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THE AGE OF PERICLES
A HISTORY
OF THE
FROM THE
PERSIAN TO THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
Volume I
By
WILLIAM
WATKISS LLOYD
PREFACE,
The story of the period that intervened between the Persian and the
Peloponnesian wars had been so far neglected when Thucydides commenced his
history of the latter, as to elicit an observation that the records of its
incidents and the determination of their sequence were alike incomplete. He
supplied in consequence a connecting summary, the section known to the ancients
as the Pentecontaeteris or Pentecontaetia, from the number of years embraced,
such as appeared sufficient for his own purpose; compared however with our
present rational requirements, it is, as might be expected, jejune and
unsatisfactory. The history of the arts, which is for us one of the main
interests of the period, escapes his notice entirely; and yet at this
particular time a work of art was apt to have the significance of a political
incident, as its purport and vicissitudes had no unfrequent bearing on
political feeling. The life of the people during this happier and more tranquil
period, was as much engrossed by poetry and the arts as by politics; of the two
interests, at present so distinct, each is found among Greeks reacting on the
other, and it is often difficult to determine which is predominant. Notices
dispersed and incidental doubtless, are fortunately recoverable from other
sources, that go some way to supply what did not fall within the plan of the
historian; it is in the belief that these have not hitherto had full justice
done to them as illustrations of the progressive Hellenic story, that attention
is invited to yet another English presentation of this history of Hellas.
Again, as even
Thucydides somewhat deviates in his summary, brief as it is, from his declared
intention to adhere to chronological sequence, the moderns have for the most part
carried the deviation further, and declining to deal with what hints of order
of time are salient, to say nothing of others that if obscure are discoverable
and are ever the more valuable as more scanty, have been content to supplement
political narrative a little at random by chapters that group and classify
rather than arrange historically the characteristics of the age.
My own endeavours
have been directed to make the most, but ever under control of sober
consideration, of every help available to determine the order of incidents, and
to disentangle confusion that was indifferent to biographers intent
exclusively on the illustration of character, to compilers who were more
concerned to be comprehensive than critical, to theorists who cared more for
general philosophy than its particular development, to say nothing of writers
only on the look-out for opportunities to be smart m the first place and in the
next picturesque. That the very varied evidence that comes under consideration
renders necessary an occasional and even a frequent shifting of point of view,
is an inconvenience which must be accepted if we would survey with an approach
to comprehensiveness the contrasted yet ever importantly connected movements
of human activity, as they proceed contemporaneously over a very extended
field; nor is it amiss that the student should be thrown upon some experience
which will only be irksome at first, in combining contrasted observations ;
only so indeed may we acquire the instructive apprehension of the life
Hellenic, in all the multifariousness of interests that was consistent with
its unrivalled concentration of power.
Into every history
and all history conjecture enters of necessity very largely indeed, and even
when testimonies and materials are most abundant, the writer who deals with
them has a sufficient burden of responsibility; an attempt to evade it will
only condemn him to overload his pages with discussions and rejoinders, to
conclude nothing and vex his readers by leaving them the very work—happy if not
further confused—which they justly look to him to set well in advance. Even
this, however, is perhaps more tolerable than the tyranny of a quiet dogmatism,
which silently tightens every knot while assuming to untie it, or the facile
scepticism that cuts all indiscriminately and destroys the web at once, by disallowing
the ‘historical character’ of every incident of which the record can by any
possibility, however remote, involve an element of error.
It would be strange
indeed if the materials of ancient history could be relied on more positively
than has been justified in such cases as the Waterloo campaign and the
diplomatic and military incidents of the Crimean war; and an admission of not
mere liability to error, but of general uncertainty in history, must be taken
once for all as standing in lieu of constantly intercalated hesitations. The
utmost positiveness of the writer’s expressions will then be understood to
mark in any case only his appreciation of highest probability, and any less
positive tones must be estimated relatively to this primary intimation. If
appropriate graduations of conviction have been marked as recognizably as it
is hoped, the writer may claim to be credited conditionally with having
regulated them with reference to comparisons and enquiries which he often
spares to set down in tedious detail,—whether or not he is so happy as to gain
confidence further for a portion of that sagacity which it should be the great
aim of one who is bound to estimate human motives, faculties and dispositions,
to acquire.
Here, as elsewhere,
the reader is entitled to full liberty of judgment; to the same that he is
driven upon perforce when he has to arbitrate between the representations of
Cromwell by Carlyle and by Pope, not to say Hutchinson and Ludlow; of Henry VIII,
as reported by Fronde, or by Cavendish and Shakespeare; of the character and
designs of Julius Caesar, as seen by Cicero, or as concerned by Mommsen; the
utmost the author can claim of him is that in questioning a decision he will
not be too hastily credulous of his own.
To return to
Thucydides: the same liability that he knew and repudiated of a history of the
past to be written with less consideration for either past or future than for a
bearing on present polities, has been and is a besetting liability of Greek
history still; in a certain qualified sense the liability must be admitted, for
it cannot be escaped from. Some of the strongest light that falls on ancient
history, is ever reflected for us from modern contemporary politics, and modern
eyes are of necessity attracted to these most highly illuminated spots. It is
however the opprobrium of the historian if he regards such accidental lights
alone, and worse if he is so misled as to accept as realities the colours which
may be thrown by them, but are only due to the passions and the prejudices of
the day.
CONTENTS.
PREFACE
Introductory.
Limits of the present
history.—The interval of fifty years between those of Herodotus and
Thucydides.—Preliminary survey of earlier history of Greece.—The Homeric epos
as an historical monument.—Antiquity and development of Hellenic
language.—Change from Homeric to historic Hellas.—Contrasts of Achaian and
Hellenic periods.—B.C. 1066 (?). Epoch of migrations and revolutions.—Return of
the Heracleids.—Centuries of colonisation East and "West.—Grouping of
Aeolian, Ionian, and Dorian tribes.—B.C. S00-700. The century of cyclic poets
and poetry.—B.C. 776. Epoch of first Olympiad: its significance.—B.C. 775.
Arctinus author of Aethiopis. — B.C. 708. Archilochus of Paros.—B.C. 700-600.
Century of elegiac and lost lyric poetry: the age of the tyrants.—B.C. 594. The
legislation of Solon: republics throughout Hellas. Development of plastic arts
and architecture.—B.C. 540. Extension of Persian empire over Asia Minor. — B.C.
499. Ionian revolt: the Athenians burn Sardis.—B.C. 490. Invasion of Attica by
the Persians: battle of Marathon.—B.C. 480. Second invasion of Attica: battle
of Salamis
CHAPTER I.
The results of Salamis.—The stratagem of Themistocles.
BC 480
Council of Xerxes
after the battle.—Disappearance of Persian fleet.— Policy and stratagem of
Themistocles.—Dedications and division of the spoils.—Dissensions of Mardonius
and Artabazus.—Xerxes in Thessaly
CHAPTER
II.
The retreat of Xerxes.—Artabazus in Thrace.—Themistocles at Sparta.
BC 480
Retreat of Xerxes to
the Hellespont.—Distress of his escort in Thrace.— Return of Artabazus.—His
capture of Olynthus.—Repulse at Potidaea.—Rivalry of Athens and
Aegina.—Themistocles slighted by the allies.—Extraordinary honours to
Themistocles at Sparta
CHAPTER
III.
Mardonius in Boeotia and Attica.—Spirit and temper of Athenians and Spartans.
BC 479,
spring
Ionian envoys to
Sparta and the fleet.—Persian fleet at Samos.—Plans of Mardonius for a land campaign.—Attempted
negotiations with Athens. Alexander the Macedonian.—Mardonius re-enters
Attica.—Renews negotiations with Athenians.—Athenian pressure on the Spartans.—
Their force at last put in motion.—Death of Lycides in tumult at Salamis
CHAPTER
IV.
The patriotic army in Boeotia.—The death of Masistius.—Persian
preparations for final conquest.
B.C. 479,
September
Halt of Greeks at the
isthmus.—Mardonius retires to Boeotia.—Encamps on the Asopus.—Episode of
Medisiug Phocians.—The entertainment of Persians by Attaginus at Thebes.—Greek
army appears on slopes of Cithaeron.—Athenian bowmen opposed to Persian
cavalry.—Death of Masistius.—Station of the Greeks.—They move towards Plataea.—
Their order of battle and estimated numbers.—Relative advantages of Greeks and
Persians.—The seer Tisamenus.—Impatience of Mardonius and jealousy of
Artabazus.—Preparations for battle on both sides .
CHAPTER V
(VI).
The decisive battle of Plataea.—The death of Mardonius.
B.C. 479,
September
Embarrassment
of the Greek forces.—Proposed change of ground.—Obstinacy of Amompharetus.—The
Greek army separated.—Elation of Mardonius at their supposed flight.—Disorderly
Persian attack.—Conflict with the Lacedaemonians.—Death of Mardonius.—Conflict
of Athenians and Thebans.—Retirement of Artabazus with large force without
engaging.—Capture of the Persian camp. — Immense slaughter and spoil
CHAPTER
VII.
The spoils of Plataea.—The glory of Pausanias.
B.C. 479,
Autumn
Distribution
of spoils and honours.—Wealth and Sparta.—Irony of Pausanias on Persian
luxury.—Sacrifices for deliverance with fire from Delphi.—Neutralisation of
Plataea.—Surrender of Thebes.—Institution of commemorative festival at Plataea
The battle of Mycale.—The final retirement of Xerxes.
B.C. 479
The decisive results
of the battle of Plataea.—Greek fleet renews activity.—Envoys from Samos urge
assistance to revolt of Ionia.—Leotychides assents.—Debarkation of Greeks at
Mycale.—Decisive Greek victory.— General liberation of Greeks of Asian coast
and the islands.—Dissensions among defeated commanders.—Xerxes finally retires
from Sardis to Susa
The capture of Sestos.—Xanthippus and Artayctes.
B.C. 479
Prospects of Ionians
as to future defence.—Discouraging views of Lacedaemonians.—Zeal of the
Athenians.—Greek fleet to the Hellespont.— Leotychides retires with the
Peloponnesian allies.—Siege of Sestos.— Local legend of Protesilaus.—Sestos
surrenders to Xanthippus.—Cruel treatment of Artayctes
Athens rewalled.—The conceptions and conduct of Themistocles.
B.C. 478
Conclusion of history
of Herodotus.—Authorities for the interval of fifty years—the
Pentecontaeteris—before the commencement of Thucydides.—Athens reoccupied;
Themistocles resumes his earlier plans for fortification and enlargement of
Piraeus.—Dorian jealousy of the fortification of Athens.—Representations of
Sparta.—Astute diplomacy of Themistocles.—The Lacedaemonians foiled
Leotychides in Thessaly.—The conditions of kingship at Sparta.
B.C. 478
Leotychides
acts against the Aleuadae in Thessaly.—The Athenian fleet in the Pagasaean
gulf.—Uncertain results of the expedition.—Leotychides exiled on charge of
accepting bribes, and never recalled.—Precarious position of Spartan kings
CHAPTER
XII.
Pausanias
and Aristides at Byzantium.—Athenian acceptance of the active leadership of
Hellas.
B.C. 477
Combined
Lacedaemonian and Athenian fleet before Byzantium.—Its capture.—Second great
success of Pausanias.—Arrogance of Pausanias disgusts the allies.—His intrigues
with Persia.—Correspondence with Xerxes.—Contrasted demeanour of
Aristides.—Samians and Chians break with Pausanias.—lie is recalled through
complaints of allies.— Athens assumes the hegemony of Hellas as committed to
continued hostilities against Persia
CHAPTER
XIII.
Dorian and
Ionian genius and genealogy.
Characteristics of
Sparta moulded by circumstances and institutions.—In contrast to those of commercial
Dorians and of the earlier stock.— Dorian, Aeolian, and Ionian tribal
distinctions.—Language as clue to earlier relations.—Dorism a qualified
Aeolism, as Attic dialect a qualified Ionic.—Meaning of the assertion of
Herodotus that the Athenians were a Pelasgic race as contrasted with the
Hellenic Lacedaemonians.—Pelasgism the basis of both Ionian and Aeolian
antiquity.—Hellenism expresses the predominant influence of a peculiarly
gifted section.—By varied receptiveness of this influence, other sections
became, in the phrase of Herodotus, Hellenised.—Contingencies which favoured
the distinguished development of the Athenians
The
confederation under leadership of Athens.—The assessment of Aristides.—The
final recall and disgrace of Pausanias.
B.C. 476
The early
rivalry of Aristides and Themistocles.—Subsequent alliance.— Characteristics of
Cimon.—Institution of a common treasure for the allies under presidency of
Athens.—Contributions assessed by Aristides with general approval.—Restlessness
of Pausanias.—Reappears at the fleet.—Is again summarily recalled to Sparta.—Is
charged and acquitted, but deprived of public influence
CHAPTER
XV.
Athenian
prosecution of the war.—Cimon in Thrace.
B.C. 476
Operations
of Cimon in Thrace.—Capture of Eion.—Traditional Athenian claims in this
quarter.—Thracian connections of Peisistratus, Miltiades, and the historian
Thucydides
CHAPTER
XVI.
The development of Athenian democracy.
Authority and
services of the Areopagus during the Persian war.—The elements of democratical
constitution in the legislation of Solon.—Contests of class interests gave
opportunity for the tyranny of Peisistratus. More fundamental reform of the
democracy by Cleisthenes. — The Persian war rendered extension of the full
franchise to every freeman inevitable.—A germ of oligarchical and even
tyrannous reaction always ineradicable.—Claims of Eupatrids to heroic ancestry
.
CHAPTER
XVII.
Poetry, lyric and dramatic, in the age of Themistocles: Pindar, Phry-
nichus, Aeschylus.
B.C. 476
First recurrence of
Olympic games after the Persian war.—Hiero of Syracuse and Themistocles.—The
acme of Pindar and Simonides.—The principle of liturgies and corrective
taxation in reference to the arts.— Themistocles a choragus.—Earlier progress
of the drama.—Epicharmus, Phormis, Thespis.—The drama, tragic and satyric.—The
Phoenissae of Phrynichus.—Innovations of Aeschylus
CHAPTER XVIII
Architecture and sculpture in the age of Themistocles.
The first properly
constructed Greek theatre, B.C. 499.—Its distribution in relation to the
represented drama.—Temple architecture.—Earlier Doric style of Aegina and
Corinth.—Characteristics of Doric architecture.— Hellenic obligations to
Aegypt.—Analogies and contrasts of Doric and Ionic orders.—Early appreciation
of the value and principles of architectural proportion.—Coloured
architectural members.—Archaic schools of sculpture.—Colossal statues.—Portrait
statues of athletes.—Sculptural compositions of the Aeginetan
pediments.—Innovations of Pythagoras of Rhegium and Myron.—Importance of Ageladas
of Argos
CHAPTER
XIX.
A decade of political and party developments.
B.C.
476-466.
Dearth of records of
particular incidents during this period.—The period to be interpreted by its
sequel.—Gradual subordination of allies to Athenian authority.—Hellenic passion
for civic autonomy.—The treasury of the confederacy removed from Delos to
Athens.—Cordial alliance with Sparta promoted by Cimon.—The previsions of
Themistocles.—His policy inherited and administered by Pericles
CHAPTER
XX.
The political and poetical scope of the Persae of Aeschylus.
B.C.
473-472.
The relation of the Persae
to the Phoenissae of Phrynichus.—Inevitable reference of the play to the glory
though not to the name of Themistocles.—Revival of interest by recent defeat of
Carthaginians by Hiero.—The Phineus, the first play of the tetralogy, involved
a reference to the victory at Artemisium.—Recognised obligations of Athens on
that occasion to the Boreads, the rescuers of Phineus. Glaucus of Potniae, the
third play, had reference to the final battle of Plataea, in its purport and in
site of Potniae, covered by the battlefield.—The satyric play, Prometheus, the
fire-bringer.—Its reference to renewal of pure fire after the defeat of the
Persians.—The warnings of the poet
CHAPTER
XXI.
Ostracism of Themistocles.—Cimon at Scyros.
B.C.
471-470.
Influence of Cimon
and his party becomes preponderant at Athens.— Themistocles is ostracized.—Ostracism
and its abuse.—Pride and independence of Themistocles.—Popular arts of his
rival.—Cimon occupies Scyros.—Modern appreciation of the statesmanship
applicable to annexations.—Recovery of the relies of Theseus. — The Theseum
and its artistic enrichments.—The Triptolemus of Sophocles and its
purport.—First public activity of Pericles.—Death of Aristides.—Interpretation
of an allusion in the ‘Seven against Thebes’ of Aeschylus
CHAPTER
XXII.
Painting, rudimentary and advanced.—Polygnotus.
B.C. 467.
Subordinate position
of painting in Hellas relatively to sculpture.—Traces of coloured design in
Homeric poetry.—Independent development of art by the Greeks.—Traditional
commencement of painting as illustrated by the vases.—Painting proper begins
with Polygnotus. — His style simple, severe and refined.—His great compositions
at Delphi, their ordination and significance.—Micon, Panaenus
CHAPTER XXIII.
Themistocles in Peloponnesus.
Uneasiness at Sparta
from restlessness of Pausanias.—Themistocles at Argos.—His probable connection
with opposition to Sparta developed in Peloponnesus.—The recovery of
Argos.—Subversion of Mycenae
CHAPTER
XXIV.
The Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus.
467 B.C.
The
tetralogy—Laïus, Oedipus, the Seven against Thebes, the Sphinx a Satyric
drama.—The principle of continuous hereditary disposition in Greek tragedy.—Its
interpretation as fate.—The warlike drama an echo of recommencing intestine
dissensions in Hellas.—The spirit of Theban mythology..................
CHAPTER
XXV.
The catastrophe of Pausanias and flight of Themistocles.
B.C.
467-466
Sparta regains
control of Peloponnesus.—Intrigues of Pausanias among helots and with
Persia.—Themistocles declines participation.—Ephors detect and destroy
Pausanias.—Endeavour to implicate Themistocles.—He flies to Corcyra.—The
grounds of his interest in the island
CHAPTER
XXVI.
Themistocles the Prometheus Desmotes of Aeschylus.
‘The Prometheus
Bound,’ the most characteristic of the plays of Aeschylus.—Its date
unrecorded.—Presumable reflection of the services and requital of
Themistocles.—Contrasted with Faust. — The theology of Aeschylus.—The more
comprehensive scope of the Prometheus
CHAPTER
XXVII.
The first contumacy of Athenian allies.—Administration of Cimon.
B.C. 465
The story of the
flight of Themistocles.—Takes refuge at Epirus.—Pursued by Lacedaemonians,
again disappears. — Simultaneous revolt of Thasos and Naxos.—Athenian colony to
Nine-ways on the Strymon.— Earlier story of Naxos.—Probability that the revolt
had been concerted with Pausanias.—Naxos captured forfeits autonomy. — Cimon
before Phaselis in Lycia.—Great victory over the Persians on the Eurymedon. The
Strymonian colony destroyed by conflict with the Thracians at Drabescus.—Cimon
establishes the siege of Thasos after destruction of its fleet
CIIAITKK
XXVIII.
Themistocles in Persia.—His death.
B.C. 464.
Xerxes murdered.—Authority
of Artabanus as regent.—He is killed by Artaxerxes.—Arrival of Themistocles at
Susa.—Story of his escape from Epirus.— His reception and cordial entertainment
by Artaxerxes. His characteristics according to Thucydides.—Is established at
Magnesia.—Probable adviser of the Persian policy on Greek frontier.— Regard for
his memory at Athens
CHAPTER
XXIX.
The seventy-ninth Olympiad - Corinthian and Rhodian victors.
B.C. 464.
Odes written by
Pindar for a Corinthian victor. — Characteristics of Corinth, as wealthy
commercial port and as seat of an oligarchy.— Aristocratic
athleticism.—Diagoras of Rhodes, and victors of his family.—Their statues at
Olympia.—Change of opinion supervening relatively to exaggerated athleticism
CHAPTER
XXX.
The rise of Pericles.—Revolt of the Helots.—Surrender of Thasos.
B.C.
464-3.
Pericles becomes
conspicuous in politics. — Continued development of Athenian democracy.—The
ambiguous attitude of Cimon.—The institution of the theoricon.—Spartans
promise aid to Thasos.—Prevented by earthquake and revolt of the helots.—Thasos
surrenders.—Cimon accused 011 account of his conduct in the war ......
CHAPTER
XXXI.
Ephialtes and the democracy.—Athenians before Ithome.—Cimon ostracized.
B.C. 461.
Acquittal of
Cimon.—Is unable to countervail democratic policy of Ephialtes.—Succeeds in
proposal to assist Sparta with auxiliary force.— Jealousy of the force
conceived by Lacedaemonians who dismiss it.— Indignation at Athens.—Cimon
returns and is ostracized
The Age of Pericles.
B.C.
480-461.
INTRODUCTORY.
The subject-matter of the ensuing- history is comprised in the
fifty years that intervene between the repulse of the invasion of Greece by
Xerxes and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War—the interval therefore between
the closing1 events of the history of Herodotus and the opening of
that of Thucydides. A certain overlap is admitted at either end for the sake of
more distinctly marking the connection with the two great continuous histories.
The political events
that occupied these years, though anything but unimportant, were yet, even in
antiquity, not made the subject of any special narrative, the more momentous
struggles and wars of the adjacent periods withdrawing attention from them. The
quarrels that occurred within this period and led to open conflicts were,
though all under a main drifting influence, short and disconnected; and it may
therefore be considered as, on the whole, an oasis of peace in the midst of
surrounding devastation and disorder.
But it was
within this period that all the germs were deposited which sprang into such
rank vitality afterwards. The predominance of Athens was then advancing to consolidation,
and already giving signs of that vigour which was to be shown in conflict with
the animosities and discontents among which it was growing up, and the growth of
which, however latent, was an historical event as important as their
manifestation in virulent activity, or even more so.
The most salient
manifestation of human activity however within that period was the marvellous
attainment to unrivalled perfection of the most refined arts and culture of
civilised life,—the acme of the plastic, poetic, and generally intellectual
arts, and the securing of the conditions of continued progress to the abstract
sciences and speculative philosophy.
A material exponent
of this full bloom of the best faculties of man is the single building of the
temple of Athene— the Parthenon; the description of this and all its adjuncts,
together with the actual remains, attest that sculpture and architecture then
reached a perfection that has never been rivalled since, even singly, not to
say conjointly, in respect of touching- the utmost point of which either is
susceptible. The consent of antiquity adjudged the palm to Pheidias above all
other sculptors, and sufficient fragments of his works are preserved to
happily attest the truth and value of such an assignment. If all evidence of
the characteristics of the age were lost but these memorials, they would be
sufficient to indicate a pitch of civilised refinement that has never since
been surpassed; which may have been more or less partial and exclusive, but
which to have been reached at all, especially in the midst of a democracy, is
sufficient to preclude despair for the capabilities and progressive hopes of
humanity.
And, as if grouped
around this central symbol, we have no insufficient portraitures of the
statesmen who prepared for and perfected such achievements—of Aristides,
Themistocles, Ephialtes, Cimon, Pericles; we have lively delineations of the
Athenians themselves—the demus—so highly and energetically endowed, whatever
the defects, the miserable follies, the shameful faults with which the entire
people, as if representative of the character of so many an individual man of
genius, was at the same time chargeable.
We have then,
preserved most happily-, a body of literature —invaluable, however relatively
small a salvage from a wreck of incomparable abundance—which gives us the still
living words that rung in the ears of those generations, to amuse or to
elevate, for encouragement or rebuke. Eupolis and Cratinus are lost, but
Aristophanes remains to tell us, and to exemplify to us also, the best and the
worst of the times. The last echoes of lyric poetry, dying out in the remoter
odes of Pindar, are renewed in the choruses of the theatre ; and, while other
inferior dramatists still live only in renown, though not inconsiderable
renown, the great triad of tragic dramatists—Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—
are not unworthily, however scantily, represented in their extant tragedies.
To Athens in this
age, as to a centre, was attracted all that profound reflection had been
maturing throughout Hellas, and her claim to be the host of the best foreign
wits was approved by her constant production among her own citizens of the
crowning intelligence. The crude, inaccurate, or sophisticated speculations of
Ionia and Italy found their correction here; and already the genius of Socrates
was abroad, which was to mould for all time the acutest and noblest exercise of
human thought.
The rapidity with
which human faculties at this period pushed forward into bloom is as remarkable
as the perfection which they attained. Accordingly, as is usual in such cases,
the characteristics of the anterior time are by no means utterly obliterated in
the new. We must accustom ourselves to regard the sculptures of Aegina and of
the Parthenon as possibly contemporary works—even as Perugino not merely
preceded and taught but survived Rafael—for the contrast is scarcely so great
as between the almost childlike playfulness and devoutness of Herodotus, and
the tone of his contemporary, the sedate and statesmanlike Thucydides.
Herodotus is in many respects more near to the people than Thucydides, in his
fondness for the picturesque, which disinclines him to reject a fabulous story
too expressive of his purpose to be put very strictly to the test, and in his
willingness to wander somewhat far afield to obtain it; but he is at the same
time distinguished by a larger and more general geographical and chronological
scope, and seems to belong- to a period when Greece was still only in course of
assuming its absolute and separate individuality. His history collects the
scattered rays of historic interest which, when it concludes, are for a period
to be restricted within Hellenic limits, and ultimately brought to a focus at
Athens.
If we are to
understand the period which we are about to consider in detail, we must first
take a somewhat wider preliminary survey. This could only be done with completeness
by the aid of histories equally detailed for the antecedent periods; but it
may, as indeed it must, suffice here to give an introductory sketch of the more
remotely anterior incidents,—so far as these will not offer themselves more readily
for recapitulation afterwards,—and those from which our narrative actually
starts.
Even more necessary
is it to adduce some notice of the previous developments of Greek genius, as
demonstrating the native endowments of the race; of what had been already
achieved and long in familiar possession, and of what early promise the
achievements of this period were the maturity. Surprising and brilliant as our
period is, it is but one in succession to several others in many respects still
more surprising; and conspicuous as Athens now appears, the city does but come
forward as continuing a line of glories to which she had heretofore scarcely
contributed, and during the course of which she was lost in a crowd, or all but
nameless.
The Homeric epos—the
Iliad and Odyssey conjoined—stands at the very commencement of Greek monumental
records, and is not only the greatest of all Greek, but, it must be said, the
greatest of all works of art whatever. There are two questions of date
concerned with it, and both lie far back in indefinite centuries, beyond the
commencement of even plausible history. The question of the date of the poetry
is one, and that of the time when the state of Greece most nearly corresponded
to the general aspect given by the poems, is another. That such a general
correspondence did once exist, and even in respect of confederacies more or
less comprehensive warring against the north-eastern districts of Asia Minor, I
do not doubt, though I cannot pause to argue it at length; that the poem was reduced
to the form in which we now have it by the genius of one man—a single Homer
being conceivable, but scarcely a multitude—I doubt as little; but the question
remains still as to what stores of scattered materials, more or less extensive,
may not have been prepared to his hand; nay, whether the latest poet may not
have been under the same obligations, or something like them, that Berni or
Dryden owed to Boiardo or Chaucer, or that Goethe owed to the epic fable of the
middle ages.
As the work has been
so happily handed down to us, it is unrivalled in expressiveness of language
and rhythm, and in beauty of versification; a perfect model of construction;
unsurpassed in natural description by sea and land; while in personal
portraiture, in variety and distinctness of characterization, in the definition
of sentiment and all the shades and colours of moral good and evil, Homer may
have a rival in Shakespeare, but in Shakespeare alone. In this poem we have all
the conditions anticipated in epithet or description, of the perfection of
plastic and imaginative art; and finally, a mastery of the problem of raising
all natural incidents and characteristic human endowments to a height of more
than experienced idealization, without ever withdrawing the action from our
closest and liveliest sympathies.
The more language by
which all this is preserved has itself the characteristics of a work of
consummate art. For anything that has yet been discovered, we may consider the
proximate roots of the Greek of Homer to be as near the origin of language as
any others, though doubtless still very remote. If we were to give in to the
exclusive influence arrogated to so-called phonetic corruption and decay in
changing and modelling language as applicable to ancient Greek, we should indeed
forfeit the most valuable lesson of etymology. Originally the urgent need of
language was to express—to express feeling as well as thought—and it is for
expression that it is ever struggling. Between the varieties due to the
eagerness of those muscular sensations which are incident to the production of
sounds, and the visible facial movements by which they are accompanied, and
with which they are connected in the mind of the listener, there is large
opportunity for indirect intimation, and direct mimesis by sound, of physical
accidents, changes, and actions. Man possesses organs formed as specifically
for speech, as others are for grasping or locomotion, and there is no mystery
in the multiplication and appropriation of these signs for the sake of convenience;
while analogy and metaphor insensibly transfer these material signs to mental
and moral experiences; thus, in time, ‘understanding’ is applied to ‘intellect’
as readily as to the leg of a chair; ‘sweet’ becomes a common epithet for a
ripe fruit, a feminine smile, and the disposition which inspires the smile. No
doubt dialectic change is influenced by special powers of producing certain
combinations of sound, but phonetic change can only be properly called
corruption or decay when it clings to the positively disagreeable, or destroys
expressiveness. Even with the most uncultured, the struggle to express governs
the direction and degree of change; and such forms as ‘squirrel’ or ‘ queer ’
are no casual results of mere disintegration, but, like ‘thunder’ and other
words of the same nature, have been gradually modified and fixed at last in
virtue of this constant aim and influence; poetry would have expired long ago
if language had not chiefly grown out of and by mimetic expressiveness. The
degree of elegance with which this expressiveness is finally attained is the
measure of the natural refinement and taste of the people among whom it has
grown up. The same influence may be traced in the rejection of various forms
for the sake of avoiding discords in combinations of frequent recurrence, or in
coarse and careless disregard of them. Extrusion of clumsiness, that is, the
rejection of unnecessary syllables and cumbrous combinations, is above all, and
in the first place, characteristic of the Greek language. Beyond this, what
grace, elegance, and euphony were attained, as the language proceeded, not
through corruption and decay, but through healthy and vigorous growth, must be
studied in other pages; but it is important to bear the fact in mind here.
With regard to the
political condition of Greece as exhibited in the poems, its relations to grand
exterior empires is much the same as we find it at the dawn of history. It is
in contact occasionally, and no more, with Phoenicia, Egypt, and northern
tribes; enough so to make the transfer of arts and the course of mercantile
exchange familiar probabilities, but not to induce important hostile
collisions. Within the limits of European Greece, the divisions of states are
almost identical with the lines of boundaries during the war with Xerxes,—lines
determined by the physical character of the mountain-traversed land, and
further by the susceptibility of the people for tribal influences and
attachment to distinct local centres. Still there is the same sense of unity of
race, and sympathy in language, customs, maxims, religion, among these
independent communities, as in later times; and they are exhibited, also, as
having a capacity for joint action under one predominant state, just as when
they adhered to the hegemony, or leadership of Sparta or Athens; and the great
moral of the whole is, that if ever Greece was to be ruined, it would be by her
incapacity to take to heart and profit by the poet’s lesson of necessity for
concord in confederation as a condition of national safety.
Hut there are two
great differences between the Greece of Homer and that of the opening of
regular and authentic history. The Homeric states are not in a single instance
republican, whatever the indications of a vigorous public opinion which has to
be managed, cajoled, or even sometimes cowed; they are all under the sway of
kings, and kings who claim by divine right, and indeed, for the most part, by
divine descent, a title which dates beyond the memory of man. The germ of the
later development is there—especially of that republican condition which
admitted the predominant influence of the Eupatrid—but at present it gives
only feeble and occasional signs of vitality.
Another great
distinction is that the leading tribe which now gives general title to the
nation is Achaian, whereas, when history opens in full light, Achaian has sunk
or receded into the title of a very secondary district, or even into a third
rank ; the nation at large calls itself Hellenic, and its leading subdivisions,
comprising groups of states not especially associated in Homeric times, are
Aeolians, Ionians, and Dorians. Dorian Sparta is now the most powerful, and
asserts somewhat of the comprehensive control of the regal Agamemnon, though
in every respect the most distinct and abnormal in habits and institutions, and
in rudest contrast to the luxurious home of Menelaus and Helen. The identity
of the race, at large, however, is certified not less by language than by the
continuance of all earlier characteristics ; energy by land and sea; admiration
of beauty in all things, especially in what is susceptible of most beauty, the
human form and character; enthusiasm for lofty ideals, however often unrealized
in practice; the love of poetry, of art, of athletic exercises; the assertion
of free action and free speech; a sense of the dignity and power of the race3
especially as contrasted with the enervated or slavish tribes to the east of
the Aegean.
The social contrast,
therefore, is as great as between the sculpture of the gate of Mycenae and that
of the Aeginetan pediments; as great, and as certainly marking an intermediate
period of active revolutions, with movements and collisions of tribes and
populations.
And if such changes
took place after the Homeric epoch, surely we are entitled to ask, whether the
like, and even yet more violent, did not probably take place before? The
poetry, for good poetic reasons, makes no mention of any forcible origin of the
Achaian power in Southern Greece; but traditions, the more trustworthy because
independent of each other, told how the Achaians had descended from Thessaly
and original seats at Phthiotis which continued to retain the name of Achaia.
Thus is explained how it was that the chief hero of the Achaian epic is
Achilles, who belongs to these original seats, and not the more powerful Agamemnon
of the later seats, and who, moreover, was traditionally of foreign lineage.
Tradition, borne out
again by corroborations which it is idle to extenuate, told further how, after
the period of Achaian domination in Southern Greece, and the collision with
Asia in the Troad, a great movement of tribes was urged southward upon
Peloponnesus, which displaced or subdued the former occupants, and gradually
established the system of tribal distribution as represented in history. A
significant threat in the Iliad, of the subversion of Mycenae, Argos, and
Sparta, has been fairly held to intimate that the poet lived after, or during
the course of, these revolutions ; the conjecture may be confirmed by a similar
hint to a future reign of descendants of Aeneas in the Troad.
It must have been in
the course and as a consequence of these convulsions—whose evidence is
absolute, however obscure their dates and details—that the distinction of
Dorians and Ionians took definite form. Of this more must be said hereafter; at
present we have to note that it constitutes a main feature in a further
contrast between this later epoch and the earlier Homeric.
The epos exhibits the
coast of Asia Minor as uncolonised by Greeks, except for some occasional
connection, as in Lycia; but we now find it fringed with Greek cities, active,
powerful, populous, and grouped in marked agreement with relationship. There
is an Asiatic Aeolis, Ionia, and Doris.
The Aeolian
cities—earliest and oldest—are settled about the islands and districts that
were the reputed seats of the Achaian warfare of Homer. The poetic war is not
waged for territory, but for plunder; not for established settlement, but in
retaliation for something like piracy: but here nevertheless it must be
observed, that the poet seems to carry back to the earlier period of his
subject the conditions of his own time ; the Achaians, from their mountainous
peninsula, are made to fight habitually in chariots, a mode of warfare only suitable
for the extensive plains of Lydia or about the coast; and that women are among
the most valued spoil, seems a glaring transference from the later time, when,
according to other notices, the immigrants systematically arrived as warriors
alone, and trusted to their arms to gain the wives with whom they commenced a
new race in a new country.
Tradition, then, is
borne out by manifest facts in establishing that the Achaian domination was
superseded by violent changes in the seats of Greek tribes, due to the
so-called return of the Heracleid dynasty to assert ancestral claims in
Peloponnesus, and that thereafter ensued a long period of active colonization
both east and west.
Particular chronology
here must always be disputable; let it be enough to state a conviction, founded
on the tenacious adherence of the Greeks to certain ceremonious forms in
founding colonies and their heroic estimate of the honour of leading such
enterprises, that there is no reason to set down all traditional names, and
even dates, as unhistoric. The return of the Heracleids was currently dated in
a year 1066 B.C., precisely at the distance anterior to our epoch that the
Norman Conquest, to which it is in many respects a parallel, occurred after it.
Three centuries lie between it and 776 B.C., the epoch of the first Olympiad,
when Coroebus was a victor; of whom, it is true, we know nothing else, in a
period that is equally unknown. And yet the commencement of that reckoning was
itself an important historical fact. It marks generally, and must mark, the
attachment to celebrations which became so expressive of the sympathetic
self-consciousness of the Hellenic race. The Olympic truce was an occasion of
suspended enmities, of meetings in joyful amity; the olive crown, the coveted
prize, was taken from the tree which can only arrive at profitable
fruit-bearing through years exempt from devastation, and hence was the accepted
symbol of peace, as it also provided the oil that gave vigour in noble games;
and all comparisons point to this date as one from which the settlement of
Hellas became recognised as permanent.
In these intervening
centuries lay the plantation of the numerous colonies, which attained to such
prosperity, that they themselves became mother-cities and planted colonies far
and wide again, at cited dates posterior to 776 B.C., and probably in many
instances authentic.
To the century
800-700 B.C. is referred, with every assurance of correctness, the origin of a
vast mass of heroic poetry, the work of what were known as the Cyclic poets,
which was extant through the classic ages. It was in the style of the Homeric
epos, and some long poems were even ascribed very currently to the same poet.
Others of the poems were attached to names of other poets; some were anonymous.
Regarded as a whole, they gained their title of Cyclic from completing, when
taken together, with more or less interference of subjects, a poetical account
of all events from the creation, or even before it, down to the death of
Ulysses. At this point mythological story closed, and the blank that then
intervenes before a more simply pragmatical story recommences with the return
of the Heracleids, is strong evidence of a new spirit having supervened on
national thought at a period that followed this crowning revolution. Mythology
does not take its subject very near to the time of the mythologist; History is
shy of an immediate attachment to a series of events with which its own are
incongruous, and a break is inevitable.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
fixes the date of Arctinus, the author of the Aethiopis, one of these poems,
and the most ancient poet, as he believed, of whose historical existence distinct
trace could be recognized, as 775 B.C. But the general period alone is of
consequence, and it is limited and certified by the unquestionable fact that
this poetry was the production of a period anterior to that of the Iambic
poets, who can be far more accurately dated.
Distinct authentic
history, we have said, only begins two centuries after the assigned date of
Arctinus, with the usurpation of Peisistratus, or at most the legislation of
Solon, 594 B.C.; but the preceding century, which followed the age of the
Cyclic poetry, was most brilliant and fertile of Greek genius, and bequeathed
productions that were the admiration and delight of the best ages of antiquity,
and down to the very establishment of Christianity.
The poems of this
period, lyric, iambic, elegiac, melic, were full of personal and passionate
allusions, and responsive hints, that would certify at least their order of
succession. Archilochus of Paros dates as early as joS B.C. The consent of
antiquity adjudged him a fame only second to that of Homer; the earliest of the
lyric poets, he is credited with exhaustless fertility in invention of new
metrical combinations: this style of poetry, imbued with the passions of the
moment, so different from the genius of epic poetry, had thus a definite
historic as well as poetic value; it is not too much to say that the
personality of Archilochus was as salient in his works as that of Horace or Ben
Jonson; and in various degrees the case was the same with all his
successors—with Simonides of Amorgos, Tyrtaeus especially, Anacreon, Aleman,
Arion, Alcaeus and Sappho, Erinna and Stesichorus, until Mimnermus, lastly,
comes into direct relation with Solon.
The cultivation of
music was pursued not less enthusiastically during this age, but here we are
of necessity at greater disadvantage in forming a judgment, though we cannot
hesitate to accept the ancient renown as well deserved, and do homage to the
antecedents of the odes of Pindar and the choruses of the dramatic poets, both
comic and tragic.
Thus it is that
beyond the limits of the broad light of Herodotus a sort of historical twilight
extends, and even as it settles into darkness we see reflected in the sky the
splendours of works that unhappily have all but perished; we gather faint
echoes of music and song from a succession of singers as gifted as those who
made the glory of the age of Pericles, and still more numerous in their succession.
Pushed back certainly by this unbroken series to the very commencement of the
Olympiads, was the age which had transmitted the vast mass of Cyclic poetry,
afterwards to be subjected to the criticism of Aristotle, but only to be found
wanting as compared with the unequalled art of the Homeric epos, descending
from a still more remote and obscurer Beyond. Even in a summary so largely
comprehensive we omit the important class of hymns both poetic and properly
sacred, and the peculiar compositions of the Hesiodic cycle.
Such was the wealthy
heritage of literary art and beauty which Hellas had long-enjoyed before the
age of Peisistratus, barely a century before the birth of Herodotus, when at
last the obscurity clears away from the historic field, and we can follow with
confidence a series of connected events and the actions of identifiable
characters. It is certain that the plastic arts and architecture had already
made advances scarcely less important; technical processes had been mastered,
the principle of constant and ever-renewed reference to nature had been
combined with the aspiration to correct the individual model by ‘ an idea
within the mind,’ by study persevering and yet so sensitive that it caught
exactly the moment to resign itself to the free guidance of imagination. It
must remain doubtful whether any of the statuary of this period could hold its
ground in comparison with the Pheidian period in the same sense in which works
of Archilochus or Sappho took equal rank with Sophocles, but at least the
preliminary conditions of the later development were mastered. The case was
certainly the same in architecture; the vast temple of Samos, and the earlier
Parthenon, had already decided all the leading members of the style, and the remains,
archaic as they are, of the temple at Corinth, evince that the application of
proportion to building, the counterpoint of architecture, had already become
matter of theoretic study, of which the marvellous results were to be fully
manifest later on.
SUCCESSION
OF MONARCHY—TYRANNY
Government also, in
its best sense, as the systematic conciliation of Force and Order with
individual freedom, had made corresponding advances, when all the accumulated
preparations for human culture were threatened by Asiatic despotism. The age of
divinely-descended and authorized kings had been succeeded, after years of
compromise or convulsion, by constitutional order, oligarchical doubtless in
most cases, but still tempered, destined to yield in its turn, however, to an
age of Tyrants; but with the fall of the sons of Peisistratus at Athens the
last traces of this latter period also had passed away. The vigorous
constitution of Sparta had retained the form of royalty with much outward ceremony,
but under severe control; and the dominant oligarchs had taken care to secure
the power of their fellows throughout the length and breadth of Hellas, by
suppressing all the tyrannies one after Another. The last of their
achievements in this way was the expulsion from Athens of the son of
Peisistratus, who took refuge in Persia, and there exerted himself, only too
effectually, to bring the scourge of Oriental invasion upon his native land.
Tyranny at Athens, however, was only superseded by another force scarcely less
repugnant to Sparta. The spirit of democracy, native here, was inimical alike
to oligarch and to tyrant; and with hands free, and aided by a remarkable
manifestation of individual genius, it made the next great chapter of Hellenic
story— a conflict of democracy with Oriental despotism in the first place, but
with Hellenic, and especially Spartan, oligarchy immediately and constantly
thereafter.
The same date marks
the power of Peisistratus at Athens and the accession of the Median Cyrus; and
the extraordinary development of Persian power absorbed, in its movement
westward, the recently consolidated Lydian kingdom,— together with all the
Hellenic cities on the sea-board, which after centuries of independence had
only just succumbed to Lydia when they were transferred to a still more
powerful master,—and under his son Cambyses subjugated the primaeval civilization
of Egypt. The growth of this great power proceeded even still more formidably
when it was wielded by the organizing energy of Darius Hystaspes, about thirty
years after the conquest of Lydia. Darius in person led armies into Europe as
far as the Danube, his lieutenants Mardonius and Megabazus secured permanent
hold on many parts of Macedonia and Thrace, and an attempt was made (501 B.C.) as far to the
west, and as near to Athens and Sparta, as the island of Naxos.
The time was now at
last once more at hand when the comparative mettle of Greek and Oriental,
Western and Eastern tribes, which had met in such unequal conflict in the
Homeric epos, was to be tried in mortal combat for life or death to liberty,
and to civilized and progressive culture.
Ionia rose in revolt
against the Persian, Sparta withheld the solicited aid, but Athens was roused
by the peril of cities which owned her as their metropolis; even her effort,
however, was but single and spasmodic, and she withdrew entirely, after giving'
mortal affront by assisting the insurgents in the burning of Sardis.
Within ten years she
found herself exposed to a retaliatory attack upon her own ground. The valour
of the unassisted Athenians, and the conduct of their general Miltiades,
inflicted on the host of Datis and Artaphernes on the field of Marathon a
defeat which brought that expedition to a disgraceful end. The Spartans arrived
too late for the battle, and afterwards, with characteristic sluggishness, left
the more acute and alert Athenians to anticipate and prepare for a renewal of
the conflict. For three years Asia was stirred from end to end by a single
resistless mandate to prepare for the subjugation of this little group of
independent communities, while Xerxes, in the pride of youthful sway, and heir
to his father’s animosity, prepared to make the progress of triumph and revenge
in person.
At Athens at least
the impending danger was not unprepared for; though that it was not so even
here was due chiefly to the foresight and energetic genius of one man—
Themistocles. He read the lesson of the past, that the salvation of the
Athenians, if not of Athens, must, under a renewed attack, depend on their
possession of ships, and that the severest stroke which could be dealt against
an invader, however he arrived, would be the annihilation of his fleet.
DESPOTIC
PERSIA AND DEMOCRATIC A THENS.
On this occasion at
least the Spartans set one grand example, which was probably due to the
personal spirit of their king Leonidas. The embattled nations of the Persians
crossed the Hellespont and wound round through Thessaly, embarrassed only by
their own encumbering numbers, to encounter opposition at the first spot under
the circumstances even moderately defensible, the pass of Thermopylae. There is
no need to recount the circumstances of the conflict ; but whatever may be
thought of the strategic insight of the Spartan, there is no reason to condemn
the exploit as heroism thrown away; from the result of it Sparta may have
learnt to be cautious in committing her fortunes to entire sacrifice on a point
of honour; but the approval at home of the steadfastness of the three hundred,
the proof they gave before they were destroyed of the efficiency of Hellenic
against Persian arms, and the moral impression created upon the Persians
themselves, were ' not without most important influence upon the later
conflicts.
In the meantime
Themistocles was labouring to keep the ships of the various Greek states
together, and to unite them in well-concerted action, by persuasion,
self-control, and bribery. He inflicted severe losses on the hostile navy as
they advanced towards the shores of Attica, and was happily seconded by the
elements. He then carried the resolution for the general evacuation, not only
of Attica, but of Athens itself, transported the entire population to the
islands and opposite peninsulas, and watched with vigilant anxiety for the opportunity
to strike his long-expected blow.
The confederate fleet
was mustered in the Saronic Gulf about the island of Salamis, as the Persians
rendezvoused in the roadstead of Phaleron ; while Xerxes had already occupied
Athens and Attica, and might at any time move forward upon the Peloponnesus. In
such a confined position the smaller licet had everything to hope from an
engagement, but the Greek commanders of the Peloponnesian states had neither
the confidence of Themistocles, nor—trusting in the blockade of the Isthmus—did
they conceive that their stake was equally emperilled.
The rest is, for our
present purpose, soon and briefly told. Themistocles sent a private message to
the Persian king, which was too like many another communication from Greek
traitors to be suspected, and which determined him to commence the attack at
once. While the allied commanders were still proposing immediate departure and
separation, they found that retreat was already cut off, that the enemy were
advancing, and that the only alternative—accepted then for the most part with
unhesitating courage—was to fight at once.
Such were the
circumstances that brought on the battle, and, with the battle, the victory, of
Salamis.
CHAPTER I.
THE RESULTS OF SALAMIS. THE STRATAGEM OF THEMISTOCLES.
480 B.C.
When night
closed upon the scene of the battle of Salamis, the victorious Greeks were
unaware of the full extent and value of their success ; the enormous land army
of Xerxes was, they knew, entirely uninjured, except by the loss of a trifling
detachment cut off by Aristides on the islet Psyttaleia, and of some leading
officers who had taken part in the sea-fight; and even at sea the ships that
had never been engaged at all, or had escaped with little damage to the station
at Phalerum, were so numerous that the allied commanders fully anticipated a
renewed attack. The moral victory, however, proved to have been more decisive
than the material—itself not unimportant. It was not so much that the troops
and mariners of the invader were seriously demoralised, as that Xerxes himself
had looked on in surprise and agitation at all the incidents of the conflict.
Even if the loss of his brother and the slaughter of his personal friends
before his eyes might not have affected the nerves of the Great King to the
degree described by Aeschylus, he could not but observe at what disadvantage
his forces, for all their superior numbers,—fighting bravely as they might in
the consciousness of his immediate presence,—had contended with the patriotic
enthusiasm, the order and skill of their opponents. It might indeed seem that
with power at his command which was still so preponderant, he could well afford
to strike another blow even at equal cost, a blow which must have fallen with
decisive disastrousness on the smaller force of the Greeks. But the stanchness
of his Phoenician and Cilician forces was thoroughly discredited by their
behaviour in the battle; the Ionians could not be trusted at a turn of fortune,
and the better troops whom he had embarked, having no opportunity for their
valour in a form of contest unknown to them, were simply thrown away. The
superiority of the Greeks on their own element was too manifest and too serious
for the repetition of a venture that might jeopardize his own personal safety;
by one more such battle his fleet might be utterly disorganized and dispersed,
and then the enemy, established in full command of the sea and the straits,
could cut off his retreat from Europe, and even interpose an obstacle to his
return beyond, by inciting a general Ionian insurrection. It was not because
his private resolve was not fixed at once, that his immediate commands implied
a purpose to remain and prosecute the enterprise without intermission;
preparation was to be made for another sea-fight, and a project that had been
mooted and perhaps commenced before the 1 battle, a familiar and favorite
Oriental expedient, was again spoken of; Phoenician transport vessels were to
be fastened together to form a bulwark and floating pier, and a causeway was to
be completed from the mainland to the island of Salamis, the refuge of the
Athenian families and the store place of their property.
A show of
consultation was then made with Mardonius, son of Gobryas, the most eager
instigator of the expedition, and separately with the Carian Queen Artemisia,
who had already commanded the confidence of the King by the frank independence
of her counsel no less than by its wisdom. Both were forward to minister the
desired advice. Mardonius especially had motives of his own for pressing what
he might easily divine was the only recommendation that would be listened to;
he had little inclination to be responsible at home for the entire and
disastrous failure of his policy—a failure which in truth it was as yet
premature to admit. The prospect of being left with a brilliant independent
command, in the conduct of which he was not unnaturally or unfairly still
sanguine of success, was tempting ; the more speedy and alarmed the flight of
Xerxes the larger the proportion of the army that he would be both disposed and
obliged to leave behind as an obstacle between himself and the possible pursuit
of the Greeks. As for Artemisia, she had distinguished herself by remarkable
bravery in the battle; and even without insisting on the feminine liability to
excessive reaction after displays of unfeminine vigour, we need not hesitate to
infer that she was well content to be now dismissed in honour. The Great King consigned
to her charge some of his illegitimate offspring, and she loosed at once for
Ephesus, where it was said that primaeval Amazons had founded the great temple
for the goddess from whom this modern Amazon derived her name.
The speeches which
Herodotus assigns to the two counsellors are excellent examples of his apt
dramatic invention, and curiously display how thoroughly a republican Greek of
his time could enter into the spirit of an absolute monarchy. Xerxes is
flattered and capable of being flattered by the suggestion of an option,
although the necessity for his flight is a foregone conclusion, since both to
his own conviction, and to that of his advisers, an alternative of any kind is
out of the question. To soothe or seem to soothe his pride, the losses that
have been incurred are made light of when set against the glorious and literal fulfillment
of the purpose of the expedition; Athenian insolence and sacrilege at. Sardis had
found its threatened retribution in the capture of Athens and the smoking ruins
of its most sacred temples ; losses, of whatever magnitude, that might ensue to
the avenging army, are treated as of little consequence in comparison with the
all-important safety of the King; Artemisia,
with something different from the abasement of sycophancy, in all
the sympathetic candour of royalty in secluded conference with royalty, adverts
to the possible destruction of Mardonius and his host as comparatively of
little consequence.
Among the ostensible
reasons for the departure of the King were some which told with equal cogency
against the further prosecution of the war; and these were made the most of, especially
by Artabazus son of Pharnaces, who had opposed it from the very beginning.
Mardonius however carried his purpose by skillfully connecting it with
conditions of self-complacent comfort for the disheartened Xerxes, and with the
propriety and security of his speedy return.
Accordingly, at
daybreak of apparently the day but one after the battle, the Persian army
indeed was still seen across the gulf in its place on land, but the Greeks
discovered that the hostile fleet had vanished from the harbour and roadstead
of Phalerum. Its destination and the full significance of the move were at
once divined. It had in fact started during the night, and though dispersed for
a time off Cape Zoster, where jutting rocks—so it was afterwards believed—were
mistaken in the darkness for Greek ships, had reassembled and was already in
full course northwards to secure the Hellespont. The Greek fleet put off in
pursuit with the utmost alacrity, and proceeded as far as the island of Andros,
where the sea-line was open northwards, but as the chase was still not in
sight, the commanders panned to consider their further movements.
