The History of Greece

Front matter

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Book The Second. From Tee Dorian Migration To Tee Persian

WARS.

I. — History of Peloponnesus, . 175

II.— History op Attica, 31$

III.— The Hellenes beyond the Archipelago, . 432

BOOK THE MUST.

THE GREEKS BEFORE THE DORIAN MIGRATION.

THE HISTORY OF GREECE.

CHAPTEE I.

LAND AND PEOPLE.

We speak of Europe and Asia, and involuntarily allow these terms to suggest to us two distinct quarters of the globe, separated from one another by natural boundaries. But where are these boundaries? Possibly a frontier-line may be found in the north, where the Ural Mountains cut through the broad complexes of land ; but to the south of the Pontus nature has nowhere severed east from west, but rather done her utmost closely and inseparably to unite them. The same mountain-ranges which pass across the Archipelago extend on dense successions of islands over the Propontis : the coast-lands on either side belong to one another as if they were two halves of one country :, and harbors such as Thessalonica and Athens have ^om the first been incomparably nearer to the coast-towns of Ionia than to their own interior, while from the western shores of their own continent they are still farther separated by broad tracts of land and by the difficulties of a lengthy sea-voyage.

Sea and air unite the coasts of the Archipel- conditions

ago into one connected whole; the same period- of climate.

ical winds blow from the Hellespont as far as Crete, and

regulate navigation by the same conditions, and the cli-

1* 9 mate by the same changes. Scarcely a single point is to he found between Asia and Europe where, in clear weather, a mariner would feel himself left in a solitude between sky and water ; the eye reaches from island to island, and easy voyages of a day lead from bay to bay. And therefore at all times the same nations have inhabited either shore, and since the days of Priam the same languages and customs have obtained both here and there. The Greek of the islands is as much at home at Smyrna as he is at Nauplia : Salonichi lies in Europe, and yet belongs to the trading towns of the Levant : notwithstanding all changes of political circumstances, Byzantium to this day ranks as the metropolis on either side: and as one swell of the waves rolls from the shore of Ionia up to Salamis, so neither has any movement of population ever affected the coast on one side without extending itself to the other. Arbitrary political decisions have in ancient and modern times separated the two opposite coasts, and used some of the broader straits between the islands as boundary-lines ; but no separation of this kind has ever become more than an external one, nor has any succeeded in dividing what nature has so clearly appointed for the theatre of a common history.

As decided as the homogeneous character of the coast-lands, which lie opposite one another from east to west, is the difference between the regions in the direction from north to south. On the northern border of the iEgean Sea no myrtle-leaf adorns the shore ; and the climate resembles that of a district of Central Germany : no southern fruit grows in any part of Roumelia.

With the 40th degree of latitude a new region begins. Here, on the coasts and in the sheltered valleys, occur the first signs of the neighborhood of a warmer world, and the first forests of constant verdure. But here, also, a trifling elevation suffices to change the whole condition of its vicinity ; thus a mountain like Athos bears on its heights nearly

Chap. I.] Land and People. 11

all European species of trees at once. And totally and utterly different is tlie natural condition of the interior. The Bay of Joannina, lying nearly a degree farther south than Naples, has the climate of Lombardy : in the interior of Thessaly no olive-tree will flourish, and the entire Pindus is a stranger to the flora of Southern Europe.

At the 39th degree, and not before, the warm air of sea and coast penetrates into the interior, where a rapid advance makes itself visible. Even in Phthiotis rice and cotton are already grown, and frequent specimens of the olive-tree begin to occur. In Euboea and Attica there are even scattered instances of the palm-tree, which in larger groups adorns the southern Cyclades, and which in the plains of Messenia will, under favorable circumstances, at times even produce edible dates. None of the rarer southern fruits prosper in the neighborhood of Athens without special cultivation; while on the east coast of Argolis lemon and orange trees grow in thick forests, and in the gardens of the Naxiotes even the tender lime ripens, whose fragrant fruit, plucked in January, is transported in the space of a few hours to coasts where neither vine nor olive will flourish.

Thus, within a boundary of not more than two degrees of latitude, the land of Greece reaches from the beeches of Pindus into the climate of the palm ; nor is there on the entire known surface of the globe any other region in which the different zones of climate and flora meet one another in so rapid a succession.

