3. THE GROWTH OF ATHENS
THE ATTIC PEOPLE.--The population of Attica in historic times was essentially Ionian in race, but there were in it strains of other Hellenic stocks, besides some non-Hellenic elements as well. This mixed origin of the population is believed to be one secret of the versatile yet well- balanced character which distinguished the Attic people above all other branches of the Hellenic family. It is not the absolutely pure, but the mixed races, like the English people, that have made the largest contributions to civilization.
THE SITE OF ATHENS.--Four or five miles from the sea, a flat-topped rock, about one thousand feet in length and half as many in width, rises with abrupt cliffs, one hundred and fifty feet above the level of the plains of Attica. The security afforded by this eminence doubtless led to its selection as a stronghold by the early Attic settlers. Here a few buildings, perched upon the summit of the rock and surrounded by a palisade, constituted the beginning of the capital whose fame has spread over all the world.
THE KINGS OF ATHENS.--During the Heroic Age Athens was ruled by kings, like all the other Grecian cities. The names of Theseus and Codrus are the most noted of the regal line.
To Theseus tradition ascribed the work of uniting the different Attic villages, or cantons, twelve in number, into a single city, on the seat of the ancient Cecropia (see p. 92). This prehistoric union, however or by whomsoever effected, laid the basis of the greatness of Athens.
Respecting Codrus, the following legend is told: At one time the Dorians from the Peloponnesus invaded Attica. Codrus having learned that an oracle had assured them of success if they spared the life of the Athenian king, disguised himself, and, with a single companion, made an attack upon some Spartan soldiers, who instantly slew him. Discovering that the king of Athens had fallen by a Lacedæmonian sword, the Spartans despaired of taking the city, and withdrew from the country.
THE ARCHONS (1050?-612 B.C.).--Codrus was the last king of Athens. His successor, elected by the nobles, was given simply the name of Archon, or Ruler, for the reason, it is said, that no one was thought worthy to bear the title of the divine Codrus. The real truth is, that the nobles were transforming the Homeric monarchy into an oligarchy, and to effect the change were taking away from the king his royal powers. At the outset there was but one Archon, elected for life; later, there were nine, chosen annually.
Throughout these early times the government was in the hands of the nobles; the people, that is, the free farmers and artisans, having no part in the management of public affairs. The people at length demanded a voice in the government, or at least legal protection from the exactions and cruelties of the wealthy.
THE LAWS OF DRACO (about 620 B.C.).--To meet these demands, the nobles appointed one of their own number, Draco, to prepare a code of laws. He reduced existing customs and regulations to a definite and written constitution, assigning to the smallest offence the penalty of death. This cruel severity of the Draconian laws caused an Athenian orator to say of them that "they were written, not in ink, but in blood." But for their harshness Draco was not responsible: he did not make them; their severity was simply a reflection of the harshness of those early times.
THE REBELLION OF CYLON (612 B.C.).--Soon after the enactment of Draco's laws, which naturally served only to increase the discontent of the people, Cylon, a rich and ambitious noble, taking advantage of the state of affairs, attempted to overthrow the government and make himself supreme. He seized the citadel of the Acropolis, where he was closely besieged by the Archons. Finally the Archon Megacles offered the insurgents their lives on condition of surrender. They accepted the offer, but fearing to trust themselves among their enemies without some protection, fastened a string to a statue of Athena, and holding fast to this, descended from the citadel, into the streets of Athens. As they came in front of the altars of the Furies, the line broke; and Megacles, professing to believe that this mischance indicated that the goddess refused to shield them, caused them to be set upon and massacred.
The people were alarmed lest the fierce anger of the avenging Furies had been incurred by the slaughter of prisoners in violation of a sacred oath and before their very altars. Calamities that now befell the state deepened their apprehension. Thus the people were inflamed still more against the aristocracy. They demanded and finally secured the banishment of the Alcmæonidæ, the family to which Megacles belonged. Even the bones of the dead of the family were dug up, and cast beyond the frontiers. The people further insisted upon a fresh revision of the laws and a share in the government.
THE LAWS OF SOLON (594 B.C.).--Solon, a man held in great esteem by all classes, was chosen to draw up a new code of laws. He repealed many of the cruel laws of Draco; permitted the return of persons driven into exile; gave relief to the debtor class, especially to the poor farmers, whose little plots were covered with mortgages, by reducing the value of the money in which they would have to make payment; ordered those held in slavery for debt to be set free; and cancelled all fines payable to the state. These measures caused contentment and prosperity to take the place, everywhere throughout Attica, of previous discontent and wretchedness.
CHANGES IN THE ATHENIAN CONSTITUTION.--The changes wrought by Solon in the political constitution of Athens were equally wise and beneficent. He divided all the citizens of Athens into four classes, according to their income. Only members of the first class could hold the office of Archon; and only those of the first three classes were eligible to the Council of Elders; but every member of all the classes had the right to vote in the popular assembly.
Thus property instead of birth was made the basis of political rights. This completely changed the character of the government; it was no longer an exclusive oligarchy.
A council known as the Council of the Four Hundred was created by Solon. Its chief duties were to decide what matters might be discussed by the public assembly, and to execute the resolutions of that body.
THE TRIBUNAL OF THE AREOPAGUS.--Solon also enlarged the jurisdiction of the celebrated Tribunal of the Areopagus, a venerable council that from time out of memory had been held on the Areopagus, or Mars' Hill, near the Acropolis. The judges sat beneath the open sky, that they might not be contaminated, it is said, by the breath of the criminals brought before them. To this court was committed the care of morals and religion. It was in the presence of this venerable tribunal, six hundred years after Solon's time, that Paul stood when he made his eloquent defence of Christianity.
THE PUBLIC ASSEMBLY.--The public assembly, under the constitution of Solon, was made the most important of all the institutions of the state. It was the fountain of all power. Contrary to the rule in Sparta, any citizen had the right not only of voting, but of speaking on any question which the assembly had a right to discuss. Six thousand citizens were required to constitute a quorum to transact business in cases of special importance. This popular assembly grew into vast importance in later times. By it were discussed and decided questions affecting the entire Hellenic world.
These laws and institutions of Solon laid the basis of the Athenian democracy.
THE TYRANT PISISTRATUS (560-527 B.C.).--Solon had the misfortune of living to see his institutions used to set up a tyranny, by an ambitious kinsman, his nephew Pisistratus. This man courted popular favor, and called himself the "friend of the people." One day, having inflicted many wounds upon himself, he drove his chariot hastily into the public square, and pretended that he had been thus set upon by the nobles, because of his devotion to the people's cause. The people, moved with sympathy and indignation, voted him a guard of fifty men. Under cover of raising this company, Pisistratus gathered a much larger force, seized the Acropolis, and made himself master of Athens. Though twice expelled from the city, he as often returned, and finally succeeded in getting a permanent hold of the government.
The rule of the usurper was mild, and under him Athens enjoyed a period of great prosperity. He adorned the city with temples and other splendid buildings, and constructed great aqueducts. Just beyond the city walls, he laid out the Lyceum, a sort of public park, which became in after years the favorite resort of the philosophers and poets of Athens. He was a liberal patron of literature; and caused the Homeric poems to be collected and edited. He died 527 B.C., thirty-three years after his first seizure of the citadel. Solon himself said of him that he had no vice save ambition.
EXPULSION OF THE TYRANTS FROM ATHENS (510 B.C.).--The two sons of Pisistratus, Hippias and Hipparchus, succeeded to his power. At first they emulated the example of their father, and Athens flourished under their parental rule. But at length an unfortunate event gave an entirely different tone to the government. Hipparchus, having insulted a young noble, was assassinated. Hippias escaped harm, but the event caused him to become suspicious and severe. His rule now became a tyranny indeed, and was brought to an end in the following way.
After his last return to Athens, Pisistratus had sent the "accursed" Alcmæonidæ into a second exile. During this period of banishment an opportunity arose for them to efface the stain of sacrilege which was still supposed to cling to them on account of the old crime of Megacles. The temple at Delphi having been destroyed by fire, they contracted with the Amphictyons to rebuild it. They not only completed the work in the most honorable manner throughout, but even went so far beyond the terms of their contract as to use beautiful Parian marble for the front of the temple, when only common stone was required by the specifications.
By this act the exiled family won to such a degree the favor of the priests of the sacred college, that they were able to influence the utterances of the oracle. The invariable answer now of the Pythia to Spartan inquirers at the shrine was, "Athens must be set free."
Moved at last by the repeated injunctions of the oracle, the Spartans resolved to drive Hippias from Athens. Their first attempt was unsuccessful; but in a second they were so fortunate as to capture the two children of the tyrant, who, to secure their release, agreed to leave the city (510 B.C.). He retired to Asia Minor, and spent the rest of his life, as we shall learn hereafter, seeking aid in different quarters to re- establish his tyranny in Athens. The Athenians passed a decree of perpetual exile against him and all his family.
THE REFORMS OF CLISTHENES (509 B.C.).--Straightway upon the expulsion of the Tyrant Hippias, there arose a great strife between the people, who of course wished to organize the government in accord with the constitution of Solon, and the nobles, who desired to re-establish the old aristocratical rule. Clisthenes, an aristocrat, espoused the cause of the popular party. Through his influence several important changes in the constitution, which rendered it still more democratical than under Solon, were now effected.
Athenian citizenship was conferred upon all the free inhabitants of Attica. This made such a radical change in the constitution in the interest of the masses, that Clisthenes rather than Solon is regarded by many as the real founder of the Athenian democracy.
OSTRACISM.--But of all the innovations or institutions of Clisthenes, that known as ostracism was the most characteristic. By means of this process any person who had excited the suspicions or displeasure of the people could, without trial, be banished from Athens for a period of ten years. Six thousand votes cast against any person in a meeting of the popular assembly was a decree of banishment. The name of the person whose banishment was sought was written on a piece of pottery or a shell (in Greek ostrakon), hence the term ostracism.
The original design of this institution was to prevent the recurrence of such a usurpation as that of the Pisistratidæ. The privilege and power it gave the people were often abused, and many of the ablest and best statesmen of Athens were sent into exile through the influence of some demagogue who for the moment had caught the popular ear.
No stigma or disgrace attached to the person ostracized. The vote came to be employed, as a rule, simply to settle disputes between rival leaders of political parties. Thus the vote merely expressed political preference, the ostracized person being simply the defeated candidate for popular favor.
The institution was short-lived. It was resorted to for the last time during the Peloponnesian War (417 B.C.). The people then, in a freak, ostracized a man whom all admitted to be the meanest man in Athens. This was regarded as such a degradation of the institution, as well as such an honor to the mean man, that never thereafter did the Athenians degrade a good man, or honor a bad one, by a resort to the measure.
SPARTA OPPOSES THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY.--The aristocratic party at Athens was naturally bitterly opposed to all these democratic innovations. The Spartans, also, viewed with disquiet and jealousy this rapid growth of the Athenian democracy, and tried to overthrow the new government and restore Hippias to power. But they did not succeed in their purpose, and Hippias went away to Persia to seek aid of King Darius. His solicitations, in connection with an affront which the Athenians just now offered the king himself by aiding his revolted subjects in Ionia, led directly up to the memorable struggle known as the Græco-Persian wars.
Chapter XIII
THE GRÆCO-PERSIAN WARS. (500-479 B.C.)
EXPEDITIONS OF DARIUS AGAINST GREECE.--In narrating the history of the Persians, we told how Darius, after having subdued the revolt of his Ionian subjects in Asia Minor, turned his armaments against the European Greeks, to punish them for the part they had taken in the capture and burning of Sardis. It will be recalled how ill-fated was his first expedition, which was led by his son-in-law Mardonius (see p. 80).
Undismayed by this disaster, Darius issued orders for the raising and equipping of another and stronger armament. Meanwhile he sent heralds to the various Grecian states to demand earth and water, which elements among the Persians were symbols of submission. The weaker states gave the tokens required; but the Athenians and Spartans threw the envoys of the king into pits and wells, and bade them help themselves to earth and water. By the beginning of the year 490 B.C., another Persian army of 120,000 men had been mustered for the second attempt upon Greece. This armament was intrusted to the command of the experienced generals Datis and Artaphernes; but was under the guidance of the traitor Hippias. A fleet of six hundred ships bore the army from the coasts of Asia Minor over the Aegean towards the Grecian shores.
After receiving the submission of the most important of the Cyclades, and capturing and sacking the city of Eretria upon the island of Euboea, the Persians landed at Marathon, barely one day's journey from Athens. Here is a sheltered bay, which is edged by a crescent-shaped plain, backed by the rugged ranges of Parnes and Pentelicus. Upon this level ground the Persian generals drew up their army, flushed and confident with their recent successes.
THE BATTLE OF MARATHON (490 B.C.).--The Athenians were nerved by the very magnitude of the danger to almost superhuman energy. Slaves were transformed into soldiers by the promise of liberty. A fleet runner, Phidippides by name, was despatched to Sparta for aid. In just thirty-six hours he was in Sparta, which is one hundred and fifty miles from Athens. But it so happened that it lacked a few days of the full moon, during which interval the Spartans, owing to an old superstition, were averse to setting out upon a military expedition. They promised aid, but moved only in time to reach Athens when all was over. The Platæans, firm and grateful friends of the Athenians, on account of some former service, no sooner received the latter's appeal for help than they responded to a man.
The Athenians and their faithful allies, numbering about ten thousand in all, under the command of Miltiades, were drawn up in battle array just where the hills of Pentelicus sink down into the plain of Marathon. The vast host of the Persians filled the level ground in their front. The fate of Greece and the future of Europe were in the keeping of Miltiades and his trusty warriors. Without waiting for the attack of the Persians, the Greeks charged and swept like a tempest from the mountain over the plain, pushed the Persians back towards the shore, and with great slaughter drove them to their ships.
Miltiades at once despatched a courier to Athens with intelligence of his victory. The messenger reached the city in a few hours, but so breathless from his swift run that, as the people thronged eagerly around him to hear the news he bore, he could merely gasp, "Victory is ours," and fell dead.
But the danger was not yet past. The Persian fleet, instead of returning to the coast of Asia, bore down upon Athens. Informed by watchers on the hills of the movements of the enemy, Miltiades immediately set out with his little army for the capital, which he reached just at evening, the battle at Marathon having been won in the forenoon of that same day. The next morning, when the Persian generals would have made an attack upon the city, they found themselves confronted by the same men who but yesterday had beaten them back from the plains of Marathon. Shrinking from another encounter with these citizen-soldiers of Athens, the Persians spread their sails, and bore away towards the Ionian shore.
Thus the cloud that had lowered so threateningly over Hellas was for a time dissipated. The most imposing honors were accorded to the heroes who had achieved the glorious victory, and their names and deeds were transmitted to posterity, in song and marble. And as the gods were believed to have interposed in behalf of Greece, suitable recognition of their favor was made in gifts and memorials. A considerable part of the brazen arms and shields gathered from the battle-field was melted into a colossal statue of Athena, which was placed upon the Acropolis, as the guardian of Athens.
RESULTS OF THE BATTLE OF MARATHON.--The battle of Marathon is reckoned as one of the "decisive battles of the world." It marks an epoch, not only in the life of Greece, but in that of Europe. Hellenic civilization was spared to mature its fruit, not for itself alone, but for the world. The battle decided that no longer the despotism of the East, with its repression of all individual action, but the freedom of the West, with all its incentives to personal effort, should control the affairs and mould the ideas and institutions of the future. It broke the spell of the Persian name, and destroyed forever the prestige of the Persian arms. It gave the Hellenic peoples that position of authority and pre-eminence that had been so long enjoyed by the successive races of the East. It especially revealed the Athenians to themselves. The consciousness of resources and power became the inspiration of their future acts. They performed great deeds thereafter because they believed themselves able to perform them.
MILTIADES FALLS INTO DISGRACE.--The distinguished services Miltiades had rendered his country, made him the hero of the hour at Athens. Taking advantage of the public feeling in his favor, he persuaded the Athenians to put in his hands a fleet for an enterprise respecting the nature of which no one save himself was to know anything whatever. Of course it was generally supposed that he meditated an attack upon the Persians or their allies, and with full faith in the judgment as well as in the integrity of their favorite, the Athenians gave him the command he asked.
But Miltiades abused the confidence imposed in him. He led the expedition against the island of Paros, simply to avenge some private wrong. The undertaking was unsuccessful, and Miltiades, severely wounded, returned to Athens, where he was brought to trial for his conduct. His never-to-be- forgotten services at Marathon pleaded eloquently for him, and he escaped being sentenced to death, but was subjected to a heavy fine. This he was unable to pay, and in a short time he died of his wound. The unfortunate affair left an ineffaceable blot upon a fame otherwise the most resplendent in Grecian story.
ATHENS PREPARES FOR PERSIAN VENGEANCE.--Many among the Athenians were inclined to believe that the battle of Marathon had freed Athens forever from the danger of a Persian invasion. But there was at least one among them who was clear-sighted enough to see that that battle was only the beginning of a great struggle. This was Themistocles, a sagacious, versatile, and ambitious statesman, who labored to persuade the Athenians to strengthen their navy, in order to be ready to meet the danger he foresaw.
Themistocles was opposed in this policy by Aristides, called the Just, a man of the most scrupulous integrity, who feared that Athens would make a serious mistake if she converted her land force into a naval armament. The contention grew so sharp between them that the ostracism was called into use to decide the matter. Six thousand votes were cast against Aristides, and he was sent into exile.
It is related that while the vote that ostracized him was being taken in the popular assembly, an illiterate peasant, who was a stranger to Aristides, asked him to write the name of Aristides upon his tablet. As he placed the name desired upon the shell, the statesman asked the man what wrong Aristides had ever done him. "None," responded the voter; "I don't even know him; but I am tired of hearing him called 'the Just.'"
After the banishment of Aristides, Themistocles was free to carry out his naval policy without any serious opposition, and soon Athens had the largest fleet of any Greek city, with a harbor at Piræus.
XERXES' PREPARATIONS TO INVADE GREECE.--No sooner had the news of the disaster at Marathon been carried to Darius than he began to make gigantic preparations to avenge this second defeat and insult. It was in the midst of these plans for revenge that, as we have already learned, death cut short his reign, and his son Xerxes came to the throne (see p. 80).
Urged on by his nobles, as well as by exiled Greeks at his court, who sought to gratify ambition or enjoy revenge in the humiliation and ruin of their native land, Xerxes, though at first disinclined to enter into a contest with the Greeks, at length ordered the preparations begun by his father to be pushed forward with the utmost energy. For eight years all Asia resounded with the din of preparation. Levies were made upon all the provinces that acknowledged the authority of the Great King, from India to the Hellespont. Vast contingents of vessels were furnished by the coast countries of the Mediterranean. Immense stores of provisions, the harvests of many years, were gathered into great storehouses along the intended line of march.
While all these preparations were going on in Asia itself, Phoenician and Egyptian architects were employed in spanning the Hellespont with a double bridge of boats, which was to unite the two continents as with a royal highway. At the same time, the isthmus at Mount Athos, in rounding which promontory the admirals of Mardonius had lost their fleet, was cut by a canal, traces of which may be seen at this day. Three years were consumed in these gigantic works. With them completed, or far advanced, Xerxes set out from his capital to join the countless hosts that from all quarters of the compass were gathering at Sardis, in Asia Minor.
DISUNION OF THE GREEKS: CONGRESS AT CORINTH (481 B.C.).--Startling rumors of the gigantic preparations that the Persian king was making to crush them were constantly borne across the Aegean to the ears of the Greeks in Europe. Finally came intelligence that Xerxes was about to begin his march. Something must now be done to meet the impending danger. Mainly through the exertions of Themistocles, a council of the Greek cities was convened at Corinth in the fall of 481 B.C.
But on account of feuds, jealousies, and party spirit, only a small number of the states of Hellas could be brought to act in concert. Argos would not join the proposed confederation through hatred of Sparta; Thebes, through jealousy of Athens. The Cretans, to whom an embassy had been sent soliciting aid, refused all assistance. Gelon, the Tyrant of Syracuse, offered to send over a large armament, provided that he were given the chief command of the allied forces. His aid on such terms was refused.