The Athenian crews in
all the elation of success were exasperated at the escape, and eager to go on,
even against the opinion of the allies, and even by themselves. Themistocles
was not likely to be less confident, or less eager to make the most of the
superiority of the fleet which he had himself created; and, as something more
than their mouthpiece, he was urgent in the same direction. He pressed with all
his influence for continuing the pursuit of the fugitive navy, the annihilation
of which was certainly important, and in its present state of dispersion and demoralization
presumably easy; and he held out the prospect of intercepting the retreat of Xerxes
and the land army by breaking the much-talked-of bridge across the Hellespont,
and so remaining in command of the channel. The apparently more astute policy
of declining to offer an impediment to the flight of a formidable enemy is
assigned to the Spartan Eurybiades, though Plutarch, writing with Herodotus
before him, prefers some other authority in ascribing it to Aristides. To a
Spartan at that time the mere remoteness of such an expedition, and that by
sea, would in itself be a sufficient objection, even though not reinforced by
the national maxim which discouraged prolonged pursuit after a victory, or by
more refined considerations. The majority of the allies fell in easily with the
resolution to give no hindrance to the evacuation of Europe by an army which,
as they prematurely flattered themselves, was as ready to retire as the fleet
had been, but which, if obliged to remain, must be driven, by the necessity of
obtaining subsistence, to perilous activity, and had still sufficient force in
reserve to overawe or subdue all the cities and tribes of Hellas one after
another. ‘With the command of the sea lost, retire he must, and it were best to
allow him to do so now, and continue the contest afterwards on his ground
instead of on our own. Plausible as the project of crushing Asia in Europe
might sound, the King at the head of such an army would, if driven to
extremity, rouse himself, and would not be content a second time merely to look
on, sitting in state under a gold umbrella.’
Themistocles, constrained
if not convinced, gave an example of loyal deference to the alliance by
bringing over his reluctant countrymen. He quoted to them the proverbial danger
of provoking desperate men, hinted that as the disaster of Xerxes was a
manifestation of the angry grudge of the gods at his impious over-confidence,
so it would be well for the Athenians—and he touched here one of the most
sensitive of their superstitions—to avoid giving like perilous and presumptuous
affront by assuming to be invincible ; it was also urgent to attend to
families, houses were to be rebuilt and resettled, the harvest of next year at
least to be secured—the present being lost—by getting seed into the ground, and
after all spring would come round, and then would be the time to deal with the
Hellespont and Ionia.
But in fact the
retreat of the Persian army was not yet declared; and it was not certain that
Attica might not continue to be occupied as a base of further operations. It
was not many days however after the battle of Salamis before this immediate
apprehension found relief; the confined and closed-in Attica was not a district
for such a host to remain in now that failure of supplies and support by sea
had put further advance out of the question ; and its departure by the same route
that it came, in the direction of 1 Boeotia, revived in the Greeks
the illusive hope of speedy and final deliverance.
Xerxes himself, had
he even been inclined to linger, might have been hastened away by a secret
message that reached him from the Athenian commander. Themistocles, overruled
in his plan to cut off the retreat, fell back on the next best policy to hasten
it.- With some reliance it would seem on the simplicity of the
barbarian, he sent to him again the same
Sicinnus who had before carried the treacherous warning that precipitated a
naval engagement just in time for the salvation of the Greeks. The instrument
was no doubt well chosen, as his dexterous service was richly rewarded
afterwards, when Themistocles made the former pedagogue of his children a
well-endowed citizen of the resettled and repeopled Thespiae. The liberation
moreover at the same time of a captured royal eunuch, Arnaces, was a personal
favour to the King, and supplied an independent witness of the sincerity of the
message and the reality of the peril with which he had doubtless been
sedulously impressed. A boat’s crew of faithful adherents, who might be fully
relied on to keep the secret of the mission, even under torture, conveyed the
agent to the shore of Attica. The communication which he bore was to the effect
that Themistocles, the Athenian commander, out of desire to be serviceable to
the King, had succeeded in restraining the Greeks from their eagerness to
pursue his fleet and cut the bridge of the Hellespont, and that he could now
draw off in perfect security. We may assume that this tranquillizing assurance
was qualified by some intimation of the precarious nature of the restraint
which Themistocles could exercise, and would thus be calculated rather to
enhance the apprehension of the King. The Persian was only too well accustomed
to receive very valuable aid from Greek treachery, but had not learnt to
suspect still further treachery beneath.
So far therefore,
Athenians and allies, Spartans and Persians, believed alike that they had
reason to applaud Themistocles, who, himself a serviceable friend, had too
lively a sense of the advantages which he and his country might derive from
enthusiastic and powerful friends, to neglect to provide them beforehand, or to
use or abuse them prematurely. That he may have designed to confirm the
previous confidence of the Great King in his sympathy, for future as well as
present use, a? it did indeed afterwards stand him in good stead, is probable
enough; but his caution in rendering his country this service only implies
that he knew how his countrymen, if it came to their knowledge, might
misunderstand or misrepresent it; that the establishment of a personal claim
was his sole or his main object, it were absurd to suppose.
In a cruise with his
victorious fleet among the islands, Themistocles now commenced a system of
requisitions, independent, not merely of the participation, but even of the
knowledge of the commanders of the allies, and, as Herodotus implies, very
considerably also for his private advantage. No time was lost therefore in
giving notice of the lofty pretensions of maritime Athens; his demands were
made in the name of Athens, and Athens alone; and whether simply on the ground
of fitting contribution to the common cause, or as penalty for aid rendered to
the Mede by the cities or by individual citizens, and for the delivery at his
summons, by almost all, of earth and water, as tokens of submission— those
demands were backed by threats which his authority and the force at his command
made in most eases immediately effectual. The Andrians were curtly informed by
his messenger, that the Athenians had with them two potent divinities,
Persuasion and Compulsion, and that on the terms of one or the other they must
needs pay. The Andrians, however, felt themselves secure enough within their
walls to retort that these goddesses, serviceable as they were, would avail
nothing against a pair not less unserviceable, Poverty and
Inability—impersonations already coupled in the poetry of Aleaeus as
sisters—and that pay they would not. The island was beset by the fleet, and the
demonstration at least brought in considerable sums from other quarters, from
Paros and Euboea certainly, and, as Herodotus believed, from elsewhere. The
Parians thus bought themselves off, but the Carystians of Euboea were less fortunate,
and, by what misarrangement does not appear, incurred devastation of their
territory all the same, when the fleet, relinquishing the attempt against
Andros, was on its return to Salamis.
It is perfectly
consistent with what is known of Themistocles that his own fortune was
increased by the proceeds of these exactions ; it would be less than justice to
assume that no larger share of the benefit accrued to the service of the state,
of which the necessities consequent on cost of war, on devastation and
expatriation, must have been most urgent. It was quite in his way, as he had
shown before the battle of 1Artemisium, to take bribes with the left
hand for patriotic services with the right.
Re-assembled at
Salamis, the first care of the Greeks was to select three of the captured
Phoenician vessels for dedication to the gods, to whom by vicinity or special
appeal their victory was peculiarly ascribed. One was dedicated at the Isthmus,—presumably
to Poseidon,—and was seen there by Herodotus; another to Athene, on the
promontory of Sunium; and a third to Ajax,—but this not at Aegina, whence the
Aeacid had been summoned to aid,—but at Salamis, closer to the scene of
victory, and the town from which the hero had led twelve ships against Troy,
and there ‘stationed them,’ according to the line suspected of being
interpolated for a political intent, ‘alongside the Athenians.’
The divine share of
the spoil was then distributed; from the prime of it the Greeks dedicated at
Delphi a statue of Apollo, twelve cubits high, holding the prow of a ship. It
stands, says Herodotus, with a particularity that marks the already crowded
state of the precinct, near the golden Alexander of Macedon. This Delphic
statue was probably of bronze, like the Zeus at Olympia, which Pausanias mentions
in the same passage as another dedication—of which we shall hear more—from the
Medica.
The siler-footed
throne from which Xerxes had watched the battle on the height above the shore
was catalogued among the treasures of the Athenian acropolis under ’Pericles,
but probably was spoil of a later conflict.
Meanwhile, whatever
sanguine hopes might have been formed that the retirement of the invaders
implied their final departure, were speedily undeceived, and the news of the
halt of the main body was promptly followed by that of renewed preparations to
complete the subjugation of the Greeks.
There is no
appearance that the Persian hold even on Boeotia was relaxed, and a pause which
was made by the King in Thessaly, and his departure northwards shortly
afterwards with a strong escort, would not be known much sooner than the sure
signs that the principal danger was still impending over Hellas, ‘like the
stone of Tantalus.’
It was during this
halt, if we are to believe Herodotus, as I doubt not that we may, that an
application was made to Xerxes which, strange as it sounds to modern ears,
would not have been recorded had it seemed so extravagant to a Greek of the
time; and that is not more strange than many of the old world notions that are
perfectly authenticated as then still lingering, especially at Sparta. A herald
of the Spartans presented himself at Larissa, and formally demanded of the
Great King satisfaction for the slaughter of their King Leonidas, ‘ slain by
Medes while defending Hellas.’ Xerxes not unnaturally laughed, and at first
made no reply; then presently, pointing to Mardonius, who was standing by him,
he said, £ Here is the man, Mardonius, who shall render them satisfaction
of such kind as is fitting.’ The herald accepted the answer, and returned to
report it. He had been despatched in haste in obedience to a Delphic oracle,
which was afterwards believed to have enjoined acquiescence in whatever reply
the application provoked, and was credited with anticipating an involuntary and
significant presage of the defeat and death of Mardonius at Plataea.
The ample powers
committed to Mardonius might reasonably make him confident of ultimate success
in the enterprise of which, in the face of ardent opposition, he had
originally been the chief adviser. He was allowed to retain all the best
troops, consisting for the most part of Persians and Medes in equal numbers—the
latter, however, of inferior account; he retained all the Sakae. Bactrians, and
Indians, both horse and foot, and picked men from all the other tribes,
including Aethiopians and Egyptians whom he had withdrawn at Phalerum from the
fighting armament of the Phoenician galleys. The Persian Immortals all
remained with him, though their commander Hydarnes declined to quit the King.
Of the retained army as many as 60,000 men were to be detached to accompany
Xerxes until he was safe in Asia, and then rejoin. This important body was
under command of Artabazus son of Pharnaces, previously named as a leader of
the Parthians and Chorasmians, who would fain have made the withdrawal from
Southern Hellas definitive and total, and was now submitting only perforce and
most reluctantly to the superior influence of Mardonius. The later consequences
of this disagreement, combined with his military influence, which would of
necessity be confirmed by so important an independent command, were momentous.
The resumption of
operations southwards was necessarily deferred until the ensuing spring; by
that time the troops that conducted Xerxes could return, and Thessaly
meanwhile, where the Aleuad Thorax of Larissa was still zealous for the
expedition that he had done so much to invite, and the nearer district of
Macedonia, afforded undisturbed winter quarters, and the best opportunity of
providing subsistence for a renewed campaign.
CHAPTER II.
THE RETREAT OF XERXES. ARTABAZUS IN THRACE.-------- THEMISTOCLES AT SPARTA.
480 B.C
Xerxes,
we
are told, reached the Hellespont in five and forty days, and as the term is
manifestly mentioned to emphasise his precipitate haste, it seems that we must
reckon it from Attica and the day of Salamis. The date of this can only be
fixed generally as in the autumn, but the retreat appears to have been late
enough in the year for at least some of the fugitives to suffer considerably by
the incipient, perhaps premature, inclemency of the Thracian winter.
On arriving at Siris
in Paeonia, Xerxes found that the sacred chariot, which he had deposited there
on his way south, was not again forthcoming. The historian, finding, as usual
with him, a Greek name for a foreign divinity, calls it the chariot of Zeus; he
notes 1 elsewhere that the Zeus of the Persians was the general
circle of the heavens. It was never ascended by man, but in the pomp of the
army was drawn vacant before the King by eight white Nisaean horses and
preceded by ten others. Doubtless it is to be regarded as property the chariot
of the sun; and this sacred character explains its disappearance in this
particular locality as due to something beyond common sacrilegious rapine. The
traces of a native solar and planetary worship are peculiarly persistent in
this region, and among them this very symbol of a chariot with white horses is
at home.
In Homer the Paeonians,
of a somewhat more western seat on the Axius, appear under the leadership of
Asteropaeus and Pyraechmes, significant names when we read in independent
authorities that the Paeonians worshipped the sun, of which their symbol was a
small disk on a high rod.
If there could be any
doubt as to the original source of the legend of the chariot and white horses
of Thracian Rhesus, son of Eion,—Eïon at the mouth of the Strymon,— it should
be dispelled by Nestor’s comparison of the steeds, as Diomed and Ulysses are
bringing them in through the night, to the solar beams. The Magians of the
expedition of Xerxes, by sacrificing white horses to the Strymon, had recognized
the genius and traditions of the locality.
The Thracians gave
the sun the name or the epithet Zeuxippus, and it is as ‘lovers of horses’ that
the Thracians of the Tereus of Sophocles invoke the ‘holy radiance of the sun’.
Thracians were now in
any case in surreptitious possession of the Persian sacred chariot and its
white horses, stolen from their custody, as the Paeonians professed, by the
remoter tribes about the sources of the Strymon, but purposely transferred to
them according to the belief of Herodotus.
The persistence of
local characteristics seems curiously illustrated by an anecdote of barbarism
that the historian next details—the blinding by a Thracian king of his disobedient
sons. We are checked in an inclination to disallow it as a mere reflection from
the mythical atrocities of Thracian Phineus, by remembering how unnatural
cruelty of the like type repeats itself afterwards, as if ineradicably native
to the region, in the chambers of Byzantine emperors.
Xerxes, then, reached
the Straits with extraordinary speed, and it may be, as regards his immediate
escort, with comparative immunity ; but the route was marked by the
falling-out of the stragglers and the sick, whom it was a mere formality to
command the exhausted cities on the line of march to tend and nourish. It fared
necessarily still worse with the vast crowds that had been mustered originally
in a spirit of barbaric display of power, and that Mardonius neither cared to
retain nor to provide for—the least effective, the least healthy, with whatever
supernumeraries and camp followers could only remain as an encumbrance. The
sufferings of these had commenced even before Thessaly was attained. The difficulty
of feeding the effective force and of filling its magazines for the prospective
campaign was relieved by abandoning the ineffective to what chances they had of
providing for themselves unaided against such competitors for failing food and
forage.
Herodotus tells how,
when all stores were exhausted, the growing crops were snatched from the
ground, and the famished hordes were at length driven to devour grass and the
bark and leaves of trees without distinction, cultivated or wild, and they
left nothing; the work of famine being followed up, as ever in such cases, by
dysentery and pestilence.
Not poetry itself can
heighten the horrors of such a retreat. Imagination indeed, drawing from its
own resources, is even more likely to match the truth than are the prosaic
details gathered by an historian. According to Aeschylus, scarcity of water was
already fatal in Boeotia, and even insufficiency of clothing during inclement
and unsheltered nights, no doubt especially with the tribes coming from such
climates as that of India, and even others. Still more fatal were the combined
effects of hunger and thirst in Thessaly, and even more deadly pestilence as
they went on. By the time Thrace was reached, at least by some lagging portion
of the wretched fugitives, the nights were cold enough to cover the Strymon, or
possibly some other river eastward of Pangaeus, with ice strong enough to
bear—an assistance for the moment; but the very sun-god of the locality seemed
in league against the unhappy train upon the way so treacherously shortened.
Those who passed early were saved ; but, as day advanced, ‘the bright circle of
the sun, ablaze with beams, warmed the ford with fire, and split it in the
midst—happiest then he who was first to perish’. Of those left behind, and who
had to make a long circuit through Thrace, few ever reached their native land.
Hasty and uncontrolled indulgence in more abundant food as soon as it was
obtainable, and—it is especially noticed—substitution of other drink for
water, caused large fatality even after Asia was regained.
Another story, in
itself improbable enough, was current, that Xerxes embarked for Asia in a
Phoenician ship at Eïon on the Strymon; it was told apparently for the sake of
an illustration, one out of several of the kind, of the cruel and irrational
punctilios of the court of an Asiatic despot. The ship, so went the tale, was
endangered by a storm, overladen as it was with Persians of high rank. The
ship-master, appealed to by the alarmed Xerxes, declared that the only hope of
escape was to lighten it of passengers. The Persians were at once advertised
by the King of the opportunity for their services, and at once making their
parting prostrations, they one after another, as if still with observance of
due precedence, leaped into the sea. The first act of Xerxes upon landing in
safety was to reward the shipmaster for saving the royal life, and the next to
have his head struck off for causing the destruction of so many Persians. The
conditions of giving wise advice to a tyrant here are essentially the same as
are illustrated in the subject of the Council of Darius on the Naples vase. The
counsellor there stands on the golden plinth which he will receive as reward
for his advice—with, however, a scourging for his presumption in offering it.
Herodotus discredits the story, on the ground that the Phoenician rowers would
have been sacrificed in preference; and so leaves us to debate whether he could
have overlooked the enhanced peril of a storm-tossed galley when reft of
oarsmen, or what escape he could imagine from it. A more reasonable objection,
provided in his reference to the local tradition of the Abderites, that Xerxes
passed through their city on his return, only invalidates the statement of his
port of embarkation. The further tradition of Abdera, that it was there that
the King first loosened zone after quitting Athens, may be taken as expressing
at least the state of discomposure in which he arrived. The licet which had
retired, or rather escaped, from Salamis and the Saronic Gulf, duly reached the
Hellespont, where it was the more needed as the bridge had already been carried
away by storms, and there aided the transit of the King and some inconsiderable
bodies of troops and stragglers. It then retired for the winter to the coast of
Asia Minor—most of the ships to Cumae, the rest to the harbour of Samos, where
the Samian Theomestor, son of Androdamas, in requital of good service done at
Salamis, was established by the Persian in the authority of Tyrant—that is,
under such circumstances, of Satrap.
Artabazus, having so
far accomplished his task and seen the King in safety, turned his face, however
unwillingly, again westward, along with his large force, to rejoin Mardonius
and the main army. On his way he halted at the Chalcidic peninsula, on the
eastern side of the Thermaic gulf. From thence he could move south in time for
operations in spring, and could meanwhile more conveniently obtain subsistence
for his forces; he had there also the opportunity to repress in the interval
some examples of defection which, if neglected, might spread, and compromise
communications of which he best knew the precariousness, and was well disposed
to forbode the coming need.
Potidaea, on the
isthmus of the fertile peninsula of Pallene, was already in declared, and
Olynthus, in less secure position, suspected as on the verge of revolt. The
latter town was occupied by Bottiaeans, who had been driven eastward from the
Thermaic gulf by Macedonian encroachment, and as a lately Hellenised, or at
best semi-Hellenic 1 tribe, and perhaps from the circumstances of
their settlement, seem to have been out of sympathy with their immediate
neighbours. Olynthus was in consequence attacked by Artabazus, and on its
capture the inhabitants were carried out into an adjacent marsh and there
massacred, as a measure preparatory to the delivery of the town into the
keeping of Critobulus of Torone, on the adjacent Sithonian peninsula, and to
the introduction of a Chalcidic population. In this manner, says Herodotus,
Olynthus—which was destined to a conspicuous place in later history—became,
like its neighbours, Chalcidic.
With Potidaea the
Persians had far different fortune. This city—which also we .shall soon hear of
again—was a Corinthian colony, and named from the god Poseidon, who, in colony
as in metropolis, could look down from his temple upon a sea on either hand.
The towns within the peninsula contributed to the defence of Potidaea, which,
by its position as a bar to the Isthmus, was the bulwark of their own immunity.
But the severity of the treatment of Olynthus, while it nerved resistance
generally, was calculated to make some timid traitors. In the course of the
siege a citizen was struck in the shoulder by an arrow, and the bystanders who
hastened to his assistance found that the shaft was laden with a missive, which
had been intended for traitorous hands. It was at once taken to the generals,
who were thus put on their guard against a clandestine correspondence carried
on by Timoxeinus, commander of their Scionaean allies, which might otherwise
have had serious consequences. The warning had its value, though, for some
unexplained politic tenderness to Scione, the matter was hushed up. At last,
after three months of urgent but vain siege, an unusually low ebb of the sea
appeared to furnish Artabazus with an opportunity of turning the defences and
penetrating into Pallene by land. Two out of five divisions intended for the
service had passed through the shoal water, and the others were on their way,
when the sea returned in flood of a volume which natives said was of the very
rarest occurrence. Those who were unable to swim perished at once, the
remainder fell by the hands of the besieged, who sallied upon them in boats.
The Potidaeans naturally recognized a special interposition of their god to
avenge the desecration of his temple and statue by the Persians in the
suburbs; ‘and so saying’, adds Herodotus, ‘to my mind they say well’. Upon this
fail are Artabazus drew off, and marched in due time with the survivors of his
forces to join Mardonius in Thessaly.
Meanwhile the
confederate Greeks had been occupied in the partition of the spoils, and, which
was a far more delicate matter, the honours, of their victory. In the division
of the spoil the Aristeia were assigned to the Aeginetans as a nation, the
Athenians obtaining only the second place; of Aeginetan individuals, Polycritus
was placed first, of Athenians, Eumenes and Ameinias (of the deme Pallene
according to Herodotus, of Decelea according to Plutarch), whom Diodorus
affirms to have been a brother of Aeschylus. The poet in the Persae marks the
exploit of Ameinias in commencing the battle with noteworthy emphasis ; his
suppression of the name cannot be taken as an argument either way. For this
pre-eminence of Aegina the Delphic oracle afterwards demanded a special
acknowledgment, which was rendered by the island in the form of a dedicated
bronze mast with three golden stars, symbolical perhaps of Apollo, Artemis, and
Latona, though with equal probability of Dionysus, Apollo, and Artemis. The
animus of the inspirers of the oracle—to confer divine sanction on a
questionable adjudication—is less equivocal. A further illustration of Delphic
partisanship occurred in the rejection of a dedication of Median spoils offered
by Themistocles on his own account.
The precedence
assigned in such a manner to Aegina above its ancient rival, and of late
threatening and encroaching enemy, Athens, could not but tend to strengthen
and revive the acerbity of a party feeling to which the Athenians afterwards
take credit to themselves for being superior. The Spartans, whose influence was
also predominant at Delphi, might naturally be inclined towards Aeginetans as
fellow Dorians, rather than to Ionian Athens; but to indulge such feelings now,
and under such relative circumstances, was to take sides in a quarrel that had
been nobly set aside in a moment of common peril, and which it would have been
well to consider as extinguished for ever. Themistocles had been earnest before
the war in urging his countrymen to establish a decided naval predominance over
Aegina, with ulterior views that were not less alarming because undefined; and
he had made the most of every pretext, and some fair ones had not been wanting,
to impute to the commercial islanders a disposition to Medism; Aeginetan
citizens had certainly struggled nobly to purge their country of the charge,
but, as there was a serious slight implied to Athens in subordinating her services
to those of Aegina, so the selection for the personal prize of valour of
precisely that Aeginetan who in the midst of the fight had upbraided
Themistocles as a false accuser, was not likely to soften the sentiments of the
powerful Athenian towards his country.
Themistocles was to
experience another rebuff, when the Greeks, after the division of the spoil,
sailed to the Isthmus solemnly to adjudge the prize to him who had deserved
best, not in the recent battle, but in the war at large. There on the altar of
Poseidon the assembled generals of the confederate states deposited votes for
the first and second in desert. Examination of the ballots showed that each
voter had received one, presumably his own, for the first prize; as none had
the requisite majority, the ballot for this was void, and with it, apparently
as a consequence, that for the second, which by a large majority was due to
Themistocles. And so the congress separated. Themistocles, however, immediately
on its breaking up, proceeded direct to Sparta, and there, by a strangely
sudden revulsion, of which we look in vain for an explanation, received
compensation for the slight inflicted by the general congress, in honours such
as Sparta had never before conferred on a foreigner.
The most indulgent
conclusion to draw from this vehement demonstration would seem to be, either
that the sentiments of Sparta, however declared, had not told upon votes when
delivered by secret ballot, or that the result of it was in fact arranged on account
of the difficulty of bringing into comparison the claims of Themistocles and
Eurybiades, and in order to avoid preferring either before the other. At Sparta
the same difficulty did not exist; there, at home and among his own countrymen,
Eurybiades had the first and rightful claim to the olive crown which he was the
first to receive from them; a like crown was then assigned to Themistocles; and
so exceptional was such an honour from Sparta to a stranger, that no derogation
was implied in his receiving it after their own countryman. That it was
distinctly assigned in recognition of sagacity and dexterous management might
enhance its value to him, and would carry no offence to the Spartan.
But, making all
allowance for a truly enthusiastic and generous recognition of the services of
Themistocles, something still remains to be accounted for by the ordinary laws
of unusual and extravagant gratitude, when we read that he received at his
departure the handsomest ebariot Sparta could provide, and, after abundant
eulogiums, was conducted to the frontiers—an honour entirely without precedent—by
the chosen troop of three hundred mounted Spartans. It had, in fact, become
apparent by this time that the liberation of Greece was not completed by the
victory of Salamis. The fleet of Athens, not to say the talent of her general,
could ill be spared if the conflict, the gravity of which had now been brought
home, was to go on; and the influence of Themistocles with his
countrymen,—unless his sympathies, irritated like theirs by the invidious precedence
voted to Aegina, were soothed and conciliated to Greece by the glory he
loved,—might be diverted to a project which, already significantly mooted, had
probably found some serious reception, namely, the entire withdrawal of the
fleet, and the transference of the population of Attica, dispossessed and
insulted as it now was, to new seats in Italy.
At a less critical
time serious danger might have been incurred among jealous fellow-citizens by
Athenians, who could harbour permanent resentment against the appearance of
very moderate assumption even in Miltiades. As it was, the cavil that was one
day to ruin him came from an insignificant quarter, and was lightly thrown
aside with his ever prompt facility of sharp retort. Timodemus, of the deme
Aphidnae, gained little by his carping sneer,—that it was on account of Athens,
and not of himself, that he had been so honoured in Lacedaemon. ‘Exactly so’,
was the reply; ‘and had I belonged to the islet Belbinis I should have had as
little respect from the Spartans as you and men like you command, Athenian
though you are’. Certain however it is that the name of Themistocles does for a
time somewhat unexpectedly lapse from the story; though the fact that
Xanthippus, father of Pericles, next appears in command of the fleet may he
simply due to the Athenian rule of succession in command, and not in itself be
any confirmation of the statement of Diodorus, which may only express an
inference, that Themistocles was superseded through popular discontent at these
personal glories.
CHAPTER III.
MARDONIUS IN BOEOTIA AND
ATTICA.SPIRIT AND TEMPER
OF ATHENIANS AND SPARTANS.
B.C. 479, Spring
The approach
of spring, says Herodotus, and the presence of Mardonius in Thessaly, roused
the Greeks to renewed activity. The mustering of their land force was a matter
of time; but 110 ships were assembled early at Aegina under the Spartan
Heracleid king Leotychides, as General Commander and Admiral—Xanthippus, son
of Ariphron, being Commander of the Athenians. The first incident here was the
arrival of envoys from Ionia, eager to concert an immediate attempt for its
liberation. The envoys themselves were men who had planned to revolutionize
Chios by the assassination of Strattis, who had been established there as
tyrant by the Persians since the time of the expedition of Darius to the
Danube. Foiled by the treachery of an associate, the conspirators escaped and
made straight for Sparta, and now came on to the fleet to urge an instant
movement on Ionia. One of their number, says the historian, was Herodotus, the
son of Basileides, who is evidently distinguished in this way from the rest for
some particular reason. It is plausibly conjectured that he was a relative of
the writer, his namesake; it may be said, perhaps as plausibly, that from him
may have come direct the pettish complaint and sarcasm that it was with great
difficulty they could induce the fleet to advance even as far as Delos, ‘for
everything beyond was alarming to the Hellenes, who, unacquainted with the
localities, fancied that all were crowded with hostile forces; and as to Samos,
the station of the Persian fled, conceived it to be as distant as the Pillars
of Hercules. So that it came to this: the barbarians were too much out of heart
to pail further westward than Samos, and the Hellenes would not move at the
solicitation of the Chians further eastward than Delos, and fear occupied the
interval between them.’ In every word we catch the tones of the desperate and
disappointed exile. The imputation attaches principally to the Spartan as
Admiral, and, thus read, glances fairly at the home-keeping habits of the
Lacedaemonians, and their systematic aversion—so strange to the maritime
Ionians—to enterprises beyond the sea. The wild projects of Aristagoras might
not unreasonably be dismissed by Spartans upon mere statement of their
geographical scope, but even the Mitylenians, though much later, and more
moderate in their request, have to apologise, in soliciting their aid, for the
remoteness of Lesbos.
This is one of the
occasions when Herodotus seems to speak of the Dorians as the Hellenes
distinctively, and so far in consistency with his explicit theory, that that
term as commonly applied comprised a number of tribes, which had only become
secondarily hellenised by constant intercourse or subjugation, and included
even the Athenians—who were in truth principally a contrasted Pelasgian stock,
and others far less cognate than they.
There was now,
however, sufficient reason why both the Athenian and Spartan commanders should
be content not to proceed beyond an intermediate position of guard and observation,
and to consider a movement upon Ionia premature. No success in this quarter
could affect the impending conflict between the land forces, which must needs
be decided on Grecian soil. The mere weakening of the fleet, even in a
successful conflict, would be disastrous, and might leave the coasts of
Peloponnesus exposed to a descent. The Persian fleet seemed inclined to keep
quiet at present, and nothing better could be desired. The enemy were, in fact,
concentrated at Samos with 300 ships, including some Ionians; the fighting
crews of most were Persians and Medes, and so, to judge by their names, were
the commanders also—Mardontes son of Bagaius, Artayntes son of Artachaeus, and
his relative Ithamitres. On their part they were chiefly concerned to overawe
Ionia, were quite indisposed to risk another collision by moving westward,
having indeed received neither summons nor command to do so, and only discussed
plans and projects while they waited with impatience for news of the more
hopeful action of Mardonius.
In the council of
Mardonius there was a mixture of native Greek and Persian elements less divided
in interests than in opinions and predilections, as to the policy that would
best promote them.
Mardonius himself, as
we have seen, was perfectly out of sympathy with Artabazus, the next most
important Persian in the expedition, and leaned in preference on the Theban or
Thessalian oligarchs, who, however they might differ as to the mode of
prosecuting the war, were at least as eager for success as himself, and had a
knowledge of the country and of the characteristics of his opponents, to which,
since he had learned to distinguish and respect them, he found himself under
obligation to defer. But he did so still with some impatience and some
wavering. His own desire was for instant, dashing, brilliant action. He had all
the barbarian confidence in masses,—he was proud of his position at the head of
an army splendidly equipped, which, numerous as it was, and recently increased
by levies from Thrace, Macedonia, and the Medising cities, comprised selections
of all arms from an immensely larger number. lie had as yet wit nested no lair
defeat of the veterans of his own race, and had sincerely represented his own
conviction when he assured Xerxes that Salamis was lost by landsmen being set
to cope on the sea with sailors, and by the cowardice of a mob of Phoenicians,
Egyptians, Syrians, and Cilicians. The Thebans, on the other hand, had serious
mistrust of even the best of the Orientals as opposed to the Greek hoplite, and
had seen enough to judge well the material of which each was made. Preponderant
as the numbers of the Persians therefore might be in any case, they knew that
the fewer their opponents the better; they would deem no delay tedious that
might serve to divide them, and had their own opinions how this was to be done
: they especially urged Mardonius to be lavish in bribes to the men in power in
the several states; he would in this way break Hellas asunder, be in possession
of all their counsels without trouble, and easily subdue the obstinate by aid
of the factious. To this party of councillors we may also trace the politic
skill with which the machinery of oracles and prophecies was set in motion to
act upon the general Greek mind, and indeed with a certain degree of effect to
control and hamper Mardonius himself. So the Pisistratids had, in the first
instance, made use of the prophetic reputation of the soothsayer Onomacritus to
decide Xerxes for the expedition, and had found the man not the less fit for
their purposes because in earlier days he had been expelled by Hipparchus from
Athens as a detected forger,—a fraudulent interpolator of the oracles of
Musaeus, which he was professing to arrange. The Athenians were of all the
Greeks peculiarly apt to be worked upon by superstition presented in this
form,—their orators continued to appeal in all gravity to the prejudice, even
while it was a standing joke upon the comic stage,—and it was upon the
Athenians that the first attempts were to be made towards breaking up the confederation.
The Theban oracles of Ismenian Apollo and of Amphiaraus were consulted, the
first by the medium of priests, interpreters of sacrifices, the latter through
dreams invited by sleep upon skins of victims within the sacred precincts. At
the temple of Ptoan Apollo, on lake Copais, three citizens were chosen to
accompany the Carian agent of the Persian into the fane and write down the
response; it was a tale of the Thebans which proves at any rate a sense of
mystification in the transactions,, that the oracle was delivered in a language
unintelligible to them, and that the Carian, snatching the tablet from their
hands, wrote it hastily down, and carried it off to Thessaly. Trophonius was
consulted in his cave, even as he was by the traveller Pausanias long after the
Christian aera.—and the Phocian oracle at Abae. Herodotus never heard the
particular enquiries or responses, and he says nothing in this place of an
application to Delphi ; but at a fitting time Mardonius had a Delphic oracle
also to propound, couched in terms which, but that the instincts of impostors
have ever the same source of inspiration, might have been imitated by an
astrologer of Louis the Eleventh.
The reception of
oracles from such sources was followed naturally by the initiation of intrigues
in the spirit of the Medising Greeks. Money, destined for the hands of men in
power in the various cities, found its way into the Peloponnesus; but there is
no positive evidence that it was to be credited with any of the dilatoriness
which caused so much difficulty later, but might be due to other familiar
causes. Against the Argives alone, who had all along refused to give aid to
Hellas against the Mede,—being jealous of Sparta on much the same grounds as
the Thebans of Athens, —is there any charge of directly abetting the later
attempt of the invader. Even they only send information of but little value,
although certainly in terms which imply that they had engaged, ami no doubt
liad been paid for engaging, to do much more.
The temptations which
were held out to the Athenians to desert the cause were more substantial and important;
and to men who were incapable of understanding the enthusiasm of free
nationality and honour, might well seem to promise a result. Attica had been
ravaged once, and renewed invasion threatened the loss of a second, probably in
any case but scanty, harvest, and the country was now again exposed to the
first attack of overwhelming forces, and might expect to remain the cross-road
and intermediate fighting-ground of all the 1 armies. The heart burnings
caused by the votes at Salamis and the Isthmus could not be unknown northwards,
any more than the high hand and ambitious pretensions of the city, which were
not only unchecked, but even still further excited, by recent events. Some
hints of covert intimations to Xerxes from Greek commanders may have helped to
make the project seem more practicable. And a good price might well be offered
and even paid,—though that might be optional afterwards,—if Athens could be
drawn to make common cause with Persia; for, even if the Isthmus could be
forced, it would manifestly be perilous to occupy Peloponnesus with no command
of the sea to secure supplies or retreat by any other route. It was indeed too
late to revert to the rejected counsel of Demaratus and threaten Sparta from
the sea with a detachment of the Persian fleet, but an Athenian alliance would
restore the lost opportunity. Communication was therefore opened through
Alexander, King of Macedon, who was known to be recognized by the Athenians as
their proxenus, or national host and guest. lie was trusted by Mardonius from
his intimate Persian connections, which read like the presage of some later
Macedonian history; his sister Gygaia had married a Persian noble named
Bonbares, and her son Amyntas was established by the King- as lord of Alabanda
in Phrygia; but true to the policy of double-dealing which was the enduring
characteristic of his dynasty, it was by his warning of Persian movements that Themistocles
had been enabled to withdraw in time from the too advanced position that he had
taken up at the opening of the war, on the northern frontier of Thessaly.
The message was
delivered to the Athenians, probably by way of flattery, as coming direct from
Xerxes. Mardonius had been commanded to pass over all former injuries,—the
rankling Sardis no less than Salamis,—and, on condition of an alliance with
him, was commissioned to restore their territory, with any addition they might
desire, and their independence; and, furthermore, to re-erect all sacred
structures that he had burnt. The offer ‘of freedom with no fraud or deception’
was of course backed by formidable statements of Persian power, and, with
rather less judgment, by emphasis on the distinction of the Athenians being
selected by the Great King from the rest of the Greeks, for condonation of
offences and a proposal of friendship. The news of this communication caused
the greatest alarm at Sparta, especially in connection with the currency of a
prophecy, which Herodotus says they called to mind, but which was probably
promulgated for the nonce, to the effect that Medes and Athenians in alliance
were destined to expel the Spartans and all other Dorians from Peloponnesus.
The Athenians could not be unwilling to foster the panic by a temporary
suspense, if only to stimulate the Lacedaemonians to more decided engagements
than they had yet seemed disposed to commit themselves to or to entertain. It
is difficult to suppose that the true scope of the crisis was not now
appreciated by the most influential men among them, but their national maxim,
to decline sustained efforts at a distance from their frontiers, was notorious;
and their inveterate reticence, which could not but favour apprehensions of
infirmity of purpose, if not of faithlessness, was most exasperating to the
Athenians,—even had they no reason to suspect that there still existed a
jealousy of Athens, and an unwillingness to give her premature, or too hearty,
support. But, for once, the urgency of the situation made the Spartan appeal
distinct enough, and even oblivious for a moment, of the narrower affectations
of Laconic brevity. ‘Desertion of the cause of Hellas’, they represented, ‘by
those who had, by their own action and for ends of their own, provoked the
invasion, would neither be just nor decorous; that servitude should be brought
upon Hellas by the Athenians of all others, who had from the earliest days been
champions of liberty, was intolerable. That they suffered by peculiar exposure
in the contest was lamented by the Lacedaemonians and their allies, who would
gladly contribute to the support of their families so long as the war should
continue. Alexander was himself a tyrant, and, as the natural accomplice of a
tyrant, had softened down the message of Mardonius, whose terms as delivered to
others were imperious and insulting in the last degree: but the Athenians, if
indeed in their right senses, — Alexander had begun with “how can you be so
mad?” — would know that neither faith nor truth are to be found in the
barbarians, and would accede to no such proposals’.
Thus far the
Spartans, who characteristically did not spend a word upon the ultimate chances
of success in the noble resistance they recommended, though they may have given
offence by assuming the attraction of Persian gold for Athens under the pinch
of her present destitution. In the same spirit the Athenians replied to
Alexander that the numerical superiority of the Persian forces was known to
them before, and in any case had nothing whatever to do with the matter in
question,—their resolution to fight in defence of their liberty to the very
last. With an image which glanced not only at the sun-worship of Persia, but at
the tradition of the kingly rise of Alexander’s own family, he was commissioned
to reply to Mardonius—‘So long as the sun travels by the same path in which it
is now moving, the Athenians will never come to accord with Xerxes, but will
perseveringly resist him, putting trust for allies in the gods and the heroes,
whose temples and images he has irreverently burnt’.
Alexander himself was
warned, friend and well-wisher as the Athenians would willingly retain him, to
come no more on such an unworthy and ignoble errand. It were handsome at least
to think that such an expostulation, and the example of a resolution so
contrasted with that of the Thessalians,— who had frankly announced that unless
supported in bearing the brunt of the Persian approach, they should as a matter
of course make terms with him for themselves, and had actually done 3
so,—may possibly have roused or strengthened the more generous though latent
sympathies of the Macedonian, who claimed Hellenic and even Heracleidan
descent, and have had influence on the circumstances under which he reappears
in history.
To the decree which
embodied this reply, and which was framed by Aristides, there was appended an
instruction to the priests—most probably the Eleusinian, reputed descendants
of Kerux and Eumolpus—to denounce curses against whosoever should make truce
with the Medes or desert the Hellenic confederacy.
The reply to the
Lacedaemonians was in as lofty a tone. It was excusable in the enemy, who knew
no better, to believe that everything was purchasable by money; but Lacedaemonians
were justly to be quarrelled with for being capable of assuming, at sight of
the present penury of the Athenians, that their resolution was likely to be
decided by a promise of aid towards subsistence, rather than by their sense of
duty towards the gods of their profaned sanctuaries, and by their Hellenic
sympathies of common blood and language, of sacred institutions and sacrifices,
of conformity in moral principles.
‘Know then now, if it
has been unknown to you hitherto, that never, so long as one Athenian survives,
will we come to terms with Xerxes. We acknowledge your good intentions towards
us with respect to maintaining our families in the event of our homes being
destroyed; and so far your kindness has its full effect. For ourselves, we
will get on as best we may, and will not burden you. That which is really
urgent now is that you should send forward your army with the utmost
promptitude. The barbarian, upon learning the failure of his envoy, will
forthwith be upon us. Now therefore is the time, before he enters Attica, to
advance with your aid, and oppose him in Boeotia.’ This the Lacedaemonians
engaged to do with a readiness that proved how great had been their anxiety.
The terms of these
Athenian replies might well, under the circumstances, seem to savour of
extravagance, did we not know how well the brave words were acted up to when
the storm again broke. And if we consider what was the ensuing history of
liberated Athens, we shall recognize from how worthy and profound a self-consciousness
her enunciations proceeded. Attica was now flourishing, with an abundant
population—a population that contained the men who had conquered at Marathon
and Salamis, and the fathers of those who were to realize the best glories of
the age of Pericles. Past achievements and future resources were potentially
concentrated at a crisis when barbarism was threatening all the results and all
the germs of the noblest development of humanity in its last refuge in the
southernmost peninsulas of Greece. A single generation had seen the glories of
Ionia brought to a bloody and stupefying catastrophe, and the homes of the best
Arts and the best Literature—both how glorious!—which Hellas had up to this
time originated on her coasts and amidst her islands, ravaged by a vulgar,
tawdry, brutalized military power. The free speech of free men in assembly and
agora was proscribed, and for the independent bearings of equals, who only
admitted reverence for legal authority, for honourable age, or for moral
excellence, was substituted companionship in degrading prostrations before the
satraps of a king. The Greeks, then, were not resisting overwhelming power out
of a blind obstinacy which but for the turn of a chance or two would have been
fatal, and which no trust in such unhopeful chance could make wise; they were
not the unconscious guardians of a deposit whose full value they did not
appreciate. The last possibility of saving Hellas was in their hands, and it
was no mere egotism on their part that made them regard this as identified
with the saving of mankind, and therefore to be vindicated at any cost, at any
risk,—vindicated in trust on the gods even when no possibility of success was
discernible,—for was not death under any circumstances preferable to any life
that could continue after the obliteration from the world of all the
distinctive excellences of the life Hellenic?
The tone in which the
Athenians had responded to the envoys from Sparta intimated no disposition on
their part to withdraw from those pretensions to influence which had already
excited jealousy, and were in consequence scarcely calculated to assist the
endeavours of any partisans of Athens there who might be anxious to hurry
forward assistance. The positive terms, again, of the defiance which was
returned to Mardonius by Alexander, had so far committed them, that
apprehension of their making terms was in a great degree set at rest. Under
these circumstances a Spartan politician might be easily reconciled to the re-occupation
of Attica, where after all there was not much left to save ; the pride of the
Athenians, as he would think, might be a little reduced with no general
disadvantage; their fleet would remain as serviceable to the cause as ever, and
secure the coasts of Peloponnesus, while no more favourable conditions could be
desired for a conflict with the Persian, than resistance to his numbers at the
narrow neck of the Isthmus, which was now fortified, and the entanglement of
his cavalry—his most formidable arm—among the passes and declivities of the
mountains to the south. The entrenchment and fortification of the Isthmus had
been commenced, upon the news of the death and defeat of Leonidas, immediately
after the Olympic and Carneian festivals were over. Every state of Peloponnesus
then lent aid to the work, except the Argives and Achaeans, of whom Herodotus
says that they ‘kept neutral, or, to speak frankly, by their very neutrality
Medised’. The Scironian road, which was always difficult, was destroyed or
obstructed, and across the Isthmus a wall was completed of stones, bricks,
timber, and gabions, combined more or less effectually and regularly, and by
labour that went on without intermission night and day. Nothing but the
stratagem of Themistocles, by which he succeeded in bringing on the sea light
against the intentions of the Peloponnesians, had prevented them, when they
heard that this safeguard was so near completion and the Persian land-force
advancing upon it, from breaking up from the Saronic gulf and leaving Aegina,
Megara, and the refugees at Salamis to their own resources—or rather to what
seemed their certain fate. After the naval victory, and still more after the
retirement of the Persians from Athens, the work had slackened, and the Spartan
regent Cleombrotus, who superintended it, found sufficient cause for alarm in
an eclipse of the sun, that occurred as he was sacrificing, to make him
withdraw home with his forces and leave it at last unfinished. The work had
therefore to be renewed in the spring, and was still in progress when the
envoys to Athens were labouring to countervail the proposals of Alexander, and
to its state of incompleteness at that time the historian ascribes the great
anxiety as to their reception. But it is difficult to suppose, as he intimates,
that even the blindest Spartan could think that the defection of Athens to
Persia would be of little consequence if once the fortification of the Isthmus
were complete. The transfer of naval power and command of the sea would still
have been as damaging as ever to the defenders of the Peloponnesus; if they
were less eager to keep, or even to make, promises of sending their forces
forward into Attica, it was sufficient that the promises already made had had
their desired effect, and that they regarded the breach of the negotiations
with Persia as irreparable. Subsequent events give us no right to suppose that
Sparta was neglecting in the meantime the equipment of her own military power,
or that she was less resolved than Athens to resist the invader, on her own
part and on her own ground at least, to the last man.
The report which the
Macedonian carried back to Thessaly had its anticipated effect, and the Persian
army was at once set in motion upon Attica. Mardonius had proposed to commence
operations in the spring, but it was about the middle of July when he reached
Athens, ten months after its occupation by Xerxes. Considerable time had been
consumed in the negotiations, and even afterwards, when he arrived at Thebes,
the temporising policy of that state embarrassed him more than ever. The
leaders of the oligarchical party there in power were with the Persians heart
and soul, and prepared even to sacrifice the independence of their country in
order to secure themselves in that irresponsible supremacy allowed by Persia to
faithful tributary princes,—whether tyrants or satraps,—though they knew that
such a position, obnoxious as it was to their fellow-citizens, was still more
so to their Athenian and Lacedaemonian neighbours, who would therefore be
always ready to subvert it. The sincerity of their counsel could not he
doubted, and their voice was still to corrupt and to divide the Greeks, who when
firmly united were invincible; and, in the meantime, to advance as far as
Boeotia, of all places most suited for the encampment of such an army, and
there await a victory that would come about without even a battle. Their arguments
told in some degree, but could not in the end restrain the Persian from moving
on into Attica. Xerxes was still at Sardis, and Mardonius was impatient to dispatch
to him the news that he was again in possession of the hated Athens ; and lie
could not rest until a system of pre-arranged beacons had transmitted, from
island to island across the Aegean, the announcement which was to vindicate the
assurance of complete success which he had given to the Great King.
There is little doubt
that Aeschylus had this train of beacons in mind, and purposely recalled it to
the Athenians, in his grand description of such a flight of fire in the ‘Agamemnon’.
The circumstances of time and space, which are reasonable enough in this
historical instance, have to be strained not a little for the ten years’
expectancy of Clytemnestra, and the provision of a series of telegraphic
stations from Troy by the line of Athos.
The Athenians had
only quitted their city and country at the last moment, trusting that in spite
of deferments and delays the Peloponnesian army would yet arrive according to
engagements, and spare them a second migration; but the enemy was presently as
near as Boeotia, and no more time was to be lost; without further delay they
again moved their families, with all their property that could be hastily
transferred, to Salamis and Troezene; and in pursuance of a psephism of Aristides,
Cimon Xanthippus and Myronides, accompanied also by representatives of Megara
and Plataea, were dispatched to Sparta, with fresh protestations and
complaints. That Xanthippus, who was now commander of the fleet, should have
been spared for this mission, is not so much improbable as suggestive of the
consideration that it was on the movements and destination of this fleet that
the interest of the Spartans turned. The immediate excuse for delay given to
the commissioners was the sacred obligation to attend to the celebration of
the Hyacinthia; the customs of the nation, rigid and narrow, and adapted only
for a limited range of relations, would in ordinary cases have caused this to
be received as a consistent if not reasonable apology. But the Lacedaemonians,
who had appealed, so glibly for them, to what was just and becoming, were now
reminded of their broken promises; they were reproached with the same
insincerity which they had imputed to the barbarian bidder for alliance, in having
only promised in order to gain time for completing the wall at the Isthmus,
which was just fitted with its battlements. However, let them now, though late,
send 011 their army, and, if not in Boeotia, fight the enemy at least in the
Thriasian plain, otherwise the Athenians on their part too would have to look
out for a shelter ; an enigmatical allusion to the Isthmian wall, made somewhat
in their' own laconic way, and to be interpreted by them in their own fashion.
When Mardonius had
reached Athens, and was again within a march or two of the difficult Isthmus,
he thought it worth while to make one more attempt to detach the Athenians. We
cannot wonder that the persistency professed by them should appear to him
inconceivable; his agents of corruption had made some reports, true or false,
of success,—another and that a third year of fields without a harvest was in
prospect for them,—perhaps the permanent hostile occupation of the country,—and
lastly, the support which their selfish allies had notoriously promised, and
which, from the circumstances of their return, they had certainly counted on,
had failed them, and failing, had left them without confidence thereafter.
Accordingly, he ostentatiously refrained from doing further damage to the
country, and re-opened, or endeavored to re-open, negotiations with Athens by dispatching
to the Council of the Athenians at Salamis a new envoy, one Murychides of the
Hellespont. This was news that of itself would fly through the Peloponnesus
like wildfire, and there is no reason to suppose that the Athenians were less
averse now than before to the policy of holding over an audience or a decision
until the contingencies of the incident had told with full effect at Sparta.
For ten successive days the Athenian envoys there had been put off, till they
were wrought to the height of impatience. It was known that the fortification
in the meantime was being strengthened, and it was natural to apprehend that
the ephors would, at a convenient moment, put forward some pretext for breaking
off their engagement. A final audience was therefore now demanded by the envoys
before quitting to report at home the failure of the mission; they were, in
fact, in possession of the renewed proposals of the Persian to treat, and were
prepared to declare, as a final argument, that further delay must lead
inevitably to their acceptance, and thence to joint action against Sparta. The
ephors listened calmly to the taunt that they were occupied with the Hyacinthia,
and trifling, not to say amusing themselves, while their ally was in extremity,
and then announced, with the by no means superfluous guarantee of an oath, that
their force was already dispatched against the ‘strangers,’ and must by that
time—in the early morning—be already well forward beyond the frontiers. The news
of the reopened negotiation—so it was believed—had wrought this change
over-night. If a certain Chileus of Tegea, who was credited with having had
most influence after Themistocles in originally uniting Hellas against the 1
Mode, -and was, of all foreigners, in the highest credit with the
Lacedaemonians, really contributed to their decision now, it must have been by
the expression of his belief that there was imminent danger of the negotiation
resulting in an alliance. That the consequence of this must be to throw open
wide portals into Peloponnesus, however strongly the Isthmus might be barred,’
the ephors did not require to be told.
The large force which
was dispatched so suddenly must necessarily have been under preparation for
emergencies all along, with the secrecy that was an established maxim of
Spartan policy; and this is adverted to by Pericles later as a contrast to the
fearless publicity of Athenian politics. It consisted of 5,000 Spartiats, each
attended by seven Helots (5,000 + 35,000=40,000 men). Cleombrotus had died soon
after his withdrawal from the Isthmus, and the splendid command devolved, with
most important historical consequences, on his son Pausanias, as regent in the
place of his cousin Pleistarchus, son of Leonidas, who was still a minor. He
chose as his own second in command, Euryanax son of Dorieus, of the same royal
house. This army—by far the largest that we ever read of as sent forth by
Sparta—was complemented by 5,000 more heavy-armed Lacedaemonians, or perioeci
(citizens of other Lacedaemonian towns than Sparta), and with them started the
well-satisfied envoys from Salamis, in all haste to overtake the first
columns. An untoward but natural consequence of the reserve, if not
hesitation, of Sparta, was the lateness in the field of some of the other
Peloponnesian contingents.
The negotiations at
Salamis, which there was now no further motive or even means for protracting,
concluded with a tragic incident. The Hellespontian Murychides was dismissed unharmed
after delivering his message to the Council, but when Lycides, a member of it,
whether influenced or not by Persian gold, proposed that the offer of the
Persian should be submitted to the popular assembly, indignation rose
instantly to its height among his assessors, and out of doors also as soon as
the occasion was known. Lycides was set upon and stoned to death ; the tumult
presently roused the Athenian women, and in contagious excitement they rushed
to his dwelling and stoned to death his family also—both wife and children.
It is probable that
this fury had in part a religious origin, and that Lycides had brought himself
and his family within the bitter and comprehensive terms of the curse that had
been solemnly denounced against favourers of the Mede.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PATRIOTIC ARMY IN BOEOTIA.—THE DEATH OF MASISTIUS.— PERSIAN
PREPARATIONS FOR FINAL CONQUEST.
B.C. 479, September
The Lacedaemonians made halt at the Isthmus,
where they were joined by forces from other states of Peloponnesus. Here terms
and resolutions were adopted in a Hellenic congress, as well for the
concentration of troops and supplies from various quarters both without and
within the Isthmus, as for the purpose of encouraging—or, let us rather say,
giving expression to—a spirit of common enthusiasm and mutual reliance. The
usual promises were made to the gods in the event and expectation of victory;
their assistance was claimed with confidence against the profaners of their
desolated sanctuaries—assistance which should be fitly acknowledged and
recompensed, though the ruins were to remain in ashes for all time as memorials
of barbarian sacrilege. The terms of an oath that was to be a bond of present
and future unity ran thus :— ‘I will not regard life as of any value in comparison
with liberty ; I will not desert my leaders either living or dead; I will
procure burial for whoever of the allies may fall in battle; and when the
barbarian is overcome I will not afterwards subvert any city that has taken
part in the struggle against him’.