The results are a variety in the living forms of nature and an abundance of her produce, which necessarily excited the minds of the inhabitants, awakened their attention and industry, and called mercantile interchange into life among them.

These differences of climate are, as a rule, common to both shores. Yet even the regions of the eastern and western shores, with all their homogeneousness, show a

12 History of Greece. C BooK *•

thorough difference between one another ; for the similarity of the shores is not more strongly marked than the difference in the formation of the countries themselves.

It would seem as if the iEgean were in possession of the peculiar power of transforming, after a fashion of its own, all the mainland, — in other words, of everywhere penetrating into and breaking it up, of forming by this resolving process islands, peninsulas, necks of land, and promontories, and thus creating a line of coast of disproportionately great extent, with innumerable natural harbors. Such a coast may be called a Greek coast, because those regions in which Hellenes have settled possess it as peculiar to them before all countries of the earth. Asia The following is the difference between the

Minor. countries on the eastern and western shore.

The mainland of the eastern is only outwardly affected by this formation. As a whole, notwithstanding its peninsular shape, it is justly called Asia Minor ; for it shares with the districts of Anterior Asia the mighty elevation of the whole. Like a lesser Iran it builds itself up out of the midst of the three seas ; presenting in the interior a massy, inaccessible region of highlands of cool temperature and dry atmosphere, in which stony and ill-watered plains are freely interspersed with fertile districts, suitable for thfr support of great and hardy nations.

Nowhere is the sea reached by the rim. of this great table-land, which is belted on all sides by mountain ranges. The mightiest of the latter is the Taurus, a wall of rocks, whose lofty edges and precipitous walls separate the southern districts from the heart of the country. Towards the north, in the direction of the Pontus, the terraces are ranged in more extensive breadth, with undulating hilly country, and a gradually progressing declivity. Towards the west is the greatest variety of formation. In the direction of the Propontis and the Hellespont the edge of the interior highland country rises to mountains of con-

Chap, t] Land tmd People. IB

siderable height, and well supplied with streams and pastures, — the Mysian Olympus and the Trojan Ida : towards the side of the Archipelago occurs a sudden transition from the inland to the coast country. A line drawn from Constantinople straight through Asia Minor to the Lycian Sea roughly indicates the degree of longitude at which the masses of table-land suddenly break off, where the country is everywhere broken up into natural divisions, and in wide fertile river-courses opens towards the sea, which runs to meet them in numerous bays. Here is, as it were, the beginning of a new world, of another country, which resembles a border of a different material woven on to a garment ; and were we desirous of distinguishing the quarters of the globe according to the formation of their soil, we should have to set up the boundary marks between Asia and Europe on this line, which separates the country of the interior from that of the coast.

Asia Minor, on account of the peculiar forma- Tlie Coasts tion of its countries, comprehending the great- Miaor. est variety of contrasts, without any unity to connect them, has altogether never shown itself suited for a common national history. So much the more have the terrace-lands of Asia Minor at all times been the theatre of a history, and the dwelling-place of nations of their own, which have known how to keep themselves free from the dominion of the interior.

The western border of Asia Minor consists, in the first instance, of the estuary-land of the four great rivers which flow into the sea through valleys lying parallel to one another, the Maeander, the Cayster, the Hermus, and the Caicus (to name them in their order of succession from south to north). In no region of the ancient world was luxuriance of arable and pasture land so immediately united to all the advantages of an excellent coast formation. The development of the coast-line of Ionia in all its bays and projections amounts to more than quadruple its extent in a straight line from north to south. On the north and south sides this formation of coast is not so consistently the same, but only appears here in certain districts, to which on the other hand, this very participation in the Hellenic formation of country has attached a peculiar mission of taking part in Hellenic history. Among these districts are the shores of the Propontis and the Caro-Lycian coast-land.

Thus in the east the sea has not been able to Hellenize more than the border of the mainland ; it is far otherwise on the opposite side. Here also is massed a mainland, /projected into the sea in a southward direction between the Adriatic and the Pontus; but this central body is not only, like Asia Minor, outwardly fashioned by the sea and « lislocated on its coasts, but the very heart of the country continues to be broken up into peninsulas and islands, till /it last it becomes entirely absorbed into this loose formation.

