: after he had subdued all the rest of the continent, he attacked the Assyrians.” Those who recollect the description of Babylon and its surrounding territory, as given in a former chapter, will not be surprised to learn that the capture of it gave the Persian aggressor much trouble: their only surprise will be, how it could ever have been taken at all,—or, indeed, how a hostile army could have even reached it. Herodotus informs us that the Babylonian queen Nitôkris—mother of that very Labynêtus who was king when Cyrus attacked the place—had been apprehensive of invasion from the Medes after their capture of Nineveh, and had executed many laborious works near the Euphratês for the purpose of obstructing their approach. Moreover, there existed what was called the wall of Media (probably built by her, but certainly built prior to the Persian conquest), one hundred feet high and twenty feet thick,[369] across the entire space of seventy-five miles which joined the Tigris with one of the canals of the Euphratês. And the canals themselves, as we may see by the march of the Ten Thousand Greeks after the battle of Kunaxa, presented means of defence altogether insuperable by a rude army such as that of the Persians. On the east, the territory of Babylonia was defended by the Tigris, which cannot be forded lower than the ancient Nineveh or the modern Mosul.[370] In addition to these ramparts, natural as well as artificial, to protect the territory,—populous, cultivated, productive, and offering every motive to its inhabitants to resist even the entrance of an enemy,—we are told that the Babylonians were so thoroughly prepared for the inroad of Cyrus that they had accumulated a store of provisions within the city walls for many years.
Strange as it may seem, we must suppose that the king of Babylon, after all the cost and labor spent in providing defences for the territory, voluntarily neglected to avail himself of them, suffered the invader to tread down the fertile Babylonia without resistance, and merely drew out the citizens to oppose him when he arrived under the walls of the city,—if the statement of Herodotus is correct.[371] And we may illustrate this unaccountable omission by that which we know to have happened in the march of the younger Cyrus to Kunaxa against his brother Artaxerxês Mnêmon. The latter had caused to be dug, expressly in preparation for this invasion, a broad and deep ditch, thirty feet wide and eight feet deep, from the wall of Media to the river Euphratês, a distance of twelve parasangs, or forty-live English miles, leaving only a passage of twenty feet broad close alongside of the river. Yet when the invading army arrived at this important pass, they found not a man there to defend it, and all of them marched without resistance through the narrow inlet. Cyrus the younger, who had up to that moment felt assured that his brother would fight, now supposed that he had given up the idea of defending Babylon:[372] instead of which, two days afterwards, Artaxerxês attacked him on an open plain of ground, where there was no advantage of position on either side; though the invaders were taken rather unawares in consequence of their extreme confidence, arising from recent unopposed entrance within the artificial ditch.
This anecdote is the more valuable as an illustration, because all its circumstances are transmitted to us by a discerning eye-witness. And both the two incidents here brought into comparison demonstrate the recklessness, changefulness, and incapacity of calculation, belonging to the Asiatic mind of that day,—as well as the great command of hands possessed by these kings, and their prodigal waste of human labor.[373] We shall see, as we advance in this history, farther evidences of the same attributes, which it is essential to bear in mind, for the purpose of appreciating both Grecian dealing with Asiatics, and the comparative absence of such defects in the Grecian character. Vast walls and deep ditches are an inestimable aid to a brave and well commanded garrison; but they cannot be made entirely to supply the want of bravery and intelligence.