The last clause is
significant of the apprehensions that were haunting some of the weaker and more
exposed members of the Hellenic community in presence of the growing ambition
of stronger powers. The Argives, unconciliated by this guarantee, held entirely
aloof, avowedly on the ground that their population had been too seriously
reduced by their defeat in a recent conflict with Sparta for them to risk the
loss of more blood at present, especially as such loss would only leave them at
the mercy of the protagonist whom they were invited to strengthen; a further
unavowed motive lay in the fact that the strength of Sparta was the main
obstacle to certain ambitious projects of their own. That the Athenians had
very distinct views of encroachment was notorious, and this notoriety had been
ominously emphasized by the offer of Mardonius to help them to whatever
additional territory they wished to acquire. Thus the threatened states of
Mycenae and Aegina had forebodings that were too well justified in the event,
and naturally claimed and clung to the guarantee of a solemn sanction, the
concession of which at this crisis was probably due to the prevailing spirit of
high-wrought patriotic enthusiasm, as much as to any suggestion of policy.
As soon as the omens
were favourable, and the requisite arrangements and musters complete, the
Peloponnesian force was at last really set in motion to cross the Isthmus and
the Megarid. By this time Mardonius had determined to evacuate Attica, after
being kept in suspense by the Athenians till the very last moment. A swift
messenger from the Argives now brought him the advice, perhaps not much earlier
than the bootless return of Murychides, that the Lacedaemonians would certainly
appear forthwith beyond the Isthmus; so that any wild hopes of effective
obstruction that they might have encouraged the barbarian to expect on their
part, had to be renounced, and it remained for him to take his own measures.
The unfitness of
Attica for the action and evolutions of cavalry, and, ravaged as it had been,
for furnishing supplies, as well as the difficulties of a retreat by a large
force, in case of a reverse, through the northern passes, determined him to
withdraw at once to the more open plains and accessible resources of Boeotia
and the neighborhood of the strong and friendly city of Thebes. His last days
in Attica were spent in destroying whatever could be destroyed and had
hitherto been politically spared, and in throwing down, so far as time allowed,
whatever still remained standing of the walls and temples of the city. The
Boeotarchs, his zealous quartermasters, furnished him with guides for the
eastern route by Decelea and Sphendale, across Parnes to Tanagra—a considerable
circuit, but affording more easy passes, and avoiding any risk of molestation
from the Isthmus to which the western might be exposed. He was already on the
road, when a report that a body of not more than 1000 Lacedaemonians had
advanced to Megara tempted him to check his march and make an attempt to snatch
a victory, however trifling, before he retired. Turning back his army, he dispatched
a cavalry force in advance, which rapidly overran the Megarid without encountering
opposition; and this was the furthest point of Europe towards the setting-sun
that a Persian invader ever reached. One of his detachments, however, became
entangled among the mountains and was cut off; and upon this check, and receipt
of more formidable accounts of the muster at the Isthmus, he turned once more,
and finally resumed the route to Decelea.
The dedication of a
bronze statue to Artemis Soteira was in later days ascribed by the Megarians to
the occasion of this incident, which, as it came to be related, wanted not
mythic embellishment. It was, they said, by device of Artemis that night
overtook the retiring Persians, who first lost their way among the mountains,
and then, when they discharged arrows to test the proximity of an enemy, were
so far beguiled by the echoes of the rock, which they mistook for groans, that
they exhausted their quivers and fell an easy prey at daybreak to the Megarian
hoplites.
Mardonius remained at
Tanagra only a night, and the next day turned westward and reached Scolus on
Theban territory, about forty stadia—four miles and a half—down the Asopus on
the road between Thebes and Plataea. The Lacedaemonians on their part advanced
to the Thriasian plain as far as Eleusis, and then made halt. The sacrifices
were again to be scanned for a suggestion to proceed; and, as at the Isthmus
they had waited for the other Peloponnesians, who ‘affected the better things’
to make an effort, in spite of the shortness of the notice, not to be
behindhand in the field, so here also time was to be allowed for further preparation,
and for a junction with an important reinforcement of the Athenians, who were
to cross from Salamis, under command of Aristides, son of Lysimachus, elected autocrator, and thus independent of the
association of colleagues which had hampered Miltiades. Then at last the
combined army started direct for Boeotia. It crossed Mount Cithaeron by the
western passes and emerged above Erythrae. The Persian host was full in view,
encamped on the plain between the line of the Asopus, here flowing eastward and
parallel to the main ridge of Cithaeron, and Erythrae and Hysiae on the higher
ground opposite to the verge of the Plataean territory. In the rear of this
position and beyond the Asopus a vast enclosure had been formed and
strengthened by a timber palisade, for which all trees within reach were felled
indiscriminately—necessity, says Herodotus, compelling disregard of the
friendliness of the country. The enclosure, though over a mile square (ten stadia),
was not intended for occupation by the army unless in the event of aught
falling out untowardly in the expected battle; in the meantime it was a
repository of the vast necessary stores, as well as of the general baggage and
appliances that were always required by Persian luxury even in the midst of a
campaign.
In this position the
Persian army received a lagging reinforcement of 1000 Phocian hoplites, under
command of Harmocydes, a citizen of marked reputation. The Medism of the
Phocians was most reluctant, but less so, Herodotus thought, from Hellenic
sympathy than out of hatred to the Thessalians; and it was only under
compulsion of their neighborhood to Thessaly and Thebes that this dilatory aid
was rendered at all. They had not joined early enough to take part in the
invasion of Attica, and were the more mistrusted from the direct hostility of a
part of their population. These had taken refuge in considerable numbers on
Mount Parnassus, and found a place of security for themselves and their
property at Tithora, a steeply-scarped rocky position from whence they had
seriously harassed the Persians and their confederates.
Mardonius
sent orders to the new arrival to take up a position on the open plain, and
then a scene ensued of which Herodotus did not pretend to know the exact explanation.
A sudden suspicion ran through all the Greek allies, including the Phocians
themselves, that mischief was intended towards them. Harmocydes apprehended the
ill offices of the Thessalians as much as the anger of the Persian, and called
on his company to show their mettle by selling their lives dearly. His appeal
was scarcely made when a cloud of horsemen were upon them, charged close up to
them, now wheeled round and now surrounded them, ever with threatening
weapons, though only one or two darts may have been, as if accidentally,
discharged. The intention probably was not so much to provoke attack as to
cause alarm, and then, when the expected dispersion and flight began, to
slaughter the fugitives. The Phocians however coolly stood to their arms,
closed their ranks to the utmost, and faced to every threatened attack; and
Mardonius was fain to turn the matter off with a compliment to the courage
which he said had been impugned, but which, so tested, commanded his absolute
confidence.
It was during these
days that an incident occurred which, as recorded by Herodotus, has all the interest
of an autobiographical notice: it brings home to us how near he himself was in
time to the events his history had reached, and to authentic information
respecting them; and by its implications adds great value to his general
testimony as to the present crisis of the Persian expedition. A magnificent
entertainment was provided in Thebes for the Persians and their Hellenic allies
by Attaginus son of Phrynon, who together with Timegenidas was in control of
the whole power and policy of the state. Mardonius and fifty of the most
distinguished Persians were invited to meet fifty Thebans at dinner, where the
two nations were not only arranged alternately but in pairs—a Theban and a
Persian sharing a single couch between them. The dinner over, wine circulated
according to universal Greek rather than earlier Persian manners ; and it was
then that a Persian who conversed in Greek opened his mind to the guest with
whom he was associated. This was a certain Thersander, a man of much note at
Orchomenus, and Herodotus received the particulars from Thersander himself,
who assured him that he had given the same account to others at the time,
before the catastrophe that was so painfully apprehended arrived. Having
assured himself by an enquiry that his companion was not an actual Theban, and possibly
of something more, ‘With you, now,’ said the Persian, ‘as my partner at meat and in libation, I
would fain leave remembrance of what is my conviction; that you may be
forewarned on your own account, and take counsel for the best. You see these Persians
feasting here; you saw the army that we left encamped down by the river; let a
short time have gone by and of all these men you will behold but some few
survivors.’ The words were spoken with the sincerity attested by abundant
tears. The Greek in surprise suggested (and we must assume that some
grounds were indicated for his conviction) that surely in this case it was
incumbent to communicate with Mardonius and those of the Persians who were in
credit with him. ‘Stranger’, was the reply, ‘what God has determined shall be,
man is incompetent to avert; for none will give attention to any, however
credible their statements. Of all that I tell you abundance of our Persians are
conscious; but we go on fettered by necessity; and the bitterest pang of all it
is for man to see and know what circumstances demand and yet to be destitute of
power’.
These are words of
which the full import will only be recognized by one who has been near enough
to head-quarters to see interests of great importance with which his own are
inextricably involved, going to rack and ruin through the obstinate
self-conceit and blind jealousy of managers alike unassailable by their
position and insensible to truth whether bluntly demonstrated, or adroitly suggested.
Whether the dejected Persian was an adherent of the unhopeful and discontented
Artabazus, or dreaded how Mardonius might be hampered by his half-hearted
support, it matters little; more probably he had discovered that the organization
and order requisite for so vast an army were wanting, and that the supreme
direction lay where decisive action might be precipitated at any moment by the
worst advisers, the excitement of a moment, blind refusal to modify a judgment
once announced, or to accept information, much less a conclusion, from a
subordinate though sagacious associate. As we read the account of the final
conflict, the elements of danger seem so rife on the other side within the
Hellenic councils, that we can scarcely conceive the case to have been worse
in the Persian. The difference lay in the fact that there was a germ of
healthy vigour underneath the dissensions and heart-burnings of the Greeks,
which counteracted great mischiefs, and assured a survival of their cause
through embarrassments that would be fatal to their enemies.
The Persian commander
had made no attempt to dispute or harass the passage of the mountains; his
expectation and hope was, to be attacked, or to have opportunity of attacking,
in the position he had taken up in the plain, where his excellent cavalry,
Persian and Thessalian—an arm of which the Greeks were entirely destitute—would
operate with most effect; the rugged and contracted passes being trusted to complete
the confusion when the troops were flying in disorder. As the Greek forces
emerged from the passes and took up their position along the higher slopes of
Cithaeron, in the direction of Erythrae, eastward of the roads that ran direct
to Thebes, they were out of reach of the enemy’s cavalry. But there was scarcity
of water from the first, and afterwards, as the rendezvous was completed, they
were so far cramped for room, from the proximity of the enemy, that some detachments—the
Megarians especially—had to occupy ground that was considerably exposed. Upon
the Megarians accordingly Mardonius, after waiting in vain for the descent of
the general army, gave orders for an attack by the entire division of cavalry,
of which a large proportion at least were bowmen, under the command of
Masistius, one of the most important of the Persians. This was executed by the
wheeling of successive squadrons on the same system that was to be employed
long after, with historic results, on the plains of Parthia; and had so much
effect, that the Megarians, while still maintaining their ground courageously,
sent word to the generals that unless relieved they must break line and retire.
An epigram collected among those of Simonides celebrates this resistance
without the qualification. That the authority of the general-in-chief of the
allied Greeks was limited, appears from the fact that Pausanias left it to
their option who among them should undertake this duty ; and Herodotus puts it
unreservedly to the credit of the Athenians that they were the first to
volunteer to the front. But the Athenians had in fact profited by their
experience at Marathon to adjust their equipments in some degree to the special
requirements of conflict with the Median archers. At Marathon they had been
forced to rush to the attack—heavyarmed as they were—with no protection from
skirmishers, either bowmen or cavalry, whereas we now find them provided with a
force of bowmen whose special duty was to co-operate with hoplites; 1
Ctesias even states that they had been procured by Aristides and Themistocles
from Crete. In the present case they accompanied three hundred select hoplites
under the command of Olympiodorus, son of Lampon. The contest still continued
for some time after their arrival, the Persian horsemen constantly careering
past, and as they discharged their weapons adding taunts of womanishness, to
provoke, if possible, an advance. At last, in the return of one charge, the
Nisaean horse of Masistius was pierced in the flank by a happy arrow, and
rearing in frantic pain, shook off its splendidly-accoutred rider. The
Athenians were upon him instantly, the horse, golden-bitted and superbly
caparisoned, was captured, and Masistius himself, though saved for a time by
the accurate completeness of his armour—a mailed shirt of golden scales hid
below his purple vest— which disappointed the strokes of his assailants, was at
length killed as he lay prostrate, by a weapon which pierced him through his
eye. In the speed and confusion of the wheeling horsemen this catastrophe was
unobserved until the troop, drawing up at a distance to reform, found
themselves without a leader. As soon as the loss was known the word was given,
and the entire force at once came on, no longer in detachments but in mass,
resolved at least to rescue the body.
It was now the turn
of the Athenians, as they saw the coming shock, to send for assistance, and,
till it arrived, they had to sustain, and did sustain, a desperate conflict.
Though compelled to retire from the dead body, they did not allow it to be
secured by the enemy, before the arrival of the reinforcements obliged the
latter to retire in their turn and leave it with more of their numbers in the
hands of the Greeks. At the distance of two stadia they again drew up, but were
soon seen, after a short consultation, returning to their camp.
The elation of the
Greeks at this success was boundless. It was much to have sustained
unflinchingly the detached onsets of this redoubted cavalry, but how much more
to have repulsed it in a body! The enthusiasm rose to its height when the
corpse of Masistius was placed upon a cart and carried through the army, where
all as it passed quitted their ranks to behold it, and gazed at it with the
peculiar gratification of Greeks. It was well worth seeing, says Herodotus, so
large it was and so beautiful. And soon a clamour from the Persian camps
revealed how severe a blow was admitted in the death of Masistius, a man second
only to Mardonius in the estimation of the Persians themselves as well as of
the Great King. The barbarians, in a frenzy of grief, were cutting off not only
their own hair but even that of horses and beasts of burden, while ‘the echo of
their lamentations—faintly represented to us by the prolonged wailings of the
Persians of Aeschylus—filled all Boeotia’. The cries as they were re-echoed
from the cliffs of Cithaeron confirmed the courage and enhanced the confidence
of the defenders of their native land.
The elation of their
own army and the dismay of the enemy now enabled the Greek generals to effect a
change of position, which had indeed become urgent; and a descent of their
entire force was at once made without molestation from the Erythraean to the
Plataic district, the lower level of which afforded freer space for encamping,
and access to water. The line of march inclined to the north-west, across the
spurs of Cithaeron, past Hysiae; and the army, in its divisions of tribes or
nations, ultimately occupied a line of intermixed plain and low hillocks,
extending—as is distinctly implied in the phrase of 1 Herodotus—from
another branch of the river on the west to a copious fountain called Gargaphia,
eastward.
The formal order of
array was not assumed without interruption from a tribal claim to precedence,
which was asserted and set aside in a manner premonitory of the dying out of
some other more important traditions. The right wing in the Greek army was the
post of honour—possibly from mere symbolical dignity as right, or because, as
exposing the unshielded side of the hoplites to a flank attack, it was a post
of more peculiar danger than the left and otherwise equally uncovered
extremity. This was conceded as a matter of course to the Lacedaemonians, but
the Tegeans contested the left wing with the Athenians, to whom it had been
assigned. With a certain Arcadian hebetude they pleaded before the
Lacedaemonians a title based on the slaying of Hyllus, a Heracleid ancestor of
their kings in mythical times, and many not unsuccessful contests against the
present arbiters later on. The Athenians replied that they had come out to
fight and not to argue; but for themselves, if antiquity is to be considered,
they might say that if the Tegeans killed Heracleids, their ancestors took arms
victoriously in defence of them, besides other exploits which they mentioned,
but did not insist on. ‘Courage or cowardice in one age is no warrant for the
next; what is more to the purpose in approving our title, apart from these
later achievements, is our single-handed victory at Marathon against this same
enemy. No difficulty however shall arise on our part at such a time; place us
where you please, Lacedaemonians, and opposed to whomsoever; in any post we
shall do our very best; give the command and you will be at once obeyed’. A
general shout from the Lacedaemonian ranks in favour of the Athenians—a
transference to camp of the vote by acclamation customary at Sparta—was
accepted as a decision, and so this question was decided in accordance with the
first intentions of Pausanias. In completing his general dispositions, he
placed the Lacedaemonian force which was under his direct command at the
extreme right, and consoled the Tegeans by giving them the position immediately
next in succession.
The original order of
array of heavy- and light-armed together then follows according to this
enumeration
:
Hoplites
Spartan : Lacedaemonians 10,000, of whom 5,000 were Spartiats, each attended by 7 helots = 40.000
Tegean Hoplites = 1.500
Corinthians 5,000, with whom, by special permission of Pausanias, were
300 Potidaeans from their colony a Pallene = 3.500
Arcadians of Orchomenus, 600 ; Sicyonians, 3,000 = 3-600
Epidaurians, 800; Troezenians, 1,000 = 1800
Lepreans, 200 ; Mycenians and Tirynthians, 400 = 600
Phliasians, 1,000 ; Hermionians, 300 = 1300
Total Peloponnesians = 54.100
From Euboea—Eretrians and Styrians, 600; Chalcidians, 400 = 1000
Ambracians, 500 ; Leucadians and Anactorians, 800 = 1.300
Palians from Cephallene, 200; Aeginetans, 5oo = 700
Megaraeans = 3.000
Plataeans = 600
Athenians = 8.000
Totals = 68.70
This catalogue of
names is verified by that copied by Pausanias the traveller from the base of a
dedicated statue at Olympia, which contains them all except the Palians. The
names of islands of the group of Cyclades—Ceos, Melos, Tenos, Naxos,
Cythnos—included at Olympia may have been omitted in the history solely from
the trifling numbers they could contribute. The omission, in the inscription, of
Andros and Paros, the only other important islands of the group, agrees with
the pressure applied to them in the history, for Medism. Of the force of
hoplites, in full defensive armour, the best—the Athenians and Plataeans 8,600,
and Lacedaemonians 10,000—do not together amount to a full half, but their
entire forces, heavy and light, including the vast proportion of helots, make
up more than half the army.
The entire array as
given by Herodotus comprised of heavy-armed men, 38,700, to whom he adds the light-armed,
69,500, made up of 35,000 helots (7 to each Spartiat), and 34,500 for the rest
of the Lacedaemonians and Greeks (‘about one to each man') ; giving a total
number of combatants 108,200.
The light-armed, as
given in his grand total, are 800 in excess of the reckoning of one to each
hoplite, but the difference—as indeed the expression of the historian—only indicates
a variation from a general proportion, which must have occurred in one
direction or the other. A muster of the round number of 110,000 is completed by
reckoning in 1,800 Thespian refugees from their burnt city, who were ‘without
arms,’ that is, equipped irregularly.
As soon as the
ceremonial mourning for the death of Masistius was concluded, Mardonius moved
his forces westward, so as to confront the Greeks in their new position. A
branch of the Asopus now separated the two armies; the stream at this
season—late in summer—must have been fordable all along its course, as it is
not taken into consideration as a serious military obstacle ; even in spring
it could be easily crossed between Plataea and Thebes, unless when swollen by
sudden heavy rain. His own forces, like those of the Greeks, were now disposed
with reference to an impending conflict. The Persians, whom he accounted his
best soldiers, he opposed to the Greek left wing, and the best of them again,
by instruction of the Thebans, to the Lacedaemonians; the others to the
Tegeans, whose array they were numerous enough to overlap, though drawn up in
deep ranks. Assuming that the helots and light-armed soldiers throughout were
in proximity to their respective nations, the Persians would be opposed to
50,000 Lacedaemonians and 3,000 Tegeans, or little under one half the numerical
Greek force, though to less than a third of the heavy-armed. The Medes were
next, opposed to 17,800 Corinthians, Arcadians, and Sicyonians; the Bactrians
were opposed to Epidaurians, Troezenians, Lepreans, Tirynthians, Mycenians, and
Phliasians; the Indians to the Hermionians, who from their Dryopian
relationship were ranged, not with their neighbours of Troezene, but with
Eretrians, Styrians, and Chalcidians from Euboea; the Sakae opposed the
Ambracians, Anactorians, Leucadians, Palians, and Aeginetans. The Bactrians,
Indians, and Sakae—for the most part a miserably armed and undisciplined
mob—had thus to match 13,400 men. Lastly, the strong force and approved quality
of the Athenians, together with the Plataeans and Megaraeans—23,000 of all
arms—were to be encountered by the Medising Greeks, the Boeotians, Locrians,
Melians, Thessalians, and neighbouring tribes, and the 1000 Phocians; and here
also were the Macedonians. Other troops, whose places are not noted, were
Phrygians, Thracians, Mysians, Paeonians and others, besides the Aethiopians
and Egyptians, who had been withdrawn from the fleet. The total barbarian
forces of Mardonius, at least at their original muster, are numbered at 300,000
horse and foot. Of his Hellenic allies the number had never been taken, and was
not known—at a guess it might be 50,000, exclusive of horsemen; and for these
figures Herodotus is responsible.
The most formidable
superiority of the Persians however lay not in their numbers at large, but in the
numbers and excellence of their cavalry, both of their zealous Thessalian
supporters and of the Sakae and their own mounted bowmen—(hippotoxatae)—in many respects the equivalents of modern
field-artillery. The Greeks, on the other hand, had the advantage of armoured
as opposed to unarmoured men, with that corresponding superiority in offensive
weapons which Aristagoras had urged on Cleomenes as an encouragement to the
Greeks to strike for the conquest of Susa itself,— in terms as ominously
significant as the conviction put into the mouth of Xerxes, that the quarrel
between Greece and Persia was to the death, and would only be concluded by the
entire subjugation of Greece by Persia or of the Persian empire by Greece. The
short spear and bow of the Persian foot-soldier prevented his carrying a shield
of any strength and magnitude, and the want of such defence was poorly supplied
by gerrha, a kind of wicker hurdles
covered with hides, and fixed into the ground by spikes as a fence before the
line. With no body armour whatever, nor effective helmet, he was but a poor
match at close quarters for the Greek, of sedulously strengthened and exercised
frame, protected yet not encumbered by the shield and panoply of the hoplite,
and still equal to wielding a stouter and longer spear. Any advantage that the
Persian might hope for and even be encouraged in by his Theban allies, from the
unity of a despotic command as opposed to a confederacy of commanders, mutually
and not without reason jealous and distrustful of each other, was just now
materially counteracted by the withdrawal of Xerxes, and is at best always
dependent on the co-existence with irresponsible power of military genius, or
at least of a spirit that would repudiate reliance on the lash as the leading
motive of concerted energy.
As regards the
Lacedaemonians, it was most true, as Demaratus warned Xerxes, that freemen as
they were, in one sense they were not free, for Law (o v6y.os) was to them a
master who exacted obedience more implicit than was ever rendered to the Great
King himself; obedient to this master in all respects, they were especially so
in this, that they were under obligation when battle once was joined never to
fly before any number of enemies, but standing their ground either to prevail
or perish. For the rest, a still nobler self-consciousness was animating the
Athenians,—the rivals of the Lacedaemonians by their achievements at Marathon,
and especially at Salamis. With them individual genius was of more avail than
rigour of technical discipline; and even among the minor states a spirit of
enthusiastic emulation in patriotism went far to obliterate for the time the
jealousies that were being nobly set aside by their leaders.
The two
armies were now within easier reach of each other, and yet the collision was
delayed. The Greeks were still receiving reinforcements and supplies, and had
taken up ground where they were content to await an attack, but which they
could not quit without seriously exposing themselves to the formidable flights
of horsemen, especially about the banks and channel of the river should they
attempt to cross it. The conclusions of the generals were duly reflected in the
entrails of the sacrifices, which on either side were interpreted so as to
promise success in repelling attack, but failure in case of commencing it. Such
was the report made to the Hellenic generals on the second day after the army
had taken up its new position. Their soothsayer was Tisamenus, son of Antiochus,
an Iamid of Elis, and as such a member of a highly-reputed family of hereditary
diviners; the origin of their ancestor and his art furnishes the mythical
adornment of an ode of Pindar for a mule-car victory at Olympia gained by a
relative of the clan some ten years after the present date. Tisamenus had been
engaged by the Spartans for this war under circumstances calculated—we may
probably say literally so—to raise confidence in him to the highest degree.
They had made a concession—unparalleled since the mythical instance of
Melampus, which it mimicked— of adopting him and his brother also—the latter on
raised terms after their first hesitation—as a Spartan citizen; for it had been
promised to him by the Delphic oracle that he should preside as diviner at five
first-class victories, and of these not one was as yet accomplished. Tisamenus—
so much for the consciousness of the prophetic faculty—had first interpreted
the oracle as promising a victory in the pentathlon, but missed it through
failure in the wrestling-match against Hieronymus the Andrian at Olympia.
Pausanias saw the statue of the victor athlete there centuries after. The
credit of the oracle was saved, apparently without damage to that of the merely
instrumental diviner, by the alternative reference to military victories.
Herodotus catalogues its fulfillments in this sense, with a simplicity of faith
that vindicates the prudence of the politicians who, whatever their own
faith,—and the survival of dread is not inconsistent with mistrust,—could not
prudently forgo any influence either for encouragement or restraint. Aristides,
according to Plutarch, had obtained a Pythian response which was
inconveniently—or conveniently—equivocal. It might even have sanctioned a
present retreat or renewed contest in Attica. As matters stood, means were
afterwards found for reconciling it with a station near an ancient fane of
Eleusinian goddesses, which, if not the best strategically, was at least
unavoidable. Near such a fane, we learn from Herodotus, the battle raged at
last, so that Plutarch appears to be in error in placing it in proximity to
Hysiae, the earlier Athenian station.
Like ceremonies with
like result were proceeding in the Persian camp, where Mardonius chafed
impatiently under the restraint they imposed upon him. His soothsayer, Hegesistratus,
was also of Elis and of the Telliad branch of the Iamid clan; but to him no
good fortune is ascribed. He had once escaped death at Spartiat hands by
breaking from prison, where he had slipped bond by mutilating his foot; he was
now by his own hatred and a heavy price engaged against the Spartans on the
side of the Mede, but to little purpose, as lie was doomed to be caught and put
to death by them at last, when again as vainly exercising his function at
Zacynthus.
The Medising Greeks
had also their diviner, Hippomachus, a Leucadian, who naturally told the same
tale as Hegesistratus, and as day drew on tediously after day, forbade joining
battle, and so aided the temporising policy of the Thebans, who still urged
upon the fretting Persian that corruption, if but sufficiently unsparing, and
combined with delay, must infallibly break up the Greek confederacy.
Herodotus, though
assuming throughout that in the Greek cities without distinction there were men
in influential positions so susceptible of bribery as to make such a policy by
far the most natural and promising, yet warns us not to disallow the existence
of a healthy patriotism—which he asserts with enthusiasm—in the very
communities most liable to be weakened and disabled by the selfish treachery of
a class. It was not without some special encouragement that the Medising Greeks
beyond the Asopus promised speedy fruits from such intrigues. Treachery had
obtained some footing even in the Athenian camp, and, however serious in
itself, would certainly be magnified by agents with the treasures of Persia at
command. The head-quarters of the inchoate conspiracy were in a house at
Plataea,—the haunt of discontented men, whose importance was originally based
on family and wealth, and was now reduced both by the impoverishing ravages of
the war, and by the emergence of new men at the requirement of the country for
the service of more genuine personal endowments. Even the democratic
innovations of Cleisthenes were not likely to be held irreversible, when the
tone of the embattled combatants by land and sea already threatened their
extension. An attempt at oligarchical if not tyrannous reaction was always
ready to arise amidst the difficulties of a Greek democracy; it was only by
promptitude that Athens had been saved from such a crisis, when Miltiades was
afield with her citizens at Marathon. The leaven was still within the lump,—and
every Athenian politician knew it be there, and the apprehension of it was never
so justifiable, or so soon likely to be confirmed by events, as while it was
being made a stock jest against Demus by Aristophanes. The first step towards
the ‘ dissolution of the demus5 was to play into the hands of the
Persians, and it would be no matter of surprise if the Delphic oracle, which
seemed to counsel retreat to Eleusis, and which Aristides could only with
difficulty strain into an equivocation compatible with strategic requirements,
were procured by the bribes of Medising Athenians. The ears of statesmen worthy
of the name, like the eyes of physicians, are quick for symptoms that ought to
be expected. Aristides was on the alert, but took measures rather to disperse
the germs of mischief than to attempt to extirpate radically what he was well
aware could never be absolutely destroyed; and at the present conjuncture
especially it was better thoroughly to overawe the discontented than to reveal
to them their own strength and thus drive them into more complete
intercommunication, or to risk a panic by publishing the existence of treachery
at such a moment. He seized eight only in the camp, brought two of these as the
most compromised—Aeschines of the dome of Lampriae, and Agesias an Acharnian —
to immediate trial, and on being, perhaps purposely, rid of these by flight,
had a pretext for moderate treatment of the rest. To the accessories—left in
uncertainty whether they might or might not be known—he indicated the field of
the coming battle as the true court in which it was open to them to clear
themselves of all imputations. The secret of this policy appears to be the same
as that of the tenderness of the Potidaeans to the traitors of Seione.
For eight days the
two armies were thus confronted in inaction, when Timegenidas son of Herpys,
the colleague of Attaginus at Thebes, suggested to Mardonius a stroke which
inflicted serious loss and embarrassment on the Greeks. By their movement
westward the latter had left unguarded a road that led direct from Thebes to
the same pass over Mount Cithaeron by which their chief supplies reached
Plataea, along a branch road from the Pass of Three Heads as the Boeotians, or
of Oak-heads as the Athenians called it. A body of horse dispatched at night
swooped upon a train of five hundred beasts of burden laden with provisions for
the Greek camp; in a fierce onslaught they killed a number of the animals as
well as the men conducting them, and carried off the remainder beyond the
Asopus. Nor was the Greek army in the position it now occupied able to secure
the passage for the future, and their supplies were in consequence blocked up
in the mountains.
Two days more were
marked by no further hostilities than harassing annoyance to the Greeks from
the enemy’s horse, which, constantly incited but not much aided by the Thebans,
skirmished to the right of their line in the direction of the pass. The
barbarians also came down as far as the Asopus, and there annoyed the Greeks
with missiles; but neither crossed the channel.
By the eleventh day
the impatience of Mardonius under the restraint to which he had subjected
himself by deference to the diviners of his Greek allies, and in a degree to
Artabazus, who was among the few Persians whose authority was conferred by a
personal hold on the Great King, became no longer endurable. Remonstrance
served but to precipitate his resolution. The only effect of their delay had
been that the Greek army had been growing stronger and stronger, and would
continue to do so. The Persian army must act at once, before their vast
superiority, which now assured to them the victory, was further impaired; they
must not force Hegesistratus and his victims by continued pertinacity, but just
leave them alone, and join battle, employing simply the old Persian forms. His
resolution had only been confirmed by the plain-spoken objections of Artabazus,
who, in terms that could not but be offensive, and intentionally so to a
sanguine chief who saw victory before him, urged that the entire army should
fall back at once and, relying on Theban fortifications, remain on the
defensive; they would there be within easy reach of abundant stores and forage,
the exhaustion of which in their advanced position must no doubt have weighed
with Mardonius; they could resort to intrigue and bribery, as recommended by
the Thebans, and wait tranquilly for a result that must come about without any
battle of importance.
But
against the absolute determination of the appointed head of the expedition—who
was not only brother-in-law to Xerxes, as having married his sister Artazostres,
but also at once son-in-law and nephew, both by blood and marriage, of Darius—nothing
was to be said; a very short leading question silenced the patrons of the
diviners. The Persian officers and Hellenic commanders were assembled; to the
demand, Were they aware of any oracle predicting the destruction of the
Persians in Greece, they could only say No, or be silent. ‘Well then’, he resumed,
‘I will tell you that such an oracle there is; but it declares the catastrophe
to be contingent on our sacking Delphi. This, forewarned, we have neither done
nor attempted, and therefore let all who arc friends to the Persians know that
our victory over the Greeks is certain.’
Herodotus takes upon
himself to say that he knew what oracle Mardonius had in mind, but that it was
entirely misapplied by him—not an unusual accident with prophecies. He himself
knew prophecies, both of Bacis and Musaeus, much more to the purpose, and
quotes one which is certainly as explicit as could be desired—whenever it may
have been composed.
The council, if it
can be so called, broke up with a command to have all in readiness for action
the next morning.
In the depth of that
night a horseman from the Median camp rode over secretly to the Athenian
outposts, and, obtaining an interview with the commanders, gave warning of
what was to be expected on the morrow, that they might not be taken unawares.
He added the encouraging information that the sacrifices were still adverse to
the Persians, and that Mardonius, who had been long ago eager for battle, and
had done all he could to get more favourable omens, was now going to fight,
notwithstanding their adverseness, at break of day; he counselled them to stand
their ground even should the onset be deferred, as their enemies would run
short of supplies within a few days at farthest. ‘And should this war have the
event that you desire, let some thought be taken of me and of my liberation,
who—a Greek by descent—have run this risk from sympathy with general Greece ; I
am Alexander of Macedon.’
This news was
immediately communicated by the Athenian commanders to Pausanias at the other
extremity of the line, and elicited a proposal to which the Athenians at once
assented, professing indeed that only delicacy prevented their own suggestion
of it at first as the most reasonable plan. It was as that the Athenians should
change places with the Lacedaemonians—from the left wing to the right—so as to
be opposed to the Persians, of whose mode of fighting they had had experience
at Marathon, while the Lacedaemonians would be opposed to familiar
enemies—Boeotians and Thessalians. The readiness with which Pausanias, Spartan
as he is, resigns the traditional post of honour is to his credit as a general,
if in truth the change had a sound military motive. The explanation of this,
though passed in silence by Herodotus, lies no doubt in the fact already
noticed, of the large proportion of bowmen in the Athenian armament, adapting
it peculiarly for resisting troops, especially cavalry, equipped with the same
weapon. The surmounting or uptearing of such a fence as the Persians were wont
to place before them was again manifestly a feat more easy for Athenians than
for Lacedaemonians, whose drill, however perfect in itself, left them always at
a loss before a fortification which compelled them to break line and rely on
individual activity. That the Greeks—the Boeotian hoplites especially—whom they
took in exchange as opponents were in any degree less formidable is not to be
thought of, and indeed, if they had been, the consideration would certainly not
have been entertained.
A greater difficulty
lies in the relative numbers of the interchanged. The Athenians and Plataeans
numbered only 8,600 against 10,000 Lacedaemonian hoplites; and, still more
important, their light-armed were again only 8,600, while those of the
Lacedaemonians were 40,000; and no doubt, if they moved at all, they moved in a
body. The interchange therefore involved much more than an alteration of mere
extremities; the extremities of the array constituted the bulk of it, and the
Lacedaemonians by far the larger proportion. Their movement therefore would
throw the Corinthians, Sicyonians, and Troezenians and their associates much
more to the right, and bring them as well as the Athenians into contact with
the Persians.
The change agreed
upon was made at daybreak, but the Boeotians recognized their new antagonists
and apprised Mardonius, who 0n his side again brought round the Persians to
confront them. Pausanias, finding that the movement was observed, carried back
the Spartiats—Aristides overcoming some reluctance among the Athenians to be marched
and countermarched, as they said, like helots; and, Mardonius 011 his side
countermanding the Persians, the original positions were maintained unaltered.
That there is 110
hint in Herodotus of an attempt of the enemy to use their numbers to outflank the
Greeks is in favour of the fact stated in the otherwise wretched account of the
battle by Diodorus, that the left wing was protected by high ground; the deep
formation of the Persians noticed by Herodotus may, however, have been
according to customary tactics, and not from any necessity. Otherwise, as at
Marathon, the chief Greek strength was stationed on the wings.
The pride of
Mardonius interpreted this attempted change as due to fear on the part of the
Spartans to encounter his vaunted Persians; he was at least surprised at
movements apparently so inconsistent with notorious Spartan tenacity of
position 011 the field of battle—the point of honour to which Leonidas had so
lately approved his loyalty; and he took the opportunity to taunt them with
renouncing a maxim, from their unreasoning reverence for which he would fain
have profited lie is represented as having promised Xerxes an easy victory over
tribes who in their quarrels amongst themselves had not the wit to employ their
common language to settle disputes without fighting; and who, when they fought,
were too stupid to take advantage of opportunities or position, but had no
other thought than to appoint a meeting in a fair field and fight it out precisely
where the vanquished had no chance of escape and the victors must needs
purchase victory at the very dearest price. Taunts had been before employed
without effect to overcome the disappointing appreciation by the Greeks of the
comparative value of positions ; and he now dispatched a herald with a formal
challenge in terms that might well wound the feelings of Spartans of the
ancient rigid school, already bewildered by the frank manoeuvring of their
general. A dead silence however was the only greeting which the Persian herald
received when he taunted the Lacedaemonians with being false to their
principles in deserting their post, with flying from Persians, whom they set
the Athenians to encounter while they went themselves to combat the Persians’
slaves; if they would vindicate their renown let them come down, Spartans alone
opposed to Persians alone, in equal numbers, whether the victory as between the
armies were to be decided by the result, if so they pleased, or the rest still
left to fight it out afterwards.
Between marchings,
countermarchings, and messages the day had already worn on; but when the herald
returned with the report that he had been left unnoticed after waiting a
considerable time, Mardonius was more than ever confirmed in his belief that
Greek valour had been over-estimated, and elated at the prospect of a ‘cool
victory.'’ He at once delivered his most effective force of mounted archery
against the two advanced wings of the Greeks, and then in flying clouds against
the intermediate bodies. The Athenians on the left had been constantly harassed
from the opposite side of the Asopus, and were now driven back and excluded
from further access to the water of the river. The supply for the entire army
thus became dependent on the fount Gargaphia, near the Lacedaemonian position ;
and this also was cut off in the progress of the contest by the enemy’s horse,
who succeeded in choking it and rendering it unavailable—an occasion 011 which
we see the important service that might have been rendered by the bowmen of the
Athenians.
CHAPTER V.
THE DECISIVE HAITI.E OF PLATAEA.—THE DEATH OF MARDONIUS.
B.C. 479,
September
The position of the Greeks, already embarrassed
by the blockade of their supplies in the defiles of the mountains, was thus
made finally untenable. The generals assembled in council with Pausanias at the
right wing, and it was determined that if the Persians, as was likely and as
proved to be the case, deferred their general attack over the day, the entire
line should be drawn back under cover of the night to the so-called Island,
some ten stadia, or less than a mile and a half, distant from the fount
Gargaphia, in front of the city of Plataea; this was ground lying between
streams that flowed from Cithaeron for some distance about three stadia apart,
till they united in one channel forming the Oeroe, that flowed westward to an
inlet of the Corinthian gulf. On the usual principle of geographical
personification, still too spontaneous to be distinguished from matter of fact,
Oeroe was said by the natives not merely obliquely to have been, but to be the
daughter of the more important eastward-flowing Asopus. Here there was
abundance of water ; and some degree of protection from the horse—which during
the day had inflicted unceasing loss and worry—was afforded by interposed
marshy 1 ground, and roughness or steepness of approach : moreover
from such a station a full half of the force could be spared to effect the
reopening of the communications through the passes.
Night fell, and at
the appointed hour the numerous bodies of troops, from the Corinthians to the
Megarians inclusive, who had been drawn up under their own leaders in the
interval between the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians, commenced their march.
In the loose coherence of the army, however, their destination was as much a
matter of 1 agreement as of imperative command, and- with a hurry
which amounted to flight from the dreaded horse they retired almost double the
appointed distance, not stopping till they reached the temple of Here, under
the walls of Plataea, twenty stadia—some two miles and a half—from the fount
Gargaphia. Here they took up a regular station. It is most probable that it was
this portion of the army—the least homogeneous and proved—that was intended to
march to the relief of the passes; but in any case the commanders, whether
acting on their own discretion or carried away by their troops in spite of it,
by retiring to such a distance ceased to be available as a reserve, and were
disabled from supporting either one or the other of the wings in case of an
attack during their convergence to a new position.
The centre having
thus, according to agreement, moved off the ground first, Pausanias gave the
word for the Lacedaemonians to follow; while the Athenians, whose route would
be shorter and easier, awaited notice of their progress to move in concert with
them. This notice was, however, both strangely and alarmingly delayed. The fact
was, that when all the taxiarchs of Pausanias were prepared to march, there was
one—Amompharetus, son of Poliathes, the lochagus of a troop (the troop of
Pitana according to Herodotus, though Thucydides, with an emphasis not quite
explained, denies that there was such a troop)—who positively refused to budge.
He had executed the countermarches parallel to the enemy, without making an
open difficulty, though not without scruples; but his old Spartan rigour had
since been galled by the insults of the Persian challenge, and he now declared
that he was ‘not, one to fly from the foreigners or be a party to the disgrace
of Sparta.’ Pausanias and Euryanax exhausted themselves in endeavors to
convince him of his absurdity, but arguments and commands were alike vain. The
dilemma was perplexing, and even dreadful. To leave the man behind with his
troop was to leave them to annihilation. Such a loss in itself was serious,
and moreover his motive for such inopportune wrong-headed ness was one that
appealed and might hereafter appeal seriously to Spartan sympathies. It was the
great merit of Pausanias that he had learned a lesson from the splendid but
wasteful self-sacrifice of Leonidas, and was capable of subordinating Spartan
scrupulousness to the urgencies of new conditions. But in this host beside the
Asopus was the sole survivor of the three hundred of Leonidas, still fretting
under the ignominy with which he was marked only because he had not, like an
associate who had the equal and sufficient excuse of ophthalmia for absence,
thrown his life uselessly away. The achievements of Aristodemus in the battle
that then ensued would have entitled him to the prize of preeminent valour,
had they not been the frenzied deeds of a man who was only desirous to die, and
moreover had quitted his place in the ranks to perform them. The best part of a
night might well be consumed in contending with feelings that could on such
grounds exclude Aristodemus from posthumous honours as a ‘recreant.’ In the
meantime the Athenians, hearing nothing of any commencement of movement by the
Laconian camp, and bearing in mind former disappointments in the execution of
Laconian engagements, became not only uneasy but seriously distrustful, and dispatched
a mounted messenger for instructions and information. The quarrel had reached
its height when he arrived, and as he stood by. Amompharetus was expressing
his reply to the abuse of the generals by lifting a great rock with both hands,
and declaring as he threw it at their feet, ‘ Thus I cast in my vote not to fly
before the foreigners.’
Pausanias bade the
messenger report the difficulty thus interposed by the obstinacy of a madman,
and desired the Athenian generals to incline in their march towards their left,
so as to co-operate more directly with the delayed Lacedaemonians. Time indeed
was pressing, since it was absolutely imperative to move a body of fifty-three
thousand men—Lacedaemonians and Tegeans, light and heavy armed —to some
distance at least before daybreak. Pausanias therefore set them in motion; but
even then, unwilling to take all the risk of the possible obstinacy of the
lochagus, he resolved to halt at an intermediate position, from which he could
still help him if follow he would not,—directing the march meantime across a
series of low hills towards the higher ground beyond, under the declivities of
Cithaeron and inaccessible to the hostile cavalry. It was only as morning broke
that the appearance of Amompharetus and his lochus
enabled the march to continue as originally proposed. The movement of the
entire force had at last convinced him that he was not to have his own way, and
had brought him—still at deliberate pace —to move his men. But daybreak also
revealed the Persian cavalry on the alert, and showed that an immediate attack
was to be expected while the ranks were still on ground exposed to their onset.
Pausanias disposed his troops on the march in the best available order, and dispatched
a horseman to the still distant Athenian force to urge them to come up to his
support as speedily as possible, or if this could not be done to send him their
detachment of archers to oppose the cavalry, the entire force of which was
coming down upon him. lie was in fact overtaken by the nearer detachments, and
in the absence of the bowmen, suffered considerably before he could roach a
favourable position near a fane of the Eleusinian Demeter, at a place called
Argiopis, on the stream Molocis, ten stadia, or about a mile, from his
starting-point. This is the distance assigned for the Island, and of this
therefore, allowing still for some indirectness in the march, the Moloeis was
probably one boundary, and so the verge at least had been attained of the
desired position. That the Demetrion was intended to be included in this the
oracle already quoted may be taken to prove. The excitement in the enemy’s camp
was by this time intense; the course of the Athenians from the flat ground by
the Asopus led them behind a ridge of low hillocks, where they were altogether
invisible from the Persian head-quarters. The vaunted and immoveable Spartans
had also evacuated their position, and were already descried at a distance in
full retreat for the passes, while the forces of the Greek centre were remoter
still. The exultation and confidence that now hurried Mardonius into
precipitate action cannot be better expressed than in the short- speech
assigned to him by Herodotus. He summoned Thorax of Larissa and his brothers
Eurypylus and Thrasydeius, and in the presence of Artabazus pointed to the
scene beyond the Asopus. ‘Ye sons of Aleuas,’ he said, ‘ what have ye to say
now at sight of this deserted station,—ye, the neighbours of the
Lacedaemonians, who persisted in declaring that they never fled from battle,
and that they were the first of all warriors? Ye beheld before how they shifted
post, and now see with all the rest of us how they have run away under cover of
night. As soon as the time came for them to be put to proof in battle against
those who are really and truly the bravest of men, they have exposed themselves
as manifestly of no account, even when compared to Greeks who are themselves
of no account. For you, who praise them for what you know them to have done,
and are quite without experience of the Persians, I make considerable excuse;
but with respect to Artabazus, that he should have been frightened by the
Lacedaemonians, and yielded from fear to the craven opinion that we ought to
break up our encampment and go to be besieged in Thebes, has indeed astonished
me. The King shall hear of it from me yet;—though this is a , matter that will
have to be discussed at another time and elsewhere. What we have now in hand is
to frustrate this design of theirs and make pursuit until we overtake them, and
exact penalty for all that they have done to the injury of the Persians’.
This threat against a
haughty rival in the favour of the King, who, opposing the expedition from the
first, had cooperated unwillingly, and, chafing at subordination, had taken
every opportunity to thwart his chief, might not have been uttered had not Mardonius
believed that no more work was before him than a triumphant slaughter of disorganized
fugitives, or had he known how entirely the 40,000 seasoned soldiers under
Artabazus—remains of the escort of 60,000— were by personal attachment at the
disposal of their leader, and withdrawn from his own command.
In wild excitement
the Persian division of the army was at once dispatched across the Asopus to
follow at a run on the track of the Greeks, who were supposed to be in hasty
flight; Mardonius himself on a white Nisaean charger led on the mounted
division of the Immortals—one thousand out of the ten thousand, who were all
picked men; a corps distinguished by extravagantly rich accoutrements,
supplied by a privileged commissariat and trains of camels, and accompanied in
camp by the harems of the various officers, and by all the luxuries of 1
peace. The sally of the Persians roused the rest of the camp. The leaders of
all nations, without waiting for definite orders, which under the circumstances
wore possibly not sent, let loose their multitudes, who rushed on in entire
neglect of ranks or array,—a shouting mob, the fastest only first,—with no
thought but that the Greeks were to be had for the snatching.
The Athenians had
wheeled at the summons of Pausanias, but were now threatened themselves, and
indeed presently engaged, while still detached, by the Medising Greeks of the
Persian right wing; and the battle was thus divided in the beginning into two
independent conflicts.
The Lacedaemonians
were overtaken first, drawn up— hoplites, light-armed, and helots—with the
Arcadian Tegeans beside them. Strong in his post,—where, from the nature of the
ground, attacks of cavalry, though present in more force, would have been of
less avail, and awaiting the succour of the Athenians, or even the central
forces of which the remoteness could not be known,—Pausanias again held his men
in hand; and, galled as they were by the Persian arrows, commanded them—while
still the sacrifices were unfavourable to action—to remain quiet, crouching on
the knee, and protected as far as possible b}' their shields. The hostile
arrows began to fall thick, and some horse approached near enough to engage;
men were falling in the unmoved Greek ranks. It was now that Callicrates, the
very stateliest and most beautiful man in the entire army, was fatally struck.
When he died it was with the complaint on his lips, not at meeting death in the
cause of Greece,—it was for that he left his home,—but that he should perish
without having lifted a hand, without having given proof of the qualities apart
from which pride in the possession of bodily beauty was admitted by the Greek
to be unauthorised and incomplete. Still the attitude of the army as their
confident assailants -came on was perfectly tranquil ; not a man started up,
not a weapon stirred ; as from one moment to another they expected the signal
for opportune action from God and their commander. He meantime stood distressed
beside the discouraging’ sacrifices, even when the Persian foot were coming
within the distance where they planted in the ground the gerrha or wicker shields
that were to protect their formidable and systematic archery, but where the
closing up of their thickening ranks would impede their orderly retirement and
even their action, and where the shock of conflict, if once successful, must be
decisive.
It was just when
opportunity and omens had, after renewed trial, been recognised by the Spartan
general as still not coincident, that the Tegeans, less enduring of sueh stern
control, broke the line, whether with or without command, and rushed to the
attack; and now forthwith the expected omen appeared at last, and with a
suddenness that was afterwards ascribed to a momentary prayer addressed by
Pausanias in his trouble to the Cithaeronian 1IIere and the other
Plataean gods. At his signal the whole Lacedaemonian host rose from its
quietude, ‘ like a single wild beast roused from its lair, dangerous, ‘horrent.’ In steady order, and shield to
shield (a formation known as the synaspism), they closed upon the line of
gerrha, which the Persians prepared to defend resolutely, and where, their
bows being useless at such close quarters, they fought as from behind a
breastwork, with a bravery sufficient to vindicate much of the confidence of
Mardonius. With naked hands they grasped the Doric spears which were thrusting
at their chests and faces with desperate effect, broke off abundance of them across
the fence, and even when this gave way resisted as furiously : a sustained and
stubborn conflict raged by the very fane of Demeter as they resorted to their
knives and scimitars (achiaces), tugging at the wall of shields, and hanging
upon them to obtain an opening for a stroke. This sustained valour, if taken
alone, would have made them no unequal foes, seeing that in bodily strength
they were on a par with the Greeks; but in such a conflict they fought at
serious disadvantage, since, compared with the hoplites, they were naked of
defensive armour, while they wrere far inferior in dexterity in
wielding their weapons, and their attacks upon a line as solid and continuous
as a wall were made in spasmodic onsets; singly even or in tens, or in bands of
sometimes more and sometimes less, they started forward upon the Spartans only
to meet their death. Yet as long as Mardo- nius survived, and the Thousand
under his immediate 1 command were supporting the Median battle by
pressing with serious effect on the Lacedaemonians, there was no sign of giving
way. But even the Thousand were gradually reduced by death and wounds ; and
when the leader disappeared, dismay and flight at once took possession of the entire
army. A stone aimed by the hand of a Spartiat, Acimnestus, struck Mardonius on
the head as he rode conspicuous on his white charger, and broke his skull; and
then, says Herodotus, the compensation was discharged which, as the oracle had
found means of intimating, was to be paid to the Spartans by Mardonius for the
slaughter of their king Leonidas. The historian omits a moral to the miserable
fact which he records on the same page, that Aeimnestus, who was now so well
serving the cause of united Greece, was to meet his own death afterwards in an
intestine quarrel among the Greeks
2 themselves. He pauses yet again before
proceeding with the incidents of the flight to note how observable it was, that
in the course of this battle, raging as it did about the grove and fane of
Demeter, not a single Persian died or even penetrated within the tewenos,
though large numbers fell in the unconsecrated ground without the precinct. ‘
In my opinion,’ he adds, ‘ if one is to have an opinion about
divine matters at
all, the goddess herself refused to admit them because they had set fire to the
saered Anadorion at ^leusis.’ And so the Greek mind is set at rest from
an apprehension that Persians who might have taken refuge in a saered precinct
encircled by battle might either have escaped, or not have been spared even
there.
The Athenian force
had only arrived within hearing of the clamour of this battle when they had
themselves to stand on their own defence. As their Hellenic antagonists
approaehed (Plutarch, taking his figures from the collective and conjectural
muster-roll of Herodotus, quotes them as 50,000), Aristides advanced in front
and appealed to them in the name of their common gods to abstain from battle
and offer no hindrance to men who were on their way to the rescuc of Greeks. In
effect it was only the Boeotians who fought with zeal and resolution on the
side of Persia against Greece ; they held the Athenians in check for a
considerable time, while the rest kept off entirely or we.re slack, and when
signs were visible of the discomfiture of the Persians, withdrew entirely. The
Thebans however, conscious that they were fighting for life or death, had been
too deeply committed to give up so easily. Plutarch, as a Boeotian, naturally
pleads that only an oligarchical faction then in power was traitor to Greece,
and not the nation. Three hundred of their first and 2 best—their
aristocracy, the very sinews of this faction—fell before the Athenians, and
then the Thebans turned and fled to gain the protection of their city walls.
The contagion of terror had spread from the scene of confusion that was now
visible all down the eastern valley and across the Asopus. Not only were the
remoter Persians in flight, but all the mingled nations of the centre which had
come on in disorder were crowding back in double confusion without having
delivered a blow, to seek the refuge
ol‘ the entrenched
nnd palisaded camp. The flying Thebans received considerable protection from
their own and the Thessalian cavalry, which, though unable to rally them so as
to make any independent stand of their own, interposed between them and the
Athenians and brought them oil'with less comparative loss. But the victors of
the subjects of Xerxes had freer play, and followed slaughtering the helpless
and bewildered fugitives.