Greece in The whole mass of the countries of Western Europe. Greece is cut off by the chain of high mountain ranges stretching in a great arc from the Adriatic to the Black Sea from all the districts belonging to the territory of the Danube, and is thus bidden to develop itself in a southward direction, as a world by itself, according to laws of its own. The Thracian Hsemus, with its impervious ridges, constitutes a natural boundary, the difficulties of which prevent all national intercourse; while from Asia the approach is easy and open. In the same way it is easy to recognize, in the development of the entire southern mass of countries between the Adriatic and the JEgean, the circumstance that the eastern or Asiatic side is always the favored one, i. e., that all the districts on this side enjoy an especially happy organization for a systematic political life, and that the abundance of harbors in their coasts imposes on them a special mission for maritime commerce. Thus, in the

Chap. L] Land and People. la

first instance, Albania and Illyria are notliing but a crowd of rocky ridges following one another in close succession, and of narrow defiles, with scarcely sufficient space left for roads to be constructed through them; their coasts are savage and inhospitable. Notwithstanding, then, that in ancient times caravans crossed the mountains, in order to exchange, in the central land between the two seas, the produce of the Ionian Islands and of the Archipelago ; notwithstanding that subsequently the Romans constructed a main road from Dyrrhachium straight across the country; Illyria has, through the whole course of time, remained a land of barbarians.

But how vast is the difference in everything

, . , . , ., J . , Macedonia.

which meets us on crossing to the eastern side over the Scardus Pass! Here numerous springs at the base of the central chain swell into mighty rivers, which fiow into broad lowlands, and these lowlands are embraced in great circlets by the mountain ranges which belt the plain, and leave only a narrow egress into the sea for the rivers of the country. Timer Macedonia consists of a succession of three such encircled plains, the waters of which unite and force themselves into the recess of the deeplyindented gulf of Thessalonica. For Macedonia is favored above Illyria, not only by the great arable plains of its interior, but also by an accessible, hospitable coast. Instead of monotonously savage lines of coast, a broad mass of mountains here springs out between the mouths of the Axius and the Strymon, and extends far into the sea with three rocky projections, abounding in bays, of which the easternmost terminates in Mount Athos.

More than 6,400 feet it rises above the sea, with its precipitous walls of marble ; equidistant from the entrance of the Hellespont and from that of the Pagaszean gulf, it casts its shadow as far as the market-place of Lemnos, and offers a guiding point for navigation, visible many miles off, and commanding the whole northern Archipelago.

By this Greek formation of their coasts Macedonia and Thrace are connected with the Greek world, while the territorial condition of their interior is totally different from that of Hellas proper. They are highland countries, where the population, cut off from the sea, is, as it were, held enchained in secluded circles of valleys.

The 40th degree of latitude cuts the knot of mountain Northern ranges, which announces a new formation to- G-reeoe. wards the south. The country loses the character of Alpine land; the mountains, besides becoming lower, tamer, and more capable of cultivation, arrange themselves more and more into a discernible system of hilly chains, surrounding the cultivated plains, and dividing and protecting the country, without making it inaccessible, savage, and barren. This advance in the organization of the country, however, again prevails only on the eastern side, where the fertile basin of the valley of the Peneus spreads out amidst its hills ; on the side of the sea, too, it is shut out by the Ossa range, which, under the name of Pelion, parallel to Athos, extends into the sea like a rocky mole. Twice, however, the mountains are .broken through, and Thessaly at the same time emptied of its waters and opened to external intercourse towards the east, viz. at the water-gate of the Vale of Tempe, and again to the south, where, between Pelion and Othrys, the Pagassean Gulf stretches deep and broad into the land. Central And now towards the south the formation of

Greece. ^ country continues to increase in multiplicity ; and to the ramification of the mountains -correspond the bays of the sea, -opening into the land from the east and west. By this means the whole body of the country is so manifoldly broken up, that it becomes a succession of peninsulas, connected with one another by isthmuses. And at the same point, under the 39th degree of latitude, begins Central Greece (Hellas, in the stricter sense of the name), where, between the Ambracian and