Thus, through different causes, many of the Greek cities held aloof from the confederation, so that only about fifteen or sixteen states were brought to unite their resources against the Barbarians; and even the strength of many of those cities that did enter into the alliance was divided by party spirit. The friends of aristocratical government were almost invariably friends of Persia, because a Persian victory in Greece proper meant what it had already meant in Ionia,--a suppression of the democracies as incompatible with the Persian form of government. Thus for the sake of a party victory, the aristocrats were ready to betray their country into the hands of the Barbarians. Furthermore, the Delphian oracle, aristocratical in its sympathies, was luke-warm and wavering, if not actually disloyal, and by its timid responses, disheartened the patriot party.
But under the inspiration of Themistocles the patriots in convention at Corinth determined upon desperate resistance to the Barbarians. It was at first decided to concentrate a strong force in the Vale of Tempe, and at that point to dispute the advance of the enemy; but this being found impracticable, it was resolved that the first stand against the invaders should be made at the pass of Thermopylæ.
The Spartans were given the chief command of both the land and the naval forces. The Athenians might fairly have insisted upon their right to the command of the allied fleet, but they patriotically waived their claim, for the sake of harmony.
THE HELLESPONTINE BRIDGES BROKEN.--As the vast army of Xerxes was about to move from Sardis, intelligence came that the bridges across the Hellespont had been wrecked by a violent tempest. It is said that Xerxes, in great wrath, ordered the architects to be put to death, and the sea to be bound with fetters and scourged. The scourgers faithfully performed their duty, at the same time gratuitously cursing the traitorous and rebellious Hellespont with what Herodotus calls "non-Hellenic and blasphemous terms."
Other architects spanned the channel with two stronger and firmer bridges. Each roadway rested upon a row of from three to four hundred vessels, all securely anchored like modern pontoons. The bridges were each about one mile in length, and furnished with high parapets, that the horses and cattle might not be rendered uneasy at sight of the water.
PASSAGE OF THE HELLESPONT.--With the first indications of the opening spring of 480 B.C., just ten years after the defeat at Marathon, the vast Persian army was astir and concentrating from all points upon the Hellespont. The passage of this strait, as pictured to us in the inimitable narration of Herodotus, is one of the most dramatic of all the spectacles afforded by history.
Before the passage commenced, the bridges were strewn with the sacred myrtle and perfumed with incense from golden censers, while the sea was placated with libations poured by the king himself. As the east reddened with the approach of day, prayers were offered, and the moment the rays of the sun touched the bridges the passage began. To avoid accidents and delays, the trains of baggage wagons and the beasts of burden crossed by one causeway, leaving the other free for the march of the army. The first of the host to cross was the sacred guard of the Great King, the Ten Thousand Immortals, all crowned with garlands as in festival procession. Preceding the king, the gorgeous Chariot of the Sun moved slowly, drawn by eight milk-white steeds. Herodotus affirms that for seven days and seven nights the bridges groaned beneath the living tide that Asia was pouring into Europe. [Footnote: According to Herodotus, the land and naval forces of Xerxes amounted to 2,317,000 men, besides about 2,000,000 slaves and attendants. It is believed that these figures are a great exaggeration, and that the actual number of the Persian army could not have exceeded 900,000 men.]
BATTLE OF THERMOPYLÆ (480 B.C.).--Leading from Thessaly into Central Greece is a narrow pass, pressed on one side by the sea and on the other by rugged mountain ridges. At the foot of the cliffs break forth several hot springs, whence the name of the pass, Thermopylæ, or "Hot Gates."
At this point, in accordance with the decision of the Corinthian Congress, was offered the first resistance to the progress of the Persian army. Leonidas, king of Sparta, with three hundred Spartan soldiers and about six thousand allies from different states of Greece, held the pass. As the Greeks were about to celebrate the Olympian games, which their religious scruples would not allow them to postpone, they left this handful of men unsupported to hold in check the army of Xerxes until the festival days should be past.
The Spartans could be driven from their advantageous position only by an attack in front, as the Grecian fleet prevented Xerxes from landing a force in their rear. Before assaulting them, Xerxes summoned them to give up their arms. The answer of Leonidas was, "Come and take them." For two days the Persians tried to storm the pass. The Asiatics were driven to the attack by their officers armed with whips. But every attempt to force the way was repulsed; even the Ten Thousand Immortals were hurled back from the Spartan front like waves from a cliff.
But an act of treachery on the part of a native Greek rendered unavailing all the bravery of the keepers of the pass. A by-way leading over the mountains to the rear of the Spartans was revealed to Xerxes. The startling intelligence was brought to Leonidas that the Persians were descending the mountain-path in his rear. He saw instantly that all was lost. The allies were permitted to seek safety in flight while opportunity remained. But to him and his Spartan companions there could be no thought of retreat. Death in the pass, the defence of which had been intrusted to them, was all that Spartan honor and Spartan law now left them. The next day, surrounded by the Persian host, they fought with desperate valor; but, overwhelmed by mere numbers, they were slain to the last man. With them also perished seven hundred Thespians who had chosen death with their companions. Over the bodies of the Spartan soldiers a monument was afterwards erected with this inscription: "Stranger, tell the Lacedæmonians that we lie here in obedience to their orders."
THE BURNING OF ATHENS.-Athens now lay open to the invaders. The Peloponnesians, thinking of their own safety simply, commenced throwing up defences across the isthmus of Corinth, working day and night under the impulse of an almost insane fear. Athens was thus left outside to care for herself.
Counsels were divided. The Delphian oracle had obscurely declared, "When everything else in the land of Cecrops shall be taken, Zeus grants to Athena that the wooden walls alone shall remain unconquered, to defend you and your children." The oracle was believed to be, as was declared, "firm as adamant."
But there were various opinions as to what was meant by the "wooden walls." Some thought the Pythian priestess directed the Athenians to seek refuge in the forests on the mountains; but Themistocles (who it is thought may have himself prompted the oracle) contended that the ships were plainly indicated.
The last interpretation was acted upon. All the soldiers of Attica were crowded upon the vessels of the fleet at Salamis. The aged men, with the women and children, were carried out of the country to different places of safety. All the towns of Attica, with the capital, were thus abandoned to the conquerors.
A few days afterwards the Persians entered upon the deserted plain, which they rendered more desolate by ravaging the fields and burning the empty towns. Athens shared the common fate, and her splendid temples sank in flames. Sardis was avenged. The joy in distant Susa was unbounded.
THE NAVAL BATTLE OF SALAMIS (480 B.C.).--Just off the coast of Attica, separated from the mainland by a narrow passage of water, lies the island of Salamis. Here lay the Greek fleet, awaiting the Persian attack. To hasten on the attack before dissensions should divide the Greek forces, Themistocles resorted to the following stratagem. He sent a messenger to Xerxes representing that he himself was ready to espouse the Persian cause, and advised an immediate attack upon the Athenian fleet, which he represented as being in no condition to make any formidable resistance. Xerxes was deceived. He ordered an immediate attack. From a lofty throne upon the shore he himself overlooked the scene and watched the result. The Persian fleet was broken to pieces and two hundred of the ships destroyed. [Footnote: The entire Persian fleet numbered about seven hundred and fifty vessels; the Grecian, about three hundred and eighty-five ships, mostly triremes.]
The blow was decisive. Xerxes, fearing that treachery might burn or break the Hellespontine bridges, instantly despatched a hundred ships to protect them; and then, leaving Mardonius with three hundred thousand men to retrieve the disaster of Salamis, and effect, as he promised to do, the conquest of the rest of Greece, the monarch set out on his ignominious retreat to Asia. [Footnote: On the very day of the battle of Salamis, Gelon of Syracuse gained a great victory over the Carthaginians at the battle of Himera, in the north of Sicily. So it was a memorable day for Hellas in the West as well as in the East.]
THE BATTLES OF PLATÆA AND MYCALE (479 B.C.).--The next year the Persian fleet and army thus left behind in Europe were entirely destroyed, both on the same day--the army at Platæa, near Thebes, by the combined Greek forces under the Spartan Pausanias; and the fleet, including the Asiatic land forces, at Mycale, on the Ionian coast.
The battles of Salamis, Platæa, and Mycale were the successive blows that shattered into fragments the most splendid armaments ever commanded by Asiatic despot.
MEMORIALS AND TROPHIES OF THE WAR.--The glorious issue of the war caused a general burst of joy and exultation throughout all Greece. Poets, artists, and orators, all vied with one another in commemorating the deeds of the heroes whose valor had warded off the impending danger.
Nor did the pious Grecians think that the marvellous deliverance had been effected without the intervention of the gods in their behalf. To the temple at Delphi was gratefully consecrated a tenth of the immense spoils in gold and silver from the field of Platæa; and within the sanctuary of Athena, upon the Acropolis at Athens, were placed the broken cables of the Hellespontine bridges, at once a proud trophy of victory, and a signal illustration of the divine punishment that had befallen the audacious and impious attempt to lay a yoke upon the sacred waters of the Hellespont.
XIV. PERIOD OF ATHENIAN SUPREMACY. (479-431 B.C.)
REBUILDING THE WALLS OF ATHENS.--After the Persians had been expelled from Greece, the first care of the Athenians was the rebuilding of their homes. Their next task was the restoration of the city walls. The exalted hopes for the future which had been raised by the almost incredible achievements of the past few months, led the Athenians to draw a vast circuit of seven miles about the Acropolis as the line of the new ramparts.
The rival states of the Peloponnesus watched the proceedings of the Athenians with the most jealous interest. While they could not but admire Athens, they feared her. Sparta sent an embassy to dissuade the citizens from rebuilding the walls, hypocritically assigning as the cause of her interest in the matter her solicitude lest, in case of another Persian invasion, the city, if captured, might become a shelter and defence to the enemy. But the Athenians persisted in their purpose, and in a marvellously short time had raised the wall to such a height that they could defy interference.
THEMISTOCLES' NAVAL POLICY.--Themistocles saw clearly that the supremacy of Athens among the Grecian states must be secured and maintained by her mastery of the sea. He had unbounded visions of the maritime power and glory that might come to her through her fleet, those "wooden walls" to which at this moment she owed her very existence; and he succeeded in inspiring his countrymen with his own enthusiasm and sanguine hopes.
In the prosecution of his views, Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to enlarge the harbor of Piræus, the most spacious of the ports of Athens, and to surround the place with immense walls, far exceeding, both in compass and strength, those of the capital. He also led his countrymen to the resolution of adding each year twenty well-equipped triremes to their navy.
This policy, initiated by Themistocles, was, as we shall see, zealously pursued by the statesmen that after him successively assumed the lead in Athenian affairs.
HIS OSTRACISM.--Themistocles well deserved the honor of being called, as he was, the founder of the New Athens. But, although an able statesman, he was an unscrupulous man. He accepted bribes and sold his influence, thereby acquiring an enormous property. Finally he was ostracized (471 B.C.). After long wanderings, he became a resident at the court of the Persian king.
Tradition affirms that Artaxerxes, in accordance with Persian usage, provided for the courtier exile by assigning to three cities in Asia Minor the care of providing for his table: one furnished bread, a second meat, and a third wines. It is told that one day, as he sat down to his richly loaded board, he exclaimed, "How much we should have lost, my children, if we had not been ruined!"
THE CONFEDERACY OF DELOS (477 B.C.).--In order that they might be able to carry on the war more effectively against the Persians, the Ionian states of Asia Minor, the islands of the Ægean, and some of the states in Greece proper, shortly after the battle of Platæa, formed themselves into what is known as the Confederacy of Delos. Sparta, on account of her military reputation, had hitherto been accorded the place of pre-eminence and authority in all such alliances of the Hellenic cities. She had come, indeed, to regard herself as the natural guardian and leader of Greece. But at this time the unbearable arrogance of the Spartan general Pausanias, who presumed upon the great reputation he had gained at the battle of Platæa, led the states which had entered into the alliance to look to Athens to assume the position of leadership in the new confederacy.
The lofty character of Aristides, who was now the most prominent Athenian leader, and his great reputation for fairness and incorruptible integrity, also contributed to the same result. He was chosen the first president of the league (477 B.C.), and the sacred island of Delos was made the repository of the common funds. What proportion of the ships and money needed for carrying out the purposes of the union should be contributed by the different states, was left entirely to the decision of Aristides, such was the confidence all had in his equity; and so long as he had control of the matter, none of the members of the alliance ever had cause of complaint.
Thus did Sparta lose, and Athens gain, the place of precedence among the Ionian states. The Dorian states of the Peloponnesus, in the main, still looked to Sparta as their leader and adviser. All Greece was thus divided into two great leagues, under the rival leadership of Sparta and Athens.
THE ATHENIANS CONVERT THE DELIAN LEAGUE INTO AN EMPIRE.--The Confederacy of Delos laid the basis of the imperial power of Athens. The Athenians misused their authority as leaders of the league, and gradually, during the interval between the formation of the union and the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, reduced their allies, or confederates, to the condition of tributaries and subjects.
Athens transformed the league into an empire in the following manner. The contributions assessed by Aristides upon the different members of the confederation consisted of ships and their crews for the larger states, and of money payments for the smaller ones. From the first, Athens attended to this assessment matter, and saw to it that each member of the league made its proper contribution. After a while, some of the cities preferring to make a money payment in lieu of ships, Athens accepted the commutation, and then building the ships herself, added them to her own navy. Thus the confederates disarmed themselves and armed their master.
Very soon the restraints which Athens imposed upon her allies became irksome, and they began to refuse, one after another, to pay the assessment in any form. Naxos, one of the Cyclades, was the first island to secede, as it were, from the league (466 B.C.). But Athens had no idea of admitting any such doctrine of state rights, and with her powerful navy forced the Naxians to remain within the union, and to pay an increased tribute.
What happened in the case of Naxos happened in the case of almost all the other members of the confederation. By the year 449 B.C. only three of the island members of the league still retained their independence.
Even before this date (probably about 457 B.C.) the Athenians had transferred the common treasury from Delos to Athens, and diverting the tribute from its original purpose, were beginning to spend it, not in the prosecution of war against the Barbarians, but in the execution of home enterprises, as though the treasure were their own revenue.
Thus what had been simply a voluntary confederation of sovereign and independent cities, was converted into what was practically an absolute monarchy, with the Attic democracy as the imperial master.
What made this servitude of the former allies of Athens all the more galling was the fact that they themselves had been compelled to forge the very chains which fettered them; for it was their money that had built and was maintaining the fleet by which they were kept in subjection and forced to do whatever might be the will of the Athenians.
THE LEADERSHIP OF CIMON; HIS OSTRACISM.--One of the ablest and most popular of the generals who commanded the forces of the Athenians during this same period when they were enslaving their confederates, was Cimon, the son of Miltiades. He was one of those whose spirits had been fired by the exciting events attendant upon the Persian invasion. He had acquired a certain reputation, at the time of the abandonment of Athens, by being the first to hang up his bridle in the sanctuary of the Acropolis, thus expressing his resolution to place all his confidence in the fleet, as Themistocles advised.
The popularity of Cimon at last declined, and he suffered ostracism, as had Aristides and Themistocles before him. His loss of public favor came about in this manner. In the year 464 B.C., a terrible earthquake destroyed a large portion of Sparta. In the panic of the appalling disaster the Spartans were led to believe that the evil had befallen them as a punishment for their recent violation of the Temple of Poseidon, from which some Helots who had fled to the sanctuary for refuge had been torn. The Helots, on their part, were quick to interpret the event as an intervention of the gods in their behalf, and as an unmistakable signal for their uprising. Everywhere they flew to arms, and, being joined by some of the Perioeci, furiously attacked their masters. The Spartans, after maintaining the bitter struggle for several years, finding themselves unable to reduce their former slaves to submission, were forced to ask aid of the other Grecian states.
The great Athenian statesman Pericles implored his countrymen not to lend themselves to the building up of the power of their rival. But the aristocratic Cimon, who had always entertained the most friendly feelings for the Spartans, exhorted the Athenians to put aside all sentiments of enmity or jealousy, and to extend succor to their kinsmen. "Let not Greece," said he, "be lamed, and thus Athens herself be deprived of her yokefellow." The assembly voted as he advised, and so the Athenian forces fought for some time side by side with the Lacedæmonians.
But the Spartans were distrustful of their Athenian allies, and fearing they might pass over to the side of the Helots, they dismissed them. The discourtesy of the act aroused the most bitter resentment at Athens. The party of Pericles took advantage of the exasperated feelings of the people to effect some important changes in the constitution in favor of the people, which made it almost purely democratical in character, and to secure the exercise of the ostracism against Cimon as the leader of the aristocratical party and the friend of Sparta (459 B.C.).
THE AGE OF PERICLES (459-431 B.C.).
GENERAL FEATURES OF THE AGE.--Under the inspiration of Pericles, the Athenian state now entered upon the most brilliant period of its history. The epoch embraces less than the lifetime of a single generation, yet its influence upon the civilization of the world can hardly be overrated. During this short period Athens gave birth to more great men--poets, artists, statesmen, and philosophers--than all the world besides has produced in any period of equal length.
Among all the great men of this age, Pericles stood pre-eminent. Such was the impression he left upon the period in which he lived, that it is called after him the Periclean Age. Yet Pericles' authority was simply that which talent and character justly confer. He ruled, as Plutarch says, by the art of persuasion.
During the Periclean period the Athenian democracy was supreme. Every matter that concerned the empire was discussed and decided by the popular assembly. Never before had any people enjoyed such perfect political liberty as did the citizens of Athens at this time, and never before were any people, through so intimate a knowledge of public affairs, so well able to direct the policies of state. Every citizen, it is affirmed, was qualified to hold civil office.
PERICLES FOSTERS THE NAVAL POWER OF ATHENS.--Cimon's policy had been to keep the Grecian cities united in order that they might offer effectual resistance to the Persian power. The aim of his rival Pericles was to maintain Athens as the leading state in Hellas, and to oppose the pretensions of Sparta. Accordingly he encouraged the Athenians to strengthen their naval armament and to perfect themselves in naval discipline, for with Themistocles he was convinced that the supremacy of Athens must depend chiefly upon her fleet.
As a part of his maritime policy, Pericles persuaded the Athenians to build what were known as the Long Walls,--great ramparts between four and five miles in length,--which united Athens to the ports of Piræus and Phalerum. Later, as a double security, a third wall was built parallel to the one running to the former harbor. By means of these walls Athens and her ports, with the intervening land, were converted into a vast fortified district, capable in time of war of holding the entire population of Attica. With her communication with the sea thus secured, and with a powerful navy at her command, Athens could bid defiance to her foes on sea and land.
EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE THIRTY YEARS' TRUCE.--At the same time that Pericles was making the maritime supremacy of Athens more secure, he was endeavoring to build up for her a land empire in Central Greece. As her influence in this quarter increased, Sparta became more and more jealous, and strove to counteract it, chiefly by enhancing the power of Thebes.
The contest between the two rivals was long and bitter. It was ended by the well-known Peace of Pericles, or the Thirty Years' Truce (445 B.C.). By the terms of this treaty each of the rival cities was left at the head of the confederation it had formed, but neither was to interfere with the subjects or allies of the other, while those cities of Hellas which were not yet members of either league were to be left free to join either according to choice.
The real meaning of the Truce was that Athens gave up her ambition to establish a land empire, and was henceforth to be content with supremacy on the seas. It meant further that Greece was to remain a house divided against itself; that democratic Athens must share with aristocratic Sparta the hegemony, or leadership, of the Hellenic cities.
PERICLES ADORNS ATHENS WITH PUBLIC BUILDINGS.--Notwithstanding Pericles had failed to build up for Athens a land dominion, he had nevertheless succeeded in securing for her a place of proud pre-eminence in maritime Hellas. Athens having achieved such a position as she now held, it was the idea of Pericles that the Athenians should so adorn their city that it should be a fitting symbol of the power and glory of their empire. Nor was it difficult for him to persuade his art-loving countrymen to embellish their city with those masterpieces of genius that in their ruins still excite the admiration of the world.
Upon the commanding site of the Acropolis was erected the unrivalled Parthenon. Various other edifices, rich with sculptures, were also erected there and in different parts of Athens, until the whole city took on a surprisingly brilliant and magnificent appearance. The whole world looked up to the Attic city with the same surprised wonder with which a century before it had regarded the city of Babylon as adorned by the power and wealth of the great Nebuchadnezzar.