If any Persian
bethought him in his terror of the help that might come from the 40,000 men of
Artabazus, he looked for him in vain. Artabazus had anticipated the catastrophe
with the cynical sagacity of a man who has both the will and the power to
promote the conclusion that he prophesies. lie had carefully preserved his own
command and - his own adherents from the impulsive onset of Mardonius. Marshalling*
them accurately, he led them forth as if for the battle, giving them a warning
which would prepare them for some sudden turn (well acquainted as they were
with his general discontent, and even apart from more explicit confidence as to
his purpose), instructing them to be watchful of his personal movements, and so
soon as he was seen to make a direct start, to follow in whatever direction it
might be without hesitation. He was still only sluggishly on his way towards
the battle-field, when unequivocal signs of defeat were apparent; he instantly
wheeled about, the entire force following implicitly, neither to the Persian
fort nor the Theban citadel, but to the well-known and well- travelled road to
Phoeis that marked a destination for the Hellespont.
The Greeks had also
fought without aid from one large section of their forces, and these were now
to be accounted for with varied fortune, some 37,000 out of 107,000. If not the
din of battle, the flight of stragglers might suffice, perhaps even without
messengers, to apprise the camp at the Heraeum of what was going on ; but the
endeavour to repair the error
of their distant
retirement was, from whatever cause, not made before the news of victory
arrived. The Corinthians and those next to them—counted up from the muster as
22,600, over three-fifths of the whole—hastened, in no proper order, along the
hills and undercliff direct to the Demetrium; the remaining two-fifths, from
the Phliasians to the Megariaus, about 14,600, took the lower ground towards
the scene of conflict of the Athenians, and equally without precautionary
order. Here however they were caught sight of in their defenceless disarray by
the unbroken Theban horse under Asopodorus son of Timander, who charged them
and pursued them into the mountains, with the loss of 600 slain, without
reason or result in any way.
The defeated Persians
and the panic-stricken mob were already in large numbers within the palisaded
fort, and, notwithstanding their confusion, were employed in manning the
towers and strengthening its openings (which must have been left of
considerable amplitude to admit of so speedy a reception under such
circumstances) before it could be reached by the heavy-armed Lacedaemonians. A
stubborn battle at the walls (teichoniachia) now commenced, in which the
Spartans, little practised in fighting either against walls or behind them, had
decidedly the worst. They were soon joined by the more expert Athenians, who,
apprised by a messenger of the state of things before the fort, willingly left
their Hellenic enemies, covered as they were in retreat, to make their way to
Thebes. A stout contest from the wall still continued for some time, but at
last the Athenians, by combined valour and pertinacity, established themselves
on it, and effected an opening through which the Greeks — the Tegeans again
leading—poured in a flood. The barrier once down, there was an end among the
defenders alike of orderly array and of any further exhibition of valour. The
mere crowding of intermingled tribes and arms was enough to extinguish
discipline and to disable its operation if it existed,
while disaster upon
disaster and the loss and disappearance of chiefs demoralised even the best.
The fort became a slaughter-honse, and a carnage ensued which even the
entertainments presided over with satisfaction by modern princes and generals
after centuries of improvement in the means of human destruction can scarcely
hope to rival.
The spirit of
vengeance for past sufferings was reinforced by a sense of the danger to be
incurred by sparing any considerable proportion of such a multitude of enemies
; Pausanias forbade taking prisoners, and neither supplications nor promises
of ransom stayed the hands of Athenians and Lacedaemonians, who emulated each
other in the now merely laborious work of massacre. Penned up within the lines
which they had toiled at as a refuge and protection, the wretchcd tribes of
men, swept together from all parts of a vast continent to subserve without
option the imperial greed of a despot and the military pride of his satraps,
were killed in heaps like cattle, and piled in blood amongst the splendid
tents, costly fittings, and the other apparatus of the pomp and luxury of their
leaders.
Out of the enormous
Persian arm}T, which he sets down in round numbers at 300,000,
Herodotus avers that besides the 40,000 who fled with Artabazus, only 3,000
were left alive.
On the
side of the Greeks he only enumerates as killed :— Spartiat Lacedaemonians 91
out of 5,000 Tegeans 16 „ 1,500
Athenians 52 „ 8,000.
The last are said to
have all belonged to the single tribe Aiantis.
The losses of the
heavy-armed Lacedaemonians—the 5,000 perioeci who were engaged, unless possibly
comprised in the compendious term Spartiats, — and of the Plataean 600, are
left unspecified here, and perhaps went to swell the total Greek loss, given by
Plutarch at 1,360. It majr be a question whether even this reckoning
includes
tlie helots. The
Spartiats, and the Tegeans who fought with them, are thus seen to have suffered
much more heavily in proportion than the Athenians. In comparing the rela^ tive
losses of opponents in ancient battles it must be borne in mind that the
victors had always a large number of unenumerated wounded ; while of the
vanquished, the wounded for the most part, and often even the captives when
barbarians were in question, were counted among the slain. Any reservation of
prisoners was quite exceptional, and made only with a view to ransom, hostages,
or sale as slaves.
The entrenchment had
been encumbered, necessarily and unnecessarily, with non-combatant
followers—purveyors of supplies, attendant slaves, and women of all degrees,
from the favourites of the luxurious nobles downwards; and these probably
constituted the majority of the spared. Herodotus describes one scene, which
may serve to represent the aspect of mingled horrors and splendours, the rescues,
recognitions, and coincident adventures that are implied by such occasions.
While Pausanias was
in the midst of urging and directing the slaughter, a woman, in the richest
Persian ornaments and attire, threw herself at his feet and clasped his knees,
claiming rescue, as a Greek, from Persian servitude. She declared that she was
by birth a Coan, daughter of Hege- torides son of Antagoras, and had been
forcibly carried off by the Persian Pharandates son of Teaspis; an example of a
very extensive class of the miseries inflicted by the barbarian domination on
the Greeks of Asia Minor and the islands, from which this victory alone had
rescued the Greeks of Europe. In the Spartan commander she was now addressing a
host of her father’s ; he committed her at once to the care of some of the
ephors, and dismissed her afterwards at her desire to Aegina, in possession of
all her dignified appointments and ornaments. The deliberate state
in which Herodotus
represents her as arriving in a closed annaui(u'(i, or covered chariot, with
her gaudy attendants, seems inconsistent with the moment, and if the picture is
to be preserved, must rather be transferred to the occasion of her departure.
Precisely at this time, when all barbarian resistance was at an end, eame in the
lagging supports, first of the Mantinaeans, and then of the Eleians. Their
regret, and still more their reproaches against their commanders, knew no
bounds; to them they ascribed their non-participation in the battle, and on
their return home visited it upon them in both eases by exile. The Mantinaeans
would fain have obtained yet one chance of service by pursuing Artabazus on
his road to Thessaly, but even this was refused them by Pausanias. The
Corinthian and Sicyonian division,—Diodorus says the Phliasians 1
also,—too late for the battle, were sent forward, without further result than
ascertaining that the retreat was remote and probably final.
Artabazus was indeed
pushing on rapidly, to keep ahead, if possible, even of the never-resting
tongue of Humour. He told the Thessalians that he was called to Thrace by
matters of importance necessitating speed, assured them that Mardonius and his
army were close behind, and made a great point of the attentions it would be
prudent to prepare for him. He then passed on through Macedonia by the
indicated road for Thrace. Here he avoided the coast and took the inland roads,
his numbers dwindling as lie passed by hunger, by fatigue, and by the hostility
of the native tribes who hung about his march. Herodotus is silent as to
hostilities against the fugitives from Plataea on the part of the king of
Macedonia, of which we have mention by 2 Demosthenes. Even so he was
driven to make, not for the nearer Hellespont, but for the Thracian Bosphorus,
which, from its
greater remoteness from Greece by sea, and the strength of the Persian post at
Byzantium, was more likely to }Tield a secure passage. He will
reappear in the story in unimpaired credit with Xerxes, and, for the Greeks, in
ill-omened communication with Pausanias.
B.C. 479, Autumn. 01. 75. 2.
At Plataea the Greeks were occupied with the
usual sequel of victory, the collection and solemn interment of their dead, and
the distribution of honours and spoil arnoug both gods and men. By proclamation
of Pausanias all private appropriation of spoil was forbidden, and the large
force of helots was employed to gather the whole together from the camp and
field of battle. The worth of precious metals in coined money (darics),
personal ornaments, and enrichments of weapons aud camp furniture, in the
vessels aud table-services that were carried about in such an expedition by the
Persians, was enormous; among the baggage-waggons gold and silver plate was
found in 1 sackfuls, so that of the abundance of merely embroidered
vestments which would at any other time have been highly valued, no account
whatever was taken. An imputation upon the Aeginetans here occurs, which,
though possibly heightened by the historian’s prejudice, still indicates a
general feeling that the tone of Hellenic thought had become vulgarised among-
these more purely commercial islanders. He accuses them of dealing illicitly
with the helots for treasure that should have been brought to the common fund,
and even ascribes to this source, if we adopt the most moderate interpretation
of his language, the
1 Herod, ix. 80.
origin of the largest
Aeginetan fortunes. The district of Plataea gave up long after to fortunate
finders deposits of plate and valuables that had been hidden away by those who
never had a chance of recovering them, and the Aeginetans bought from the
helots sometimes the secret of such stores, and sometimes the purloined objects
themselves,—armlets, chains or torques, and golden-hilted scimetars that were
found upon the bodies of the slain enemy all over the field. The helots, fresh
from their secluded servitude at Lacedaemon, were as ignorant of the precious
metals as the Swiss when they rifled the tents and stripped the bodies of the
Burgundians at Granson, and were glad to get the price of brass for objects of
gold which in any case they would have been unable to conceal or employ to an}r
purpose.
A still more shameful
fraud on the part of the Aeginetans against the victors in a battle in which
they themselves had scarcely taken any part, was the suggestion made to Pausanias
by Lampon son of Pytheus, one of their leading men, a member of a family
distinguished for hereditary prowess in the public games, and a participator in
the glory of 1 Salamis. He represented that the predicted penalty to
be recovered from Mardonius still lacked completion; it would be exacted in
full and the glory of Pausanias immensely enhanced if the head of Mardonius
were cut off and exposed, as Mardonius and Xerxes had done with the remains of
Leonidas. Pausanias repudiated the suggestion with contemptuous dignity ; it
was barbarian, not Hellenic, in spirit, and repugnant to Lacedaemonians,
whatever it might be to Aeginetans. Lampon was bidden to bring no more advice,
and might be thankful that even this time he got away with only a rebuke.
By next day the body
of Mardonius was missing—withdrawn for burial, it was assumed; and more than
one man afterwards claimed and received large rewards from his son
Artontcs for the
service: there was a report that it had been really performed by Dionysophanes,
an Ephesian. A monument—probably a barrow—on the right of the road from
Eleutherae to Plataea, immediately after the junction of the road to 1
Ilysiae, was pointed out long after as that of Mardonius.
And now again, as after
Salamis, questions arose as to the assignment of chief honours among the
nations engaged. Some of the Athenian leaders, Leoerates and Myronides especially,
were indisposed to concede any exclusive distinction to the Spartans for all
their exploits and leadership, and Aristides could only prevail on them to
remit the apportionments to the assembled Greeks. In the end, Athenians and
Lacedaemonians each erected a separate trophy, and each nation honoured its
own most deserving champions without drawing comparisons. 2
Pausanias speaks of the trophy as a single one, and situated about fifteen
stadia (a mile and a half) beyond the city, towards Thebes. Here, as after
Salamis, further heartburnings were said to have been evaded by the chief
rivals renouncing their claims, at the suggestion of Megariaus or Corinthians,
in favour of an inferior power. The gods and heroes of Plataea had been
specially invoked, and in consequence eighty talents (about £2,000) were set
aside for the Plataeans, a sum which defrayed the cost of a temple to Athene
Areia,—the Martial,—and of the paintings which adorned it, and which remained
in preservation long enough to be seen by Plutarch and described by Pausanias.
Herodotus however, giving voice to the common opinion of unbiassed Greeks,
after the generous confession that among their enemies the first honours were
due to the Persian foot (the horse of the Sakae), and among individuals to
Mardonius, declares that of the Greeks, brave men as the Tegeans and Athenians
had approved themselves, the palm of valour belonged to the
Lacedaemonians,—belonged by this token, that though
1 Paus. ix. 2. 2
lb. ix. 2. 4.
all alike had
conquered their opponents, the Lacedaemonians had assaulted and conquered by
far the most valiant. He had before stated liis opinion that the one seat of
strength in the army of Mardonius lay in the ranks of the native Persians of
whom he was so proud. In place of Aristodemus, whose claims he thought were
wrongly set aside, Poseidonius, Philocyon, and the rigid Spartiat Amompharetus
were preferred; and of these again Poseidonius was chiefly honoured,—honoured,
while Aristodemus was set aside, inasmuch as in his case daring had not been
urged .by contempt of the life he put in peril. It is highly characteristic of
the Greek mind that Herodotus returns to Callicrates, and his premature death,
as explaining how it was that a man so beautiful is absent from the list that
signalises the most brave.
Among the Athenians,
renown distinguished Sophanes son of Eutychides, of the deme of Decelea; the
man of whom it came to be told—a valuable example of how fact was still liable
to wander away through metaphor into myth—that he wore in battle an iron anchor
or grappling-iron attached to a bronze chain, with which he moored himself to
his station till his enemies were in flight, when he took it up again and
carried it on in the pursuit. e So the stoiy goes ; but there
is another which conflicts with it, namely that the anchor he carried was not
formed of iron and hanging to his corselet, but a painted symbol on his ever
restless shield.’ Opportunity is taken to record of this champion of Greek
liberty, how at the sieg'e of Aegina by the Athenians, when Greeks and Greeks,
now allies, were in conflict, he challenged and killed the c Argive
Eurybates, a Nemean victor in the 1 pentathlon,’—c
another brilliant exploit.’
The mention of the
Decelea, as the deme of Sophanes, is fortunate, as it introduces an allusion to
a later incident, the invasion of Attica by 2Archidamus, and so
informs us that
Herodotus was
finishing his history after that date; that he was in fact—anachronism as it
seems for his comparative genius—a contemporary with Thucydides at the age of
40, and with Euripides when author of the Medea ;—so near to- o-ether in Grecce
was all that was archaic and most modern.
o
From the collected
spoil a tithe was then reserved for the god at Delphi; and from this a golden
tripod was dedicated, and placed on a three-headed serpent near the altar.
Pausa- nias found that Phocian sacrilege had taken its way with the tripod, but
the bronze support was still in its placc. Constantine transferred this to the
hippodrome of his new city, and there by rare clemency of fortune it stands to
this day inscribed with a list of patriotic cities. It bore the inscription :—
'EAAaSos fi/pvxopov
acurrjpfs rul'd' avtOijKai’,
5ov\oaivrjS
orvytpas pvaap.(voi n6\tas
Further reservation
was made for a bronze statue of Poseidon, seven cubits high, at the Isthmus,
and for another of Zeus, twelve cubits high, at Olympia. Pausanias the
traveller notes of the latter, apparently merely to guide the curious, that it
was turned towards the east, and he copied from its base the catalogue of the
dedicating cities already referred to.
Of the assignment of
special trophies we are told that the Tegeans, who first entered the entrenched
camp, had among other things from the quarters of Mardonius an elaborate
manger formed entirely of bronze, which they dedicated in their ancient temple
of Athene Alea, in the conflagration of 2 which it probably 3
perished.
In the temple of
Athene Polias at Athens was long after shown the corselet of Masistius—an
appropriate Athenian prize,—and a scimitar asserted to be that of Mardonius,
the identity of which, however, is reasonably questioned by
Pausanias, who
refuses to believe in the resignation of such a trophy by the 1 Lacedaemonians.
A metrical
inscription by 2 Simonides for a bow and arrows dedicated at Athens,
recalls the specific services rendered by that weapon at Plataea :—
To£a ra5e 7TToXlfioio
Treirav/jifva fiaxpvofVTOS vrjai ’ASrjva'iTjs kcItcii vtroppotyia, noWa/ci St} arovoevra /card k\6vov Iv Sal" (porrCiv
IItpoajv L7T7TOfidxcul' cupO'Ti Xovaapuva.
The general
distribution concerned a miscellaneous assemblage of booty, such as
‘concubines of the Persians, gold and silver, and other valuables and animals.’
M hether the precise principle of apportionment with reference to 3
merit was determined by the numbers of 4 contingents must remain
uncertain, but in any case the share of the Lacedaemonians eould not have been
less than enormous. Again, we are left in the dark as to the disposal of this
share, whether as public or private treasure, in a polity of which a professed
fundamental maxim was to discourage and ignore accumulated wealth and the
luxuries to which it could minister. Apart however from the laxities that creep
into all organisations founded on the basis of asceticism, a populous state, of
the influence and power of Sparta, could never dispense with the command of some
considerable treasure or of stored wealth in some form. And even ascetic
disciplinarians, especially when at the head of a system, can always find
opportunities of expensive self-indulgenee, which by some means are brought
within the letter of the stern code. We read at this time of Spartans of great
wealth ; and others will speedily, and not unfrequentlv, come before us whose
common weakness is greed for that gold of which their laws forbade almost the
mention ; and even when we look back to the reign of Darius, we find that if
Cleo- menes repudiated the invitations of Aristagoras to aid an
Ionian revolt, it was
for other reasons, and not because he was shocked at having it held out as a
temptation that the capture of Susa was quite within possibility,—Susa, the
treasure-house of the Great King, by acquiring which he might confidently rival
Ionia in 1 riches. The promise of Aristagoras might now seem to the
Spartans to have come to pass; general, ephors and Spartiats, perioeei and
helots, might all look round as if a new world had opened upon them; and men of
the stubborn antique stamp of a Leonidas or an Amompharetus were blind if they
had not some mistrust of the working of this sight upon all classes of
visitors from the Eurotas, from the helots who had loyally contributed to the
capture, and yet were only to share in it dangerously and by stealth, to the
Regent himself on whom they were lavished so abundantly. For him also, as if
next after the gods, the several classes of spoil—1f women, horses,
talents, camels, and all the other wealth of whatever kind ’— wrere
not tithed exactly, but put under contributions expressed by tens, and with him
rested of necessity the disposal of whatever was most princely. Mardonius,
though himself only a deputy, or lieutenant, had remained in possession of all
the splendidly appointed establishment of the fugitive King, and while
Pausanias gazed on the vessels and furniture of gold and silver, the
luxuriously covered couches and embroidered curtains, a thought occurred to
him of a contrast that should give zest to his elation in victory. He summoned
the Greek generals to a feast in the royal tent itself, which they found set
out and prepared in every detail by the Persian’s own train of confectioners
and cooks, as if Mardonius were still alive; and beside it he pointed with
laughter to a spare Laconian dinner that had been prepared in the usual order
by his own servants for himself, exclaiming with derisive scorn, ‘ Ye men of
Hellas, I have brought you together for precisely
this,—to exhibit to
you the folly of the Median general, who having enjoyment of all this
splendour, came here to plunder an existence so wretched as ours.’ The turn of
the moral is the same that is put into the mouth of Caractacus by a Roman
writer, and of the hardy Swiss by
1 Philip de Comines; but in this>
case it strikes upon the ear as involving an appreciation of the more luxurious
fare, when obtainable, that has scarcely the true Laconian ring.
The traveller
Pausanias mentions finding the tombs of the Greeks very near the entrance to
the city of Plataea as he came in from Attica, inscribed with the epitaphs of
Simonides; the Athenians and Lacedaemonians having each their burial- place,
and the rest of the Greeks a third. The Lacedaemonians made a triple division
of their dead ; commanders of companies—among whom were Poseidonius,
Amompharetus, Philocyon, and Callicrates—occupied one depository, the rest of
the Spartiats another, the helots a 2 third. But besides these
veritable tombs, Herodotus avers that certain fictitious ones, fraudulent
cenotaphs, had been afterwards raised by other cities anxious to assert their
participation in the victory. One mound especially he charges with having been
raised for Aeginetans—in disgrace again—some ten years afterwards by a friendly
Platacan whom he names. Nothing is said of the burial of the enemies; and
indeed a notice that the Plataeans found one skull without sutures—a case not
unknown to modern physiology—when they gathered the bones together into one place,
appears to imply that many at least were left above 3 ground through
autumn and winter.
It still remained to
deal with Thebes. But even before doing so it was incumbent to offer
appropriate sacrifices for the great deliverance, and on this point guidance
was solicited from the god at Pytho. The oracle enjoined the immediate erection
of an altar to Zeus Eleutherius (the Liberator), but
forbade them to offer
a sacriliee upon it until all fire had been quenched throughout the Platnean
district, as having been polluted by the sacrilegious barbarians, and
re-lighted pure from the common hearth at Delphi. The Greek officials
immediately made a general visitation, and caused all fire to be extinguished,
and a certain Euehidas left the city, engaging to bring back fire from the god
with the utmost possible speed. Arrived and forthwith purified at Delphi, and
duly besprinkled and crowned with the sacred laurel, he took fire from the
altar there, started again to race homeward to Plataea, and came in before sunset,
having accomplished the double journey, so the story goes, within the day. Tie
greeted the expectant citizens, delivered over the fire, and at once sank down
exhausted, and died on the spot. The Pla- taeans took him up and buried him in
the saered precinct of Artemis Eucleia, inscribing on the tomb the following
tetrameter—
Evx^as nvdwSe 9pi£as
tf\9e raS’ avOrjfiepuv.
‘ Euehidas
running lienee to Pytho here returned the
self-same day.’
The full distance of
one thousand stadia—115 miles—obliges us to assign a very large interpretation
to the ‘single day’ of the tale and the inscription.
The enthusiasm of the
confederates readily extended to something more than the present occasional
sacrifice. It was resolved, on the proposal of Aristides, that the celebration
should be annual, and that every fourth year—a pentaeteris— there should be a
celebration of Eleutherian games, in the presence of such sacred missions from
general Hellas as the various cities were wont to despatch to represent them at
the great common festivals, and perhaps of envoys (i7po/3ovAoi) for political
deliberation. To the Plataeans was to be committed the function of offering
sacrifices on the part and for the safety of Hellas, as well as performing the
annual rites at the graves of the dead ; and in return, and as security for
these institutions, they were to be declared inviolable and conse-
crated to the god.
The Platacans thus obtained at least a nominal guarantee from Greece at large
for the extension of their territory to the limits of Hysiae and the Asopus,
which had been wrested for them from Thebes by the Athenians in
1 B.C.
519. The parallel between the arrangements which the Greeks attempted to
establish here and the sacred immunity of Elis and the participation of all
Hellas in its games is manifest ; yet the suggesting influences are so natural
that we may less reasonably conclude that the correspondence is due to mere
rivalry or mimicry, than carry back the analogy, and infer that the elevation
of the Olympic games and territory to their distinction was originally due to
like combinations of events — to the enthusiasm of a confederacy at some great
conquest which was connected with the seat of the festival in origin, conduct,,
or conclusion.
These generous
resolutions, made in the first heat of sympathy, proved of but insignificant
or evanescent advantage for Plataea. The site was unfavourable, to say nothing
of the Greek calendar being already well covered by festivals and games which
could not be superseded ; and, as time went on, the growth in popularity of the
new institution was liable to be checked by the very intimate attachment of
Plataea to Athens. Plataea, had placed itself under the protection of Athens as
early as B.C. 519, at the recommendation of Lacedaemonians—as Herodotus
thought, out of no good will to either; and the loyal city had approved the
spirit and value of its alliance at Marathon as well as in this later war. It
might even seem surprising that privileges should now be conceded so readily
which could scarcely but redound to the advantage of the protecting state,
whose aspirations were so well known: but Athens was not then in a condition
to excite alarm at a spirit of encroachment; patriotic enthusiasm was blinding
all but politicians of the most special type to the still living germs of
internal dissensions
and rivalries; and,
above all, the common animosity of the patriotic Greek army against the
especial enemies of Plataea, the Medising Thebans, still contumacious within
the walls which had served the Mede as the fortified base of his most dangerous
and hardly frustrated enterprise, would cause a proposition so appropriately
honouring the patriotic rival to be carried by acclamation.
A further resolution,
also it is 1 said on the motion of Aristides, had reference to a
future Hellenic muster for the prosecution of the war ; the numbers to be
raised are given as io,oco shields (that is hoplites), with a like number at
least, we must infer, of light-armed men; r,ooo horses, to supply the want so
grievously experienced in the late battle, and 100 ships. It is probable that
these forces are to be considered exclusive of the power of the Spartans, to
whom as directors of the whole it would be left to decide on the application of
their own resources, as well as to dispose of the contingents of the allies.
On the eleventh day
after the victory at Plataea the Thebans were summoned to surrender the members
of the Medising faction, and especially Timegenidas and Attaginus, —the leaders
of the leaders, — with the notice that the army would not remove from before
the city till the demand was complied with. Refusal was followed up by the
usual measures taken to reduce a fortified city in Greece; attacks were made
upon the walls, but the main reliance was placed on the exclusion of supplies
by investment, and on the openly expressed intention to damage the territory to
such an extent that surrender would involve a less sacrifice. On the twentieth
day a herald announced to Pausanias that the Thebans were prepared to give up
the men demanded. The traveller
2 Pausanias in Roman times is as positive
as the Boeotian Plutarch that the crime of Medism lay exclusively with an
oligarchy. Had Xerxes
invaded Greece, he says, when the Peisistratids ruled, the Athenians themselves
would have been open to the same charge. There is probably much truth in
this—certainly some; and at any rate, an anti-Medising faction was sure to be
born, if not to revive, on the failure of the earlier policy. The oligarchs had
made the best terms they could, weakened as were their ranks by the slaughter
of so many of their class by the Athenians in the battle ; and Timegenidas made
a patriotic virtue of the necessity of saving Boeotia from further ravage, and
the city from capture. A futile attempt to iuduce the captors of Persian
treasures to be put off with a money ransom having failed, the utmost that
could be done was to appeal for such subventions from the funds of the public—‘
that public which had in truth gone along with their policy ’—as would when applied
in bribery shrewdly help what they proposed to urge in their defence.
Everything was done to give the surrender the air of being the voluntary act of
Timegenidas and the rest, and they were not without confidence that between
argument and corruption they might come safe through. Attaginus, less sanguine
or more fortunate, made his escape in time. His children were given up in his
place, but sent back by Pausanias with the remark, in the spirit of his reply
to Lampon, that ‘ Medism was not a child’s fault.’ Divining the calculations of
the rest, he was no sooner in possession of them than he cut off all
opportunity of intrigues by immediately dismissing the confederate forces home
; and then, carrying the prisoners off with him to the Isthmus, he put them all
to death by his own authority.
Fifty-two years after
this common triumph of Greece the city of the Plataoans was besieged and
subverted by Greeks—by Lacedaemonians, at the commencement of that intestine
quarrel which was to be the ruin of so much that was best in Hellas (427 B.C.). Restored again (386 B.C.), they
were again expelled (374 B.C.), to
await a final restoration
(315 B.C.) two
generations later; and yet, through all the tenacity of tradition and of race,
this brave people carried over 110 insignificant traces of the institutions
which had been intended to inaugurate a period of Hellenic unity, from the
field where the blood of many tribes had been shed for one common Hellenic
interest and hope. Plutarch of Chaeroneaj who was probably an eye-witness, thus
describes the ceremony with which the Plataeans of his day fulfilled the
engagements of their ancestors at the tombs of the slain :—
‘On the 16th of the
month Maiinacterion,—Alalcomeneis of the Boeotians,—the procession is
marshalled at, break of day. A trumpeter precedes sounding notes of war; cars
follow laden with branches of myrtle and crowns, and with them a black bull;
and young men of free condition carry amphorae of wine and milk for the
libations, and vessels of oil and perfumed ointments ; no slave is permitted to
give any assistance in the service which is being paid to men who died for
freedom. Last of all comes the arehon of the Plataeans, who, forbidden at other
times to wear any colour but white and even to touch iron, is now arrayed in
purple chiton and girt with a sword, as, holding a hydria taken from the public
record office, he traverses the city on his way to the tombs. He then takes
water from the fountain and washes the monuments, and anoints them ; and after
sacrificing the bull on the pyre and praying to Zeus and Hermes Chthonios, he
invites the brave men who died for Greece to the banquet and the blood ; and
mixing wine in a crater, pours it on the ground, exclaiming, “ I drink to the
men who died for the liberty of the 1 Greeks.” 5
2 Thucydides adds, ' honouring the tombs —
zvdijixaoiv — with robes ; ’ the equivalents probably of the black scarves and
fillets which we see attached to tombs on vases. The altar and statue of Zeus
Eleutherius, both of white marble,
were erected just
without the city of Plataea, near the bronze monument over the slain of various
tribes. In Homan times as late as 1 Pausanias the Eleutherian games
were still held here on the anniversary of the battle, the fourth day of the
Attic mouth Boedromion. The chief prize—a crown or chaplet, for it was an 2
aycov ore^aytrr/s—was given for the race in armour, for which the altar was the
starting-point.
1 Paus. ix. 2. § 4.
2 Strabo, 412.
479 B.C.; 01. 75. 1. and a.
The battle of Plataea was truly one of the decisive battles of the world
; the victory was not only decisive in the sense that it left the worsted army
disorganised and ruined beyond all possibility of rally, but that it precluded
for all time any renewed attempt by Persia to subjugate continental Greece.
Upon this field was jeopardied and saved, if not the last and single chance of
the survival of progressive civilisation, much at least of the prompt
development of all its best characteristics; the ripened display, within the next
fifty years of Hellenic independence, of that healthy and hopeful manhood of
the race that had been maturing through centuries, to be staked at last on the
turn of one day of conflict. It.would be rash to infer that the germ of
Hellenic genius would necessarily have been lost to the world, though Oriental
domination had oppressed or even exterminated Hellenism at Athens and Sparta;
but to the happier result it is at least due that the world inherits a history,
a literature, and art through which Hellenic genius remains so prime an
influence for instruction and delight, for refinement and dignity in art and
manners, for guidance in administration of the intellectual powers, for
elevation of purpose, to noblest patriotism, and largest theory of humanity. A story
opens before us which assuredly is not free from many a discouraging incident;
our best hopes are indeed disappointed at every turn; but the
warnings, if we
fairly read them, take an important place in the moral. The vices and errors of
the Greek communities keep our eyes open to the imperfections which may intrude
among virtues, that most approve themselves to be virtues when found strong
enough to encourage humanity, for all its shortcomings and difficulties, not to
despair.
All the importance of
the victory could not however be seen at the moment. To many a Greek the power
and wealth of the Great King could never have been realised so formidably as in
sight of the ruin of his magnificent armament. Here, in the resources which he
had forfeited, was apparent evidence of what he might still have in reserve;
the magnitude of the danger that had been escaped, but only just escaped, was
brought home to the senses amid the blood-stained spoil of the vast camp, with
a liveliness that could not but have some effect on future apprehensions, while
it strengthened resolution for the future. Self-confidence rose in more than
equal proportion ; the victory that had shattered the aggressive power and
spirit of Persia animated the Greeks to prepare themselves against a revival of
aggression, and strengthened a decision which had before been halting, to take
securities against it with all the power of settled concord and alliance.
For although the host
that, whether as ally or enemy, had devoured the plains of Thessaly, Boeotia,
and Attica, might be assumed as accounted for, yet the hold of the Persians on
their established conquests in Thrace; their command of the Hellespont, whether
for reinforcements or interruption of the Euxine trade ; and the strength and
designs of their fleet, with all Ionia and Phoenicia to recruit from, were
considerations of sufficient weight to give spirit to those in the Plataenn
council who advocated continued exertions and hearty adherence to the
new-found value of confederation. The failure of Darius at Marathon had not
deterred Xerxes from a second expedition, but had rather prompted more
formidable prepani-
i 2
lion ; and the defeat
:it Salamis had only induced the enemy to change the quarter of attack with a
pertinacity that might still not be exhausted. On some of these points of
apprehension the victors of Plataea were soon to be happily relieved, for on
the very same day, the afternoon of the day which had been ushered in by the
frantic onset of Mardonius, the Persian fleet was finally destroyed, and a not
unimportant blow delivered even upon their army in Asia.
The commanders of the
Greek fleet had of necessity more than reciprocated the anxieties that
Pausanias and Aristides might have had time to feel on their account. While Mardonius
was still in Thessaly they had not moved beyond the advanced station of Delos,
from whence they could more readily obtain information about the enemy’s fleet
and act upon it with greater promptitude. Of their movements when the
re-occupation of Attica drove the Athenians again to Salamis, we know nothing
more than that the mission of the Athenian admiral Xanthippus to Sparta implies
that the Athenian division, as might be expected, was not far from the shores
of Attica. The evacuation of the latter country, however, soon set it free.
The Persian fleet
might now have been expected to move back to the Hellespont, or still more
probably to afford support or supplies to Mardonius; but in point of fact,
besides the necessity of overawing the rising agitations in Ionia and the
islands, the Phoenician mariners had not only been foiled by the weather on the
unknown western coasts, but had forfeited all confidence by their behaviour at
Salamis; their commanders were consequently discouraged from attempting even
short voyages, and a renewal of the conflict seemed more hazardous still. Of
this the Greeks could not be immediately aware, and to them preparation
against any movement on the part of the Persian fleet was rightly a matter of
most anxious interest. Western Greece could only be secured from the transport
of aid to
Mardonius, or
diversions in other directions, by complete command of the sea, and the time
was at hand when this was to be actively asserted. The year was already far advanced,
and the Greek force had received its last accession; the fleet of no ships all
told, which'we read of in the spring as assembled at Aegina, was now increased
to *250 triremes. Of these the largest portion were Athenian; of the rest,
besides Lacedaemonians, there w ere contingents from Corinth, Sicyon, and
Troezene. The Corinthians brought in addition the highly esteemed contribution
of the soothsayer Deiphonus from Apol- lonia, their colony 011 the Ionian gulf.
It was already
autumn, and expectation was at its height for news of the conflict in Europe,
which it was certain could not long "be deferred, when Leotychides and the
generals gave audience at Delos to three envoys who had left Samos unknown to
Theomestor son of Androdamas, whom the Persians had established there as tyrant
in reward for his services at Salamis. The spokesman was Hegesistratus son of
Arista- goras, who set forth the case in every variety of aspect aud with an
Ionian fluency wrhich might perhaps have damaged his cause had he in
truth been the sole informant (eAeye 7w\\a teal »avToia). Appealing to their
sympathies as venerators of common gods, he supplicated them as Greeks to come
to the rescue of Greeks and assist in expelling the barbarian; the Ionians at
the first sight of them would rise in revolt, and the barbarians would as
instantly retire, or, if they did not, might be pounced on as a prey. And never
would there be another such chance : for the ships of the enemy were ill-
found, wretched sea-boats, perfectly ineffective to cope with those of the
Greeks. Never could an exploit be more easy or more certain of success. He
added, as guarantee of the sincerity of the advice, that the envoys were ready
to accompany the expedition as hostages.
The Spartan listened
to the long-drawn pleadings and
beseeehings without
any indication that he accepted the information as correct, or that he
sympathised with the orator, and then interposed abruptly, f And
what, Samian stranger! is your name?’ Catching up the reply before the flow of
words could re-cominence, £ I accept, Hegesistratus,’ said he,
‘ the appellation ’
(i. c. conductor or leader of armies); ‘ do you only, and these who are with
you, take order to pledge your faith before you sail away that the Samians will
be our zealous allies.’ The decision thus curtly announced with true Spartan
affectation of suddenness and contempt for words, was as promptly put in
action. The Samians, says Herodotus, took the oath and engagement of alliance
with the Hellenes— that is with the Dorians, whom the historian seems here
again to distinguish as specifically Hellenic, in contrast to the Pelasgie
Athenians and Ionians. The other two envoys, Lampon son of Thrasyeles and
Athenagoras son of Arcliestra- tides, were dismissed the same day; and on the
very next, the seer Deiphonus, son, or reputed Json, of the
prophetic Euenius, having’ announced that the victims were favourable, the
fleet put to sea ; Leotychides, notwithstanding his rejection of the proposal
of hostages, keeping by him Hegesistratus, the man with the name of good omen,
a hostage in reality if not in 2name. They moored at Calamei on the
coast of Samos, and there made preparations for battle. The exact locality is
uncertain ; it is indicated by Herodotus to those who know the spot as being £
by the Heraeum, or temple of Here, that is in that place,’—terms apparently
intended to distinguish the temple from the more celebrated Heraeum in or close
to the city of Samos. A more remote station, perhaps the petty Ipnus, where
Stephanus Byzantinus notes a temple of Here Ipnuntis, seems to be implied by
the unpereeived and unmolested retirement of the Persian fleet through the
narrow channel between Samos and the continent.
The Persian
commanders indeed were no sooner aware of the advance of the Greeks than, as
the envoys had predicted, they gave up all thought of contending at sea,
dismissed the Phoenician vessels with their crews, and carried the others from
Samos to the opposite coast, where they could draw them ashore and have the
protection of fortifications and a numerous army. They passed, saj^s Herodotus,
by the fane of the Potniae of Mycale on to Gaeson and Scolopoeis, where there
is a fane of Eleusinian Demeter, founded by Philistus son of Pasicles, when he
accompanied Neileus son of Codrus in the settlement of Miletus. The spot was on
the coast south of the mountainous promontory of Mycale, just before it trends
south-east to the embouchure of the Maeander and the Latmian gulf. Gaeson,
which is with Herodotus apparently the name of a town, was the name also of a
river that discharged itself into the lake Gaesonis and so into the sea. 1Ephorus
spoke of the Gaeson aud its lake as near Priene, and another 2
author places it between Priene and 3 Miletus. The ancient line of
coast, owing to the accumulated deposits of the Maeander, now lies, like the
site of Priene, far inland ; but the Gaeson is still represented by a stream
which flows from the mountains under the heights that are occupied by the ruins
of Priene. Pliny, immediately before coming to Priene from the south, inserts
the name Naulochus, which indicates an ancient favourable station for ships.
The plain was here in communication with Ephesus and Sardis by the road across
the mountains, and agaiu more circuitously by the valley of the Maeander, past
Magnesia. Here, previously stationed, or rapidly concentrated, was the main
body of the force originally left behind by Xerxes to watch Ionia: it is set
down by Herodotus as 60,000 (Diodorus gives 100,000) men, under Tigranes, a
commander f supereminent among the
1 ap. Athenaeum, vii. p. 311. 2 Ibid.
3 Mela also, i. 17—Ionia ‘cingit urbem Prienen et
Gaesi fluminis ostium.’
Cf. Pliny, II. N. v. 31.
Persians, like Xerxes
and Mardonius, for stature and beauty.’ The Persian admirals drew tlieir
vessels on shore and hastened to enclose them by a vast fort, of sufficient
circuit to shelter the army in case of a reverse. Trees were cut down indiscriminately,
and a wall or bulwark was formed of mixed stones and timber, and strengthened
by projecting stakes or palisades —according to Diodorus by a trench also. The
probability of an Ionian insurrection had been a source of anxiety ever since
the reverses in Greece, and preparations for a campaign in the collection of
stores and provisions had in consequence been in a state of 1
forwardness. What no vigilance or foresight could now supply was that spirit,
which is required to give vivacity even to unbroken resolution, and to remedy
the despondency which comes over a multitude when under misfortune, and
foredooms to destruction an army which, however bravely, has suffered defeat
after defeat, and a cause which has never enjoyed one success. And then too a
large proportion of the muster—enormous doubtless, reduce the quoted numbers as
we may—were Ionians, who were justly objects of increasing mistrust. From the
Samians especially all confidence had been withdrawn since the discovery that
some 500 captives, taken by the army of Xerxes from Attica, had been purchased
by them only to be sent home free and restored to his enemies.
The aspect of the
enterprise was now entirely changed for the Greeks, who, with all their
rapidity, at last found that they had moved just too late to find the
ineffective navy the easy prey which they had expected. The tardy alacrity of
the reticent Spartan was probably due to some secret notice of the preparations
for the Persian retreat, in case the signs of an approaching attack, which they
were hopeless to resist, should oblige them to forego their hold on the now
uneasy Samos; — information evidently passed over as
rapidly in one
direction as the other. A suggestion which was made upon this disappointment,
to return to inactivity at Delos, was set aside; and the project that still
retained its hold as much on the imagination of the Greeks as on their reason,
of making for the Hellespont and the bridge, had scarcely more to recommend it
now than before, in comparison with the importance of striking at the hostile
fleet. The Samians and Ionians would of course be more urgent than ever, and
with more effect from the manifest justification of their former confident
assurances. It was resolved therefore, but only after discussions had caused
more ’delay, to follow up the chase ; the ships were provided with ladders and
every possible preparation, to enable the forces, in ease they should be
disappointed of a sea- fight, to effect a rapid disembarkation and try the
fortune of a battle on land. Not a vessel was afloat to oppose them when they
arrived; all were seen drawn ashore under protection of the wall, while a
numerous army of foot was in array on land. Leotychides, in imitation of the
policy of Themistoeles at Artemisium, passed along as near inshore as possible,
and by the voice of his loudest herald invited the Ionians to bear in mind in
the coming battle, in the first place Liberty and then the password
Hebe—selected apparently as the name of the spouse of his ancestor Hercules,
herself a daughter of the goddess of the Samian Heraeum : those who heard were
urged to inform those who did not. The proclamation was made not without
expectation of the effect it invited, but also with the indirect intention of
rousing mistrust in the Persians towards the Ionians, to whom the herald
affeeted to believe that his language would be alone intelligible. The Spartan
seems to have applied his borrowed stratagem but clumsily, for in this case
there was much fairer hope of considerable desertions than in that of
Artemisium; and an
immediate result of the warning was that the Persians instantly disarmed the
Samians, and assigned the Milesians a post too distant to allow them, in case
of defection, to interfere in the expected battle.
The Greek
debarkation, as it was effected without opposition, must have been made at
some distance from the entrenched camp and army ; but by mid-day or later—
Diodorus says the day ensuing—the troops were marshalled and moving forward to
the attack. The Athenians, who were to sustain the main burden of the battle,
were commanded by the arehon eponymus of the year-—Xanthippus, son of Ariphron
and father of Pericles : and together with associated troops of other cities,
Corinth, Sieyon, Troezene, they made up a full half of the entire force. These
now advanced direct upon the enemy over the level ground by the sea-shore,
while the Lacedaemonians and the other half of the army made a 1
circuit, and having to traverse on their way the rough ravines of torrents and
spurs of the mountain, came into action later, as if intentionally, and only
with the view to an effective flank attack. The spirit of emulation, of which
the Greek was so susceptible in its noblest forms, was now at its height among
the Athenians, who had recently had just cause to feel that by their warlike
achievements they had already placed their country on a line with Sparta, hitherto
the recognised leading power in Greece ; while in breadth and boldness of
political views and in patriotic self-sacrifice alike they were far ahead. The
present was an opportunity for winning yet another advance, and that on
land—the very prerogative of the Spartans ; and the word passed from mouth to
mouth to make such thorough and speedy work with their already despised
opponents as should give them at least the largest share in the victory. It was
afterwards believed that another influence, not independent of the
supernatural powers, was at work to heighten 1 Herod, ix. 102.
the general
confidence and enthusiasm of the host. A sudden and instantaneous rumour, it
was said—a (ptfw—pervaded the ranks, to the effect that all cause for anxiety
at home was happily at an end ; that battle had at last been joined with
Mardonius in Boeotia, and that the Greeks were complete victors. What may have
been a bold assertion of the loud-voiced herald to the 1Ionians
became a belief all the more exciting from the uncertainty of its origin ; it
was indeed afterwards said that, as the troops marched along the shore, a
herald’s staff—confirmation unquestionable—was seen floating inland on a vast
wave; apparently a mythical version of the incident of the coasting herald. The
boldness of the present attack, by only half the men that could have been
brought over by the Greek squadron, upon such a host and its entrenchments,
might well seem to demand some unusual explanation. Herodotus—notwithstanding
his recent mention of a falsified (pVW *n anecdote of the Medising
Phocians—has no difficulty on the point; and why then the soldiers ? and is not
the ‘ interposition of the Divinity in human affairs’ to be seen in the
coincidence that at Mycale again, as at Plataea, the battle was fought close to
a temenos of the Eleusinian Demeter? That the recognition of this locality may
have been to Athenians as encouraging an omen as the name Hegesistratus was to
the Spartan, we need not doubt. It was believed that during the battle of Salamis
the mystic cry had been heard from clouds of dust along the Thriasian plain,
avouching that the divinities of Eleusis were proceeding to protect their
worshippers ; and intimate indeed was the connection with Athens of a fane of
their own goddess founded by a comrade of a son of Codrus, their own patriotic
king.
The incidents of the
battle in the afternoon correspond very closely with those of the same morning
at Plataea: the Persians were first attacked behind their fence of gerrha, and
1 Diod.
xi. 34. § 4.
so long1
as it stood, maintained a not unequal war; wlien it fell they still fought
bravely for a considerable time, but fled at last for refuge into the fortified
eamp: the eamp however was nearer at hand to the Asiatic battle-field, and the
Athenian pursuers swifter than the Lacedaemonians ; so that Athenians,
Corinthians, Sieyonians, and Troezenians entered pell-mell along with the
fugitives. Resistance was still continued within, though by the Persians alone.
Of the other troops, some took to flight; the Samians, who had been left in the
camp, though disarmed, found means to assist the Greeks so soon as they were
encouraged by prospect of success, while the other Ionians, incited by their
example, and forgetting at once the faith of oaths and the fate of hostages,
went over in a body, and turned their weapons on the barbarians. The contest
was still undecided when the Lacedaemonians arrived fresh upon the spot, but
the numbers of the Persians were already fast diminishing, and they fought only
in knots, in uncombined onsets, at points where they could still oppose the
entranee of the Greeks. Tigranes himself, the general of the land forces, died
fighting, and with him Mardontes, who in the European expedition had led the
islanders from the Persian gulf—the Erythraean sea. The admirals, Artayntes and
Ithamitres, with Masistes, a son of Darius, who had been present at the action,
were among the few men of distinction who escaped. They succeeded in gaining on
the heights of Myeale a better refuge than the mountain afforded to many of
their flying troops. The mistrusted Milesians, who had been posted among* the
defiles and declivities at the rear of the army, to act ostensibly as guards of
the passes, but in reality in order to prevent their deserting to the Greeks
during the battle, now found themselves precisely upon the line of
communication and retreat of the routed army. As treacherous guides they led
the hurrying fugitives into false tracks, and either deserted them in their
bewilderment, or brought them upon the very enemy they shunned; at last
turned openly upon
them, in the spot which their knowledge of the localities pointed out as most
advantageous, and, remembering the severities of Darius, were the most
vindictive of their slaughterers. To this place, if it is to have place
anywhere, we must transfer the 1 incident that the Greeks were for a
moment checked by an alarm that Xerxes was arriving from Sardis with
reinforcements by the road through the defiles of Mycale, but only to be
presently reassured by finding that the apprehended enemies were Ionians in
revolt.
The battle, thus at
last won, had been strenuously contested ; Greeks and barbarians, says
Herodotus, were animated to exertion by the feeling that the islands and the
Hellespont were—a true Greek figure—set out as prizes for the victors. When the
slaughter of both the fighting and the flying at last came to an end, the
Greeks stripped the ships and camp of the booty, comprising the military chest
with several stores of coined money, collected it on the shore, and then made a
general conflagration of the palisaded camp and of the ships, which for some
unstated reason they did not relaunch.
The Greek losses were
considerable, but, like their original muster, are unenumerated; the Sicyonians
are specified as having lost, along with many others, their general Perilaus.
The chief honours of the battle were adjudged to be the right of the Athenians;
after them are named in order the Corinthians, Troezenians, and Sicyonians,
who fought in company with them ; while the Lacedaemonians and their associates
are unmentioned.
Among the Athenians
themselves, Hermolycus son of Euthunus, a pancratiast, was pre-eminent; though
destined to perish later in an inter-Hellenic quarrel between Athens and Carystus
in Euboea ; he was buried, apparently in recognition of his fame, on
Geraestus, the extreme promontory of the island.
‘ And so,’ says
Herodotus, ‘ Ionia revolted from the Persians for the second time.’
In this expression we
have to understand the defection of the islands also, and the emancipation of
Samos, Chios, and Lesbos from the yoke of Persia, by a process of which we have
no notice' or particulars.
Xerxes had lingered
at Sardis since his return from Europe, as if in expectation of couriers who should
announce the full success promised by Mardonius. Since the announcement by the
train of beacons of the reoccupation of Athens, lie could have received little
consolation beyond renewals of too hopeful promises. The European intelligence
was at last to be anticipated by a disaster nearer home, as Sardis was reached
by the scanty and disheartened survivors of Myeale. Salamis had cost him one
brother, and he made the most of the escape of another, Masistes, from perils
that were not at an end when he had eluded the Milesians. Masistes in his
flight had taxed his fellow-fugitive Artayntes with having, by his miserable
generalship, caused the entire disaster and the disgrace of the royal house, to
winch he now added the abusive charge of cowardice worse than a woman's: at
this, the most poignant insult to a Persian, the self-restraint of Artayntes
gave way; drawing his scimitar, he rushed upon the brother of the Great King,
and would have killed him on the spot, if he had not been seized round the body
just in time, even before the guards of Masistes could interpose, lifted from
his horse, and flung upon the ground. It was a Haliear- nassian, Xeinagoras son
of Praxilaus, who rendered this service, and Xerxes rewarded him for it with
the government of the whole of Cilicia. It had been more fortunate for both
Masistes and Xerxes had the rescue miscarried. Even the catastrophe of Plataea,
which must have been announced within a day or two, was less fraught with
misery and disgrace than events, not on a distant continent, but within the
royal palace, not wrought by foreign hostile hands, but due directly
to the cruel passions
and hist of Xerxes himself. With a narrative of these, which need not be
repeated, Herodotus dismisses him from his history; clearly feeling’, though he
does not phrase it in a formal moral, that public violences and impieties were
thus visited with retribution within the home, and within the tortured, or,
even more severely, the seared and callous conscience of the man. With such an
epilogue may be closed the story of too many a selfish scourge of the race
!—an Augustus Caesar, a Norman William, a Prussian Frederic, a Napoleon, to
take names almost at random.
On the 16th of
February in the ensuing spring occurred an eclipse of the sun, which the
superstition of the time may naturally have connected with the final
disappointment of Xerxes and his retirement from Sardis; it was equally natural
that by the time the tradition reached Herodotus the omen should have been
carried back, as he records it, to the days of the King’s inauspicious
departure from Sardis for Greece.
T1IE CAPTURE OP SESTOS.—XANTHIPPUS AND ARTAYCTES.
B.C. 479; 01. 75. 2.
It was difficult to realise that this eheek to the power of Persia on
Asian ground might prove more decisive than the still severer blow inflicted in
Europe. Memories were still fresh of the vengeance which Persia had before
inflicted on Ionia for resistance or revolt; it was not so many years since the
tragedian Phrynichus was fined at Athens for bringing into too painful
prominence the horrors of the fall of Miletus. That disaster, and indeed the
ruin and desolation of all Ionia, had followed upon provocation which present
events seemed to repeat too exactly not to introduce like consequences. Athens
had then interposed to encourage and abet a rising to which in the end she
failed to give any effective support; while the transitory triumph of the burning
of Sardis and the fanes of Cybele had infused into the quarrel the venom of
religious vindictiveness. It is not surprising therefore that the policy of
general migration before vengeance should arrive, which had been partially
acted on by the Teians and Phoeaeans at the original subjugation of Ionia, and
the wisdom of which, as urged by Bias of Priene, was then recognised too late,
should again be brought forward for serious consideration. The victorious
Greeks returned to Samos, and there the Ionians of the islands and the
continent had to face the question how they were to protect themselves with better
fortune than before against the too probable eon-
sequences of the
revolt to which they were again committed. Their elation at the victory of
Mycale and their own participation in it might well have been tempered with
apprehensions from which both Athenians and Spartans beyond the Aegean were
naturally exempt. But the Athenians themselves were at this moment without a
country or a city, without walls or temples, relying for re-establishment on
their ships, their transportable wealth, and, above all, their population; and
were known to have professed an intention under some contingencies of seeking
new and distant seats. The project of abandoning the Ionian cities on the
mainland, and apparently on the three great islands also, and of transferring their
property and population to a region removed from such desperate liabilities,
was therefore mooted with serious and even sanguine advocacy. It was the
Homeric story of the happy resettlement of the harassed Phaeacians, or that of
the later Phocaeans, over again. Leotychides, the Spartan leader, gave the
proposal hearty support, and even affected to assume that it was decided
conformably to his authority, and that the next point to be discussed was • the
particular destination. The Ionians could have no hope of disposing of Persian
enmity without aid, and it was out of the question that their defence should be
undertaken by the European Greeks under the conditions of maintaining a force
on the spot for all time. If they were to be protected they must be within
easier reach ; and this might be compassed by putting them in possession of the
trading ports (emporia) of the Greeks who had Medised, and who should now be
expelled to make room for them. Boeotia, Locris, and Thessaly, where the Aleuad
families were still to be punished, are most directly indicated; but Achaia,
and more especially Argos, which had acted so equivocally, might also be
considered as included, and in some respects affording a more tempting
prospect.
This diplomacy on the
part of Laccdaemon was perfectly natural and characteristic for a state still
at the com
mencement of its
experience in remote and sustained enterprises. The traditional maxim, to
limit external action in respect both of time and distance, was in fact a
constitutional necessity when the predominant class at home was constantly in
an attitude of over-strained watchfulness and jealous defence. Leotyehides in
truth only discouraged present reliance upon support the failure of which, as
far as his own country was concerned, he was quite right in assuming. The
strength of Sparta could not long be spared from repression of the helots, and
was moreover dependent on a discipline which could only be enforced and
sustained by keeping its employment ordinarily within bounds, however it might
be capable of striking out suddenly at well chosen times with single, forcible,
and decisive blows. The difficulty experienced by the Chians in drawing out the
Spartans even as far as Delos, and by the Samians in inducing them to attack
the Persian fleet before it had time to escape, are but moderate symptoms of
that fixed habit that could satisfy them with limiting their efforts against
Mardonius to defence of the peninsula, cut off at the Isthmus by fortifications
which, after years of notice, were only completed at the latest 1
moment.