Chap. L] Land and People. 17

Malian Gulfs, tlie conical height of Tymphrestus rises to a height of more than 7,000 feet, and once again binds together in the centre the eastern and western halves of Greece. Towards the west Tymphrestus towers oyer the regions watered by the Achelous, which, with the districts contiguous to them, remain excluded from the more broken-up formation of the eastern half. Towards the east the GEta chain extends, and at the southern border of the Malian Gulf forms the Pass of Thermopylae, where, betwixt morass and precipitous rock, the mere breadth of a road is left for reaching the southern districts. From Thermopylae straight across to the Corinthian Gulf the distance is less than six miles. * This is the isthmus, commencing from which the peninsula of Eastern Central Greece extends as far as the Promontory of Sunium.

The main mountain range of this peninsula is the Parnassus, whose crest, 7,500 feet in height, was held sacred by the generations of men dwelling around it, as the starting-point of a new human race. From its northern base the Cephissus flows into the great basin of the Boeotian valley, bounded by the Helicon with its ramifications. Helicon is closely followed by Cithseron, another crossrange from sea to sea, separating Attica from Boeotia. It would be difficult to find two countries contiguous to and at the same time more different from one another than these. Boeotia is an inland territory, complete and secluded in itself, where the superabundant water stagnates in the depths of the valleys — a land of damp fogs and luxuriant vegetation on a rich soil. The whole of Attica is projected into the sea, which it admits into its bays ; its soil is dry and rocky, and covered with a thin coating of earth, and it is surrounded by the clear transparent atmosphere of the island-world to which, by situation and climate, it belongs. Its mountain-ranges carry themselves on in the sea, and form the inner group of the Cyclades, just as the outer

P geographical.

group consists of the continuations of Euboea. Once upon a time Attica was the southernmost member of the continent of Greece, till out of the waters emerged the low narrow bridge of land which was to add the island of Pelops, as the completest of peninsulas, as last and concluding member to the body of the mainland. Thus, without severing the continuous cohesion of the country, in the midst of it two broad inland seas, abounding in harbors, meet one another, the one opening towards Italy the other towards Asia.

Peiopon- The Peloponnesus forms a whole by itself; it

nesus. contains in its own centre its principal moun-

tain-range, whose mighty bulwarks embrace the high inland country of Arcadia, while its ramifications break up the surrounding districts. These are either mere terraces of the inner highland country, like Arcadia and Elis, or new mountain-ranges issue, and, running in a south or eastward direction, form the trunk of new peninsulas : such is the origin of the Messenian, Laconian, and Argive peninsulas, and of the deeply-cut gulfs between them, with their broad straits.

Equal in rich variety to the outline of the country is the constitution of its interior. On the monotonous table-land of Arcadia one fancies oneself in the midst of an extensive inland district ; the basins of its valleys participate in the organization and the heavy foggy atmosphere of Boeotia : whereas the closely-packed mountain-chains of Western Arcadia resemble the wild Alpine scenery of Epirus. The west coast of Peloponnesus corresponds to the flat shores of the Achelous districts ; the rich plains of the Pamisus and Eurotas are natural gifts of the river, as in the case of the Thessalian Peneus, which flows out of mountain clefts ; finally, Argolis, with its Inachus Plain, opens towards the south, and its peninsula, abounding in rocky harbors and projecting islands, is both by situation and soil like a second Attica. Thus the creative nature

Chap, i.] Land and People. 19

of Hellas once more, in the southernmost member of the country, repeats all its favorite formations, compressing within narrow limits the greatest variety of contrasts.