The Athenians secured the vast sums of money needed for the prosecution of their great architectural works, out of the treasury of the Delian confederacy. The allies naturally declaimed bitterly against this proceeding, complaining that Athens, with their money, was "gilding itself as a proud and vain woman decks herself out with jewels." But the answer of Pericles to them was, that the money was contributed to the end that the cities of the league should be protected from the Persians, and that so long as the Athenians kept the enemy at a distance they had a right to use the money as they pleased.
The Citizens are taken into the Pay of the State.--It was a fixed idea of Pericles that in a democracy there should be not only an equal distribution of political rights among all classes, but also an equalization of the means and opportunities of exercising these rights, as well as an equal participation by all in social and intellectual enjoyments.
In promoting his views Pericles carried to great length the system of payment for the most common public services. Thus, he introduced the custom of military pay; hitherto the Athenian soldier had served his country in the field as a matter of honor and duty. He also secured the payment of the citizen for serving as a juryman, as well as for his attendance upon the meetings of the popular assembly. Through his influence, also, salaries were attached to the various civil offices, the most of which had hitherto been unpaid positions.
These various measures enabled the poorer citizens to enjoy, without an inconvenient sacrifice, their franchise in the popular assembly, and to offer themselves for the different magistracies, which up to this time had been practically open only to men of means and leisure.
Furthermore, Pericles introduced or extended the practice of supplying all the citizens with free tickets to the theatre and other places of amusement, and of banqueting the people on festival days at the public expense.
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.--Under Pericles Athens had become the most powerful naval state in the world. In one of his last speeches, made at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, in which he recounts the resources of the Athenian empire, Pericles says to his fellow-citizens: "There is not now a king, there is not any nation in the universal world, able to withstand that navy which at this juncture you can launch out to sea."
But the most significant feature of this new imperial power was the combination of these vast material resources with the most imposing display of intellectual resources that the world had ever witnessed. Never before had there been such a union of the material and intellectual elements of civilization at the seat of empire. Literature and art had been carried to the utmost perfection possible to human genius. Art was represented by the inimitable creations of Phidias and Polygnotus. The drama was illustrated by the incomparable tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and by the comedies of Aristophanes, while the writing of the world's annals had become an art in the graceful narrations of Herodotus.
But there were elements of weakness in the splendid imperial structure. The subject cities of the empire were the slaves of Athens. To her they paid tribute. To her courts they were dragged for trial. Naturally they regarded Athens as the destroyer of Hellenic liberties, and watched impatiently for the first favorable moment to revolt, and throw off the hateful yoke that she had imposed upon them. Hence the Athenian empire rested upon a foundation of sand.
Had Athens, instead of enslaving her confederates of the Delian league, only been able to find out some way of retaining them as allies in an equal union,--a great and perhaps impossible task in that age of the world,--as head of the federated Greek race, she might have secured for Hellas the sovereignty of the Mediterranean, and the history of Rome might have ended with the first century of the Republic.
Furthermore, in his system of payment for the most common public services, and of wholesale public gratuities, Pericles had introduced or encouraged practices that had the same demoralizing effects upon the Athenians that the free distribution of grain at Rome had upon the Roman populace. These pernicious customs cast discredit upon labor, destroyed frugality, and fostered idleness, thus sapping the virtues and strength of the Athenian democracy.
Illustrations of these weaknesses, as well as of the strength of the Athenian empire, will be afforded by the great struggle between Athens and Sparta known as the Peloponnesian War, the causes and chief incidents of which we shall next rehearse.
XV. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR: THE SPARTAN AND THE THEBAN SUPREMACY
1. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404 B.C.).
CAUSES OF THE WAR.--During the closing years of the life of Pericles, the growing jealousy between Athens and Sparta broke out in the long struggle known as the Peloponnesian War. Pericles had foreseen the coming storm: "I descry war," said he, "lowering from the Peloponnesus." His whole later policy looked toward the preparation of Athens for the "irrepressible conflict."
The immediate causes of the war were, first, the interference of Athens, on the side of the Corcyræans, in a quarrel between them and their mother city Corinth; and secondly, the blockade by the Athenians of Potidæa, on the Macedonian coast. This was a Corinthian colony, but it was a member of the Delian league, and was now being chastised by Athens for attempted secession. Corinth, as the ever-jealous naval rival of Athens, had endeavored to lend aid to her daughter, but had been worsted in an engagement with the Athenians.
With affairs in this shape, Corinth, seconded by other states that had causes of complaint against Athens, appealed to Sparta, as the head of the Dorian alliance, for aid and justice. The Spartans, after listening to the deputies of both sides, decided that the Athenians had been guilty of injustice, and declared for war. The resolution of the Spartans was endorsed by the Peloponnesian confederation, and apparently approved by the Delphian oracle, which, in response to an inquiry of the Spartans as to what would be the issue of the proposed undertaking, assured them that "they would gain the victory, if they fought with all their might."
COMPARISON OF THE RESOURCES OF SPARTA AND OF ATHENS.--The resources of Hellas were, at the outbreak of the war, very evenly divided between the two parties. With Sparta were all the states of the Peloponnesus, save Argos and Achaia, while beyond the Isthmus the Boeotian League, headed by Thebes, and other states were her allies. Together, these states could raise a land force of sixty thousand men, besides a considerable naval armament, Corinth being especially strong in ships.
Athens commanded all the resources of the subject cities--about three hundred in number, with twice as many smaller towns--of her great maritime empire. Her independent allies were Chios, Lesbos, Corcyra, and other states. Of course the chief strength of Athens lay in her splendid navy.
THE BEGINNING: ATTACK UPON PLATÆA BY THE THEBANS.--The first act in the long and terrible drama was enacted at night, within the walls of Platæa. This city, though in Boeotia, was under the protection of Athens, and would have nothing to do with the Boeotian League.
Anxious to get possession of this place before the actual outbreak of the war which they saw to be inevitable, the Thebans planned its surprise and capture. Three hundred Thebans gained access to the unguarded city in the dead of night, and marching to the public square, summoned the Platæans to exchange the Athenian for a Boeotian alliance.
The Platæans were upon the point of acceding to all the demands made upon them, when, discovering the small number of the enemy, they attacked and overpowered them in the darkness, and took a hundred and eighty of them prisoners. These captives they afterwards murdered, in violation, as the Thebans always maintained, of a sacred promise that their lives should be spared. This wretched affair at Platæa precipitated the war (431 B.C.).
INVASION OF ATTICA: PESTILENCE AT ATHENS.--A Spartan army was soon overrunning Attica, while an Athenian fleet was ravaging the coasts of the Peloponnesus. Pericles persuaded the country people of Attica to abandon their villas and hamlets and gather within the defences of the city. He did not deem it prudent to risk a battle in the open fields. From the walls of Athens the people could see the flames of their burning villages and farmhouses, as the enemy ravaged the plains of Attica up to the very gates of the city. It required all the persuasion of Pericles to restrain them from issuing in a body from behind the ramparts and rushing to the defence of their homes.
The second year the Lacedæmonians again ravaged the fields about Athens, and drove the Athenians almost to frenzy with the sight of the flame and smoke of such property as had escaped the destruction of the previous year. To increase their misery, a pestilence broke out within the crowded city, and added its horrors to the already unbearable calamities of war. No pen could picture the despair and gloom that settled over the city. Athens lost, probably, one-fourth of her fighting men. Pericles, who had been the very soul and life of Athens through these dark days, fell a victim to the plague (429 B.C.). In dying, he said he considered his greatest praise to be that "he had never caused an Athenian to put on mourning."
After the death of Pericles the leadership of affairs at Athens fell into the hands of unprincipled demagogues, of whom Cleon was chief. The mob element got control of the popular assembly, so that hereafter we shall find many of its actions characterized neither by virtue nor wisdom.
DESPERATE AND CRUEL CHARACTER OF THE WAR.--On both sides the war was waged with the utmost vindictiveness and cruelty. As a rule, all the men captured by either side were killed.
In the year 428 B.C. the city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, revolted from the Athenians. With the rebellion suppressed, the fate of the Mytileneans was in the hands of the Athenian assembly. Cleon proposed that all the men of the place, six thousand in number, should be slain, and the women and children sold as slaves. This infamous decree was passed, and a galley despatched bearing the sentence for execution to the Athenian general at Mytilene.
By the next morning, however, the Athenians had repented of their hasty and cruel resolution. A second meeting of the assembly was hurriedly called; the barbarous vote was repealed; and a swift trireme, bearing the reprieve, set out in anxious haste to overtake the former galley, which had twenty-four hours the start. The trireme reached the island just in time to prevent the execution of the barbarous edict.
The second resolution of the Athenians, though more discriminating than the first decree, was quite severe enough. Over one thousand of the nobles of Mytilene were killed, the city was destroyed, and the larger part of the lands of the island given to citizens of Athens.
Still more unrelenting and cruel were the Spartans. In the summer of the same year that the Athenians wreaked such vengeance upon the Mytileneans, the Spartans and their allies captured the city of Platæa, put to death all the men, sold the women as slaves, and turned the site of the city into pasture-land.
EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE PEACE OF NICIAS (421 B.C.).--Soon after the affair at Mytilene and the destruction of Platæa, an enterprising general of the Athenians, named Demosthenes, seized and fortified a point of land (Pylos) on the coast of Messenia. The Spartans made every effort to dislodge the enemy. In the course of the siege, four hundred Spartans under Brasidas, having landed upon a little island (Sphacteria), were so unfortunate as to be cut off from the mainland by the sudden arrival of an Athenian fleet. About three hundred of them were at last captured and taken as prisoners to Athens.
But affairs now took a different turn; the Athenians were worsted (at the battle of Delium, 424 B.C.), and then much indecisive fighting followed. At last negotiations for peace were opened, which, after many embassies to and fro, resulted in what is known as the Peace of Nicias, from the prominent Athenian general who is supposed to have had most to do in bringing it about. The treaty arranged for a truce of fifty years. Each party was to give up to the other all prisoners and captured places.
ALCIBIADES AND THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION (415-413 B.C.).--The Peace of Nicias was only a nominal one. Some of the allies of the two principal parties to the truce were dissatisfied with it, and consequently its terms were not carried out in good faith or temper on either side. So the war went on. For about seven years, however, Athens and Sparta refrained from invading each other's territory; but even during this period each was aiding its allies in making war upon the dependents or confederates of the other. Finally, hostilities flamed out in open and avowed war, and all Hellas was again lit up with the fires of the fratricidal strife.
The most prominent person on the Athenian side during this latter period of the struggle was Alcibiades, a versatile and brilliant man, but a reckless and unsafe counsellor. He was a pupil of Socrates, but he failed to follow the counsels of his teacher. His astonishing escapades only seemed to attach the people more closely to him, for he possessed all those personal traits which make men popular idols. His influence over the democracy was unlimited. He was able to carry through the popular assembly almost any measure that it pleased him to advocate. The more prudent of the Athenians were filled with apprehension for the future of the state under such guidance. The noted misanthrope Timon gave expression to this feeling when, after Alcibiades had secured the assent of the popular assembly to one of his impolitic measures, he said to him: "Go on, my brave boy, and prosper; for your prosperity will bring on the ruin of all this crowd." And it did, as we shall see.
The most prosperous enterprise of Alcibiades, in the Timonian sense, was the inciting the Athenians to undertake an expedition against the Dorian city of Syracuse, in Sicily. The scheme that Alcibiades was revolving in his mind was a most magnificent one. He proposed that the Athenians, after effecting the conquest of Sicily, should make that island the base of operations against both Africa and Italy. With the Italians and Carthaginians subdued, the armaments of the entire Hellenic world outside of the Peloponnesus, were to be turned against the Spartans, who with one blow should be forever crushed, and Athens be left the arbiter of the destinies of Hellas.
Alcibiades succeeded in persuading the Athenians to undertake at least the first part of the colossal enterprise. An immense fleet was carefully equipped and manned. [Footnote: It consisted of one hundred and thirty- four costly triremes, bearing thirty-six thousand soldiers and sailors. The commanders were Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus. Later, Demosthenes was sent out with a reinforcement consisting of seventy-three triremes and five thousand soldiers.] Anxiously did those remaining behind watch the squadron as it bore away from the port of Athens. Could the watchers have foreseen the fate of the splendid armament, their anxiety would have passed into despair. "Athens itself was sailing out of the Piræus, never again to return."
Scarcely had the expedition arrived at Sicily, before Alcibiades, who was one of the leading generals in command of the armament, was summoned back to Athens to answer a charge of impiety. [Footnote: Just upon the eve of the departure of the expedition, the numerous statues of Hermes scattered throughout the city were grossly mutilated. Alcibiades was accused of having had a hand in the affair, and furthermore of having mimicked the sacred rites of the Eleusinian mysteries.] Fearing to trust himself in the hands of his enemies at Athens, he fled to Sparta, and there, by traitorous counsel, did all in his power to ruin the very expedition he had planned. He advised the Spartans to send at once their best general to the Syracusans. They sent Gylippus, an able commander, whose generalship contributed largely to the total and irretrievable defeat that the Athenians finally suffered. Their fleet and army were both virtually annihilated. Seven thousand prisoners were crowded into the open stone quarries, where hundreds speedily died of exposure and starvation. Most of the wretched survivors were sold as slaves. The disaster was appalling and complete. The resources of Athens were wrecked.
THE DECELEAN WAR: THE FALL OF ATHENS--While the Athenians were before Syracuse, the Spartans, acting upon the advice of Alcibiades, had taken possession of and fortified a strong and commanding position known as Decelea, in Attica, only twelve miles from Athens. This was a thorn in the side of Athens. Secure in this stronghold, the Spartans could annoy and keep in terror almost all the Attic plain. The occupation by the Spartans of this strategic point had such a determining influence upon the remainder of the Peloponnesian War, that this latter portion of it is known as the Decelean War (413-404 B.C.).
Taking advantage of the terrible misfortunes of Athens, her subject-allies now revolted and fell away from her on every side. The Persians, ever ready to aid the Greeks in destroying one another, lent a willing ear to the solicitations of the traitor Alcibiades, and gave help to the Spartans.
The Athenians put forth almost superhuman efforts to retrieve their fortunes. Had they been united among themselves, perhaps their efforts might not have been in vain. But the oligarchical party, for the sake of ruining the democracy were willing to ruin the empire. While the army was absent from Athens, they overturned the government, and established a sort of aristocratical rule (411 B.C.), under which affairs were in the hands of a council of Four Hundred.
The Athenian troops, however, who were at Samos, would not recognize the new government. They voted themselves to be the true Athens, and forgetting and forgiving the past, recalled Alcibiades, and gave him command of the army, thereby well illustrating what the poet Aristophanes said respecting the disposition of the Athenians towards the spoiled favorite,--"They love, they hate, but cannot live without him."
Alcibiades detached the Persians from the side of the Spartans, and gained some splendid victories for Athens. But he could not undo the evil he had done. He had ruined Athens beyond redemption by any human power. Constantly the struggle grew more and more hopeless. Alcibiades was defeated, and fearing to face the Athenians, who had deposed him from his command, sought safety in flight.
Finally, at Ægospotami, on the Hellespont, the Athenian fleet was surprised and captured by the Spartans under Lysander (405 B.C.). The prisoners, three thousand in number, were massacred, and the usual rites of burial denied their bodies.
The battle of Ægospotami sealed the fate of Athens. "That night," writes the historian Xenophon, referring to the night upon which the news of the woful disaster reached Athens, "That night no man slept."
The towns on the Thracian and Macedonian coasts, and the islands of the Ægean belonging to the Athenian Empire, now fell into the hands of the Peloponnesians. Athens was besieged by sea and land, and soon forced to surrender. Some of the allies insisted upon the total destruction of the city, and the conversion of its site into pasture-land. The Spartans, however, with apparent magnanimity, declared that they would never consent thus "to put out one of the eyes of Greece."
The real motive, doubtless, of the Spartans in sparing the city was their fear lest, with Athens blotted out, Thebes or Corinth should become too powerful. So the city itself was spared, but the fortifications of Piræus and the Long Walls were levelled to the ground, the work of demolition being begun to the accompaniment of festive music (404 B.C.).
Sparta's power was now supreme. She had neither peer nor rival among all the Grecian states. Throughout the war she had maintained that her only purpose in warring against Athens was to regain liberty for the Grecian cities. We shall very soon see what sort of liberty it was that they enjoyed under her guardianship.
RESULTS OF THE WAR.--"Never," says Thucydides, commenting upon the lamentable results of the Peloponnesian War, "Never had so many cities been made desolate by victories;... never were there so many instances of banishment; never so many scenes of slaughter either in battle or sedition."
Athens was but the wreck of her former self. She had lost two hundred ships and sixty thousand men, including the killed among her allies. Things were just the reverse now of what they were at the time of the Persian invasion. When, with all Athens in ruins, Themistocles at Salamis was taunted by the Spartans with being a man without a city, he replied grandly, "Athens is here in her ships." But now the real Athens was gone; only the empty shell remained.
And all the rest of Hellas showed the marks of the cruel war. Spots where once had stood large towns were now pasture-land. But more lamentable than all else besides, was the effect of the war upon the intellectual and moral life of the Greek race. The Grecian world had sunk many degrees in morality; while the vigor and productiveness of the intellectual and artistic life of Hellas, the centre and home of which had been Athens, were impaired beyond recovery. The achievements of the Greek intellect, especially in the fields of philosophic thought, in the century following the war were, it is true, wonderful; but these triumphs merely show, we may believe, what the Hellenic mind would have done for art and general culture, had it been permitted, unchecked, and under the favoring and inspiring conditions of liberty and self-government, to disclose all that was latent in it.
2. THE SPARTAN AND THE THEBAN SUPREMACY
SPARTAN SUPREMACY.--For just one generation following the Peloponnesian War (404-371 B.C.), Sparta held the leadership of the Grecian states. Aristocratical governments, with institutions similar to the Spartan, were established in the different cities of the old Athenian Empire. At Athens, the democratical constitution of Solon, under which the Athenians had attained their greatness, was abolished, and an oppressive oligarchy established in its stead. The Thirty Tyrants, however, who administered this government, were, after eight months' infamous rule, driven from the city, and the old democratic constitution, somewhat modified, was re- established (403 B.C.).
It was during this period that Socrates, the greatest moralist and teacher of antiquity that Europe had produced, was condemned to death, because his teachings were thought contrary to the religion of the Athenians. To this era also belongs the well-known expedition of the Ten Thousand Greeks.
EXPEDITION OF THE TEN THOUSAND (401-400 B.C.).--Cyrus, satrap of the Persian province of Asia Minor, thinking that his brother Artaxerxes held the throne unjustly, planned to wrest it from him. For carrying out this purpose, he raised an army composed of a hundred thousand Barbarians and about eleven thousand Greek mercenaries.
With this force Cyrus set out from Sardis, in the spring of 401 B.C. He marched without opposition across Asia Minor and Mesopotamia to Babylonia, into the very heart of the Persian empire. Here, at Cunaxa, he was confronted by Artaxerxes with a force of more than half a million of men. The Barbarian allies of Cyrus were scattered at the first onset of the enemy; but the Greeks stood like a rampart of rock. Cyrus, however, was slain; and the other Greek generals, having been persuaded to enter into a council, were treacherously murdered by the Persians.
The Greeks, in a hurried night meeting, chose new generals to lead them back to their homes. One of these was Xenophon, the popular historian of the expedition. Now commenced one of the most memorable retreats in all history. After a most harassing march over the hot plains of the Tigris and the icy passes of Armenia, the survivors reached the Black Sea, the abode of sister Greek colonies.
THEBAN SUPREMACY (371-362 B.C.).--Throughout all the period of her supremacy, Sparta dealt selfishly and tyrannically with the other Grecian states. But at last the fiery resentment kindled by her oppressive measures inspired such a determined revolt against her as brought to an end her assumed supremacy over her sister cities. It was a city in Boeotia that led the uprising against Sparta. This was Thebes. The oligarchical government which the Lacedæmonians had set up in that capital was overthrown by Pelopidas at the head of the so-called Sacred Band, a company of three hundred select men who were bound by oath to stand by each other to the last. Pelopidas was seconded in all his efforts by Epaminondas, one of the ablest generals the Grecian race ever produced. Under the masterly guidance and inspiration of these patriot leaders, Thebes very soon secured a predominating influence in the affairs of Greece.