An
opposition to these proposals, however, soon gained head; and was the first
revelation of that declared rivalry to the supremacy of Sparta in thought and
action, which was destined to maintain itself with enduring effects on Greece
for the next half century, and on all history thereafter. Short as was the
period—not twenty years—since the first Ionian revolt was quenched in blood (b.c. 494),
Xerxes was not Darius; nay, the men of the age of Darius were rapidly dying
out; and it was apparent to Ionians that the genius of the Persian empire had
undergone a degeneracy, while the confidence and resolution of the Athenians
were what they had never before been. It was the Persian command of the sea
that had been fatal to Miletus; but - 1 Thucyd. i. 68.
the fair prospect
that this had now been finally wrested from them altered all the conditions of
the crisis for the islands and cities on the sea-board. The Athenians were not
backward to foster, or even foment, these rising protests, and at last, when
the issue was distinctly joined, they came forward with one of their own ;
they disallowed the necessity of leaving Ionia to desolation, and in any case
repudiated the title of the Peloponnesians to take order respecting colonies of
which Athens was the metropolis: it was from the prytaneum of Athens that the
Xelid and Codrid leaders started to found these cities, and Athens was prepared
to defend her proper relatives, as she claimed to have the sole right to do.
The arrival of the
news of the battle of Plataea, while it added immensely to the glory and
prestige of Sparta, insured the restoration of the Athenians to their city and
country, and promised a revival of power corresponding with the energies her
citizens had so uniformly displayed. The accession of strength to be gained for
operations against Persia by attaching the islands and Ionia as allies, might
suffice to decide Xanthippus in the assertion of an independent course,
whether politic jealousy of Spartan designs against Argos came into
consideration or no.
To the opposition
thus developed the Spartans yielded with a good grace; and the Samians, Chians,
Lesbians, and other islanders who took part in the expedition, were admitted
into confederacy under an oath of steadfast Adherence.
And now at last the
original passion of the Athenian fleet to make for the Hellespont could be
satisfied. The bridge had indeed been broken by storms a year ago, before
Xerxes recrossed the strait; but it might be capable of repair, and in any case
it was desirable, if not indispensable, to establish control over the channel.
The allied fleet
moved northwards, past the now liberated Chios and Aeolian Lesbos. Detained off
the sheltering promontory of Lectos, the westernmost prolongation of the range
of Ida, by the late north winds that prevail through the Hellespont, they
proceeded at last to Abydos. Here they found that the bridge which had extended
from this point to Sestos was fairly gone; while the Persians remained in
possession of the Chersonesus opposite, and in a position to threaten free
navigation and annoy the opposite coast, or even to assist the transit either
of Persian reinforcements or retreating troops. The Athenians were familiar
from of old with the Chersonesus, where some of their citizens—among them the
family of Miltiades—had property and rights, and for them the liberation of the
Hellespont was only an opening for new enterprise. But Leotyehides, hitherto
the recognised head of the expedition, now declined to make further concession
to the zeal and urgency of his allies, and would do no more. He withdrew
homewards, and with him went the ships of the other Peloponnesian states—thus
marking the future breaking line of the great confederation. He probably could
not act otherwise under the strict limitations imposed upon a Spartan king; but
already, and especially after recent differences, the course he took was
equivalent to a temporary abdication of Spartan headship, and a qualified
resignation of it to Athenians, who, elate in self-reliance, knew all the value
of the opportunity, and were secretly, if not openly, eager to avail themselves
of *it.
The words of
Herodotus are very significant as to the conditions under which a Greek of the
time, whether as member of a confederacy of states or under a separate command,
submitted his actions to authority. ‘ It was determined by the Peloponnesians
attached to Leotyehides to sail away to Hellas,—but by the Athenians and by
Xanthip- pus their commander to remain where they were and make 1 Herod, ix. 114; Thucyd. i. 89.
an attempt upon the
Chersonesus.’ Interpreted to the letter, Peloponnesians and Athenians assert as
much independence of their respective commanders as these do of each other. As
a matter of fact no more is implied—though this is much—than that the superior
can only enforce orders which are in accordance with public feeling; the
feeling being sometimes liable to be swayed, not to say forced, by the resoluteness
of a commander, as the commander’s resoluteness is sometimes by his sense of
the inefficiency of obedience when not rendered with good-will.
The hostile occupants
of the Chersonesus were taken by surprise, and hurried at the first alarm ‘ to
take refuge in Sestos, the only place within reach of such strength as to be
defensible, and which soon became over-crowded: to the native Aeolians and
refugees from places around were added the Persians and their allies, and
there, with no provision for enduring or repelling a siege, they were shut up
by the Athenian investing force by sea and land. The Persian Oiohazus, who was
in charge of all the tackle and materials for the bridge, had come in from
Cardia on the northern coast, but the chief authority, both of the city and the
district, was Artayctes, who had obtained his appointment from Xerxes, and
afterwards abused it, under circumstances that made him the object of most
vindictive rancour: a man, says Herodotus, both able and impiously unscrupulous
(beivos Kal araadaXos)—epithets which he justifies as follows. At Elaeus on the
southern point of the peninsula, within a temenos or consecrated precinct, was
the tomb of the hero Protesilaus, the sacredness of which was avouched by a
large accumulation of offerings,—gold, silver, brass, costly robes or dressings
(kad^, as at Plataean tombs), and so forth. The tomb—apparently in form a naos,
or at least a naidion—stood menacingly enough, a memorial and emblem of the
first collision between Asia and Europe in that war of Troy which Herodotus
recognises as the prototype of all their
.subsequent
hostilities. Protcsikus was a leader of Thessalians from Phylake, and Homer
relates how he was the first to leap from shipboard to land, and the first also
to die, and that on the spot, by a Dardan weapon; so he perished, a youthful
bridegroom, leaving a bride 'in frantic grief,—a house half finished.’
Artayetes, the story ran, begged and obtained the temenos from Xerxes by the
representation,—‘ Here is the house of a Greek who met his deserts when
invading your territory; give his house to me that so there may be a lesson to
others to keep off yonr ground.’ He despoiled the fane of its valuables and
transported them to Sestos, and gave up the temenos, apparentl}r of
some extent, to culture, and still worse to grazing, and worst of all, insulted
wantonly the most sacred associations of the place. The story of Protesilaus
was a traditional exemplar of conjugal affection most tenderly expressed, and
its details point to an analogy with the equally Thessalian tradition of the
self-sacrifice of Alcestis, which vindicates it as truly national, and not a
mere late poetic development. By supplications to the gods, Laodameia obtained
the return of her husband to earth for a three hours’ colloquy, and then died
with him as he died 1 again. This colloquy seems to have been a
subject of mystic representation like the groups of Aphrodite and Adonis
described by Theocritus — the Piet& of antiquity. In later accounts we read
that she formed a lifelike image of her husband, kissed it, embraced it, talked
to it as if alive and in connection with some sacred rites, and at last was
burnt along with it. The tender sentiment clung to the locality, and gave to
late Greek poetry the grief of Hero of Sestos over the corpse of her Leander.
This is not the place to develop further the process by which a type of
conjugal self-devotion—as given again in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice,
and on the vase-paintings in a series of
1 Ovid,
Trist.i. 5. 20; Hygin. 103-4; Propert. i. 19. 7; Eurip. frag. Prot.; Iliad, ii.
695; Ovid, Ileroides, xiii. 150.
interesting
illustrations—became for the Greek a type for all that is most solemn with
reference to either the commencement of life or the circumstances and
apprehended sequel of its conclusion. It is enough to note that the barbarian
could only read such symbolism coarsely, and find a suggestion for desecrating
the 1 adytum by choosing it for the scene of wantonness and gross
debauchery.
Unprovided as the
city was, the Persian garrison forced it to hold out to the last extremity; so
time dragged on for the besiegers, the late autumn was upon them, and even the
Athenians, with so many motives to return home, began to despair of success
from seeing no sign of progress, and urged the commanders—again not the single
Xanthippus—to give up aud retire. In this case the will of the commanders
prevailed; they would persevere, although the winter was close upon 2
them, until either the city was taken or an order of recall arrived from the
Athenian community (ro 'AOr]vaL(jiv kolvov).
That we hear nothing of negotiations when the besieged had really no hope but
in tiring out their besiegers, was possibly due to the knowledge which
Artayctes had of the feelings of which he was the object, though it may just as
easily be due to his resolution.
At last subsistence
failed entirely, the very thongs of the couches had been cooked and eaten, and
the Persian garrison, who would be the last to suffer, were reduced to the only
chance left—to break out and escape. Early one morning the besiegers observed
signalling from the towers, and speedily received intimation from the native
inhabitants that the Persians had vacated the town during the night, descending
from the wall and passing the lines at an unwatched interval. The gates were
immediately opened, and the city occupied by a detachment,
while the main force
started at once in pursuit of the fugitives. They were in two parties.
Oiobazus, who was in advance, succeeded in getting clear off to Thrace, but
only to fall, before he could reach a Persian post, into the hands of the
Apsinthian Thracians, ‘who sacrificed him to their native god Pleistoros ’—a
deity of whom no mention has been traced elsewhere—fin their
peculiar fashion, and slaughtered those who were with him in another fashion.’
Artayctes and his party, who had less start, were overtaken a little beyond
Acgos-potami, and for a short time maintained a defence: some were killed, and
the rest, among whom were Artayctes and his son, were captured and led back
bound to Sestos. We are further told how the captive’s conscience was touched
by the miraculous antics of some pickled fish, a fact not worth alluding to but
for the historian’s comment, which implies that the body, or at least an
effigy, of Protesilaus had been in some way 1 preserved. His offers
of ransom were declined—100 talents to the god, 200 to the Athenians. The
Elaeuntians pressed for his well- merited execution, as vengeance due to their
hero Protesilaus, whose sanctuary he had defiled and desecrated, f
and the disposition of Xanthippus inclined in the same direction.’ Elsewhere
the historian, mentioning the offence by anticipation, attaches the name of
Xanthippus to the 2 deed ; and the impression is conveyed that he
was willing to stigmatise him, from repugnance either to cruelty unworthy of a
Greek, or to the general character of the persecutor of Mil- tiades. Artayctes
was carried to the headland from which the bridge of Xerxes had been
constructed, or as some said to the hill above the city Madytus, and there
nailed alive to a plank and raised aloft,—crucified in fact,—while his son was
stoned to death before his eyes. This refinement in cruelty would
1 Herod,
ix. 120. The relics, too valuable to be lost, were known to P. Mela. ‘ Sunt
Protesilai ossa, consecrata delubro.’ ii. 2.
2 Herod,
vii. 33.
alone have been
sufficient to indicate in what direction lay the motive of the hateful deed. It
would scarcely be a relief to think that it was <to this same religious
rancour, and not to the cold policy of stimulating superstition, that three of
his sons by Sandaee sister of Xerxes had already fallen victims, having been
sacrificed on the prow of the galley of Themistocles at Salamis to Dionysus
Omestes, in concession to the clamours of a crowd, led on by Euphran- tides the
diviner. Plutarch gives this 1 story on the authority of Phanias, a
pupil of Aristotle.
The tomb of
Protesilaus was, as might be expected, re-erected and re-.eonseerated ; and the
mj^thical prototype of Hellenic aggression on Asia was destined to be visited
and invoked by a more fortunate successor. When Alexander of Maeedon retrod the
steps of Xerxes on his way to determine in what sense the Great King’s dictum
as to the ultimate relations of Europe and 2Asia was to be
fulfilled, he sacrificed to Prote- silaus on his tomb at Elaeus, to obtain a
happier landing; then, after offerings to Poseidon and the Nereids while
passing the channel, which Xerxes was at least believed to have scourged and
chained, he reversed the omen for his army by leaping on shore first of all,
and in arms, and alighting scatheless. It was probably not without the design
of counteracting a similar superstition, that at the end of his first campaign
he sent hack from Caria to Macedonia every newly married soldier—every
Protesilaus—in his army, under generals who were themselves bridegrooms, who
were charged to make the best of the good omen by bringing back with them in
spring the most numerous reinforcement possible of both horse and 3
foot.
Sestos captured and
Artayctes the sacrilegious punished, the Athenians were at last free to make
the longed-for voj'ago homewards. Byzantium, upon the route by which
Artabazus had
escaped, still remained to be dealt with; but this was of necessity a work left
over. Conspicuous among the spoils carried homo were the cables of the Persian
bridge, the ingenious workmanship of Phoenicians and Egyptians— as dedications
to the gods. The Ionian allies also returned to their newly-liberated 1
cities. And so, with the winter, ended this eventful year.
1 Tliucyd. i. 89
ATHENS EE-WALLED.—THE CONCEPTIONS AND CONDUCT OF THEMTSTOCLES.
b.o. 478; 01. 75. 2 and
3.
We have now reached a
point in the story where, but for a few anticipatory hints, we are deserted by
Herodotus, and through the years that intervene between the fall of Sestos and
the Peloponnesian war have to make out a way for ourselves through
difficulties and contradictions which enhance, if it were possible, our
appreciation of the guide we have parted with. Some assistance, and in certain
respects the most valuable of all, is given by the few pages in which
Thucydides summarizes the history of this very interval of fifty years—the
Pentecontaeteris or Pentecontaetia as it was called in antiquity. But though
the sequence of events is observed in due order, there is unfortunately a want
of fixed dates and precise notes of intermediate intervals. Other most
important and interesting details are obtainable from Plutarch’s lives of
Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles, and even some notes of dates,
though not uniformly trustworth}'; his narratives of incidents, again, are
sadly tainted with errors and contradictions too easily detected not to oblige
us to hesitate frequently over even an unchallenged statement if it lacks
corroboration. The chronologised history of Diodorus Siculus is likewise of
very great value, but, as usual, has many drawbacks. It is even
more than usually
unsatisfactory for the years that we are coneernoil with. Other confusions
apart, we find some years left entirely blank; while in another a complete
series is inserted of events which must have extended over several or even many
years, and we are left to determine as we may whether in the assigned year they
commenced, or culminated, or came to an end. Such are the limitations of our
main sources ; but cross-lights occasionally visit us, reflected sometimes
from the most brilliant, sometimes the most trifling, remains of Hellenic
literature, poetry and prose, of its best period or its most debased. Help also
that is by no means to be neglected in our dearth and distress is incidentally
obtainable from monuments, from inscriptions, and, still more importantly for
the history of that noblest progress in which resides so much of the interest
of our period, from works of art.
Immediately upon the
retirement of the barbarians from Attica, and with complete confidence after
the destruction of the army at Plataea, the Athenians for a second time
returned to a devastated country and ruined city, bringing back the women and
children from their refuge in Salamis or Troezene, together with whatever
moveable property had been preserved. Athens itself was found a heap of ruins :
except some of the better houses that had served up to the last as quarters for
Persian nobles, very few were left entire, and of the circuit of the walls only
short interrupted portions remained. The emergency was however energetically
met by the labour of the whole population, slave and free; while Persian spoil,
and fines exacted severely from Medising islanders, came to the aid of the
property which had been rescued, in procuring means and materials.
Themistocles was the
presiding genius of these operations, and in proseeuting them with zeal and
forethought he did but resume a career of which his conduct of the Persian war
had been only an episode ; the dangers and
*•]
.1TUESS RE- WALLED.
Ill
difficulties which he
there overcame were indeed only a portion of what he had been preparing to
encounter, if not to provoke, in furtherance of a settled design for the aggrandisement
of his country. According to Herodotus, Themistoeles in the year of the
invasion of Xerxes had but recently attained to eminence, and the scholiast of
Thucydides 1 notes that his archonship was in the previous year,—an
assertion apparently corroborated by the absence of any other name in the lists
for that year. But the authority of the scholiast is not great, nor is this
interpretation of his words very satisfactory, and there are considerations in
the narrative of Herodotus and elsewhere that oblige us to give a large
interpretation to the limits of the phrase. The death of Themistoeles as
recorded at the age of sixty-five must fall, as will appear, about 460-459
B.C., and he would in consequence be thirty- two in 493 B.C., when a
Themistoeles was archon eponymus of the 2 year, thirty-five in the
year of Marathon, and forty-two in 483 B.C., three years before Salamis, when
it was as the conclusion of a rivalry with him of considerable duration that
Aristides was ostracised. The removal of such an opponent is quite sufficient
to explain the expression of Herodotus as applying to his acquirement of
predominant influence, and there therefore appears to be no sufficient reason
for questioning the earlier date of his archonship.
It was as early, then,
as his holding of this office that, according to Thucydides, Themistoeles had
mooted the policy, and even made a commencement of the plan, for fortifying the
promontory of the Piraeus, which he was now to resume on an enormous scale. The
stunning blow inflicted upon Greece in the previous year by the fall of Miletus
had been due to the command of the sea by the Persian fleet, and Chios, Lesbos,
Tenedos, and the Chersonesus had succumbed in rapid succession. Such disasters
might well second the
arguments of
Themistocles, who easily read in them the moral, that the freedom of Western
Hellas must ultimately depend on maritime superiority; and his happy
appreciation of the position and resources of his country and the genius of his
fellow-eitizcns enabled him to disccrn that public confidence in wise counscl
was alone required to secure that superiority to Athens. There is every reason
to ascribe to him at this early period the large conception which he was now to
declare fully and urge on to execution; but in the meantime, as a still rising
man, he had only been able to make gradual and cautious 1 advances.
The circumstances of the invasion of Datis and Artaphernes, while they
confirmed the justness of his views, interfered prematurely with their
realization ; and the splendid victory of Marathon was certain to give
temporary strength to the party most disposed to thwart him. It was only after
a severe struggle that he sueceedcd, in opposition to the influence and
supporters of Miltiades, in diverting the exclusive attention and resources of
the citizens from the land force of hoplites, to ships, and ports, and
arsenals. It was felt on both sides that this change could not but involve some
transference of power and ascendency from the settled proprietors and cultivators
of land to classes of more restless habits and slighter local attachment, and
it was contested accordingly. His success, such as it was, was mainly due to
his adroitly stimulating the jealousy and animosity of the popular assembly
against Aegina, while he laid the basis of a system which had prospective
reference to a struggle with Persia in case of need, and in any case to the
assumption of a prime influence over Hellas. It was thus that he obtained from
the people their patriotic renunciation of the surplus profit from the Laurium
silver mines, which had previously been distributed, and its devotion to the
construction and maintenance of a fleet'; and with such success, that the city,
after having
been beholden to
Corinth for twenty triremes to complete an armament of seventy against Aegina
in the year before Marathon, eould within ten years of that event plaee two
hundred of her own in line at Salamis. Herodotus himself aseribes the creation
of this fleet, which ‘ was the salvation of Greece,’ to Themistocles ; a fact
quite inconsistent with his influence being of recent date, even though the
statement, that he gained a vote for the entire number of ships at once, eannot
be received against other evidence.
It was only in
respect of the fleet and its equipment that these preparations were
sufficiently advanced to be fully available against the invasion of Xerxes ;
but now the original plan, with all that it promised and all that it
threatened, eould be resumed, and Themistocles exerted all his authority and
influence to hasten its fulfilment.
In former days the
city had availed itself of the harbour of Phalerum, which although exposed was
at least spacious, and had the advantage of being1 within the
shortest distance
O O
of the 1
eity; but on the representation of Themistocles it was resolved to abandon this
in favour of the three natural harbours formed by the rocky promontory of
Piraeus. One of these, of smaller dimensions, appears to have been situated
eastward, at the foot of the steeply-scarped hill of Munyehia ; the larger and
more important lay to the westward, thoroughly sheltered, and accessible only
by a narrow and easily protected inlet. The position of Muuyehia bad been
recognised in earlier times as liable to be most dangerous for Athens if held
by an enemy—as indeed it was to prove more than once long afterwards; but the
plans of Themistocles now extended to the inclusion of this in a general
circuit of impregnable walls, defending the entire peninsula, and of sufficient
extent to afford refuge for the population of the city itself. He urged upon
the Athenians that it was from a Persian naval foree that they would have most
to apprehend
in future; that their
safety depended on their own supremacy at sea; and that should the time ever come
for their country to he again invaded, their true policy would be to decline as
before to rely on the defences of the upper city, and fall back on those of the
Piraeus as a citadel, where they would have a refuge which wTould
spare them the sufferings of their late migrations, and be easily maintained by
a few of the least serviceable of the population, and give them the opportunity
to throw their whole able-bodied strength on ship-board.
The locality itself
provided stone in abundance, and Thucydides refers to the walls as still
existing for the solidity which Themistoeles proposed to give them: they were
sufficiently broad for two of the wagons that brought materials to pass each
other; they were not formed with a core of rubble, nor was mortar employed, but
they were regularly constructed of great squared stones, the upper surfaces of
which were fastened with clamps of iron run with lead. It was said that the
height they were carried to was not more than half of that originally intended,
but even at that height they were fully defensible.
Thus it was that
Themistoeles first gave shape to the principle on which the maritime empire of
Athens was to rest, and of which the parallel long walls were but a further
application, until at last the metropolis itself might be considered as within
the impregnable circuit of the ports and town of the Piraeus.
In the meantime
however the city was too sacred to be neglected: it had indeed to be attended
to in the first instance, though the subject of the fortified ports is duly introduced
at a time when it was already a settled design and a motive force in political
action. It was in accordance with these ulterior views that the walls of the
city itself were recommenccd on a scale greatly in excess of mere repair and restoration,
and rather commensurable with the pre
tensions of a state
which had before been self-confident in energy and genius, and was now resolved
to maintain preeminence as the due of its patriotic devotion and services in
the course of the recant, and still existing, struggle. The area to be enclosed
within the new walls was extended in every direction, so as to include the
suburbs and to admit of future expansion.
The scope of these
preparations was not unmarked or misinterpreted by jealous eyes; the
apprehensions of Aegina were at once re-awakened, and with good reason. The
predominance of the Athenian marine was already absolute, partly from the
number of its triremes, and still more from the efficiency with which they were
manned by a population whom the exigencies of the time had transformed into
trained and dexterous oarsmen, whose daring and self-reliance had been
heightened by success. If Athens were to be secured from attack by land also,
the last check upon her ambition would be lost. Corinth complained later of the
fatal indulgence allowed to these preparations, and might easily share with
Megara the jealousies of Aegina; but it was from Lacedaemon—as head of the
Dorian section, if not indeed of the entire confederacy—that a protest first arrived
by the mouths of special envoys. The present relations of the two states and
their mutual necessities caused the objections, though serious, to be couched
in terms of advice rather than expostulation, Spartans, who on principle
repudiated the protection of walls for their own city, might with a show of
consistency from their own point of view urge the same magnanimous policy on
others; but some other plea was necessary for them as representatives of
alarmed Peloponnesian allies, who had fortifications of their own which they
were not likely to renounce. They urged therefore that to fortify xVthens would
be but to provide the Persian, in the very probable event of a renewed invasion
in still greater force, with one more such dangerous basis as he had already
used to advantage in
L
Thebes; the
Peloponnesus would be a place of refuge sufficient for all, and the best basis
for defence or action; it would be better indeed that the Athenians, instead of
adding to the extra-Peloponnesian fortresses, should co-operate with them in
razing the walls of all the others.
Representations so
moderately expressed might be as moderately entertained, and meanwhile the
progress of the walls was not interrupted in the slightest degree. But the real
strength of the feelings in reserve was presently manifested by the growing
impatience of the Spartan envoys, who even took upon themselves to interfere
with the workmen by commands and threats. Themistoclcs was equal to the
occasion : for an opposition manifestly so serious he intimated his serious
respect, and stopped the works at once; and by his advice the envoys were
dismissed home without delay, satisfied with this compliance, and with the
engagement that the Athenians would on their part send envoys to Sparta to deliberate
further on the suggestion that had been put forward. He himself in fact
followed them forthwith, but for some time after his arrival made no sign of
bringing the business under the consideration of the Spartan authorities. When
questioned by some of the leading men as to the cause of the delay, he replied
that he waited for his colleagues: he was surprised that they had not arrived
long ago, as promptly as himself ; some hindrance must have intervened to
detain them; he had no doubt they would make their appearance in all haste; and
so with one excuse or another he made time draw on. Theopompus states that the
ephors were bribed by Themistoclcs to connive at his dilatoriness; and such a
suspicion is often found to attach as naturally to Spartan corruptibility as
to Athenian craft; but the confidence placed in the plausible negotiator needs
no other explanation, and possibly admitted of none, than the very frankness of
his plausibility, the unscrupulous positiveness of his assurances, and the
reception that was appropriate to the
comrade and colleague
of Eurybiades at Artemisium and Salamis; he had before been welcomed at Sparta
with honours that were almost extravagant, and Hellas was even yet not so
secure against Persia that his friendliness could be dispensed with or
prudently jeopardised by unhandsome imputations. But to delay thus gained there
must necessarily be a term. Rumours that the walls of Athens were rising all
the while received the positive confirmation of a message despatched from the watchful
Aegina by Polemarchus. In point of fact, Themistocles had arranged with the
Council (Boule) that the work should be recommenced as soon as he had started,
and the departure of his colleagues delayed until the wall had reached such a
height that in an extreme case it would be defensible. All hands accordingly
fell promptly to the work, men, women, and children, slave and free, resident
and stranger; and all available materials, whether of private or public
buildings, were seized and made use of indiscriminately. Thucydides adverts to
the appearance and miscellaneous materials of the lower part of the walls in
his own time, as evidence of the hasty energy with which the work had been
executed. The stones were not properly squared or fitted in courses, but laid
together as they best might be; and amongst them were visible even sepulchral
steles and sculptured stones, which showed that not even works of art or
monuments of the dead had been spared.
To the direct
assertion of the fact by Polemarchus, as just mentioned, Themistocles opposed a
flat denial of its possibility ; he represented that so extraordinary a tale
should not be taken on trust from a source which was prejudiced if not hostile
; let men be sent from Sparta to Athens of such character and dignity as really
to command credit, and it would appear how grossly Athens was calumniated.
The challenge made so
boldly was accepted ; and Spartan
l a
envo}rs of
the distinction demanded arrived at Athens to open their astonished eyes on an
effectually walled city; but the reception that awaited them was governed by a
message from Themistocles to the Council, which had passed them on the road.
Abronichus son of Lysieles and Aristides son of Lysimachus, his colleagues, had
before this joined Themis- toeles with news that the requisite height of the
wall had been accomplished; there was no further use or motive for
dissimulation, but the indignation of the Spartans might be dangerous ; his
instructions accordingly were to detain the envoys, with as little appearance
of coercion as possible, but effectually, until he and his colleagues were
released.
The Spartans
expressed themselves with great violence at Athens, and it was not easy to
conceal from them the fact that they were under detention ; but in the meantime,
the hostages fairly in hand, Themistocles believed that the shortest and
frankest explanation at Sparta was the best. His character for candour could in
no case be of use there again, unless indeed with the most credulous and after
lapse of time; he might always dispense with it in dealing with those who had
neither candour nor scruples of their own: for the rest, he was not ill satisfied
as a politician with the price for which he parted with it.
He therefore
presented himself to the Spartans, with the plain announcement, ‘ that the
walls of Athens were now so far completed as to afford perfect shelter to its
inhabitants; and that in case the Lacedaemonians or the allies had any
communication to make to the Athenians, they would please to address them as
capable of knowing their own interest no less than that of the general
community. Of such capacity there was proof enough and notorious ; their
decision that it was expedient for them to abandon their city and take to the
ships was a bold resolution adopted independently
of foreign counsel ;
while on the other hand it was well known, and had been distinctly admitted at
Sparta, that in deliberating on common business their judgment had been
inferior to none. They were now of opinion, that it was better for their city
to be walled, both for the sake of their citizens independently, and for the
advantage of the alliance at large; inasmuch as it was quite impossible for
states to deliberate fairly and equally on common objeets unless upon an equal
basis. On this ground, either the existing state of things must be aequiesced
in as just, or otherwise walls must be dispensed with by all members of the
confederacy indifferently, whether within or without the Isthmus/ The
Lacedaemonians suppressed their anger and vexation perforce,—‘ they had
interfered with no purpose of obstruction, but had aeted as public agents in
communication of an opinion, moved indeed by a particular sense of sympathy
with the known zeal of the Athenians against the Medes.’ And so the two
embassies returned to their respective homes without further difficulty or 1
challenge. But the displeasure rankled at Sparta, and was to rankle, and the
time came one day for Themistoeles personally to feel its effect.
To this occasion, if
we are to accept them at all, we must refer some proceedings which, as
obviously misplaced by Diodorus, are inconsistent with themselves, and as
transformed by 2 Plutarch, only reappear to be further involved in
conflict with most assured history.
We have seen Themistoeles
acting throughout with all the freedom of absolute authority, though apparently
uninvested with any leading political offiee ; and this at a crisis when the
people must have been in the liveliest agitation at their unprotected
condition relatively to the jealousies of the Peloponnesians. On no occasion
could
he have appealed with
more reason to the people in public assembly (ecclc.ua) to be allowed an
interval of uncontrolled action in a business of the utmost importance to the
state, but which in the interests of the state might not be divulged. It is
also perfectly consistent with the jealousy of the demus, that he should be
called upon to confide his plan to Aristides and Xanthippus, the latter of whom
would have rcached Athens in the course of the winter,—men who commanded public
confidence not only from their general character, but in such a contingency
from their being at least his rivals, if not his declared opponents. The report
however which was thus obtained, that the scheme was both advantageous and
feasible, again only excited the popular mistrust of a man who, already well
known as an intriguer of unrivalled ingenuity, had now enlisted his very competitors
on his side and in favour of his most marked advancement. They therefore insisted
further—so the story continues — that he should admit the Council into the
secret of his policy ; and that after this, if the report were to the same
effect, the liberty of action which be demanded should be finally conceded to
him. The great advantage and practicability of the plans were now affirmed; and
so at last with difficulty, and with curiosity stimulated to the highest pitch,
Council and ecclesia gave up the control of the state to a single man, who was
to exercisc it for a time without check or supervision : and thus the stratagem
obtained a success which, whether it might or might not have been gained by a
more direct method, was at any rate held to justify the demand of the
administrator, and the confidence, so cautiously bestowed, of the Athenian
demus.
The city once walled,
we hear of no further opposition or protest at present from either the
Lacedaemonians or their immediate allies ; but the jealousy they had already
displayed could not but be enhanced and their animosity envenomed by the
consciousness of the contemptuous way in which
such clumsy schemes
of interference had been seen through and set aside. To the Athenians, who were
perfectly aware of these sentiments, they could only act as incitements to
second the urgency of Themistocles to complete the defensive works at the
Piraeus.
LEOTYCHIDES IN THESSALY. TIIE
CONDITIONS OF KINGSHIP
AT SPARTA.
B.C. 478 ; 01. 75. 2
and 3.
The Athenian fleet, as we have seen, was detained at least till the near
approach of winter by the siege of Sestos, after the Peloponnesians had
retired, and only then at last made the wished-for return to Athens, where the
restoration of the city and the resettlement of society and domestic life
awaited all available assistance. On this account, and inasmuch as Aristides,
who is next named in command of the fleet, was occupied with the prolonged
negotiations about the walls of Athens, we cannot safely reckon upon it as
having resumed action so early as the ensuing spring of 478 B.C.
The most pressing
services required of it were, first to follow in the track of the
Persian-Phoenician fleet, which had escaped before the disaster at Mycale, and
if not to reach it, to provide occupation for it elsewhere; and then to take
Byzantium, which still insured to the Persians a ready transit by the route of
Artabazus from Asia to Europe, either on some new expedition or to support the
garrisons in Thrace, and the power of interfering with the trade to and from
the Euxine. But the strong northern winds which through the summer always set
down the Propontis and Hellespont, mark out the early part of the year for the
important expedition to Byzantium, and, under
all the
circumstances, it seems to have been deferred to the spring- of the next year,
477 n.c. This inference is in harmony with Diodorus, who assigns it to the
archonship of Adeimantus.
It would be
inconsistent, however, to suppose that the intermediate year was entirely
unemployed in the war, though it may have been mainly occupied with
preparations for a more vigorous renewal, as soon as some past ravages had been
repaired. To this year accordingly we must assign an expedition of great
importance in its purpose, but of which, in consequence of its failure to
realise any important results, we have but the most cursory notice.
A land force, we are
told, was despatched by the Lacedaemonians, under the king Leotyehides, to act
in Thessaly against the Aleuad princes, who, replaced in authority by the
Persian, had rendered zealous aid against Hellas to the very last. There was
the best hope of native assistance, as a strong party of Thessalians had
originally displa}Ted hearty Hellenic 1 sympathy, and
promoted, as long as there was reasonable chance of success, the defence of the
passes of Olympus. On the occasion referred to a combined Athenian and Spartan
force had been carried by the Euripus past Thermopylae to disembark at Halos,
on the western Achaian shore of the Pagasaean gulf. The same route was probably
adopted in the present instance, when Larissa was the object of attack. It is
at least in harmony with this view that, according to a proposed correction of
a text of 2 Pausanias, it was in the fourth year after the death of
Leonidas (a period sufficiently covered by the duration of this expedition)
that his remains were brought back from Thermopylae to Sparta by Pausanias, who
thus acted appropriately as his nephew and regent for his son, and who is found
the next year in command of the fleet.
Whenever this
occurred, we cannot doubt that it wras done in obedience to an
oracle, though none is on record. The unaltered text of the Periegesis,
however, gives an interval of forty years, which carries on the incident to the
time of the grandson and namesake of Pausanias. Arnold Schaefer is unusually
weak here, when he finds a motive for the transfer at this time in the
possibility of danger from the Athenians to the sacred relies as at first 1
deposited.
It is, again, as
connected with this expedition to Thessaly, that we obtain .an available
explanation of the notice that the combined fleets of Athens and Sparta were
present, some time after the retirement of the Persians, in the bay of Pagasae,
as they well might be now, for eo-operating with or transporting the land
force. How Themistocles had a private project for treacherously destrojdng the
fleet of the allies of Athens ; how Aristides, to whom the demus required the
plan to be divulged, reported that it was advantageous but dishonourable; and
how, thereupon, it was refused further entertainment,—this is a tale in wrhieh
Plutarch gives new colour and details to what we have divined of the part
played by Aristides in first learning privately the views of Themistocles in
staying the works on the walls, and then in not denouncing, but very
effectively furthering, the stratagem against Lacedaemon.
To the present
occasion, however, we may probably refer the opposition of Themistocles to a
Spartan proposal for forfeiting the ancient Amphictyonie rights of all cities
that had failed to take part against the Medes. He apprehended the
preponderance that would accrue to Spartan influence, but argued broadly
against excommunicating all Greece, except some thirty-one cities, of which the
majority wrere so small that the assembly would virtually be in the
control of two or three of the largest; and to this reasoning the Pylagorae
gave in.
1 Arn. Schaefer De rerum p. bell. Pcrs. p. 8.
A few lines of 1
Herodotus, which are confirmed as well as copied by 2 Pausanias,
apprise us further, that Leotychides had a course of military success which it
was believed that he only faded to push to completeness because he allowed
himself to be corrupted by those whom it was his office to chastise. He had
however been mistrusted by the oligarchical ephors as likely to be too eager,
king as he was, to drive the Aleuad princes of Larissa to extremities. It was
not so long ago as to be forgotten that king Cleomenes, who had been their
instrument for putting an end to the tyranny of the Peisistratids at Athens,
had attempted for his own purposes to install Isagoras in their place.
Leotychides was watched in his veiy camp, and at least declared to be detected
in the possession of a large bribe—a gloveful of money under his very seat. On
his return to Lacedaemon—at latest, therefore, at the end of the campaign, the
winter of 478 b.c.—the
charge was pressed, and, rather than abide the result of a trial, he retired to
Tegea in Arcadia, his house was razed to the ground, and he never was recalled.
He died at Tegea, and
Diodorus, in agreement with better authorities, says after a reign of
twenty-two years, which was succeeded by that of Archidamus of forty-two years;
but he assigns his death to the archonship of Phaedon ( = 476-56.0.), and, so
far consistently, the death of 3 Archidamus to 434 B.C. His own
subsequent record, however, of the acts of Archidamus is at variance with this
date, and in accordance with both 4Plutarch and Thucydides, who
enable us to fix the term of the life of Archidamus decisively in 427-6 B.C.,
and the commencement of his reign in 469 B.C. Diodorus therefore antedates the
commencement of either reign by seven years.
The chronology of the
succession is thus satisfactorily corrected ; but it is not an unimportant
question how Diodorus was led into the error that he carried forward so persistently.
1 Herod, vi. 72. 2
Paus. iii. 7. 9.
3 Diod.
xii. 45. * Plut. Cimon, 16.
By one explanation
lie merely transferred an event to the archonship of Phaedon from that of
Apsephion by mistake in the name, which in its place he certainly mis-eopies 1Phaion.
Another and more satisfactory view is, that his erroneous date for the death is
the interchanged date of exile. The exile followed immediately upon the
Thessalian expedition, of which no date is given either for one year or
another, but which is quite in its place if undertaken to punish Medism in 477
B.C., though not easily accommodated to the circumstances of 469 B.C. The
expression of Herodotus, that he did not live on to old age in Sparta, conveys
with sufficient distinctness that his life was considerably prolonged after
his retirement,—that he was to at.tain to old age, but elsewhere.
According to this
supposition, therefore, the exile, or rather flight, of Leotyehides was not
reckoned as formal deposition, and it was only from his death that Arehidamus,
whatever authority was allowed him in the interim, was recorded as king-. A
parallel to a certain extent occurs in the case of Pleistoanax, son of the
regent Pausanias; he also was charged with military remissness for the sake of
a bribe, was in exile eighteen years, during which time his son, a minor, is
alluded to as 2king; was then recalled, and has at last his term of
exile included in the full tale of his fifty years of 3 reign. The
tale of his son’s regnal years only commences from this term, his previous
dignities notwithstanding.
It is quite possible
that Arehidamus likewise was a minor at the time of his grandfather’s disgrace,
though from some considerations unlikely. It was before his exile that
Leotyehides, in consequence of the death of his son Zeuxi- damus, married a
second wife; it is implied that a son by this second marriage would have
superseded Arehidamus, the heir of his deceased son Zeuxidamus, perhaps in
aeeord-
ance with precedent,
as the eldest born during his father’s kingship. The only issue of this later
marriage, however, was a daughter, Lampito, whom he gave in marriage to the
presumptive heir Archidamus—son of her half-brother, his own grandson, and, in
default of his further male issue, his heir; and this would seem more probably,
though after all by no means certainly, to have taken place before his exile
than after it.
The circumstances of
royalty at Sparta about this time may be taken as representing many of the
contingencies and consequences of its hard conditions generally. Leotychides
only followed into exile his predecessor Demaratus, who had been supplanted by
an intrigue to which he himself had been a party, and which involved corruption
of a Delphic priestess; and the authority of the representative of the Proclid
line of Heracleids, his grandson Archidamus, could scarcely be confirmed so
long as his own return was a possibility. As regards the other, the Agid line,
Cleomenes, the elder brother and predecessor of Leonidas, had been a party to
the extrusion of Demaratus, and a feeling which arose from some discoveries
upon the subjeet so far alarmed him that he retired to Thessaly, was then suspiciously
busy in Arcadia, was at last and perhaps in consequence recalled, but soon
died a maniac. The present king Pleistarehus, son of Leonidas, was still a
minor; to what stringent control his cousin and guardian, the regent Pausanias,
was amenable we shall presently see, and how soon the accession of Pleistoanax,
the son of the regent, was superseded by an exile that was to last for some
twenty years.
The position and
authority of the kings would thus appear at this time to be about the least
stable thing at Sparta. The relation indeed of the ephors to the kings was
such, that kings and regents could scarcely but chafe under interference and
control, and be uneasy as to con-
stant peril from one
trumped-up charge or another ; and the ephors on their side had cause, if only
hy their knowledge of this very uneasiness, always to exert their great power
of self-protection early enough and vigorously enough.
It is not easy to
read all the stories that are told to account for the setting aside, and no
less for the reinstatement, of Spartan kings, without concluding that many of
them can but represent pretexts for political or private objects, of which the
true particulars are hidden far beyond detection. In a state so bound to the
observance of rigid laws and constitution, changes of policy either requisite
or desired, precautions against ambition or excessive influence, or even the
substitution of another for the hereditary military commander, seem to have
been effected as systematically by a charge of bribery or by a procured oracle,
as they were at Athens more frankly, without any definite charge at all, by the
process of ostracism.
The Athenian demus
could not be more jealous of the independence of its command than was the
Spartan oligarchy. It was in genuine aversion to tyrannies, and to the
contagion of their example, that the ephors, by the not always zealous hands of
their own kings, had rooted out the tyrants from Athens and other cities of
Hellas ; and now the example of Athens in rebuking Mil- tiades for seeming to
claim the entire credit of 1 Marathon, was followed at Sparta by a
severe cheek administered to the first display of arrogance by the victor of
Plataea. To the basis of the tripod at Delphi, which was a common Greek
dedication for this victory, he had attached an inscription which Thucydides
preserves, and which named himself alone, both as victor and dedicator.
The ephors had it
instantly erased, and substituted
another reciting only
the names of the dedicating confederate cities; his position was, however,
otherwise at present undisturbed. The signs of the erasure have been recognised
beside the inscription upon the bronze basis as it still exists at
Constantinople.
PAUSANIAS AND APISTIDES AT BYZANTIUM. ATHENIAN
ACCEPTANCE OF THE ACTIVE LEADERSHIP OF HELLAS.
B c. 477 ; 01. 75. 3 and 4.
By the early spring of the next year, 477 B.C.,
a large naval armament was afloat. Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, says
Thucydides, was despatched from Lacedaemon as general of the Hellenes, with
twenty Peloponnesian ships; and with them sailed the Athenians in thirty ships,
and a considerable number of other allies. Diodorus seems to include the other
allies in the proper squadron of Pausanias, which he gives at fifty ships in
all. They probably mustered on the coast of Asia Minor, and their first
attempts were made on Cyprus, where the Persian garrisons were expelled from
most of the cities. The complete liberation of the entire island, however,
could not be effected, at least within the time available; the attempt was
renounced, and the fleet, anticipating the contrary summer winds, made for the
north, and reached Byzantium, to find it probably all the more unprepared for
defence, from reports received of the direction of hostilities elsewhere. The
city was not taken without some 1 fighting; but we hear of no
considerable difficulty 01* prolongation of the siege. A certain number of the
defenders escaped; but on the capture, Pausanias found himself not only a
second time in possession
\
1 Diod. xi. 44.
of the wealthy spoil
of the ehicf refuge of the Persians in Europe, but also of a number of
important prisoners—officers, and even relatives of the Great King. This second
success, won by him at the head of the confederated naval force of Hellas, as
he had won Plataea in command of the united land forces, seems to have filled
the mind of the Spartan regent with dreams of emancipation from the control of
his national constitution—the galling interference of ephors —of which the
peril of Leotyehides was a recent and perhaps an intentionally warning example,
and which had but lately exposed himself to so public a humiliation.
We miss throughout
the story of his treason any intimation of a really profound and promising
scheme; no extensive connection of adherents among the allies is hinted at, no
apparent opportunity of turning the discontents of a powerful class, the
madness of many or of few, to the elevation of himself to the position of a
tyrant—for nothing less was the project of Pausanias—of universal Hellas.
Absolute selfcontained arrogance, recalling the frequent relationship of pride
to madness, brings to mind also that mania was the end of the wild life of his
uncle Cleomenes I. Pausanias not merely disgusted the Iomans by injurious
treatment in their intercourse with the Spartans, but even the Athenians and
Peloponnesian allies by his superciliousness, and at last took to courses that
put him in the wrong as much with his own countrymen as with the other Greeks,
and threw him into desperate intrigues with the Persians which, for aught we
can discern, were alike hopeless and senseless from the very beginning.
The discontent of the
Ionian allies had been growing for some time. Unfavourably as the Ionians of
Asia Minor contrast with those of Attica, even to an Athenian like Aeschylus,
they were doubtless held still cheaper in respect of strength and discipline by
the Spartans; but they were now under all the excitement of being consciously
committed to a
51
perilous quarrel,
were inspired by the sense of' newly-recovered liberty, and by emulation with
the marvellous energy of the Athenians, whom they were proud to claim as their
relations, whether accepted as such with entire cordiality or 1 not.
To the Ionians — the more so because of their recent enfranchisement—it was
galling beyond endurance to be still treated like slaves; to be interfered with
in watering and foraging parties, till the Lacedaemonians gave leave after
taking precedence ; to be subjected to arbitrary punishments such as stripes,
or picketing to iron anchors, and even to blows from subordinates. To Dorians
from Peloponnesus a much smaller share of such treatment would be intolerable.
Expostulation was vain, and men in command, up to Aristides himself, who here
as at Plataea might claim the privilege of an associate in generalship, were
refused audience, and put off with studied airs of preoccupation or more
insulting disregard. An independent incident, of tragic and shameful interest,
brought on a crisis. Cleonice, a daughter of a noble Byzantine family, was so
unfortunate as to attract the notice of Pausanias, and he forced her parents by
threats to surrender her to his desires. He had fallen asleep when she was
introduced into his apartment; aroused by the sudden noise of a falling lamp,
he seized the sword that was beside him, and, under the momentary impression of
an enemy being near, struck out in the unexpected darkness, to find that he had
slain the unhappy girl, who was approaching his bed in shame and terror. It
was believed afterwards that her eidolon constantly haunted him at night,
repeating a warning and summoning hexameter; that, in distress and excitement,
he resorted to every form of atoning purification, and to mystical rites at
Heraelea and Phigaleia, for evoking her soul and deprecating its anger; but
only to obtain a response which sent him back once more to Sparta with promise
of speedy conclusion to his miseries—a eon-
1 Herod, i. 143.
elusion that did
speedily arrive, but only in a miserable death. The tale, says 1
Plutarch, has been told by many; it was to be told after him again by the
traveller Pausanias, who had it, he seems to suppose, as an unrecorded
anecdote, from the lips of a 2 Byzantine.
It was on 3
this that many of the Peloponnesian allies gave up and returned home, to report
how Sparta was being disgraced and the harmony of the Hellenic confederation
endangered.
Mistrust still more
serious soon arose, to add alarm to the indignation of the recently emancipated
Ionians. The satrapy of Dascylitis, adjacent to the eastern coast of the
Hellespont, was held by the Achaemenid Megabates, who under Darius had been appointed
to co-operate with Aristagoras for the subjugation of the 4
Cyclades, but, quarrelling with his associate, gave treacherous information to
the Naxians, and so frustrated the enterprise. From whatever suspicious circumstances,
the report got about that Pausanias was negotiating for an alliance with his
daughter, in combination with a treasonable scheme against Hellas. This version
of his designs is referred to by Herodotus as merely a report; but Thucydides
could quote documents that came to light at a later date—not later however than
when Herodotus was writing — which proved that Pausanias aimed higher, and
indeed was on his guard against the treacherous nature which had once before
been fatal to another Hellenic traitor. He took an opportunity of committing
the charge of Byzantium to a certain Gongylus, an Eretrian, together with the
custody of the prisoners, including some connections and relatives of the Great
King, and arranged that he should liberate them without communication with the allies,
and proceed in person to the court of Xerxes, bearing a letter in terms thus
literally translated: —c Pausanias, general of
1 Plut. Cimon, 6. 2 Paus. iii. 17. S.
3 Plut. ibid. * Herod,
v. 32.
M 2
Sparta, out of a
desire to gratify thee, sends to thee these men, whom he took captive in war;
and I am moreover minded, if it is also agreeable to yourself, to marry your
daughter, and to bring into subjection to you both Sparta and the rest of
Hellas. If then you are at all favourable to this, send down to the sea a man
who may be relied on, through whom I may communicate hereafter.’
The treachery of
Gongylus to Hellas was gratefully recognised by Xerxes; such a service was
least of all to be expected from an Eretrian, whose country had been so mercilessly
treated by Datis and Artaphernes. He was rewarded by the lordship—in effect
hereditary—of four towns in Aeolis, near those which had been consigned to the
equally unpatriotic Demaratus, and where Xenophon knew of the descendants of
both as still established.
The proposal to
negotiate was at once warmly embraced by Xerxes; it confirmed all that
Artabazus had ever impressed upon him as to the true policy for subjecting
Greece, the policy which he had advocated all along, and which Mardonius had
overruled with such fatal consequences. In all haste he sent down Artabazus
himself to supersede Mega- bates, with authority to forward a letter sealed
with the royal signet to Pausanias, and instructions to co-operate with him in
whatever he might propose to the best effect and in all good faith. The reply
so transmitted was in these terms :—‘ Thus says King Xerxes to Pausanias. The
act of kindness towards the men whom you have preserved for me from Byzantium
beyond the sea, is laid up for you in record in our house for all time ; and I
am gratified by your further communications. Let neither night nor day
interfere to cause you to relax in setting about what you promise me; and be
not hindered for any expenditure of gold or silver, nor for abundant forces in
whatever direction they may be required ; and deal in full confidence with
Artabazus, a man of worth, % ? * a whom I have
sent to you, in what is both my business and
your own, as will be
best and most honourable for both of us.’ The custom here alluded to, of the
formal registry of the king’s friends, is frequently 1 mentioned.
The receipt of this
letter from the Great King seems to have fairly turned the head of the Spartan
regent; and if not the more, certainly none the less, from the earnest of a
large treasure conveyed to him by Artabazus for employment in 2
corruption. He at once assumed the state and the arbitrary airs of a Persian
satrap. He had already abused the dignity which the Greeks could not but
willingly concede to the head of Sparta in any case, and still more to the
victor of Plataea; but he now assumed the ensigns of Persian rank in dress and
attendance, and adopted in serious infatuation the display which in the
Boeotian camp he had sarcastically contrasted with Spartan simplicity. He left
Byzantium to make a round through Thrace, where there were still considerable
Persian garrisons, even as near as in the Chersonesus, with which the royal
signet would probably enable him to open communications. On his return he appeared
with a body-guard of Medes and Egyptians, had his table served with all the
pomp and apparatus of Persia, and could not restrain himself from giving hints,
or rather notice, in trivial matters, of the designs that he was harbouring on
a larger 3 scale. But he returned to find the confederates and
O
their commanders by
no means in the merely irritated and unsettled state in which he left them.
Suspicions were abroad, and general alarm at common danger had ripened into a
common understanding as to the means by which it might be averted. Alike in
demeanour and administration, the Athenian commander Aristides was in absolute
contrast to Pausanias — as the steadfast to the fitful, the deliberate to the
capricious, the just to the arbitrary, the
1 Herod,
iii, 140, viii. 85; Diod. S. xvii. 14; Joseph. Antiq. xi. 6; Esther, ii. 23,
vi. 1.
2 Diod.
xi. 44. 3 Thuc. i. 130.
truly dignified to
all that was supercilious, offensive, and arrogant. The lonians had had
warning before the battle of Myeale, and also at the siege of Sestos, that Sparta
was less to be relied on than Athens for rendering such aid as they required to
maintain their newly-recovered independence ; and the temper of the Athenian
commander Aristides, and of Cimon also if, as is possible from the tenor of
some accounts, he was already associated with him, gave asguranee that such aid
would be rendered with a good faith and Hellenic loyalty, which plainly eould
no longer be counted on from Pausanias.
The crisis must have
seemed dangerous to Aristides himself ; and there was every reason for his
readily entertaining the advances of the insular and Asian allies, who were now
prepared definitely to transfer their recognition of leadership from Sparta to
Athens. It was only from patriotic concession to the predilections of the confederacy—predilections
rooted in immemorial tradition—that Athens had conceded the leadership to
Sparta at sea also, where her own preponderant naval power gave her a fair
claim to preeminence. This preponderance had been gradually becoming still more
decided, and no one knew better than Aristides the future which Themistocles
was at this very time preparing for it, by his improvements at the Piraeus.
The Peloponnesian allies, the peculiar adherents of Sparta, not sorry perhaps
(as at Sestos) to have again an excuse for giving up, had already retired in
disgust; those that remained were the lonians, whom Athens had already protected
against Spartan interference, by assertion of her metropolitan claims, and
whose continued zeal eould be relied on. The same tradition of colonial
dependence was now willingly urged by the lonians themselves; and in truth,
whatever change of character may have supervened from foreign admixture and
under Asian skies, there was still enough of original tribal character remaining
to account
for a very lively
sympathy of relationship, especially as compared with Spartan Dorians. The
heroic traditions of these cities, and their conspicuous monuments, kept ever
in mind that their reputed founders were of the old royal race of Athens, or
had carried from its prytaneum their saered 1 fire; and the motives
involved in these associations were ever most powerful with the Greeks at
periods of excited enthusiasm.
The signs of
relaxation in Spartan energy, and worse still, of a tendency to corruption or
treachery in her most powerful leader, were thus declaring themselves at a time
when Athenian energy, so far from exhaustion, was in the first flush of
sanguine resolution. It is beside the question at such a point to consider
whether Aristides was most influenced in his policy by ambition for the power
of Athens, or concern for the defence of Hellas. His course could only be the
same in either case ; much indeed remained to be done to secure the result of
past victories for the benefit of Hellas at large, and only by Athens coming
frankly and boldly to the front could this security be taken. It was on the
occasion of a distinct insult being offered to Aristides by Pausanias, that an
opportunity seemed afforded to the Ionian malcontents for gaining him over to a
policy which he had resolved not to precipitate, nor even to appear to invite.