In whatever manner the difficulties of approaching Babylon may have been overcome, the fact that they were overcome by Cyrus is certain. On first setting out for this conquest, he was about to cross the river Gyndês (one of the affluents from the East which joins the Tigris near the modern Bagdad, and along which lay the high road crossing the pass of Mount Zagros from Babylon to Ekbatana), when one of the sacred white horses, which accompanied him, insulted the river[374] so far as to march in and try to cross it by himself. The Gyndês resented this insult, and the horse was drowned: upon which Cyrus swore in his wrath that he would so break the strength of the river as that women in future should pass it without wetting their knees. Accordingly, he employed his entire army, during the whole summer season, in digging three hundred and sixty artificial channels to disseminate the unity of the stream. Such, according to Herodotus, was the incident which postponed for one year the fall of the great Babylon; but in the next spring Cyrus and his army were before the walls, after having defeated and driven in the population who came out to fight. But the walls were artificial mountains (three hundred feet high, seventy-five feet thick, and forming a square of fifteen miles to each side), within which the besieged defied attack, and even blockade, having previously stored up several years’ provision. Through the midst of these walls, however, flowed the Euphratês; and this river, which had been so laboriously trained to serve for protection, trade, and sustenance to the Babylonians, was now made the avenue of their ruin. Having left a detachment of his army at the two points where the Euphratês enters and quits the city, Cyrus retired with the remainder to the higher part of its course, where an ancient Babylonian queen had prepared one of the great lateral reservoirs for carrying off in case of need the superfluity of its water. Near this point Cyrus caused another reservoir and another canal of communication to be dug, by means of which he drew off the water of the Euphrates to such a decree that it became not above the height of a man’s thigh. The period chosen was that of a great Babylonian festival, when the whole population were engaged in amusement and revelry; and the Persian troops left near the town, watching their opportunity, entered from both sides along the bed of the river, and took it by surprise with scarcely any resistance. At no other time, except during a festival, could they have done this, says Herodotus, had the river been ever so low; for both banks throughout the whole length of the town were provided with quays, with continuous walls, and with gates at the end of every street which led down to the river at right angles: so that if the population had not been disqualified by the influences of the moment, they would have caught the assailants in the bed of the river “as a trap,” and overwhelmed them from the walls alongside. Within a square of fifteen miles to each side, we are not surprised to hear that both the extremities were already in the power of the besiegers before the central population heard of it, and while they were yet absorbed in unconscious festivity.[375]
Such is the account given by Herodotus of the circumstances which placed Babylon—the greatest city of western Asia—in the power of the Persians. To what extent the information communicated to him was incorrect, or exaggerated, we cannot now decide; but the way in which the city was treated would lead us to suppose that its acquisition cannot have cost the conqueror either much time or much loss. Cyrus comes into the list as king of Babylon, and the inhabitants with their whole territory become tributary to the Persians, forming the richest satrapy in the empire; but we do not hear that the people were otherwise ill-used, and it is certain that the vast walls and gates were left untouched. This was very different from the way in which the Medes had treated Nineveh, which seems to have been ruined and for a long time absolutely uninhabited, though reoccupied on a reduced scale under the Parthian empire; and very different also from the way in which Babylon itself was treated twenty years afterwards by Darius, when reconquered after a revolt.
The importance of Babylon, marking as it does one of the peculiar forms of civilization belonging to the ancient world in a state of full development, gives an interest even to the half-authenticated stories respecting its capture; but the other exploits ascribed to Cyrus,—his invasion of India, across the desert of Arachosia,[376]—and his attack upon the Massagetæ, nomads ruled by queen Tomyris, and greatly resembling the Scythians, across the mysterious river which Herodotus calls Araxês,—are too little known to be at all dwelt upon. In the latter he is said to have perished, his army being defeated in a bloody battle.[377] He was buried at Pasargadæ, in his native province of Persis proper, where his tomb was honored and watched until the breaking up of the empire,[378] while his memory was held in profound veneration among the Persians.