It was Epaminondas who, when his enemies sought to disgrace and annoy him by electing him "public scavenger," made, in accepting the office, the memorable utterance, "If the office will not reflect honor upon me, I will reflect honor upon it."
At Leuctra (371 B.C.) the Thebans earned the renown of being the most invincible soldiers in the world by completely overthrowing, with a force of six thousand men, the Spartan army of twice that number. This is said to have been the first time that the Spartans were ever fairly defeated in open battle. Their forces had been annihilated, as at Thermopylæ,--but annihilation is not defeat.
From the victory of Leuctra dates the short but brilliant period of Theban supremacy. The year after that battle Epaminondas led an army into the Peloponnesus to aid the Arcadians, who had risen against Sparta. Laconia was ravaged, and for the first time Spartan women saw the smoke of fires kindled by an enemy.
To strengthen Arcadia's power of resistance to Sparta, Epaminondas perfected a league among the hitherto isolated towns and cantons of the district. As the mutual jealousies of the leading cities prevented him from making any one of them the capital of the confederation, he founded Megalopolis, or the Great City, and made it the head of the union. In the pursuit of the same policy, Epaminondas also restored the independence of Messenia.
But, moved by jealousy of the rapidly growing power of Thebes, Athens now formed an alliance with her old rival Sparta against her. Three times more did Epaminondas lead an army into the Peloponnesus. During his fourth and last expedition he fought with the Spartans and Athenians the great battle of Mantinea, in Arcadia. On this memorable field, Epaminondas led the Thebans once more to victory; but he himself was slain, and with him fell the hopes and power of Thebes (362 B.C.).
All the states of Greece now lay exhausted, worn out by their endless domestic contentions and wars. There was scarcely sufficient strength left to strike one worthy blow against enslavement by the master destined soon to come from the North.
Chapter XVI
PERIOD OF MACEDONIAN SUPREMACY: EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER. (338-323 B.C.)
GENERAL STATEMENT.--Macedonia lay to the north of Greece proper. The ruling class of the country was probably of Hellenic race; at all events the Macedonian kings were allowed to take part in the Olympian games--a privilege accorded to none but pure Hellenes. Their efforts to spread Greek art and culture among their subjects, a race of rough but brave and martial men, unaccustomed to city life, had been so far successful that the country had, to a certain degree, become Hellenized.
So this period of Macedonian supremacy upon which we are entering belongs to the history of the political life of the Greek race, as well as the eras marked by Athenian, Spartan, or Theban leadership. It was Hellenic institutions, customs, and manners, Hellenic language and civilization, that the Macedonians, in the extended conquests which we are about to narrate, spread over the world. [Footnote: Of course it was rather the outer forms than the real inner life and spirit of the old Greek civilization which were adopted by the non-Hellenic peoples of Egypt and Western Asia. Hence the resulting culture is given a special name, Hellenism, which, in Professor Jebbs' language, means,--"not 'being Hellenes,' or Greeks, but--'doing like Hellenes'; and as the adjective answering to Hellas is Hellenic, so the adjective answering to Hellenism is Hellenistic."] It is this which makes the short-lived Macedonian empire so important in universal history.
PHILIP OF MACEDON.--Macedonia first rose to importance during the reign of Philip II. (359-336 B.C.), better known as Philip of Macedon. He was a man of pre-eminent ability, of wonderful address in diplomacy, and possessed rare genius as an organizer and military chieftain. The art of war he had learned in youth as a hostage-pupil of Epaminondas of Thebes. He was the originator of the "Macedonian phalanx" a body as renowned in the military history of Macedonia as is the "legion" in that of Rome.
With his kingdom settled and consolidated at home, Philip's ambition led him to seek the leadership of the Grecian states. He sought to gain his purpose rather by artful diplomacy and intrigue than by open force. In the use of these weapons he might have been the teacher of the Athenian Themistocles.
THE SECOND SACRED WAR (355-346 B.C.).--Philip quickly extended his power over a large part of Thrace and the Greek cities of Chalcidice. Meanwhile he was, in the following way, acquiring a commanding position in the affairs of the states of Greece proper.
The Phocians had put to secular use some of the lands which, at the end of the First Sacred War (see p. 108), had been consecrated to the Delphian Apollo. Taken to task and heavily fined for this act by the other members of the Delphian Amphictyony, the Phocians deliberately robbed the temple, and used the treasure in the maintenance of a large force of mercenary soldiers. The Amphictyons not being able to punish the Phocians for their impiety, were forced to ask help of Philip, who gladly rendered the assistance sought.
The Phocians were now quickly subdued, their cities were destroyed, and the inhabitants scattered in villages and forced to pay tribute to the Delphian Apollo. The place that the Phocians had held in the Delphian Amphictyony was given to Philip, upon whom was also bestowed the privilege of presiding at the Pythian games. The position he had now secured was just what Philip had coveted, in order that he might use it to make himself master of all Greece.
BATTLE OF CHÆRONEA (338 B.C.).--Demosthenes at Athens was one of the few who seemed to understand the real designs of Philip. His penetration, like that of Pericles, descried a cloud lowering over Greece--this time from the North. With all the energy of his wonderful eloquence, he strove to stir up the Athenians to resist the encroachments of the king of Macedon. He hurled against him his famous "Philippics," speeches so filled with fierce denunciation that they have given name to all writings characterized by bitter criticism or violent invective.
At length the Athenians and Thebans, aroused by the oratory of Demosthenes and by some fresh encroachments of the Macedonians, united their forces, and met Philip upon the memorable field of Chæronea in Boeotia. The Macedonian phalanx swept everything before it. The Theban band was annihilated. The power and authority of Philip were now extended and acknowledged throughout Greece (338 B.C.).
PLAN TO INVADE ASIA.--While the Greek states were divided among themselves, they were united in an undying hatred of the Persians. They were at this time meditating an enterprise fraught with the greatest importance to the history of the world. This was a joint expedition against Persia. The march of the Ten Thousand Greeks through the very heart of the dominions of the Great King had encouraged this national undertaking, and illustrated the feasibility of the conquest of Asia. At a great council of the Grecian cities held at Corinth, Philip was chosen leader of this expedition. All Greece was astir with preparation. In the midst of all, Philip was assassinated during the festivities attending the marriage of his daughter, and his son Alexander succeeded to his place and power (336 B.C.).
ACCESSION OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.--Alexander was only twenty years of age when he came to his father's throne. The spirit of the man is shown in the complaint of the boy when news of his father's victories came to him: "Friends," said he to his playmates, "my father will possess himself of everything and leave nothing for us to do."
For about two years Alexander was busy suppressing revolts against his power among the different cities of Hellas, and chastising hostile tribes on the northern frontiers of Macedonia. Thebes having risen against him, he razed the city to the ground,--sparing, however, the house of the poet Pindar,--and sold thirty thousand of the inhabitants into slavery. Thus was one of the most renowned of the cities of Greece blotted out of existence.
ALEXANDER CROSSES THE HELLESPONT (334 B.C.).--Alexander was now free to carry out his father's scheme in regard to the Asiatic expedition. In the spring of 334 B.C., he set out, at the head of an army numbering about thirty-five thousand men, for the conquest of the Persian empire. Now commenced one of the most remarkable and swiftly executed campaigns recorded in history.
Crossing the Hellespont, Alexander routed the Persians at the important battle of the Granicus, by which victory all Asia Minor was laid open to the invader.
THE BATTLE OF ISSUS (333 B.C.).--At the northeast corner of the Mediterranean lies the plain of Issus. Here Alexander again defeated the Persian army, numbering six hundred thousand men. The family of Darius, including his mother, wife, and children, fell into the hands of Alexander; but the king himself escaped from the field, and hastened to his capital, Susa, to raise another army to oppose the march of the conqueror.
SIEGE OF TYRE (332 B.C.).--Before penetrating to the heart of the empire, Alexander turned to the south, in order to effect the subjugation of Phoenicia, that he might command the Phoenician fleets and prevent their being used to sever his communication with Greece. The island-city of Tyre, after a memorable siege, was taken by means of a mole, or causeway, built with incredible labor through the sea to the city. Eight thousand of the inhabitants were slain, and thirty thousand sold into slavery--a terrible warning to those cities that should dare to close their gates against the Macedonian.
ALEXANDER IN EGYPT.--With the cities of Phoenicia and the fleets of the Mediterranean subject to his control, Alexander easily effected the conquest of Egypt. The Egyptians, indeed, made no resistance to the Macedonians, but willingly exchanged masters.
While in the country, Alexander founded, at one of the mouths of the Nile, a city called, after himself, Alexandria. The city became the meeting- place of the East and West; and its importance through many centuries attests the far-sighted wisdom of its founder.
A less worthy enterprise of the conqueror was his expedition to the oasis of Siwah, located in the Libyan desert, where were a celebrated temple and oracle of Zeus Ammon. To gratify his own vanity, as well as to impress the superstitious barbarians, Alexander desired to be declared of celestial descent. The priests of the temple, in accordance with the wish of the king, gave out that the oracle pronounced Alexander to be the son of Zeus Ammon, and the destined ruler of the world.
THE BATTLE OF ARBELA (331 B.C.).--From Egypt Alexander recommenced his march towards the Persian capital. He had received offers of peace from Darius, but to these he is said to have replied, "There cannot be two suns in the heavens." Pushing on, he crossed the Euphrates and the Tigris without opposition; but upon the plain of Arbela, not far from ancient Nineveh, he found his further advance disputed by Darius with an immense army. Again the Macedonian phalanx "cut through the ranks of the Persians as a boat cuts through the waves." The fate of Darius has been already narrated in our story of the last of the Persian kings (see p. 82).
The battle of Arbela was one of the decisive combats of history. It marked the end of the long struggle between the East and the West, between Persia and Greece, and prepared the way for the spread of Hellenic civilization over all Western Asia.
ALEXANDER AT BABYLON, SUSA, AND PERSEPOLIS.--From the field of Arbela Alexander marched south to Babylon, which opened its gates to him without opposition. Susa was next entered by the conqueror. Here he seized incredible quantities of gold and silver ($57,000,000, it is said), the treasure of the Great King.
From Susa Alexander's march was next directed to Persepolis, where he secured a treasure more than twice as great ($138,000,000) as that found at Susa. Upon Persepolis Alexander wreaked vengeance, for all Greece had suffered at the hands of the Persians. Many of the inhabitants were massacred, and others sold into slavery; while the palaces of the Persian kings were given to the flames.
Alexander, having thus overthrown the power of Darius, now began to regard himself, not only as his conqueror, but as his successor, and was thus looked upon by the Persians, He assumed the pomp and state of an Oriental monarch, and required the most obsequious homage from all who approached him. His Greek and Macedonian companions, unused to paying such servile adulation to their king, were much displeased at Alexander's conduct, and from this time on to his death, intrigues and conspiracies were being constantly formed among them against his power and life.
CONQUEST OF BACTRIA.--Urged on by an uncontrollable desire to possess himself of the most remote countries of which any accounts had ever reached him, Alexander now led his army to the north, and, after subduing many tribes that dwelt about the Caspian Sea, boldly conducted his soldiers over the snowy passes of the Hindu Kush, and descended into the fair provinces of Bactria.
During the years 329-328 B.C. Alexander conquered not only Bactria but Sogdiana, a country lying north of the Oxus. Among his captives here was a beautiful Bactrian princess, Roxana by name, who became his bride.
Alexander's stay in Sogdiana was saddened by his murder of his dearest friend Clitus, who had saved his life at the Granicus. Both were flushed with wine when the quarrel arose; after the deed, Alexander was overwhelmed with remorse.
CONQUESTS IN INDIA.--With the countries north of the Hindu Kush subdued and settled, Alexander recrossed the mountains, and led his army down upon the rich and crowded plains of India (327 B.C.). Here again he showed himself invincible, and received the submission of many of the native princes.
The most formidable resistance encountered by the Macedonians was offered by a strong and wealthy king named Porus. Captured at last and brought into the presence of Alexander, his proud answer to the conqueror's question as to how he thought he ought to be treated was, "Like a king." The impulsive Alexander gave him back his kingdom, to be held, however, subject to the Macedonian crown.
Alexander's desire was to extend his conquests to the Ganges, but his soldiers began to murmur because of the length and hardness of their campaigns, and he reluctantly gave up the undertaking. To secure the conquests already made, he founded, at different points in the valley of the Indus, Greek towns and colonies. One of these he named Alexandria, after himself; another Bucephala, in memory of his favorite steed; and still another Nicæa, for his victories. The modern museum at Lahore contains many relics of Greek art, dug up on the site of these Macedonian cities and camps.
Alexander's return route lay through the ancient Gedrosia, now Beluchistan, a region frightful with burning deserts, amidst which his soldiers endured almost incredible privations and sufferings. After a trying and calamitous march of over two months, Alexander, with the survivors of his army, reached Carmania. Here, to his unbounded joy, he was joined by Nearchus, the trusted admiral of his fleet, whom he had ordered to explore the sea between the Indus and the Euphrates.
To appropriately celebrate his conquests and discoveries, Alexander instituted a series of religious festivals, amidst which his soldiers forgot the dangers of their numberless battles and the hardships of their unparalleled marches, which had put to the test every power of human endurance. And well might these veterans glory in their achievements. In a few years they had conquered half the world, and changed the whole course of history.
PLANS AND DEATH OF ALEXANDER.--As the capital of his vast empire, which now stretched from the Ionian Sea to the Indus, Alexander chose the ancient Babylon, upon the Euphrates. His designs were to push his conquests as far to the west as he had extended them to the east. Arabia, Carthage, Italy, and Spain were to be added to his already vast domains. Indeed, the plans of Alexander embraced nothing less than the union and Hellenizing of the world. Not only were the peoples of Asia and Europe to be blended by means of colonies, but even the floras of the two continents were to be intermingled by the transplanting of fruits and trees from one continent to the other. Common laws and customs, a common language and a common religion, were to unite the world into one great family. Intermarriages were to blend the races. Alexander himself married a daughter of Darius III., and also one of Artaxerxes Ochus; and to ten thousand of his soldiers, whom he encouraged to take Asiatic wives, he gave magnificent gifts.
In the midst of his vast projects, Alexander was seized by a fever, brought on by his insane excesses, and died at Babylon, 323 B.C., in the thirty-second year of his age. His soldiers could not let him die without seeing him. The watchers of the palace were obliged to open the doors to them, and the veterans of a hundred battle-fields filed sorrowfully past the couch of their dying commander. His body was carried to Alexandria, in Egypt, and there enclosed in a golden coffin, and a splendid mausoleum was raised over it. His ambition for celestial honors was gratified in his death; for in Egypt and elsewhere temples were dedicated to him, and divine worship was paid to his statues.
We cannot deny to Alexander, in addition to a remarkable genius for military affairs, a profound and comprehensive intellect. He had fine tastes, and liberally encouraged art, science, and literature. The artists of his times had in him a munificent patron; and to his preceptor Aristotle he sent large collections of natural-history objects, gathered in his extended expeditions. He had a kind and generous nature: he avenged the murder of his enemy Darius; and he repented in bitter tears over the body of his faithful Clitus. He exposed himself like the commonest soldier, sharing with his men the hardships of the march and the dangers of the battle-field.
But he was self-seeking, foolishly vain, and madly ambitious of military glory. He plunged into shameful excesses, and gave way to bursts of passion that transformed a usually mild and generous disposition into the fury of a madman. The contradictions of his life cannot, perhaps, be better expressed than in the words once applied to the gifted Themistocles: "He was greater in genius than in character."
RESULTS OF ALEXANDER'S CONQUESTS.--The remarkable conquests of Alexander had far-reaching consequences. They ended the long struggle between Persia and Greece, and spread Hellenic civilization over Egypt and Western Asia. The distinction between Greek and Barbarian was obliterated, and the sympathies of men, hitherto so narrow and local, were widened, and thus an important preparation was made for the reception of the cosmopolitan creed of Christianity. The world was also given a universal language of culture, which was a further preparation for the spread of Christian teachings.
But the evil effects of the conquest were also positive and far-reaching. The sudden acquisition by the Greeks of the enormous wealth of the Persian empire, and contact with the vices and the effeminate luxury of the Oriental nations, had a most demoralizing effect upon Hellenic life. Greece became corrupt, and she in turn corrupted Rome. Thus the civilization of antiquity was undermined.
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF GRECIAN HISTORY TO THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
Legendary Age The Trojan War, legendary date 1194-1184 The Dorians enter the Peloponnesus, about 1104
Early History of Sparta Lycurgus gives laws to Sparta, about 850 The Messenian Wars, about 750-650
Early History of Athens Rule of the Archons 1050-612 Rebellion of Cylon 612 Legislation of Solon 594 Pisistratus rules 560-527 Expulsion of the Pisistratidæ 510
Period of Græco-Persian War First Expedition of Darius (led by Mardonius) 492 Battle of Marathon 490 Battle of Thermopylæ 480 Battle of Salamis 480 Battles of Platæa and Mycale 479
Period of Athenian Supremacy Athens rebuilt 478 Aristides chosen first president of the Confederacy of Delos 477 Themistocles sent into exile 471 Ostracism of Cimon 459 Pericles at the head of affairs-- Periclean Age 459-431
Events of the Peloponnesian War Beginning of the Peloponnesian War 431 Pestilence at Athens 430 Expedition against Syracuse 415 Battle of Ægospotami 405 Close of the War 404
Period of Spartan Supremacy Rule of the Thirty Tyrants at Athens 404-403 Expedition of the Ten Thousand 401-400 Peace of Antalcidas 387 Oligarchy established at Thebes 382 Spartan power broken on the field of Leuctra 371
Period of Theban Supremacy Battle of Leuctra, which secures the supremacy of Thebes 371 Battle of Mantinea and death of Epaminondas 362
Period of Macedonian Supremacy Battle of Chæronea 338 Death of Philip of Macedon 336 Alexander crosses the Hellespont 334 Battle of Issus 333 Battle of Arbela 331 Death of Alexander at Babylon 323
XVII. STATES FORMED FROM THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER
DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER.--There was no one who could wield the sword that fell from the hand of Alexander. It is told that, when dying, being asked to whom the kingdom should belong, he replied, "To the strongest," and handed his signet ring to his general Perdiccas. But Perdiccas was not strong enough to master the difficulties of the situation. [Footnote: Perdiccas ruled as regent for Philip Arridæus (an illegitimate brother of Alexander), who was proclaimed titular king.] Indeed, who is strong enough to rule the world?
Consequently the vast empire created by Alexander's unparalleled conquests was distracted by quarrels and wars, and before the close of the fourth century B.C., had become broken into many fragments. Besides minor states, [Footnote: Two of these lesser states, Rhodes and Pontus, deserve special notice:
RHODES.--Rhodes became the head of a maritime confederation of the cities and islands along the coasts of Asia Minor, and thus laid the basis of a remarkable commercial prosperity and naval power.
PONTUS.--Pontus (Greek for sea), a state of Asia Minor, was so called from its position upon the Euxine. It was never thoroughly conquered by the Macedonians. It has a place in history mainly because of the lustre shed upon it by the transcendent ability of one of its kings, Mithridates the Great (120-63 B.C.), who for a long time made successful resistance to the Roman arms.] four well-defined and important monarchies arose out of the ruins. After the rearrangement of boundaries that followed the decisive battle of Ipsus (fought in Phrygia 301 B.C.), these principal states had the outlines shown by the accompanying map. Their rulers were Lysimachus, Seleucus Nicator, Ptolemy, and Cassander, who had each assumed the title of king. The great horn being broken, in its place came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven. [Footnote: Dan. viii. 8.]
Lysimachus held Thrace and the western part of Asia Minor; Seleucus Nicator, Syria and the countries eastward to the Indus; Ptolemy ruled Egypt; and Cassander governed Macedonia, and claimed authority over Greece. [Footnote: Cassander never secured complete control of Greece, hence this country is not included in his domains as these appear upon the map.]
