LXI. THE FAILURE OF GRECIAN FREEDOM…

LXI. THE FAILURE OF GRECIAN FREEDOM

[Sidenote: [318-309 B.C.]]

We have already mentioned that Polysperchon with his army was in Phocis when Phocion was brought before him, on his march towards Peloponnesus. Before he reached Attica, Cassander arrived at Piræus to join Nicanor with a fleet of thirty-five ships and four thousand soldiers obtained from Antigonus. On learning this fact, Polysperchon hastened his march also, and presented himself under the walls of Athens and Piræus with a large force of twenty thousand Macedonians, four thousand Greek allies, one thousand cavalry, and sixty-five elephants; animals which were now seen for the first time in Greece. He at first besieged Cassander in Piræus, but finding it difficult to procure subsistence in Attica for so numerous an army, he marched with the larger portion into Peloponnesus, leaving his son Alexander with a division to make head against Cassander. Either approaching in person the various Peloponnesian towns, or addressing them by means of envoys, he enjoined the subversion of the Antipatrian oligarchies, and the restoration of liberty and free speech to the mass of the citizens. In most of the towns, this revolution was accomplished; but in Megalopolis, the oligarchy held out, not only forcing Polysperchon to besiege the city, but even defending it against him successfully. His admiral Clitus was soon afterwards defeated in the Propontis, with the loss of his whole fleet, by Nicanor (whom Cassander had sent from Piræus) and Antigonus.

After these two defeats, Polysperchon seems to have evacuated Peloponnesus, and to have carried his forces across the Corinthian Gulf into Epirus, to join Olympias. His party was greatly weakened all over Greece, and that of Cassander proportionally strengthened. The first effect of this was the surrender of Athens. The Athenians in the city, including all or many of the restored exiles, could no longer endure that complete severance from the sea, to which the occupation of Piræus and Munychia by Cassander had reduced them. Athens without a port was hardly tenable; in fact, Piræus was considered by its great constructor, Themistocles, as more indispensable to the Athenians than Athens itself. It was agreed that they should become friends and allies of Cassander; that they should have full enjoyment of their city, with the port Piræus, their ships and revenues; that the exiles and deported citizens should be readmitted; that the political franchise should for the future be enjoyed by all citizens who possessed one thousand drachmæ of property and upwards; that Cassander should hold Munychia with a governor and garrison, until the war against Polysperchon was brought to a close; and that he should also name some one Athenian citizen, in whose hands the supreme government of the city should be vested. Cassander named Demetrius the Phalerean (i.e., an Athenian of the deme Phalerum), one of the colleagues of Phocion.

This convention restored substantially at Athens the Antipatrian government; yet without the severities which had marked its original establishment, and with some modifications in various ways. It made Cassander virtually master of the city (as Antipater had been before him), by means of his governing nominee, upheld by the garrison, and by the fortification of Munychia; which had now been greatly enlarged and strengthened, holding a practical command over Piræus, though that port was nominally relinquished to the Athenians. But there was no slaughter of orators, no expulsion of citizens; moreover, even the minimum of one thousand drachmæ, fixed for the political franchise, though excluding the multitude, must have been felt as an improvement compared with the higher limit of two thousand drachmæ prescribed by Antipater. Cassander was not, like his father, at the head of an overwhelming force, master of Greece. He had Polysperchon in the field against him with a rival army and an established ascendency in many of the Grecian cities; it was therefore his interest to abstain from measures of obvious harshness towards the Athenian people.[b]

HELLAS AT PEACE

Subsequent events, in Greece itself first of all, offer sufficient explanation of what the Peace of 311 meant, so far as the freedom of the Grecian states was concerned. And yet it appears the old magic of the word did not cease to delude the mind and inflame the heart--for did not that word comprehend everything they thought they now lacked and had once enjoyed?

Free their city republics could yet certainly be, or become--free after a certain fashion; but independent, scarce one of them. Powers far superior stood round on every side; and although full of active men ready to be hired for fighting, these little states were too poor to bring up considerable armies, too jealous and bitter about one another to make a reliable alliance, and lastly the public spirit of their citizens was too decayed to permit any possible hope of a radically better state of things. Their day was over. Only the forms of a great monarchy could have held together this restless life which was fretting itself away; but whatever attempt had been made in this direction had taken no root among a people who were entirely separatist, and whose ideas of citizenship never went beyond the limits of their various cities. The very qualities that so peculiarly fitted the Greek spirit to serve as the fermenting leaven that should work through the peoples of Asia and forward their development, incapacitated it for the work of retaining its independent politics and keeping pace with the new developments of the time.

The situation of Sparta in these times is a strange one. The laws of Lycurgus and the old forms still linger there, but the old spirit has gone out, even to the last trace. It is a reign of the basest immorality. The citizens have dwindled to a few hundreds, the constitution of Lycurgus, formally observed, is a lie. The narrower the intellectual circle in which thought may move, the cruder must be the notions that obtain. Literature and science, the comfort and hope of the rest of Greece, were still, even to this day, proscribed in Sparta. Sparta had no other interest in the situation except that in her dominion was the universal recruiting ground for all parties--the peninsula of Tænarus--and distinguished Spartans were always glad to take the field as mercenaries. Even the son of the aged king Cleomenes II, Acrotatus, led a mercenary army to Tarentum and Sicily in 315, revolting those in whose pay he fought by his bloodthirsty savagery and his unnatural passions. He came home to Sparta dishonoured, and died before he could inherit from his father.

At the death of Cleomenes (309), Cleonymus, a worthy brother to Acrotatus in dissoluteness and arrogance, demanded the kingdom; the Gerousia decided in favour of the young son of Acrotatus, Areus, and after a few years Cleonymus entered the service of Tarentum with a force of mercenaries, to bring the name of Sparta into ignominy by behaving even worse than his brother. At home the power of the kings, since the state no longer existed for its business of war, was as good as gone. The ephorate ruled as an oligarchy, and the oligarchy wanted nothing but quiet and pleasure, wrapped up in the dead laws of Lycurgus; nothing was further from their thoughts than the idea of winning again their old hegemony, at least in the Peloponnese--an idea which might now have been justified by the distraction of Greece and the strife of parties that was bursting afresh into flames.

ATHENS UNDER DEMETRIUS; SPARTA BEHIND WALLS

Athens affords us the most vivid glimpse into this unhappy time. How often had the ruling party and the policy of the city changed since the battle of Chæronea. At last in the autumn of 318, after the victory of Cassander, the state was given a form which was anything but a democracy. The man whom the people chose, and Cassander confirmed, as state administrator, was Demetrius, the son of Phanostratus of Phalerus. He had grown up in the house of Timotheus and had been educated in science and for a political life by Theophrastus. He was a man as talented as he was vain, as versatile in the realm of letters as he was politically characterless--for the rest, a man of the world and its pleasures, who fell on his feet wherever he was.

It may be that in his early years he had lived like a philosopher, that his table was laid very frugally, “only with olives in vinegar and cheese from the islands.” And then too, when he became master of the state he showed himself, according to some, a humane, clear-sighted, excellent statesman; while others declare that he spent but a small proportion of the city’s income (which with subsidies from Egypt and Macedonia he had raised to twelve hundred talents) in administration and in keeping the city well prepared for war; the rest went partly in public festivities and splendour, and partly in his own riotous and dissolute living. He that would pose in his ordinances as a reformer of Athenian morals, corrupted morals by his more than doubtful example. Every day, it was said, he gave splendid dinners to which a great number of guests were always invited; in his expenditure on his table he surpassed even the Macedonians, in his elegance he outdid Cyprians and Phœnicians; spikenard and myrrh were sprinkled for perfume, the floor was strewn with flowers, costly carpets and paintings decorated the rooms; he kept so extravagant, so luxurious, a table, that his cook, who had what was left over, was able to buy three properties in two years out of the profits he made by his sales. Demetrius spent the greatest care upon his choice of dress, he dyed his hair fair, painted his face, anointed his head with precious oils; he always showed a smiling countenance, he wanted to please every one.

The most dainty and unbridled wantonness side by side with that subtle, gracious, and witty culture, which has ever since been described by the epithet Attic--both are characteristic of the life of Athens in those days. It was the fashion to attend the schools of philosophy.

Such words as home, chastity, modesty, were no longer heard in the Athens of that time, or they were only words. Life had all become phrases and epigrams, ostentation and occupied idleness. Athens distributed flattery and entertainment to the mighty ones of the earth, and permitted herself to receive in return their gifts and gratuities. She grew more servile as she grew more oligarchic. She played as a state the rôle of parasite to kings and such as held power, a sponging flatterer not at all ashamed to buy admiration and pleasures at the price of dignity. There were only two things her people were afraid of; they were afraid of being bored, and they were afraid of being ridiculous--and there were rich occasions for being both. Religion had disappeared, and with the indifference of enlightenment superstition came in--magic, witchcraft, astrology. Moral conduct, out of an old habit (for morality like the laws had been reasoned away), was theoretically handled in the schools and made a theme for debate and literary duels. The two standard philosophies of the next centuries, the Stoic and the Epicurean, were evolving in Athens at this period.

It was, of course, a proud thing for Demetrius that the city was much and profitably frequented. Trade itself was probably livelier in Athens during these years than at any other time and rivalled that of Rhodes, Byzantium, and Alexandria. According to a census which was probably undertaken during the year Demetrius was archon (309), the population of Attica amounted to 21,000 citizens, 10,000 strangers, 400,000 slaves--certainly a great number of inhabitants for a territory of little more than forty square miles.[c]

[Sidenote: [318-317 B.C.]]

The acquisition of Athens by Cassander, followed up by his capture of Panactum and Salamis, and seconded by his moderation towards the Athenians, procured for him considerable support in Peloponnesus, whither he proceeded with his army. Many of the cities, intimidated or persuaded, joined him and deserted Polysperchon; while the Spartans, now feeling for the first time their defenceless condition, thought it prudent to surround their city with walls. This fact, among many others contemporaneous, testifies emphatically how the characteristic sentiments of the Hellenic autonomous world were now dying out everywhere. The maintenance of Sparta as an unwalled city was one of the deepest and most cherished of the Lycurgean traditions; a standing proof of the fearless bearing and self-confidence of the Spartans against dangers from without. The erection of the walls showed their own conviction, but too well borne out by the real circumstances around them, that the pressure of the foreigner had become so overwhelming as hardly to leave them even safety at home.

THE LAST ACTS OF OLYMPIAS’ POWER

[Sidenote: [317-311 B.C.]]

The warfare between Cassander and Polysperchon became now embittered by a feud among the members of the Macedonian imperial family. King Philip Arrhidæus and his wife Eurydice, alarmed and indignant at the restoration of Olympias, which Polysperchon was projecting, solicited aid from Cassander, and tried to place the force in Macedonia at his disposal. In this however they failed.

Olympias, assisted not only by Polysperchon, but by the Epirot prince Æacides, made her entry into Macedonia out of Epirus, apparently in the autumn of 317 B.C. She brought with her Roxane and her child--the widow and son of Alexander the Great. The Macedonian soldiers, assembled by Philip Arrhidæus and Eurydice to resist her, were so overawed by her name and the recollection of Alexander, that they refused to fight, and thus insured to her an easy victory. Philip and Eurydice became her prisoners; the former she caused to be slain; to the latter she offered only an option between the sword, the halter, and poison. The old queen next proceeded to satiate her revenge against the family of Antipater. One hundred leading Macedonians, friends of Cassander, were put to death, together with his brother Nicanor; while the sepulchre of his deceased brother Iollas, accused of having poisoned Alexander the Great, was broken up.

During the winter, Olympias remained thus completely predominant in Macedonia; where her position seemed strong, since her allies the Ætolians were masters of the pass at Thermopylæ, while Cassander was kept employed in Peloponnesus by the force under Alexander, son of Polysperchon. But Cassander, disengaging himself from these embarrassments, and eluding Thermopylæ by a maritime transit to Thessaly, seized the Perrhæbian passes before they had been put under guard, and entered Macedonia without resistance. Olympias, having no army competent to meet him in the field, was forced to shut herself up in the maritime fortress of Pydna, with Roxane, the child Alexander, and Thessalonice daughter of her late husband Philip, son of Amyntas.

Here Cassander blocked her up for several months by sea as well as by land, and succeeded in defeating all the efforts of Polysperchon and Æacides to relieve her. In the spring of the ensuing year (316 B.C.), she was forced by intolerable famine to surrender. Cassander promised her nothing more than personal safety, requiring from her the surrender of the two great fortresses, Pella and Amphipolis, which made him master of Macedonia. Presently however the relatives of those numerous victims, who had perished by order of Olympias, were encouraged by Cassander to demand her life in retribution. They found little difficulty in obtaining a verdict of condemnation against her from what was called a Macedonian assembly. Nevertheless, such was the sentiment of awe and reverence connected with her name, that no one except these injured men themselves could be found to execute the sentence. She died with a courage worthy of her rank and domineering character. Cassander took Thessalonice to wife, confined Roxane with the child Alexander in the fortress of Amphipolis--where (after a certain interval) he caused both of them to be slain.

While Cassander was thus master of Macedonia, and while the imperial family were disappearing from the scene in that country, the defeat and death of Eumenes (which happened nearly at the same time as the capture of Olympias) removed the last faithful partisan of that family in Asia. But at the same time it left in the hands of Antigonus such overwhelming preponderance throughout Asia, that he aspired to become vicar and master of the entire Alexandrine empire, as well as to avenge upon Cassander the extirpation of the regal family. His power appeared indeed so formidable that Cassander of Macedonia, Lysimachus of Thrace, Ptolemy of Egypt, and Seleucus of Babylonia, entered into a convention, which gradually ripened into an active alliance against him.

[Sidenote: [317-315 B.C.]]

During the struggles between these powerful princes, Greece appears simply as a group of subject cities, held, garrisoned, grasped at, or coveted, by all of them. Polysperchon, abandoning all hopes in Macedonia after the death of Olympias, had been forced to take refuge among the Ætolians, leaving his son Alexander to make the best struggle that he could in Peloponnesus; so that Cassander was now decidedly preponderant throughout the Hellenic regions. After fixing himself on the throne of Macedonia, he perpetuated his own name by founding, on the isthmus of the peninsula of Pallene and near the site where Potidæa had stood, the new city of Cassandrea.

Passing through Bœotia, he undertook the task of restoring the city of Thebes, which had been destroyed twenty years previously by Alexander the Great, and had ever since existed only as a military post on the ancient citadel called Cadmea. The other Bœotian towns, to whom the old Theban territory had been assigned, were persuaded or constrained to relinquish it; and Cassander invited from all parts of Greece the Theban exiles or their descendants. From sympathy with these exiles, and also with the ancient celebrity of the city, many Greeks, even from Italy and Sicily, contributed to the restoration. The Athenians, now administered by Demetrius Phalereus under Cassander’s supremacy, were particularly forward in the work; the Messenians and Megalopolitans, whose ancestors had owed so much to the Theban Epaminondas, lent strenuous aid. Thebes was re-established in the original area which it had occupied before Alexander’s siege; and was held by a Cassandrian garrison in the Cadmea, destined for the mastery of Bœotia and Greece.

After some stay at Thebes, Cassander advanced towards Peloponnesus. Alexander (son of Polysperchon) having fortified the isthmus, he was forced to embark his troops with his elephants at Megara, and cross over the Saronic Gulf to Epidaurus. He dispossessed Alexander of Argos, of Messenia, and even of his position on the isthmus, where he left a powerful detachment, and then returned to Macedonia. His increasing power raised both apprehension and hatred in the bosom of Antigonus, who endeavoured to come to terms with him, but in vain. Cassander preferred the alliance with Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus--against Antigonus, who was now master of nearly the whole of Asia, inspiring common dread to all of them. Accordingly, from Asia to Peloponnesus, with arms and money Antigonus despatched the Milesian Aristodemus to strengthen Alexander against Cassander; whom he further denounced as an enemy of the Macedonian name, because he had slain Olympias, imprisoned the other members of the regal family, and re-established the Olynthian exiles. He caused the absent Cassander to be condemned by what was called a Macedonian assembly, upon these and other charges.

Antigonus further proclaimed, by the voice of this assembly, that all the Greeks should be free, self-governing, and exempt from garrisons or military occupation. It was expected that these brilliant promises would enlist partisans in Greece against Cassander; accordingly Ptolemy, ruler of Egypt, one of the enemies of Antigonus, thought fit to issue similar proclamations a few months afterwards, tendering to the Greeks the same boon from himself. These promises, neither executed nor intended to be executed, by either of the kings, appear to have produced little or no effect upon the Greeks.

[Sidenote: [315-312 B.C.]]

The arrival of Aristodemus in Peloponnesus had reanimated the party of Alexander (son of Polysperchon), against whom Cassander was again obliged to bring his full forces from Macedonia. Though successful against Alexander at Argos, Orchomenos, and other places, Cassander was not able to crush him, and presently thought it prudent to gain him over. He offered to him the separate government of Peloponnesus, though in subordination to himself; Alexander accepted the offer--becoming Cassander’s ally--and carried on war, jointly with him, against Aristodemus, with varying success, until he was presently assassinated by some private enemies. Nevertheless his widow Cratesipolis, a woman of courage and energy, still maintained herself in considerable force at Sicyon.

Cassander’s most obstinate enemies were the Ætolians, of whom we now first hear formal mention as a substantive confederacy. These Ætolians became the allies of Antigonus as they had been before of Polysperchon, extending their predatory ravages even as far as Attica. Protected against foreign garrisons, partly by their rude and fierce habits, partly by their mountainous territory, they were almost the only Greeks who could still be called free. Cassander tried to keep them in check through their neighbours the Acarnanians, whom he induced to adopt a more concentrated habit of residence, consolidating their numerous petty townships into a few considerable towns,--Stratus, Sauria, and Agrinium,--convenient posts for Macedonian garrisons. He also made himself master of Leucas, Apollonia, and Epidamnus, defeating the Illyrian king Glaucias, so that his dominion now extended across from the Thermaic to the Adriatic Gulf. His general Philippus gained two important victories over the Ætolians and Epirots, forcing the former to relinquish some of their most accessible towns.

The power of Antigonus in Asia underwent a material diminution, by the successful and permanent establishment which Seleucus now acquired in Babylonia; from which event the era of the succeeding Seleucidæ takes its origin. In Greece, however, Antigonus gained ground on Cassander. He sent thither his nephew Ptolemy with a large force to liberate the Greeks, or in other words, to expel the Cassandrian garrisons; while he at the same time distracted Cassander’s attention by threatening to cross the Hellespont and invade Macedonia. This Ptolemy (not the Egyptian) expelled the soldiers of Cassander from Eubœa, Bœotia, and Phocis; having taken Chalcis, Oropus, Eretria, and Carystus, he entered Attica and presented himself before Athens. So much disposition to treat with him was manifested in the city, that Demetrius the Phalerean was obliged to gain time by pretending to open negotiations with Antigonus, while Ptolemy withdrew from Attica. Nearly at the same epoch, Apollonia, Epidamnus, and Leucas, found means, assisted by an armament from Corcyra, to drive out Cassander’s garrisons, and to escape from his dominion. The affairs of Antigonus were now prospering in Greece, but they were much thrown back by the discontent and treachery of his admiral Telesphorus, who seized Elis and even plundered the sacred treasures of Olympia. Ptolemy presently put him down, and restored these treasures to the god.

[Sidenote: [312-308 B.C.]]

In the ensuing year, a convention was concluded between Antigonus, on one side, and Cassander, Ptolemy (the Egyptian) and Lysimachus, on the other, whereby the supreme command in Macedonia was guaranteed to Cassander, until the maturity of Alexander son of Roxane; Thrace being at the same time assured to Lysimachus, Egypt to Ptolemy, and the whole of Asia to Antigonus. It was at the same time covenanted by all, that the Hellenic cities should be free. Towards the execution of this last clause, however, nothing was actually done. Nor does it appear that the treaty had any other effect, except to inspire Cassander with increased jealousy about Roxane and her child; both of whom (as has been already stated) he caused to be secretly assassinated soon afterwards, by the governor Glaucias, in the fortress of Amphipolis, where they had been confined. The forces of Antigonus, under his general Ptolemy, still remained in Greece. But this general presently (310 B.C.) revolted from Antigonus, and placed them in co-operation with Cassander; while Ptolemy of Egypt, accusing Antigonus of having contravened the treaty by garrisoning various Grecian cities, renewed the war and the triple alliance against him.

Polysperchon--who had hitherto maintained a local dominion over various parts of Peloponnesus, with a military force distributed in Messene and other towns--was now encouraged by Antigonus to espouse the cause of Heracles (son of Alexander by Barsine), and to place him on the throne of Macedonia in opposition to Cassander. This young prince Heracles now seventeen years of age, was sent to Greece from Pergamus in Asia, and his pretensions to the throne were assisted not only by a considerable party in Macedonia itself, but also by the Ætolians. Polysperchon invaded Macedonia, with favourable prospects of establishing the young prince; yet he thought it advantageous to accept treacherous propositions from Cassander, who offered to him partnership in the sovereignty of Macedonia, with an independent army and dominion in Peloponnesus. Polysperchon, tempted by these offers, assassinated the young prince Heracles, and withdrew his army towards Peloponnesus. But he found such unexpected opposition, in his march through Bœotia, from Bœotians and Peloponnesians, that he was forced to take up his winter quarters in Locris (309 B.C.). From this time forward, as far as we can make out, he commanded in southern Greece as subordinate ally or partner of Cassander.

The assassination of Heracles was speedily followed by that of Cleopatra, sister of Alexander the Great, and daughter of Philip and Olympias. She had been for some time at Sardis, nominally at liberty, yet under watch by the governor, who received his orders from Antigonus; she was now preparing to quit that place, for the purpose of joining Ptolemy in Egypt, and of becoming his wife. She had been invoked as auxiliary, or courted in marriage, by several of the great Macedonian chiefs, without any result. Now, however, Antigonus, afraid of the influence which her name might throw into the scale of his rival Ptolemy, caused her to be secretly murdered as she was preparing for her departure; throwing the blame of the deed on some of her women, whom he punished with death.

All the relatives of Alexander the Great (except Thessalonice wife of Cassander, daughter of Philip by a Thessalian mistress) thus successively perished, and all by the orders of one or other among his principal officers. The imperial family, with the prestige of its name thus came to an end.

PTOLEMY IN GREECE

[Sidenote: [308-307 B.C.]]