On his seeking1 a hearing from Pausanias for
O O
expostulations, and
with intent to inform him of the offensiveness of his conduct, he had been
superciliously put off; the mimic satrap would not listen to him, would
scarcely look at him ; he was not at leisure. Counting on his indignation, the
captains and generals of the allies, chiefly of the Chians, Samians, and
Aeolian Lesbians, made a direct proposal that he should assume the leadership
(,hegemonia), and thus attach to himself the allies, who
had long- been
anxious to give up the Spartans and would at once range themselves with the
Athenians. They quitted the interview however without having elicited cither
pledge or proposal from Aristides to undertake what was suggested to him ; and
yet every word lie had said was confirmatory of the pressing necessity that
something should be done, of the justice of their complaints, of the zeal and
goodwill of the Athenians, and even of the principles of the best settlement
in the event of such a change. He was only cool in his expressions, when he
might have been expected to declare his reliance on the resolution of the
malcontents to encounter the consequences of a quarrel. There were some among
them who could interpret the demand which this attitude conveyed, and Ouliades
of Samos and Antagoras of Chios — it is noteworthy that Aeolian Lesbos is not
even yet included—resolved to commit themselves boldly to an irreparable
breach, in confidence that the rest would follow them, and that Aristides might
be relied on to interpose between them and the Spartans if violence were 1
attempted, and so give permanence to an alliance already approved in principle.
As the general’s trireme was moving in advance on the waters of Byzantium, the
conspirators— so they are called—on a sudden brought their own vessels wantonly
into collision with it, catching it violently amidships. Pausanias came
forward in a rage, and seeing who were the offenders, vented a threat that the
time would not be long before he would show them that it- was not his ship that
they had damaged, but their own native countries. They bluntly retorted £
that it was high time for him to be gone ; and he might be thankful that the
recollection of his connection with the Greeks in the Pla- taean victory
restrained them from inflicting the punishment he merited.’ There and then they
moved off to range
their squadrons in
station with the Athenians, and were joined at once by all the allies but the
Peloponnesians. Such was the first decisive rupture which marked the line
which, for such important consequences, whether in emulation or collision, was
to separate the Ionian and Dorian confederations.
It was precisely at
this juncture that further complications were relieved, by the recall of
Pausanias to Lacedaemon, there to reply to charges of wrongs against
individuals, which in various instances were established. On more serious
public charges he obtained acquittal; but still too much was notorious of how
he had comported himself in his appointment of general, as if it were a
tyranny, and too much was suspected of his inclination to Medism, to allow of
his being again entrusted with command.
It was apparently at
the approach of winter 477 B.C. that he returned home, and his fleet with him;
it would then be, at the earliest, in the spring of 476 B.C. that Dorcis was
sent out in his stead, associated with others, and with only an inconsiderable
force. Dorcis found on his arrival, as under these circumstances was probably
anticipated, that the resolution of the seceding allies to acquiesce no longer
in Spartan leadership was fixed; and after a short stay he returned home, ‘ nor
did the Lacedaemonians afterwards send out other commanders.’ The example of
Pausanias, following so closely on that of Leotyehides, alarmed them as to the
corrupting effect of prolonged absence from the discipline of home; and they
were in truth well content to be rid of the Median war, in which they had only
taken part at all when it approached their doors, and to leave the distant
prosecution of it in the hands of the Athenians, who were not only fully as
competent to conduct it, but were disposed—especially when so engaged— to
remain on good terms with themselves. According to Plutarch they were the
better satisfied with this course
from the conciliatory
assurances, and if so, we must infer from the growing political influence, of
Cimon. Diodorus dates this revolution in the archonship of Adeimantus = 477-6
B.C.
Such was the
commencement of the hegemony, or leadership of Hellas, by the Athenians.
DORIAN AND IONIAN GENIUS AND GENEALOGY.
The sternness and stability of the peculiar
institutions of Sparta had in the course of years produced a national character
so distinctive, that her statesmen and citizens might seem to stand in almost
as strong a contrast, in respect of maxims and manners, and even language, to
other Dorians, as the Dorians at large did to the Ionians. The Dorian colonists
of the shores of the Euxine, of Rhodes and Cos and the borders of the
archipelago, of Sicily and Italy, were drawn of necessity into habits of
general intercourse and free communication with foreigners and aliens, quite
unknown to the Spartans, secluded as they were from even the stimulant
proximity of an Ionian frontier. Commerce was fostered at Dorian Corinth, with
all its consequences of foreign haunt and intercourse, and luxury in the
coarser forms affected by commercial wealth; and innovation and invention were
promoted there as eagerly as they were repressed at 1 Lacedaemon. At
Corinth, as in her western colonies, the plastic and the graphic arts
flourished with a vivacity that communicated no trifling reaction to Ionian
genius; and Dorian Megara. besides being the home of such a master of elegiac
poetry as Theognis, was the
1 Pindar, 01. xiii. 15; Thucyd. i. 13, 69; Herod, ii.
168.
very birth-place of
imaginative Comedy, of which Dorian Syracuse was the nursing-mother. There is
every presumption that this contrast, at least in respect of its strongest
lines, was superinduced mainly by the special legislation of Sparta, which,
overstrained by the police requirements of its institution of helotry and in
the interest of military prowess, carried more than military discipline into
every detail of domestic life.
Lacedaemon anterior
to the Dorian conquest is presented in the Homeric legend as a centre of
refinement, or indeed of luxury; and the picture is by no means extravagantly
out of harmony with such intimations as reach us of its earlier Doric times, in
no sparse notices of archaic Spartan monuments and art — of Spartan sculpture,
and poetry, and music.
Bathycles, Terpander,
Thaletas, Aleman, Tyrtaeus, if they were not Spartans, are so associated in
fame with Sparta, as to prove that appreciation for art lived on with considerable
pertinacity even after the germs of the native faculty for creation had been
ruthlessly trodden down and stamped out. In later days these proper Hellenic
characteristics only appear in a lively devotion to certain religious and
athletic festivals and their accompaniments; beyond this it seems left to
predominating political power alone to constitute a bond between Sparta and the
general Hellenic community, and to preserve it from forfeiting in its isolation
all sympathy with the busy related tribes beyond its jealously-guarded barrier.
This predominance, however, was during a long period sustained and decisive,
uncontested and unquestioned; it was asserted intermittently, but still on
occasion with such promptitude and force, as to give the impression of jealous
watchfulness as well as power. The larger Dorian Hellas in consequence, for all
its varied qualifications and divergences, never renounced a traditional
regard for Sparta as chief of the Dorian race, and peculiarly as chief and
leader
on all occasions of
rivalry and complication with the other great Hellenic section—the Ioniau.
The deepest line of
division that we know among the people who in historical times were designated
collectively as Hellenes, runs between these Doric and Ionic sections ; another
line divides the Aeolians from both, but much less decisively, for among the
varied and widely-spread tribes of Aeolian descent and dialect and
characteristics, while those on the west of the Aegean approximated very nearly
to the most distinctive Dorians, there were others in the islands and colonies
eastward that exhibited many signs of Ionian sympathy. This approach, however,
of Aeolians to lonians is ambiguous and accidental, and historical indications
go far to show that their distinction was all but primitive; that Dorism
developed independently from an Aeolism with which Ionism was already in marked
contrast, at some point of earlier departure, rather than that Ionism and
Dorism together were collateral shoots from an original main Aeolic stem.
Strabo, who, late as
he is, merits even on these points especial attention, remarks, with his usual
good sense, that the earlier divisions of the tribes of Hellas must needs have
followed, and may be tracked by the broader distinctions of dialect, the
innumerable minor subdivisions being left aside. Under this guidance four
families are obtained, which however, by the derivation that he points out, may
again be reduced to a primitive pair, the Ionian dialect being virtually the
same as the old Attic, and the Dorian not to be distinguished from the old
Aeolic. The specialties of Attic speech of the fully-developed period were thus
deviations from primitive Ionian, and those of Sparta from primitive Aeolian.
According’ to this
view, the Ionian and Aeolian dialects
O 3
were in contrast from
the beginning, and were continued among certain sections of the race with less
change in their
forms, though still
by no means exempt from slighter variations, than when they came to be spoken
in the predominant states of Attica and Sparta. Modern criticism has elucidated
in detail the diversities of Attic and Ionic, as well as of Lesbian Boeotian
and Thessalian Acolic, and the purer
1 Doric.
The geographer
supports his analysis by the remark that the inhabitants of Attica at an early
period were recognised as Ionians, and that the colonies in Asia who used the
Ionic dialect were notoriously of Attic origin. Even up to his own time, he
proceeds, all the Hellenes without the Isthmus, except the Athenians,
Megarians, and the Dorians about Mount Parnassus, were still called Aeolians,
and the districts within the Isthmus were also previously in complete Aeolian
occupation, the Homeric Achaeans having been an Aeolian tribe. Then two
interferences took place; a population from Attica, who, according to his own
account, were already known as Ionians, established themselves in the district
along the Corinthian gulf, that was afterwards the best-known Achaia, but only
to be driven back again to Attica by Achaians, when the latter were expelled
from their more easterly seats in Peloponnesus by the intrusive Dorians. The
Aeolic dialect, continues Strabo, was still retained after this revolution by
the Eleians, who had sided with the invaders, and by the Arcadians, who, safe
among their mountains, defied them; though even among these, despite their
political independence, there was a sympathetic tendency for the dialect of the
dominant tribe to prevail. In the case of subjection, as might be expected, the
dialectic modification was decisive; even as Herodotus witnesses, that Ionians
who were left isolated in Cynouria and fell into subjection to Argos became
ultimately Dorised. Allowing for these influences, it is less surprising that
in Strabo’s time
every town in
Peloponnesus Dorised, than that most of them should still retain some dialectic
peculiai'ities of their own.
The Dorians then,
according- to the view of Strabo, had already acquired their characteristic
dialect, as well as certain peculiarities of manners qualifying- their
primitive Aeolism, before this invasion, and he ascribes these changes to the
special climatic and social influences that affect a tribe in secluded and
crowded occupation of a bleak and rugged territory. Upon this view no
distinctive Dorism is recognised prior to the residence of a teeming
population in the rough and limited Doris. But Doris about Parnassus was only
the late seat of a tribe that had previously had many migrations. Herodotus,
who speaks with an absence of hesitation that carries much authority, from its
apparent harmony with uncontested traditions, knows of it first as occupying
Phthiotis, to the south of the Pagasaean gulf, at that time conterminal with
the Thessalian 1 Pelasgi, and including the Hellas proper of Homer;
and, in fact, in close proximity to the original, or at least the primaeval
Achaia. Here it would be in possession of a sea-board, and hence might perhaps
have extended the early Dorian influence, that is afterwards declared so
powerfully, to Rhodes and to Crete. Hestiaeotis, which Herodotus bounds by Ossa
and Olympus, is given as the next seat of the tribe; expelled hence by
Cadmeians, who seem to be represented iu mythus by the epon}rmn
Cadmus, and migrating from Thebes to Illyria, they occupy Pindus under the
title of Macedonians, thence pass southward to Dryopis, and so at last move
across the Crissaean gulf to their final establishment in Peloponnesus. Such a
story is by no means too wild for a period of general unsettlement, and implies
a series of warlike enterprises and collisions, by a vigorous tribe under a
succession of vigorous leaders, and tribal cohesion of a fibre that, in view
of numerous parallels in later
history, it would be
presumptuous to disallow; but we can no more circumscribe the regions
successively taken possession of, than we can limit times of occupation, or the
possible association and reaction of other tribes as such events went on.
This broad
implication of Strabo, that the grand distinction between Dorians and Ionians
was but inherited from a prior, and equally marked, distinction between Ionian
and Aeolian (the Doric Spartans being to primitive Aeolians what the Athenians
were to primitive Ionians), is matched by as broad, and at first sight a more
surprising, assertion of Herodotus, that the Athenians as a Pelasgic race were
contrasted in origin with the Lacedaemonians as a Hellenic one. Interpreted
strictly and literally, this statement would exclude the Athenians and Ionians
generally from the list of Hellenes, and so far would agree with his habit of
speaking of Dorians as specifically Hellenes; these Aeolo-Hellenic populations
would confront Pelasgico-Ionic in the ultimate bifurcation of the race; but it
is manifest that he would have admitted no such extreme interpretation of his
statement, and we must compare other evidence before we pretend to extract from
what he here seems to say, what he can only in reasonable consistency mean.
Pelasgic is as widely
distributed an appellative in legend as Aeolian in history, and though we are
not justified in pronouncing that they are convertible with only a difference
of epoch, the geographical range and the incidents ascribed to both are
curiously similar. Thessaly northwards is Pelas- gie, is Pelasgiotis, as all
Peloponnesus on the 1 south, in legends that it were vain to set
aside as nugatory, and so are the islands and the eastern coast of the Aegean.
Two views in consequence are open to us ; either that the Aeolians superseded
alien Pelasgi, or, more probably, that they were a vigorous overgrowth from
their midst—a section taking
1 Eurip., Iphig. Aul. 1473.
such a start as the
Dorians afterwards took from amongst themselves; and then, that the Ionians
were another, and possibly a later, that made a separate leading shoot upon a
different congenial soil and under contrasted climatic and social influences.
The first of these tribes that rose to a self - consciousness of independence
and superior power might well be apt to consider the differences of the races
left behind as little worth regard. ‘ When Hellas was Pelasgie,’ says
Herodotus, ‘ the Athenians were distinguished as Cranai Pelasgi;’ he marks
other epochs in their history by the titles of Cecropidae, Athenians, and, still
later, Ionians; each change being attached to a change of king or
leader—Cecrops, Erechtheus, Ion—in no case to an expulsion from the country of
the tribe already in possession. With perfect consistency so far, he again
affirms that the Ionians of Asia were a Pelasgie race, that so also were the
Ionians of the Cyclades, and that the Ionian colonies were founded by a
population which had been expelled by the Achaians from Peloponnesus, where
they were called Aegia- lian 1 Pelasgi. Strabo, we have seen,
asserts that it was from Attica that they had originally passed to Aegialea,
and calls them even then Ionians, which agrees with the story of the settlement
of Ionians at Cynouria, where they remained to be subject to the Dorian
Argives.
But these statements
appear to involve the consequence that if the Athenian race was Pelasgie, the
Pelasgie must have been Hellenic; which would contradict the principle of the
distinction drawn by Herodotus himself. He is indeed in the difficulty that the
Pelasgi appeared to have spoken a barbarous tongue, whereas the Athenians spoke
the Hellenic; but he still does not doubt that they £ broke off’
from the main Pelasgie stem, and is therefore driven to conclude that they
changed their language on becoming
Hcllenised. In any
ea?e the opinion of Herodotus goes for very little in a question as to
fundamental difference of language, and cannot be taken to establish a positive
diversity of race between tribes that proved themselves so happily susceptible
of reciprocal influence.
It must be borne in
mind throughout that the name Pelasgian, like Aeolian afterwards, in all
probability comprised a diversity of sub-tribes which, even if upon a general
level of civilisation and relationship, might easily differ among themselves as
widely at least as Celts, Gaels, and Cymri, in tendencies, dispositions,
capacities, and susceptibilities of influence, good or evil.
There is temptation
to infer that Herodotus, being possessed by the Athenian claim to be
autochthonous—to have never immigrated into their country and never to have
been expelled—and at the same time by the persistent tradition of the range of
the Pelasgic period, merely adopted as a necessary conclusion that the
Athenians so unremoved must be Pelasgians, and shut his eyes to inconsistent
consequences. But how evanescent an ethnological distinction he was prepared
to accept as involved in Pelasgic origin appears in the fact of his noticing,
without serious demur, that the Hellenes charged such an origin even upon the
Aeolians of the Archipelago; whence it seems clear that, according to his
conception, Pelasgism might well lie deep down at the basis of both Aeolian and
Ionian antiquity.
Such a charge could
mean no more than that settlers of purer race and more imbued with the nobler
culture that was recognised as characteristic of a new epoch had coalesced with
a comparatively, but only comparatively, alien population. The growth and
assumption of national character by the nations of modern Europe after the
break up of the Roman empire furnish many examples of dis
proportion between
the numbers and the influence of commingling tribes, conquering or conquered.
As time went on, and according to the capacity of the seeondaiy race, it might
well be that though contributing at first most largely to the numbers of the
population, it perpetuated but little of its primitive unculture. Only in one
sense could Ionians and Aeolians be conceived of as members of a non-Hellenic
Pelasgic race, and that is, that a large, perhaps the largest proportion of the
population of either was of a non-Hellenic stock which had become absorbed—
transformed by the superior energy and genius of the smaller Hellenic portion,
of Aeolic genius in one case, of Ionian in the other. Herodotus himself gives
an account of the expulsion, by his own Pelasgic Athenians, of a depressed
tribe of Pelasgi. One version of this quarrel connected it with molestation of
free maidens drawing water from the well Enneakrounoi. This water, we learn
from Thucydides, was used for sacred purposes, especially on occasions of
marriage, and the story—which has many an ancient analogue—reads much like a
mythic translation of a dispute as to a privilege of intermarriage, a constant
source of disagreement between tribes and cities of antiquity.
AYhat is most
surprising in the result thus obtained from analysis of the reports, is the
extremely limited area, even if we include Aegialia and Cynouria with Attica,
which is allowed for the primitive Ionians, and a difficulty arises how this
can consist with the conditions of the grand figure that is made in historic
times by the Ionian race as correlative and in competition with Dorian and
Aeolian conjoined. But Herodotus himself is a witness how comparatively
insignificant were the commencements of Ionia. ‘ At a time,’ he says, ‘ when
the Hellenic race generally was weak, the Ionian was by far the weakest of all
and of least account; for except Athens there was 110 other Ionian city of 1
importance.’
It is characteristic
of a vigorous stock that it will from time to time throw out a fresh shoot that
is more productive than any that have gone before; and not only is a population
thus suddenly prolific and suddenly prosperous, but it presently manifests new
characteristics, assumes new energies, and, in respect of civilisation, is a
true birth of an original species. It is likewise characteristic of the
commencement of new epochs of history, that a particular tribe, sometimes it
may be said a particular family, makes its way out of the indiscriminate crowd
and cluster, and by conjoint development of numbers and characteristic energy
moulds the entire course of after history. History must usually accept genius
of this value as an ultimate fact; it may trace some secondary obligations to
circumstances, to happiness of geographical position or political surroundings;
but no combination of these has ever yet been competent to account for the
genesis of the chief motive characteristics of the genius itself. Still, with
nations as with men individually, while the power to mould circumstances is
much,—is energy in any case and may be genius,—yet for greatest results the
circumstances must be .such as are capable of being moulded ; and moral and
physical endowments within and happy combinations and opportunity without,
nay, even what we are driven to call accident or luck, must conspire, and at
critical periods occasionally do conspire, that the very greatest success that
is conceivable may actually occur.
The situation of
Attica had doubtless many advantages; and even the poverty of its soil, which
rendered it a less tempting prey to invaders, would help to divert iudustry to
maritime adventure, for which its spacious and well-protected harbours gave aid
and encouragement. Accordingly, when the time arrived that moral conditions
were in happy coincidence with material opportunities, Attica became a centre
of mof-t active colonisation, and the colonies she planted again
proved secondary
centres of most active colonisation. So was fdled up and occupied a period all
but unrecorded of marvellous development and activity and prosperity; tlie
prosperity that makes its mark by the speedy growth of a few associated
families into a tribe, of a tribe into a nation; growth with which the world is
so familiar in the stories of modern colonies and their mother countries.
We have no direct and
explicit trace of this vast Ionic development in the Homeric poems; Pelasgians
are noted as still existing, as tribes or hordes, but of no coherence or marked
distinction, and seeming to have already receded into almost as much obscurity
as shrouds them for Herodotus or Thucydides—dwindling, dwarfed, and unprogressive
sections left behind, as poor inheritors of possibly a once great name. What
indeed is not implied of the original greatness of the name when in the most
solemn and ceremonious adjuration of Zeus in the entire poem, he is invoked
under the titles Dodonaean, 1 Pelasgic ? The Aehaian nation of Homer
is not yet even by name Hellenic, though the fact that his chief hero Achilles
belongs to the district that includes Hellas proper already indicates with what
seat was to be associated the hearth of the ultimately dominant tribe. Still
though the period that the poet depicts was that to which he was carried back
by the legends he dealt with, the characteristics of which were
O '
familiar in the early
scattered poems which his own work was destined to supersede, it was at the
same time impossible for him not to be influenced by the interests and
circumstances of his own time. There is much appearance that this was when the
Ionic development was already in active movement; and a hint has even been
detected in the possibly not unintentional disparagement of Athens— sometimes
direct and sometimes by neglect—that the pre
dilections of the
poet were engaged less for the intrusive energy than for the elder races.
A single mention of
Ionians (Iaones) in the Iliad brings them curiously into equivocal connexion
with the 1 Athenians, and with the characteristic
epithet—IXKexfrowes—but not much can be made of the passage. The flowing
draperies of the older Athenians were in contrast to Doric costume, and
together with their peculiar seclusion of women seem to argue Asiatic
affinities or reactions, which were perhaps contracted in the course of the
great Ionian colonisations.
It was the great
pride of the Athenians that they were autochthonous, a boast which was founded
on the principle that neither their history nor their legends, which would have
been accepted as equal in authority, could tell of their nation having ever
been, like so many others, ejected in a body from their territory. Something
may have been due to the defensibleness of the country on its northern mountainous
frontier, something to its occupying a position aside from the route of armies,
or—which is the explanation of Thucydides—to the uncovetable poverty of its
soil. Attica is just such an angle of a continent as populations are apt to be
driven into as a last refuge in violent times—like Cornwall or Biscay, Wales or
Scotland. Such refugees, if able or allowed to maintain themselves in
independence, sometimes only perpetuate a didl and ineffective race, even
though they may not have been merely the most ready to be fugitive, but the
most resolved to resist to the last rather than submit to conquerors. It may be
otherwise if they accept the influence of immigrant populations, or even of
leaders and dynasties from without; and great results ensue when the original
population is so endowed as not only to respond to happiest stimulus, but,
while accepting an influence, to stamp an influence in return. In the
circumstances of Attica
we may recognise the
same process, though resulting in a different form of character, that produced
in England what Shakespeare has called a (happy breed of men,’ from
the mingling of Roman, Dane, Belgian, Saxon, Norman, Fleming, Frenchman, with
the by no means homogeneous original Celtic tribes. Only in later times did
Attica become irre- concileably jealous of aliens. Legislators even as modem as
Solon and Cleisthenes consolidated its power by incorporating strangers with
full franchise; and it seems clear that each change of dynasty in mythical
story expresses the reception of a new wave of foreign, and possibly cognate,
population. To these contingencies, always reserving the chief value of the
truly native, autochthonous genius, we may fairly ascribe no little of that
restless activity and versatility of mind which distinguished the Athenians
even among the generally so restless and mobile Hellenes.
THE CONFEDERATION UNDER LEADERSHIP OF ATHENS.—THE
ASSESSMENT OF ARISTIDES.—THE DISGRACE OF PAUSANIAS.
B.C. 476 ; 01. 75. 4. and 76.
As early as 490 B.C.,
fourteen years before the present date, Aristides had taken a position of
eminence at Athens. He was one of the generals who were associated with Milti-
ades at Marathon, where by setting the example of deference to his single
authority, he contributed still more to the victory than even by his services
in the battle; the next year he was Archon Eponymus. He was related to one of
the richest families in Athens represented by Callias, though accounted, for
his position at least, a poor man; and his immediate connexion was not so much
with the oligarchical as the aristocratical party, and with the party perhaps
even less than with the class. He had been an associate of Cleisthenes the
Alcmaeonid, a very personification of that class, who yet had discerned the
necessity and the occasion for giving more decision to the institutions of
Solon, and had effected this by original measures which caused him to be
celebrated as even more truly than Solon the founder of Athenian 1
democracy.
The Cleisthenean
constitution owed its birth to a sagacious* recognition of the requirements of
new circumstances in a
1 Isoc. ir. avTtS. 232 ; Herod, vi. 131.
new time. By a
liberal admission of new citizens, and by subdividing the tribes and
redistributing them on a new principle, and thus breaking up many inveterate
local and narrow influences, it did as much violence to sectional prejudices
as had been done to the rights of property by the seisachtheia of Solon, to
which measure the innovations of Cleisthenes acted as an appropriate
complement. The example so confirmed was destined to be followed again, and
have the further support of Aristides, though he had first to overcome the
general inclination in Athens to think that a change which had cost so great an
effort was necessarily final, and could be so maintained. It was in the
interval between Marathon and Salamis that Themistocles entered public life. He
was younger than Aristides, and yet we are not on that account obliged to set
aside as impossible the tradition that their rivalry began in a Greek
competition for the regards of a beautiful Ceian youth Stesilaus, to which
Solon himself at an earlier 1 date might have been a party.
Themistocles, son of Neocles, was destitute of the advantages both of fortune
and family, at least of more than just sufficient to give him an opening to a
public career. Confident in energy and resource, ready and incisive of speech,
he measured the scope of his genius against the foreseen contingencies of a
coming period, and dared to set his ambition on a glory that should match even
the trophy of Miltiades, by which he was haunted sleeping and awake.
Politicians of this
stamp, who labour under such initial disadvantages, are apt, whatever may be
their ultimate or fundamental patriotism, not to be over-scrupulous as. to the
persons or things which they attack in their resolve to let the world know
early what men it has to reckon with and will have to find employment for. It
was in the face of the opposition of Miltiades himself that Themistocles
carried his
first great measure,
the appropriation of the annual state revenue from the Laurian silver mines to
the increase of the fleet; and this appears to have been only one out of many
of his novel and adventurous propositions. lie is not named— Xanthippus has
that bad distinction—among those who turned the failure at Paros into a capital
charge; but lie was the main cause (in 483 B.C.) of the ostracism of Aristides,
who had supported Miltiades in more partial attention to a land- force. It was
thus at any rate that he secured the direction of the next three years,
invaluable for the timely furtherance of the naval preparations which were to
be effective at Salamis. The opponent of his policy was honestly converted by
its triumph; Themistoeles himself moved for his recall, and thenceforward the
two acted in concert to an extent truly wonderful, considering the contrast of
their natures. Aristides is said to have been conscious, even in earlier days,
that, in his apprehension of the general prejudicial influence of Themistoeles,
he had opposed him sometimes with too unfortunate effect; once he had even
candidly admitted that it was high time, if such contests were to go on, 'for
the Athenians to throw one or other of them into the pit; and ostracism
intervened in fact as a solution of the difficulty. This, however, had now gone
by; he appeared to recognise that the occasion had arrived for him to follow in
the steps of his master Cleisthenes, though as a master himself, and that he
could not do better service to the state than by giving aid to inevitable
changes with a frauk cordiality which would at least enable him to impress them
with some character of his own, and to regulate violence into ordered energy.
Another contemporary
of Aristides still younger than Themistoeles was Cimon, son of Miltiades, who
will soon come before us in command of the fleet at Byzantium. He possessed a
large share of the best qualities of both his elders, without attaining to the
heroic disinterestedness of Aristides, and certainly falling short of
Themistoeles at the
point where nature
has set the eternal limit between endowments however distinguished and
unquestionable genius. He began life under mingled conditions of hardship and
brilliancy. He inherited the renown of Marathon, which could not but be a
power as time went 011 with the men who had fought there. They were however for
a time ungratefully jealous of it as too great a power, and resented some selfassertion
of Miltiades by seizing the opportunity of inflicting on him a monstrous fine
of fifty talents, which, remaining unpaid at his death, carried on the
obligation and the stigma to his son. The son had the buoyancy both of youth
and of temperament; he was disinclined to the more finished intellectual or
musical culture that already distinguished the Athenians above other Greeks, as
it did the Greeks from barbarians. In speech and manners he was more in harmony
with the Dorian type, and proved himself always naturally more in sympathy with
Sparta than even Aristides, who set up as his legislative model the severity of
Lycurgus. Severe, in early life at least, Cimon was not. He was free of life
and of love, and contemporary poets told of his weakness for the Salaminian
Asteria, and again for a certain Mnestra; told also, however, of his affection
for a legitimate wife Isodice, daughter of Euryptolemus, a son of Megaeles, in
elegies written to console him in his desolation at her death. By these
characteristics, combined with a generous and open nature and energy in public
lofty aims, he was recognised as bearing resemblance to the Euripidean type of
Hercules :
(pavAov,
aKOfiipuv, ra fi^ytar’ dyaOuv.
A wealthy marriage of
his half-sister Elpinice was the means, it is said, of relieving him from the
inherited fine, and his military services at Salamis and onwards commenced a
popularity which was confirmed by an unaffected manner which transmuted a blunt
bearing into gentleness itself. In Cimon we recognise an antique type of what
in modern times
we designate with
admiration as truly ‘ sailor-like.’ It was as quite a youth that he adopted the
maritime policy of Themistocles, which he was to devote his life to carry ingout.
In the midst of the dismay produced by the resolution to abandon Athens for the
ships, Cimon was seen in cheerful style—Ion described him as of noble stature,
with a head of abundant elose and curly hair—leading a troop of companions
through the Cerameicus to the Acropolis, and holding in his hand a bridle,
which he was on his way to dedicate to the goddess in token that the class of
knights
o o
with whom his fortune
was then perhaps only sufficient to rank him, were for the time renouncing land
service. He exchanged bit and bridle for one of the shields—probably his
father’s spoils from Marathon—which were suspended about the temple, and then,
after a prayer to the goddess, descended to embark, communicating to no few the
spirit of his enthusiasm. In the actual conflict he acquitted himself with such
brilliant manfulness as to mark him at once for a career not unworthy of his 1
origin. The first time that his name appears afterwards is as the colleague of
Aristides, by anticipation possibly of his sueeessorship, in command of the
fleet at Byzantium: that Cornelius Nepos, by confusion with a later exploit,
puts him in the place of Xanthippus at Myeale, may be due—and that is all that
can be said—to his name having really occurred there in a secondary command.
Nothing is more
comprehensible than the attraction which is said to have been felt by Aristides
towards the comparatively youthful Cimon, and to none could he resign more
hopefully the responsibilities of active warfare which he now seems to have
relinquished for organic statesmanship.
The lonians did not
adopt Athenian leadership in place of Spartan unspurred by a lively sense of
their requirement of aid, and of their most likely chance for obtaining it.
Neither the seaports
of the Asian coast nor the islands could reasonably feel themselves safe from
further attack and cruel reprisals, sooner or later; too much cause had they to
remember Persian pertinacity and 1 vindictiveness. To secure themselves
against such renewals of violence by weakening or overawing the common enenvy
was now recognised as a genuine common object in the interest of both the
parties to the new arrangement, with as much fervour as it was afterwards
believed to be a mere pretext for exaction on the part of the Athenians, and
with more reason. Revenge for sufferings and the hope of recouping losses b}r
conquest and plunder, were no doubt also not uninfluential motives; the
strength of all combined is proved by the serious arrangements which were not
only agreed to with alacrity, but realised and sustained. A permanent
confederation was formed for the prosecution of hostilities and the protection
of Hellas and her colonies against Persia. To Athens, as decidedly the preponderant
power, both morally and mate- riall}r, was of necessity, and also
with free good-will, consigned the headship and chief control of the affairs
and conduct of the alliance; a position that carried with it the responsibility
of the collection and administration of a common fund, and the presidency of
the assemblies of delegates. As time went on and circumstances altered, the
terms of confederation were modified in various instances; but at first the
general rule was the contribution, not only of money or ships, but of actual
personal service. The important insular communities of Lesbos, Chios, and
Samos occupied from the very first that position of exceptional independence as
compared with the smaller islands and the separate cities of the coasts which they
long retained. They were able and willing to yield their full share of
assistance to the main object in manned and disciplined war-ships, and did
not make themselves
liable for a money assessment, for which, as time went on, both the supply of
ships and service of men was elsewhere willingly commuted. We have no precise
enumeration of the allies of Athens at this early time, but the course of the
history brings up the mention of many; and on two occasions—at the outbreak of
the Peloponnesian and Syracusan wars—Thucydides gives lists which are comprehensive,
though in disappointingly general terms. Crete was never directly affected by
these events, and Cyprus was also soon to be left aside; but otherwise all the
Greek islands of the Aegean northwards—except Melos, Thera, Aegina, and
Cythera—were contributory, including Euboea; as were the cities on the coasts
of Thrace and the Chalcidic peninsula from the Macedonian boundary to the
Hellespont; Byzantium and various eities on the coasts of the Propontis, and
less certainly of the Euxine; the important series of eities on the western
coast of Asia Minor—though apparently with considerable exceptions—Aeolian,
Ionian, Dorian, and Carian, as far as Caunus at least on the borders of Lycia,
if not even round to the ChelidOnian isles.
The sacred island of
Delos was chosen as the depository of the common treasure and the place of
meeting of the contributors. Apart from its central convenience and defensibleness
as an island, and the sanctity of the temple, which had been respected, and
more than respected, by Datis, who even burnt lavish incense there,— it was a
traditional centre for solemn reunions of Ionians from either side the Aegean.
Thucydides quotes the Homeric hymn as proving that these festivals in very early
times were of the same character as those which in his day collected the entire
Ionian population of every age and sex at the Ephesian celebrations. Both
Polycrates of Samos and Peisistratus as tyrant of Athens had displayed a pious
regard for the seat of the nativity of Apollo and Artemis, no doubt of much the
same value and significance as the jealousy
which has involved
modern politicians in war ostensibly upon a quarrel about the keys and custody
of holy places. The annual theoria of the Athenians to Delos is memorised in
the story of the death of Socrates.
At the distinct
request of the allies the Athenians appointed Aristides to superintend the
difficult process of assessing the various forms and amounts of contribution.
This implies that his fairness and probity must already have gained general
approval; though it is possible that it was his strict observance of justice in
the performance of the task that obtained for him that universal character
under which he is recognised by Herodotus, who declares him to have been to his
mind the very best of the Athenians and the most just. "We are fain,
however, to admit that he may have merited and obtained that title previously,
for it were pity to sacrifice the story that he had, necessarily at an earlier date,
written his own name on the ovster-shell for a clown, who could give no better
reason for his vote of ostracism than that he was utterly tired of hearing
about Aristides the Just—the Just.
The total annual
amount of the assessment was the large sum of 460 talents (^112,125), and this
perhaps not inclusive of, but only supplementary to, the costly supply of
equipped ships furnished by some of the cities in lieu of a money payment, and
exclusive again of any payment by Athens, whose navy was most important of all.
We know as little of any basis on which the required total was calculated as we
do of the proportions in which it was distributed. We are only assured by the
satisfaction expressed in the settlement —perhaps heightened in its echoes from
experience of later changes—that the total, like the distribution, was held to
be perfectly justified.
According to 1
Plutarch, the Greeks had made payments
towards ihe war even
under the leadership of the Lacedaemonians, but not on the principle of such a
distinct survey and estimate of their respective resources as was now carried
through by Aristides. The assessor came forth from the trial a poorer man than
he entered upon it—to the great astonishment of Athens, and somewhat to the
amusement of Themistocles, who professed to recognise that as but poor praise
for a politician which was not too extravagant a merit for a money-bag.
The prospect of peace
and security might well reconcile these industrious cities to payments, even
exceeding in amount the tribute formerly exacted by Persia, which in most
important cases had been levied by tyrants or satraps, who could enrich
themselves with all the recklessness of arbitrary power. The tax so willingly
paid by autonomous states who had joint votes in its expenditure was first
called the </>opo?; it is not quite clear whether an inheritance of the
former title of tribute, or a euphemistic modification of it on occasion of
the change. Thucydides thinks it necessary to explain the term as an equivalent
of (f>opa. In later days the Athenians found even the term (j>6pa for a
tax odious, and substituted for it avvra^is, as implying a burden not imposed
but agreed upon. The immediate officials who, according to Thucydides, were
intrusted with the receipt of the fund, and according to their title, with the
dispensing of it also, were the Hellenotamiae, whose appointment rested with
the Athenians. This title, by its very parallelism with the Hellenodieae of
Olympia, and indeed of Sparta xalso, carries with it an implied responsibility
for the common interests of Hellas, and we must assume that their functions
were supposed to be exercised under certain agreed conditions of audit and
control by the periodical congress. The whole arrangement was based on the
model of the ancient
amphictyonies, blit
vastly dilated both in scope and scale. Themistoeles may have had no hand in
its organisation, but he who had urged elsewhere so cogently, that the more
insignificant cities, whatever the theoretical equality of their vote in such
assemblies, would al\va}Ts be controlled by one or other of the few
more powerful, must have been well satisfied with the prospect for the power of
Athens in such a combination, where she stood in her preponderance unrivalled
and alone. T\rhen assessment, collection, and distribution were
exclusively and immediately in Athenian hands, no check of general supervision,
at whatever seat of the treasury, could long be counted upon, by those who knew
Greece, to prevent distribution being mainly biased towards Athenian policy and
purposes. AVe hear nothing directly of any negotiations with Sparta with
reference to this fund and the further prosecution of the purpose to which it
was to be applied; and yet a confederacy that was to be the common bulwark of
Hellas, and that proposed to itself the task of so dealing with Persian power
as to render her hitherto periodical aggressions impossible for the future, had
surely a claim upon the Peloponnesians generally. The peninsula that had hardly
roused itself before to move its arms beyond the Isthmus until alarmed for the
immunity of its own coasts, could scarcely but be urged now to further the
efficiency of the fleet 011 which it might again have to rely for its immunity
hereafter. The Spartans however did not at this time naturally look very far
ahead ; it was enouffh for them and satisfied their traditions to see that ©
there was no danger
immediately pressing’; in any case they could not now appear as allies
subordinate to Athens, where they had lately been superiors; their own power
and that of their immediate dependents and allies—Corinthians, Arcadians, and
the rest who had sallied with them to Plataea— would always be in reserve; the
conduct of Leotychides and Pausanias abroad had moreover not only put them more
than
ever out- of conceit
with detached enterprises, but to some extent had disarranged their political
and military system. All such difficulties and objections only operated to
enhance the value of the opportunity to Athens, and we may with much confidcnce
assign to this time an embassy that arrived at Sparta from the Athenians to
move—perhaps in the common Hellenic synedrion, which was still considered to
meet there— the further consideration of the relations of Hellas to Persia. Its
announcements and proposals were not received without producing considerable
agitation. They included at least a vindication, which we may suppose was
rather challenged than in the first instance volunteered, of the scale on which
the harbour of the Piraeus was being extended as necessary for the security and
reception of the combined Hellenic fleet— now so very numerous from the
accession of the colonies— and on which the security of Hellas would
henceforward depend. The strong argument of an oracle that commanded the
Spartans to beware of admitting a halting leadership was urged, it is said,
against their renunciation of maritime hegemony, the natural complement of that
which they retained by land. The ambition moreover that had been so fostered at
Athens by glory and success could scarcely but spring up under like influences
among the younger spirits of Lacedaemon ; the excitement that crazed Pausanias
was not without its effect on minds by many degrees more sober. The passions
however that were now so born had to wait their time and their turn ; at Sparta
the power of the elders wTas supreme, and the aspiration of the new
generation had to survive if it could, and as in effect it did, the
sexagenarian predecessors in possession. To a Heracleid Hetaemeridas is
assigned the ingenuity of propounding reasons that sounded sufficient for
leaving the Athenians to take their own way undisturbed, as it was clear that
they intended to take it in any case. Such at least is the point of view from
which the certainly perplexed and
disarranged
notices of 1 Diodorus seem to fail naturally into cohercnce. He
concludes that the Athenians, being entirely relieved from apprehension of a
breach with Sparta, were at undisturbed leisure to apply themselves to the advancement
of their own city; and from his last date (the archonship of Dromoclidcs, 476-5
B.C.) there certainly endues an interval of several Olympiads—the o/xaixf-ua of
2 Thucydides, a period short enough, and yet how long for Greece!—
within which the two great powers of land and sea, of Dorian and Ionian stock,
are at least not in hostile collision. One transitory difficulty only was to
occur, or had already occurred, that bore such a semblance, and this again was
due to what must be called another extravagance of Pausanias. He reappeared at
Byzantium in a ship of Hermione, professedly to take part in the war, though
without any public authorisation from Sparta, and in reality with intention to
proceed with his criminal intrigues. Between his personal authority with those
who could not suspect him of treason, and his connections with the party which
at Byzantium, as in Athens itself, would through rivalry or in consideration of
bribes concur in such designs, he managed to establish himself in the city in
such a position, that when the allies under the conduct of Cimon took the
alarm, their ejection of him is expressed by phrases implying either direct
violence or starving out. Plutarch, who does not here copy Thucydides, employs
the same expression. He went off southwards, but only to fix himself at Colonae
in the Troad, within easy reach of Artabazus, if not of Demaratus and Gongylus
also. Information of his practices however went past him to Sparta, with no
favourable account of his doings; and the ephors forthwith despatched the
formal summons of a scytale) bidding him return in company with
the herald who bore it, and never quit him on pain of being accounted a
national enemy. Unwilling to excite further suspicion, and in 1 Diod. xi. 43 and 50. * Thuc, i.
10.
O 2
confidence that with
the treasure at his command he could escape from existing charges by bribes, he
returned a second time. On arrival he was placed in confinement, and retained
there some time by the ephors, in the exercise of their independent authority
even over a king, not to say a regent; and it was only by treating and
management that he obtained a formal trial at an opportunity for bringing the
accusations against him to a favourable issue. Nothing was established against
him, either by his enemies or the state, with such positiveness as to warrant
severity towards one, who, himself of the royal blood, was also the official
governor and representative of the minority of his cousin, King Plistarchus,
son of Leonidas. His acquittal however left him not the less under grave suspicions,
on account of his infringements of Spartan discipline and his manifest leaning
to the wa}Ts of the barbarians ; he remained therefore for years
unemployed, and not unwatched, until impatience was again to overmaster him and
hurry him to a wretched catastrophe.
It must have been
about this time that intrigue with Persian gold from the satrapy of Artabazus,
and possibly with some reference to the invitations of Pausanias, was brought
home to an agent in Peloponnesus. This was Arthmius, son of Pythonax of Zeleia,
a town rather of Phrygia than the Troad: he was a proxenus of Athens, and at
Athens indignation was vehement accordingly. 1 Demosthenes quotes
textually a decree, alluded to in like terms by both 2 Aeschines
and 3 Deinarchus, which remained inscribed on a bonze stele in the
Acropolis, and by which, on the motion of Thucydides, Arthmius was declared
‘degraded and hostile,’ and warned under penalty of death, not only from Athens
itself, but from every territory under Athenian control; and the exclusion
extended to his family and his 4 descendants.
1 Demosth. Phil. iii. p. 122. 2
Aescli. c. Ctes. sub fin.
* Deinar. c, Arist. 25, 26. 4 Plut. Them. 6.
B.C. 476; 01. 75. 4
and 76. 1.
The command of the combined fleet had in the
meantime been taken over at Byzantium by Cimon, who, arriving from Athens with
a small squadron of only four ships, had nevertheless found an opportunity for
a brilliant achievement by the way. In the absence of the chief Greek force at
Byzantium, the Persians, who were not quite cleared out of Chersonesus, and
some garrisons further west, were giving signs of renewed activity and
intriguing for the co-operation of Thracian allies from the north. AY ith his
four triremes, which no doubt were provided with the improvements introduced by
1 Themistoeles, he successfully attacked their flotilla of thirteen
vessels, and then followed up his victory on land by beating and driving out
both Persians and auxiliaries, with such effect as to set the fertile peninsula
entirely free for Athenian re-oecupation. AYe can scareety refuse this exploit
as related by Plutarch a place in the history, and it is not easy to find a
better, or indeed another, for we must demur to accepting it as introductory to
the reduction of the important rebellion of Thasos some years later, when the
fleet employed was necessarily much more numerous and powerful.
1 Plut.
Cim. 12.
The full foree of the
Byzantine fleet being1 now required, was directed by Cimon,
energetically and without delay, to unfasten the hold which the Persians,
though ousted from the straits, and, as we may infer, from 1 Lemnos
and Thasos likewise, still retained upon Thraee. Their opportunity for
receiving reinforcements from Asia was now finally cut off, and the time had
come to deal with them in detail.
Far and wide over
Thrace, as well as along the Hellespont, the officers of the Great King had
held posts ever since the European expedition of Mardonius under 2
Darius. It was then that the island of Thasos had been reduced by them, and
compelled to demolish its walls and surrender its navy, to the formation of
which it had devoted the profits of the mines on the mainland—an anticipation
of the policy that was to have better fortune at Athens. One chief Persian
stronghold was at Ei'on, at the mouth of the Strymon, over against Thasos,
commanding the access to the gold regions of Mount Pangaeus, which, as worked
by the Thasians, had rivalled in productiveness those of their own 3island.
The district, however yielded silver as wrell as gold, 4and
was occupied partly by the Pierians, between the mountains and the sea, partly
by the Odomanti, and most especially by the Satrian Thracians, all most warlike
tribes, whose seats extended northwards, among thickly-wooded or snow- covered
mountains, and who never had been to the knowledge of the historian otherwise
than independent. On their loftiest mountains they had an oracle of Dionysus,
which implies the culture of the vine on the lower slopes, and corresponds with
what might be inferred from the mythological aspects of the region ; it has
even been conjectured, not unplausibly, that the Diouysiae Satyrs were in
origin no other than these wild Satrae. The limits of Macedonian sway were
already advanced very close up towards
the 1
Strymon, between which and Mount D}'sorus lay other most productive mines.
Herodotus had visited with marvel the mines at Thasos, which he ascribes to
early Phoenician colonists ; Greeks possibly in direct intercourse with
Phoenicia, who had brought thence their knowledge of mining, even if they had
not, which is probable enough, Phoenician associates. The resources which were
appreciated so early, were still and long after unexhausted, at least on the
mainland; the Persians levied rates upon them during their occupation, and
Thracians, Athenians, Thasians, and Macedonians fight over them down to the
extinction of Hellenic autonomies by the kings, who drew from them the very
sinews of their military power. The liberation of Thasos from Persia, after the
destruction of the fortifications by the Persians themselves, is passed over
as a matter of course; but the reduction of E'ion was attended by some
difficult and remarkable circumstances. The Persian in command was Boges, a
man of desperate resolution, who held out to the last. He relied on his
fortifications, and was in correspondence for supplies with friendly Thracians
of the upper Strymon, in the district of Siris, which had been subjugated and
cleared of its earlier Paeonian inhabitants by Mega- bazus, lieutenant of
Darius, and in which Xerxes had deposited his sacred chariot.
It is an illustration
of how far the successes of Leotyehides in Thessaly, incomplete as the}r
were considered at home, had transferred power to the Hellenic party, that
Menon of Phar- salus aided the Athenians here with a subsidy of twelve talents,
and a squadron of 300 Penestae mounted at his own
2 charge. There is only a question whether
his great recompense was citizenship or somewhat short of this—aleleia. By the
time the armament of the allies arrived, under the command of Cimon, such a
force had been concenti’ated by Boges,
cither from allies
and stations inland or from the garrisons which controlled the numerous cities
of the adjacent Clial- cidic peninsula, that he was encouragcd to stand a
conflict in open lield ; he was worsted, however, and driven within the walls,
where his numbers only gave the besieged additional embarrassment. Cimon’s
force was sufficient to invest the city, and the hoped-for relief never made
its appearance; the Athenian general had cut off all chance of it, by detaching
a force against the Thracians and driving them before it in all
C? O
directions. Famine
was now imminent, but the place still held out; and the offer of conditions of
surrender, including safe- cunduct to Asia, which was made readily by the
besiegers for the sake of speedier possession of their prize,—the very citadel,
and also the treasury of the wealthy province,—was rejected. The difficulty of
holding out, however, was not dependent alone on pressure of famine, however
urgent; there was a danger more urgent still. The walls of the city were of
unburnt brick, that would yield readily to the action of water; and Cimon, by a
stratagem th.it was long a favourite subject of celebration, and was one day to
be imitated against the walls of 1 Mantinea, so dammed and diverted
the Strymon, that under its action the speedy formation of a breach was
unavoidable. The catastrophe that ensued has many parallels, espeeia.ly in
Eastern history; Butes, or Boges, slew his children, wife, and concubines, on
an enormous pyre, disappointed the besiegers by scattering from the wall
before their sight into the Strymon all the treasure of gold and silver out of
the citadel, then fired the city and the pyre at onee, and entered himself and
his friends with him into the flames. ‘ On this account he is still to the
present time praised by the Persians,’ says Herodotus, {and rightly 2
too.’ It wou’d be rash, however, to conclude that this immolation was so
complete that no spoil whatever, nor Persian prisoners
of'birth available
for ransom, were left over for the victors. The terms of Thucydides imply a
selling1 into slavery as consequent on the 1 capture, and
an anecdote relates how on such an occasion, at least, Cimon enriched himself
by sagaciously taking his share rather in naked prisoners than their rich
accoutrements.
rlhis
conquest at once freed the Greek cities of the seaboard of the westward gulfs
from annoyance, and added them as contributors to the Aristidean assessment; as
such we find distinctly enumerated Argilus, Stageirus, Acanthus, Scolus,
Olynthus, and others come in by implication. Thucydides names the capture of
E’ion as the first of the exploits by which Athens advanced to empire, and so
distin- tinguishing it above others unnamed must, I think, be held to imply
that the Athenians from the first held the placa in their own possession. It
thus became their basis for advancing some ye.irs later to a position higher
up the river, and of most admirable natural advantages. Old traditions gave the
Athenian, what he accepted as a title, to feel himself no stranger in this
region. He was accustomed to the tale that the sons of Theseus, Demophon and
Acamas, had, one or the other, or perhaps both, touched here after the taking
of Troy, and close at hand was the scene of the loves of 2
Demophon—or of 3Acamas—and Phyllis. Phyllis is the eponymous nymph
or heroine of the district Phyllis, that lies between the northern slopes of
Mount Pangaeus and the river Angites, that flows parallel to it to join the
Strymon in the lake Prasias above Ei'on. 4Aeschines appeals to this
mythus —how Aeamas (his Scholiast says Demophon) had received the site of
Amphipolis in way of dowry—as being notoriously ancient, as well as, at any rate
to the satisfaction of his hearers and his argument, authentic; and it implies
an inaccurate and modern apprehension of the characteristics of a period given
to limited variations of mythus, if one should imagine
1 Thuc. i. 98. 2
Serv. in Yirg. Ed. v. 10; Ovid, Ejnst. Her. 2.
* Lucian. <h Sail.; Schol. Aesch. dc Fill. Ley. 4 Aesch. de Fal.
Ltg.
that the story had
its origin after this campaign of Cimon. We may far more probably assume that
it is a genuine, though of course mythical, record of some primitive transactions
between Athens and this region ; a consequence of it no less real than that
hankering after power in this quarter by the Athenians, a passion which returns
again and again, like an ineradicable impression of early youth, which owed
much of its force quite as probably to unconscious inheritance as to any later
influence. The story of this love, as fully told, was not encouraging ; Aeamas
was 110 more constant as a lover than his father Theseus. Ever expected to
return according to his promise, ho was looked for in vain, and Phyllis
destroyed herself. Poetry, of whatever date, told of her transformation into an
almond-tree, of which the premature blossoms await the dallying leaves; they
burst forth when the belated lover arrived to throw his arms around the yet
warm and not yet quite unconscious stem.
In the same year as
the capture of Eion (476 B.C., during the archonship of ^haedon), is given in
an isolated notice, and very unsatisfactory terms, the disaster of an Athenian
force under Lysistratus, Lycurgus, and Cratinus, said to have been destroyed by
the Thracians after their conquest of E'ion. If we accept this at all, it must
be as a corrupt record of some serious mishap, after the reduction of the place
by Cimon, to the land force which had at first operated successfully to check
Thracian attempts to raise the siege.
More disasters were
to follow thereafter through a series of years, until the Scholiast of
Aeschines could tell how it was, because Demophon had broken tryst with Phyllis
in nine several appointments—there seems a hint of suggestion here in the name
of the important locality, Nine ways—that the nymph in bitterness had doomed
the Athenians to expiation by as many defeats; the Scholiast accurately reckons
them up,
and so accurately no
doubt would the ascribed denunciation of the nymph keep level pace with
Athenian misfortunes.
Besides the general
commercial advantages of such a position, the precious metals of the adjacent
mines were to prove too tempting not to determine the Athenians to assume, as
time went on, the position and rights rather of conquerors of the Persians,
than mere liberators of their oppressed subjects, Hellenic or other, the
Thasians or Thracians who had previously shared these productive sources of
revenue between Hhem. It was not long before, between claims for restitution
and resentment at encroachment, they became very seriously embroiled with both.
Herodotus makes
mention of another hold of Persians on Europe, respecting the fate of which
there is considerable difficulty. This was Doriscus, at the mouth of the Hebrus
eastward, opposite Samothrace, on the border of the vast plain where Xerxes
reviewed his army. It had remained a Persian fortress since the Scythian
expedition of Darius. For the governor appointed by Darius, Xerxes substituted
Maseames, son of Megadostes, and by him the post was so stubbornly maintained,
that after all the other Persian officers had been rooted out from Thrace and
the Hellespont, he alone defied all the numerous attempts to eject 2
him. This is the only notice we find of the defence of Doriscus; it is perhaps
presumable that it came to an end at the death of Maseames, for though the
honours that Xerxes accorded him were continued by Artaxerxes to his sons, it
does not follow that they succeeded to his command. The city of Ainos, again, a
very short distance to the east of Doriscus, was certainly associated with 3
Athens. It was Maseames probably who animated the movement that Cimon had
countervailed in the Chersonesus.