After barely mentioning the fate of the kingdom of Lysimachus, we will trace very briefly the fortunes of the other three monarchies until they were overthrown, one after the other, by the now rapidly rising power of Rome.
THRACE, OR THE KINGDOM OF LYSIMACHUS.--The kingdom of Lysimachus soon disappeared. He was defeated by Seleucus in the year 281 B.C., and his dominions were divided. The lands in Asia Minor were joined to the Syrian kingdom, while Thrace was absorbed by Macedonia.
SYRIA, OR THE KINGDOM OF THE SELEUCIDÆ (312-63 B.C.).--This kingdom, during the two centuries and more of its existence, played an important part in the political history of the world. Under its first king it comprised nominally almost all the countries of Asia conquered by Alexander, thus stretching from the Hellespont to the Indus. Its rulers were called Seleucidæ, from the founder of the kingdom, Seleucus Nicator.
Seleucus Nicator (312-280 B.C.), besides being a ruler of unusual ability, was a most liberal patron of learning and art. He is declared to have been "the greatest founder of cities that ever lived." Throughout his dominions he founded a vast number, some of which endured for many centuries. Antioch, on the Orontes, in Northern Syria, became, after Seleucia on the Tigris, the capital of the kingdom, and obtained an influence and renown as a centre of population and trade which have given its name a sure place in history.
The successors of Seleucus Nicator led the kingdom through checkered fortunes. On different sides provinces fell away and became independent states. [Footnote: The most important of these were the following:--1. PERGAMUS.--This was a state in western Asia Minor, which became independent upon the death of Seleucus Nicator (280 B.C.). Favored by the Romans, it gradually grew into a powerful kingdom, which at one time embraced a considerable part of Asia Minor. Its capital, also called Pergamus, became a most noted centre of Greek learning and civilization. 2. PARTHIA.--Parthia was a powerful Turanian state that grew up east of the Euphrates River (from about 255 B.C. to 226 A.D.). Its kings were at first formidable enemies of the rulers of Syria, and later of the Romans, whom they never allowed to make any considerable conquest beyond the Euphrates.] Antiochus III. (223-187 B.C.), called "the Great," raised the kingdom for a short time into great prominence; but attempting to make conquests in Europe, and further, giving asylum to the Carthaginian general Hannibal, he incurred the fatal hostility of Rome. Quickly driven by the Roman legions across the Hellespont, he was hopelessly defeated at the battle of Magnesia (190 B.C.). After this, the Syrian kingdom was of very little importance in the world's affairs. At last, brought again into collision with Rome, the country was overrun by Pompey the Great, and became a part of the Roman Republic, 63 B.C.
KINGDOM OF THE PTOLEMIES IN EGYPT (323-30 B.C.).--The Græco-Egyptian empire of the Ptolemies was by far the most important, in its influence upon the civilization of the world, of all the kingdoms that owed their origin to the conquests of Alexander. The founder of the house and dynasty was Ptolemy I., surnamed Soter (323-283 B.C.), one of Alexander's ablest generals. His descendants ruled in Egypt for nearly three centuries, a most important period in the intellectual life of the world. Under Ptolemy I., Alexandria became the great depot of exchange for the productions of the world. At the entrance of the harbor stood the Pharos, or light- house,--the first structure of its kind,--which Ptolemy built to guide the fleets of the world to his capital. This edifice was reckoned one of the Seven Wonders.
But it was not alone the exchange of material products that was comprehended in Ptolemy's scheme. His aim was to make his capital the intellectual centre of the world--the place where the arts, sciences, literatures, and even the religions, of the world should meet and mingle. He founded the famous Museum, a sort of college, which became the "University of the East," and established the renowned Alexandrian Library. Poets, artists, philosophers, and teachers in all departments of learning were encouraged to settle in Alexandria by the conferring of immunities and privileges, and by gifts and munificent patronage. His court embraced the learning and genius of the age.
Ptolemy II., Philadelphus (283-247 B.C.), followed closely in the footsteps of his father, carrying out, as far as possible, the plans and policies of the preceding reign. Under his successor, Ptolemy III., Euergetes (247-242 B.C.), the dominions of the Ptolemies touched their widest limits; while the capital Alexandria reached the culminating point in her fame as the centre of Hellenistic civilization.
Altogether the Ptolemies reigned in Egypt almost exactly three centuries (323-30 B.C.). Those rulers who held the throne for the last two hundred years were, with few exceptions, a succession of monsters, such as even Rome in her worst days could scarcely equal. The usage of intermarriage among the members of the royal family,--a usage in which the Ptolemies followed what was a custom of the ancient Pharaohs,--led to endless family quarrels, which resulted in fratricide, matricide, and all the dark deeds included in the calendar of royal crime. The story of the renowned Cleopatra, the last of the house of the Ptolemies, will be told in connection with Roman history, to which it properly belongs.
MACEDONIA AND GREECE.--From the time of the subjection of Greece by Philip and Alexander to the absorption of Macedonia into the growing dominions of Rome, the Greek cities of the peninsula were very much under the control or influence of the Macedonian kings. But the Greeks were never made for royal subjects, and consequently they were in a state of chronic revolt against this foreign authority.
Thus, no sooner had they heard of the death of Alexander than several of the Grecian states rose against the Macedonian general Antipater, and carried on with him what is known as the Lamian War (323-321 B.C.). The struggle ended disastrously for the Greeks, and Demosthenes, who had been the soul of the movement, was forced to flee from Athens. He took refuge upon an island just off the coast of the Peloponnesus; but being still hunted by Antipater, he put an end to his own life by means of poison.
The next matter of moment in the history of Macedonia, was an invasion of the Gauls (279 B.C.), kinsmen of the Celtic tribes that about a century before this time had sacked the city of Rome. These savage marauders inflicted terrible suffering upon both Macedonia and Greece. But they were at last expelled from Europe, and settling in Asia Minor, they there gave name to the province of Galatia. The celebrated Greek sculpture, The Dying Gaul, popularly but erroneously called The Dying Gladiator, is a most interesting memorial of this episode in Greek history.
Macedonia finally came in contact with a new enemy--the great military republic of the West. For lending aid to Carthage in the Second Punic War, she incurred the anger of Rome, and the result was that, after much intrigue and hard fighting, the country was brought into subjection to the Italian power. In the year 146 B.C. it was erected into a Roman province.
The political affairs of Greece proper during the period we are considering were chiefly comprehended in the fortunes of two confederacies, or leagues, one of which was called the Achæan, and the other the Ætolian League. United, these two confederacies might have maintained the political independence of Greece; but that spirit of dissension which we have seen to be the bane of the Hellenic peoples caused them to become, in the hands of intriguing Rome, weapons first for crushing Macedonia, and then for grinding each other to pieces. Finally, in the year 146 B.C., the splendid city of Corinth was taken by the Roman army and laid in ashes. This was the last act in the long and varied drama of the political life of ancient Greece. Henceforth it constituted simply a portion of the Roman Empire.
CONCLUSION.--We have now traced the political fortunes of the Hellenic race through about seven centuries of authentic history. In succeeding chapters it will be our pleasanter task to trace the more brilliant and worthy fortunes of the artistic and intellectual life of Hellas,--to portray, though necessarily in scanty outline, the achievements of that wonderful genius which enabled her, "captured, to lead captive her captor."
XVIII. GREEK ARCHITECTURE, SCULPTURE, AND PAINTING
THE GREEK SENSE OF BEAUTY.--The Greeks were artists by nature. "Ugliness gave them pain like a blow." Everything they made was beautiful. Beauty they placed next to holiness; indeed, they almost or quite made beauty and right the same thing. They are said to have thought it strange that Socrates was good, seeing he was so unprepossessing in appearance.
1. ARCHITECTURE.
PELASGIAN ARCHITECTURE.--The term Pelasgian is applied to various structures of massive masonry found in different parts of Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor. The origin of these works was a mystery to the earliest Hellenes, who ascribed them to a race of giants called Cyclops; hence the name Cyclopean that also attaches to them.
These works exhibit three well-defined stages of development. In the earliest and rudest structures the stones are gigantic in size and untouched by the chisel; in the next oldest the stones are worked into irregular polygonal blocks; while in the latest the blocks are cut into rectangular shapes and laid in regular courses. The walls of the old citadels or castles of several Grecian cities exhibit specimens of this primitive architecture (see p. 90).
ORDERS OF ARCHITECTURE.--There are three styles, or orders, of Grecian architecture--the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian. They are distinguished from one another chiefly by differences in the proportions and ornamentation of the column.
The Doric column is without a base, and has a simple and massive capital. At first the Doric temples of the Greeks were almost as massive as the Egyptian temples, but later they became more refined.
The Ionic column is characterized by the spiral volutes of the capital. This form was borrowed from the Assyrians, and was principally employed by the Greeks of Ionia, whence its name.
The Corinthian order is distinguished by its rich capital, formed of acanthus leaves. This type is made up of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Grecian elements. The addition of the acanthus leaves is said to have been suggested to the artist Callimachus by the pretty effect of a basket surrounded by the leaves of an acanthus plant, upon which it had accidentally fallen.
The entire structure was made to harmonize with its supporting columns. The general characteristics of the several orders are well portrayed by the terms we use when we speak of the "stern" Doric, the "graceful" Ionic, and the "ornate" Corinthian.
TEMPLE OF DIANA AT EPHESUS.--The temple of Diana at Ephesus was regarded as one of the wonders of the world. The original structure was commenced about the beginning of the sixth century B.C., and, according to Pliny, was one hundred and twenty years in process of building. Croesus gave liberally of his wealth to ornament the shrine.
In the year 356 B.C., on the same night, it is said, that Alexander was born, an ambitious youth, named Herostratus, fired the building, simply to immortalize his name. Alexander offered to rebuild the temple, provided that he be allowed to inscribe his name upon it. The Ephesians gracefully declined the proposal by replying that it was not right for one deity to erect a temple to another. Alexander was obliged to content himself with placing within the shrine his own portrait by Apelles--a piece of work which cost $30,000. The value of the gifts to the temple was beyond all calculation: kings and states vied with one another in splendid donations. Painters and sculptors were eager to have their masterpieces assigned a place within its walls, so that it became a great national gallery of paintings and statuary.
So inviolable was the sanctity of the temple that at all times, and especially in times of tumult and danger, property and treasures were carried to it as a safe repository. [Footnote: The Grecian temples were, in a certain sense, banks of deposit. They contained special chambers or vaults for the safe-keeping of valuables. The heaps of gold and silver relics discovered by Di Cesnola at Sunium, in the island of Cyprus, were found in the secret subterranean vaults of a great temple. The priests often loaned out on interest the money deposited with them, the revenue from this source being added to that from the leased lands of the temple and from the tithes of war booty, to meet the expenses of the services of the shrine. Usually the temple property in Greece was managed solely by the priests; but the treasure of the Parthenon at Athens formed an exception to this rule. The treasure here belonged to the state, and was controlled and disposed of by the vote of the people. Even the personal property of the goddess, the gold drapery of the statue (see p. 185), which was worth about $600,000, could be used in case of great need, but it must be replaced in due time, with a fair interest.] But the riches of the sanctuary proved too great a temptation to the Roman emperor Nero. He risked incurring the anger of the great Diana, and robbed the temple of many statues and a vast amount of gold. Later (in 262 A.D.), the barbarian Goths enriched themselves with the spoils of the shrine, and left it a ruin.
THE DELPHIAN TEMPLE.--The first temple erected at Delphi over the spot whence issued the mysterious vapors (see p. 105) was a rude wooden structure. In the year 548 B.C., the temple then standing was destroyed by fire. All the cities and states of Hellas contributed to its rebuilding. Even the king of Egypt, Amasis, sent a munificent gift. More than half a million of dollars was collected; for the temple was to exceed in magnificence anything the world had yet seen. It will be recalled that the Athenian Alcmæonidæ were the contractors who undertook the rebuilding of the shrine (see p. 122).
The temple was crowded with the spoils of many battle-fields, with the rich gifts of kings, and with rare works of art. Like the temple at Ephesus, the Delphian shrine, after remaining for many years secure, through the awe and reverence which its oracle inspired, suffered frequent spoliation. The greed of conquerors overcame all religious scruples. The Phocians robbed the temple of a treasure equivalent, it is estimated, to more than $10,000,000 with us (see p. 160); and Nero plundered it of five hundred bronze images. But Constantine (emperor of Rome 306-337 A.D., and founder of Constantinople) was the Nebuchadnezzar who bore off the sacred vessels and many statues as trophies to his new capital then rising on the Hellespont.
THE ATHENIAN ACROPOLIS AND THE PARTHENON.--In the history of art there is no other spot in the world possessed of such interest as the flat-topped rock, already described, which constituted the Athenian Acropolis. We have seen that in early times the eminence was used as a stronghold. But by the fifth century B.C. the city had slipped down upon the plain, and the summit of the rock was consecrated to the temples and the worship of the deities, and came to be called "the city of the gods." During the period of Athenian supremacy, especially in the Periclean Age, Hellenic genius and piety adorned this spot with temples and statues that all the world has pronounced to be faultless specimens of beauty and taste.
The most celebrated of the buildings upon the Acropolis was the Parthenon, the "Residence of the virgin-goddess Athena." This is considered the finest specimen of Greek architecture. It was designed by the architect Ictinus, but the sculptures that adorned it were the work of the celebrated Phidias. [Footnote: The subject of the wonderful frieze running round the temple was the procession which formed the most important feature of the Athenian festival known as the Great Panathenæa, which was celebrated every four years in honor of the patron-goddess of Athens. The larger part of the frieze is now in the British Museum, the Parthenon having been despoiled of its coronal of sculptures by Lord Elgin. Read Lord Byron's The Curse of Minerva. To the poet, Lord Elgin's act appeared worse than vandalism.] It was built in the Doric order, of marble from the neighboring Pentelicus. After standing for more than two thousand years, and having served successively as a Pagan temple, a Christian church, and a Mohammedan mosque, it finally was made to serve as a Turkish powder-magazine, in a war with the Venetians, in 1687. During the progress of this contest a bomb fired the magazine, and more than half of this masterpiece of ancient art was shivered into fragments. The front is nearly perfect, and is the most prominent feature of the Acropolis at the present time.
THE MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSUS.--This structure was another of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was a monumental tomb designed to preserve the memory of Mausolus, king of Caria, who died 353 B.C. Its erection was prompted by the love and grief of his wife Artemisia. The combined genius of the most noted artists of the age executed the wish of the queen. It is the traditions of this beautiful structure that have given the world a name for all magnificent monuments raised to perpetuate the memory of the dead.
THEATRES.--The most noted of Greek theatres was the Theatre of Dionysus at Athens, which was the model of all the others. It was semi-circular in form, and was partly cut in the rock on the southeastern slope of the Acropolis, the Greeks in the construction of their theatres generally taking advantage of a hillside. There were about one hundred rows of seats, the lowest one, bordering the orchestra, consisting of sixty-seven marble arm-chairs. The structure would hold thirty thousand spectators.
2. SCULPTURE AND PAINTING
PROGRESS IN SCULPTURE: INFLUENCE OF THE GYMNASTIC ART.--Wood was the material first employed by the Greek artists. About the eighth century B.C. bronze and marble were generally substituted for the less durable material. With this change sculpture began to make rapid progress.
But what exerted the most positive influence upon Greek sculpture was the gymnastic art. The exercises of the gymnasium and the contests of the sacred games afforded the artist unrivalled opportunities for the study of the human form. "The whole race," as Symonds says, "lived out its sculpture and its painting, rehearsed, as it were, the great works of Phidias and Polygnotus, in physical exercises, before it learned to express itself in marble or in color."
As the sacred buildings increased in number and costliness, the services of the artist were called into requisition for their adornment. At first the temple held only the statue of the god; but after a time it became, as we have already seen, a sort of national museum. The entablature, the pediments, and every niche of the interior of the shrine, as well as the surrounding grounds and groves, were peopled with statues and groups of figures, executed by the most renowned artists, and representing the national deities, the legendary heroes, victors at the public games, or incidents in the life of the state in which piety saw the special interposition of the god in whose honor the shrine had been reared.
PHIDIAS.--Among all the great sculptors of antiquity, Phidias stands pre- eminent. He was an Athenian, and was born about 488 B.C. He delighted in the beautiful myths and legends of the Heroic Age, and from these he drew subjects for his art. It was his genius that created the wonderful figures of the pediments and the frieze of the Parthenon.
The most celebrated of his colossal sculptures were the statue of Athena within the Parthenon, and that of Olympian Zeus in the temple at Olympia. The statue of Athena was of gigantic size, being about forty feet in height, and was constructed of ivory and gold, the hair, weapons, and drapery being of the latter material.
The statue of Olympian Zeus was also of ivory and gold. It was sixty feet high, and represented the god seated on his throne. The hair, beard, and drapery were of gold. The eyes were brilliant stones. Gems of great value decked the throne, and figures of exquisite design were sculptured on the golden robe. The colossal proportions of this wonderful work, as well as the lofty yet benign aspect of the countenance, harmonized well with the popular conception of the majesty and grace of the "father of gods and men." It was thought a great misfortune to die without having seen the Olympian Zeus. [Footnote: Phidias avowed that he took his idea from the representation which Homer gives in the first book of the Iliad in the passage thus translated by Pope:-- "He spake, and awful bends his sable brow, Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod, The stamp of fate, and sanction of the god. High heaven with reverence the dread signal took, And all Olympus to the centre shook." BULFINCH'S Age of Fable.]
The statue was in existence for eight hundred years, being finally destroyed by fire in the fifth century A.D.
Phidias also executed other works in both bronze and marble. He met an unworthy fate. Upon the famous shield at the feet of the statue of Athena in the Parthenon, among the figures in the representation of a battle between the Athenians and the Amazons, Phidias introduced a portrait of himself and also one of his patron Pericles. The enemies of the artist caused him to be prosecuted for this, which was considered an act of sacrilege. He died in prison (432 B.C.).
POLYCLETUS.--At the same time that Phidias was executing his ideal representations of the gods, Polycletus the elder, whose home was at Argos, was producing his renowned bronze statues of athletes. Among his pieces was one representing a spear-bearer, which was so perfect as to be known as "the Rule."
PRAXITELES.--This artist, after Polycletus, stands next to Phidias as one of the most eminent of Greek sculptors. His works were executed during the fourth century B.C. Among his chief pieces may be mentioned the "Cnidian Aphrodite." This stood in the Temple of Aphrodite at Cnidus, and was regarded by the ancients as the most perfect embodiment of the goddess of beauty. Pilgrimages were made from distant countries to Cnidus for the sake of looking upon the matchless statue.
LYSIPPUS.--This artist is renowned for his works in bronze. He flourished about the middle of the fourth century B.C. His statues were in great demand. Many of these were of colossal size. Alexander gave the artist many orders for statues of himself, and also of the heroes that fell in his campaigns.
THE RHODIAN COLOSSUS AND SCHOOLS OF ART.--The most noted pupil of Lysippus was Chares, who gave to the world the celebrated Colossus at Rhodes (about 280 B.C.). This was another of the wonders of the world. Its height was about one hundred and seven feet, and a man could barely encircle with his arms the thumb of the statue. [Footnote: The statue was not as large as the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. The height of the latter is 151 feet.] After standing little more than half a century, it was overthrown by an earthquake. For nine hundred years the Colossus then lay, like a Homeric god, prone upon the ground. Finally, the Arabs, having overrun this part of the Orient (A.D. 672), appropriated the statue, and thriftily sold it to a Jewish merchant. It is said that it required a train of nine hundred camels to bear away the bronze.
This gigantic piece of statuary was not a solitary one at Rhodes; for that city, next after Athens, was the great art centre of the Grecian world. Its streets and gardens and public edifices were literally crowded with statues. The island became the favorite resort of artists, and the various schools there founded acquired a wide renown. Many of the most prized works of Grecian art in our modern museums were executed by members of these Rhodian schools. The "Laocoön Group," found at Rome in 1506, and now in the Museum of the Vatican, is generally thought to be the work of three Rhodian sculptors.
GREEK PAINTING.--Although the Greek artists attained a high degree of excellence in painting, still they probably never brought the art to the perfection which they reached in sculpture. One reason for this was that paintings were never, like statues, objects of adoration; hence less attention was directed to them.