Ptolemy of Egypt now set sail for Greece with a powerful armament. He acquired possession of the important cities--Sicyon and Corinth--which were handed over to him by Cratesipolis, widow of Alexander son of Polysperchon. He then made known by proclamation his purpose as a liberator, inviting aid from the Peloponnesian cities themselves against the garrisons of Cassander. From some he received encouraging answers and promises; but none of them made any movement, or seconded him by armed demonstrations. He thought it prudent therefore to conclude a truce with Cassander and retire from Greece, leaving however secure garrisons in Sicyon and Corinth. The Grecian cities had now become tame and passive. Feeling their own incapacity of self-defence, and averse to auxiliary efforts--which brought upon them enmity without any prospect of advantage--they awaited only the turns of foreign interference and the behests of the potentates around them.

The Grecian ascendency of Cassander, however, was in the following year exposed to a graver shock than it had ever yet encountered, by the sudden invasion of Demetrius called Poliorcetes, son of Antigonus. This young prince, sailing from Ephesus with a formidable armament, contrived to conceal his purposes so closely, that he actually entered the harbour of Piræus (on the 26th of the month Thargelion--May) without expectation, or resistance from any one; his fleet being mistaken for the fleet of the Egyptian Ptolemy. The Phalerean Demetrius, taken unawares, and attempting too late to guard the harbour, found himself compelled to leave it in possession of the enemy, and to retire within the walls of Athens; while Dionysius, the Cassandrian governor, maintained himself with his garrison in Munychia, yet without any army competent to meet the invaders in the field. This accomplished Phalerean, who had administered for ten years as the viceroy and with the force of Cassander, now felt his position and influence at Athens overthrown, and even his personal safety endangered. He obtained permission to retire to Thebes, from whence he passed over soon after to Ptolemy in Egypt. The Athenians in the city declared in favour of Demetrius Poliorcetes; who however refused to enter the walls until he should have besieged and captured Munychia, as well as Megara, with their Cassandrian garrisons. In a short time he accomplished both these objects. Indeed energy, skill, and effective use of engines in besieging fortified places, were among the most conspicuous features in his character; procuring for him the surname whereby he is known to history. He proclaimed the Megarians free, levelling to the ground the fortifications of Munychia, as an earnest to the Athenians that they should be relieved for the future from all foreign garrison.

ATHENS PASSIVE AND SERVILE

[Sidenote: [307-304 B.C.]]

After these successes, Demetrius Poliorcetes made his triumphant entry into Athens. He announced to the people, in formal assembly, that they were now again a free democracy, liberated from all dominion either of soldiers from abroad or oligarchs at home. He also promised them a further boon from his father Antigonus and himself--150,000 medimni of corn for distribution, and ship-timber in quantity sufficient for constructing one hundred triremes. Both these announcements were received with grateful exultation. The feelings of the people were testified not merely in votes of thanks and admiration towards the young conqueror, but in effusions of unmeasured and exorbitant flattery. Stratocles (who has already been before us as one of the accusers of Demosthenes in the Harpalian affair) with others exhausted their invention in devising new varieties of compliment and adulation. Antigonus and Demetrius were proclaimed to be not only kings, but gods and saviours; a high priest of these saviours was to be annually chosen, after whom each successive year was to be named (instead of being named after the first of the nine archons, as had hitherto been the custom), and the dates of decrees and contracts commemorated; the month Munychion was re-named as Demetrion; two new tribes, to be called Antigonias and Demetrias, were constituted in addition to the preceding ten; the annual senate was appointed to consist of six hundred members instead of five hundred; the portraits and exploits of Antigonus and Demetrius were to be woven, along with those of Zeus and Athene, into the splendid and voluminous robe periodically carried in procession, as an offering at the Panathenaic festival; the spot of ground where Demetrius had alighted from his chariot, was consecrated with an altar erected in honour of Demetrius Catæbates or the Descender. Several other similar votes were passed, recognising, and worshipping as gods, the saviours Antigonus and Demetrius. Nay, we are told that temples or altars were voted to Phila-Aphrodite, in honour of Phila wife of Demetrius; and a like compliment was paid to his two mistresses, Leæna and Lamia. Altars are said to have been also dedicated to Adimantus and others, his convivial companions or flatterers. At the same time the numerous statues which had been erected in honour of the Phalerean Demetrius during his decennial government, were overthrown, and some of them even turned to ignoble purposes, in order to cast greater scorn upon the past ruler. The demonstrations of servile flattery at Athens, towards Demetrius Poliorcetes, were in fact so extravagantly overdone, that he himself is said to have been disgusted with them, and to have expressed contempt for these degenerate Athenians of his own time.

The most fulsome votes of adulation proposed in honour of Demetrius Poliorcetes by his partisans, though perhaps disapproved by many, would hardly find a single pronounced opponent. One man, however, there was, who ventured to oppose several of the votes--the nephew of Demosthenes, Demochares; who deserves to be commemorated as the last known spokesman of free Athenian citizenship. We know only that such were his general politics, and that his opposition to the obsequious rhetor Stratocles ended in banishment, four years afterwards. He appears to have acted as a general during this period, and to have been active in strengthening the fortifications and military equipment of the city.

The altered politics of Athens were manifested by impeachment against Demetrius Phalereus and other leading partisans of the late Cassandrian government. He and many others had already gone into voluntary exile; when their trials came on, they were not forthcoming, and all were condemned to death. But all those who remained, and presented themselves for trial, were acquitted; so little was there of reactionary violence on this occasion.

The friendship of this obnoxious Phalerean, and of Cassander also, towards the philosopher Theophrastus, seems to have been one main cause which occasioned the enactment of a restrictive law against the liberty of philosophising. It was decreed, on the proposition of a citizen named Sophocles, that no philosopher should be allowed to open a school or teach, except under special sanction obtained from a vote of the senate and people. Such was the disgust and apprehension occasioned by the new restriction, that all the philosophers with one accord left Athens. This spirited protest, against authoritative restriction on the liberty of philosophy and teaching, found responsive sympathy among the Athenians. The celebrity of the schools and professors was in fact the only characteristic mark of dignity still remaining to them--then their power had become extinct, and when even their independence and free constitution had degenerated into a mere name.

Athenian envoys were despatched to Antigonus in Asia, to testify the gratitude of the people, and communicate the recent complimentary votes. Antigonus not only received them graciously, but sent to Athens, according to the promise made by his son, a large present of 150,000 medimni of wheat, with timber sufficient for one hundred ships. He at the same time directed Demetrius to convene at Athens a synod of deputies from the allied Grecian cities, where resolutions might be taken for the common interests of Greece. It was his interest at this moment to raise up a temporary self-sustaining authority in Greece, for the purpose of upholding the alliance with himself, during the absence of Demetrius--whom he was compelled to summon into Asia with his army, requiring his services for the war against Ptolemy in Syria and Cyprus.

The following three years were spent by Demetrius: (1) In victorious operations near Cyprus, defeating Ptolemy and making himself master of that island; after which Antigonus and Demetrius assumed the title of kings, and the example was followed by Ptolemy, in Egypt, by Lysimachus, in Thrace, and by Seleucus in Babylonia, Mesopotamia, and Syria; thus abolishing even the titular remembrance of Alexander’s family. (2) In an unsuccessful invasion of Egypt by land and sea, repulsed with great loss. (3) In the siege of Rhodes. The brave and intelligent citizens of this island resisted for more than a year the most strenuous attacks and the most formidable siege-equipments of Demetrius Poliorcetes. All their efforts however would have been vain had they not been assisted by large reinforcements and supplies from Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Cassander. Such are the conditions under which alone even the most resolute and intelligent Greeks can now retain their circumscribed sphere of autonomy. The siege was at length terminated by a compromise; the Rhodians submitted to enrol themselves as allies of Demetrius, yet under proviso not to act against Ptolemy. Towards the latter they carried their grateful devotion so far as to erect a temple to him, called the Ptolemæum, and to worship him (under the sanction of the oracle of Ammon) as a god. Amidst the rocks and shoals through which Grecian cities were now condemned to steer, menaced on every side by kings more powerful than themselves, and afterwards by the giant republic of Rome--the Rhodians conducted their political affairs with greater prudence and dignity than any other Grecian city.

[Sidenote: [304-302 B.C.]]

Shortly after the departure of Demetrius from Greece to Cyprus, Cassander and Polysperchon renewed the war in Peloponnesus and its neighbourhood. We make out no particulars respecting this war. The Ætolians were in hostility with Athens, and committed annoying depredations. The fleet of Athens, repaired or increased by the timber received from Antigonus, was made to furnish thirty quadriremes to assist Demetrius in Cyprus, and was employed in certain operations near the island of Amorgos, wherein it suffered defeat. But we can discover little respecting the course of the war, except that Cassander gained ground upon the Athenians, and that about the beginning of 303 B.C., he was blockading or threatening to blockade Athens. The Athenians invoked the aid of Demetrius Poliorcetes, who, having recently concluded an accommodation with the Rhodians, came again across from Asia, with a powerful fleet and army, to Aulis in Bœotia. He was received at Athens with demonstrations of honour equal or superior to those which had marked his previous visit. He seems to have passed a year and a half, partly at Athens, partly in military operations carried successfully over many parts of Greece. He celebrated, as president, the great festival of the Heræa at Argos; on which occasion he married Didamia, sister of Pyrrhus, the young king of Epirus. He prevailed on the Sicyonians to transfer to a short distance the site of their city, conferring upon the new city the name of Demetrias. At a Grecian synod, convened in Corinth under his own letters of invitation, he received by acclamation the appointment of leader or emperor of the Greeks, as it had been conferred on Philip and Alexander. He even extended his attacks as far as Leucas and Corcyra. The greater part of Greece seems to have been either occupied by his garrisons, or enlisted among his subordinates.

So much was Cassander intimidated by these successes, that he sent envoys to Asia, soliciting peace from Antigonus; who, however, elate and full of arrogance, refused to listen to any terms short of surrender at discretion. Cassander, thus driven to despair, renewed his applications to Lysimachus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus. All these princes felt equally menaced by the power and dispositions of Antigonus, and all resolved upon an energetic combination to put him down.

SUCCESS OF DEMETRIUS IN GREECE

[Sidenote: [302-301 B.C.]]

After uninterrupted prosperity in Greece, throughout the summer of 302 B.C., Demetrius returned from Leucas to Athens, about the month of September, near the time of the Eleusinian mysteries. He was welcomed by festive processions, hymns, pæans, choric dances, and bacchanalian odes of joyous congratulation. One of these hymns is preserved, sung by a chorus of ithyphalli--masked revellers, with their heads and arms encircled by wreaths--clothed in white tunics, and in feminine garments.

Effusions such as these, while displaying unmeasured idolatry and subservience towards Demetrius, are yet more remarkable, as betraying a loss of force, a senility, and a consciousness of defenceless and degraded position, such as we are astonished to find publicly proclaimed at Athens. It is not only against the foreign potentates that the Athenians avow themselves incapable of self-defence, but even against the incursions of the Ætolians,--Greeks like themselves, though warlike, rude, and restless. When such were the feelings of a people--once the most daring, confident, and organising, and still the most intelligent, in Greece, we may see that the history of the Greeks as a separate nation or race is reaching its close; and that from henceforward they must become merged in one or other of the stronger currents that surround them.

After his past successes, Demetrius passed some months in enjoyment and luxury at Athens. He was lodged in the Parthenon, being considered as the guest of the goddess Athene. But his dissolute habits provoked the louder comments, from their being indulged in such a domicile; while the violences which he offered to beautiful youths of good family led to various scenes truly tragical. The subservient manifestations of the Athenians towards him, however, continued unabated. It is even affirmed that, in order to compensate for something which he had taken amiss, they passed a formal decree, on the proposition of Stratocles, declaring that everything which Demetrius might command was holy in regard to the gods, and just in regard to men. The banishment of Demochares is said to have been brought on by his sarcastic comments upon this decree. In the month Munychion (April) Demetrius mustered his forces and his Grecian allies for a march into Thessaly against Cassander; but before his departure, he was anxious to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries. It was however not the regular time for this ceremony; the Lesser Mysteries being celebrated in February, the Greater in September. The Athenians overruled the difficulty by passing a special vote, enabling him to be initiated at once, and to receive in immediate succession the preparatory and the final initiation, between which ceremonies a year of interval was habitually required. Accordingly, he placed himself disarmed in the hands of the priests, and received both first and second initiation in the month of April, immediately before his departure from Athens.

BATTLE OF IPSUS

[Sidenote: [301-294 B.C.]]

Demetrius conducted into Thessaly an army of fifty-six thousand men, of whom twenty-five thousand were Grecian allies--so extensive was his sway at this moment over the Grecian cities. But after two or three months of hostilities, partially successful, against Cassander, he was summoned into Asia by Antigonus to assist in meeting the formidable army of the allies--Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus, and Cassander. Before retiring from Greece, Demetrius concluded a truce with Cassander, whereby it was stipulated that the Grecian cities, both in Europe and Asia, should be permanently autonomous and free from garrison or control. This stipulation served only as an honourable pretext for leaving Greece; Demetrius had little expectation that it would be observed. In the ensuing spring was fought the decisive battle of Ipsus in Phrygia (300 B.C.), by Antigonus and Demetrius, against Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus; with a large army and many elephants on both sides. Antigonus, completely defeated, was slain; his age was more than eighty years. His Asiatic dominion was broken up, chiefly to the profit of Seleucus, whose dynasty became from henceforward ascendant, from the coast of Syria eastward to the Caspian Gates and Parthia; sometimes, though imperfectly, farther eastward, nearly to the Indus.

The effects of the battle of Ipsus were speedily felt in Greece. The Athenians passed a decree proclaiming themselves neutral, and excluding both the belligerent parties from Attica. Demetrius, retiring with the remnant of his defeated army, and embarking at Ephesus to sail to Athens, was met on the voyage by Athenian envoys, who respectfully acquainted him that he would not be admitted. At the same time, his wife Didamia, whom he had left at Athens, was sent away by the Athenians under an honourable escort to Megara, while some ships of war which he had left in the Piræus were also restored to him. Demetrius, indignant at this unexpected defection of a city which had recently heaped upon him such fulsome adulation, was still further mortified by the loss of most of his other possessions in Greece. His garrisons were for the most part expelled, and the cities passed into Cassandrian keeping or dominion. His fortunes were indeed partially restored by concluding a peace with Seleucus, who married his daughter. This alliance withdrew Demetrius to Syria, while Greece appears to have fallen more and more under the Cassandrian parties. It was one of these partisans, Lachares, who, seconded by Cassander’s soldiers, acquired a despotism at Athens such as had been possessed by the Phalerean Demetrius, but employed in a manner far more cruel and oppressive.

Various exiles from his tyranny invited Demetrius Poliorcetes, who passed over again from Asia into Greece, recovered portions of Peloponnesus, and laid siege to Athens. He blocked up the city by sea and land, so that the pressure of famine presently became intolerable. Lachares having made his escape, the people opened their gates to Demetrius, not without great fear of the treatment awaiting them. But he behaved with forbearance, and even with generosity. He spared them all, supplied them with a large donation of corn, and contented himself with taking military occupation of the city, naming his own friends as magistrates. He put garrisons, however, not only into Piræus and Munychia, but also into the hill called Museum, a part of the walled circle of Athens itself (298 B.C.).

While Demetrius was thus strengthening himself in Greece, he lost all his footing both in Cyprus, Syria, and Cilicia, which passed into the hands of Ptolemy and Seleucus. New prospects however were opened to him in Macedonia by the death of Cassander (his brother-in-law, brother of his wife Phila) and the family feuds supervening thereupon. Philippus, eldest son of Cassander, succeeded his father, but died of sickness after something more than a year. Between the two remaining sons, Antipater and Alexander, a sanguinary hostility broke out. Antipater slew his mother Thessalonice, and threatened the life of his brother, who in his turn invited aid both from Demetrius and from the Epirotic king Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus being ready first, marched into Macedonia, and expelled Antipater; receiving as his recompense the territory called Tymphæa (between Epirus and Macedonia) together with Acarnania, Amphilochia, and the town of Ambracia, which became henceforward his chief city and residence. Antipater sought shelter in Thrace with his father-in-law Lysimachus; by whose order, however, he was presently slain. Demetrius, occupied with other matters, was more tardy in obeying the summons; but, on entering into Macedonia, he found himself strong enough to dispossess and kill Alexander (who had indeed invited him, but is said to have laid a train for assassinating him), and seized the Macedonian crown; not without the assent of a considerable party, to whom the name and the deeds of Cassander and his sons were alike odious.

[Sidenote: [294-279 B.C.]]

Demetrius became thus master of Macedonia, together with the greater part of Greece, including Athens, Megara, and much of Peloponnesus. He undertook an expedition into Bœotia, for the purpose of conquering Thebes; in which attempt he succeeded, not without a double siege of that city. But Greece as a whole was managed by Antigonus (afterwards called Antigonus Gonatas) son of Demetrius, who maintained his supremacy unshaken during all his father’s life-time; even though Demetrius was deprived of Macedonia by the temporary combination of Lysimachus with Pyrrhus, and afterwards remained (until his death in 283 B.C.) a captive in the hands of Seleucus. After a brief possession of the crown of Macedonia successively by Seleucus, Ptolemy Ceraunus, Meleager, Antipater, and Sosthenes--Antigonus Gonatas regained it in 277 B.C. His descendants, the Antigonid kings, maintained it until the battle of Pydna in 168 B.C.; when Perseus, the last of them, was overthrown, and his kingdom incorporated with the Roman conquests.

Of Greece during this period we can give no account, except that the greater number of its cities were in dependence upon Demetrius and his son Antigonus--either under occupation by Macedonian garrisons, or ruled by local despots who leaned on foreign mercenaries and Macedonian support. The spirit of the Greeks was broken, and their habits of combined sentiment and action had disappeared. The invasion of the Gauls indeed awakened them into a temporary union for the defence of Thermopylæ in 279 B.C. But this burst of spirit did not interrupt the continuance of the Macedonian dominion in Greece, which Antigonus Gonatas continued to hold throughout most of a long reign. He greatly extended the system begun by his predecessors, of isolating each Grecian city from alliances with other cities in its neighbourhood--planting in most of them local despots, and compressing the most important by means of garrisons. Among all Greeks, the Spartans and the Ætolians stood most free from foreign occupation, and were the least crippled in their power of self-action. The Achæan League too developed itself afterwards as a renovated sprout from the ruined tree of Grecian liberty, though never attaining to anything better than a feeble and puny life, nor capable of sustaining itself without foreign aid.[b]

At this point Grote ends his immortal work and takes farewell of Grecian history in the following words:

“With this after-growth, or half-revival, I shall not meddle. It forms the Greece of Polybius, which that author treats, in my opinion justly, as having no history of its own, but as an appendage attached to some foreign centre and principal among its neighbours--Macedonia, Egypt, Syria, Rome. Each of these neighbours acted upon the destinies of Greece more powerfully than the Greeks themselves. The Greeks to whom these volumes have been devoted--those of Homer, Archilochus, Solon, Æschylus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Demosthenes--present as their most marked characteristic a loose aggregation of autonomous tribes or communities, acting and reacting freely among themselves, with little or no pressure from foreigners. The main interest of the narrative has consisted in the spontaneous grouping of the different Hellenic fractions, in the self-prompted co-operations and conflicts, the abortive attempts to bring about something like an effective federal organisation, or to maintain two permanent rival confederacies, the energetic ambition and heroic endurance of men to whom Hellas was the entire political world. The freedom of Hellas, the life and soul of this history from its commencement, disappeared completely during the first years of Alexander’s reign. After following to their tombs the generation of Greeks contemporary with him--men like Demosthenes and Phocion, born in a state of freedom--I have pursued the history into that gulf of Grecian nullity which marks the succeeding century; exhibiting sad evidence of the degrading servility, and suppliant king-worship, into which the countrymen of Aristides and Pericles had been driven, by their own conscious weakness under the overwhelming pressure from without.

“I cannot better complete that picture than by showing what the leading democratical citizen became, under the altered atmosphere which now bedimmed his city. Demochares, the nephew of Demosthenes, has been mentioned as one of the few distinguished Athenians in this last generation. He was more than once chosen to the highest public offices; he was conspicuous for his free speech, both as an orator and as an historian, in the face of powerful enemies; he remained throughout a long life faithfully attached to the democratical constitution, and was banished for a time by its opponents. In the year 280 B.C., he prevailed on the Athenians to erect a public monument, with a commemorative inscription, to his uncle Demosthenes. Seven or eight years afterwards, Demochares himself died, aged nearly eighty. His son Laches proposed and obtained a public decree, that a statue should be erected, with an annexed inscription, to his honour. We read in the decree a recital of the distinguished public services whereby Demochares merited this compliment from his countrymen. All that the proposer of the decree, his son and fellow-citizen, can find to recite, as ennobling the last half of the father’s public life (since his return from exile), is as follows: (1) He contracted the public expenses, and introduced a more frugal management. (2) He undertook an embassy to King Lysimachus, from whom he obtained two presents for the people--one of thirty talents, the other of one hundred talents. (3) He proposed the vote for sending envoys to King Ptolemy in Egypt, from whom fifty talents were obtained for the people. (4) He went as envoy to Antipater, received from him twenty talents, and delivered them to the people at the Eleusinian festival.

“When such begging missions are the deeds for which Athens both employed and recompensed her most eminent citizens, an historian accustomed to the Grecian world as described by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, feels that the life has departed from his subject, and with sadness and humiliation brings his narrative to a close.”[b]

A kindred feeling seems to have actuated most of the other prominent historians of Greece, with the notable exception of Thirlwall. Yet from a slightly altered point of view, there is much of interest in the story of the later struggles of this wonderful people, against a seemingly predestined fate. Even were it not so, our present purpose, which regards Greece not as an isolated entity but as a part of the scheme of world history, requires that we should follow the tragic drama to its close.[a]

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LXII. THE EXPLOITS OF PYRRHUS

We now approach that dramatic moment when Greek first met Roman in battle array. Into the tangled web of the history of this period there flashes the scarlet thread of the life of Pyrrhus of Epirus. Though a fuller account of his war against Italy must be deferred to the Roman history, it will be briefly sketched here, together with a short account of his country and his ancestors.[a]

Epirus, in spite of its distance from the chief centres of Greek thought and action, and the fact that its inhabitants were hardly regarded as other than barbarians, exerted even at an early period no small influence on Greece, by means more especially of the oracle of Dodona. One of the earliest and most flourishing settlements of the Greeks proper in Epirus was the Corinthian colony of Ambracia, which gave its name to the neighbouring gulf. The happy results of the experiment appear to have tempted other Greek states to imitate the example, and Elatria, Bucheta, and Pandosia bore witness to the enterprise of the people of Elis. Phœnice, still so called, was the wealthiest of all the native cities of Epirus, and after the fall of the Molossian kingdom the centre of an Epirotic league.