The future political
position and influence of Cimon were
not only advanced by
his success as a commander in these northern wars, but also by the brilliant
retrieval they induced of his private fortune, so low at the time when he only
inherited the liability to a crushing' fine. Opportunities of enrichment
legitimate enough, from share of spoil and so forth, were doubtless open ; but
these operations had moreover broug-ht under Athenian control the Chersonesus,
where under other circumstances Cimon might have succeeded his father Miltiades
as tyrant, and where the present would no doubt reinstate him at least in an
extensive proprietorship. It is thus that, the embarrassment of the fine
notwithstanding, we read of him as indulging in lavishness which was accepted
as ungrudged display in a man, if not of hereditary wealth, yet of hereditary
title to be wealthy. It is even inviting to conjecture that he may have had
some proprietary rights in the neighbourhood of ETon; the notion is suggested
by curious hints, so significant as to demand collating, of relations and
relationships to each other and to this part of Thrace, of the families of the
tyrants Miltiades and Peisistratus and the historian Thucydides.
Miltiades I colonised
or obtained possession of the Chersonesus, when he quitted Athens out of
disgust at the rule of Peisistratus; and there, after death, received the
recognised heroic honours of a {founder ’—an oiKicmjs. As belonging
to the Philaid gens he claimed deseent from Ajax, as the Aeaeid Philaeus had obtained
Athenian citizenship and settled at Attic 1 Melite. The demus
Philaeus was connected with the same 2 hero, and to this
Peisistratus belonged. The gens, not the demus of Miltiades, and the demus, not
the gens of Peisistratus, wTho was a Nelid, have thus a common
relation to Philaeus; and this is the first of several hints, individually
inconclusive, of their connection with each other. Peisistratus may indeed have
claimed to rank as a Philaid also, through
some maternal 1
connections, as Pericles was attacked as an Alcmaeonid, thong'll only so by the
mother’s side. A halfbrother of Miltiadcs I, by the mother’s side, was Cimon,
to whom the nickname Koalemus imputed dulness of intellect. Of his father
Stesagoras wc have no particulars; for anything that appears then, his
descendants, among them Miltiades of Marathon, have no claim to the Aeacid
descent of Miltiades the first. Ilis wealth at least is avouched by his winning
three Olympic chariot-races ; he gratified Peisistratus by causing him to be proclaimed
as victor for the second, and so gained recall from banishment; he disappointed
the Peisi- stratidae of like honour on the third occasion, and was assassinated
in 2consequence. Stesagoras IT succeeded his uncle Miltiades I at
the 3Chersonesus, and was himself succeeded by his brother Miltiades
II (515 B.C.), in whom the Peisistratids took such interest as to despatch him
thither in a 4trireme. Of the concern of the Peisistratidae with any
other part of Thrace we hear nothing; but Herodotus furnishes the curious and
isolated fact, independently of any notice of conquest, that Peisistratus drew
considerable revenues from the 5 Strymon.
Miltiades II, by a
first and Athenian wife, had a son Metio- chus. whose fortunes were remarkable:
he was captured by the Persians when they drove out his father, 493 B.C., and
Darius either restrained or gave loose to resentment, so far as to give him a
Persian wife and family, and so denationalise him. An own sister of Metiochus
was Elpinice. But their brother Cimon was the son of a second wife, Hegesipyle,
daughter of a king of Thracians—6 Olorus.
As regards Thucydides
the historian, he too, by his own statement, was son of an Olorus; by that of 7Marcellinus,
of a Hegesipyle also; and according to the same authority and Plutarch, he was
buried in the £ Cimonia,’ the family
1 Plato, Hipparch, p. 288. 2 Plut. Cim. 4; Herod, vi. 103;
Ael. T\ If. ix. 32. 3
Herod, vi. 38. * Id. vi. 39. 6 Id.
i. 121. 6 Id. vi. 39. 7 In vit.
cemetery of Cimon by
the Melite Gate, close to the tomb of Elpinice. Thucydides, on his own showing,
had, like Peisi- stratus before him, property on the Strymon ; and 1
Hermippus explained, not implausibly, his intimation of peculiar knowledge and
his rather anxious tendency concerning the Peisi- stratidae, by his asserted
relationship to the 2 family. Plutarch, at variance with other
authorities who put the catastrophe at Athens, says that it was at Seapte-hyle
that he was assassinated.
1 A}). Marcell. 18; Schol. Thuc. i. co. 2
Thuc. vi. 35. 3 Cimon, 6.
THE DEVELOrjIEXT OF ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY.
After the restoration of the walls of Athens and
the speedy resettlement of domestic life and civil order, the ancient local
influences led to a resumption of ancient habits ; but along with much that
reappeared unaltered from of old, there came up much that was surprisingly
novel, and not more in the material, than in the moral and intellectual,
equipments of strenuous civilisation in the capacities and aspirations of
various competing classes. It was soon recognised by some, who were by no
means forward to invite innovation, that changes must be admitted in the
distribution of political power, conformably to new manifestations of
political energy. The exceptional powers of the crisis involved in their lapse
something more than mere return to previous arrangements. In the difficulties
of the conflict, necessity had reconciled the citizens to entrusting unusual
discretion to a restricted body, and the vigorous tone which was in consequence
communicated to the action of the state had for a time confirmed the authority,
perhaps enhanced the pretensions, of a Council which is referred to constantly
in general terms ; we learn by a casual notice of Aristotle 1 alone,
that this was not the Council of 500 to which Miltiades had
1 Arist. Polit. v. 3, p. 683 a.
been responsible
during the earlier invasion, but the more limited Council or Court of the
Areopagus. The time had not yet arrived for this venerable authority to be
directly assailed, but otherwise all traditional respect was becoming seriously
weakened during the later prosecution of the war ; a spirit of proud and even
arrogant self-reliance spread among the mass of the population, when each man,
fighting with zeal as if the event depended on himself, was almost persuaded
that not even the general had contributed more to its result. The urgency of
the times gave opportunity and prominence to men who never before had a chance
of either, but, when so put to the proof, were as worthy as the best. The urgency
of the strain might relax, but not so the ambition of the many, who wore
ill-content to fall back in civil life into places below those with whom they
had ranked in the face of danger as equals or superiors and who now had only a
privilege to plead and no sufficient reason. It was a familiar principle and
experience with the Greek, that political franchise should and would be
co-extensive with military service; and now for the first time a victory at sea
had been so important and so glorious, that the familiar maxim carried its
application to the entire nautical multitude.
The spirit, the
enthusiasm, of demoeratical encroachment at Athens was far from originating in
these events, however it might be revived and reinforced by them ; the germ was
of far earlier origin, had made good several stages of progress, and to its
movement was not inconsiderably due the vigour of the Athenian patriotic
exertions at this time as on some earlier occasions; so manifestly is
concentrated energy associated with 1 freedom. Athenian poets were
fond of dating demoeratical institutions as far back as mythical times,
extravagantly enough, though more plausibly than when they imputed Spartan
characteristics to the subjects of Menelaus. But
enough of Solon’s
institutions—which, if within, are only just within the scope of true historic
ken—survived the lapse to the tyranny of Peisistratus, to attest a very
positive democratic tendency, and indeed intention, and, for all their
deficiencies, to explain how he came to be regarded in time as the universal
legislator and author of the Athenian free constitution.
According to the
conception of Aristotle, what Solon founded way indeed worthy of the high title
of a proper polity,—a politeia, which is, in modern phraseology, a ‘ free constitution,’—inasmuch
as it aimed at, and to a large extent effected, a harmony of diverse powers. He
found and left the council of the Areopagus with its general supervision of
morals and manners and guardianship of legality; this was the Upper Council,—rj
avco fiovXr]—as distinguished from a second, the Probouleutic or Preconsidering
Council, which was elected annually, and as its members held office for life,
its principle was strictly oligarchical. Again, the Preconsidering Council,
which was also of a time before Solon and of which a main function was to
determine and prepare what business should be submitted to the popular 1
ecclesia, is defined by Aristotle, and even in virtue of being elective, and
that annually, as an aristocratic institution. In fact, in the most
democratical of ancient societies it was well understood that offices which
were obtainable through election must needs be gained by those who could
intimidate or bribe or command deference even independently of special qualifications,
must fall to an aristocracy whether of birth or of wealth. It was only a change
therefore in favour of aristocracy as contrasted with oligarchy, that the
privilege of birth was now superseded by the limit of a high property
qualification. The democratic element, however, but for consideration of which
‘ the demus would be too nearly
1 Plut. Solon, 19. P
enslaved for any
tranquillity to bo 1 expected/ was then admitted with no little
decision. Of the four classes of citizens upon which Solon successively imposed
an advance in his graduated income-tax, the lowest and most numerous, although
still remaining incapable of magistracy, was for the first time allowed to
participate in the full elective 2 franchise.
It was to his
innovation at this point, and its consequences that Solon chiefly, and with a
degree of justice that would perhaps have surprised himself, owed his
democratic fame. By the demus, thus largely interpreted, magistrates and
functionaries, archons and council, were elected in the first instance, and to
this demus they were required, at conclusion of their term, to render account
and apply for certificate, undergoing at the same time close scrutiny. As some
check on the recognised aristocratical tendency of the accepted conditions of
election, and (so far in the interests of democracy again) to take security as
far as possible against the exercise of undue influence by clubs and associated
cliques, its dicasteria, or committees for special purposes, were taken from
the general number by the chance of 3 lot. How vast was the power
that such privileges delivered over into democratical hands under able guidance
we shall see hereafter.
In the meantime, the
liability of public interests to be hampered by the factious conflicts of class
interests, was still overlooked and left unprovided against by these arrangements.
A pre-historic settlement which was ascribed to Theseus, and due, if Theseus
never existed or had no concern in it, to some great organising genius, had
laid deep foundations for the strength if not predominance of Attica in Hellas,
by associating the freemen of its scattered townships in dependence on the
legislature and courts of.1 Athens. This is the policy by which
Thales of Miletus afterwards urged that
1 Arist. 661 a. s Arist. Polit. 2.
still one chance
remained for rein vigo rating 1 Ionia; but even suppression of the
narrow rivalry of townships left un- eradieated that of wider districts, a
feeling which was perhaps only more likely to burst forth amongst the enlarged
constituencies of Solon. The political subdivisions that followed the natural
limits of highland, lowland, and seaboard districts, were too conformable to
the groups of real or supposed conflicting interests, especially between the
poorer and wealthier citizens, for local disagreements not to be reproduced in
compact parties in the assembly and there to break out into political
contentions. It was immediately through the opportunities which these provided,
that tyranny— a transformed pernicious demagogy—found an entrance, and after
the opportunity had been seized by the able Peisistratus, never long relaxed
its grasp during thirty years; it is difficult not to believe, though there is
no direct evidence of the fact, that aid was rendered by discontents on the
part of the large class of residents in Athens and Attica for whom, as not
being members by birth of any of the Ionic tribes, there was no protection by
political franchise.
A\ hen relief was at
length obtained and the Peisistratids were expelled, an heir to their opportunities
and an aspirant to their succession rose up before long in Isagoras, son of
Tisandros, but only to be as promptly confronted by the Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes.
It was the belief at
Athens that Cleisthenes, during the time that he was at Delphi in exile, had
contributed importantly to their former liberation from the son of Peisistratus
by inducing the Pythia to attach to every response to Lacedaemon, public or
private, an injunction, which was effective at last, to suppress the tyranny at
Athens. Himself a grandson of Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, he learnt a lesson
from his policy, but only so to apply it as to deprive tyranny of its last
chance at Athens. He got the better of
liis rival Tsagoras
by f taking the demus into partnership,’ and well he requited the
assistance. lie gave a safer and a broader basis to the democratical element of
the constitution by liberal admission to citizenship of foreign 2
metics, that is by naturalising resident foreigners,—residents no doubt in
numerous cases of long standing or through generations,— and if the record may
be trusted, even foreigners who, though not slaves, were servants. By the
latter we may understand foreigners, artisans and others, who were free but
worked for hire, like many an Athenian of old stock, and who often, like many
metics of superior station, might only be known as of foreign descent by
absence from tribal registry.
Besides thus swamping
the faction-infected constituency by an extension of privilege that for the
first time was made independent of scrutiny of ancient pedigree, Cleisthcnes
furthered his purpose of giving steadiness to the state, by redistribution of
electoral groups and districts. For the four Ionie tribes into which traditions
of worship made it impossible to foist the new unrelated citizens, he
substituted ten, to which, following a Sicyonian precedent, he gave new names,
entitling them, after Attic heroes, as eponymi. Each tribe comprised a certain
number of demes or parishes, but as a rule by no means adjoining each other,
and as the tribe was the electoral unit that sent its several representatives
to the Council, this altered arrangement naturally tended to a disruption of
aneient partizanships and to elections on a better principle than the
representation of narrow local cabals. What precise scheme of grouping was
employed further we are not told, nor how acquiescence in such a disturbance of
ancient associations and recent alliances was secured. Traditional family and
religious ties wTere beyond legislative reach, and would and did
inevitably remain in force; but it appears that some simplified religious
sanctions and
celebrations,
attaching probably to the mythic associations of the heroic eponymns, were
appropriated to the new tribes, both severally and in 1 common. This
hint assures us that the policy of Sicyonian Cleisthenes in the same direction
had, like that of his grandson, some motives which Herodotus, if he suspected,
has at least not cared to tell.
The democratic
concession that was now further demanded by what Aristotle calls the ‘ nautical
multitude,’ or, to translate more honestly, ‘rabble/ in the pride of their
achievements and eacer for tangible advantage from the
O O O
splendid ascendency
that Athens had won by their valour and perseverance, was the eligibility to
office of eveiy class of citizens, even the hitherto excluded Thetic or very
poorest. The limit of this political privilege originally ruled with liability
to taxation and to service in war either as hoplite or light-armed, but the new
importance of war service afloat (if only as oarsmen, still as highly-trained
and disciplined oarsmen) had now given the lowest class a technical right to
equal participation; Salamis could be cited, and was cited unsparingly and for
ever—long after Comedy had made a stoek-joke of the common-place—as a claim to
political power superior to every other—to all others together.
Themistoeles, it
would seem, was the natural vindicator of the pretensions of the crews who were
the mam strength of his peculiar policy aboard the navy that was his own
creation, and with whose glory in their greatest achievements hitherto his own
was so immediately associated. That the truly revolutionary measure that gave
effect to their pretensions is connected immediately with the name, not of
Themistoeles as we should expect, but of Aristides, implies most naturally that
it was obtained at last as a concession after a more or less considerable
struggle of interests and parties. The world is familiar with the
experience that a
political party does not at once relinquish the reins of power because all
independent guidance is so utterly lost as no longer to leave choice between
repugnant alternatives. Then the veriest Eupatrid partizan, whether by descent
or predileetion, can anticipate sagaciously at last, though it may be only
after prolonged resistance has proved useless, that from the vantage-ground he
holds the influence of class may be made to tell but little less effectively in
the new state of things than in the old. Aristides, there can be little doubt,
was superior to many if not most of the Eupatrid party with whom he acted and
who were brought over to this concession; otherwise a Eupatrid is not
unfrequently developed into something very like a revolutionist by well-
grounded confidence that his personal genius—let his class fare as it may—will
secure his own leadership all the more certainly from the exaggerated violence
that he volunteers to hold under restraint; and then there is the case of the
politician who can foresee and dares to face the fact that the thing must be,
accepts the risk with the resolution to deal with consequences as best he may
when they arrive—as some one must deal with them—and in the meantime keenly
appreciates the mere exercise of power in carrying through a great measure
however inconsistently adopted by him, and knows that popular gratitude does
not look back beyond the hand from which it actually takes its benefit at last.
In the case of
Themistocles, it is probably not unfair to ascribe some of the persistency in
democratical purpose which, notwithstanding his advance in fame and fortune, he
continues to give proof of still later, to the circumstances of his origin. He
was comparatively to his most powerful competitors a new man ; and neither by
marriage nor descent connected with any of the historical Eupatrid families to
which, notwithstanding their notorious conservative tendencies, all political
parties were still accustomed and best content to look in the first instance
for leaders
and statesmen. He was
of an old Attic race of Lycomidae, but no brilliance accrued to him thence that
would compensate for some defect in Attic purity on the side of his mother,
whether of Thracian or Carian blood, or for the limitation of his fortune,
which originally did not exceed three talents. These disadvantages had come
home to him very early in life, but only to exercise him early in breaking down
by force of resolution and genius some social barriers that divided even the
palaestra.
As regards the
elements of the less eagerly innovating and the conservative parties, it must
always be understood and borne in mind that at this period at Athens, as in
other important states of Hellas, there ever lived on the germ of—■ more than
oligarchical—even dangerous and tyrannous reaction,
confined to a few it may be, discouraged, discredited, latent, vehemently
disclaimed of course by many who amongst themselves were consciously
sympathetic, and disallowed by the superficial as having any real existence;
but it was of indestructible vitality nevertheless, and moreover instinctively
and nervously dreaded by the new inheritors of power, even while they were
laughing with the comedian who ridiculed it as an obsolete absurdity. The
intrigues at Plataea were of recent memory; but even the earlier sting of the
Peisistratid tyranny, so we are assured by 1 Thucydides, lingered in
the wound that shuddered at a touch, and an oligarchical tyranny came round in
time to justify the popular resolve that, with an assignable reason or without,
the experience should never be forgot.
Any seeds of such
desperate hope among Eupatrids could only be entertained furtively, as in
absolute opposition to a more powerful section, which was represented now by
Aristides, Cimon, and Ephialtes, who honestly aimed to make the oligarchical
and aristocratieal conditions of the government work harmoniously with the
demoeratical,
which they strove to
restrain or regulate when they might not rule. Of Ephialtes son of Sophonides
we know too little; in his poverty and highmindedness he is a parallel to his
associate Aristides. He is said to have protected his independence even against
his own party by refusing the ten talents with which they would have increased
his 1 means. Another colleague of Aristides, who is to us but a
name, is Alemaeon, but a name that intimates connection with the great
Alemaeonid family, of which Xanthippus, who is not heard of in these
transactions, was at present the protagonist, and Pericles after a few years
was destined to be. With this famity Cimon, who had a noble pedigree of his
own, was connected by marriage. These were times of scrupulous records of
relationships by the phratries, of formal and religious celebrations of births,
and of commemorations of deaths in worship of remoter and immediate ancestries;
and records so long back wTere so preserved as to seem to
authenticate the claims by which they were attached to primeval ages and
heroes. A descent from Ajax or from Hercules was claimed and conceded in such
cases with perfect faith on both sides; to the claimant it gave an ideal to
emulate, an obligation which Pindar’s odes take for granted in every strophe,
the influence of which is seen in the numerous great names that cluster round
these associations. Such recognised descent was a real power in politics; it
imparted special grace to well-assumed popular manners, and the most
democratieal accorded to it some indulgence in extravagance and even
o o
licence, forgave it
more and forgot for it more and more readily than in other instances of merely
equal desert. And so in Athens, as elsewhere, democracy had a certain
affection—a very weakness—for the guidance and leadership of an aristocrat by
birth.
The faith, one might
almost say the sense, of the continuity of mythological -with historical and
current times, was all but universally prevalent, and few politicians of power
before Themistocles are found independent of it. Solon himself was reputed a
Codrid; Peisistratus, said also to be his relative, was a Nelid; both thus
connccted with the families that first had reigned at Athens and then given
leaders and kings to the Ionian colonies. The Alcmaeonids also carried up their
genealogy to Neleus, with Nestor, not to say Poseidon, still in the background.
This family furnishes Megacles, the slayer of Cylon; Alcmaeon, the guest of
Croesus; Megacles, the son-in-law of Cleisthenes tyrant of Sicyon, in a line
that had ruled there, not undeservedly, for one hundred years; Cleisthenes, the
founder of Athenian democracy; his sister married to Peisistratus, but only to
increase of discord; Agariste, wife of Xanthippus and mother of Pericles;
Deinomaclie, wife of Cleinias and mother of Alcibiades ; and Isodiee, wife of
Cimon.
The father of
Cleinias was the earlier Alcibiades, who was the colleague of Cleisthenes, and
on his part claimed descent from Eurysaces, son of Ajax. Another traditional
son of Ajax and fellow-settler in Attica was Philaeus, whom the first Miltiades
claimed as ancestor,—as, by the mother’s side at least, did the second also,
his successor in tyranny of the Chersonesus, the victor at Marathon, and father
of Cimon by a daughter of a Thracian prince.
Cf the remoter
ancestry of Aristides we hear nothing, but he was at least related to the
wealthy Callias, and there can be no doubt as to the order to which the
colleague of the reforming Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes must have belonged.
We now learn from
Plutarch that 1 Cimon, who had acted
in harmony with
Aristides at the Hellespont, made common cause with him at home to resist the
extreme democratic measures which Themistoeles was urging forward, and so
commenced a new rivalry that was destined to have important consequences. At
present the command lay with Themistoeles; the passion for the development of
democracy was ablaze, and no other public man was found to lend aid of any
importance to countervail it but Ephialtes. His views in this direction and at
the present time, as a partizan of Aristides and Cimon, were probably as
perfectly in harmony with those of the Alcmaeonids, as when at a later date he
was in opposition to Cimon and promoted an assault upon the time-honoured
privileges of the Areopagus in concert with Pericles.
To what extent the
policy of Themistoeles may have been checked by such an opposition, what other
concessions may have been made to it besides the opening of the elections to
magistracy, 01* indeed whether any, it is impossible to say. But the direction
in which progress was being made was at any rate certain and is known to us,
and led, sooner or later, to such further changes as the application of the
democratic lot to the elections of Archons and even members of the Council
(Boule), and important reductions of the powers and privileges of both.
The progress of
constitutional change at Athens, the anticipation of which is necessary for a
clear apprehension of the import of its present condition, is thus sketched by
Aristotle:
‘ When the power of
the popular dicastery came to be fully recognised, the demus received all the
court that is payable to a tyrant, and so the polity (the duly regulated
Constitution) was turned into the democracy that we are witnesses of.’ One
demagogue after another helped a little; but the decisive blow was struck when
Pericles and Ephialtes ‘ docked ’ the powers of the Areopagitic Council, and
habitual participation
in the dieastery was
opened to the very poorest by carrying- a 1 payment.
At present, however,
the step in legislation which if not , promoted by Themistoeles, was certainly
carried by Aristides in the direction of his policy, introduced a period of
tranquillity, and Athens for a time had leisure from internal dissensions, as
well as from conflicts with Persia.
Questions of policy
in abundance, that would open serious struggles for supremacy of thought and
action, were certain to arise full soon, with respect to the prosecution of
aggressive war with Persia, the treatment of the lately Medising states, the
management of the Delian confederacy, the attitude to be maintained relatively
to Sparta and her special allies, and so forth ; but in the meantime Hellas
took a long free breath after her unwonted effort, and, while her strength and
population were being insensibly restored, found vent for the enthusiasm of her
triumph in an outburst of energy applied to Arts which, after long maturing,
now suddenly leapt to perfection, within the limits of a single lifetime.
1 Arist. Polit. ii. 9, p. 661
a.
PINDAR, PIIRYNICIIUS, AESCHYLUS.
476 B.C.; 01. 76. 1.
At the summer solstice of 476 B.C., under the commencing archonship at
Athens of Phaedon, came round the first celebration of the Olympic games since
the great victories of Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale, since the time when Xerxes
at Thermopylae enquired how the Greeks were occupied, and the reply had
elicited a foreboding as to the dangerous qualities of opponents who could
strain energies to the utmost, not for the sake of a prize in money, but to
gain the honour of a simple olive 1 crown.
Again recurred the festival which was the most expressive pledge of Hellenic
unit}^; when Greece was free from intestine conflicts, and, moreover, in the
first glow of self-gratulation and pride at delivery from a foreign enemy. If
jealousies between her states could ever be lulled at all, surely it might be
now; and, in fact, when Themisto- cles appeared at the stadium, the contests
that were proceeding were disregarded—he was hailed with a general outburst of
applause, and throughout the day was followed and proudly pointed out to admiring
strangers. His nature was peculiarly susceptible of pleasure from such homage,
and he professed to his friends that Hellas had herein fully compensated him
for all his labours. He was, however, by no means a man to
disregard more
material compensations; and the very rapid progress of (his fortune
showed conclusively that he knew well how to opportunely help himself. A
fragment of an attack upon him remains which attests both his passion for
displa}*, in spite perhaps of the inadequate means he once could command for
it, and by what dealings he was accused of providing these means to an extent
that had certainly enabled him by this time to undertake the mobt chargeable
public offices.
Timocreon, the
melojjoios of Rhodes, complains in bitter verses, which apparently date before
the disgraces of Pausanias aud Leotychides, of the falsehood, injustice, and
treachery of Themistocles—of Themistocles who, when propitiated by only a
moderate sum, did not care to restore him, his friend and host, to his native
Ialysus, but for the sake of three talents that he sailed away with, recalled
some from exile, banished others, and put others to death, without regard to
justice.
‘ Praise Pausanias,
or Xanthippus, or Leotychides who will; he, for his part, applauds Aristides as
the singly most excellent man of all who came from sacred Athens. Themistocles
is the detestation of 1Lgjtona.’ He further ridicules the shabby
entertainment that Themistocles had given at the Isthmus, when the guests
prayed that it might, not be an apt omen for the coming harvest.
Meagreness on this
occasion, however, may have been but the parsimony of an ostentatious man, who
does not care to be lavish when ostentation will not have the reward he chiefly
covets. At Olympia, but probably four years later than our present date, he
made such a show of magnificence as to be provocative at home of dangerous
dissatisfaction.
On the other hand, I
think we must assign to this present Olympiad his own encouragement of popular
indignation against Hicro, tyrant of Syracuse. It is precisely this date
that is given for the
subversion by Ilicro of the Ionic city of Catana; he had transferred the
inhabitants in a body to Lcontini, and was proceeding to settle in their stead
a new colony of Dorians in a city with a new name, Aetna, where he should enjoy
for all time the heroic honours which by ancient custom were accorded to a
founder—an oikistes. Syracuse furnished half the new population, the other half
he invited from Peloponnesus. It is quite intelligible that such arbitrary
courses at such a time should have encouraged a denunciation of his
ostentatious magnificence, as the offensive intrusion of a tyrant among
Hellenic freemen, to the ruin of his tent and exclusion of his horses from the 1
contest.
The victory of Theron,
tyrant of Acragas, with the four- liorse chariot,—that triumph that still
remained to be coveted by Hiero when he was victor with the single horse in the
next 2Olympiad,—is usually assigned to this occasion, though an
argument may be combined that would transfer it to the next, and is perhaps
worth stating, though I have disregarded it elsewhere. The testimony of the
scholiast halts between the two dates, and cannot be adduced as deciding for
either; that Diodorus dates the death of Theron in the very year of the next
Olympic festival might doubtless seem inconsistent with the elaborate poetic
celebration of the victory by Pindar, though not necessarily with the victory
itself. But the year, as reckoned by archons, commenced at the same season as
the games, and the terms of the ode are quite susceptible of being interpreted
to imply that Theron was at the time declining in health, was not remote from
the same anticipated migration to those rewards of the just that Pindar here so
beautifully indicates, and that he did not deem it inappropriate to promise
afterwards still more, and yet scarcely more pointedly, to Hiero, when he too
was touching on the fatal 3term.
One short
but very beautiful ode of Pindar remains to us that is certified as written for
a victory gained this year in the stadium of boys by Asopichus, of Orchomenus
in 1 Boeotia. •
Lyric poetry had now
touched its very acme in Pindar, who at the age of forty-five was in the full
might and glory of his genius. Theban by birth, and from early years the
associate, as poets had ever been up to this time in Greece, of aristocracies
and tyrants,—of Aleuads in Thessaly, of Alexander in Macedon, of Hiero and
Theron in Sicily, of Arcesilaus in Cyrene,—there is not a line in his preserved
works that can be strictly challenged as unnational, unpatriotic, unworthy of a
spokesman who has at heart the best interests of general Hellas. Tradition
retains at least a rumour that if he ever offended party feeling at all, it was
at his native Thebes, by expression of sympathy with the Hellenic services of
hostile Athens. He recognised it as the function of the lyric poet to shed the
glow of poetry over every occasion and incident of contemporary life that was
worthy of a noble interest, to exalt and purify the feelings it excited, to
dignify motive and aspiration, and represent humanity as then only verging
towards its natural perfection, when it tended to realise in itself as far as
possible the best conception it could form of the divine.
The extant remains of
the poet are almost exclusively odes on occasion of victories in the games;
hymns, paeans, dithyrambs in honour of gods, and hymenaeals congratulatory of
men, and threnes or dirges that were consolatory, not without promise of a
better life, are lost to us but for fragments— fragments that enhance our
regret for what has been in part engulfed by the common injuries of time, but
partly destroyed wilfully by fanaticism.
In prolific variety
of metrical arrangement and mastery of
rhythm, Pindar was
and still is without a rival; the secret of his art in this direction must be
considered as still, after all the labour and learning bestowed upon it, very
imperfectly explained. The key to it is probably lost with the secret of the
music which originall}' accompanied the poetry, and was indeed a very important
part of the composition of the poet. It was also the poet’s part to train the
choruses by whom his odes were sung, and to instruet them in sedulous
rehearsals; and what we miss now of the ‘ immortal man/ with only the written
words before us, is comparable in a degree to the enhancement, lost for ever,
which Shakespear superadded to his dramas by direet communication to the
original actors of the effects he aimed at, and his conceptions of how they
were to be produced.
That the music did
not interfere with the perfeet hearing of the words is most certain, so
delicate are the transitions, so uncompromising are the suspensions of the
theme for the sake of divergence, to what are in truth indispensable and heightening,
although to the unintelligent unintelligibly irrelevant episodes.
y Simonides, who was
held worthy to be a rival of Pindar, and even to have surpassed him in
pathos,—the fragment of his ‘Danae’ approves the tradition,—was now at the end
of a long life; but even as late as 476B.C., at the age of eighty, is recorded
as victor with a dithyrambie chorus. The chief remains of him that we
possess—and however brief, at least complete in themselves—are the elegiae
inscriptions or epigraphs, many applying to the incidents of the Persian war,
in which his combined ingenuity, propriety, and terseness were unrivalled.
Simonides, like Pindar, was familiar with the courts of the Sicilian tyrants,
as he had previously been with those of Hipparchus at Athens and of the Thessalian
dynasts. It was only at a centre where wealth was abundant and willingly
lavished upon refined superfluities, that lyrical art, at the degree of
elaboration it had now attained to, could be fur-
nished with means and
opportunities for its fullest display. A composition of Simonides might require
a chorus of fifty performers, who were to be carefully and expensively trained,
and the requirement would be vain unless such productions were frequent and
habitual; it required also an audience of refined sensibilities and culture,
such as in any state of society must be exceptional, and which during the
earlier period, when popular aspirations were under strong repression, was
found in highest perfection among those who, few or many, were elevated above the
general mass as an aristocracy, and engrossed participation in active
government.
The almost universal
sentiment for artistic beauty which at this time prevailed among the Greeks of
all races and classes was naturally most lively amongst the families of
hereditary culture and wealth, the same from which, if not by virtue, not
slightly by the aid of their sympathy with popular tendencies in the like
direction, had ever come forth the men who gained command of their states as
tyrants. Hiero was preceded in his love and patronage of art by such men as
Peisistratus at Athens, Cleisthenes at S icy on, Polycrates at Samos, Periander
at Corinth, to mention no more men, who, by their furtherance of what Greeks
had so much at heart, seemed almost to vindicate their position. The
continuance of such rule would no doubt have been presently fatal to much for
which the best art affords only poor compensation ; and the better art itself
was imperilled seriously. Under such circumstances, when, in a second
generation, nobler impulses—which can only for a time and under a deception be
associated with usurpation—are flagging 01* extinct, it cannot but decline to a
purely personal and parasitical application. Hiero and Theron are to be
credited with personal qualities and patriotic services that go very far to
excuse, if not to vindicate the enthusiasm of Pindar; but it is well that he
was not committed to celebrate their immediate successors.
A' hen tyranny was
abolished throughout Greece, from end
to end, the fortunes
of art in its most elaborate and expensive developments were rescued primarily
from wreck by the care and appreciation of the same class from which the
tyrants had sprung'—by such families as the Alemaeonids, who were even allied
to them, whose wealth had enabled them to contend in the ehariot-raees at
Olympia, and even when they were in exile to promote gratuitously the
enhancement of the architectural splendour of Delphi. A democracy that such
men founded or fostered was not likely to miss them as its leaders and
administrators ; and they ‘ took the people into partnership,’ to extend the
words of Herodotus, in their artistic projects now, as before in their
revolutionary. The guiding minds might still be aristoeratical, might still be
in many social respects an exclusive few; but not only was the sanction of the
people asked and obtained, but their sympathies too were regarded, were
appealed to, and the result left little discontent at what in effect was
equivalent to a delegation of popular control; and this was especially the case
when the fund disbnrsed was less immediately from the public treasury than from
private fortunes.
The system of the ‘
liturgies,’ or services for the public, by which this was brought about, seems
to have been at least as old as Solon, and may have been one of his political
inventions. It was the principle of this institution that citizens of
exceptional wealth were liable to be called on, out of the tribes in rotation,
to make exceptional contributions to the public service ; for the equipment of
a war vessel only occasionally, but in usual and regular order to furnish
forth publie spectacles and festivals and amusements. Sueh a demand is
manifestly an extension of Solon’s graduated property-tax, and in principle
challenges a like justification. At Athens at least the institution seems to
have had the justification of success, and there is no slight ease to be made
for the principle as demanding even general application. It is too usually the
opprobrium of civilised communities that, by whose fault
or unwisdom soever, a
large mass of the population, which subserves the social requirements not
unimportantly, though in the lowest functions, receives no more advantage from
the imposing result than if civilisation did not exist; with regard to this
large section at least, civilisation is a failure. Count up the numbers, and
they are a vast nation that lags behind in squalor and hopelessness ; shall it
be said, as a necessary condition of the grace and glory of the superior ranks,
any more than are their own crapulence and gaudiness or the merely
self-indulgent listlessness which misuses a superflux so sorely missed
elsewhere? What the narrower political economy insists on as the natural laws
of the distribution of wealth, are no more to be trusted to bring out
spontaneously, without any adjustment of human intelligence, the fairest or the
most desirable result, than are any other natural laws. In this, as in so many
other cases, the opportunity and the facult}’ of regulative power that is
confided to us demands to be taken into account, and ‘ the art itself is
nature/ It is in perfect accordance with natural laws for the water-shed which
is indispensable to the fertility of a district, to form, if left to itself,
pestiferous marshes or desolating inundations. To say nothing of disgrace,
society may be threatened by dangers as serious, through the aggregation of
wealth by one accident or another in a single or a few extravagant masses, or
even by such an unchecked irrational apportionment of the results of labour
among the labourers as constantly ensues even when competition seems most free.
The division even then, though under all the forms of peace and legality, is
sometimes of the nature of a promiscuous scramble and sometimes of a lottery,
and the shares prove at last to be onty coarsely proportionate to the values of
the co-operating labour, either mental or manual.
It is not however the
sense of very palpable injustice that has usually induced a legislative
interference; sufferers and spectators alike are rather apt to acquiesce in
this as a hardship inherent in the inevitable course of the world; but the
extreme
Q ^
of social contrast
engenders blind, discontents and violences which cannot be disregarded, and the
prudent dealing with which at onee postulates the main principle of corrective
taxation. Corrective self-taxation—the dispensing of alms—has always been
applied, however unequally, rudely, wastefully; and in modern times we are most
familiar with attempts to redeem wild nature by the application of funds raised
by taxation to the relief, somewhat indiscriminately it must be said, of the
destitute victims of misfortune or of vice. Further applications of the
principle come in when the gathered gains of commerce are mulcted in a poor
subsidy to a genius or his descendants, or the well-to-do and wealthy are taxed
not only to support but to educate the poor, or for the adornment of parks and
establishment of public galleries to afford recreation chiefly to classes that
are much too poor to be in any sense contributory. So does the prudence at
least, if not the obligation quite so readily, become in some degree
recognised, of giving more unity to the system of society by a better diffusion
of enjoyment as well as comfort, than is the outcome of the vaunted, of the so
often misstated and misunderstood, law of supply and demand.
On the other hand,
there is the danger of adjustment degenerating in ungoverned hands into
confiscation; and the historical outcry—pattern et circenses—is warning that
justice itself had need be very wise if the sinews of industry are not to be
relaxed and the remedy of civil discord not fordo itself.
The leiturgia was an
ancient contrivance for equalising in some degree the advantages of civil
society, at least for distributing some of the best of them, and went far to
reconcile free poverty, if not penury, to co-existence with a class of acquired
or hereditary opulence. Opulence on its own part had a pride which was
compensated by the opportunity of public display—a pride which was not ignoble
when its gratification depended on addressing successfully the acute sense and
fastidious taste of such a public as the Athenians. These
functions were no
doubt often burdensome enough, though only through ambitious competition
ruinous ; if there were some to complain, there were more to rejoice, who were
eager for the distinction, and prepared with hearty good-will even to damage
their fortunes seriously. The prize was certainly not always bare renown, and
sometimes the influence that ensued upon a great success was counted on to more
than reinstate the outlay; but even so, the renown was the basis of the
influence.
In England the costly
entertainments of a mayoralty but weakly represent, or rather parody, the Athenian
tribal liturgy; and modern instances of noble employment of immense wealth are
not so frequent as to have ceased to be matters of surprise. We have otherwise,
in substitution of the ancient system, only the precarious enforcement by
public opinion of aids to charities that spare an intermediate class, or of
contributing to the amusement of a class still narrower by ‘ hunting a county.’
The Italian opera lives by exceptionally liberal subscriptions of the wealth}',
but not out of public spirit or to the relief of very extended public
participation ; the higher drama languishes, or rather is extinct, in default
of unmercenary support and subvention.
The most chargeable
of all the ordinary Athenian liturgies was the dramatic—the Choragia—of which
the first mention occurs in the year 476 B.C., just preceding the present
Olympia, and associated with the name of Themistocles as Choragus. The
inscription which was read on a commemorative tablet that he dedicated, ran
thus:—£ Themistocles of the Phrearian tribe was Choragus, Phrynichus
was Master (i. e. the teacher of the chorus or poet), Adeimantus was Archon.’
The name of
Phrynichus dates an epoch in the history of the drama, particularly of traged}r,
as standing between Aeschylus, his immediate successor and younger contemporary,
and Thespis, contemporary of Solon.
It is the peculiar
glory of Athens to have originated and perfected tragedy, though not the drama
generally, for comedy had already taken birth elsewhere,—taken very highly
developed form in Sieily certainly, if not previously at Megara.
The essential
characteristic of the drama may be said to be the representation of human
action by impersonations, by assumed characters. In this barest sense it may be
recognised as independent of spoken language; inasmuch as mere dumb show of
even an individual, not to say of several conjointly, suffices to tell a very
complicated story. "Whether as mimicry of individuals or general
pantomime, impersonation of this kind has been in vogue everywhere and always,
and has sometimes been raised by men of peculiarly apt endowments to the
dignity of an art. In its purest form it is independent even of mimicry of
costume. Such an exhibition is then capable of being enhanced by music;
predominance as between music and acting being variously adjusted, accordingly
as music is accompaniment to acting or acting to music. In either ease, whether
as telling a story or merely expressing a train of sentiment, there is
intervention of the dramatie principle.
A further
modification arrives, and it would seem a demand for still more distinct
acting, in such a performance as we read of in the Odyssey, where the bard
sings the adventure of Mars and Venus, including the dialogue of Hermes and
Apollo, Poseidon and Vulean, and is accompanied by the dancing of a chorus of
youths. In other instances a pair of performers, gesticulators apparently
rather than dancers, are associated with a chorus and the singing and playing
1 bard. In such exhibitions the dancing,
as a visible expression of general sentiment, seems to have had the same
relation to more definite pantomime, as the accompaniment
of pipe or lyre to
the audible words. The genius and the passion for expressive gesture manifestly
conduct to the completes! possible development in dramatic impersonation.
Hellenic comedy and tragedy proper are accordingly both traced by
Aristotle—with whose amount of knowledge we may be content—to developments from
choral celebrations of Dionysus ; tragedy from the enthusiastic dithyramb, and
comedy from the phallic extravagances, such as in his time were still in vogue
in many cities in their rudest naturalistic form. Each form of the drama seems
to have advanced with considerable independence of the other, and even
severally at several centres, though it is impossible not to infer from the
great start which was taken so early by comedy in Sicily that her more
dignified sister at Athens might well have some considerable obligations to own
to.
When history first
took note of comedy it was already familiar with the use of masks, of speeches,
of words spoken not sung, and of plurality of actors, by whom introduced was
not known; nor were many names of dramatists on
1 record. It was Epicharmus however and
Phormis in Sicily who first advanced beyond simple dialogue or insignificant
incidents, and dramatised fables ( = stories) — and ‘from Sicily therefore this
first came.’ Epicharmus was from Megara, Phormis from Arcadia, and it was
admitted that comedy had its primitive commencement among the ruder, the rustic
and unceremonious Dorian populations, whose capacity for humour is recorded and
exemplified for us in Theocritus. But comedy at this Sicilian epoch is drama
with all apparatus and capabilities full blown; Phormis attended to the draping
both of his actors and of the stage, and so it appears certain that the plays
of Epicharmus, to which
2 Plautus owed obligations, had more
resemblance, as plays of general character and with proper plots, to the new
comedy
of Athens than to the
old. An attempt of Crates as late as 450 B.C. to establish comedy of general
character at Athens seems even then to have been premature, and could not
compete with the stimulant personalities of Aristophanes and Cratinus.
Epicharmus was still
writing in 477 B.C., but apparently towards the end of a very long life; and at
this time Phrynichus was exhibiting what is most authentically recorded as a
very early form of tragedy, a form which is indeed characteristic still of a
play of Aeschylus—the Persae— represented four years later.
Every manifestation
of religion, however festive its general character may be, has necessarily a
serious—a solemn side ; and there are abundant proofs of this in the
Dionysiac-— elsewhere also, as for instance at 1 Argos, but
especially in Attica, where all religious sentiments were peculiar in intensity.
The god who became associated, and not on inferior terms, with Apollo at
Delphi, was an assessor no less with the awful goddesses of Eleusis, and shared
with them in the respect which is ever inspired bjr concern with the
gravest responsibilities of another world—of a future 2 life. It was
therefore quite as natural and spontaneous a process for the severest form of
dramatic poetry to be engrafted on the dithyramb of the god, as for the most
cheerful, the most extravagantly vivacious on the turbulent exeitement of his
coarser celebrations.
To Thespis in the
time of Solon was ascribed the relief of the choral performers by introduction
of recited speeches, but as yet with no mention of dialogue. For anything that
appears, the chorus was uniformly composed of representatives of Satyrs, the m}rthicnl
train of Dionysus, a modification superinduced on the ancient dithyramb by
Arion at Corinth, and already involving the principle of impersonation. How
rapidly the same principle
extended to the exarchon, the leader of the chorus, to the variation of the
characters that he might assume, to the substitution or addition of other
characters besides Satyrs for the chorus, it may be to the incorporation of an
independently developed system at once, these are matters unrecorded; when the
door was once opened for innovation, the emulative spirit of gifted imaginations
at a period of high intellectual excitcment did not allow it to prematurely
close.
To Aeschylus
Aristotle ascribes the introduction, into tragedy at least,—if we may not with
Epicharnms in mind say into the drama,—of a second actor, an innovation
equivalent to the commencement of dialogue, and then still further the
curtailment of the ehoral seetions of the piece in favour of extended dialogue
; and it may be asked, what then remains intermediately for Phrynichus? But
there was abundant opportunity for variety of' artistic elaboration and
novelty, even within the limits of composition restricted to lyrical chorus and
narrative speeches. It is to the value which these latter now attained that we
must ascribe the affection with which they were retained in later Greek
tragedy, whether delivered by messengers or in the prologues that Euripides
peculiarly affects, but that were not rejected by 1 Aeschylus or 2Sophoeles.
In these we have relics, traditions, of the time when such narrative speeches,
an epic element in fact, were the sole interruptions or reliefs of the
choruses, but their reduction to such an extent may have been but gradual. So
we cannot say by whom it was effected, nor whether it was by one of the many
gradual transitions, to which Aristotle alludes as unrecorded, or by a bold
stroke, that the chorus of Satyrs was extruded from intercourse with the more
severe action, and relegated—as from tradition of hereditary claim to all it
could not be denied a
residue—to a separate
and final satyrie entrance or play. Still less can we certify that the system
of trilogic and tetralogic combinations of dramas may not have had its origin
long before the first recorded example that comprised the Persae of Aesch}'lns.
It is characteristic
of early art to rely on repetitions in the very simplest form as at once the
great resource of variet}' and composition; to proceed from more absolute
parallels to such contrasts of type and antetype as Gothic art delights in, the
coupled subjects of the Old Testament and New, of sacred and profane, and so to
climb by degrees towards truly aesthetic principles of composition.
From the scattered
notices that are obtainable of Phrvni- chus we must conclude that his merits
were still rather distinctly poetical than specifically dramatic. A caviller at
Aeschj’lus in Aristophanes—at Aeschylus who combined both
qualifications—ascribes the effect which he produced to his luck in having to
take over the simple-minded auditors of Phryniehus, who were easily astonished.
But the poetical merit of Phryniehus, in addition to his very considerable
Originality, must have been very great, and the melodiousness of his
versification is particularly celebrated. The careers of Phryniehus and of
Aeschylus overlap, and each may have borrowed from the other,—the elder from
the younger quite as probably as the younger from the elder of natural
necessity. Phryniehus was said to have first brought female characters on the
stage, and this was more likely to occur after the innovation of Aeschylus
respecting dialogue than before it.
The acted drama ever
involves the union of several arts, or draws on the resources of several; it
may even be a concentration of all, and as it would appear, should then most
nearly achieve its proper triumph, when it is most
comprehensive and
when the various elements that it unites are united to the best effect, are so
subordinated as to give best prominence to the worthiest. Every variety of
poetry may here fiud place—the epic, the lyrical, the melic; every variety of
rhetoric—persuasive, declamatory, argumentative; chorus and song bring in
music; and scenery, costume, grouping, mien, and gesture are effective on the
same conditions as admit architecture, painting, sculpture. It is perfectly
legitimate for an artist who is to be justified by his results, to exclude
from his accompaniments of impersonation either one or more of the arts, to dispense
with music, with scenery, with lyric or with narrative poetry; and no less so
for him to determine, from considerations of his capacity and his theme, to
which art and to which class of its resources he will assign the predominance.
But the best attaches to the best. The aim to give the fullest expression f
to high actions and high passions’ conducted the Attic tragedian to, not
exclude, but subordinate, the lyrical and musical elements of his composition,
as absolutely as he retained the musical and dancing accompaniments in
subjection to the lyric words and their intelligible effect; as absolutely as
lie repressed any tendency of scenic pomp and surprise of machinery to distract
attention from the main purport of the play.
In what manner
another class of combinations were dealt with it is less easy to determine. The
drama has for its general subject the entire range of human feelings, every
phase in every age and class, of hope and fear, of love and hatred, of
admiration or amusement; and there is no feeling, however dignified, that has
not its relations by over-tension or by lapse to the mean or the ridiculous,
and none so irretrievably comic that may not glide into the serious and severe
by very moderate variation of a circumstance. The very grandest tone of
sentiment and thought can therefore scarcely receive its full illustration
unless its divergences and limits are defined by indication at least of its
controlling contrasts.
It is as open to the
poet to make one tone or another predominant, as to make election among the
arts that are to be its vehicle ; and thus arises the grand distinction between
tragedy and comedy, when most unchallengeable; and thus the various graduations
of cither, till in certain phases and proportions they meet and coalesce. But
Socrates assumed, as a corollary of one of his most favourite general
principles— that perfect apprehension of one thing implied as perfect of its
opposite—that the best appreciation of tragic and of comic effcct must
necessarily go together; and so the perfect realisation of tragic effect seems
to require concurrent presentation of at least an adumbration of its comic
phase. Abundant illustration of this principle may be gathered from the plays
of Shakespear; we need go no further than the clownish conundrums of the
gravedigger, which are introductory to the over-curious considerings, as they
seem to Horatio, of Prince Hamlet over the skull. How is this requirement
satisfied, how was it satisfied, in the Attic drama ? Apparently by the medium
of the satyric drama—the drama with a chorus of Satyrs—which was in the time of
Aeschylus, and presumably of Phrynichus, the complement of a tragic
representation. More we can scarcely say; we have but one satyric play, and of
that we know not the tragic accompaniments; we have the title of another and
One of the three tragedies—the Persae—that it followed, to which, as we shall
see, we can attach its subject as having a certain pertinence, but beyond the
confirmation of a general presumption we can deduce nothing more.
The Persae of
Aeschylus is the only later example even on record of tragic treatment of a
contemporary subject, and was said to be copied in a degree from the Phoenissae
(the Phoenician women) of Phrynichus. The Phoenissae was the second such attempt
of Phrynichus; a previous, and indeed the only other on record at all, was on a
theme which was as painful for the Athenians as his later was exultant—
the Capture of
Miletus by the Persians, the catastrophe of Ionia (b.c. 494). So profound was the sympathy
of the Athenians at that wreck of the most glorious of their colonies—
manifested in other ways frequently—that when Phryniehus brought it before them
011 the stage, though doubtless with 110 lack of sympathy, the whole theatre
burst into a passion of tears, and the people resented the public exhibition of
afflictions which they counted as their own by inflicting upon the poet a fine
of 1000 drachmas.
The. title of his
later play is no doubt true indication that the chorus consisted of Phoenician
girls or women. AVe learn from the argument of the Persae, which was said by
the same authority—Glaueus—to be in some degree an imitation of it, that the
scene opened by entrance of a eunuch to arrange the seats for the royal
councillors; for such an assembly of dignities in due order therefore, as is
described by Herodotus on the occasion of a council of 1 Xerxes, and
as we see depicted around Darius on the Neapolitan vase,—a recognised display
of Persian state. The eunuch prologised by relating the defeat of Salamis—a
precipitate discovery that is more artfully reserved by Aeschylus. The poet
would thus appear to have written the play, upon a flattering theme, in
compensation of his previous offence, no less than as a gratification, a
glorification of the victor of Salamis—his choragus.
The acceptance of
such personal glorification was not uithout its dangers at Athens, but dangers
that Themistocles seems to have made a point of carelessly provoking; possibly
from simple want of self-control in this direction, possibly, on the other
hand, from a definite notion that by persistent provocation of enviousness of a
somewhat mean type he could shame it to silence or blunt its faculty of
offence.
Earlier in time, and
by the elder and earlier poet, the
Phoenissae of Phrynichus
may bo certainly assumed as characterised by more than the archaism that we
usually assume as recognisable in the Persae. Whatever innovations are implied
by regular dialogue, feminine interlocutor, a chorus of senators, extensive
adoption of the tragic senarian, are found in the Persae; but along with these,
as archaic residues, are not unfrequent adoption, for speeches, of the
tetrameter that Aristotle tells us was relinquished when a measure fitted for
dancing was of less consequence than one which, like the trimeter, had a
natural harmony with the measure of discourse; general excess of proportion of
lyrical element, its encroachment on or rather retention of place where it is
afterwards missed, as in the long prologue, itself an archaism ; and the
protraction, though not unre- ieved by interruptions, of the messenger’s
narrative.
Phrynichus therefore
is an apt representative of the drama at the epoch of this Olympiad, as
advanced to the formal condition which is precisely auterior to that last
effort of genius which carries it to perfection, a condition which it shares
with several other arts.
ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE IX THE AGE OF THEMISTOCLES.
A notice is
preserved by 1 Vitruvius, that a proper theatre was first
constructed at Athens by Agatharcus, who described it in a treatise. From 2Suidas
we learn that it was erected in place of a wooden structure that gave way with
the spectators on an occasion when Aeschylus was exhibiting in competition with
Pratinas, the reputed inventor of the satyric drama, as early as the 70th
Olympiad (499 b.
c.). In the absence of closer information, we are left to entertain the
high probability that here at Athens, and in this way was originated that type
of the Greek uncovered theatre which was repeated with only secondary
variations all over Hellenic ground—of vast capacity usually, and, in Asia
Minor especially, on colossal scale. The general characteristics that agree
with such an origin are, the solidity that was secured by basing the concentric
lines of seats, as they rose one behind the other, immediately on the hollowed
slope of, if possible, a rocky hill-side; and then the liberal extent which was
allowed for the orchestra, the dancing-place of the chorus, a level
semicircular space embraced by the arc of the lowest range of seats. The concession
of so large and central a position is in accordance w ith
1 Praefat. 7.
2 s.
v. Aeschylus.
the relative
importance of the chorus in the earlier drama as compared with the proper
dialogue, and still more with the traditional regard for its performance as a
celebration in honour of the god—of Dionysus, to whom the entire structure and
all its purposes were sacred. At the same time, although the area reserved for
the chorus has its name from dancing, it is not the less certain that in the
execution to music of the beautiful and elaborately-constructed choruses of the
dramatists, as of the Odes of Pindar, the dancing was but a secondary adjunct,
that, so far from superseding or even interfering with the interest and
distinctness of the poetry, was only valued for heightening1 its
effect.
o o
The long transverse
slip of elevated stage for the dialogue of the actors was more remote, on the
chord of the semicircle ; the difficulty of giving effect to the voice in
theatres so large and under the open sky, for due delivery of speeches which
depended for interest and charm on refined poetical expression, was resolved
with as much ingenuity as daring. Besides certain acoustical adjustments that
are still but imperfectly understood, but were evidently directed less to
countervailing echoes than enhancing resonance, a contrivance was employed for
adding loudness to the issuing voice. The deformity which this involved was
relieved by, and perhaps originally suggested, the adoption of a mask that
completely covered both face and head. Threatened disproportion was again
evaded by what was considered only a further pro- prietv, the artificial
exaggeration of the entire height and bulk of the actors, sometimes representatives
of gods, or in any case of heroes who, by the convention of ancient art, which
was allowed on the frieze of the Parthenon as on the shield of 1
Achilles, ever claimed superior magnitude. There was thus a readily accepted
contrast between the personages on the bema, and the natural forms and
proportions of the
chorus, which in the
days of purer dramatic art all but invariably represented the weaker aud
vacillating, in fact, the generally meaner minds of ordinary mortals. The
thick- soled cothurnus, the majestic costumes, and the masks were inventions of
Aeschylus, and are in striking harmony with his style, with the boldness of his
metaphors, the unhesitating originality of his expressions; and we need not
doubt were on the whole equally justified, equally admirable in result, though
in like manner not seldom startling, even sometimes to the extent of a shock.