With the exception of antique vases and a few patches of mural decoration, all specimens of Greek painting have perished. Consequently our knowledge of Greek painting is derived chiefly from the descriptions of renowned works, by the ancient writers, and their anecdotes of great painters.
POLYGNOTUS.--Polygnotus (flourished 475-455 B.C.) has been called the Prometheus of painting, because he was the first to give fire and animation to the expression of the countenance. "In his hand," it is affirmed, "the human features became for the first time the mirror of the soul." Of a Polyxena [Footnote: Polyxena was a daughter of the Trojan Priam, famous for her beauty and her sufferings.] painted by this great master, it was said that "she carried in her eyelids the whole history of the Trojan War."
ZEUXIS AND PARRHASIUS.--These great artists lived and painted about 400 B.C. A favorite and familiar story preserves their names as companions, and commemorates their rival genius. Zeuxis, such is the story, painted a cluster of grapes which so closely imitated the real fruit that the birds pecked at them. His rival, for his piece, painted a curtain. Zeuxis asked Parrhasius to draw aside the veil and exhibit his picture. "I confess I am surpassed," generously admitted Zeuxis to his rival; "I deceived birds, but you have deceived the eyes of an experienced artist."
APELLES.--Apelles, who has been called the "Raphael of antiquity," was the court painter of Alexander the Great. He was such a consummate master of the art of painting, and carried it to such a state of perfection, that the ancient writers spoke of it as the "art of Apelles."
That Apelles, like Zeuxis and Parrhasius, painted life-like pictures is shown by the following story. In a contest between him and some rival artists, horses were the objects represented. Perceiving that the judges were unfriendly to him, and partial, Apelles insisted that less prejudiced judges should pronounce upon the merit of the respective pieces, demanding, at the same time, that the paintings should be shown to some horses that were near. When brought before the pictures of his rival, the horses exhibited no concern; but upon being shown the painting of Apelles, they manifested by neighing and other intelligent signs their instant recognition of the companions the great master had created.
NOTE.--Recent excavations (1878-1886) on the site of ancient Pergamus, in Asia Minor, have brought to light a great Altar, dating seemingly from the second century B.C., whose sides were decorated with gigantic sculptures representing the Battle of the Giants against the Gods. The sculptures, which by some are placed next to those of the Parthenon, are now in the Berlin Museum.
XIX. GREEK LITERATURE
1. EPIC AND LYRIC POETRY.
THE GREEKS AS LITERARY ARTISTS.--It was that same exquisite sense of fitness and proportion and beauty which made the Greeks artists in marble that also made them artists in language. "Of all the beautiful things which they created," says Professor Jebb, "their own language was the most beautiful." This language they wrought into epics, lyrics, dramas, histories, and orations as incomparable in form and beauty as their temples and statues.
THE HOMERIC POEMS,--The earliest specimens of Greek poetry are the so- called "Homeric poems," consisting of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The subject of the Iliad (from Ilios, Troy) is the "Wrath of Achilles." The Odyssey tells of the long wanderings of the hero Odysseus (Ulysses) up and down over many seas while seeking his native Ithaca, after the downfall of Ilios. These poems exerted an incalculable influence upon the literary and religious life of the Hellenic race.
The Iliad must be pronounced the world's greatest epic. It has been translated into all languages, and has been read with an ever fresh interest by generation after generation for nearly 3000 years. Alexander, it is told, slept with a copy beneath his pillow,--a copy prepared especially for him by his preceptor Aristotle, and called the "casket edition," from the jewelled box in which Alexander is said to have kept it. We preserve it quite as sacredly in all our courses of classical study. The poem has made warriors as well as poets. It incited the military ambition of Alexander, of Hannibal, and of Cæsar; it inspired Virgil, Dante, and Milton. All epic writers have taken it as their model.
DATE AND AUTHORSHIP OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.--Until the rise of modern German criticism, the Iliad and the Odyssey were almost universally ascribed to a single bard named Homer, who was believed to have lived about the middle of the ninth or tenth century B.C., one or two centuries after the events commemorated in his poems. Though tradition represents many cities as contending for the honor of having been his birthplace, still he was generally regarded as a native of Smyrna, in Asia Minor. He travelled widely (so it was believed), lost his sight, and then, as a wandering minstrel, sang his immortal verses to admiring listeners in the different cities of Hellas.
But it is now the opinion of many scholars that the Iliad and the Odyssey, as they stand today, are not, either of them, the creation of a single poet. They are believed to be mosaics; that is, to be built up out of the fragments of an extensive ballad literature that grew up in an age preceding the Homeric. The "Wrath of Achilles," which forms the nucleus of the Iliad as we have it, may, with very great probability, be ascribed to Homer, whom we may believe to have been the most prominent of a brotherhood of bards who flourished about 850 or 750 B.C.
THE HESIODIC POEMS.--Hesiod, who lived a century or more after the age that gave birth to the Homeric poems, was the poet of nature and of real life, especially of peasant life, in the dim transition age of Hellas. The Homeric bards sing of the deeds of heroes, and of a far-away time when gods mingled with men. Hesiod sings of common men, and of every-day, present duties. His greatest poem, a didactic epic, is entitled Works and Days. This is, in the main, a sort of farmers' calendar, in which the poet points out to the husbandman the lucky and unlucky days for doing certain kinds of work, eulogizes industry, and intersperses among all his practical lines homely maxims of morality and beautiful descriptive passages of the changing seasons.
LYRIC POETRY: PINDAR.--The Æolian island of Lesbos was the hearth and home of the earlier lyric poets. Among the earliest of the Lesbian singers was the poetess Sappho, whom the Greeks exalted to a place next to Homer. Plato calls her the Tenth Muse. Although her fame endures, her poetry, except some mere fragments, has perished.
Anacreon was a courtier at the time of the Greek tyrannies. He was a native of Ionia, but passed much of his time at the court of Polycrates of Samos. He seems to have enjoyed to the full the gay and easy life of a courtier, and sung so voluptuously of love and wine and festivity that the term "Anacreontic" has come to be used to characterize all poetry over- redolent of these themes.
But the greatest of the Greek lyric poets, and perhaps the greatest of all lyric poets of every age and race, was Pindar (about 522-443 B.C.). He was born at Thebes, but spent most of his time in the cities of Magna Græcia. Such was the reverence in which his memory was held that when Alexander, one hundred years after Pindar's time, levelled the city of Thebes to the ground on account of a revolt, the house of the poet was spared, and left standing amid the general ruin (see p. 161). The greater number of Pindar's poems were inspired by the scenes of the national festivals. They describe in lofty strains the splendors of the Olympian chariot-races, or the glory of the victors at the Isthmian, the Nemean, or the Pythian games.
Pindar insists strenuously upon virtue and self-culture. With deep meaning he says, "Become that which thou art;" that is, be that which you are made to be.
2. THE DRAMA AND DRAMATISTS
ORIGIN OF THE GREEK DRAMA.--The Greek drama, in both its branches of tragedy and comedy, grew out of the songs and dances instituted in honor of the god of wine--Dionysus (the same as the Roman Bacchus).
Tragedy (goat-song, possibly from the accompanying sacrifice of a goat) sprang from the graver songs, and comedy (village-song) from the lighter and more farcical ones. Gradually, recital and dialogue were added, there being at first but a single speaker, then two, and finally three, which last was the classical number. Thespis (about 536 B.C.) is said to have introduced this idea of the dialogue; hence the term "Thespian" applied to the tragic drama.
Owing to its origin, the Greek drama always retained a religious character, and further, presented two distinct features, the chorus (the songs and dances) and the dialogue. At first, the chorus was the all- important part; but later, the dialogue became the more prominent portion, the chorus, however, always remaining an essential feature of the performance. Finally, in the golden age of the Attic stage, the chorus dancers and singers were carefully trained, at great expense, and the dialogue became the masterpiece of some great poet,--and then the Greek drama, the most splendid creation of human genius, was complete.
THE THREE GREAT TRAGIC POETS.--There are three great names in Greek tragedy,--Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. These dramatists all wrote during the splendid period which followed the victories of the Persian war, when the intellectual life of all Hellas, and especially that of Athens, was strung to the highest tension. This lent nervous power and intensity to almost all they wrote, particularly to the tragedies of AEschylus and Sophocles. Of the two hundred and more dramas produced by these poets, only thirty-two have escaped the accidents of time.
Æschylus (525-456 B.C.) knew how to touch the hearts of the generation that had won the victories of the Persian war; for he had fought with honor both at Marathon and at Salamis. But it was on a very different arena that he was destined to win his most enduring fame. Eleven times did he carry off the prize in tragic composition. The Athenians called him the "Father of Tragedy."
The central idea of his dramas is that "no mortal may dare raise his heart too high,"--that "Zeus tames excessive lifting up of heart." Prometheus Bound is one of his chief works. Another of his great tragedies is Agamemnon, thought by some to be his masterpiece. The subject is the crime of Clytemnestra (see p. 96). It is a tragedy crowded with spirit-shaking terrors, and filled with more than human crimes and woes. Nowhere is portrayed with greater power the awful vengeance with which the implacable Nemesis is armed.
Sophocles (495-405 B.C.) while yet a youth gained the prize in a poetic contest with Æschylus. Plutarch says that Æschylus was so chagrined by his defeat that he left Athens and retired to Sicily. Sophocles now became the leader of tragedy at Athens. In almost every contest he carried away the first prize. He lived through nearly a century, a century, too, that comprised the most brilliant period of the life of Hellas. His dramas were perfect works of art. The leading idea of his pieces is the same as that which characterizes those of Æschylus; namely, that self-will and insolent pride arouse the righteous indignation of the gods, and that no mortal can contend successfully against the will of Zeus.
Euripides (485-406 B.C.) was a more popular dramatist than either Æschylus or Sophocles. His fame passed far beyond the limits of Greece. Herodotus asserts that the verses of the poet were recited by the natives of the remote country of Gedrosia; and Plutarch says that the Sicilians were so fond of his lines that many of the Athenian prisoners, taken before Syracuse, bought their liberty by teaching their masters his verses.
COMEDY: ARISTOPHANES.--Foremost among all writers of comedy must be placed Aristophanes (about 444-380 B.C.). He introduces us to the every-day life of the least admirable classes of Athenian society. Four of his most noted works are the Clouds, the Knights, the Birds, and the Wasps.
In the comedy of the Clouds, Aristophanes especially ridicules the Sophists, a school of philosophers and teachers just then rising into prominence at Athens, of whom the satirist unfairly makes Socrates the representative.
The aim of the Knights was the punishment and ruin of Cleon, whom we already know as one of the most conceited and insolent of the demagogues of Athens.
The play of the Birds is "the everlasting allegory of foolish sham and flimsy ambition." It was aimed particularly at the ambitious Sicilian schemes of Alcibiades; for at the time the play appeared, the Athenian army was before Syracuse, and elated by good news daily arriving, the Athenians were building the most gorgeous air-castles, and indulging in the most extravagant day-dreams of universal dominion.
In the Wasps, the poet satirizes the proceedings in the Athenian law-courts, by showing how the great citizen-juries, numbering sometimes five or six hundred, were befooled by the demagogues. But Aristophanes was something more than a master of mere mirth-provoking satire and ridicule: many of the choruses of his pieces are inexpressibly tender and beautiful.
3. HISTORY AND HISTORIANS
Poetry is the first form of literary expression among all peoples. So we must not be surprised to find that it was not until several centuries after the composition of the Homeric poems--that is, about the sixth century B.C.--that prose-writing appeared among the Greeks. Historical composition was then first cultivated. We can speak briefly of only three historians,--Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon,--whose names were cherished among the ancients, and whose writings are highly valued and carefully studied by ourselves.
HERODOTUS.--Herodotus (about 484-402 B.C.), born at Halicarnassus, in Asia Minor, is called the "Father of History." He travelled over much of the then known world, visiting Italy, Egypt, and Babylonia, and as an eye- witness describes with a never-failing vivacity and freshness the wonders of the different lands he had seen. Herodotus lived in a story-telling age, and he is himself an inimitable story-teller. To him we are indebted for a large part of the tales of antiquity--stories of men and events which we never tire of repeating. He was over-credulous, and was often imposed upon by his guides in Egypt and at Babylon; but he describes with great care and accuracy what he himself saw. It is sometimes very difficult, however, to determine just what he actually did see with his own eyes and experience in his own person; for it seems certain that, following the custom of the story-tellers of his time, he often related as his own personal adventures the experiences of others, yet with no thought of deceiving. In this he might be likened to our modern writers of historical romances.
The central theme of his great History is the Persian wars, the struggle between Asia and Greece. Around this he groups the several stories of the nations of antiquity. In the pictures which the artist-historian draws, we see vividly contrasted, as in no other writings, the East and the West, Persia and Hellas.
THUCYDIDES.--Thucydides (about 471-400 B.C.), though not so popular an historian as Herodotus, was a much more philosophical one. He was born near Athens. A pretty story is told of his youth, which must be repeated, though critics have pronounced it fabulous. The tale is that Thucydides, when only fifteen, was taken by his father to hear Herodotus recite his history at the Olympian games, and that the reading and the accompanying applause caused the boy to shed tears, and to resolve to become an historian.
Thucydides was engaged in military service during the first years of the Peloponnesian War; but, on account of his being unfortunate, possibly through his own neglect, the Athenians deprived him of his command, and he went into an exile of twenty years. It is to this circumstance that we are indebted for his invaluable History of the War between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians.
Through the closest observation and study, he qualified himself to become the historian of what he from the first foresaw would prove a memorable war. "I lived," he says, "through its whole extent, in the very flower of my understanding and strength, and with a close application of my thoughts, to gain an exact insight into all its occurrences." He died before his task was completed. The work is considered a model of historical writing. Demosthenes read and re-read his writings to improve his own style; and the greatest orators and historians of modern times have been equally diligent students of the work of the great Athenian.
XENOPHON.--Xenophon (about 445-355 B.C.) was an Athenian, and is known both as a general and a writer. The works that render his name so familiar are his Anabasis, a simple yet thrilling narrative of the Expedition of the Ten Thousand Greeks; and his Memorabilia, or Recollections of Socrates. This work by his devoted pupil is the most faithful portraiture that we possess of that philosopher.
4. ORATORY
INFLUENCE OF THE PUBLIC ASSEMBLY.--The art of oratory among the Greeks was fostered and developed by the democratic character of their institutions. The public assemblies of the democratic cities were great debating clubs, open to all. The gift of eloquence secured for its possessor a sure pre- eminence. The law-courts, too, especially the great jury-courts of Athens, were schools of oratory; for every citizen was obliged to be his own advocate and to defend his own case. Hence the attention bestowed upon public speaking, and the high degree of perfection attained by the Greeks in the difficult art of persuasion. Almost all the prominent Athenian statesmen were masters of oratory.
THEMISTOCLES AND PERICLES.--We have already become acquainted with Themistocles and Pericles as statesmen and leaders of Athenian affairs during the most stirring period of the history of Athens. They both were also great orators, and to that fact were largely indebted for their power and influence. Thucydides has preserved the oration delivered by Pericles in commemoration of those who fell in the first year of the Peloponnesian War. It is an incomparable picture of the beauty and glory of Athens at the zenith of her power, and has been pronounced one of the finest productions of antiquity. The language of the address, as we have it, is the historian's, but the sentiments are doubtless those of the great statesman. It was the habit of Thucydides to put speeches into the mouths of his characters.
DEMOSTHENES AND ÆSCHINES.--It has been the fortune of Demosthenes (385-322 B.C.) to have his name become throughout the world the synonym of eloquence. The labors and struggles by which, according to tradition, he achieved excellence in his art are held up anew to each generation of youth as guides of the path to success. His first address before the public assembly was a complete failure, owing to defects of voice and manner. With indomitable will he set himself to the task of correcting these. He shut himself up in a cave, and gave himself to the diligent study of Thucydides. That he might not be tempted to spend his time in society, he rendered his appearance ridiculous by shaving one side of his head. To correct a stammering utterance, he spoke with pebbles in his mouth, and broke himself of an ungainly habit of shrugging his shoulders by speaking beneath a suspended sword. To accustom himself to the tumult and interruptions of a public assembly, he declaimed upon the noisiest seashore.
These are some of the many stories told of the world's greatest orator. There is doubtless this much truth in them at least--that Demosthenes attained success, in spite of great discouragements, by persevering and laborious effort. It is certain that he was a most diligent student of Thucydides, whose great history he is said to have known by heart. More than sixty of his orations have been preserved. "Of all human productions they present to us the models which approach the nearest to perfection."
The latter part of the life of Demosthenes is intertwined with that of another and rival Athenian orator, Æschines. For his services to the state, the Athenians proposed to award to Demosthenes a golden crown. Æschines opposed this. All Athens and strangers from far and near gathered to hear the rival orators; for every matter at Athens was decided by a great debate. Demosthenes made the grandest effort of his life. His address, known as the "Oration on the Crown," has been declared to be "the most polished and powerful effort of human oratory." Æschines was completely crushed, and was sent into exile, and became a teacher of oratory at Rhodes.
He is said to have once gathered his disciples about him and to have read to them the oration of Demosthenes that had proved so fatal to himself. Carried away by the torrent of its eloquence, his pupils, unable to restrain their enthusiasm, burst into applause. "Ah!" said Æschines, who seemed to find solace in the fact that his defeat had been at the hands of so worthy an antagonist, "you should have heard the wild beast himself!"
Respecting the orations of Demosthenes against Philip of Macedon, and the death of the eloquent patriot, we have already spoken (see pp. 160, 174).
5. THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE.
The Alexandrian period of Greek literature embraces the time between the break-up of Alexander's empire and the conquest of Greece by Rome (300-146 B.C.). During this period Alexandria in Egypt was the centre of literary activity, hence the term Alexandrian, applied to the literature of the age. The great Museum and Library of the Ptolemies afforded in that capital such facilities for students and authors as existed in no other city in the world.
But the creative age of Greek literature was over. With the loss of political liberty, literature was cut off from its sources of inspiration. Consequently the Alexandrian literature lacked freshness and originality. The writers of the period were grammarians, commentators, and translators,--in a word, book-worms.
One of the most important literary undertakings of the age was the translation of the Old Testament into Greek. From the traditional number of translators (seventy) the version is known as the Septuagint (Latin for seventy.) The work was probably begun by Ptolemy Philadelphus, and was completed under his successors.
Among the poets of the period one name, and only one, stands out clear and pre-eminent. This is that of Theocritus, a Sicilian idyllist, who wrote at Alexandria under Ptolemy Philadelphus. His idyls are beautiful pictures of Sicilian pastoral life.
CONCLUSION: GRÆCO-ROMAN WRITERS.--After the Roman conquest of Greece, the centre of Greek literary activity shifted from Alexandria to Rome. Hence Greek literature now passes into what is known as its Græco-Roman period (146 B.C.-527 A.D.).
The most noted historical writer of the first part of this period was Polybius (about 203-121 B.C.), who wrote a history of the Roman conquests from 264 to 146 B.C. His work, though the larger part of it has reached us in a very mutilated state, is of great worth; for Polybius wrote of matters that had become history in his own day. He had lived to see the larger part of the world he knew absorbed by the ever-growing power of the Imperial City.
Plutarch (b. about 40 A.D.), "the prince of ancient biographers," will always live in literature as the author of the Parallel Lives, in which, with great wealth of illustrative anecdotes, he compares or contrasts Greek and Roman statesmen and soldiers.
XX. GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE
THE SEVEN SAGES; THE FORERUNNERS.--About the sixth century B.C. there lived and taught in different parts of Hellas many philosophers of real or reputed originality and wisdom. Among these were seven men, called the "Seven Sages," who held the place of pre-eminence. [Footnote: As in the case of the Seven Wonders of the World, ancient writers were not always agreed as to what names should be accorded the honor of enrolment in the sacred number. Thales, Solon, Periander, Cleobulus, Chilo, Bias, and Pittacus are, however, usually reckoned as the Seven Wise Men.] To them belongs the distinction of having first aroused the Greek intellect to philosophical thought. The wise sayings--such as "Know thyself" and "Nothing in excess"--attributed to them, are beyond number.