[Sidenote: [ca. 360-288 B.C.]]

The kings or rather chieftains of the Molossians, who ultimately extended their power over all Epirus, claimed to be descended from Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, who, according to the legend, settled in the country after the sack of Troy, and transmitted his kingdom to Molossus, his son by Andromache. The early history of the dynasty is very obscure; but Admetus, who lived in the fifth century B.C., has become famous for his hospitable reception of the banished Themistocles, in spite of the grudge that he must have harboured against the great Athenian, who had persuaded his countrymen to refuse the alliance tardily offered by the Molossian chief when their victory against the Persians was already secured. He was succeeded about 429 B.C. by his son or grandson, Tharymbas or Arymbas I, who being placed by a decree of the people under the guardianship of Sabylinthus, chief of the Atintanes, was educated at Athens, and thus became at a later date the introducer of a higher kind of civilisation among his subjects. Alcetas, the next king mentioned in history, was contemporary with Dionysius of Syracuse (about 385 B.C.) and was indebted to his assistance for the recovery of his throne. His son Arymbas II (who succeeded by the death of his brother Neoptolemus) ruled with prudence and equity, and gave encouragement to literature and the arts. To him Xenocrates of Chalcedon dedicated his four books on the art of governing; and it is specially mentioned that he bestowed great care on the education of his brother’s children. Troas, one of his nieces, became his own wife; and Olympias, the other, was married to Philip of Macedon, and had the honour of giving birth to Alexander the Great. On the death of Arymbas, his nephew Alexander, the brother of Olympias, was put in possession of the throne by the assistance of Philip, who was afterwards assassinated on occasion of the marriage of the youthful king with Philip’s daughter Cleopatra. Alexander was the first who bore the title of king of Epirus, and he raised the reputation of his country amongst foreign nations. His assistance having been sought by the Tarentines against the Samnites and Lucanians, he made a descent, 332 B.C., at Pæstum, near the mouth of the river Silarus, and reduced several cities of the Lucani and Bruttii; but in a second attack upon Italy he was surrounded by the enemy, defeated, and slain, near the city Pandosia, in the Bruttian territory.

Æacides, the son of Arymbas II, succeeded Alexander, and espoused the cause of Olympias against Cassander; but he was dethroned by his own soldiers, and had hardly regained his position when he fell, 313 B.C., in battle against Philip, brother of Cassander. He had, by his wife Phthia, the celebrated Pyrrhus, and two daughters Didamia and Troas, of whom the former married Demetrius Poliorcetes. His brother Alcetas, who succeeded him, continued the war with Cassander till he was defeated; and he was ultimately put to death by his rebellious subjects, 295 B.C. The name of Pyrrhus, who next ascended the throne, gives to the history of his country an importance which it would otherwise never have possessed.

THE ANTECEDENTS OF PYRRHUS

Born about the year 318, and claiming descent from Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, connected also with the royal family of Macedonia through Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, he became when a mere stripling king of the wild mountain tribes of Epirus, and learned how to fight battles in the school of Demetrius Poliorcetes and of his father Antigonus. He fought by their side in his seventeenth year at the memorable battle of Ipsus in Phrygia, in which they were decisively defeated by the combined armies of Seleucus and Lysimachus. Soon afterwards he was sent to the court of Ptolemy of Egypt at Alexandria as a pledge for the faithful carrying out of a treaty of alliance between Ptolemy and Demetrius, as his sister Didamia was the wife of the latter. Through Ptolemy, whose step-daughter Antigone he married, he was enabled to establish himself firmly on the throne of Epirus, and he became a formidable opponent to Demetrius, who was now king of Macedonia and the leading man in the Greek world.[e]

[Sidenote: [288-285 B.C.]]

Demetrius had not renounced the project of resuming his father’s kingdom. He made immense preparations. The other kings renewed their league in which they included Pyrrhus, who had long been the friend of Demetrius but was now to become his rival. This rivalry was the more dangerous to Demetrius since he had made himself hated by his insolence. One day when, contrary to his custom, he had received all the petitions which were presented to him, he was seen to throw them into a river as he was crossing the bridge.

All the kings of that day made an endeavour to imitate Alexander, but it was said that Demetrius represented him as an actor on the stage, bowing his head to right and left, assuming majestic airs, adorning himself with a double diadem and a purple mantle on which he had caused the sun, the moon, and the stars to be embroidered in gold.

Pyrrhus, on the contrary, recalled Alexander by his fire and his boldness. He was the type of the soldier and the adventurer. He loved war for itself and despised all else. He came to the assistance of the Ætolians when they were attacked by Demetrius, but the two kings did not meet, having both missed their way. Whilst Demetrius ravaged Epirus, Pantarchus, one of his lieutenants, gave battle to Pyrrhus, and during the fight provoked him to single combat. Both were wounded, but Pyrrhus overthrew his adversary; the Epirots, excited by the courage of their king, carried the victory, and the Macedonians, having been conquered by him, admired him more and more.

Whilst Ptolemy raised the Greek towns against Demetrius, Lysimachus entered Macedon by Thrace, and Pyrrhus by Epirus. Demetrius thought it prudent to turn first against Pyrrhus, who was a foreigner, but he was not slow to repent his action. Desertions were numerous and soon a general mutiny broke out in the army. The soldiers had not forgiven Demetrius for permitting the capture of Berœa, where most of them had left their wives and their money. They went over to Pyrrhus in crowds to ask for his commands as their general. Demetrius returned to his tent, took off his crown and his royal mantle, assumed a dark dress and a Macedonian cap and left the camp unnoticed. He had scarcely gone when his tent was pillaged.

Pyrrhus was proclaimed king of Macedon; but Lysimachus appeared on the scene and demanded his share. Pyrrhus was not sufficiently certain of the Macedonians to enter into a contest with one of Alexander’s lieutenants, and he agreed to divide the towns and provinces of Macedonia with Lysimachus. As Antipater, who had murdered his own mother, protested against this arrangement and complained that he was being despoiled of his inheritance, Lysimachus had him put to death; in him the family of Alexander became extinct.

THE LAST ADVENTURES OF DEMETRIUS

[Sidenote: [285-281 B.C.]]

Demetrius withdrew first to Cassandrea, a town which Cassander had founded on the site of Potidæa. Then he passed into Greece to endeavour to retrieve his fortunes. The Athenians, under the command of Olympiodorus, had expelled the Macedonian garrison from the Museum and resumed possession of the Piræus and of Munychia. They had summoned Pyrrhus, who, after having aided them to liberate themselves, gave them the excellent advice to receive no more kings into their city. Demetrius would have besieged Athens, but the philosopher Crates, being sent to him, dissuaded him in his own interest. Corinth and some portions of the Peloponnesus still remained to him; there he left his son, Antigonus Gonatas, and set out for Asia with such vessels as he had and about twelve thousand soldiers. Most of the towns surrendered and several he took by force, amongst others the town of Sardis. A few officers and soldiers passed into his camp. But Agathocles, son of Lysimachus, appeared with a numerous army. Demetrius, pursued across the desert, soon found himself confronted by Seleucus. The latter presented himself unarmed before his enemy’s troops and exhorted them to quit a brigand leader who had not even the means of paying them. The soldiers saw the wisdom of the advice and went over to him.

Demetrius attempted to flee, but was soon dying of hunger and obliged to give himself up to Seleucus. Lysimachus offered a large sum to have him put to death; Antigonus Gonatas implored Seleucus to release his father, offering to abandon all he possessed as his ransom and to surrender himself as hostage.

Seleucus repulsed both proposals. He contented himself with preventing this incorrigible adventurer from again trying his fortune. He gave him a palace, park, and all the comforts of life. The besieger developed a taste for hunting and then for games of chance. He soon accustomed himself to this easy life, became very fat, and died of over-eating (283).

THE END OF LYSIMACHUS, KING OF MACEDON

As soon as Lysimachus had nothing more to fear from Demetrius, he turned against Pyrrhus and tried to corrupt his officers. He reproached them for having selected for themselves an Epirot king whose ancestors had been the slaves of Macedon, and for having preferred him to an old comrade of Alexander. Pyrrhus could not struggle against the desertion of his troops. A caprice of the soldiers had given him Macedon; a new caprice took it away from him, and he withdrew to Epirus. We might think we were reading the history of the Lower or Byzantine Empire--the fruits of military government are everywhere the same. Macedonia was united with the kingdom of Thrace (286); but it had not yet come to the end of the revolutions which had continued to shake it ever since the death of Alexander. These revolutions, always provoked by personal ambition and never by a question of principle or national interest, refute the Utopia of monarchical stability in a striking manner.

The polygamy practised by the Macedonian kings multiplied the rivalries so common in royal families. Agathocles, the eldest of the sons of Lysimachus, who had established his father’s throne on a firmer basis by his combats with the independent Thracians and with Demetrius, died of poison administered at the instigation of his step-mother Arsinoe, the daughter of Ptolemy. This murder was followed by many others, for Agathocles had numerous friends. His widow, Lysandra, who was also a daughter of Ptolemy, took refuge with Seleucus and demanded that he should avenge her. She had with her one of her brothers who, like all the members of the royal family of Egypt, bore the name of Ptolemy and was surnamed Ceraunus, the thunder, on account of his violent character. He was the eldest of the children of Ptolemy Soter, but the intrigues of Berenice, one of his step-mothers, caused him to be deprived of the throne. Ptolemy Soter abdicated in favour of the son he had had by Berenice, and who reigned under the name of Ptolemy Philadelphus (285). The eldest at first went to Lysimachus, then to Seleucus, whom he endeavoured to interest in his favour.

Seleucus, who nourished the hope of reconstituting Alexander’s monarchy, had an opportunity to intervene in Macedonia to avenge Lysandra and in Egypt to support Ptolemy Ceraunus. He was undecided when Lysimachus forestalled him by declaring war against him. The two octogenarians, in whom age had not extinguished ambition, once more measured their forces in a last battle at Corupedion in Phrygia.[44] Lysimachus was slain; for some days his body was sought for in vain; it was discovered through his dog who had guarded it and kept off the birds of prey. They buried him in the town of Lysimachia which he had founded near Cardia on the European bank of the Hellespont (281). The ranks of the veterans are thinning rapidly; and little wonder,--forty troublous years had passed since Alexander died.

DEATH OF SELEUCUS

[Sidenote: [281-279 B.C.]]

Seleucus assumed the title of Nicator, the conqueror. The defeat and death of Lysimachus made him master of Asia Minor, Thrace, and Macedonia. In the east he had extended his sway over Upper Asia as far as the Indus, but he had given his son Antiochus the crown of the provinces beyond the Euphrates. Antiochus might thus think that after the death of his father he would unite under his authority all the possessions of Alexander with the exception of Egypt. It is said that at the time when Seleucus was serving as a common soldier in the army of the conqueror of Asia, the oracle of the Didymean Apollo had announced to him the greatness of his future, while advising him never to return to Europe. Nevertheless, six months after the battle of Corupedion, he wished to take possession of Macedonia and to end his days in his own country. He disembarked at Lysimachia and at once offered a sacrifice. Then Ptolemy Ceraunus who had come to him as a suppliant and had been received by him as a friend, stabbed him before the altar (280).

The death of the last of Alexander’s companions-in-arms was not avenged. The army which had proved faithful to none of its chiefs, proclaimed the murderer king of Thrace and Macedon. He had no difficulty in getting rid of his rivals. Antiochus, to whom he abandoned Asia Minor, had to subdue the towns on the Hellespont which had revolted; Antigonus Gonatas, involved in a struggle with a league of cities in the Peloponnesus, could not assert his claims to Macedonia. Pyrrhus was more dangerous, but at this moment the Tarentines, who were at war with Rome, summoned him to their aid. Ptolemy Ceraunus furnished him with troops, elephants, and ships to pass over into Italy, gave him his daughter in marriage, and undertook to protect Epirus so long as he should be absent. Pyrrhus set out at once and the assassin might fancy that he was to enjoy his usurped throne in peace. He did not enjoy it long; the very next year a formidable invasion of barbarians swooped down on Macedonia and Greece.

INVASION OF THE GAULS

[Sidenote: [279-278 B.C.]]

Numerous tribes of Gauls, or Galatæ, as the Greeks called them, had been established, for how long is not known, on the banks of the Danube, when a fresh migration of Belgic Tectosages, starting from Toulouse, set in motion those populations which, having little knowledge of the art of cultivating the ground, found all regions too narrow for them. Two or three hundred thousand men, divided into three bands descended like clouds of locusts on Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece. Ptolemy Ceraunus, who in his presumption had refused the assistance of the Dardani, was overwhelmed with his whole army. His head was stuck on the end of a pike and paraded about the country. The fields were laid waste, the towns closed their gates, and the inhabitants, accustomed to rely on the protection of the soldiers, could do nothing but groan and invoke the names of Philip and Alexander. A Macedonian named Sosthenes urged them to defend themselves, collected the young men and succeeded in repelling the enemy. He was offered the crown, which he refused, desiring only the title of general. But very soon his little army, weak and inexperienced as it was, succumbed with him to the invasion of a new horde of barbarians which, after completing the devastation of Macedonia turned in the direction of Greece.

The Athenians, though weakened by their struggles with the Macedonian kings, resolved to arrest the barbarians at the pass of Thermopylæ. The peoples of central Greece responded to their summons, but the Peloponnesians, believing themselves to be sufficiently protected by the Isthmus of Corinth, did not stir. The Ætolians furnished the largest number of soldiers, but the command was conferred on the Athenians, who had taken the initiative in resistance. Their ships were of much service to the Greek army; they approached the shore, in spite of the difficulty of navigating amongst the morasses, and sent a shower of arrows against the enemy. It was a deadly fight for the barbarians; their superiority in numbers was of no advantage to them in this narrow passage. Then, in order to compel the Ætolians to return home, Brennus[45] detached forty thousand men who recrossed the Sperchius and deluged Ætolia with fire and blood. It was the warfare of savages; nothing was spared, neither age nor sex. As Brennus had anticipated, the Ætolians immediately quitted Thermopylæ to rescue or avenge their wives and children. But already a corps of troops from Patræ, the only town in the Peloponnesus which had thought of coming to the rescue of the Ætolians, had encountered the barbarians and inflicted such slaughter upon them that less than half returned to the camp at Thermopylæ.

DEFENCE OF THE TEMPLE AT DELPHI

[Sidenote: [280-278 B.C.]]

The Ænianes and Heracleans, ridding themselves of the neighbourhood of the barbarians by an act of treachery, showed Brennus the path by which in the old days the Persians had turned Mount Œta. The Phocians who guarded it were thrown into confusion and the army of the Greeks would have suffered the same fate as the soldiers of Leonidas, if it had not been fortunate enough to take refuge on the Athenian vessels. The Galatæ immediately proceeded towards Delphi; they had heard of the riches of the temple and it was primarily for this that they had invaded Greece. The Delphians demanded of the oracle whether they should put the sacred treasure in a place of safety: “The god,” answered the Pythia, “ordains that the votive offerings be left where they are; he will himself protect his sanctuary by means of the White Virgins.” It was thus that the Pythia indicated Artemis and Athene, the moon and the light. It was indeed the terrors of the night which triumphed over the barbarians. The noise of thunder, repeated by the great echoes of Parnassus, struck them with fear. Enormous fragments of rock detached themselves from the mountain and crushed them by thousands. Amidst the awe of the sacred woods, a prey to the mysterious terror which was ascribed to Pan, they rushed against one another. Enveloped in a whirlwind of hail and snow they fled in confusion, pursued like wild beasts through the deep gorges under the irresistible arrows of the archer who strikes from afar. Brennus ordered them to burn their chariots and kill their ten thousand wounded who were hindering their flight. He himself, after taking copious draughts of wine, stabbed himself with his sword. What remained of this countless army succumbed to hunger, fatigue, and the attacks of the Ætolians and Dardani. According to Justin, Diodorus, and Pausanias, not one escaped.[46]

Other bands of Galatæ were destroyed about the same time by Antigonus Gonatas who since the death of Sosthenes had returned to Macedonia. He had left them his camp after having distributed his soldiers in the woods and on ships. When the barbarians were filled with wine and meat he fell unexpectedly upon them and effected a great slaughter. As these Galatæ were strong and brave he took many of them into his pay and soon had occasion to employ them. On the coins struck in memory of this victory we see the god Pan, the originator of panic fears, bearing a trophy (278).

PYRRHUS AND THE ROMANS

The absence of any federal link between the Greek cities of Italy rendered them incapable of resisting the native peoples of the Samnites, Lucanians, and Bruttians. They were thus naturally led to demand the support of the great Roman republic, which alone could protect them. Rome never refused her protection to those who asked for it, even if they were at a distance from Italy,--like Marseilles which, thanks to her alliance with the Romans, was able to extend her commerce without any fear of her barbarian neighbours, the Ligurians and the Gauls. Rome’s first relations with the Greek towns of Italy were those of friendship: Locri, Thurii, and Rhegium, asked and obtained her alliance and protection. Tarentum alone preferred to have the Romans as enemies rather than friends.

She had never had to suffer either from the tyrants of Syracuse or from the Lucanians or the Samnites, for she was separated from them by less powerful and less warlike populations. Under the influence of democratic institutions she had achieved, says Strabo, an amazing prosperity. She aspired to play a dominant part in the peninsula of Italy similar to that which Syracuse had acquired in Sicily; it was therefore with anxiety and jealousy that she watched the progress of the Roman power. By a mad act of provocation the Tarentines put themselves entirely in the wrong and rendered war with Rome inevitable. Then, according to their custom, they called in the assistance of a foreign prince, and though on this occasion they had chosen the bravest and most skilful captain of the day, the struggle on which they embarked resulted in the final establishment of the dominion of the Romans over all Italy.

PYRRHUS SUMMONED BY THE TARENTINES

[Sidenote: [280-279 B.C.]]

They summoned Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, promising him the support of the Lucanians and Samnites. He eagerly seized the opportunity to renew the attempt of his great-uncle, Alexander the Molossian. Ptolemy Ceraunus, in order to rid himself of a dangerous competitor, furnished him with soldiers and elephants. Pyrrhus founded great hopes on this expedition.

No sooner had he arrived than he caused the theatre, the gymnasiums, and the gardens where they met to discuss politics, to be closed, forbade festivals and all unseasonable diversions, enrolled all the citizens and had them drilled. There were many who sought to escape but he had the doors guarded. When this produced murmuring he took some of the malcontents and sent them to Epirus.

Soon he heard that the Roman army was approaching. He would have liked to await the arrival of the Lucanians and Samnites, and offered his mediation to the consul Lævinus, but was answered that the Romans did not accept him as arbitrator and did not dread him as a foe. The battle was fought near the river Siris in the neighbourhood of Heraclea. The king had his horse killed under him, and, according to Justin, was even wounded. He sent his elephants forward; the Romans, who had never seen any, called them the Lucanian oxen. It was they that gave Pyrrhus the victory. When he saw the dead bodies of the Romans, all wounded in front and with their hands on their arms: “With such men,” he said, “I should have soon conquered the world.” He caused them to be buried in like manner with his own soldiers (280).

Pyrrhus marched into Campania, but did not manage to surprise Capua and was not more successful in an attempt on Naples. He went as far as Præneste and came within sight of Rome; but the Romans had now raised a new army; he saw the legions being restored to life like the heads of the hydra, and fearing to be surrounded he returned to Tarentum. An embassy was sent to him; he hoped that he was about to dictate terms of peace but it merely came to discuss the ransom of the captives. Pyrrhus offered to restore the prisoners without payment. Knowing that Fabricius, the chief ambassador, was poor, he thought to win him over by proposing to repair the errors of fortune. Fabricius answered simply that his poverty did not trouble him and did not prevent his being highly considered in his own country. Pyrrhus sent Cineas to Rome with presents for the wives of the senators; it is said that these presents were refused; this is not impossible though very extraordinary. Historians are not agreed as to the conditions proposed. The senate would have accepted them, but a lofty speech of the blind old Appius Claudius so worked on the assembly as to lead to its returning Pyrrhus the answer that it would not be possible to treat with him until he had left Italy. Cineas, on his return from Rome, told Pyrrhus that the senate seemed to him an assembly of kings; politically speaking, the heads of families who composed the Roman city, may indeed be compared with the Homeric kings; but if Cineas meant to refer to the successors of Alexander, the comparison was by no means flattering to honourable men like Curius and Fabricius.

[Sidenote: [279-275 B.C.]]

There was nothing for it but to continue the war. A fresh encounter took place near Asculum; Pyrrhus, whose Italian auxiliaries were armed in the Roman fashion, had skilfully combined the formation of the legion with that of the phalanx. But a Roman soldier cut off the trunk of an elephant: the Lucanian oxen were not, then, invulnerable. According to the Epitome of Titus Livius the result of the battle was doubtful. According to Plutarch the Romans had the advantage on the first day, but on the morrow Pyrrhus, having contrived to decoy them to ground on which he was able to manipulate his forces, put them to flight and obliged them to take refuge in their camp. He had lost his best soldiers, and when he was congratulated on his success: “Another such victory,” he said, “and I shall have to return to Epirus.” One of his followers offered to poison him for the Romans: Fabricius denounced the treachery to him, advising him to choose his friends better. He sent back the Roman prisoners without ransom; the senate sent him an equal number of Greek and Italian prisoners. An armistice was concluded and he took advantage of it to pass into Sicily (278).

PYRRHUS IN SICILY; HIS RETURN TO ITALY

Since the death of Agathocles Sicily had been continuously troubled by the acts of brigandage perpetrated by the Mamertines established at Messana, and by the wars of Hicetas, tyrant of Syracuse, against Phintias, tyrant of Agrigentum. After having reigned nine years, Hicetas was dethroned by Thynion who took his place and occupied the island of Ortygia whilst Sosistratus was master of the rest of the town. The Carthaginians, taking advantage of the dissensions of these two leader’s, besieged Syracuse. It was then that the two parties implored the aid of Pyrrhus. He had some claims to Sicily as son-in-law of Agathocles. He could not pass through Messana for the Mamertines had made a league with the Carthaginians against him. He disembarked at Tauromenium, whither he had been summoned by the tyrant Tyndarion and from there he proceeded to Catana and thence to Syracuse where he was received as a deliverer. He reconciled Thynion and Sosistratus and joining the forces of the Syracusans to those which he had brought with him, he expelled the Mamertines and forced them to retire to Messana. Agrigentum, Leontini, Selinus, Segesta, and many other towns opened their gates to him. He took Eryx, leading the assault himself, and in the same way made himself master of Panormus the principal port of the Carthaginians, to whom, of all their Sicilian possessions, only Lilybæum remained (277).