Notwithstanding this confusing multiplicity in the relations of the soil, we find, asserting themselves in all their severity, certain plain and clear laws, which impress upon the whole of European Greece the mark of a peculiar organization. Among these are the co-operation of *sea and mountains in marking off the different parts of Laws reguthe country ; further, the series of cross-bars JSj 1 **^ running out from the central range, and, in ieai formacombination with the Ulyrico-Macedonic high- (j ree ee in lands, rendering access to the dwellings of the Bur0 P e - Greeks impossible from the north, isolating them from the mainland, and confining them entirely to the sea and the opposite coasts. The very nature of the northern highlands forces their inhabitants to live in their narrow well-watered valleys as peasants, shepherds, and hunters ; to steel their strength by the Alpine air, and to preserve it intact amidst their simple and natural conditions of life, until the time shall have come for them to descend into the regions farther to the south, the more subdivided and manifold formation of which has, in turn, assigned to them the mission of becoming a theatre for the creation of states, and of leading their inhabitants in an eastward direction into the maritime and coast intercourse of a new and wider world. For, in fine, of all the laws which regulate the formation of the countries of European Greece, this is at once the most undeniable and the most important, that, beginning at the Thracian coast, the east side is marked out as the frontage of the whole complex of countries. "With the exception of two bays and of the Gulf of Corinth, the western sea, from Dyrrhachium to Methone, washes nothing but precipitous cliffs or a flat shore, an accretion of the sea, and disfigured by lagunes ; while innumerable deep bays and anchorages open from the mouth of the Strymon, as far as Cape Malea, to invite the inhabitants of the islands hard by to sail into, or their own population to sail out of, them. The form of rocky coast which prevails on the east side, and renders maritime intercourse possible at almost every point of a long line of shore, at the same time conduces to a superior healthiness of climate, and is better adapted for the foundation of cities. Thus the whole history of Hellas has thrown itself on the eastern coast, and those tribes which were driven into the rear of the land, such as, e. g., the Western Locrians, were by this means simultaneously excluded from active participation in the progress of the national development.

The history of a nation is by no means to be regarded solely as a consequence of the natural condition of its local habitations. But thus much it is easy to perceive : a formation of soil as peculiar as that commanding the basin of the Archipelago may well give a peculiar direction to the development of the history of its inhabitants.

In Asia great complexes of countries possess a history common to all of them. There one nation raises itself over a multitude of others, and in every case decrees of fate fall, to which vast regions, with their millions of inhabitants, are uniformly subjected. Against a history of this kind every foot-breadth of Greek land rises in protest. There the ramification of the mountains has formed a series of cantons, every one of which has received a natural call and a natural right to a separate existence.

The villagers of wide plains quail at the thought of defending their laws and property against an overpowering force of arms ; they submit to what is the will of heaven, and the survivor tranquilly builds himself a new hut near the ruins of the old. But where the land which has been with difficulty cultivated is belted by mountains with lofty ridges and narrow passes, which a little band is able to hold against a multitude, there men receive, together

Chap. I.] Land and People. 21

with these weapons of defence, the courage for using them. In the members of every local federation arises the feeling of belonging together by the will and command of God ; the common state grows by itself out of the hamlets of the valley ; and in every such state there springs np at the same time a consciousness of an independence fully justified before God and man. He who desires to enslave such a land must attack and conquer it anew in every one of its mountain valleys. In the worst case the summits of the mountains and inaccessible caves are able to shelter the remnant of the free inhabitants of the land.

But, besides the political independence, it is also the multiplicity of culture, manners, and language characteristic of Ancient Greece which it is impossible to conceive as existent without the multiplicitous formation of its territory, for without the barriers of the mountains the various elements composing its population would have early lost their individuality by contact with one another.

Now Hellas is not only a secluded and well-guarded country, but, on the other hand, again sphere and more open to commerce than any other country tiie sea " of the ancient world. For from three sides the sea penetrates into all parts of the country ; and while it accustoms men's eyes to greater acuteness and their minds tohigher enterprise, never ceases to excite their fancy for the sea, which, in regions where no ice binds it during the whole course of the year, effects an incomparably closer union between the lands than is the case with the inhospitable inland seas of the North. If it is easily agitated, it is also easily calmed again ; its dangers are diminished by the multitude of safe bays for anchorage, which the mariner may speedily reach at the approach of foul weather. They are further decreased by the transparent clearness of the atmosphere, which allows the mariner at daytime to recognize the guiding points of his course at a distance of as many as twenty miles, and at night spreads over his head a cloudless sky, where the rising and setting of the stars in peaceful tranquility regulate the business of peasant and mariner. The winds are the legislators of the weather ; but even they, in these latitudes submit to certain rules, and only rarely rise to the vehemence of desolating hurricanes. Never, except in the short winter season, is there any uncertain irregularity in wind and weather ; the commencement of the fair season — the safe months, as the ancients called it — brings with it an immutable law followed by the winds in the entire Archipelago : every morning the north wind arises from the coasts of Thrace, and passes over the whole island-sea ; so that men were accustomed to designate all the regions lying beyond that of these coasts as the side beyond the north wind.