The ethical maxims and practical proverbs ascribed to the sages, while, like the so-called proverbs of Solomon, they contain a vast amount of practical wisdom, still do not constitute philosophy proper, which is a systematic search for the reason and causes of things. They form simply the introduction or prelude to Greek philosophy.
THE IONIC PHILOSOPHERS.--The first Greek school of philosophy grew up in the cities of Ionia, in Asia Minor, where almost all forms of Hellenic culture seem to have had their beginning. The founder of the system was Thales of Miletus (about 640-550 B.C.), who was followed by Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus.
One tenet held in common by all these philosophers was that matter and mind are inseparable; or, in other words, that all matter is animate. They never thought of the soul as something distinct and separable from matter as we do. Even the soul in Hades was conceived as having a body in every respect like that the soul possessed in the earthly life, only it was composed of a subtler substance. This conception of matter as being alive will help us to understand Greek mythology, which, it will be remembered, endowed trees, rivers, springs, clouds, the planets, all physical objects indeed, with intelligence and will.
PYTHAGORAS.--Pythagoras (about 580-500 B.C.) was born on the island of Samos, whence his title of "Samian Sage." Probable tradition says that he spent many years of his early life in Egypt, where he became versed in all the mysteries of the Egyptians. He returned to Greece with a great reputation, and finally settled at Crotona, in Italy.
Like many another ancient philosopher, Pythagoras sought to increase the reverence of his disciples for himself by peculiarities of dress and manner. His uncut hair and beard flowed down upon his shoulders and over his breast. He never smiled. His dress was a white robe, with a golden crown. For the first years of their novitiate, his pupils were not allowed to look upon their master. They listened to his lectures from behind a curtain. Ipse dixit, "he himself said so," was the only argument they must employ in debate. It is to Pythagoras, according to legend, that we are indebted for the word philosopher. Being asked of what he was master, he replied that he was simply a "philosopher," that is, a "lover of wisdom."
Pythagoras held views of the solar system that anticipated by two thousand years those of Copernicus and his school. He taught, only to his most select pupils however, that the earth is a sphere; and that, like the other planets, it revolves about a central globe of fire. From him comes the pretty conceit of the "music of the spheres." He imagined that the heavenly spheres, by their swift, rolling motions, produced musical notes, which united in a celestial melody, too refined, however, for human ears.
He taught the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, an idea he had doubtless brought from Egypt. Because of this belief the Pythagoreans were strict vegetarians, abstaining religiously from the use of all animal food.
ANAXAGORAS.--Anaxagoras (499-427 B.C.) was the first Greek philosopher who made mind, instead of necessity or chance, the arranging and harmonizing force of the universe. "Reason rules the world" was his first maxim.
Anaxagoras was the teacher in philosophy of Pericles, and it is certain that that statesman was greatly influenced by the liberal views of the philosopher; for in his general conceptions of the universe, Anaxagoras was far in advance of his age. He ventured to believe that the moon was somewhat like the earth, and inhabited; and taught that the sun was not a god, but a glowing rock, as large, probably, as the Peloponnesus.
But for his audacity, the philosopher suffered the fate of Galileo in a later age; he was charged with impiety and exiled. Yet this did not disturb the serenity of his mind. In banishment he said, "It is not I who have lost the Athenians, but the Athenians who have lost me."
EMPEDOCLES AND DEMOCRITUS.--In the teachings of Empedocles (about 492-432 B.C.) and Democritus (about 460-370 B.C.) we meet with many speculations respecting the constitution of matter and the origin of things which are startlingly similar to some of the doctrines held by modern scientists. Empedocles, with the evolutionists of to-day, taught that the higher forms of life arise out of the lower; Democritus conceived all things to be composed of invisible atoms, all alike in quality, but differing in form and combination.
THE SOPHISTS.--The Sophists, of whom the most noted were Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus, were a class of philosophers or teachers who gave instruction in rhetoric and the art of disputation. They travelled about from city to city, and contrary to the usual custom of the Greek philosophers, took fees from their pupils. They were shallow but brilliant men, caring more for the dress in which the thought was arrayed than for the thought itself, more for victory than for truth; and some of them inculcated a selfish morality. The better philosophers of the time despised them, and applied to them many harsh epithets, taunting them with selling wisdom, and accusing them of boasting that they could "make the worse appear the better reason."
SOCRATES.--Volumes would not contain what would be both instructive and interesting respecting the lives and works of the three great philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. We can, however, accord to each only a few words. Of these three eminent thinkers, Socrates (469-399 B.C.), though surpassed in grasp and power of intellect by both Plato and Aristotle, has the firmest hold upon the affections of the world.
Nature, while generous to the philosopher in the gifts of soul, was unkind to him in the matter of his person. His face was ugly as a satyr's, and he had an awkward, shambling walk, so that he invited the shafts of the comic poets of his time. He loved to gather a little circle about him in the Agora or in the streets, and then to draw out his listeners by a series of ingenious questions. His method was so peculiar to himself that it has received the designation of the "Socratic dialogue." He has very happily been called an educator, as opposed to an instructor. In the young men of his time Socrates found many devoted pupils. The youthful Alcibiades declared that "he was forced to stop his ears and flee away, that he might not sit down by the side of Socrates and grow old in listening."
Socrates was unfortunate in his domestic relations. Xanthippe, his wife, seems to have been of a practical turn of mind, and unable to sympathize with the abstracted ways of her husband.
This great philosopher believed that the proper study of mankind is man, his favorite maxim being "Know Thyself"; hence he is said to have brought philosophy from the heavens and introduced it to the homes of men.
Socrates held the Sophists in aversion, and in opposition to their selfish expediency taught the purest system of morals that the world had yet known, and which has been surpassed only by the precepts of the Great Teacher. He thought himself to be restrained from entering upon what was inexpedient or wrong by a tutelary spirit. He believed in the immortality of the soul and in a Supreme Ruler of the universe, but sometimes spoke slightingly of the temples and the popular deities. This led to his prosecution on the double charge of blasphemy and of corrupting the Athenian youth. The fact that Alcibiades had been his pupil was used to prove the demoralizing tendency of his teachings. He was condemned to drink the fatal hemlock. The night before his death he spent with his disciples, discoursing on the immortality of the soul.
PLATO.--Plato (429-348 B.C.), "the broad-browed," was a philosopher of noble birth, before whom in youth a brilliant career in the world of Greek affairs opened; but, coming under the influence of Socrates, he resolved to give up all his prospects in politics and devote himself to philosophy. Upon the condemnation and death of his master he went into voluntary exile. In many lands he gathered knowledge and met with varied experiences. He visited Sicily, where he was so unfortunate as to call upon himself the resentment of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, through having worsted him in an argument, and also by an uncourtly plainness of speech. The king caused him to be sold into slavery as a prisoner of war. Being ransomed by a friend, he found his way to his native Athens, and established a school of philosophy in the Academy, a public garden close to Athens. Here amid the disciples that thronged to his lectures, he passed the greater part of his long life,--he died 348 B.C., at the age of eighty-one years,--laboring incessantly upon the great works that bear his name.
Plato imitated in his writings the method of Socrates in conversation. The discourse is carried on by questions and answers, hence the term Dialogues that attaches to his works. He attributes to his master, Socrates, much of the philosophy that he teaches: yet his Dialogues are all deeply tinged with his own genius and thought. In the Republic Plato portrays his conception of an ideal state. He was opposed to the republic of Athens, and his system, in some of its main features, was singularly like the Feudal System of Mediæval Europe.
The Phædo is a record of the last conversation of Socrates with his disciples--an immortal argument for the immortality of the soul.
Plato believed not only in a future life (post-existence), but also in pre-existence; teaching that the ideas of reason, or our intuitions, are reminiscences of a past experience. [Footnote: In the following lines from Wordsworth we catch a glimpse of Plato's doctrine of pre-existence:-- "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, Nor yet in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God, who is our home."--Ode on Immortality.] Plato's doctrines have exerted a profound influence upon all schools of thought and philosophies since his day. In some of his precepts he made a close approach to the teachings of Christianity. "We ought to become like God," he said, "as far as this is possible; and to become like Him is to become holy and just and wise."
ARISTOTLE.--As Socrates was surpassed by his pupil Plato, so in turn was Plato excelled in certain respects by his disciple Aristotle, "the master of those who know." In him the philosophical genius of the Hellenic intellect reached its culmination. He was born in the Macedonian city of Stagira (384 B.C.), and hence is frequently called the "Stagirite." As in the case of Socrates, his personal appearance gave no promise of the philosopher. His teacher, Plato, however, recognized the genius of his pupil, and called him the "Mind of the school."
After studying for twenty years in the school of Plato, Aristotle became the preceptor of Alexander the Great. When Philip invited him to become the tutor of his son, he gracefully complimented the philosopher by saying in his letter that he was grateful to the gods that the prince was born in the same age with him. Alexander became the liberal patron of his tutor, and aided him in his scientific studies by sending him large collections of plants and animals, gathered on his distant expeditions.
At Athens the great philosopher delivered his lectures while walking about beneath the trees and porticoes of the Lyceum; hence the term peripatetic (from the Greek peripatein, "to walk about") applied to his philosophy.
Among the productions of his fertile intellect are works on rhetoric, logic, poetry, morals and politics, physics and metaphysics. For centuries his works were studied and copied and commented upon by both European and Asiatic scholars, in the schools of Athens and Rome, of Alexandria and Constantinople. Until the time of Bacon in England, for nearly two thousand years, Aristotle ruled over the realm of mind with a despotic sway. All teachers and philosophers acknowledged him as their guide and master.
ZENO AND THE STOICS.--We are now approaching the period when the political life of Hellas was failing, and was being fast overshadowed by the greatness of Rome. But the intellectual life of the Greek race was by no means eclipsed by the calamity that ended its political existence. For centuries after that event the poets, scholars, and philosophers of this intellectual people led a brilliant career in the schools and universities of the Roman world.
From among all the philosophers of this long period, we can select for brief mention only a few. And first we shall speak of Zeno and Epicurus, who are noted as founders of schools of philosophy that exerted a vast influence upon both the thought and the conduct of many centuries.
Zeno, founder of the celebrated school of the Stoics, lived in the third century before our era (about 362-264). He taught at Athens in a public porch (in Greek, stoa), from which circumstance comes the name applied to his disciples.
The Stoical philosophy was the outgrowth, in part at least, of that of the Cynics, a sect of most rigid and austere morals. The typical representative of this sect is found in Diogenes, who lived, so the story goes, in a tub, and went about Athens by daylight with a lantern, in search, as he said, of a man. The Cynics were simply a race of pagan hermits.
The Stoics inculcated virtue for the sake of itself. They believed--and it would be very difficult to frame a better creed--that "man's chief business here is to do his duty." They schooled themselves to bear with perfect composure any lot that destiny might appoint. Any sign of emotion on account of calamity was considered unmanly and unphilosophical. Thus, when told of the sudden death of his son, the Stoic replied, "Well, I never imagined that I had given life to an immortal."
Stoicism became a favorite system of thought with certain classes of the Romans, and under its teachings and doctrines were nourished some of the purest and loftiest characters produced by the pagan world. It numbered among its representatives, in later times, the illustrious Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the scarcely less renowned and equally virtuous slave Epictetus. In many of its teachings it anticipated Christian doctrines, and was, in the philosophical world, a very important preparation for Christianity.
EPICURUS AND THE EPICUREANS.--Epicurus (342-270 B.C.), who was a contemporary of Zeno, taught, in opposition to the Stoics, that pleasure is the highest good. He recommended virtue, indeed, but only as a means for the attainment of pleasure; whereas the Stoics made virtue an end in itself. In other words, Epicurus said, "Be virtuous, because virtue will bring you the greatest amount of happiness"; Zeno said, "Be virtuous, because you ought to be."
Epicurus had many followers in Greece, and his doctrines were eagerly embraced by many among the Romans during the corrupt period of the Roman empire. Many of these disciples carried the doctrines of their master to an excess that he himself would have been the first to condemn. Allowing full indulgence to every appetite and passion, their whole philosophy was expressed in the proverb, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." No pure or exalted life could be nourished in the unwholesome atmosphere of such a philosophy. Epicureanism never produced a single great character.
THE SKEPTICS; PYRRHO.--About the beginning of the third century B.C. skepticism became widespread in Greece. It seemed as though men were losing faith in everything. Many circumstances had worked together in bringing about this state of universal unbelief. A wider knowledge of the world had caused many to lose their faith in the myths and legends of the old mythologies. The existence of so many opposing systems of philosophy caused men to doubt the truth of any of them. Many thoughtful minds were hopelessly asking, "What is truth?"
Pyrrho (about 360-270 B.C.) was the doubting Thomas of the Greeks. He questioned everything, and declared that the great problems of the universe could not be solved. He asserted that it was the duty of man, and the part of wisdom, to entertain no positive judgment on any matter, and thus to ensure serenity and peace of mind.
The disciples of Pyrrho went to absurd lengths in their skepticism, some of them even saying that they asserted nothing, not even that they asserted nothing. They doubted whether they doubted.
THE NEO-PLATONISTS.--Neo-Platonism was a blending of Greek philosophy and Oriental mysticism. It has been well called the "despair of reason," because it abandoned all hope of man's ever being able to attain the highest knowledge through reason alone, and looked for a Revelation. The centre of this last movement in Greek philosophical thought was Alexandria in Egypt, the meeting-place, in the closing centuries of the ancient world, of the East and the West.
Philo the Jew (b. about 30 B.C.), who labored to harmonize Hebrew doctrines with the teachings of Plato, was the forerunner of the Neo- Platonists. But the greatest of the school was Plotinus (A.D. 204-269), who spent the last years of his life at Rome, where he was a great favorite.
CONFLICT BETWEEN NEO-PLATONISM AND CHRISTIANITY.--While the Neo-Platonists were laboring to restore, in modified form, the ancient Greek philosophy and worship, the teachers of Christianity were fast winning the world over to a new faith. The two systems came into deadly antagonism. Christianity triumphed. The gifted and beautiful Hypatia, almost the last representative of the old system of speculation and belief, was torn to pieces in the streets of Alexandria by a mob of fanatic Christian monks (A.D. 415). Finally the Roman emperor Justinian forbade the pagan philosophers to teach their doctrines (A.D. 529). This imperial edict closed forever the Greek schools, in which for more than a thousand years the world had received instruction upon the loftiest themes that can engage the human mind. The Greek philosophers, as living, personal teachers, had finished their work; but their systems of thought will never cease to attract and influence the best minds of the race.
SCIENCE AMONG THE GREEKS.
The contributions of the Greek observers to the physical sciences have laid us under no small obligation to them. Some of those whom we have classed as philosophers, were careful students of nature, and might be called scientists. The great philosopher Aristotle wrote some valuable works on anatomy and natural history. From his time onward the sciences were pursued with much zeal and success. Especially did the later Greeks do much good and lasting work in the mathematical sciences.
MATHEMATICS: EUCLID AND ARCHIMEDES.--Alexandria, in Egypt, became the seat of the most celebrated school of mathematics of antiquity. Here, under Ptolemy Lagus, flourished Euclid, the great geometer, whose work forms the basis of the science of geometry as taught in our schools at the present time. Ptolemy himself was his pupil. The royal student, however, seems to have disliked the severe application required to master the problems of Euclid, and asked his teacher if there was not some easier way. Euclid replied, "There is no royal road to geometry."
In the third century B.C., Syracuse, in Sicily, was the home of Archimedes, the greatest mathematician that the Grecian world produced.
ASTRONOMY.--Among ancient Greek astronomers, Aristarchus, Hipparchus, and Claudius Ptolemy are distinguished.
Aristarchus of Samos, who lived in the third century B.C., held that the earth revolves about the sun as a fixed centre, and rotates on its own axis. He was the Greek Copernicus. But his theory was rejected by his contemporaries and successors.
Hipparchus, who flourished about the middle of the second century B.C., was, through his careful observations, the real founder of scientific astronomy. He calculated eclipses, catalogued the stars, and wrote several astronomical works of a really scientific character.
Claudius Ptolemy lived in Egypt about the middle of the second century after Christ. His great reputation is due not so much to his superior genius as to the fortunate circumstance that a vast work compiled by him, preserved and transmitted to later times almost all the knowledge of the ancients on astronomical and geographical subjects. In this way it has happened that his name has become attached to various doctrines and views respecting the universe, though these probably were not originated by him. The phrase Ptolemaic system, however, links his name inseparably with that conception of the solar system set forth in his works, which continued to be the received theory from his time until Copernicus-- fourteen centuries later.
Ptolemy combated the theory of Aristarchus in regard to the rotation and revolution of the earth; yet he believed the earth to be a globe, and supported this view by exactly the same arguments that we to-day use to prove the doctrine.
XXI. SOCIAL LIFE OF THE GREEKS
EDUCATION.--Education at Sparta, where it was chiefly gymnastic, as we have seen (p. 115), was a state affair; but at Athens and throughout Greece generally, the youth were trained in private schools. These schools were of all grades, ranging from those kept by the most obscure teachers, who gathered their pupils in some recess of the street, to those established in the Athenian Academy and Lyceum by such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle.
It was only the boys who received education. These Grecian boys, Professor Mahaffy imagines, were "the most attractive the world has ever seen." At all events, we may believe that they were trained more carefully and delicately than the youth among any other people before or since the days of Hellenic culture.
In the nursery, the boy was taught the beautiful myths and stories of the national mythology. At about seven he entered school, being led to and from the place of training by an old slave, who bore the name of pedagogue, which in Greek means a guide or leader of boys--not a teacher. His studies were grammar, music, and gymnastics, the aim of the course being to secure a symmetrical development of mind and body alike.
Grammar included reading, writing, and arithmetic; music, which embraced a wide range of mental accomplishments, trained the boy to appreciate the masterpieces of the great poets, to contribute his part to the musical diversions of private entertainments, and to join in the sacred choruses and in the pæan of the battlefield. The exercises of the palestræ and the gymnasia trained him for the Olympic contests, or for those sterner hand- to-hand battle-struggles, in which so much depended upon personal strength and dexterity.
Upon reaching maturity, the youth was enrolled in the list of citizens. But his graduation from school was his "commencement" in a much more real sense than with the average modern graduate. Never was there a people besides the Greeks whose daily life was so emphatically a discipline in liberal culture. The schools of the philosophers, the debates of the popular assembly, the practice of the law-courts, the religious processions, the representations of an unrivalled stage, the Panhellenic games--all these were splendid and efficient educational agencies, which produced and maintained a standard of average intelligence and culture among the citizens of the Greek cities that probably has never been attained among any other people on the earth. Freeman, quoted approvingly by Mahaffy, says that "the average intelligence of the assembled Athenian citizens was higher than that of our [the English] House of Commons."
SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMAN.--Woman's social position in ancient Greece may be defined in general as being about half-way between Oriental seclusion and Western freedom. Her main duties were to cook and spin, and to oversee the domestic slaves, of whom she herself was practically one. In the fashionable society of Ionian cities, she was seldom allowed to appear in public, or to meet, even in her own house, the male friends of her husband. In Sparta, however, and in Dorian states generally, she was accorded much greater freedom, and was a really important factor in society.
The low position generally assigned the wife in the home had a most disastrous effect upon Greek morals. She could exert no such elevating or refining influence as she casts over the modern home. The men were led to seek social and intellectual sympathy and companionship outside the family circle, among a class of women known as Hetairæ, who were esteemed chiefly for their brilliancy of intellect. As the most noted representative of this class stands Aspasia, the friend of Pericles. The influence of the Hetairæ was most harmful to social morality.
THEATRICAL ENTERTAINMENTS.--Among the ancient Greeks the theatre was a state establishment, "a part of the constitution." This arose from the religious origin and character of the drama (see p. 193), all matters pertaining to the popular worship being the care and concern of the state. Theatrical performances, being religious acts, were presented only during religious festivals, and were attended by all classes, rich and poor, men, women, and children. The women, however, except the Hetairæ, were, it would seem, permitted to witness tragedies only; the comic stage was too gross to allow of their presence. The spectators sat under the open sky; and the pieces followed one after the other in close succession from early morning till nightfall.