After two months’ siege he judged that this place was impregnable so long as the Carthaginians were masters of the sea. He then decided to make a descent on Africa, after the example of Agathocles. But as he needed sailors he required the cities to supply them and grew angry at their tardiness and resistance; his yoke began to weigh as heavily as that of the Carthaginians and Mamertines. He had had enough of Sicily and used the reiterated appeals of the Tarentines and Samnites as an excuse for departure. With great difficulty he escaped from the Carthaginian fleet, which sank seventy of his ships, and he then fell in with a band of Mamertines who were waiting for him on the coast of Italy. He lost his rear-guard and two of his elephants; he was hurt and as he was retiring to dress his wound a tall soldier came and attacked him. But Pyrrhus had a strong arm and a well-tempered sword: he hit him a blow on the head and cut it in two. The barbarians, struck with admiration, allowed him to continue his route. He stopped at Locri to punish the inhabitants who had expelled his garrison, then, as he was in want of money to pay his troops, he pillaged the temple of Core, one of the most celebrated in Italy. But the vessels which were carrying off the sacred treasure were thrown on the shore by a tempest. Pyrrhus, struck with fear, replaced all the money in the treasury of the goddess and continued his route to Tarentum.

In his absence the Romans had retaken Crotona, admitted Heraclea to their alliance and several times defeated the Bruttians, Lucanians, and Samnites. Weakened by these defeats the allies of Pyrrhus sent him but few soldiers. Nevertheless he hastened to take the field to prevent the junction of two Roman armies sent against him--the one by Samnium, the other by Lucania. Near Beneventum he encountered the consul Curius, who was compelled to give battle before the arrival of his colleague. But the Romans no longer dreaded the elephants; they flung flaming tow at them. Some were killed and others reserved for the triumph. The victory of the Romans was complete (275). They took the camp of Pyrrhus who re-entered Tarentum with a small number of riders. He was compelled to renounce his projects in the west. The whole scheme had failed and he made haste to embark on another. He told the Tarentines he had written to the kings of Macedon and Asia for their help, and that he was going away to collect a fresh army. He left them a garrison. The Tarentines summoned the Carthaginians who sent their fleet to the harbour. But Milon, the commander of the Epirot garrison, surrendered the citadel to the Romans. They entered the town, declared it tributary to Rome and disarmed the inhabitants.

MAGNA GRÆCIA SUBDUED BY THE ROMANS

All the native peoples of southern Italy, who had welcomed Pyrrhus as a deliverer were finally subdued to the dominion of Rome. It was a deliverance for such Greek cities as still existed, but they were no more than the shadow of their former selves. Although free under the protection of Rome, they disappear obscurely from history. In the time of Strabo the name of Magna Græcia was already an ancient memory and the Greek language was no longer spoken save at Naples, Rhegium, and Tarentum. For want of a federal bond between the autonomous cities, the Hellenic race with its brilliant civilisation had gradually disappeared from the soil of Italy. The Romans were about to enter into its inheritance that they might eventually transmit it to Gaul and Spain. They repeopled some of the ancient Greek colonies which had lapsed into barbarism, notably Posidonia and Hipponium which had long been peopled, the one by the Campanians, the other by the Bruttians and which changed their Greek names for those of Pæstum[47] and Vibo Valentia.

RETURN OF PYRRHUS TO MACEDONIA

[Sidenote: [274-272 B.C.]]

The sole advantage which Macedonia had derived from Alexander’s conquest was the barren honour of furnishing royal dynasties to Egypt and Asia. No part of the conqueror’s heritage had been more disputed between ambitious rivals. Within the space of fifty years ten kings had succeeded each other on the throne in consequence of as many military revolutions. After the invasion of the Galatæ, Antigonus Gonatas, the son of Demetrius, fancied he had secured himself in the possession of devastated Macedonia by making a treaty with his competitor Antiochus Soter, whose daughter he married. But military anarchy had not yet reached its term. Pyrrhus, returning from Italy and at a loss how to pay his troops, sought an occasion for war. He entered Macedonia simply for the purpose of collecting spoil. Having won a few successes he remembered that he had been king of this country, marched against Antigonus, cut to pieces the Galatæ whom he employed as mercenaries, and took his elephants. Then he approached the phalanx, recognised some of the captains who commanded it, addressed them by their names and extended his hand to them. All the soldiers went over to him. Proud of his victory over the Galatæ, he consecrated their shields in the temple of the Itonian Athene, enlisted the barbarians, whose value he had recognised, and put them as garrisons in the Macedonian cities. At Ægæ they pillaged the royal tombs and scattered the bones. This called forth complaints from the Macedonians; but Pyrrhus, as an Epirot, took little interest in the ancient kings of Macedonia. He had no time to punish his mercenaries, and he was soon to stand in need of their services. An opportunity of conquering Greece had presented itself to him and he desired to take advantage of it.

EXPEDITION OF PYRRHUS AGAINST SPARTA

[Sidenote: [272 B.C.]]

This opportunity was offered to him by Cleonymus of Sparta, the same who had been before him in making an expedition to Tarentum. He requested Pyrrhus to support the rights which he pretended to have to the throne of Sparta. The ephors had set him aside in favour of Areus, the son of his eldest brother; and to complete his chagrin his wife Chelidonis, who was much beloved by him, did not conceal her aversion, and showed her preference for the son of Areus, named Acrotatus.

This seemed to Pyrrhus a sufficient pretext for invading the Peloponnesus with twenty-five thousand footmen, two thousand horses, and twenty-four elephants. He declared, moreover, that his sole object was to restore liberty to the towns which Antigonus was keeping in subjection. As to the Spartans, far from wishing them ill, he proposed, he said, to confide his younger sons to their care, that they might be educated in the discipline of Lycurgus. When his soldiers began pillaging, the Spartans reproached him with his breach of faith. He answered, “Neither are you in the habit of saying beforehand what you will do.” There had been nothing to give warning of this aggression in time of peace and the town was not in a state of defence: the whole army had followed the king Areus to Crete whither he had been summoned by the Gortynians. Cleonymus would have liked to attack immediately; but Pyrrhus preferred to wait for a capitulation which seemed inevitable. He established his camp before Sparta believing himself certain of being able to enter whenever he might wish.

Sparta was saved by the women. It had been proposed to send them to Crete, a suggestion which roused their indignation. Archidamia, mother of Acrotatus and the richest heiress in Sparta, entered the senate, sword in hand, and protested in the name of the women against their being thought capable of surviving the ruin of their country. The walls raised in preceding wars left the town exposed at several points: the night was spent in digging a great ditch parallel with the enemy’s camp, and barricades were formed on each side by means of chariots with their wheels buried in the ground. The women undertook a third of the work and obliged those who were to fight next day to rest. In the morning they armed the young men and exhorted them to die under the eyes of their mothers. During the fight, which lasted all day, they kept close to them, handing them weapons, carrying them food and drink and tending the wounded. But as Rollin has pointed out, if the women of Sparta practised masculine virtues they sometimes forgot the virtues of their sex: seeing the young Acrotatus who had fought like a lion return covered with blood and dust, they envied the lot of Chelidonis. Plutarch adds a detail which shows how far the Spartans carried the sacrifice of the family to the city: the old men, he says, cried out: “Bravo, Acrotatus. Retain Chelidonis, and may she give the country children as brave as thou.” As to Chelidonis herself, not wishing to fall into the hands of her husband, she had prepared a rope to hang herself if the town were taken.

The combat began again the next day. The Macedonians endeavoured to fill up the trench with branches. Pyrrhus even succeeded in crossing it and galloped towards the town; but his horse was killed and threw him on a steep slope; his friends had great difficulty in rescuing him. Almost all the Spartans were killed or wounded, and the town was on the verge of being taken when a lieutenant of Antigonus brought help. Almost at the same time Areus arrived from Crete with two thousand Spartans. Pyrrhus decided to raise the siege. He turned in the direction of Argos, where one party had summoned him to oppose another faction supported by Antigonus. Areus pursued him as he retreated, harassing him in the defiles and destroying his rear-guard composed of Galatæ and Molossians. To avenge the death of his son Ptolemy, who had been killed in this fight, Pyrrhus destroyed almost the whole Spartan army and then continued his route towards Argos.

DEATH OF PYRRHUS

Antigonus was occupying the heights. Pyrrhus proposed to him to settle their quarrel in a single combat, but Antigonus answered that if Pyrrhus was weary of life he might find many roads to death. The Argives begged the two kings to withdraw and to permit them to remain friends of both. They consented to do so, but during the night the partisans of Pyrrhus admitted him into the town. The members of the opposite party immediately summoned Antigonus. At the same time Areus arrived with the relics of his army. Fighting went on in the streets all night in the midst of a general confusion. Pyrrhus would have retired, but his Galatæ, coming to his assistance, blocked the narrow streets. One of his elephants had fallen across the gateway, another whose driver was wounded was overturning friends and enemies indiscriminately. Pyrrhus received a blow from the javelin of an Argive soldier and turned against the man who had wounded him; the soldier’s mother, who, with some other women, was watching the fight from the top of the roofs, seeing her son in danger seized a tile and flung it at the king’s head. He fell from his horse. Though he had removed the plume from his helmet he was recognised: his head was cut off and taken to Antigonus. At this example of the mutability of fortune the latter was reminded of his father Demetrius and caused a search to be made for the body of Pyrrhus, which he burned, with the head, on a funeral pyre. He sent the ashes to Pyrrhus’ son Helenus who returned to Epirus (272).

ANTIGONUS GONATAS

[Sidenote: [272-243 B.C.]]

The history of the twenty years which followed the death of Pyrrhus is little known. We have no guide but Justin[g] who is not always very reliable, and some scanty indications in Polybius[h] and Pausanias.[i] All we know is that these twenty years were not an epoch of repose for Greece, and still less of liberty. The death-blow of Greek liberty had been struck at Chæronea, and the weapon had been left in the wound. The Macedonian monarchy clung to Greece like the shirt of Nessus. Though they had been compelled to renounce Alexander’s heritage the kings of Macedon were still the heirs of Philip and determined to continue his work of subjugating Greece. This policy was persistently followed by Antigonus Gonatas, who bequeathed it to his successors. After the death of Pyrrhus he had no competitors for the throne of Macedon. The greater part of the army of the king of Epirus was composed of Macedonians and Galatæ who passed without difficulty into Antigonus’ service. His rule in Greece extended over Thessaly and Eubœa, over Corinth and a part of the Peloponnesus, exactly which part is not known: Justin says vaguely that the Peloponnesians were delivered into his hands by treachery. Sometimes he put garrisons into the cities, sometimes he set up tyrants: “Most of the tyrants in Greece,” says Polybius, “date from this Antigonus.” The isolation of the cities, their mutual jealousies and the rivalry of the political factions, everywhere raised up interested accomplices for the Macedonian usurpation.

Following the example of his predecessors, Antigonus Gonatas was especially eager for the conquest of Athens. He burned the temple of Poseidon at Colonus and the sacred wood which surrounded it. The war lasted six or seven years. A revolt of Antigonus’ hired Galatæ scarcely interrupted hostilities; Areus, king of Sparta, and a lieutenant of Ptolemy Philadelphus who had been sent to the aid of Athens and might have taken advantage of this diversion, remained inactive and the Athenians, deserted by their allies, were obliged to receive a Macedonian garrison (268). Antigonus also sent garrisons to Megara, Salamis, and Cape Sunium.

But about the same time Alexander, king of Epirus, made an incursion into Macedonia to avenge the death of his father Pyrrhus, and the phalanx went over to him, thus giving a fresh example of the facility with which military monarchies change masters. Antigonus was absent; his son Demetrius, who was still very young, soon recovered possession of Macedonia. Alexander, in his turn despoiled of Epirus, took refuge amongst the Acarnanians, who subsequently reinstated him in possession of his kingdom. This did not prevent him from treating with the Ætolians for the partition of Acarnania, for gratitude is by no means a royal virtue. Antigonus kept the throne of Macedonia till his death in 243, and his dynasty maintained itself there for more than a century, prosecuting the conquest of Greece up to the last, till that country, exhausted by the ceaseless struggle, finally threw itself into the arms of the Roman people.[b]

[Sidenote: [272 B.C.]]

Inglorious as was this termination of a career like that of Pyrrhus, the closing scene of his life was not without some points of resemblance to its general character. He was undoubtedly one of the nobler spirits of his age, though it would seem that it could have been only in one which was familiar with atrocious crimes, that he could have gained the reputation of unsullied virtue, more particularly of probity, which we find attached to his name. With extraordinary prowess, such as revived the image of the heroic warfare, he combined many qualities of a great captain, and was thought by some to be superior even to Alexander in military art. But his whole life was not only a series of unconnected, mostly abortive, enterprises, but might be regarded, with respect to himself, as one ill-concerted, perplexed, and bootless adventure. From beginning to end he was the sport, not so much of fortune, as of desires without measure or plan, of an impetuous, but inconstant will. His ruling passion was less ambition than the love of action; and he seems to have valued conquest chiefly because it opened new fields of battle. But viewed as subservient to higher ends, both his life and his death were memorable and important. He contributed to adjust the balance of power among Alexander’s successors in the West. He exercised the Roman arms with a harder trial than they had ever before undergone; and inspired the people with a confidence in its own strength which nerved it for the struggle with Carthage, and prepared it for the mastery of the world. His death forms a momentous epoch in Grecian history, as it left the field clear for the final contest between the liberty of Greece and the power of Macedon, a contest which was only terminated by the ruin of both.[f]

FOOTNOTES

[44] [“This,” says Justin,[g] “was the last contest between the fellow-soldiers of Alexander; Lysimachus was seventy-four years old; Seleucus seventy-seven.”]

[45] [This name Brennus seems to be merely a military title, having been referred to the Cymric brenhin--king, though others believe it a proper name like the Welsh “Bran”; some historians refer to Brennus simply as “the brenn.”]

[46] [It would hardly be necessary to add a rational explanation of this supernatural defence of Delphi, were it not desirable that the credit should not be denied the gallant 4000 Delphians and other soldiers who made so brave a stand for their gods and altars and after rolling down rocks upon the Gauls until they were in confusion, charged them and broke them into panic, pursuing them even through a night of bitter storm.]

[47] [At Pæstum, most interesting ruins of three Greek temples are still to be seen. Two of these are in a relatively fine state of preservation; and one--the temple of Poseidon--is among the most imposing structures in existence. It is probably as old as the Parthenon, and is much better preserved.]

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LXIII. THE LEAGUES AND THEIR WARS

Whilst the cultured Greeks of the long-established cities and confederacies were being gradually absorbed into the Macedonian kingdom, and the spirit of liberty was dying out amidst luxury and the fleeting pleasures of sense, amidst theatrical shows and festivals, and amidst the philosophy and culture of the day; two races, as yet little affected by the influences of Hellenic life and culture, emerged into the foreground of effective action. These were the Ætolians and the Achæans.

THE ÆTOLIANS

For centuries the Ætolian mountaineers, a branch of the Æolian race but with a great admixture of foreign (barbarian) blood, had led in peasant simplicity a quiet and unnoted existence in the open country, dwelling in villages and scattered homesteads, remote from the culture and refinement, as from the enervation and luxury of other Hellenic peoples. Inured to a life of hardship by the character of their country, which, bounded on the west by the torrent stream of the Achelous and on the east by the Evenus, offered no fertile land for cultivation except along the southern coast--the inland tracts being fit for nothing but pasture and the chase--the Ætolians had preserved intact the warlike spirit and savage freedom of primitive times “when the law ran just as far as the sword could reach, and honourable pillage by sea and land was every brave man’s trade.” Out of sheer valour and love of fighting they undertook venturesome freebooting voyages under their native captains and chiefs, penetrating even to the distant coasts of Italy and Asia Minor, or entered the service of foreign states as mercenaries; while those who remained at home provided for the few needs of their rude and simple existence by field labour, cattle-tending, horse-breeding, and the chase.

Weapons were the pride and ornament of the free man, and he hardly ever laid them aside. When the Ætolians took the field, armed with slings and spears, and ranged, sometimes in serried phalanx, sometimes in irregular hordes, their strength, agility, and desperate courage made them formidable to all their enemies. Their national dress included the kausia or broad-brimmed white hat, the tunic, girded high and leaving the arms free, and the high Cretan shoe. The right foot was left bare in climbing or going up-hill, “to insure a firmer foothold.” In culture and learning they were far behind other Greeks, who avoided and despised the rude, haughty, and boastful “mountain peasants” in consequence. Yet even they in time developed some artistic feeling and talent, for as their power increased, Thermus the capital of their league, was richly adorned with public buildings and temples, pictures and statues. In this unfortified town, encircled by mountains and tracts of fertile country, the districts belonging to the league celebrated their annual festival and assembly with fairs, games, and feasts, for they were as ready to enjoy life in every sort of turbulent and unbridled pleasure as to hazard it in any bold venture.

THE ÆTOLIAN LEAGUE

From very early times the townships and districts under democratic government had been united in some sort of loose confederacy, which imposed but a very slight curb upon the independent action of each community; but it was not until the Macedonian period, when the power of other states was impaired by civil wars and their energy paralysed by the effects of a higher state of civilisation, that the several confederacies of kindred tribes united to form a general Ætolian League, its purpose being rather to safeguard their predatory excursions than to strengthen a political system based on moral or legal principles.[48] For although the germ of a vigorous federal and communal life might lie dormant in this hardy and primitive race, yet it was wanting in moral discipline, the authority of law, and the habit of obedience. The first result of the fresh unity and order brought into Ætolian enterprise by this closer union was the extension of Ætolian supremacy westward over the Œniades and eastward over Naupactus.

From this time forth we find the Ætolians mentioned in every military achievement of importance; they manfully withstood the Macedonian greed of domination; we see them defending Hellenic liberty and independence against Antipater and Cassander; they formed the nucleus of the force which checked the wild hordes of the Celts at Thermopylæ and overthrew Brennus and his robber bands on the sacred soil of Delphi. Everywhere we find their strong hand and resolute energy at work on the destinies of the Greek nation in the mournful period of its decline and fall, staving off and delaying the complete subjugation of Greece to the best of their ability.

The supreme authority of the federated states was vested in the Panætolium, or Diet of the League, which assembled in council regularly every year at the autumnal equinox in the mountain city of Thermus, and at which every free-born Ætolian was entitled to appear and vote. In cases of urgency this assembly was sometimes held at other times and places. The Diet of the League declared war and peace, concluded alliances and treaties, and sent and received ambassadors. Its proceedings were directed by a president (strategus) who was elected annually. In administrative and judicial matters the supreme authority was the Council called the Apocleti, the members or “assessors” (synedri) of which were elected annually from amongst the members of the Diet and the noble families of the several districts. Under the presidency of the strategus the Council managed the ordinary course of business and judicature for the league as a whole as well as for the several districts or cantons, maintained the rights of the League and the several confederated districts against attacks from within and from without, and in certain cases appointed commissions consisting of not more than thirty members.

At first all members of the League enjoyed full civil rights within it, and accordingly might settle anywhere within its territory, acquire landed property, contract marriages, take part in the public assemblies, vote, and hold public office. These privileges of citizenship were shared not only by all Ætolians, but by all other Greeks who joined the League, whether voluntarily or under compulsion, such as the inhabitants of certain towns and districts in Thessaly, Phocis, Locris, Messenia, and others. Since the expulsion of Aristotimus, governor of Elis, the Eleans had occupied a relation of independent defensive alliance with the Ætolians; they gave and received help at need, but retained their political autonomy. It was otherwise with the Cephallenians, who paid tribute as Ætolian subjects, and were obliged to sue for justice in the Ætolian law courts.

THE ACHÆAN LEAGUE AND ARATUS OF SICYON

In natural contrast with the Ætolian “peasant league,” the league of the Achæan cities arose in the reign of Antigonus Gonatas. It was the last vigorous shoot that sprang from the decaying root of the Hellenic tree of liberty.

From primitive times the twelve towns of the coast of Achaia had been joined in a loose confederacy for which the sanctuary of Zeus Homagyrius or Homorius in the district of Helice served as a place of assembly and council. It was a religious association based upon kinship--ancient Greece has many such to show--a free union for the worship of tribal divinities under traditional forms, and involved no restraint upon the political independence of its members. Without exercising any great influence upon the political and military life of Greece, Achaia was notable for unostentatious virtues, for order, unity, and a patriarchal form of government; while Croton, Sybaris, and other flourishing colonies in lower Italy bore eloquent witness to the culture and creative energy of the Achæan race. In so great honour were the uprightness and public virtue of the simple and industrious coast dwellers held by the rest of Greece that after the battle of Leuctra the great Hellenic states besought them to arbitrate in their internal quarrels. This old-time confederacy was broken up and destroyed by the Macedonian rulers, who craftily sowed the seeds of discord, and then made use of the ensuing dissensions to subjugate and oppress the several cities by foreign garrisons and governors. But despotism could not obliterate the memory of the happy past. Favoured by the weakness and confusion which followed upon the Celtic invasion of Macedonia, four towns, Dyme, Patræ, Tritæa, and Pharæ, having expelled their garrisons and tyrants, renewed the confederacy, vowed mutual aid against external and internal enemies, and pledged themselves faithfully to observe the decrees of the League. Five years later they were joined by Ægium, thenceforth the capital. Others soon followed: Burs, where the tyrant had been slain, Cerynea, where the governor had voluntarily abdicated in fear of a like fate, Pellene, Leontium, and Ægira.

But even in its rejuvenated form the Achæan League remained for years in provincial isolation, until Aratus of Sicyon[49] induced his native city to join it, and set before it a loftier aim in the deliverance of Greece from the dismemberment and chaos due to the exclusive regard of local interests, and the awakening of national spirit, unity, and vigour.

[Sidenote: [249 B.C.]]