Of his real exploits, we know little except their results; but in what we read respecting him there seems, though amidst constant fighting, very little cruelty. Xenophon has selected his life as the subject of a moral romance, which for a long time was cited as authentic history, and which even now serves as an authority, expressed or implied, for disputable and even incorrect conclusions. His extraordinary activity and conquests admit of no doubt. He left the Persian empire[379] extending from Sogdiana and the rivers Jaxartês and Indus eastward, to the Hellespont and the Syrian coast westward, and his successors made no permanent addition to it except that of Egypt. Phenicia and Judæa were dependencies of Babylon, at the time when he conquered it, with their princes and grandees in Babylonian captivity. They seem to have yielded to him, and become his tributaries,[380] without difficulty; and the restoration of their captives was conceded to them. It was from Cyrus that the habits of the Persian kings took commencement, to dwell at Susa in the winter, and Ekbatana during the summer; the primitive territory of Persis, with its two towns of Persepolis and Pasargadæ, being reserved for the burial-place of the kings and the religious sanctuary of the empire. How or when the conquest of Susiana was made, we are not informed; it lay eastward of the Tigris, between Babylonia and Persis proper, and its people, the Kissians, as far as we can discern, were of Assyrian and not of Arian race. The river Choaspês, near Susa, was supposed to furnish the only water fit for the palate of the Great King, and is said to have been carried about with him wherever he went.[381]
While the conquests of Cyrus contributed to assimilate the distinct types of civilization in western Asia,—not by elevating the worse, but by degrading the better,—upon the native Persians themselves they operated as an extraordinary stimulus, provoking alike their pride, ambition, cupidity, and warlike propensities. Not only did the territory of Persis proper pay no tribute to Susa or Ekbatana,—being the only district so exempted between the Jaxartês and the Mediterranean,—but the vast tributes received from the remaining empire were distributed to a great degree among its inhabitants. Empire to them meant,—for the great men, lucrative satrapies, or pachalics, with powers altogether unlimited, pomp inferior only to that of the Great King, and standing armies which they employed at their own discretion, sometimes against each other,[382]—for the common soldiers, drawn from their fields or flocks, constant plunder, abundant maintenance, and an unrestrained license, either in the suite of one of the satraps, or in the large permanent troop which moved from Susa to Ekbatana with the Great King. And if the entire population of Persis proper did not migrate from their abodes to occupy some of those more inviting spots which the immensity of the imperial dominion furnished,—a dominion extending (to use the language of Cyrus the younger, before the battle of Kunaxa)[383] from the region of insupportable heat to that of insupportable cold,—this was only because the early kings discouraged such a movement, in order that the nation might maintain its military hardihood,[384] and be in a situation to furnish undiminished supplies of soldiers.
The self-esteem and arrogance of the Persians was no less remarkable than their avidity for sensual enjoyment. They were fond of wine to excess; their wives and their concubines were both numerous; and they adopted eagerly from foreign nations new fashions of luxury as well as of ornament. Even to novelties in religion, they were not strongly averse; for though they were disciples of Zoroaster, with magi as their priests, and as indispensable companions of their sacrifices, worshipping Sun, Moon, Earth, Fire, etc., and recognizing neither image, temple, nor altar,—yet they had adopted the voluptuous worship of the goddess Mylitta from the Assyrians and Arabians. A numerous male offspring was the Persian’s boast, and his warlike character and consciousness of force were displayed in the education of these youths, who were taught, from five years old to twenty, only three things,—to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak the truth.[385] To owe money, or even to buy and sell, was accounted among the Persians disgraceful,—a sentiment which they defended by saying, that both the one and the other imposed the necessity of telling falsehood. To exact tribute from subjects, to receive pay or presents from the king, and to give away without forethought whatever was not immediately wanted, was their mode of dealing with money. Industrious pursuits were left to the conquered, who were fortunate if by paying a fixed contribution, and sending a military contingent when required, they could purchase undisturbed immunity for their remaining concerns.[386] They could not thus purchase safety for the family hearth, since we find instances of noble Grecian maidens torn from their parents for the harem of the satrap.[387]
To a people of this character, whose conceptions of political society went no farther than personal obedience to a chief, a conqueror like Cyrus would communicate the strongest excitement and enthusiasm of which they were capable. He had found them slaves, and made them masters; he was the first and greatest of national benefactors,[388] as well as the most forward of leaders in the field; they followed him from one conquest to another, during the thirty years of his reign, their love of empire growing with the empire itself. And this impulse of aggrandizement continued unabated during the reigns of his three next successors,—Kambysês, Darius, and Xerxês,—until it was at length violently stifled by the humiliating defeats of Platæa and Salamis; after which the Persians became content with defending themselves at home, and playing a secondary game. But at the time when Kambysês son of Cyrus succeeded to his father’s sceptre, Persian spirit was at its highest point, and he was not long in fixing upon a prey both richer and less hazardous than the Massagetæ, at the opposite extremity of the empire. Phenicia and Judæa being already subject to him, he resolved to invade Egypt, then highly flourishing under the long and prosperous reign of Amasis. Not much pretence was needed to color the aggression, and the various stories which Herodotus mentions as causes of the war, are only interesting inasmuch as they imply a vein of Egyptian party feeling,—affirming that the invasion was brought upon Amasis by a daughter of Apriês, and was thus a judgment upon him for having deposed the latter. As to the manner in which she had produced this effect, indeed, the most contradictory stories were circulated.[389]