There were companies of players who strolled about the country, just as the English actors of Shakespeare's time were wont to do. While the better class of actors were highly honored, ordinary players were held in very low esteem. The tragic actor increased his height and size by wearing thick-soled buskins, an enormous mask, and padded garments. The actor in comedy wore thin-soled slippers, or socks. The sock being thus a characteristic part of the make-up of the ancient comic actor, and the buskin that of the tragic actor, these foot coverings have come to be used as the symbols respectively of comedy and tragedy, as in the familiar lines of Dryden:--
"Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here, Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear."
The theatre exerted a great influence upon Greek life. It performed for ancient Greek society somewhat the same service as that rendered to modern society by the pulpit and the press. During the best days of Hellas the frequent rehearsal upon the stage of the chief incidents in the lives of the gods and the heroes served to deepen and strengthen the religious faith of the people; and later, in the Macedonian period, the theatre was one of the chief agents in the diffusion of Greek literary culture over the world.
BANQUETS AND SYMPOSIA.--Banquets and drinking-parties among the Greeks possessed some features which set them apart from similar entertainments among other peoples.
The banquet proper was partaken, in later times, by the guest in a reclining position, upon couches or divans, arranged about the table in the Oriental manner. After the usual courses, a libation was poured out and a hymn sung in honor of the gods, and then followed that characteristic part of the entertainment known as the symposium.
The symposium was "the intellectual side of the feast." It consisted of general conversation, riddles, and convivial songs rendered to the accompaniment of the lyre passed from hand to hand. Generally, professional singers and musicians, dancing-girls, jugglers, and jesters were called in to contribute to the merrymaking. All the while the wine- bowl circulated freely, the rule being that a man might drink "as much as he could carry home without a guide,--unless he were far gone in years." Here also the Greeks applied their maxim, "Never too much."
The banqueters usually consumed the night in merry-making, sometimes being broken in upon from the street by other bands of revellers, who made themselves self-invited guests.
OCCUPATION.--The enormous body of slaves in ancient Greece relieved the free population from most of those forms of labor classed as drudgery. The æsthetic Greek regarded as degrading any kind of manual labor that marred the symmetry or beauty of the body.
At Sparta, and in other states where oligarchical institutions prevailed, the citizens formed a sort of military class, strikingly similar to the military aristocracy of Feudal Europe. Their chief occupation was martial and gymnastic exercises and the administration of public affairs. The Spartans, it will be recalled, were forbidden by law to engage in trade. In other aristocratic states, as at Thebes, a man by engaging in trade disqualified himself for full citizenship.
In the democratic states, however, speaking generally, labor and trade were regarded with less contempt. A considerable portion of the citizens were traders, artisans, and farmers.
Life at Athens presented some peculiar features. All Attica being included in what we should term the corporate limits of the city, the roll of Athenian citizens included a large body of well-to-do farmers, whose residence was outside the city walls. The Attic plains, and the slopes of the half-encircling hills, were dotted with beautiful villas and inviting farmhouses.
And then Athens being the head of a great empire of subject cities, a large number of Athenian citizens were necessarily employed as salaried officials in the minor positions of the public service, and thus politics became a profession. In any event, the meetings of the popular assembly and the discussion of matters of state engrossed more or less of the time and attention of every citizen.
Again, the great Athenian jury-courts, which were busied with cases from all parts of the empire, gave constant employment to nearly one fourth of the citizens, the fee that the juryman received enabling him to live without other business. It is said that, in the early morning, when the jurymen were passing through the streets to the different courts, Athens appeared like a city wholly given up to the single business of law. Furthermore, the great public works, such as temples and commemorative monuments, which were in constant process of erection, afforded employment for a vast number of artists and skilled workmen of every class.
In the Agora, again, at any time of the day, a numerous class might have been found whose sole occupation, as in the case of Socrates, was to talk. The writer of the "Acts of the Apostles" was so impressed with this feature of life at Athens that he summarized the habits of the people by saying, "All the Athenians, and strangers which were there, spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing." (Chap. xvii. 21.)
SLAVERY.--There was a dark side to Greek life. Hellenic art, culture, refinement--"these good things were planted, like exquisite exotic flowers, upon the black, rank soil of slavery."
The proportion of slaves to the free population in many of the states was astonishingly large. In Corinth and Ægina there were ten slaves to every freeman. In Attica the proportion was four to one; that is to say, out of a population of about 500,000, 400,000 were slaves. [Footnote: The population of Attica in 317 B.C. is reckoned at about 527,000. That of Athens in its best days was probably not far from 150,000.] Almost every freeman was a slave owner. It was accounted a real hardship to have to get along with less than half a dozen slaves.
This large class of slaves was formed in various ways. In the prehistoric period, the fortunes of war had brought the entire population of whole provinces into a servile condition, as in certain parts of the Peloponnesus. During later times, the ordinary captives of war still further augmented the ranks of these unfortunates. Their number was also largely added to by the slave traffic carried on with the barbarian peoples of Asia Minor. Criminals and debtors, too, were often condemned to servitude; while foundlings were usually brought up as slaves.
The relation of master and slave was regarded by the Greek as being, not only a legal, but a natural one. A free community, in his view, could not exist without slavery. It formed the natural basis of both the family and the state,--the relation of master and slave being regarded as "strictly analogous to the relation of soul and body." Even Aristotle and other Greek philosophers approved the maxim that "slaves are simply domestic animals possessed of intelligence." They were regarded as just as necessary in the economy of the family as cooking utensils.
In general, Greek slaves were not treated harshly--judging their treatment by the standard of humanity that prevailed in antiquity. Some held places of honor in the family, and enjoyed the confidence and even the friendship of their master. Yet at Sparta, where slavery assumed the form of serfdom, the lot of the slave was peculiarly hard and unendurable.
If slavery was ever justified by its fruits, it was in Greece. The brilliant civilization of the Greeks was its product, and could never have existed without it. As one truthfully says, "Without the slaves the Attic democracy would have been an impossibility, for they alone enabled the poor, as well as the rich, to take a part in public affairs." Relieving the citizen of all drudgery, the system created a class characterized by elegant leisure, refinement, and culture.
We find an almost exact historical parallel to all this in the feudal aristocracy of mediæval Europe. Such a society has been well likened to a great pyramid, whose top may be gilded with light, while the base lies in dark shadows. The civilization of ancient Hellas was splendid and attractive, but it rested with a crushing weight upon all the lower orders of Greek society.
SECTION III. ROMAN HISTORY.
Chapter XXII
THE ROMAN KINGDOM. (Legendary Date, 753-509 B.C.)
DIVISIONS OF ITALY.--The peninsula of Italy, like that of Greece, divides itself into three parts--Northern, Central, and Southern Italy. The first comprises the great basin of the Po, lying between the Alps and the Apennines. In ancient times this part of Italy included three districts-- Liguria, Gallia Cisalpina, which means "Gaul on this (the Italian) side of the Alps," and Venetia.
The countries of Central Italy were Etruria, Latium, and Campania, facing the Western, or Tuscan Sea; Umbria and Picenum, looking out over the Eastern, or Adriatic Sea; and Samnium and the country of the Sabines, occupying the rough mountain districts of the Apennines.
Southern Italy comprised the countries of Apulia, Lucania, Calabria, and Bruttium. Calabria occupied the "heel," and Bruttium formed the "toe," of the peninsula. This part of Italy, as we have already learned, was called Magna Græcia, or "Great Greece," on account of the number and importance of the Greek cities that during the period of Hellenic supremacy were established in these regions.
The large island of Sicily, lying just off the mainland on the south, may be regarded simply as a detached fragment of Italy, so intimately has its history been interwoven with that of the peninsula. In ancient times it was the meeting-place and battleground of the Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans.
EARLY INHABITANTS OF ITALY.--There were, in early times, three chief races in Italy--the Italians, the Etruscans, and the Greeks. The Italians, a branch of the Aryan family, embraced many tribes (Latins, Umbrians, Sabines, Samnites, etc.), that occupied nearly all Central Italy. The Etruscans, a wealthy, cultured, and maritime people of uncertain race, dwelt in Etruria, now Tuscany. Before the rise of the Romans they were the leading race in the peninsula. Of the establishment of the Greek cities in Southern Italy, we have already learned in connection with Grecian History (p. 111).
Some five hundred years B.C., the Gauls, a Celtic race, came over the Alps, and settling in Northern Italy, became formidable enemies of the infant republic of Rome.
THE LATINS.--Most important of all the Italian peoples were the Latins, who dwelt in Latium, between the Tiber and the Liris. These people, like all the Italians, were near kindred of the Greeks, and brought with them into Italy those same customs, manners, beliefs, and institutions which we have seen to have been the common possession of the various branches of the Aryan household (see p. 5). There are said to have been in all Latium thirty towns, and these formed an alliance known as the Latin League. The city which first assumed importance and leadership among the towns of this confederation was Alba Longa, the "Long White City," so called because its buildings stretched for a great distance along the summit of a whitish ridge.
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME.--The place of preeminence among the Latin towns was soon lost by Alba Longa, and gained by another city. This was Rome, the stronghold of the Ramnes, or Romans, located upon a low hill on the south bank of the Tiber, about fifteen miles from the sea.
The traditions of the Romans place the founding of their city in the year 753 B.C. The town was established, it would seem, as an outpost to guard the northern frontier of Latium against the Etruscans.
Recent excavations have revealed the foundations of the old walls and two of the ancient gates. We thus learn that the city at first covered only the top of the Palatine Hill, one of a cluster of low eminences close to the Tiber, which, finally embraced within the limits of the growing city, became the famed "Seven Hills of Rome." From the shape of its enclosing walls, the original city was called Roma Quadrata, "Square Rome."
THE EARLY ROMAN STATE: KING, SENATE, AND POPULAR ASSEMBLY.--The early Roman state seems to have been formed by the union of three communities. These constituted three tribes, known as Ramnes (the Romans proper, who gave name to the mixed people), Tities, and Luceres. Each of these tribes was divided into ten wards, or districts (curiæ); each ward was made up of gentes, or clans, and each clan was composed of a number of families. The heads of these families were called patres, or "fathers," and all the members patricians, that is, "children of the fathers."
At the head of the nation stood the King, who was the father of the state. He was at once ruler of the people, commander of the army, judge and high priest of the nation, with absolute power as to life and death.
Next to the king stood the Senate, or "council of the old men," composed of the "fathers," or heads of the families. This council had no power to enact laws: the duty of its members was simply to advise with the king, who was free to follow or to disregard their suggestions.
The Popular Assembly (comitia curiata) comprised all the citizens of Rome, that is, all the members of the patrician families, old enough to bear arms. It was this body that enacted the laws of the state, determined upon peace or war, and also elected the king.
CLASSES OF SOCIETY.--The two important classes of the population of Rome under the kingdom and the early republic, were the patricians and the plebeians. The former were the members of the three original tribes that made up the Roman people, and at first alone possessed political rights. They were proud, exclusive, and tenacious of their inherited privileges. The latter were made up chiefly of the inhabitants of subjected cities, and of refugees from various quarters that had sought an asylum at Rome. They were free to acquire property, and enjoyed personal freedom, but at first had no political rights whatever. The greater number were petty land-owners, who held and cultivated the soil about the city. A large part of the early history of Rome is simply the narration of the struggles of this class to secure social and political equality with the patricians.
Besides these two principal orders, there were two other classes--clients and slaves. The former were attached to the families of patricians, who became their patrons, or protectors. The condition of the client was somewhat like that of the serf in the feudal system of the Middle Ages. A large clientage was considered the crown and glory of a patrician house.
The slaves were, in the main, captives in war. Their number, small at first, gradually increased as the Romans extended their conquests, till they outnumbered all the other classes taken together, and more than once turned upon their masters in formidable revolts that threatened the very existence of the Roman state.
THE LEGENDARY KINGS.--For nearly two and a half centuries after the founding of Rome (from 753 to 509 B.C., according to tradition), the government was a monarchy. To span this period, the legends of the Romans tell of the reigns of seven kings--Romulus, the founder of Rome; Numa, the lawgiver; Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Marcius, conquerors both; Tarquinius Priscus, the great builder; Servius Tullius, the reorganizer of the government and second founder of the state; and Tarquinius Superbus, the haughty tyrant, whose oppressions led to the abolition by the people of the office of king.
The traditions of the doings of these monarchs and of what happened to them, blend hopelessly fact and fable. We cannot be quite sure even as to the names. Respecting Roman affairs, however, under the last three rulers (the Tarquins), who were of Etruscan origin, some important things are related, the substantial truth of which we may rely upon with a fair degree of certainty; and these matters we shall notice in the following paragraphs.
GROWTH OF ROME UNDER THE TARQUINS.--The Tarquins extended their authority over the whole of Latium. The position of supremacy thus given Rome was naturally attended by the rapid growth in population and importance of the little Palatine city. The original walls soon became too strait for the increasing multitudes; new ramparts were built--tradition says under the direction of the king Servius Tullius--which, with a great circuit of seven miles, swept around the entire cluster of the Seven Hills. A large tract of marshy ground between the Palatine and Capitoline hills was drained by means of the Cloaca Maxima, the "Great Sewer," which was so admirably constructed that it has been preserved to the present day. It still discharges its waters through a great arch into the Tiber. The land thus reclaimed became the Forum, the assembling-place of the people. Upon the summit of the Capitoline Hill, overlooking the Forum, was built the famous sanctuary called the Capitol, or the Capitoline temple, where beneath the same roof were the shrines of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, the three great national deities. Upon the level ground between the Aventine and the Palatine was laid out the Circus Maximus, the "Great Circus," where were celebrated the Roman games.
NEW CONSTITUTION OF SERVIUS TULLIUS.--The second king of the Etruscan house, Servius Tullius by name, effected a most important change in the constitution of the Roman state. He did here at Rome just what Solon at about this time did at Athens (see p. 120). He made property instead of birth the basis of the constitution. The entire population was divided into five classes, the first of which included all citizens, whether patricians or plebeians, who owned twenty jugera (about twelve acres) of land; the fifth and lowest embraced all that could show title to even two jugera. The army was made up of the members of the five classes; as it was thought right and proper that the public defence should be the care of those who, on account of their possessions, were most interested in the maintenance of order and in the protection of the boundaries of the state.
The assembling-place of the military classes thus organized was on a large plain just outside the city walls, called the Campus Martius, or "Field of Mars." The meeting of these military orders was called the comitia centuriata, or the "assembly of hundreds." [Footnote: This assembly was not organized by Servius Tullius, but it grew out of the military organization he created.] This body, which of course was made up of patricians and plebeians, gradually absorbed the powers of the earlier patrician assembly (comitia curiata).
THE EXPULSION OF THE KINGS.--The legends make Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin the Proud, the last king of Rome. He is represented as a monstrous tyrant, whose arbitrary acts caused both patricians and plebeians to unite and drive him and all his house into exile. This event, according to tradition, occurred in the year 509 B.C., only one year later than the expulsion of the tyrants from Athens (see p. 122).
So bitterly did the people hate the tyranny they had abolished that it is said they all, the nobles as well as the commons, bound themselves by most solemn oaths never again to tolerate a king. We shall hereafter see how well this vow was kept for nearly five hundred years.
THE ROMAN RELIGION.
THE CHIEF ROMAN DEITIES.--The basis of the Roman religious system was the same as that of the Grecian: the germs of its institutions were brought from the same early Aryan home. At the head of the Pantheon stood Jupiter, identical in all essential attributes with the Hellenic Zeus. He was the special protector of the Roman people. To him, together with Juno and Minerva, was consecrated, as we have already noticed, a magnificent temple upon the summit of the Capitoline Hill, overlooking the Forum and the city. Mars, the god of war, standing next in rank, was the favorite deity and the fabled father of the Roman race, who were fond of calling themselves the "children of Mars." They proved themselves worthy offspring of the war-god. Martial games and festivals were celebrated in his honor during the first month of the Roman year, which bore, and still bears, in his honor, the name of March. Janus was a double-faced deity, "the god of the beginning and the end of everything." The month of January was sacred to him, as were also all gates and doors. The gates of his temple were always kept open in time of war and shut in time of peace.
The fire upon the household hearth was regarded as the symbol of the goddess Vesta. Her worship was a favorite one with the Romans. The nation, too, as a single great family, had a common national hearth in the Temple of Vesta, where the sacred fires were kept burning from generation to generation by six virgins, daughters of the Roman state. The Lares and Penates were household gods. Their images were set in the entrance of the dwelling. The Lares were the spirits of ancestors, which were thought to linger about the home as its guardians.
ORACLES AND DIVINATION.--The Romans, like the Greeks, thought that the will of the gods was communicated to men by means of oracles, and by strange sights, unusual events, or singular coincidences. There were no true oracles at Rome. The Romans, therefore, often had recourse to those in Magna Græcia, even sending for advice, in great emergencies, to the Delphian shrine. From Etruria was introduced the art of the haruspices, or soothsayers, which consisted in discovering the divine mind by the appearance of victims slain for the sacrifices.
THE SACRED COLLEGES.--The four chief sacred colleges, or societies, were the Keepers of the Sibylline Books, the College of Augurs, the College of Pontiffs, and the College of the Heralds.
A curious legend is told of the Sibylline Books. An old woman came to Tarquinius Superbus and offered to sell him, for an extravagant price, nine volumes. As the king declined to pay the sum demanded, the woman departed, destroyed three of the books, and then, returning, offered the remainder at the very same sum that she had wanted for the complete number. The king still refused to purchase; so the sibyl went away and destroyed three more of the volumes, and bringing back the remaining three, asked the same price as before. Tarquin was by this time so curious respecting the contents of the mysterious books that he purchased the remaining volumes. It was found upon examination that they were filled with prophecies respecting the future of the Roman people. The books were placed in a stone chest, which was kept in a vault beneath the Capitoline temple; and special custodians were appointed to take charge of them and interpret them. The number of keepers, throughout the most important period of Roman history, was fifteen. The books were consulted only in times of extreme danger.
The duty of the members of the College of Augurs was to interpret the omens, or auspices, which were casual sights or appearances, by which means it was believed that Jupiter made known his will. Great skill was required in the "taking of the auspices," as it was called. No business of importance, public or private, was entered upon without first consulting the auspices, to ascertain whether they were favorable. The public assembly, for illustration, must not convene, to elect officers or to enact laws, unless the auspices had been taken and found propitious. Should a peal of thunder occur while the people were holding a meeting, that was considered an unfavorable omen, and the assembly must instantly disperse.
The College of Pontiffs was so called because one of the duties of its members was to keep in repair the bridges (pontes) over which the religious processions were accustomed to pass. This was the most important of all the religious institutions of the Romans; for to the pontiffs belonged the superintendence of all religious matters. In their keeping, too, was the calendar, and they could lengthen or shorten the year, which power they sometimes used to extend the office of a favorite or to cut short that of one who had incurred their displeasure. The head of the college was called Pontifex Maximus, or the Chief Bridge-builder, which title was assumed by the Roman emperors, and after them by the Christian bishops of Rome; and thus the name has come down to our own times. The College of Heralds had the care of all public matters pertaining to foreign nations. If the Roman people had suffered any wrong from another state, it was the duty of the heralds to demand satisfaction. If this was denied, and war determined upon, then a herald proceeded to the frontier of the enemy's country and hurled over the boundary a spear dipped in blood. This was a declaration of war. The Romans were very careful in the observance of this ceremony.
SACRED GAMES.--The Romans had many religious games and festivals. Prominent among these were the so-called Circensian Games, or Games of the Circus, which were very similar to the sacred games of the Greeks (see p. 106). They consisted, in the main, of chariot-racing, wrestling, foot- racing, and various other athletic contests.
These festivals, as in the case of those of the Greeks, had their origin in the belief that the gods delighted in the exhibition of feats of skill, strength, or endurance; that their anger might be appeased by such spectacles; or that they might be persuaded by the promise of games to lend aid to mortals in great emergencies. At the opening of the year it was customary for the Roman magistrate, in behalf of the people, to promise to the gods games and festivals, provided good crops, protection from pestilence, and victory were granted the Romans during the year. So, too, a general in great straits in the field might, in the name of the state, vow plays to the gods, and the people were sacredly bound by his act to fulfil the promise. Plays given in fulfilment of vows thus made were called votive games.
Towards the close of the republic these games lost much of their religious character, and at last became degraded into mere brutal shows given by ambitious leaders for the purpose of winning popularity.