Even in the days of Macedonian rule Sicyon had not forfeited her ancient glories. Her gardens, fruitful fields, and flourishing villages, her magnificent buildings and art collections, and the merchant vessels in her sheltered harbour, bore testimony to the wealth, culture, and busy trade of her citizens. But internal discord, fostered by Macedonian guile, undermined the foundations of her prosperity. Party strife arose, bringing revolutions and tyrannies. Clinias, a citizen of noble birth, great wealth, and patriotic spirit, perished in the struggle against the tyrant Abantidas. With difficulty his son Aratus, a child of seven years old, was rescued and brought to Argos, where he grew up sound in body and mind under the fostering care of friends, while his native city fell under tyranny after tyranny, until, broken in spirit and shorn of her noblest citizens, she ultimately came under the sway of the wicked and violent Nicocles. For thirteen years Aratus dwelt in Argos, in the society of the wealthy and cultured friends of his family, and in intercourse with the numerous Sicyonians who sought refuge in this neighbouring town from the wrath and persecution of their own tyrant, and who turned eyes full of hope upon the vigorous and able youth who combined courage with discretion and burned with desire to deliver his native place and avenge his father’s murder. He contrived cunningly to deceive the tyrant’s spies, to whom he seemed to spend all his days in thoughtless gaiety with courtesans and boon companions.

When the auspicious moment seemed to have come, Aratus left Argos in company with some fugitives and a band of mercenaries. They climbed the walls during the night, surprised and disarmed the tyrant’s bodyguard, and at daybreak summoned the citizens to rise for their liberties. Nicocles escaped in the tumult, his palace was sacked and given to the flames, his property confiscated to the commonwealth. Thus without bloodshed was the liberation of Sicyon effected. But fresh disorders and disturbances soon threatened, when some six hundred fugitives, who had once been wealthy men, returned and demanded the restoration of property which had long since passed into other hands. In order that he might not be left without support in this difficult situation Aratus induced the Dorian city, wealthy still in spite of all, to join the Achæan League on an equality of laws and privileges, and then, by the help of a large sum of money granted to him by the friendly king of Egypt, Ptolemy, upon his personal application in Alexandria, he effected a settlement and reconciliation among his contentious fellow-citizens.

The fame which he won by this prudent and patriotic act, combined with the great service he had rendered to the League by inducing such an important seaport to join it, smoothed the young commander’s way to the highest office; but he modestly chose to work his way up. He first enrolled himself in the Achæan cavalry, but by the end of six years he had attained the dignity of strategus which was thenceforth seldom conferred upon another until his death. Clear-minded, far-sighted, and steeped in the philosophic and patriotic culture of his time, Aratus soon turned his energies towards the great end of uniting all Peloponnesians under the hegemony of Achaia. Without interfering with the autonomy and freedom of the several states he established the principle of equal rights for all members of the League. The road to office and honours lay open to every man within it, without distinction of wealth or social standing; and, though some towns or districts of those which were gradually won over to the League might favour a different form of government, yet the constitution of the Achæan confederacy, as it developed by degrees under Aratus, retained the character of a moderate democracy. Moreover, careful as he was to avoid rousing local jealousies or wounding local self-esteem and prejudices by meddling with internal administration, traditional privileges and customs, or the religious peculiarities of different places or communities, he awakened the sense of a common civilisation by introducing uniformity of weights and measures, a common coinage, and equality of commercial rights, and secured it by the bond of religion.

ARATUS CONTROLS THE LEAGUE

The government of the Achæan League which was formed under Aratus was vested in the free Diet of the people, which met twice a year (in spring and autumn) at their ancient place of council, not far from Ægium, and at which every free citizen who had attained his thirtieth year was qualified to appear and give his opinion and his vote. In spring, the beginning of the civil year, the officers of the League were elected by the Diet, the president, the secretary or chancellor, and the senate, which, in concert with the demiurgi, or representatives of the ten Achæan towns which originally composed the League, formed the supreme executive authority, managing political affairs in conformity with the decrees and ordinances of the Diet and under its control, directing the discussion and voting of the great assemblies of the League, and making the necessary preparations when they were to be held. In urgent cases the strategus and senate acted on their own initiative, without the authorisation of the Diet but subject to the obligation of rendering account to it. There was a League Court, likewise appointed by the great assembly, for the settlement of internal disputes. The strategus presided at the Diet as in the greater and lesser council, and confirmed decrees and ratified documents by his signature and the seal of the League. Possessed of executive powers in external and internal affairs, he had charge of the treasury, called in the contributions of the confederates in money, ships, and men, and held supreme command of the army and fleet, subject to the obligation of rendering account of his actions. In war he was assisted by the captain of the cavalry (hipparch), and in home affairs by the chancellor or secretary (grammateus).

[Sidenote: [249-242 B.C.]]

This admirable constitution was in the main the work of Aratus, always the “moving spirit” of the League, and though his later years are in many respects open to reproach, yet this practical application of his philosophic and patriotic ideas is worthy of the highest commendation. He is one of those characters whose portraits, distorted by the favour and enmity of partisans, are but uncertainly discerned in history. Strenuously as he strove in his Memorabilia (the essentials of which Plutarch has preserved in his biography) to guard his actions and motives from misconception and to truly exhibit himself to his contemporaries and to posterity, his record is nevertheless darkened by many shadows and charged with many blunders. “Aratus had not a great Hellenic soul,” is the verdict of Schorn, “his soul was narrow and Achæan.” As a man he was distinguished by many fine and amiable qualities, as a citizen he merits respect for his great love of his country, to which he dedicated his life with an absolute devotion, and to the aggrandisement of which all his efforts were directed with rare perseverance. To the state he sacrificed himself without reserve, giving up his property, friendships, enmities, and even the implacable hatred of tyrants with which he had been imbued from his youth up; everything, indeed, except the ambition which cast a doubt even upon his patriotism. He desired to shine on the Achæan horizon alone, and he used his influence to keep down any who attempted to shine beside him.

He regarded the Ætolian peasant-league, with its raids and savage feuds, and the revolutionary attempts of the Spartan kings Agis and Cleomenes with equal abhorrence; and by turning his arms against them alternately he played into the hands of the common national foe, Macedonia. As strategus his military talents were of a very inferior order. He was admirably skilled in arranging sudden attacks and ambushes, and in the carrying out of military surprises his boldness and daring were equal to his subtlety and cunning, but as a commander his capacity was small, and in his first campaign he proved diffident, timorous, and faint-hearted. It was not his strong point to look danger boldly in the face, in battle he lost self-control and presence of mind; and he consequently preferred the privy and crooked ways of stratagem, dissimulation, and deceit to a direct and valiant attack.

In his second period of office as strategus, Aratus increased the reputation he had gained by the liberation of Sicyon, but had impaired by a profitless campaign against the Ætolians in the first year of his command, by his successful stratagem at Corinth. With mingled craft and daring he succeeded in ridding the impregnable citadel of Acrocorinthus of its Macedonian garrison, and persuaded this important city, one of the three “fetters of Greece,” to join the League.[e]

ARATUS TAKES CORINTH

Three brothers, Syrian Greeks, had pilfered from the royal treasure at Corinth, and one of them named Erginus, came to Sicyon from time to time to exchange their plunder at the house of a banker well known to Aratus. Through this channel Aratus learned that there was an accessible point in the wall of the citadel; and Erginus, having engaged the concurrence of a fourth brother who served in the garrison, undertook to conduct Aratus to the place, where the wall was no more than fifteen feet high. The brothers demanded a large reward. Sixty talents [£12,000 or $60,000] were to be deposited with the banker, to be paid to them in the event of success; and even in the case of failure, if they escaped, each was to receive a house and a talent. Aratus could not immediately raise so large a sum, and was forced to pledge his plate and his wife’s ornaments, purchasing, as Plutarch observes, the privilege of a perilous adventure for the good of his country, at a price which it would have been accounted magnanimous to reject, if it had been offered as a bribe. When the time came which had been fixed for the attempt, leaving the main body of his forces under arms, he proceeded with four hundred men, few of whom were in the secret, towards Corinth. As they approached the wall, the light of the full moon, which would have rendered concealment almost impossible, was intercepted by clouds which rose from the sea. Several other propitious circumstances contributed to his success, though he fully earned it by his courage. Erginus with seven others, disguised as wayfarers, gained entrance at a gate and overpowered the guard, while Aratus, with only a hundred of his men, scaled the wall, and advanced towards the citadel with the scaling-ladders, ordering the rest to follow. But on his way through the town he fell in with a patrol, one of whom escaped, and soon raised a general alarm.

Aratus, again favoured by the moon which broke through the clouds as he was entangled in the most intricate part of the ascent, reached the wall of the citadel safely, and was soon engaged in a hard combat with the garrison. As soon as the alarm was raised, Archelaus, finding that the citadel was attacked, hastened with all his forces in that direction. But he chanced to light on three hundred Achæans, who, unable to find the track of their comrades, had cowered behind a projection of the rock. They now sprang out as from an ambuscade, and completely routed and dispersed his troops. But they were recalled from the pursuit by Erginus to the succour of Aratus, and their arrival decided the struggle. By sunrise he was in possession of the fortress, and the forces which had followed him from Sicyon, making their appearance at the same time, were joyfully admitted into the lower town by the Corinthians, who helped to capture the royal soldiers.[d]

[Sidenote: [242-232 B.C.]]

By this act, in which he generously hazarded his private fortune, Aratus gained such a degree of popular confidence that the Achæans thenceforth committed the conduct of public affairs to his hands, and followed his counsel even in the years when he was by law excluded from the office of strategus. The towns of Trœzen, Epidaurus, Cleonæ, and Megara, presently revolted from Macedonia and joined the Achæan League.

The rise of the Achæans stirred up the jealousy of other states, and incited the Macedonians to fresh exertions to recover what they had lost. The old king Antigonus concluded an alliance with the Ætolians for a joint attack on Achaia, on the basis of a partition of the territory to be acquired. But Aratus, who had chosen Ptolemy as patron of the League, and thus secured the protection of Egypt in the event of possible disaster, repulsed the Ætolian marauders before they could join hands with the Macedonians, and dissuaded King Antigonus from the proposed campaign by promising him the remaining dominions of the Peloponnesus. The aged Antigonus Gonatas died soon afterwards, and his son and heir, Demetrius II, was kept fully occupied by an invasion of his own country by the Dardans.

Aratus contrived to make use of these circumstances for fresh acquisitions. Secured from attack in the rear by an offensive and defensive alliance with the Ætolians, he induced most of the states of the Peloponnesus by force or subtlety to join the League. Thus Lydiades, the young and accomplished prince who reigned at Megalopolis, was prevailed upon to join, and the rich and extensive territory of that city was won for the League. The tyrants, abandoned by Macedonia, were no longer able to withstand the power of Achaia; they yielded voluntarily or under compulsion to the tide of democracy; so that when Demetrius II sank into his grave after ten years of feeble sovereignty, and Antigonus Doson (the Promiser) undertook the government of Macedonia during the minority of King Philip III, the Achæans ruled over Hermione, Phlius, and the greater part of Arcadia, counted the rich island of Ægina among their possessions, had induced Argos to join the League after a long struggle with three successive tyrants, and had entered into an alliance with Athens (whence, by the assistance of Aratus, the Macedonian garrisons had been forced to withdraw) on equal terms though without reciprocal civil rights. Mantinea, Tegea, Orchomenos, and Elis were the only towns that remained subject to the Ætolians, who, however, had meanwhile extended their dominion over part of Thessaly; and Sparta, just awakened from her long trance and invigorated by a new birth from within, was striving to regain the ascendency which had been hers in the glorious days of old. Out of these elements was bred the fatal conflict which broke all that was left of the strength of Greece at the very moment when the Romans began to intermeddle in the domestic concerns of warring states.[e]

SPARTA UNDER CLEOMENES

[Sidenote: [232-227 B.C.]]

Lacedæmon had, by this time, exchanged poverty and hardy discipline for opulence and voluptuous manners. The public meals, that last pledge of Spartan frugality and temperance, were discountenanced by the rulers of the state, and fell into disrepute and disuse. One or two princes, who endeavoured to stem the torrent of corruption, suffered deposition, exile, and even death. The laws of Lycurgus were totally disregarded. The lands were all in possession of a few families, who lived in the greatest splendour, whilst the rest of the Spartans, stripped of their patrimony, were doomed to the greatest indigence. The efforts of Agis IV, the king, to enforce the sumptuary laws, to cancel all debts, and to make a new division of lands, were opposed by the rich, and at last punished with death, on pretence of a design to alter the government.

In such a situation of affairs, Cleomenes ascended the Spartan throne, a prince who united integrity of heart with martial spirit and a love of glory. He found, on his accession, both the internal constitution and the public affairs of Sparta in the utmost confusion. Domestic distress, with its concomitant despondency of spirit, had caused throughout Laconia a universal depopulation. Instead of natives sufficient to occupy the thirty-nine thousand shares into which Lycurgus had originally divided the land, only seven hundred families of the Spartan race were now to be found; and, of these, about six hundred, sunk into abject penury and wretchedness, were incapable of exerting any degree of vigour in the public service. The slaves, too, had many of them perished through want of employment and subsistence, while others had been carried off, in great numbers, by the enemies of Sparta. Such was the miserable decay of both public and private virtue! Cleomenes, actuated by his natural disposition to arms, as well as by the representations already mentioned of the Ætolians, in order to revive the martial spirit of the Spartans, attacked Tegea, Mantinea, and Orchomenos, cities of Arcadia. Having reduced these under his obedience, he marched without delay against a certain castle in the district of Megalopolis, which commanded on that side the entrance into Laconia.

Immediately upon this act of hostility, the Achæan states declared war against the Spartans. The Spartan king forthwith took the field, with what troops he could muster, and ravaged the territories of the cities in alliance with Achaia. With five thousand men he advanced against the Achæan general Aratus, who, perceiving the resolution of the Spartans, declined an engagement, though at the head of twenty thousand. The retreat of Aratus, determined the Eleans, who had never been steady in the interests of Achaia, openly to declare against her. The Achæans attempted to chastise this defection; but they were routed by Cleomenes at Lycæum, near the Elean borders; and totally overthrown by him in the ensuing campaign, near Leuctra. Pursuing his good fortune, he reduced several of the towns of Arcadia, which he garrisoned with his Lacedæmonian troops.

[Sidenote: [227-223 B.C.]]

He returned to Sparta with the mercenaries only, and cut off the ephori, whom he considered as troublesome to himself, and oppressive to the Spartan subjects, by assassination; a course which he endeavoured to justify, by arraigning the unconstitutional establishment of this order of magistrates, and a recital of several acts of iniquity. He now seized on the administration of justice, and re-established the agrarian and sumptuary laws of Lycurgus, which he enforced by his own example. Having thus made himself master of Sparta, he diverted that energy to foreign enterprises, which might otherwise have broken out in domestic sedition. He plundered the territories of Megalopolis, forced the Achæan lines at Hecatombæum, and obtained a complete victory. The Achæan army, composed of the flower of their nation, were almost all cut off. The Mantineans, having slaughtered the Achæan garrison stationed in their city, put themselves under the protection of the Spartans. The same spirit of defection and revolt appeared in most of the other cities of Peloponnesus. In this extremity, they sued for peace to Cleomenes; but Aratus, who had for some time declined to take the lead in the public affairs of Achaia, now resumed his authority; and, by insisting on such terms as the high-spirited Cleomenes could not accept, contrived to prevent that peace which his countrymen wished for.

Both Aratus and Cleomenes wished to unite all the nations of Peloponnesus into one commonwealth, and by that means to form such a bulwark for the liberties of Greece, as might set all foreign power at defiance. But to what people the supreme direction of the common affairs should belong, was the question. Even Aratus, so much above the love of money, showed himself, on this occasion, the slave of ambition; and, rather than see a superior in power, determined to involve everything in confusion.

The interruption of the negotiations for peace raised a general ferment throughout Peloponnesus; the conduct of Aratus fired the martial ardour of Cleomenes, and excited jealousies in different states; nor could the Achæans obtain any assistance from the Athenians, the Ætolians, or the Argives. Corinth was on the point of surrendering to the Spartan king; and even Sicyon must have been lost, had not a timely discovery prevented an intended conspiracy. Here we may remark the extreme quickness with which the Grecian states entered into any confederacy that was formed for humbling whatever power preponderated in Greece: a proof, that, however their manners were corrupted, their sentiments of liberty and the balance of power were not yet wholly subverted.

ANTIGONUS CALLED IN

[Sidenote: [223-221 B.C.]]

Resentment against Cleomenes induced Aratus to entertain the project of calling in, for the destruction of Sparta, the aid of Antigonus of Macedon. But in Greece this attempt was generally odious, and Antigonus was averse from all interference in Grecian affairs, not being easily dazzled by the splendour of ambition. But the last and greatest of these difficulties Aratus surmounted by various artifices, and entered into a compact with Antigonus, the conditions whereof were that the citadel of Corinth should be delivered into the hands of the king; that he should be at the head of the Achæan confederacy, superintend their councils, and direct their operations; that his army should be supported at their expense. From these articles it is evident, that the liberties of Achaia were now no more, and that the sovereign of this country was Antigonus.[50]

This transaction roused the indignation of the Peloponnesian states: they looked to Cleomenes as the only protector of their liberties. That hero, upon hearing that the Macedonians were in motion, took possession of a pass on the Onean Mountains, which commanded the Corinthian Isthmus; but the Achæans having surprised Argos, he was forced to abandon it, and to leave it open for the Macedonians. The Achæans now resumed their superiority in Peloponnesus, and most of the cities in that peninsula were constrained to submit to their power. The efforts of Cleomenes to restore the liberties of Peloponnesus, and to protect, of course, those of the rest of Greece, equal the most famed exploits of antiquity. But the wary Antigonus, rich in treasure, artfully protracted the war, and suffered his impetuous adversary to waste his force in vain. Cleomenes was forced to retreat to Sellasia, in order to cover Sparta.

Antigonus, therefore, encamped at a distance, on the plain below, in order to watch the motions of the enemy, and to act according to circumstances. Cleomenes, reduced to the greatest distress for want of provisions, was forced to throw open his entrenchments, and, without further delay, to come to an engagement. All his skill and valour, which were eminently displayed on this occasion, could not save him from a complete defeat (221 B.C.). He fled first to Sparta, and from thence to Egypt; where, after various adventures, the loftiness of his spirit, which could not brook the indignities offered to him by the ministers of Ptolemy Philopator, brought him to an honourable but untimely end.[f]

Having eluded the vigilance of his guards he made a sally with his friends, thirteen in number, all with drawn swords, and raised the cry of liberty. The Alexandrian populace stared and applauded, as at a scene on the stage, but with as little thought of taking any part in the action. The Spartans killed the governor of the city, and another courtier, but after an ineffectual attempt to break open the prison in the citadel, finding themselves universally shunned, they abandoned their forlorn hope, and turned their swords against their own hearts. Panteus, the dearest of the king’s friends, consented at his request to survive until he saw that the others had breathed their last. Ptolemy, as soon as he had learned what had happened, ordered all the women and children belonging to the deceased to be put to death; and the young wife of Panteus is said to have paid the like pious offices to Cratesiclea, who was forced to witness the butchery of her two grandsons, as Cleomenes had received from her husband. The body of Cleomenes was flayed and hung on a cross, until, if we may believe Plutarch, an extraordinary occurrence awakened Ptolemy’s superstitious fears, gave occasion for new expiatory rites in the palace, and induced the Alexandrians to venerate Cleomenes as a hero.

Such indeed he was, when measured with them. As we turn from them to the proper subject of this history, we feel, as it were, that we are beginning again to breathe a healthier atmosphere: and we carry away a strengthened conviction, that great as were the evils which Greece suffered from the ill-regulated passion for liberty, it was still better to live there, than under the sceptre of the Ptolemies--among a people who can hardly be said to have a history, in any higher sense than a herd of animals, always prone, unless when goaded into fury.[d]

[Sidenote: [221 B.C.]]

During the absence of Antigonus, a multitude of Illyrians, and other barbarians, made an irruption into Macedon, and committed great devastation. This irruption hastened his return into his own dominions. In a decisive battle, the barbarians were defeated; but the Macedonian king, by straining his voice during the engagement, burst a blood-vessel. The consequent effusion of blood threw him into a languishing state, and he died in the space of a few days, lamented by all Greece.

Antigonus II was succeeded by Philip, the son of Demetrius, the last of the Macedonian kings of that name; a prince only in the seventeenth year of his age, intelligent, affable, munificent, and attentive to all the duties of the royal station. This excellent character was formed by a good natural disposition, cultivated by the instructions and example of Antigonus, who appointed him his successor on the Macedonian throne.

THE SOCIAL WAR

[Sidenote: [221-216 B.C.]]

The jealousy which the Ætolians had long entertained of the Achæan states, was increased by the importance which they had assumed from their alliance with Macedon. No sooner were they relieved from the dread of Antigonus, than they ravaged the Achæan coast, and committed depredations on all the neighbouring countries. Aratus having opposed to them the Achæan forces in vain, invoked and obtained the aid of the king of Macedon. Philip promised that as soon as he should have settled the affairs of his own kingdom, he would repair to Corinth, in order to meet the convention of the states in alliance with Achaia, that he might have an opportunity of settling with them a plan of future operations. In the meantime, the Ætolians, making a fresh irruption into Peloponnesus, sacked Cynætha, a city of Arcadia, put most of the inhabitants to the sword, and laid the place in ruins. The convention of the Achæan confederates, now assembled at Corinth, unanimously agreed that unless the Ætolians should make reparation, war should be declared against them, and the direction of it committed to the king of Macedon. Hence the origin of the Social War, so called from the association entered into by the several states engaged against Ætolia.

Philip commenced his operations with the siege of Ambracas, a fortress which commanded an extensive territory, belonging of right to Epirus, but now in the hands of the Ætolians. Having reduced this fortress, he restored it to the Epirots, and prepared to carry the war into Ætolia. The Ætolian spirit was not daunted either by the loss of Ambracas or the threats of Philip. They invaded Macedon, and made incursions into Achaia, which they reduced to the greatest distress. The mercenaries in the Achæan service had mutinied for want of pay; the Peloponnesian confederates became spiritless or disaffected; even the Messenians, in whose cause chiefly Achaia, had, at the beginning, taken up arms, were afraid to act against the Ætolians: whilst the Spartans, notwithstanding their engagements, at the late conventions, to Achaia, had now massacred, or sent into exile, all such of their own citizens as were in the interest of the Achæans, and openly declared against them. For the Spartans, amidst their greatest humiliation, had ever been impatient of the domination of Achaia, to which the haughtiness of that republic had, in all probability, very much contributed.