This is the wind which once carried Miltiades to Lemnos, and at all times secured advantages of such importance to those who commanded the northern coasts. Often these winds (the Etesian) for weeks together assume the character of a storm, and when the sky is clear waves of froth appear as far as the eye can see; but the winds are regular enough to be free from danger, and they subside at sunset : then the sea becomes smooth, and air and water tranquil, till almost imperceptibly a slight contrary wind arises, a breeze from the south. When the mariner at JEgina becomes aware of this, he weighs anchor, and drops into the Piraeus in a few hours of the night. This is the sea-breeze sung of by the poets of antiquity, and now called the Embates, whose approach is ever mild, soft, and salutary. The currents passing along the coasts facilitate navigation in the gulfs and sounds of the sea ; the flight of migratory birds, the shoals of tunny-fish reappearing at fixed seasons of the year, serve as welcome signs for the mariner. The regularity in the whole life of nature and in the motion of air and sea, the mild and humane character of the iEgean, essentially contributed to make the inhabitants of its

Chap. I.] Land and People. 23

coasts use it with, tlie fullest confidence, and live on and with it.

Men soon learn all the secrets of tlie art of river navigation to an end, but never those of navigating the sea ; tlie differences between dwellers on the banks of a river soon vanish by mutual contact, whereas the sea suddenly brings the greatest contrasts together; strangers arrive who have been living under another sky, and according to other laws : there ensues an endless comparing, learning and teaching, and the more remunerative the interchange of the produce of different countries, the more restlessly the human mind labors victoriously to oppose the dangers of the sea by a constant succession of new inventions.

The Euphrates and the Nile from year to year offer the same advantages to the population on their banks, and regulate its occupations in a constant monotony* which makes it possible for centuries to pass over the land without any change taking place in the essential habits of the lives of its inhabitants. Revolutions occur, but no development, and, mummy-like, the civilization of the Egyptians stagnates, enshrouded in the Valley^ of the Nile : they count the monotonous beats of the pendulum of time, but time contains nothing for them ; they possess a chronology but no history in the full sense of the word. Such a death-in-life is not permitted by the flowing waves of the iEgean, which, as soon as commerce and mental activity have been once awakened, unceasingly continues and develops them.

Lastly, with regard to the natural gifts of the soil, a great difference prevailed between the eastern and western half of the land of Greece. The Athenian had only to ascend a few hours' journey from the mouths of the rivers of Asia Minor to assure himself how much more remunerative agriculture was there, and to admire and envy the deep layers of most fertile soil in JEolis and Ionia. There the growth of both plants and animals manifested greater luxuriance, the intercourse in tlie wide plains incomparably greater facility. We know how in the European country the plains are only let in between the mountains, like furrows or narrow basins, or, as it were, washed on to their extremest ridge ; and the single passage from one valley to the other led over lofty ridges, which men were obliged to open up for themselves, and then, with unspeakable labor, to provide with paths for beasts of burden and vehicles. The waters of the plains were equally grudging of the blessings expected from them. Far the greater number of them in summer were dried-up rivers, sons of the Nereides dying in their youth, according to the version of mythology ; and although the drought in the country is incomparably greater now than it was in ancient times, yet, since men remembered, the veins of water of the Ilissus, as well as of the Inachus, had been hidden under a dry bed of pebbles. Yet this excessive drought is again accompanied by a superabundance of water, which, stagnating in one place in the basin of a valley, in another between mountains and sea, renders the air pestiferous and cultivation difficult. Everywhere there was a call for labor and a struggle. And yet at how early a date would Greek history have come to an end had its only theatre been under the skies of Ionia ! It was, after all, only in European Hellas that the fulness of energy of which the nation was capable came to light, on that soil so much more sparingly endowed by nature ; here, after all, men's bodies received a more powerful and their minds a freer development ; here the country which they made their own, by drainage, and embankment, and artificial irrigation, became their native land in a fuller sense than the land on the opposite shore, where the gifts of God dropped into men's laps without any effort being necessary for their attainment.