[Sidenote: [216-208 B.C.]]

A year had elapsed since the alliance had been formed against Achaia, when Philip of Macedon, in the depth of winter, set out with the utmost secrecy to Corinth, where a part of his forces were stationed. He surprised a party of Eleans, who had gone forth to ravage the Sicyonian territories, and reduced Psophis, a stronghold within the confines of Arcadia, of which the Eleans had taken possession. He plundered Elis, one of the finest regions in Greece, in respect to cultivation, and rich in every kind of rural wealth. He next subdued under his power Triphylia, a district of Peloponnesus to the southward of Elis, and wrested the Ætolian yoke from the necks of the Messenians. Philip made a temperate use of all his victories. He granted peace to all who sued for it; and the whole of his conduct seemed to be directed by the same generous motives which had formerly directed that of Antigonus. But in the midst of these fair appearances, Philip began to manifest latent seeds of ambition. He restrained the pride and power of his ministers, who had been appointed to their offices by his predecessor Antigonus; and supported Eperatus in the election of general of Achaia, in opposition to Aratus. In order to counterbalance this unpopular measure, and to strengthen himself in the affections of the Achæan people, he besieged Teichos, and having taken that fortress, restored it to the Achæans, to whom it belonged. He also made an inroad into Elis, and presented the Dymeans and the cities in the neighbourhood with all the plunder. He now imagined that the wealth and vigour of the Achæan republic were at his disposal; but the new general had not provided any magazines, and the treasury was exhausted. Philip now affected to place great confidence in Aratus. By the advice of this statesman, he made an attempt on the island of Cephallenia, an island in the Ionian Sea, near the coast of Peloponnesus, and the great resort of the Ætolian pirates. His attempt, after it had been carried on almost to success, was baffled by the treachery of his ministers.

He now, following the advice of Aratus, invaded and ravaged Ætolia itself, returned into Peloponnesus, laid waste Laconia, and, flushed with success, meditated the subjection of all Greece, and a junction with Hannibal against the Romans. Aratus in vain attempted to dissuade him from this project. He sent ambassadors to the Carthaginian general, but they were intercepted, soon after their landing in Italy: as they gave out, however, that they were going to Rome, they, in a little time, obtained their release, and made their way to Hannibal, with whom they concluded a treaty. On their return they were again intercepted, and sent with all their papers to Rome. But Philip despatched other ambassadors, and a ratification of the treaty was obtained. It was stipulated that Philip should furnish a fleet of two hundred ships, to be employed in harassing the Italian coasts; and that he should also assist Hannibal with a considerable body of land-forces. In return for this assistance, when Rome and Italy should be finally reduced, which were to remain in the possession of the Carthaginians, Hannibal was to pass into Epirus at the head of a Carthaginian army, to be employed as Philip should desire; and, having made a conquest of the whole country, to give up to him such parts of it as lay convenient for Macedon.

In consequence of this agreement, the Macedonian king entered the Ionian Gulf, with a large fleet, fell down to the coast of Epirus, took Oricum, on the coast of Epirus, a defenceless seaport, but from which there was a short passage to Italy, and laid siege to Apollonia; but surprised and defeated by the Romans, secretly retreated homeward across the mountains.

ALLIANCE WITH ROME

The Romans, humbled by the victorious arms of Hannibal, were not in a condition in which they might prosecute a war with Macedon; they therefore determined, if possible, to raise up enemies against Philip in Greece, that he might be employed at home in the defence of his own dominions. They accordingly made overtures for this purpose to the Ætolians, who, confiding in the flattering declarations of the Roman ambassador, hastened to conclude a treaty, of which the following were the principal conditions: That the Ætolians should immediately commence hostilities against Philip by land, which the Romans were to support by a fleet of twenty galleys; that whatever conquests might be made, from the confines of Ætolia to Corcyra, the cities, buildings, and territory, should belong to the Ætolians, but every other kind of plunder to the Romans. The Spartans and Eleans, with other states, were included in this alliance; and the war commenced with the reduction of the island of Zacynthus, which, as an earnest of Roman generosity and good faith, was immediately annexed to the dominions of Ætolia. These transactions were dated about 208 B.C.

[Sidenote: [208-205 B.C.]]

It has already been observed, that Philip aimed at the subjection of all Greece. Aratus, who would have opposed him in this design, he took off by poison.[51] His interest in Greece was now strengthened by the introduction of the Romans: he was regarded by the Greeks as the champion of freedom, and as their defence against the Romans, whom they still considered and denominated barbarians. Not only the Greeks northward of the Corinthian isthmus, but even the Achæan League, prepared to take up arms in his support. Encouraged by these allies, he acted with uncommon vigour: he carried the war into Illyricum with success; marched to the relief of the Acarnanians, who were threatened by the Ætolians, and fortified himself in Thessaly. The Ætolians, notwithstanding these advantages gained over them by Philip, and that they were afterwards defeated by him in two hot engagements, remained undaunted, and prosecuted the war with an amazing obstinacy. The neighbouring states, now jealous of the successes of Philip, endeavoured to mediate a peace; nor did the Macedonian show himself unwilling to treat for that purpose.

A peace was ready to be concluded, when the Romans, deeply interested in the prolongation of war, sent their fleet to support the Ætolians; who, encouraged also by the prospect of acquiring another ally, Attalus, king of Pergamus, boldly set Philip at defiance, and talked of terms to which they knew he would not submit. The moderation of Philip strengthened the indignation of his Greek confederates against the Ætolians; a disposition which he soon found an opportunity of calling forth into action. Intelligence being brought to him, whilst he was assisting at the Nemean games, that the Romans had landed, and were laying waste the country from Corinth to Sicyon, he instantly set out, attacked and repulsed the enemy, and, before the conclusion of the games, returned again to Argos; an achievement which greatly distinguished him in the eyes of all Greece, assembled at that solemnity. After other vigorous, though unsuccessful, exertions against the Romans, he was called back, by domestic insurrections, to Macedon.

The Achæan states, though deprived of the powerful aid of the Macedonian king, still carried on their military operations under the conduct of Philopœmen of Megalopolis, in Arcadia, an enthusiast in the cause of liberty from his earliest years, and one who had been active in bringing over several of the Arcadians to join the Achæan League. Soon after the death of Aratus, to whom he was as much superior in military, as he was inferior in political abilities, he attained the chief sway in the Achæan councils. He saw with concern the humiliating condition to which a foreign yoke had reduced his countrymen, and conceived the noble resolution of relieving them from it. In the character of general of Achaia, he improved their discipline, inured them to hardship and toil, and gave them weightier armour, and more powerful weapons. The effect of this discipline soon appeared: the armies of Ætolia and Elis, which attacked them in Philip’s absence, were totally defeated. In the meantime, the Romans, supported by Attalus, attacked Eubœa, of all the provinces of Greece, though an island, one of the most considerable for fertility of soil, extent of territory, and advantage of situation. Philip, on his part, kept a watchful eye on his enemies: his military preparations were vigorous, and not without success. The war was prolonged, with various success, for six years, when the Romans and Attalus retired from Greece. A peace was now concluded between the Ætolians and Romans, on the one part, and Philip on the other, whose successful ambition led him, by a natural progress, to attack the dominions of the king of Egypt.

[Sidenote: [205-199 B.C.]]

The Romans, whose policy it was never to have more enemies on their hands than one at a time, had consented to a peace with Macedon, because they were involved in a war with Carthage; but that war being now at an end, they eagerly embraced the first pretexts they could find for a rupture with the prince, whose successes had excited a jealousy of his growing power. Complaints being brought before that political and powerful people from Attalus, from the Rhodians, from the Athenians, and from Egypt, they readily determined to improve so favourable a juncture. And first, they declared themselves the guardians of the young king of Egypt. Marcus Æmilius was despatched from Rome, to announce to Philip the intentions of the Roman senate. The ambassador found the king before Abydos, at the head of an army flushed with victory. Philip was not insensible of the advantage of his situation; yet the Roman, undaunted by the deportment of the monarch, charged him with dignity and firmness, not to attack the possessions of the crown of Egypt; to abstain from war with any of the Grecian states; and to submit the matters in dispute between him, Attalus, and the Rhodians, to fair arbitration. “The boastful inexperience of youth,” said the king, “thy gracefulness of person, and, still more, the name of Roman, inspire thee with this haughtiness. It is my wish, that Rome may observe the faith of treaties; but should she be inclined again to hazard an appeal to arms, I trust that, with the protection of the gods, I shall render the Macedonian name as formidable as that of the Roman.” These things, with the cruel destruction of the city and inhabitants of Abydos, happened about 199 B.C.

Philip, like other ambitious princes, was now on terms of hostility with most of the neighbouring nations. Rome, on the contrary, was in a situation the most favourable that could be imagined to her ambition: Carthage was subdued; in Italy, all remains of insurrection had subsided; Sicily, in fertility and opulence, at that time the pride of the western world, with most of the adjacent islands, was annexed to her dominions; and even those nations which had not yet felt the force of her arms, heard, with terror, the fame of a people not to be subdued even by a Hannibal. About three years, therefore, after peace had been made with Philip, the Romans despatched a fleet, under the conduct of the consul Sulpicius, for the relief of Athens, then besieged by the Macedonians.

Philip was moved with resentment, and attempted to wreak his vengeance on Athens. Disappointed in his hope of surprising that city, he laid waste the country around it, destroying even the temples, which he had hitherto affected to venerate, and mangling and defacing every work of art in such a manner, that there scarcely remained, according to the Roman historian Livy, a vestige of symmetry or beauty. Here we have an opportunity of remarking the contrast between the genius of Athens, in the times of Philip, the father of Alexander, and that Philip who now filled the throne of Macedon. The Athenians harassed by the arms of this last mentioned prince, had recourse to the only weapons with which they were now acquainted--the invectives of their orators, and the acrimony of their popular decrees. It was resolved, that “Philip should forever be an object of execration to the Athenian people; that whatever statues had been raised to him, or to any of the Macedonian princes, should be thrown down; that whatever had been enacted in their favour should be rescinded; that every place in which any inscription, or memorial, had been set up in praise of Philip, should be thenceforth held profane and unclean; that in all their solemn feasts, when their priests implored a blessing on Athens and her allies, they should pronounce curses on the Macedonian, his kindred, his arms by sea and land, and the whole Macedonian name and nation: in a word, that whatever had been decreed in ancient times against the Pisistratidæ, should operate in full force against Philip; and that whoever should propose any mitigation of the resolutions now formed, should be adjudged a traitor to his country, and be punished with death.” The flatteries of the Athenians to their allies were in proportion to their impotent execrations of the Macedonian monarch. Such is the connection between meanness of spirit and the loss of freedom!

GREEK FREEDOM PROCLAIMED

[Sidenote: [200-193 B.C.]]

A languid and indecisive war had been carried on for the space of two years between the Macedonians and Romans, during the consulship of Sulpicius and that of his successor Villius, not much to the honour of these commanders, when the command of the Roman army devolved to the new consul, Titus Quintius Flaminius, not indeed unacquainted, being a Roman, with the science of war, but more remarkable for his skill and address in negotiation than for military genius. The Roman consul, by the vigour of his arms, but still more by the dexterity with which he carried into execution the profound policy of his nation, brought Greece to the lowest state of humiliation. By detaching the most considerable of the Grecian states, particularly the Ætolians and the Achæans, from their connection with Macedon; by ingratiating himself with the Grecian states, whom he managed, after they had become his confederates, with infinite artifice; by making a pompous but insidious proclamation of their freedom at the Isthmian and Nemean games, he reduced the Macedonian king to the necessity of first seeking a truce, and afterwards of accepting peace on these mortifying conditions, which were entirely approved by the Roman senate:

“That all the Greek cities, both in Asia and in Europe, should be free, and restored to the enjoyment of their own laws.

“That Philip, before the next Isthmian games, should deliver up to the Romans all the Greeks he had in any part of his dominions, and evacuate all the places he possessed either in Greece or in Asia.

“That he should give up all the prisoners and deserters.

“That he should surrender all his decked ships of every kind; five small vessels, and his galley of sixteen banks of oars, excepted.

“That he should pay the Romans a thousand talents [£200,000 or $1,000,000], one half down, the rest in ten equal annual payments.

“And that, as a security for the performance of these regulations, he should give hostages, his son Demetrius being one.” The date of this peace was 198 B.C.

Flaminius having made various decrees in favour of the several Grecian communities in confederacy with the Romans; having expelled Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta, from Argos; and having obtained the freedom of the Roman slaves in Greece, returned to Rome, to the great satisfaction of all Greece; and withdrew, as he had promised, all the Roman garrisons.

THE ÆTOLIANS CRUSHED

[Sidenote: [193-187 B.C.]]

Antiochus, king of Syria, was renowned for the magnificence of his court, great treasures, numerous armies, military talents, and political wisdom. He had visited the coasts of the Hellespont, formerly subject to the kings of Syria; he had even passed over into Thrace, where he had likewise claims; and he was preparing to rebuild Lysimachia, in order to make it again the seat of government in the countries anciently possessed by Lysimachus. The pretensions of so powerful and politic a prince to countries which the Romans had already marked as their own, excited the jealousy of that ambitious people. They gave him repeated notification, that, “by the treaty with Macedon, the Grecian cities in Asia, as well as Europe, had been declared free; that Rome expected he would conform to that declaration”; and further, “that henceforth Asia was to be the boundary of his dominions; and that any attempt to make a settlement in Europe, would be considered by Rome as an act of hostility.” Antiochus, at first, manifested a disposition to peace, and, in order to obtain it, would have made large concessions, could anything less than the humiliation of the crown of Syria have satisfied Roman ambition.

But Hannibal, the sworn enemy of Rome, no sooner heard of his meditating a war against the Romans, than he made his escape from Carthage to the Syrian court, and urged him to arms. The Ætolians, too, solicited him to vindicate the cause of Greece, notwithstanding the delusive show of liberty granted by Rome, more enthralled in reality than at any former period. Hannibal recommended an invasion of Italy, where alone, in his judgment, Rome was vulnerable. With only eleven thousand land-forces, and a suitable naval armament, he offered to carry the war into the heart of that country; provided Antiochus would, at the same time, appear at the head of an army on the western coast of Greece, that, by making a show of an intended invasion from that quarter, he might divert the attention and divide the strength of the Romans. The Ætolians, on the other hand, told him, that if Greece were made the seat of war, there would be, throughout all that country, a general insurrection against the power of the Romans. Antiochus, having adopted the plan of the Ætolians in preference to that of Hannibal, entered Greece with a small force, and being disappointed in his expectations of succour from the Grecian states, was defeated at the straits of Thermopylæ by Manlius Acilius Glabrio, the Roman consul. He escaped with only five hundred men to Chalcis, from whence he retreated with precipitation to his Asiatic dominions, 187 years before the Christian era.

The Ætolians having rejected the terms of peace offered to them by the Romans, the consul pressed forward the siege of Heraclea, which soon surrendered at discretion. He was preparing to besiege Naupactas, a seaport on the Corinthian Gulf, of the greatest importance to the Ætolian nation, who now decided to submit themselves to the faith of the Roman people, and sent deputies to intimate this determination to the Roman consul. Acilius, catching the words of the deputies, said, “Is it then true, that the Ætolians submit themselves to the faith of Rome?” Phæneas, who was at the head of the Ætolian deputation, replied, that they did. “Then,” continued the consul, “let no Ætolian, from henceforth, on any account, public or private, presume to pass over into Asia; and let Dicæarchus, with all who have had any share in his revolt, be delivered into my hands.”

“The Ætolians,” interrupted Phæneas, “in submitting to the faith of the Romans, meant to rely upon their generosity, but not to yield themselves up to servitude: neither the honour of Ætolia, nor the customs and laws of Greece, will allow us to comply with your requisition.” “It is insolent prevarication,” answered the consul, “to mention the honour of Ætolia and the customs and laws of Greece; you ought even to be put in chains.” The Ætolians, exasperated even to madness at this imperious treatment of their deputies and nation, were encouraged in their disposition to vindicate their liberties by arms, by the expectation of succours from Asia and from Macedon; but this expectation was disappointed, and they were reduced to the necessity of sending ambassadors to Rome, to implore the clemency of the Roman senate. The only conditions they could obtain were, either to pay a thousand talents [£200,000 or $1,000,000], a sum which, they declared, far exceeded their abilities, and to have neither friend nor foe, but with the approbation of Rome, or to submit to the pleasure of the senate. The Ætolians desired to know, what they were to understand by “submitting to the pleasure of the senate”: an explanation being refused, they were obliged to return uncertain of their fate. The war with Rome was renewed; but the Roman vigour and policy prevailed in the unequal contest, and the Ætolians were again obliged to apply to the consul, in the most submissive manner, for mercy. The conditions granted to them were extremely hard: they were heavily fined, obliged to give up several of their cities and territories to the Romans, and to deliver to the consul forty hostages, to be chosen by him, none under twelve, or above forty years of age. But one express condition comprehended everything that imperious power might think fit to impose: the Ætolians were to “pay observance to the empire and majesty of the Roman people.”

The predominant power of the Achæans in the Peloponnesus, now became the object of Roman jealousy and ambition. Though confederated with Achaia, the Peloponnesian cities retained each of them peculiar privileges, and a species of independent sovereignty. No sooner was peace concluded with Ætolia, than Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, to whom the conduct of the Ætolian War had been committed on the expiration of the consulship of Acilius, took up his residence in the island of Cephallenia, that he might be ready, upon the first appearance of any dispute in Achaia, to pass over into Peloponnesus, and improve every dissension, for the aggrandisement of the Roman Republic. Such an opportunity soon presented itself: the congress of the Achæan states had always been held at Ægium: but Philopœmen, now the Achæan general, having determined to divide among all the cities of the League the advantages of a general convention, had named Argos for the next diet. This innovation the inhabitants of Ægium opposed, and appealed to the Roman consul for his decision. Another pretext for passing over into Greece was also soon offered to Fulvius. The Lacedæmonian exiles, who had been banished in the days of the tyrants, and never restored, resided in towns along the coast of Laconia, protected by Achæan garrisons, cut off the inhabitants of Lacedæmon from all intercourse with the seacoast. One of those maritime towns was attacked by the Spartans in the night-time, but defended by the exiles, with the assistance of the Achæan soldiery. Philopœmen represented this attempt of the Spartans as an insult on the whole Achæan body. He obtained a decree in favour of the exiles, commanding the Lacedæmonians, on pain of being treated as enemies, to deliver up the authors of that outrage. This decree the Lacedæmonians refused to obey. They dissolved their alliance with Achaia, and offered their city to the Romans. In revenge of this, Philopœmen, notwithstanding the advanced season, laid waste the territories of Lacedæmon.[f]

GREECE AT THE MERCY OF “FRIENDLY” ROME

[Sidenote: [189-183 B.C.]]

The bond which had formerly existed between Macedonia and Greece, giving the history of both, after the time of Philip and the Great Alexander, a common road to travel, had in the course of time disappeared. The Greeks had not desired this bond with Macedonia, though nothing else could possibly have won the townships their independence. For, while the kings of Macedonia proceeded rigorously in carrying out their desire of building for themselves a suzerainty in Greece, yet for all that the ultimate end of pursuit was not the enslaving of Greece, but her amalgamation with Macedonia. The Greeks would have been as free as the Macedonians were under the monarchy, and it was no mean degree of freedom they enjoyed.

An Asiatic despotism could take no root on this soil, it could not spring up spontaneously. Rome certainly was capable of exercising such power, since she commanded forces such as would not have been at the disposal of a king of Macedonia and Greece. But the Greeks had worked against the amalgamation with Macedonia as though it had been the worst of all fates. Now, as a reward, they accepted the rule of the cruel Romans, who revealed their character even more and more clearly through the veiling cloud of their friendship, their alliance, and their altruistic enthusiasm for freedom.

There is a silence come over the land of Greece, since the result of the Roman war against Syria, the silence of bondage. Zacynthus, Apollonia, Epidamnus, and certain other points in the Greek world, might thereafter at once be considered and treated as subject lands. Altogether the Romans during this time moved nearer. Istria was conquered and made a province. Even Ætolia was not talked of in Philip’s last years; here too, stillness had come. Not one of the many little leagues, which now divided Greece dared or could dare to refuse anything the Romans demanded--if, that is to say, the Romans attached any importance to it. And of what kind these commands were one may still judge from isolated facts appearing in the detached fragments from which we have to construct the history of Greece during this period. Thebes had to receive again within her walls the murderer of the Bœotarch, Brachyllas, because he murdered for Rome’s sake and was a friend of Rome.

From only one quarter of Greece did there sound any note of life and activity--from Achaia; and the Romans did, for an exception, think it worth while to concern themselves about Achaia somewhat, and to take action, when occasion offered, that her dissolution might be hastened.

But such life or activity as may still stir in the Achæan League is no longer a cheering spectacle in any way. Those of its men who are best calculated to win respect, because they are not in the pay of the Romans, and still cherish thoughts of independence, prove themselves to be, if not without real worth, yet certainly without caution or insight. Philopœmen and Lycortas stand highest among them. Philopœmen himself is said to have perceived that extinction under the Roman rule was become altogether inevitable, and that the only thing left to do was to endeavour to put it off as long as possible. That was the right view for a man to take, unless he had determined to evade bondage by a voluntary death. But Philopœmen, it would appear, did not hold the view attributed to him. He thought the bond might grow stronger again some day, and, if it were necessary, assert itself in arms against the Romans. For why else, if this were not his idea, should there have been that madness and murder in Sparta? The old Spartan life had to be stamped out, the new citizens must be strangled, because the old Sparta and the strong Sparta would not join the Achæans and so the Peloponnese remained divided. With the idea that the unity of the Peloponnese was gained at last, and that the bond was solid and complete, Philopœmen and his friends may have rested from the festival of murder in Sparta, which now found herself once more forced into the Achæan League.

Obviously the heads of the League thought they might move more freely. They ventured to mention the League’s independence, they continued to disobey Roman commands. In this they made one of two mistakes. Either they thought the senate really desired their independence, or else they imagined that they also were still something considerable and were capable, if necessary, of defending themselves in arms. It would not have suited the Romans just then to appear again in Greece with an army, and so, for a time, though only a very short time, they permitted the high and empty words of the Achæans. And in the end the sword was not in the least required to bring them back to heel, only a stern command from the senate, and at once the liberty craze of the Achæans tumbled pitifully into nothing.

The trifling differences which sprang from the endeavours of the Achæans and the counter endeavours of the Spartans, would be insignificant did they not conduce to our knowledge of the Roman method. The arts which were employed against Macedonia were also employed against the Achæans. The small should be stricken like the great, so that in the end both might be completely and easily taken. The Romans must have seen with pleasure the perverse measures to which Philopœmen and the Achæans resorted in order to force the Peloponnesus to the unity of the League.[g]

The Romans, thus invited to act as umpires in Greece, found means to break the strength of the commonwealth of Achaia, by seducing its confederate states--a conduct which, in the eyes of pure morality, must appear enormously treacherous; but which if, in the ambitious designs of states and princes, the certain attainment of the end be considered as a sufficient justification of the means, must be deemed refined policy. By the intrigues of Roman emissaries, too, a party of Messenians took up arms against the Achæans; and Philopœmen, hastening to suppress the insurgents, fell into their hands, and was put to death.

ROME AGAINST PHILIP

[Sidenote: [185-179 B.C.]]

During these transactions in Greece, the Romans, jealous of the increasing power of their ally, Philip of Macedon, sought an occasion of quarrelling with him, and, agreeably to their usual policy, encouraged every complaint, and supported the pretensions of his enemies; prepared to plunder them, too, in their turns, when the Macedonian power should no longer be formidable. The small cantons or communities of Thessaly, in which he had re-established his authority, were now encouraged to assert their independence; and the Macedonian king was called to account for those very outrages which he had committed on the side of the Romans. Commissioners were appointed for the settlement of differences. Philip was required by them to evacuate Ænus and Maronea, which were claimed by Eumenes. These were cities on the Hellespont, which, from their maritime situation, afforded many advantages. The complexion and designs of the Roman commissioners were obvious; and Philip, judging it vain to keep measures with men determined at any rate to take part with his adversaries, expostulated with them with great boldness on the injustice, treachery, and ingratitude of their nation.

In this temper of mind he wreaked his revenge on the Maroneans, whose solicitations, he supposed, had been employed against him. A body of his fiercest Thracian mercenaries being introduced into Maronea, on the night before the Macedonian garrison was to march out, on pretence of a sudden tumult, put to the sword all the inhabitants suspected of favouring the Roman interest, without distinction of condition, age, or sex, and left the place drenched in the blood of its citizens. The Romans threatened to revenge this massacre, and Philip was obliged to send his second son, Demetrius, to Rome, to make an apology. The Roman senate, with a view to debauch the filial affection of Demetrius and to draw him over to the interests of Rome, told him that, on his account, whatever had been improper in his father’s conduct should be passed over; and that, from the confidence they had in him, they were well assured Philip would, for the future, perform everything that justice required: that ambassadors should be sent to see all matters properly settled: and that, from the regard they bore to the son, they were willing to excuse the father. This message excited in the breast of Philip a suspicion of the connection formed between Rome and Demetrius; which suspicion was inflamed by the insinuations and dark artifices of his eldest son Perseus, a prince, according to the Roman writers, of an intriguing and turbulent disposition, sordid, ungenerous, and subtle.

Perseus and Demetrius were both in the bloom of life; the former aged about thirty years when Demetrius returned from Rome, but born of a mother of mean descent, a seamstress of Argos, and of so questionable a character, as to make it doubtful whether he was really Philip’s son. Demetrius was five years younger, born of his queen, a lady of royal extraction. Hence Perseus had conceived a jealousy of his brother, and was insidiously active to undermine him in the royal favour. He accused Demetrius to the king of a design to assassinate him. Philip, familiarised as he was to acts of blood, was struck with horror at the story of Perseus. Retiring into the inner apartment of his palace, with two of his nobles, he sat in solemn judgment on his two sons, being under the agonising necessity, whether the charge could be proved or disproved, of finding one of them guilty. Distracted by his doubts, Philip sent Philocles and Apelles, two noblemen, to proceed as his ambassadors to Rome, with instructions to find out, if possible, with what persons Demetrius corresponded, and what were the ends he had in view.

Perseus, profoundly artful, and having the advantage of being the heir apparent to the Macedonian crown, secretly gained over to his interest his father’s ambassadors, who returned to the king with an account that Demetrius was held in the highest estimation at Rome, and that his views appeared to have been of an unjustifiable kind; delivering, at the same time, a letter, which they pretended to have received from Quintus Flaminius. The handwriting of the Roman, and the impression of his signet, the king was well acquainted with; and the exactness of the imitation induced him to give entire credit to the contents, more especially as Flaminius had formerly written in commendation of Demetrius. The present letter was written in a different strain. The author acknowledged the criminality of Demetrius, who indeed, he confessed, aimed at the throne; but for whom, as he had not meditated the death of any of his own blood, he interceded with the monarch. The issue of this atrocious intrigue was truly tragical: Demetrius, found guilty of designs against the crown and the life of his father, was put to death. Philip, when too late, discovered that he had been imposed upon by a forgery, and died of a broken heart.

PERSEUS, KING OF MACEDONIA

[Sidenote: [179-168 B.C.]]

Perseus succeeded his father on the throne of Macedon, a hundred and seventy-nine years before the birth of Christ. The first measures of his government appeared equally gracious and political. He assumed an air of benignity and gentleness. He not only recalled all those whom fear or judicial condemnation had, in the course of the late reign, driven from their country; but he even ordered the income of their estates, during their exile, to be reimbursed. His deportment to all his subjects was happily composed of regal dignity and parental tenderness. The same temper which regulated his behaviour to his own subjects, he displayed in his conduct towards foreign states. He courted the affections of the Grecian states, and despatched ambassadors to request a confirmation of the treaties subsisting between Rome and Macedon. The senate acknowledged his title to the throne, and pronounced him the friend and ally of the Roman people. His insinuations and intrigues with his neighbours were the more effectual, that most of them began to presage what they had to expect, should the dominion of Rome be extended over all Greece; and looked upon Macedon as the bulwark of their freedom from the Roman yoke.

The only states that stood firm to the Roman cause, were Athens and Achaia. But in this all of them now agreed, that foreign aid was on all occasions necessary to prop the tottering remains of fallen liberty, which, by this time, was little else than a choice of masters. Besides all those advantages which Perseus might derive from the well-grounded jealousy of Roman ambition, he succeeded to all those mighty preparations which were made by his father. But all this strength came to nothing: it terminated in discomfiture, and the utter extinction of the royal family of Macedon. He lost all the advantages he enjoyed, through avarice, meanness of spirit, and want of real courage. The Romans, discovering or suspecting his ambitious designs, sought and found occasion of quarrelling with him. A Roman army passed into Greece. This army, for the space of three years, did nothing worthy of the Roman name; but Perseus, infatuated, or struck with a panic, neglected to improve the repeated opportunities which the incapacity or the corruption of the Roman commanders presented to him. Lucius Æmilius Paullus, elected consul, restored and improved the discipline of the Roman army, which, under the preceding commanders, had been greatly relaxed. He advanced against Perseus, drove him from his entrenchments on the banks of the river Enipeus, and engaged and defeated him under the walls of Pydna.

On the ruin of his army, Perseus fled to Pella. He gave vent to the distraction and ferocity of his mind, by murdering with his own hand two of his principal officers, who had ventured to blame some parts of his conduct. Alarmed at this act of barbarity, his other attendants refused to approach him; so that, being at a loss where to hide himself, or whom to trust, he returned from Pella, which he had reached only about midnight, before break of day. On the third day after the battle he fled to Amphipolis. Being driven by the inhabitants from thence, he hastened to the seaside, in order to pass over into Samothrace, hoping to find a secure asylum in the reputed holiness of that place. Having arrived thither, he took shelter in the temple of Castor and Pollux. Abandoned by all the world, his eldest son Philip only excepted, without a probability of escape, and even destitute of the means of subsistence, he surrendered to Octavius, the Roman prætor, who transported him to the Roman camp. Perseus approached the consul with the most abject servility, bowing his face to the earth, and endeavouring with his suppliant arms to grasp his knees. “Why, wretched man,” said the Roman, “why dost thou acquit Fortune of what might seem her crime, by a behaviour which evinces that thou deservest not her indignation? Why dost thou disgrace my laurels, by showing thyself an abject adversary, and unworthy of having a Roman to contend with?” He tempered, however, this humiliating address, by raising him from the ground, and encouraging him to hope for everything from the clemency of the Roman people. After being led in triumph through the streets of Rome, he was thrown into a dungeon, where he starved himself to death. His eldest son, Philip, and one of his younger sons, are supposed to have died before him. Another of his sons, Alexander, was employed by the chief magistrates of Rome in the office of a clerk.

THE HUMILIATION OF GREECE

[Sidenote: [168-167 B.C.]]

Within the space of fifteen days after Æmilius had begun to put his army in motion, all the armament was broken and dispersed; and, within two days after the defeat at Pydna, the whole country had submitted to the consul. Ten commissioners were appointed to assist that magistrate in the arrangement of Macedonian affairs. A new form of government was established in Macedon, of which the outlines had been drawn at Rome. On this occasion the Romans exhibited a striking instance of their policy in governing by the principle of division. The whole kingdom of Macedon was divided into four districts; the inhabitants of each were to have no connection, intermarriages, or exchange of possessions, with those of the other districts, but every part to remain wholly distinct from the rest. And among other regulations tending to reduce them to a state of the most abject slavery, they were inhibited from the use of arms, unless in such places as were exposed to the incursions of the barbarians. Triumphal games at Amphipolis, exceeding in magnificence all that this part of the world had ever seen, and to which all the neighbouring nations, both European and Asiatic, were invited, announced the extended dominion of Rome, and the humiliation not only of Macedon, but of Greece; for now the sovereignty of Rome found nothing in that part of the world that was able to oppose it.

The Grecian states submitted to various and multiplied acts of oppression, without a struggle. The government which retained the longest a portion of the spirit of ancient times, was the Achæan. In their treatment of Achaia, the Romans, although they had gained over to their interests several of the Achæan chiefs, were obliged to proceed with great circumspection, lest the destruction of their own creatures should defeat their designs. They endeavoured to trace some vestiges of a correspondence between the Achæan body and the late king of Macedon; and when no such vestiges could be found, they determined that fiction should supply the place of evidence. Caius Claudius, and Cneius Domitius Ahenobarbus, were sent as commissioners from Rome, to complain that some of the first men of Achaia had acted in concert with Macedon. At the same time they required, that all who were in such a predicament should be sentenced to death: promising that, after a decree for that purpose should be enacted, they would produce the names of the guilty. “Where,” exclaimed the assembly, “would be the justice of such a proceeding? First name the persons you accuse, and make good your charge.” “I name, then,” said the commissioner, “all those who have borne the office of chief magistrate of Achaia, or been the leaders of your armies.” “In that case,” answered Xenon, an Achæan nobleman, “I too shall be accounted guilty, for I have commanded the armies of Achaia; and yet I am ready to prove my innocence, either here, or before the senate of Rome.” “You say well,” replied one of the Roman commissioners, laying hold on his last words, “let the senate of Rome then be the tribunal before which you shall answer.”

A decree was framed for this end, and above a thousand Achæan chiefs were transported into Italy, a hundred and sixty-seven years before Christ.[f] Among these was Polybius,[b] who afterwards became famous as the historian of the Roman Conquest, and whose work, though preserved only in fragments beyond the fifth book of the original forty, is the chief reliable source of information regarding some of the events of the period we have just considered. Had fortune spared us the later books of Polybius, our knowledge of the history of the Leagues would have been far different from what it is; for this Greek of the “degenerate” Hellenistic age is universally admitted to be the most philosophical and reliable of all historical writers among his countrymen of any age, Thucydides alone excepted. We shall see more of his work when we come to the history of the Punic wars, where he is again the chief authority.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[48] [Freeman[i] comparing the two great Leagues says: “The political conduct of the Achæan League with some mistakes and some faults, is, on the whole, highly honourable. The political conduct of the Ætolian League is, throughout the century in which we know it best, simply infamous.”]

[49] [Freeman[i] praises Marcus of Cerynea, as the probable founder or “Washington of the original League,” though obscured later by Aratus.]

[50] [Freeman[i] calls Aratus “the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer” of the League and bitterly compares his surrender of Corinth with Cavour’s delivery of Savoy and Nice to Napoleon III.]

[51] [“This infamous action,” says Polybius,[b] “was not for some time discovered to the world; for the poison was not of that kind which procures immediate death; but was one of those which weaken the habit of the body, and destroy life by slow degrees. Aratus himself was very sensible of the injury that he had received. ‘Such, Cephalo,’ he said to a favourite servant, ‘is the reward of the friendship which I have had for Philip.’ So great and excellent a thing is moderation, which disposed the sufferer, and not the author of the injury, to feel the greatest shame when he found that all the glorious actions which he had shared with Philip, in order to promote the service of that prince, had been at last so basely recompensed.

“Such was the end of this magistrate, who received after his death, not from his own country alone, but from the whole republic of the Achæans, all the honours that were due a man who had so often held the administration of their government, and performed such signal services for the State. For they decreed sacrifices to him, with the other honours that belong to heroes, and, in a word, omitting nothing that could serve to render his name immortal.”]

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LXIV. THE FINAL DISASTERS

The condition of Achaia during this period of the Roman dominion, from B.C. 172 to 152, was peculiar and is very obscure. The government was in a very sad condition; Callicrates and Andronidas tyrannised over the Achæans, although they had no followers, and although the people were so enraged against the former that he was publicly hissed, and everybody shunned him. “He is a man who stands forth branded in every respect with everlasting infamy; he was never invited by a Greek either to dinner or to a wedding;” but still it was impossible to change the direction he gave to the state. “He was regarded as a demon, whose existence could not be controlled.” No consideration was shown towards foreign powers; it was a state of utter inactivity and leisure, but at the same time of material prosperity. Commerce and agriculture were thriving, as is mentioned several times by Polybius; the taxes were not very heavy, the laws were suited to the circumstances, and hence it was a period of general material well-being. But at the same time, it is evident that the number of regular marriages decreased immensely, and consequently that of persons who were born citizens also; it was just the same as towards the end of the Roman Republic and under the Roman emperors, when people generally lived in concubinage. It was a deplorable condition.

There was not a trace of intellectual life; literature no longer existed, except that a few philosophers still lived at Athens. Poetry was confined to little poems, and was cultivated in Asia more than in Peloponnesus; the new comedy had entirely died away. In spite of the material prosperity, nothing was done for the arts and for monuments. The Achæans preserved the Greek name until the end, but the Romans need not have been jealous of them. There were still some places to be subdued to complete the supremacy of Rome, as Carthage, for example; and so long as that city existed, the Romans turned their eyes towards those who might be an obstacle to their subduing those places.

[Sidenote: [156-150 B.C.]]

At the middle of the second century B.C., Achaia embraced the whole of Peloponnesus; it must have extended its dominion even beyond it, for not to mention Megara, which had belonged to it before, it now also comprised Pleuron and Calydon, which were originally Ætolian towns, but are called both Ætolian and Achæan. In general people had become accustomed to the Achæan League; Sparta alone bore the connection reluctantly.

The disputes which, in the end, led to the fatal war, arose out of the intrigues of Menalcidas, a Lacedæmonian, who even rose to the dignity of strategus. This Menalcidas, with a remarkable versatility in his wickedness, jumped from one party to another. The quarrels between the Achæans and Lacedæmonians are said to have arisen from his villainy and that of Diæus of Megalopolis, on the occasion of a quarrel between Athens and Oropus.

The town of Oropus, of which, ever since the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians had wanted to take possession, which was often subdued by them, but each time taken from them again, had, according to Pausanias, been assigned to them by Philip after the Macedonian War, that is, he had made the town tributary to Athens. The Athenians, it is said, plundered the town, because they were suffering from severe poverty--but they had probably imposed too heavy taxes upon the Oropians, and levied them too rigorously, so that the Oropians applied to the Romans for redress. A great quantity of existing Athenian tetradrachmæ still attests the poverty prevailing at that time in Athens, for they consist of copper only covered over with a thin coat of silver. The Athenians were then compelled to pay to the Oropians one hundred talents as an indemnification; but they contrived to become reconciled with them, and induced them not to exact the money, to return to their former relation, and admit a garrison into their town. The conduct of this garrison, however, induced the Oropians to demand its withdrawal. As the Athenians refused, the Oropians applied to the Achæans, and bribed Menalcidas, who happened to be strategus, with ten talents; Menalcidas again prevailed upon Callicrates to persuade the popular assembly to compel Athens to pay the one hundred talents. But the Athenians were beforehand with them: they completely plundered Oropus, and Menalcidas also exacted the promised sum with the greatest insolence, while he himself refused to pay to Callicrates the sum he had promised him. The latter charged him with high treason, and Menalcidas retaliated. The former repaired to Rome, and Menalcidas is said to have saved his life only by bribing Diæus, who was strategus.

The manner in which out of this unrelated quarrel the disputes between the Achæans and Lacedæmonians arose is not clear. But they gave rise to a war, and a wretched war it was. Diæus, with an army of the Achæan confederates, entered Laconia, demanding the condemnation of the recalcitrants. A Spartan senator proposed, that the twenty-four whose condemnation was demanded by Diæus, should of their own accord go into exile. This was done, and according to a preconcerted plan, all were condemned to death. But these exiles were kindly received by the Roman senate, and Diæus and Callicrates were sent to Rome to counteract their influence. The latter died on his journey, having apparently somewhat changed his conduct during the latter part of his life. Diæus and Menalcidas vehemently disputed before the senate, which simply commanded them to return and wait, until a Roman embassy should bring over a decisive answer. The Achæans, however, did not wait, and Damocritus, who had in the meantime succeeded Diæus as strategus, invaded Laconia, before the Roman ambassadors arrived, defeated the enemy, and advanced as far as Sparta. He had no intention to pursue them farther, and the Achæans accordingly accused and condemned him, thinking that he had been bribed; and he went into exile. This happened probably in 150 B.C.; and Diæus now became strategus in the place of Damocritus.

In the meantime the great drama throughout the world came to a crisis. The Romans had undertaken the destruction of Carthage, but did not find it so easy as they had imagined. In the provinces, the most contemptible side of the character of the Romans was seen; they were beheld as plunderers and oppressors; it was known that they were hated by all the world, and it was expected that a general insurrection would break out, extending from Spain to the extreme East. And it was believed that Rome could not stand against it. It is possible that the nations may have heard of the internal decay of Rome, of the ferment of Italy, and of the discontent of the allies.

[Sidenote: [149-146 B.C.]]

Under these circumstances, an insurrection first broke out in Macedonia. The Romans had torn that country asunder in four parts, as Napoleon wanted to divide Poland into three states--an attempt which proved fatal to him. The Romans in Macedonia had not left together those masses which, in language and origin, as well as geographically, were united; but with a diabolic and calculating policy they had torn the country to pieces, and it was divided in such a manner as to have as little connection as possible, one tribe being mixed up with others. All the respectable people of Macedonia, under the pretext of their being hostages, had been carried away with their families into Italy, where they amalgamated with the inhabitants and disappeared. In this manner all persons of mark had been removed. Moreover, the commercium and connubium among those four provinces had been abolished, so that no Macedonian was allowed to possess land in two different provinces, every one being confined to his own district. But still Macedonia was in a condition of great prosperity, especially in consequence of its mines and commerce, as we must infer from the immense quantity of Macedonian money of that period, which has come down to us. The limbs which had been torn asunder, longed to be reunited as one whole.

THE MACEDONIAN INSURRECTION

At this time there appeared among them a man of about forty years, calling himself Philip, and declaring himself to be a son of Perseus, and to have escaped from his father’s misfortunes. It is possible that he was a pseudo-Philip, that his real name was Andriscus, and that he was a native of Thrace: there were several such impostors at that time. Philip defeated the Romans, and in a very short time made himself master of all Macedonia, which recognised him. He even penetrated into Thessaly, where he gained advantages, and successfully maintained himself against the untrained troops of the Romans. All sided with him; but the Achæans very inconsistently sent auxiliaries to the Romans, although at the time all nations were harbouring designs of revolt, but the Achæans thought that they were not yet ripe for it. The Achæan auxiliaries came very opportunely to the Romans; it was only through these, who were commanded by a Roman legate, that they succeeded in defending Thessaly, and with their assistance they repelled the Macedonians, until Metellus came with the Roman legion. He defeated this Philip, whom the Romans call Andriscus, in several battles. Macedonia now became a Roman province, under the absolute power of an imperator; the senate coolly ordered them to dismiss from the confederacy not only Lacedæmon, but all the other places which had not belonged to Achaia at the time when the Achæans concluded the treaty with Rome in the first (or more correctly the second) Macedonian War. C. Aurelius Orestes, together with other ambassadors, brought these orders to Corinth, whither he summoned the allies of the Achæans.

THE ACHÆAN WAR

This very unjust and insolent demand threw the Achæans into a state of frenzy; even before Orestes had finished his speech, the council hastened to the market-place, calling upon the people to assemble, and it cannot excite wonder, though it is a proof of the utter want of common sense among the Achæans, that they fell upon the Roman ambassadors, and insultingly drove them out of the theatre. All the Lacedæmonians who happened to be in the city were arrested. After this the Achæans again marched into Laconia, where Menalcidas had, in the meantime, made away with himself, because he had broken a truce which he had been ordered to observe by the Romans.

At this time the Macedonian insurrection was not yet quelled, and fortune was still undecided. Metellus had not yet come over. Simultaneously the Third Punic War was going on; the Spaniards and Iberians were stirring; Masinissa’s family was suspected, and in short the Romans were pressed on all sides. Their cunning policy therefore was mildness: they said that they were willing to pardon the Achæans, if they would but acknowledge their guilt, and apologise. But almost the whole nation was now in a state of intoxication, “according to the words of Scripture, that God makes the nations intoxicated for their own destruction.” Critolaus the strategus, played the part of a hero, and inflamed the minds of the people--especially of the populace, which was already in commotion at Corinth. When the Roman ambassadors commenced speaking no one listened to them; they were obliged to stop, and as the tumult became too great, they went away. Critolaus, and still more, Diæus, now goaded the Achæans into the madness of declaring war against the Romans, and marching towards Thermopylæ. The war was decreed nominally against the Lacedæmonians, but in reality against the Romans.

We have only very scanty information about the course of this war; but the Excerpts of Porphyrogenitus from Polybius[c] will throw light upon it. “Posterity can form no conception,” says Polybius, “of the madness with which the war was carried on; it was as if men rushed into it for the purpose of perishing.”

Critolaus assembled a considerable army. The Bœotians, headed by the Thebans under the wretched Pytheas, and the Chalcidians, were the only Greeks that sided with the Achæans; the Ætolians and the other nations were neutral; the Lacedæmonians, on the other hand, were hostile towards the Achæans, for which reason all of the Achæans could not leave their country. The allied army advanced as far as Heraclea near Mount Œta, and laid siege to that town in order to protect Thermopylæ. But everything was there managed so senselessly, that when Metellus, who on being informed of this, without waiting for orders, had broken in from Macedonia with the rapidity of lightning, came to its relief, the Achæans under Diæus and Critolaus hastily fled back through the pass of Thermopylæ.

Metellus overtook them near Scarphe, attacked and defeated them so completely that within a few hours the Achæan army was utterly annihilated; many were slain, many were taken prisoners, and many dispersed in flight. Diæus fled, Critolaus was not to be found, having perhaps perished in a marsh. The whole army was scattered. An Arcadian contingent of one thousand men, which arrived too late, was carried away by the flight of the others, and a few days later, in the neighbourhood of Chæronea, it was partly taken and partly cut to pieces by the Romans. The Achæans fled in disorder into Peloponnesus. In Bœotia all the people, quitting the towns, took refuge in the mountains; Thebes was deserted; many made away with themselves from despair, and many implored the Romans to kill them, declaring themselves to be the authors of all the misfortunes.

Diæus succeeded Critolaus in the command of the army; he was a person of the utmost incapacity, and formidable only to those who obeyed him. He had recourse to the most extreme measures; he decreed that all judicial trials for debts should be stopped, all imprisoned debtors should be set free, and that no debt should become due before the close of the war--a sad decree for the wealthy, but it made him popular among the rabble. Twelve thousand slaves were to be manumitted and armed (they are called παράτροφοι--i.e., milk-brothers, the children of female slaves or nurses); and heavy war contributions were levied. Four thousand men were sent to Megara to defend that place, and Diæus himself assembled the army on the isthmus. When Metellus appeared, those four thousand soon evacuated Megara, and all the forces were concentrated on the isthmus close to the walls of Corinth.

[Sidenote: [146 B.C.]]

Metellus now appeared before Corinth. Animated by a feeling of humanity he wished to spare the city; such a magnificent ancient city was indeed something venerable to many a Roman, and the idea of destroying it was terrible to Metellus. It is also possible that he grudged the consul Mummius, who was already advancing in quick marches, the honour of bringing the war to a close. Once more Metellus sent some Greeks to the Achæan army, according, according to Roman notions, fair terms, if they would but lay down their arms, and requesting them to put confidence in him. What else could he have done? But Diæus, who knew that his life was forfeited, goaded the poor people to madness. The Achæans, believing that Metellus had offered peace from a feeling of weakness, nearly killed the ambassadors, and Diæus did not set them free until a ransom of ten thousand drachmæ was paid; this is a characteristic feature of the man who showed his avarice to the very last minute. The hypostrategus, who was favourable to the Romans, was tortured.

In the meantime Mummius arrived and took the place of Metellus. He had no such feelings towards the Achæans as his predecessor, who returned to Rome. Mummius now had an army of twenty-three thousand foot and three thousand horse, while the Achæans had only fourteen thousand foot and a few hundred horse. The Achæans were encamped on the isthmus in a strong position, but this was of no avail. The Romans had a fleet furnished by their allies, while the Greeks had no ships, and the Roman fleet cruised along the whole coast of Peloponnesus, landing everywhere, and ravaging the country with the most fearful cruelty. What Themistocles had said to the Peloponnesians, when they wanted to fortify themselves on the isthmus, now came to pass; the contingents, especially those of the Eleans, dispersed in all directions in order to protect their own towns, without being able to do so.

A somewhat favourable engagement, in which they defeated a detachment of the Romans, which had ventured too far and was not duly supported, made the Achæans completely mad, and being thus encouraged they thoughtlessly attacked the Roman army. But their small advantage was immediately neutralised by a fatal blow; for in a great and decisive battle, the Achæans were so completely routed, that they were not even able to throw themselves into Corinth. The cavalry fled immediately; the infantry maintained its ground better, but in the end all fled in different directions into the mountains, and Diæus to Megalopolis, where he first murdered his wife and then took poison. All the population of Corinth deserted the city and took refuge in the mountains, as the Romans had done on the arrival of the Gauls, and were hunted by the Romans like wild beasts.[b]

THE DESTRUCTION OF CORINTH

Mummius had not expected so easy a conquest, and, though informed that the gates were open, suspecting some stratagem, suffered an entire day to pass before he marched into the city. Though no resistance was offered, all the men found within the walls were put to the sword; the women and children were reserved for sale; and when all its treasures had been carried away, on a signal given by blast of the trumpet the city was consigned to the flames. So it is said the senate had expressly decreed. But vengeance for the insults offered to the Roman envoys was probably more the pretext than the motive for this cruelty. It was at least no less a crime in the eyes of the Roman soldiers that Corinth was the richest city of Greece. Scarcely any other was adorned with so many precious works of art. Mummius himself had as little eye for them as any of his men, who made dice-boards of the finest masterpieces of painting; but he knew that such things were highly valued by others, and he therefore preserved those which were accounted the choicest to embellish his triumph.

Before the arrival of the ten commissioners, who were sent in the autumn to regulate the state of Greece, he made a circuit in Peloponnesus to inflict punishment on the cities and persons that had taken an active share in the war. The walls of all such towns were dismantled, and their whole population disarmed. The adherents of Diæus were sentenced to death or exile, and their property confiscated; and the Achæans--that is, the cities which had contributed to the war--were condemned to pay two hundred talents [£40,000 or $200,000] to Sparta. The greater part of the Corinthian territory was annexed to Sicyon. Mummius afterwards marched northward to deal like retribution among the insurgents of Bœotia and Eubœa. He razed Thebes and Chalcis--or at least their walls--to the ground; condemned the Bœotians and Eubœans--or more probably those cities alone--to pay one hundred talents to Heraclea, which they had helped to besiege; and at Chalcis he shed so much blood of the principal citizens, that Polybius himself can only reconcile his conduct with the supposed mildness of his character by the suggestion that he was urged by his council to unwonted severity.

It remained for the ten commissioners, according to the instructions of the senate, to fix the future condition of the conquered nation. All Greece, as far as Macedonia and Epirus, was constituted a Roman province: and Achaia enjoyed the melancholy distinction of giving its name to the whole. But the senate’s jealousy was not satisfied with the formal establishment of its sovereignty; it had also decreed a series of regulations tending as much as possible to restrict every kind of union and intercourse among the Greeks, and to reduce them to the lowest stage of weakness and degradation. All federal assemblies, all democratical polities, were abolished, and the government of each city committed to a magistracy, for which a certain amount of property was required as a qualification. No one might acquire land in any part of the province but that in which his franchise lay. The details of this outline, and all temporary measures for the settlement of the country, were left to the discretion of Mummius and the Ten; and Polybius, who appears to have arrived in Greece soon after the fall of Corinth, was now able in some degree to alleviate the calamity which he had found it impossible to avert; and perhaps it would not have been equally in his power to render such services to his countrymen if he had been previously less alienated, at least in appearance, from the national cause. As the intimate friend of the conqueror of Carthage, he was treated with the highest respect and confidence; and he employed his influence so as to win the esteem and gratitude of his fellow-citizens. Mummius himself, when sated with bloodshed and rapine, showed a disposition to conciliate the vanquished. Before his departure, though he had removed the statue of the Isthmian Poseidon, to dedicate it--in gross violation of religious propriety--in the temple of Jupiter at Rome, he repaired the damage which had been done to the public buildings on the Isthmus, adorned the temples of Olympia and Delphi, and made a circuit round the principal Greek cities to receive tokens of their gratitude.

The political institutions were of course, according to the senate’s decree, strictly oligarchical. And in this respect no alteration seems ever to have been granted by the Roman government. But in some other points the rigour of its original regulations was a few years afterward greatly relaxed. The fines imposed on the Achæans, and on the Bœotians and Eubœans, were remitted; the restraints on intercourse and commerce were withdrawn; and the federal unions which had been abolished were revived. The Romans in their official language seem to have described this renewal of the old forms as a restoration of liberty to Greece. But even if the monument in which this sounding phrase appears to be applied to it, did not itself illustrate the vigilance with which the exercise of political freedom was checked by the provincial government, we might be sure that these revived confederations answered no other purpose than that of affording an occasion for some periodical festivals, and some empty titles, soothing perhaps to the feelings of the people, but without the slightest effect on their welfare. The end of the Achæan War was the last stage of the lingering process by which Rome enclosed her victim in the coils of her insidious diplomacy, covered it with the slime of her sycophants and hirelings, crushed it when it began to struggle, and then calmly preyed upon its vitals.

GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS

[Sidenote: [146 B.C.-540 A.D.]]

We have brought the political history of ancient Greece down to a point which may be fitly regarded as its close; since in the changes which afterwards befell the country the people remained nearly passive. The events of the Mithridatic War--in which the Achæans and Lacedæmonians, and all Bœotia, except Thespiæ, are said to have declared themselves against Rome, and the royal army in Greece received a reinforcement of Lacedæmonian and Achæan troops--might serve to indicate that the national spirit was not wholly extinct, or that the Roman dominion was felt to be intolerably oppressive. But Athens certainly no more deserved Sulla’s bloody vengeance for the resistance into which she was forced by the tyranny of Athenion, than for the credulity with which she had listened to his lying promises.

No historical fact is more clearly ascertained than that from this epoch the nation was continually wasting away. Strabo,[e] who visited Greece but a little more than a century later (B.C. 29), found desolation everywhere prevailing. Beside his special enumeration of ruined towns and deserted sites, and his emphatic silence as to the present, while he explores the faint vestiges or doubtful traditions of the past, the description of almost every region furnishes occasion for some general remark illustrating the melancholy truth. Messenia was for the most part deserted, and the population of Laconia very scanty in comparison with its ancient condition; for beside Sparta it contained but thirty small towns in the room of the hundred for which it had once been celebrated. Of Arcadia it was not worth while to say much, on account of its utter decay. There was scarcely any part of the land in tillage, but vast sheep-walks, and abundant pasture for herds of cattle, especially horses; and so the solitude of Ætolia and Acarnania had become no less favourable to the rearing of horses than Thessaly. Both Acarnania and Ætolia--he repeats elsewhere--are now utterly worn out and exhausted; as are many of the other nations. Of the towns of Doris scarcely a trace was left; the case was the same with the Ænianes. Thebes had sunk to an insignificant village; and the other Bœotian cities in proportion--that is, as he elsewhere explains himself, they were reduced to ruins and names, all but Tanagra and Thespiæ, which, compared with the others, were tolerably well preserved.

It has been usual in modern times to attribute this decline of population to the loss of independence, to the withering influence of a foreign yoke--in a word, to Roman misrule. And it would be bold and probably an error, to assert, that it was wholly unconnected with the nature of the government to which Greece was subject as a Roman province. It is too well known what that government was--how seldom it was uprightly administered, how easily, even in the purest hands, it became the instrument of oppression. The ordinary burdens were heavy. The fisherman of Gyaros, who was sent ambassador to Augustus, to complain that a tax of 150 drachmæ was laid upon his island which could hardly pay two-thirds of that sum, afforded but a specimen of a common grievance. Greece was not exempt from those abuses which provoked the massacre of the Romans in Asia at the outbreak of the Mithridatic War. And even if we had no express information on the subject, we might have concluded that it did not escape the still more oppressive arbitrary exactions of corrupt magistrates, and their greedy officers. “Who does not know,” Cicero asks, “that the Achæans pay a large sum yearly to L. Piso?” It was notorious that he had received one hundred talents from them, beside plunder and extortion of other kinds. The picture which Cicero draws of the evils inflicted by L. Piso upon Greece is no doubt rhetorically overcharged; but it is one of utter impoverishment, exhaustion, and ruin. And here we may remark that the privileges of the free cities included in the province afforded no security against the rapacity and oppression of a Piso or a Verres. The Lacedæmonians, Strabo observes, were peculiarly favoured, and remained free, paying nothing but voluntary offerings. But these were among the most burdensome imposts; and so Athens, which enjoyed the like immunity, was nevertheless, according to Cicero’s phrase, torn to pieces by Piso. To this it must be added that the oligarchical institutions everywhere established--and even Athens was forced so to qualify her democracy that little more than the name seems to have been left--tended to promote the accumulation of property in few hands; as we read that the whole island of Cephallenia was subject to C. Antonius as his private estate.

Nevertheless it seems certain, that when these are represented as the main causes of the decline of population in Greece, which followed the loss of her independence, their importance has been greatly exaggerated, while others much more efficacious have been overlooked or disparaged. For on the one hand it is clear that this decline did not begin at that epoch, but had been going on for many generations before. A comparison of the forces brought into the field to meet the Celtic invasion by the states of northern Greece with those which they furnished in the Persian War, would be sufficient to prove the fact with regard to them; the evil lay deeper than the ravages of war. And we have now the evidence of Polybius, that in the period either immediately preceding, or immediately subsequent to the establishment of the Roman government--a period which he describes as one of concord and comparative prosperity, when the wounds which had been inflicted on the peninsula were beginning to heal--even then the population was rapidly shrinking, through causes quite independent of any external agency, and intimately connected with the moral character and habits of the society itself.

The evil was not that the stream of population was violently absorbed, but that it flowed feebly, because there was an influence at work which tended to dry up the fountain-head. Marriages were rare and unfruitful through the prevalence of indifference or aversion toward the duties and enjoyments of domestic life. The historian traces this unhealthy state of feeling to a taste for luxury and ostentation. But this explanation, which could only apply to the wealthy, seems by no means adequate to the result. The real cause struck deeper, and was much more widely spread. Described in general terms, it was a want of reverence for the order of nature, for the natural revelation of the will of God; and the sanction of infanticide was by no means the most destructive, or the most loathsome form in which it manifested itself. This was the cancer which had been for many generations eating into the life of Greece.

How little the vices of the Roman government had to do with the decrease of population in Greece, becomes still more apparent as we follow its course through the history of the empire. The change from republican to monarchical institutions was in general beneficial to the provinces, and especially to Greece, which was not only exempt from the danger of arbitrary oppression, but was distinguished by many marks of imperial favour. Within the space of a few years, about the beginning of this period, three new colonies animated the south coast of the Corinthian Gulf. Pompey planted a settlement of pirates in the solitude of Dyme. His great rival restored Corinth, and, if he had lived longer, would perhaps have opened a canal through the Isthmus. Though the commerce, which at the fall of Corinth had been diverted to Delos, and afterwards dispersed by the Mithridatic War, may not have wholly returned into its ancient channel, still there can be no question that the advantages of this restoration were very largely felt throughout Greece. Augustus founded another populous Roman colony at Patræ, which enjoyed the privileges of a free city. Nicopolis indeed was rather designed as a monument of his victory, than to promote the prosperity of Greece: for it was peopled from the decayed towns of the adjacent regions, and the effect was to turn Acarnania and Ætolia into a wilderness.

Athens too had soon repaired the loss it suffered through Sulla’s massacre, though Piræus did not rise out of its ruins. But the Athenian population was recruited, as it had long been, by the lavish grant or cheap sale of the franchise. It was like the galley of Theseus, retaining nothing but the name and semblance of the old Athenian people, without any real natural identity of race; so that it was no exaggeration, when Piso called it a jumble of divers nations. The poverty indeed of the city, which had been a main cause of its unfortunate accession to the side of Mithridates, still continued, and was but slightly relieved by the bounty of benefactors like Pomponius and Herodes Atticus, or even by the growing influx of wealthy strangers who came to pursue rhetorical or philosophical studies there.

While its splendour was increased by the magnificent structures added to it by Hadrian and Herodes, perhaps the larger part of the freemen was never quite secure of their daily meal. Still the good will of the early emperors was unequivocally manifested. They seem always to have lent a favourable ear to the complaints and petitions of the province, and Nero went so far as to reward the Greeks for their skilful flattery of his musical talents by an entire and general exemption from provincial government, which may have compensated for the presents he exacted from them. The Greeks, it is said, abused their new privileges by discord and tumults, and Vespasian restored the proconsular administration, and above all the tribute--which was perhaps his real motive--with the remark that they had forgotten the use of liberty. But it is evident that on the whole, from the reign of Augustus to that of Trajan, the increase of the population was not checked by oppression or by any calamity. Yet at the end of this period we find Plutarch declaring, that Greece had shared more largely than any other country in the general failure of population which had been caused by the wars and civil conflicts of former times over almost all the world, so that it could then hardly furnish three thousand heavy-armed soldiers--the number raised by Megara alone for the Persian War; and his assertion is confirmed by the pictures drawn by another contemporary witness.

In times when the present was so void and cheerless, the future so dark and hopeless, it was natural that men should seek consolation in the past, even though it had been less full, than was the case among the Greeks, of power and beauty, prosperity and glory. Nor was it necessary then to evoke its images by learned toil out of the dust of libraries or archives. The whole land was covered with its monuments in the most faultless productions of human genius and art. There was no region so desolate, no corner so secluded, as to be destitute of them. Even the rapacity of the Romans could not exhaust these treasures. Though Mummius was said to have filled Italy with the sculptures which he carried away, it is probable that in the immense multitude which remained, their absence, in point of number, might be scarcely perceived. If Nero robbed Delphi of five hundred statues, there might still be more than two thousand left there.

The expressive silence of these memorials was interpreted by legends which lived in the mind and the heart of the people; and so long as any inhabitants remained in a place, a guide was to be found thoroughly versed in this traditional lore. The town of Panopeus at the northern foot of Parnassus, though celebrated by Homer as a royal residence, had been reduced, when it was visited by Pausanias,[f] to a miserable assemblage of huts, in which the traveller could find nothing to deserve the name of a city, as it contained neither an archive, nor a gymnasium, nor a theatre, nor a market-place, nor a fountain; but the people remembered that they were not of Phocian, but of Phlegyan origin: they could show the grave which covered the vast bulk of the great Tityus, and the remnants of the clay out of which Prometheus had moulded the human race. Relics of like antiquity were at the same period reverently treasured in most parts of Greece. The memory of the past was still more effectually preserved by a great variety of festivals, games, public sacrifices, and other religious solemnities. After the extinction of the national independence, the battle of Platæa did not cease to be commemorated by the Feast of Liberty; as notwithstanding the absence of all political interests, the forms of deliberation were kept up in the Amphictyonic, the Achæan, Phocian, and Bœotian councils. The heroes both of the mythical and the historical age were still honoured with anniversary rites--Aratus and Demosthenes, and the slain at Marathon, no less than Ajax and Achilles, Temenus, Phoroneus, and Melampus.

The religion of the Greeks, which was so intimately associated with almost all their social pleasures and their most important affairs, had never lost its hold on the great body of the nation. We hear much of the change wrought in the state of religious feeling by the speculations of the sophists, and the later kindred philosophical schools, by the frequent examples of sacrilegious violence, by the progress of luxury, and the growing corruption of manners. But the effect seems to have been confined to a not very large circle of the higher classes. With the common people paganism continued, probably as long as it subsisted at all, to be not a mere hereditary usage, but a personal, living, breathing, and active faith. In the age of the Antonines the Attic husbandmen still believed in the potent agency of their hero Marathon, as the Arcadian herdsmen fancied that they could hear the piping of Pan on the top of Mænalus. The national misfortunes, as they led the Greeks to cling the more fondly to their recollections of the past, tended to strengthen the influence of the old religion, and rendered them the less disposed to admit a new faith which shocked their patriotic pride and dispelled many pleasing illusions, while it ran counter to all their tastes and habits, and deprived them of their principal enjoyments. Accordingly, it seems that Christianity, notwithstanding the consolations it offered for all that it took away, made very slow progress beyond the cities in which it was first planted; and its ascendency was not firmly established long before the beginning of a period in which a series of new calamities threatened the very existence of the nation.

The result of the Persian invasion in the mind of the victorious people had been a feeling of exulting self-confidence, which fostered the development of all its powers and resources. The terror of the Celtic inroad was followed by a sense of security earned in a great measure by an honourable struggle. Far different was the impression left by the irruption of Alaric, when Greece was at length delivered from his presence. The progress of the barbarians had been stopped by no resistance before they reached the utmost limits of the land. They retreated indeed before Stilicho, but not broken or discomfited, carrying off all their booty to take undisturbed possession of another, not a distant province. It was long indeed before the Greeks experienced a repetition of this calamity, but henceforth they lived in the consciousness that they were continually exposed to it. They neither had strength to defend themselves, nor could rely on their rulers for protection.

The safety of Greece was one of the last objects which occupied the attention of the court of Constantinople. In the utter uncertainty how soon a fresh invader might tread in the steps of Alaric, every rumour of the movements of the hordes which successively crossed the Danube, might well spread alarm, even in the remotest corners of Peloponnesus. The direction which they might take could be as little calculated as the course of lightning. Who could have foreseen that Attila and Theodoric would be diverted from their career to fall upon other prey--that Genseric after his repulse before Tænarus would not renew his invasion--that the Bulgarians would be so long detained by the plunder of the northern provinces? In the reign of Justinian the advances of the barbarians became more and more threatening, and in the year 540 northern Greece was again devastated by a mixed swarm of Huns and other equally ferocious spoilers, chiefly of the Slavonic race.

The strengthened fortifications of the Isthmus indeed withstood this flood, though they could not shelter the Peloponnesians from the earthquakes and the pestilence, which during this unhappy period were constantly wasting the scanty remains of the Hellenic population which had escaped or survived the inroads of the barbarians. Justinian’s enormous line of fortresses revealed the imminence of the danger, but could not long avert it. In the course of the seventh and eighth centuries the worst forebodings were realised; after many transient incursions the country was permanently occupied by Slavonic settlers. The extent of the transformation which ensued is most clearly proved by the number of the new names which succeeded to those of the ancient geography. But it is also described by historians in terms which have suggested the belief that the native population was utterly swept away, and that the modern Greeks are the descendants of barbarous tribes which subsequently became subject to the empire, and received the language and religion which they have since retained from Byzantine missionaries and Anatolian colonists; and such is the obscurity which hangs over the final destiny of the most renowned nation of the earth, that it is much easier to show the weakness of the grounds on which this hypothesis has been reared, than to prove that it is very wide of the truth.[d]

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