The number and variety of characteristic masks that were required by such a
fertile dramatist as Aeschylus alone, must have given a marvellous stimulus to
inventive design, and it is impossible to say how much his personal influence
and suggestions may not have contributed to the decision of those types of
divine and heroic physiognomy that were elaborated by the sculptors. His own
description of the aspect of his Furies evinces how forcibly characteristic
were the types that he accepted.
As regards the temple
architecture of the Greeks, we have the names of four architects of Athens who
were employed on the great Olympieium under Peisistratus,—names only, not a
fragment of their work, as little of the work of Rhoecus in the vast Heraeum of
Samos, or of the Corinthian Spintharus at Delphi. But for our immediate epoch
we happily possess remains which when closely examined discover how much careful
theoretical study was devoted to the original design, and even throw back light
upon certain more archaic fragments of unassignable date. The temple that was
measured and published with great completeness by Mr. Cockerell, under the
title of The Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius at Aegina, illustrates the
architecture of this period and its sculpture also, and furnishes an
intermediate example between some scanty remains of an earlier Parthenon and a
temple at Corinth, and the perfected Doric temples of the age of Pericles.
The Doric may be said
to have been the common style of
Hellenic architecture
at the date when building- first attained with the Hellenes to the dignity of a
style, a point that is found already attained in no imperfect sense even in the
very earliest examples of which fragments are preserved. The first that we
possess betray most clearly in their details derivation from timber originals,
but not more distinctly and scarcely more crudely than the latest; and the
moderateness of subsequent change in this respect warns us how remote the
earlier may be from the epoch of original adaptation. For all their archaism,
they exhibit the style complete in its essential members, and with far more
than the rudiments of its characteristic beauty; most important fact of all,
they betray a consciousness of the principles on which character and expression
in architecture are dependent.
The obligations of
Doric to Egyptian architecture have been recognised with a circumstantiality
that is not easily gainsaid, in the details which offer for comparison in the
so-called Proto-Done of Beni-Hassan and Philae ; among them the most plausible,
for they are in truth too specific to be ascribed to common suggestion of
natural fitness, are the abacus, echinus, and rudimentary annulets of the
capital of the column, and the facetted shaft that prepares for the
all-important flutes. But the most important lessons that the Greek might have
learnt and probably did learn among the primeval monuments of Egypt, were the capabilities
of beauty that reside in the column as a structural member, and in extended
colonnades,— in contrasts of columns of subordinated dimensions and proportions,
and of the cylindrical column with rectangular pier or anta,—the value of
equalities of spacing and of symmetry in elevation,—the dignity of close and
massive proportions and of consistent adherence to trabeative construction in
the span of voids by the horizontal beam. To Egypt, with all its barbaric
limitations and sophistications and affection for extravagant mass that did but
dwarf the artist, must still be allowed the achievement both in sculpture and
architecture of a very high
grade of dignity and
expression, which merits recognition in no slight degree as a grand style, and
that at a time which relatively to Greek art—carry it back as far as we
reasonably may—wras remote antiquity indeed.
But whatever the
Greek borrowed was first selected as the most suitable, and then very speedily
became his own by a process equivalent to the changes of transmuting nature. It
was by his steady reliance on nature and recurrence to nature that he had
shaken himself free from many a sophistication that clung to him for a certain
time from earlier forms of Aryan language or mythology; at the utmost he retained
them as wild stocks on which to graft expression and poetry of a perfection
that goes far to reduce enquiry respecting their ulterior origin to little more
than vulgar antiquarianism. The superseded forms ma}r leave a
certain impress, but it is as vestiges of forms that have departed ; adopted
forms may still upon scrutiny betray their prototype, but ever concurrently
with the final renunciation of allegiance to such an origin. So the stone
architecture of the Greeks, while manifestly derived in numerous details from
models constructed in timber, as manifestly does not minutely mimic, does not
studiously imitate them, and in all most important points adjusts itself to new
conditions. The substitution of stone for timber had early enforced contracted bearings
between open supports, the span from column to column being controlled by
available scantling of materials; then the composition, which so was of
necessity closed up, betrayed of itself an elementary principle of dignity that
the sensibility of the Greek was quick to recognise and eager and able to
develope. It was here that his imagination was most affected by the exclusively
stone architecture of Egypt; but out of the various types presented to him he
selected and made chief use of that which harmonised best with past
associations from constructions that were already in possession of his
sympathies,
The climatic
difference of a stormy as contrasted with a rainless region was recognised and
allowed prerogative influence over mouldings and profiles throughout;
responsively to this consideration, a sloping roof, adapted to weather- fend
the interior, now descended on the cornice; and to the cornice was given a
bolder horizontal projection that sheltered the exterior also, and delivered
rainfall clear of the members below. Even to the crowning capital of the
column, in deference to the same idea, was assigned a spread that is quite
independent of reference to the bearing and breadth of the architrave, the beam
which it carried; but is sympathetic with the expression of ample cover to the
shaft and foot below.
A solid
and spreading basement, the line of regularly interspaced columns, the bracing
architrave and covering and repeated triglyphs of the bonding frieze, completed
the elements of the composition, and gave occasions for telling contrasts of
void and solid, of vertical and horizontal, of open and enclosed. But it was by
his mastery of the harmonising influence of consistent and characteristic
proportion that the Greek attempered these contrasts, and by blending them in
unity knew how to elevate propriety in purpose and construction to the charm
of stateliness and beauty in highest perfection. .
The Aeginetan temple
is but small—100 feet by 50 on plan, with columns of 3^- feet in diameter against
the 5f- feet of the Corinthian. It represents the distribution of larger
structures by being divided in the interior even to inconvenience by colonnades
that, upon such a reduced scale, obstruct passage; but it is in other respects
elaborate in design and refined in execution and ornament, to a degree that
certifies it to be an example of the best advancement of its period. As regards
the architecture of the temple, its Doric style is the same that, complete in
all members and details, and even in characteristic treatment and the general
proportions of the
whole, had been already transported to Italy and Sicily; it was there to be
embodied on colossal scale, but scarcely to receive any modifications that, as
compared with the primary scheme, are beyond the value of provincialisms. The
architecture of Paestum and of Agri- gentum, and other Sicilian cities even of
later date, has marked analogy with Aeginetan Doric in the specimen before us,
and separated too early from the parent stock to participate in the exactness
of refinement that still remained to be conferred by Attic genius.
In almost all its
forms at all times Doric architecture is distinguished for breadth, boldness,
simplicity, majesty, and its merits in these respects are already pronounced in
the age of Themistoeles with considerable dignity; but archaism even at its
best never quite compasses perfect consistency, and purity of style awaits the
sensitiveness of a more refined and fully practised age. Severity is usually
the characteristic of archaic art, and the remains of the Doric temple at
Corinth, of an earlier age than the Aeginetan, are in respect of some forms
more heavy, it may be said more majestic; but in the profile of the capital
they demand still more stringently that correction of a common weakness which
was afterwards to be administered by the Athenian.
Ionic architecture,
or rather the Ionic style of Greek architecture, can scarcely be traced quite
up to the age of Themis- tocles, but must have been already in progress of
develope- ment, and may be referred to in anticipation as illustrating by
contrast the developement to which it supervened. It stands in the same
relation to Persia, from whence it derived many suggestions for treatment of
column in capital and base, and to Assyria for ornamental details, that the
Doric style occupies to Egypt. Again, the Greek gave more than he appropriated.
Egyptian architecture was Doriscd by fusion with inventions drawn from
systematic timber construction ; and then this developed Doric supplied the
funda
mental t’orms which
received enrichments of Eastern origin, but which it remained for Hellenic
genius to render refined, and to distribute with unimpeachable propriety and
grace.
In leading divisions
and even certain subdivisions of stylo- bate, column, entablature, pediment,
the Ionic style in the majority of instances adheres accurately to the lines
and precedents of the Doric. The main differences are that the column as Ionie
assumes for the first time a proper moulded base and interpolates the peculiar
Eastern form of volutes below the abacus of the capital, and that the frieze
becomes continuous by dispensing with the intermittent series of triglyphs.
What are really more important distinctions are found in the uniform adoption
of slenderer proportions, in harmony with the lightness of decoration, though
still regulated on the same general principles, and above all in the
characteristic profile of the order.
Pass the eye down the
Ionie profile and it will be observed that every angle is tempered by an
adjacent curved moulding precisely at the points—as in architrave-band and
abacus, and at meeting of cornice and bed-moulding, of shaft and stylobate
—where the angularity of the Doric is most unqualified ; and curves of contrary
flexure are admitted as frankly as the more simple. In the Doric profile, the
imperceptible entasis of the column apart, it is only in the cymatium or
gutter-rim of the pediment, in the echinus or the bowl-like member of the
capital and the mere lip of a drip-moulding that curvature is admitted at all;
all other projections are bounded by right lines at right angles, or at angles
very acute or very obtuse. The cymatium at Aegina is a curve of contrary
flexure, but even this indulgence was destined to be corrected in the
Parthenon, for a simple curve stopped by a right line ; and the curve of the
echinus of the capital was also to be set there more severely upright and
returned upon the abacus with greater approximation to the vertical than in the
Aeginetan and in the still more abnormal Corinthian example. So the sinking
of the Aeginetan
flute as a segment of a circle was afterwards rendered more severe by the
substitution of the flatter ellipse that gives a sharper and steeper arris. At
Aegina already, the tendency to contrary flexure in a curve as continued from
the echinus to the shaft of the column, is qualified by the deep sinkings and
bold angularity of the annulets and necking; but even here the Athenian was not
-satisfied without rendering the break still more pronounced.
As regards general
proportion, not only is Doric majesty acknowledged and valuably realised at
Aegina, but it was moreover already effected by studied adjustment of exact
numerical proportion; and much progress had been made towards discoveiy of the
appropriate terms and appropriate directions for the application of the
principle. I have illustrated this point in detail in an Appendix to ZNTr.
Cockerell’s work.
The Doric column, as
compared with the Ionic, is shorter relatively to its diameter, thicker
relatively to its interval, and consequently lower relatively to its spacing;
but varies iu different examples in a sequence that tends directly to Ionic
proportion. A comparison of Doric examples among themselves in the last
respect gives the following progressive contraction of arrangement on plan,
and illustrates—this is not the place for more—one application of the Greek
theory of architectural proportion :—
At Corinth—Height of Column = 2 Intercokunns + 11 diameters of the
column. At Aegina „ = „ + 2 „
The Theseum at 1 _ .
Athens J ” — ” 2 ”
The Parthenon „ = „ +3
In both the Aeginetan
and Corinthian Doric columns the upper and lower diameters of the shaft and
that of the abacus have the same relative proportions of low numbers, 3:4: 5 j
a sequence that occurs in like application in some Attic examples, but in
others, and especially the Parthenon, wTas superseded by further
refinements. The retention of like
proportions between
corresponding- diameters in columns that differed considerably in height
introduced effects of delicate variety.
Lastly, the architect
of the temple at Aegina had as yet no more than the school that carried on the
art in the West, appreciated the value of giving preponderance of height to the
vertical member, the column, relatively to the joint height of the
horizontals—of the rest of the fa£ade. This was a discovery still reserved for
Attica, and the rational vindication of it goes far into the principles that
govern architectural design of every style and age to the extent that it
approaches full perfection. It was at Athens first, at Athens chiefly, that the
principles of the appropriate application of proportion to architecture were
discovered and exemplified ; principles that even so far as already recovered
await intelligent recognition.
Authentic evidence
fails for instituting a comparison of the entire coloured enrichment with that
of the Parthenon ; for little more can be advanced without risk of controversy
than that there also the stringcourses and mouldings that framed in the
pediment and frieze were painted with patterns. At Aegina there is more
sufficient proof of the colour applied to some plain broad surfaces, with
manifest crudity and as lingering traditions from primitive usage of timber
constructions.
The sculpture of the
Aeginetan temple is so far in harmony with its architecture, that in hardness
of forms and expressions, as distinguished from unskilfulness or rudeness, it
retains much of traditional archaism, together with very high merits that
evince capacities and promise of advance to any height of excellence. The
various degrees of merit that are found among the figures of these
compositions, attest an already established and still proceeding improvement.
We cannot do them full justice as compositions, in consequence of many figures
being lost from each, but fortunately enough remain to illustrate the
principles of com
position that were
adopted, as well as to display the feeling that had been acquired for
truthfulness to beauty in nature and technical mastery. The original marbles
are at Munich, restored by Thorwaldsen, and so far with a misdirected ingenuity
that designedly obscures the distinction of new parts and old.
The chief seats of
sculpture in Greece at this time—and for long before, as for long
afterwards—were Aegina, Athens, Argos, Sicyon. Each city may have had
peculiarities of school, but their artists are found working in concert, and it
would seem to follow, exercising lively reaction in style and interchanging
instruction. Synnoon and his son Ptoli- chus of Aegina are pupils of a
Sicyonian; Simon of Aegina works together with Dionysius of 1 Argos
as Ageladas of Argos works with the Sicyonians Canachus and Aristocles, and has
for scholars Myron and Pheidias, Athenians, as well as Polycletus, an Argive
like himself.
The early notices of
Greek sculpture defy definite chronology ; allusions to particular artists are
scant, confused, or contradictory; notices of their comparative styles are
inconclusive. So many of the most distinguished Greeks, again, lived and were
active to very advanced age, that this may well have been the case with many
artists; and we know— it is a commonplace in the history of arts—how rapidly at
certain epochs an individual artist may advance in style, and also how long
after art generally has passed into a totally new style one of the earlier
innovators may continue, persevering in a style at a date when, but for
biography, it would be unhesitatingly declared to have been long superseded.
Pausanias refers to
Callon of Aegina as representative of the same archaic style of art as Canachus
of 2 Sicyon ; and Latin authors, as 3 Quintilian and 4
Cicero, apply to the works of both the same terms ‘ hard ’ and ‘ rigid.5
o
1 Pans, v 27. i. 2 lb. vii. 18. 6.
3 Quint, xii. l o. * Brut, xviii. 70.
Of the style of
Canachus we may form a certain notion, from comparison of these terms with
recognised copies of his celebrated Apollo, which was carried off from Miletus
by the Persians, to be restored long after by Seleucus. There can be little
doubt that it is more or less accurately represented on coins, and then by the
small Payne Knight bronze now in the British Museum. The date of the original
work has been somewhat hastily assumed by Brunn and others as later than 479
B.C., on the assertion of both Pausanias and Strabo that it was carried off by
Xerxes. But it surely is clear that all these authorities transfer to Xerxes
the earlier outrages of Darius, who by testimony of 1 Herodotus
plundered and burnt the temple at Didyma, and transferred captives from Miletus
to Ampe on the Tigris. Brunn, in his History of Greek Artists, also confuses
lonians with Aeolians and Miletus with Miletopolis in 2 Mysia.
This statue was
colossal; another at Thebes, a repetition of it in both magnitude and design, wTas
of cedar. To Cana- ehus is also ascribed a seated temple statue of Aphrodite of
ivory and gold—chryselephantine—at Corinth ; a valuable notice of the early
date of this sumptuous form of art.
The Aeginetan artist
Callon, who ranked with this master, could not have been unimportant.
Another Aeginetan, of
whose very important works we have abundant notices in Pausanias, though
strangety enough not a single mention of him occurs elsewhere, was Onatas; and
here we obtain a certified date ; he was in full reputation 01. 78. 3 = 496
B.C., not long after which date one of his works was dedicated by Deinomenes,
son of Hiero, at Olympia. He wrought, at least principally, in bronze, gods and
heroes and victors in the games; and in the characterisation of his works by
Pausanias, we find the Aeginetans
indicated as usually
more archaic, for all their merit, than the archaic school of Attica.
A contemporary of
Onatas was Glaucias of Aegina; we only read ot‘ his statues of Olympic victors;
of Gelon with his chariot; of Theagenes the renowned athlete of Thasos, victor
in boxing, 01. 75 = 480 B.C., the year of Salamis, and as Pancratiast in the
following Olympiad ; and of Glaucus of Carystus, whom he represented
characteristically, in the attitude of that sciamachy—sparring—in which he peculiarly
excelled.
The material of all
the Aeginetan sculpture of which we have literary record is metal, chiefly
bronze; it was perhaps with a certain symbolical intention that the colossal
Zeus— ten cubits high, erected at Plataea by the Hellenes collectively, and
work of an Aeginetan. Anaxagoras, not otherwise known—was formed of 1
iron. The recovered sculptures of the Aeginetan pediments, although of marble,
seem to follow a precedent or conform to a taste established by familiar use of
bronze. Each figure stands freely on its legs, with no obligation for support
to stump 01* attached drapery, or other of the usual contrivances in marble
sculpture for securing against collapse by proper weight. The comparatively small
scale of the figures of course renders this more easy, but still the feat is
remarkable; each figure rested upon its plinth, that was let into the comice
and run with lead, and except for some ornamental adjuncts to helmets, was
formed from a single piece of marble, even to the shield that in some parts did
not exceed three-quarters of an inch in thickness. The parts of the figures
that, as turned towards the tympanum, must have been always invisible from
below, are finished with all the scrupulous care that was bestowed on the
fronts.
The subject of one
composition certainly, and probably of both, was a combat for possession of a
slain warrior. Athene
stands upright in the
centre, represented with only a qualification of the formality that might
pertain to her archaic statue, but still with so much as to vindicate her
interest, indeed protective interference, in the fight. This point is somewhat
obscured by misarrangement of the grouped casts in the British Museum; the feet
of the goddess ought to protrude below the knees of the prostrate warrior who
lay further to her right. The angles are occupied by extended wounded figures,
of which the correspondence is heightened into a blunt and over-formal
antithesis; the remoter arm is bent in one case, extended in the other; the
remoter leg crosses over the nearer in one case, in the other is behind. Then
follows on either side a triplet of figures,—a kneeling archer in each group
behind an advancing protagonist and with a kneeling spearman behind him. Here
contrast is chiefly entrusted to some difference of costume in the archers, and
then to the variety that is given by the shield arms being necessarily next to
the tympanum on one side, and the spear arm on the other. The most marked
contrast of all ensues between the figures that answer indeed as figure for
figure on either side of the goddess, but are as different as the prostrate in
death from the enemy who crouches forward to seize and drag him away.
In such arrangement
there is recognition of the symmetry appropriate for sculpture that is to be
associated with strictty symmetrical architecture ; but at best there is only a
commencing break into that bolder rhythmical distribution that can balance
group by group, of which both the elements and arrangement are contrasted, as
exemplified beyond all rivalry in the pediments of the Parthenon.
The drapery of the
Athene is stiff and formal, and none appears elsewhere to relieve the nude ; it
is much if we may say that there is a poor substitution attempted by interposing
on either side the more entirely, and closely covered and accoutred archers.
Archaic formality is
retained in the stiffly curled hair and set smile of the combatants, even of
the dying, even of the spectatress goddess. One fashion however does but preserve
the Doric custom of a toilette of battle, as exemplified by the Spartans
preparing for battle at Thermopylae ; and Homer ascribes such a smile to
Aeginetan Ajax at the very crisis of combat:—
Toro* ap‘ Alas wpro neXdipios ep/cos ’Ayaiuiv MeiSiScuu (iXoavpotat
vpoawiraac vtpOt 5e Troaatv 1'Hi'€ fia/cpcL fitffas, xpaSaaiv
5o\ixoCKtov eyxosl-
If colour was crude
on the architecture, it was still more so on the sculpture, where armour and
eyes and lips and wounds were certainly painted, as well as probably emblems on
the shields.
The subject of the
best preserved pediment is, I do not doubt, the contest over the body, not of
Patroclus, but of Achilles himself, the rescue of which was the great glory of
the Aeacid Ajax. Hector with Paris as an archer and a characteristic figure,
are then recognised on one side, as Ajax: and his constant comrade Teucer, and
perhaps Ulysses, on the other. The kneeling Hercules of the other pediment, an
archer as he is described in the Odyssey, gives sufficient assurance that its
subject was that earlier contest with Trojans in which Telamon, as ally of
Alcides, gained his bride Hesione; a second glorification of heroes of Aegina
whom Pindar lauds as unfailingly in every Aeginetan ode, and in victorious conflict
in the wars against Asia, of which Herodotus himself regards that with Xerxes
as a continuation.
The contrast of these
works to the Pheidian pediments may not be greater than was that of a drama of
Phrynichus with one of Sophocles; certain in any case it is that very decisive
archaism clung obstinately to the art. An example of how it could defend its
ground is seen in a bas-relief found at Eleusis, where on the veiy same slab
one figure of a group 1 Iliad, vii. 211.
is in the later,
another, for no discoverable reason, in the style that was all bnt obsolete.
The notice which has
been already qnoted of the statue of Glaucus in the attitude of ‘ sparring,’ by
Glaucias of Aegina, may be regarded as a link in history which connects
Aeginetan art with that of Pythagoras of Rhegium and Myron of Attica, who are
both celebrated as breaking through ancient rigour more or less completely, and
at the same time venturing boldly upon characteristic—dramatic— attitudes and
gestures. The art of the Italian colony was at this time capable of holding its
own in competition with Attic, for Pythagoras was held to have surpassed Myron
in a figure of a Pancratiast at 1 Delphi. Particularly celebrated
was his statue at Syracuse of a figure painfully limping from the suffering
caused by an ulcer,—as I have elsewhere inferred,—a Philoetetes; a group of
great interest was ascribed to him of the Theban brothers, Eteocles and
Polynices, dying by mutual blows.
Myron was of
Eleutherae in Attica, a town on the road to Boeotia, a hint that criticism has
sometimes too eagerly seized on to impute to his art Boeotian characteristics
that would not otherwise be suspected. A vast number of his works are on
record, from single and associated figures of animals as well as of men and
gods, in bronze, and some colossal, to modelling and chasings in silver. Like
his rival, he is one of the artists who are signalised by innovations in art
together with retention of considerable archaism. By rare good fortune we have
certain representations of some of his works, which are sufficient to avouch
that, like Pythagoras, he was studious of ‘ rhythm and symmetry,’ in other
words, when sculpture is in question, of proportion and composition. The daring
attitude of his Discobolus, who bends down and forwards and sideways
preparatory to the delivery of his cast,
is described with
admiration by the ancients, and is reflected for us in various copies and
repetitions,—one is in the British Museum,—which however differ too much among
themselves for us to accept any one as an exact reproduction. His exhausted
foot-racer, Ladas, represented as just winning, but winning only at the expense
of his last breath, was almost equally celebrated. A figure in the Lateran
Museum has been recognised with great plausibility as representing Marsyas,
from his group of the Satyr in an attitude of astonishment at Athene as she
flung away the pipes that he w'as to take up to be his bane. It is difficult to
resist an impression, on regarding this slatue, that Pheidias was under the
same obligation to the original for the Poseidon of his west pediment of the
Parthenon, that Michael Angelo did not disdain to owe to the Christ of Orcagna
for the central figure in his Last Judgment.
How far and in what
manner Ageladas of Argos showed the way by his own productions to the
marvellous advances that were made by those who are assigned to him as
scholars, we cannot say. Not a few of his works are recorded, but unfortunately
in no instance with a characterisation of style. It is significant however that
it is not to himself but to his scholar Myron that so much merit is assigned
for a decisive break with archaism, from which Pheidias and Polycletus were
entirely emancipated. How defective are the materials for a history of early
art appears in the fact that we have not a sing-le notice of that grand transition
in the treatment of
o o
drapery which was
equivalent in itself to a revolution in art. Apart from this the glory must be
assigned to Myron and his competitors of occupying in ancient art the position
of the Masaccios and Mantegnas in the history of modern painting.
Two Athenian artists,
Critios and Ncsiotes, in 148o B.C.
made statues of
Ilarmodius and Aristogeiton in substitution of those which were carried off by 1
Xerxes three years previously. Some records of this group have been traced on
coins and vases, and, it is believed, even copies in sculpture. By comparison
of these it is still possible to appreciate the skill with which the figures of
the two youths rushing forward together to an attaek were so composed as to
display the action of both in effective combination from whichever side they
were regarded.
1 Paus. i. 8. 5 ; Lucian, Philops. 18.
A DECADE OF POLITICAL AXD PARTY DEVELOPMENTS.
From 476 down to 466 b. c. the page of Greek history
presents what may seem to be a happy blank. No collisions with Persia are set
down within this period, and not even any considerable dissensions among the
Greeks themselves. It might be supposed that they were now enjoying the unmixed
rewards of patriotic exertions and free co-operation, devoting themselves
entirely to the reconstruction of their industries, the celebration of their
festivals, the production and dedication of the numerous and elaborate works of
art by which they commemorated their deliverance and acknowledged their
gratitude to the gods for glory, for safety, and for wealth. Political feelings
however, we may be sure, were not in suspended animation during this interval,
nor conld significant political events, however comparatively sparse and
unobtrusive, be wanting; but historians negleeted the tameness of the time to
dissert in preference on the broader and more startling effects of Persian or
Peloponnesian war, or were diverted to fill up what seemed a gap by annals of
opportunely livelier events in the colonial West. Sicily and lower Italy
supplied some highly exciting incidents,—tales of the courts of Hiero and
Theron, the important naval victory gained by Hiero over Etruscans in the Bay
of Cumae in 474 B.C., and the crushing defeat of the Dorians of Tarentum by the
Iapvgians 473 B.C., with its consecpient supplanting of Tarentine oligarchy by
a democracy.
Deserted thus by the
detailed guidance that we could wish
for in central
Greece, we are left to interpret a few general notices as best we may, and so
elicit explanation of wliat contrasts are discoverable between the situation of
affairs at the opening of the period and at its conclusion.
Important changes, it
is certain, were gradually supervening throughout this period in the relations
of Athens, not only to Sparta and the Peloponnesian states, but also to her own
confederates in the alliance assumed as still subsisting for active prosecution
of hostilities against the Persian. And it was impossible that differences of
opinion as to the policy dictated by such changes or inducing them, should not
be very decided at Athens itself, where the control of public affairs on this
extended scale offered so tempting a prize to the ambitious. The value of party
combination for the compassing of political power was no new discovery at
Athens, and the leaders of party, now that Aristides, probably through age, had
comparatively retired, were recognised distinctly enough in Themistoeles and
Cimon. By the circumstances of the time a large measure of popular support was
enjoyed by either. Themistoeles, as creator of the fleet with its fortified
arsenal at the Piraeus, and leader in its prime glory at Salamis, was the
proper representative of the new democracy; while Cimon, though more
immediately allied with the aristocracy, had no slight popular hold, in some
degree from the memory of his father Miltiades, still more from his own
considerable achievements, and also from the open and liberal manners that are
never so appreciated, even in the most resolute democracy, as from a born
aristocrat. Influential members again of the Eupatrids—of that aristocracy of
descent which comprised some who were devoted to all tha£ was desperately
oligarchical, not to say tyrannical in aspiration— were the Alcmaeonids, who
knew well how to avail themselves of the connection for the sake of aid from
those of less flexible principles than themselves, but had ever in view to
effectuate a compromise at a favourable time, and so to
acquire the guidance
which by management might become equivalent to the mastery of the democracy. Of
such a section Cimon would naturally receive the support, but only until it
produced from itself a rival and a competitor.
On the great question
of the treatment of the allies, there can be little doubt that Themistocles was
disposed to carry matters with a high hand, and to foreg'o no opportunity of
making the leadership of Athens stringently imperative. Whether the synod of
representatives met regularly and debated and voted at Delos 01* not, would not
much alter the case ; the preponderance of Athens would enable her easily to
rule every discussion, every decision. It was therefore a eon-"’ sequence
in the nature of things that however, as time went on, alarm at the urgency of
danger from Persia might decline, there was decided indisposition to admit of
any question as to reduction in the assessed contributions or of the rigour
with which they were levied. Already even while apprehension was still
subsisting, the same difference in respect of energy and organisation that had
appeared in the resistances offered by Ionia and by Athens when they were tried
independently, had begun to tell in a manner that encouraged Athenian
pretensions. Already before any thought came into question on the part of the
allied cities of repudiating continued assessment, there was a declared
preference among many of them to compound for exemption from personal service,
to furnish ships rather than their quota of men, or with still more alacrity to
substitute both for men and ships a contribution in money. The Athenian
population, on the other hand, had fairly taken to the sea—to public service
afloat that involved remote voyages and renunciation or suspense of private
occupation, and the policy of its leaders gave them every encouragement in this
direction. Arrangements for money compositions therefore, which went to supply
liberal pay to Athenian crews and to fit out Athenian vessels, were readily
accepted. The efficiency of a war trireme depended,
s 2
from the tactics that
wore applicable, on discipline and training that were not speedily acquired,
and so by degrees Athens became, by the habits of her population as well as the
numbers of her ships, not so much the preponderant as the sole naval power of
the Aegean. Only the larger islands of Lesbos, Chios, and Samos remained in the
distinct condition of properly autonomous allies, and still kept up war
fleets, though comparatively inconsiderable.
The affection however
for positive autonomy in even very small Greek cities was so much a part of
Greek nature, that the sense of subordination which qualified the relief
obtained by such compositions could not before very long be otherwise than
galling. Nor were the Athenians disposed either to indulgence or tenderness in
administration; they had the consciousness, and did not care to conceal it, of
possessing qualities themselves that were proper to a superior and governing
race ; they assumed the tone and independence of command, and took slight care
to mask the fact that their nominal allies were rapidly declining into the
condition of subjects. It is only at the conclusion of the period we are now
concerned with that we have notice of hostile collisions induced by these
growing discontents ; but the expressions of Thucydides seem to authorise the 1
inference that outbursts of contumacy were early as well as frequent, and had
been followed up by Athens, in instances that have escaped particular record,
with a severity that left the offenders thereafter in a perfectly different
relative position.
All this implies the constant
exercise and cruising of the Athenian fleet, quite apart from special
expeditions. In such operations Themistocles was at home; and the notice
occurs, among examples of his ostentation of ability and distinction, how on
one occasion of assuming command he put off the settlement of all his matters
of business, private as well as
public, for the sake
of the display of his multifarious concerns and facility of despatch, on the
very day of 1 embareation. The ambitious views which he entertained
for the city that he had re-created were without limit; and his faculty of political
insight, so celebrated by Thucydides, gave him clearest perceptions of the
openings that would conduct its present largely extended power most directly to
the limitless beyond. The position that Persia seemed to be rapidly forfeiting,
of a vigorously organised and overwhelming empire, left a vacancy for a
successor who could profit by the opportunity and by the examples of her glory
and her decline. But for a Greek state to be her successor or rival, the
relations of the states of Hellas could not be unchanged. The first difficulty
and the last in the way of the largest organisation, was the inveterate
Hellenic tendency to mere municipal, or at best cantonal independencies, asserting
for themselves the right of war and peace, of exclusive treaties and
legislation. To the disorders that ensued it is due that even Herodotus refers
to the conquests of Ionia by the Persians with a certain sense of relief as
pacifications—pacifications, that is, of the very internal feuds and quarrels
that had disabled them from uniting for effective self-protection. Hellas no
doubt could not have been what it was, have done what it had done, but for the
spirit of individuality of which this tendency was an outgrowth; but its
difficulties, always great, were rapidly becoming inconsistent with the
necessities of changed times, and the true problem of politics was how to carry
over the best of its advantages; the Athenian could discern that the option lay
between succeeding to empire or succumbing to it. For sueh a sucecssion the
irresistible predominance of a central power was a condition, and thus direct
constraint or the threat of it, its equivalent, was applied without remorse to
the minor allies, who might show impatience at demands upon
their active scvviccs
or even payments in composition. Impatience could not but spring- up under
such conditions among communities of which the restricted limits admitted of no
interests so important as local distinction, local festivals and festivities,
and the pursuit of wealth; while they fostered narrow-mindedness that would
require danger to be very close to them indeed—such in all ages is the story of
small confederate republics—before it roused them thoroughly, and to continue
very close to them if they were to remain for long united and alert.
In the more important
communities, such as Thebes or Samos, the hold of Athens upon loyalty to
alliance was largely or chiefly dependent on the security given by her alliance
to the possession of power by the demoeratieal party. A firmly-planted
democracy constituted an Athenian garrison, an Athenian outpost.
Against what an
opposition such a party had to strengthen itself at Samos, where aristoeratical
traditions maintained themselves, as at Athens, by certain traditions of the
pomps and indulgences of a tyranny—of the court of Pol}Tcrates—is
evidenced by the convulsions that ultimately led to its overthrow and a very
serious revolt. There is then nothing that should surprise us in the fullest
sympathy and co-operation of democratic Samians in power with the Athenian
policy, and even to the extent of being the proposers of the removal of the
treasury of the confederation, and with it, as of course, the synod, from Delos
to 1 Athens. The accumulation of the fund after a few }Tears
might well seem to demand that a protection of the strongest walls should be
superadded to that of sanctity; Athens, as collector and disburser of the fund,
could make as many difficulties and inflict as much inconvenience as she
chose, while appearing, if she cared to be at the trouble, to be quite
satisfied with the first arrangement, which was now finally superseded.
1 PIut. Aristides, 25.
Some more ancient
authority is no doubt represented by Justin when he dates this transference
several years later, after the dangerous sympathy of Sparta with the revolt of
Thasos. But it is certain that the depth and designs of this sympathy remained
secret for a year or two at least; the meditated invasion of Attica on that
occasion by the Lacedaemonians, avouched by Thucydides, was secret at the
time, and not notorious enough to prevent the friendly aid of Cimon’s
expedition to Ithome soon after. Where one authority must needs be sacrificed,
I adopt in preference the record of Plutarch ; there is a confirmatory sentence
in Deinarchus that Aristides in this case, as in the extension of the
democracy, assented to and even promoted a measure which in itself bears a
certain resemblance to the less scrupulous policy of Themis- tocles. The
transference however may easily have had full and manifest justification; and
that it was passed over so slightly by the historians, rather implies its
adoption with a facility that is in accordance with the universal confidence in
Aristides; its consequence however could not but have been even more important
morally than materially, as conclusively expressing the sanctioned right of
Athens to extended metropolitan control.
It is impossible not
to be struck with the abstention during all these years from any offensive
operations against Persia, of sufficient importance to enforce an historical
allusion ; this may well have been due on the one hand to the retirement of the
Persians from collisions which had so little prospered, and to the comparative
insignificance, whatever their number, of those that might have taken place in
restoring the independence of minor cities and territories; but indications
are not wanting that it was chiefly because Athens was now more immediately concerned
in extending, or preparing to extend, her influence within the limits of
Hellas. There is a tale in
Plutarch to which we
have already adverted, inadmissible as literally told, but which cannot but be
noticed onee again, as involving elements which, however disarranged, are very
distinctly in general harmony with the situation. Themistocles, it is said,
conceived a scheme for assuring the supremacy of the Athenians by burning the
Hellenic fleet when it was stationed for the winter at Pagasae after the
retreat of 1 Xerxes, or generally to burn the Greek naval 2
station. That the story was current in more forms than one is proved by a
version of the project quoted by Cicero as referring to Gytliium, the port of
the Lacedaemonians, and which was destined to be burnt by Tolmides at later
date; all accounts agree that the opposition of Aristides was fatal to its
entertainment. Through this haze and confusion we at least may be justified in
discerning that Themistocles, who had laid out the walls of Athens so as to
defy the land force of the Spartans, was prepared to put aside every scruple,
should opportunity occur, to render the formation of a rival Hellenic fleet,
especially by Sparta, an impossibility. Even less than the infallible faculty
of divination that is ascribed to Themis- toeles, would apprise him that
rivalry alone, still more when necessarily compounded with jealous
apprehension, must sooner or later bring on a confliet to prove which of the
two powers, Athenian or Spartan, Dorian or Ionian, was not merely to have
superior control in Greece, but to positively check and overbear the other.
That he was even prepared to take the issue at once, in his own time and the
earlier the better, may not be too much to infer when we have followed his
career to its catastrophe.
This confliet then,
for better or worse, was deferred ; but in the meantime the influence of Athens
might assert a still wider range, and with Themistocles again are connected
some hints that her views were already directed westward across
the Ionian sea, to
Italy at least. When Cimon, his political opponent, expressed the contrasted
direction of his sympathies by naming- his sons Thessalus, Elens, and
Lncedaemonius, it cannot have been without meaning- that Themistoeles, after
adopting such self-assertiug names for other children as Archeptolis,
Cleophantus, and Nicomache, named two other daughters Italia and Sybaris; as
the daughter of his exile afterwards was named by him Asia. The colony to
Thurium, which dates under the administration of Pericles, would thus be a
fulfilment of his earlier abortive but definite project.
We are without
information as to the precise relation to " Athens of those states which,
having a certain dependence upon her rather than on Sparta, were yet not members
of the Delian confederation. In this position was Thebes, where democracy had
been installed after the suppression of Medism; and the other Boeotian towns,
which the same change had released from Theban control, however much of
Athenian, on whatever terms, may have taken its place. The same remark applies
to Phocis in a qualified degree, and more positively to Locris, the Medism of
which would afford pretext for any amount of interference. It is highly
probable that a certain command was obtained by Athens, through her present
position in relation to these regions, over the northern ports on the
Corinthian gulf, the ancient outlet of colonising Ionians to Sicily, Italy, and
the intermediate islands. The Ionians of Acliaia on the opposite side of the
gulf were either brought under Athenian control, or, which is much the same
thing, accepted the Athenian alliance at a later date ; but this event, like
the interference with the Spartan control of Delphi, seems only to have given
form and reality to foregone projects for broadening the basis of Athenian
power, which in their mere existence as projects had a reality of their own,
and which, when they came to be surmised by the rival or the enemy, had certain
very serious consequences forthwith.
The policy of Themistoeles
to found the influence of Athens
above all things on a
predominant navy, and to divert to its formation, and to the ports and arsenals
which it required, the chief resources of the State, was carried in the first
instance, as wc have seen, against the opposition of a party which urged the
advantage and necessity of reliance on a land force. A union of the two might
indeed well seem indispensable for the support of the vast project whicli was
now more or less avowedly and which, it is certain, was consciously,
entertained. It was by co-operation of an army and a navy that Persia had
subjugated Ionia, its coast cities and the islands; it was by like concurrent
action alone that the liberation commenced in the Saronic gulf had been
completed on the slopes of Cithaeron. It was for want of a powerfully
co-operating land-force that the liberation of the Greeks of Asia could not
penetrate beyond the very fringe of the sea-coast; and if Athens in the pursuit
of her designs had to lay her account with the possibility of a collision with
Sparta, the want of a countervailing heavy-armed force involved the surrender
of the open country of Attica to plunder and devastation.
A remnant of the old
party, ever ready to take a chance for reviving its fixed idea, might proudly
vindicate the ability of the Athenian hoplites to cope with the redoubted
Spartans in open field; the less audacious might still be sanguine that the
support of a cavalry force would at least make the balance even. When we weigh
the impression however of the reputation and achievements of the Dorian
hoplites, it'becomes quite intelligible that a politician like Cimon should
patriotically and in all sincerity hold at last, that while Athens was bound
to do her best to maintain an efficient land-force— a force as efficient as
possible—her great necessity still, whether as operating against Persia or as
hoping to continue undisturbed at home, was to persevere in a frank and cordial
alliance with Sparta. Thus would the power of Hellas be a truly perfect
organism, and ‘limp neither on one leg nor the other.’ So might the action
against Persia go on with fullest
effect in expeditions
both lucrative and glorious, for which there were still abundant opportunities;
while at home the recognised obligation to retain the sympathies of Sparta by
deference to her principles, could not but operate to check the constant
encroachments of democracy.
There is much in this
of ‘ honest general thought and common good of all5 the Hellenic
family; but there was little that Themistocles would not denounce as obsolete,
or deride as a dream. Athens was committed by circumstances first, and then by
all the inducements of honour and of revenue, to a new career, and must make
the most of it; must do her best no doubt to maintain power by land, but would
assuredly have to rely at last upon the nav}r, and might safely do
so, if this were only so maintained as to be crushingly preponderant.
It is difficult to
say that this ma}7 not have been the only course that was now open
to Athens, albeit involving of necessity a primary defect that was liable to
become more and more perilous as events moved on. As the wealth and population
of Athens and Attica increased, the theory of Themistocles, that the Athenians
must look to their fortified port as their refuge as well as the basis of their
power, could only be held to in virtue of a capital modification, the
connection of the city with the Piraeus by the long walls which in a few years
were to unite the earlier and later city into a single vast stronghold upon the
sea. By whomsoever this extension of the original plan was first proposed, it
was cordially adopted, as we shall see, with all its implications by Pericles ;
upon this he based his confidence that when Lacedaemonian opposition broke out
into the violence which no politician believed could be postponed indefinitely,
Athenian activity and power would make short work in rendering an account of
it; how his hopes were falsified in result, and mainly through the catastrophe
of the pestilcnce that decimated the over-crowded city, is the moral of the
story that we read in Thucydides.
The policy therefore
which the Athenian dermis accepted with all its sacrifices for the maintenance
of empire, in deference to the arguments and eloquence of Pericles, was the
ultimate and most resolute application of the conceptions of Themistoeles.
THE POLITICAL AND POETICAL SCOPE OF THE PEESAE OF AESCHYLUS.
It was in the archonship of Menon, 473-472 B.C.,
when these contrasted policies were hardening' into form and ripening for
conflict, that Aeschylus produced his play of the Persae. In subject it was at
least the same, and it was said to have some correspondence in detail, with the
Phoenissae of Phrynichus, which had subserved the glorification of
Themistocles only four years earlier. The stoiy of Salamis could scarcely be
presented again with enhanced dramatic force without again telling to the same
effect, albeit the name of Themistocles
O O 1
is suppressed
throughout, and no lines can be detected as introduced to give occasion for a
spontaneous outburst of recognition, as little as any that tend to extenuate
his merits by a cavil. A more direct allusion is sometimes said to be made to
Aristides in the description of the exploit at the island Psyttaleia; but this
was only an episode; even so the name of the commander is suppressed, and the
poet is deferential throughout to the jealousies of a sovereign people, who
could not endure that the victory of Marathon should be especially connected with
the name of Miltiades, or that the very inscriptions, by which as an unusual
honour they commemorated the highly valued successes and conquests of Cimon in
Thrace, should include his name.
The notion is at the
same time too absurd to controvert, though not to have been stated or adopted,
that Aeschylus in dramatising the story of Salamis, and insisting expressly
on the happy
stratagem that determined Xerxes to engage, had in view to derogate from the
merits of the Athenian commander, who was notoriously the author of the
stratagem, and in favour of Cimon, whose name never positively occurs in
eonncction with the battle at all.
The Persac was one
play associated in a tetralogy with three others, of which we fortunately have
the titles, though only scantiest fragments; and I have now to show that it is
possible to recover such a drift pervading the four, as vindicates for
Aeschylus the merit, which Aristophanes asserts as proper to the tragic poets,
of being as much the political as the moral monitors of their 1
countrymen. A poet who addressed a serious play to such an audience as the
Athenian, that came to the theatre thrilling with all the agitated and
suspended interests of the politics of the time, could scarcely hope to retain
attention unless he so chose his theme and treated it, as to affect however
covertly whatever sympathies were likely at the time to be most alert and
sensitive ; he walked amongst the hot embers of political passion, and his gait
and deviations were of necessity not uninfluenced. It was not only that he w’as
concerned to touch their very deepest sensibilities, but that these could not
be approached at random or with uneon- sidered directness; according to
circumstances they might for the time be utterly callous to one stimulus, while
susceptible, as Phryniehus had found, to exasperation in another. Distinct
allusions to current or even recent politics no doubt appear henceforward
resigned to the less dignified handling of the comic poets, but even so the
sense of a present or impending crisis can be recognised in many cases as controlling
the treatment of a tragic theme.
At the present time,
to the stimulus of home polities was added an especial revival of
self-consciousness of achievements against the barbarian, from the fame of
another naval victory
over other barbarians
at the western extremity of Hellas, achieved by Hiero of Syracuse. His aid had
been solicited by envoys from Cumae, which was threatened by the Etruscans. He
appears to have embarked himself, though suffering at the time from a painful
disorder, engaged the hostile fleet in the noble bay within sight of the
Phlegraean fields, and inflicted a total defeat. An iron helmet inscribed as
his dedication at Olvmpia from the spoils is now in the British Museum. In the same
year he gained a chariot victory in the Pythian games ; and the ode—one of his
noblest—in which Pindar celebrates 1 this, celebrates proudly the
warlike achievement also, reverts to his earlier victory at Himera over the
Phoenician, the Carthaginian barbarian, and associates the rescue of Hellas
here from impending slavery, with the Athenian claim to Hellenic gratitude at
Salamis and the victory at Plataea. the conquest of the Dorian spear, below
Cithaeron.
The occasion was most
apt for reviving at Athens the memories that Athens most delighted in, and
events that had so many bearings on the actually impending problems of the day.
The complete analysis of the play, and of the tetralogy, in reference to these
is the subject of a special dissertation, which cannot be inserted here ; but
the results of the enquiry may be given ; it has convinced me that the poet
wrote in no party temper, but as directing enthusiasm in the purest spirit of
patriotism to the maintenance of Ionian and Dorian alliance (homaicJtmia), at
the same time that he furthered domestic harmony by bringing to mind the
services of the politician bv whom this alliance might seem to be in most
danger of
^ o o
being jeopardised.
The play of the
Persae, then, with the account of Salamis, was introduced by the ‘ Phineus,5
and this referred to the previous and preliminary trial of Athenian strength
with the Persian
1 Pyth. i ;
cf. Pyth. 3, and Ilyporch. frag. i. 3.
at Artemisium, and it
was followed by the ‘ (Jlaueus of Potniae,’ a mythical subject again, but so
treated as to bear immediately on the decisive victory of Plataea, that is
foretold in the Persae by the shade of Darius. This assertion with respect to
the ‘ Phineus 5 is proved by comparison of the tenor of his mythus
with the story of Artemisium as told by Herodotus. Phineus, the blind king of
Salmydessus in Thrace, is the son-in-law of Boreas,—the north wind,—and of the
Athenian nymph Oreithyia, whom Boreas- carried off from the scene so celebrated
from Plato’s description and comments in the Phaedrus. Victim of the foul and
violent harpies, he is rescued by the winged sons of Boreas, Zetes and Calais,
who drive away his tormentors, pursuing them through the air. Now it was to the
same ageneies—to the happy interferences of Boreas, the north wind, and on the
same ground of relationship— that the Athenians owned their obligation for the
discomfiture of the Persian fleet off the coast of Magnesia and the headland
of Artemisium. They averred that they had been bidden by an oraele to invoke the
aid of their son-in-law Boreas, who responded with sueh vehement effect
accordingly. How more exactly and pointedly the two stories might be brought
together by the poet it were easy to conjecture; but records fail, and having
now recovered for the first time the leading import of the drama, we may be
better contented to remain in inevitable ignoranee of the rest.
It is much the same
with the ‘ Glaueus of Potniae.’ The German critics, to whom we owe so much,
have hitherto essayed to help themselves in their difficulties here by
substituting, with perfect arbitrariness, another recorded play of Aeschylus,
the ‘ Glaueus Pontieus,’ and so have contrived an argument that after all is
anything but conspicuously plausible. The story of Glaueus of Potniae is very
variously told indeed. He appears sometimes as himself a daemon, Taraxippus, a
( causer of horse-shying,’ sometimes as a hero overthrown by
such accident in a chariot race, and—for what impious offence is doubtful—
tom to pieces by his
horses maddened by having1 been watered at a spring at Potniae. Now
the Potniae of this mythus may be said to be on the very battle-field of
Plataea ; it was passed by the periegetes Pausanias on his way from that city
at about ten stadia from Thebes,—the actual ground occupied by the Persian army
and passed over by the pursuing Greeks. The great services of the Athenians in
these encounters were against the Persian cavalry, which previous to the battle
had choked and ruined the—we may safely assume—saered fount Gargaphia; and it
is at least easy to see how the fate of Masistius and Mardonius on their
Nisaean chargers and the rout and carnage of the mounted Immortals may have
been brought into connection with interference or desecration at the maddening
waters of Potniae close to their encampment.
These combinations
are clinched by the peculiar pertinence of the concluding Satyric play—the f
Prometheus, the Firelighter or Fire-bringer.’ The advent of the element which
is
o o
the type as the cause
of all gladness, and purity, and health, might happily symbolise the
restoration of Hellas after the dispersion of the dark barbarian cloud. It had
a further specific appropriateness from the formal and ceremonious renewal of
pure fire from Delphi, after the Persian evacuation and preparatory to the
sacrifice to Zeus Eleutherius.
W hen we
look over the single play of the trilogy that is preserved in its entirety, we
find very distinct characterisation of the Asiatic Ionians and the European
Greeks, especially the Dorians, and the Persians. There is then a very marked
contrast effected between Xerxes as the youthful, over-confident, too-widely
grasping inheritor of power, and the more wise and sober Darius. The contrast
is indeed rather strangely heightened by the ascription to Darius of a
moderation in conquest that belies the record of the Scythian and Thracian
expeditions which he conducted in person, to say nothing of that which he
despatched under Datis and Artaphernes, and was only prevented by death from
following up more
vigorous]}7.
The suppression indeed of* every allusion to Marathon by Aeschylus, who himself
was a Marathonomachus, might so far be understood if he also had equal part at
Salamis, but has certainly some appearance of a declining to seize an
opportunity to glorify the house of Cimon. It would be iu accordance with such
a feeling of the poet that tradition ascribed his final departure from Athens
to pique at an award of victory given by Cimon in favour of Sophocles.
The fundamental moral
however that underlies the entire play, and comes forward into most definite
expression over and over again, is the periloutness of excessive prosperity as
provocative to fatal insolence. The catastrophe of such a frame of mind is
represented as induced by the agency of a delusive daemon despatched by the
gods, as if in envious grudge, to tempt the overweening to their downfall.
Prosperity doubtless, even though most innocently or most honourably attained,
may prove scarcely less corrupting, scarcely less deluding, than the achievement
of a course of violence and guile, and its downfall came thus to be as
naturally ascribed to the same grudge of Nemesis ; the warning being as useful
in one case as the other. Now this sense of awe at the peril of great
prosperity was a commonplace of popular philosophy; it is the leading moral
that is constantly insisted on in the history of Herodotus, and meets us again
in that of Thucydides in the mouth of the pietist Nicias, who in deepest
disaster has a last hope from the exhaustion of the (pOovos of the gods. So,
on the one hand, it furnishes the prime motive of the drama, and, on the
other, it is embodied in much later times in the paintings on the large Darius
vase of Naples. In the play no doubt the moral is pointed against national
enemies, but this would not blunt it in its application to the consciences of
the present spectators of the play. The elevation of Athens, the. extension of
her sway, the swelling of her revenues, had reached such pitch so suddenly,
that never could the moral of moderation be more fitly brought forward.
That the example was
taken in the ease of a eonquered enemy served to secure a hearing’ for the
homily, but left its purport quite as unmistalceable. Athens at the head of a
confederacy of numerous allies, that varied in every degree of interestedness
and loyalty, might take warning if she could from the fate of Xerxes, induced
by blindfold elation to assume invincibility, only to witness his motley
armament shattered and wrecked at collision with the very first obstacle,—the
derision of men and gods.
In this manner the
tragedian, while he gratifies to the utmost the national pride of the
Athenians, appeals even more distinctly to the common Hellenic feeling in
memories of all the most glorious Hellenic achievements, rewards of the united
efforts of Dorian and Ionian by land and by sea; nor could this be done without
reviving a sense of the merits of the commanders, however their names were
passed over in silence,—of Themistocles as well as Aristides, for they had been
colleagues in the war, and colleagues afterwards, or certainly not rancorous
rivals, in the politics of peace; nor could some sense of sympathy have been
unrevived with Pausanias—his errors notwithstanding—with the victor in the last
decisive battle, who was still lingering, and doomed so long to linger, and to
fret, in obscurity, inaction, and restraint.
Sincere and wise a political monitor as
Aeschylus may have been for the Athenians, he was not popular with them in this
1 character; at best they left him, according' to his own
profession, to dedicate his tragedies to 2 Chronos—Time ; they were
quite capable of divorcing appreciation of the beauty and force of his poetry
from acceptance of its obvious moral. So it was certainly on a later occasion,
and so it appears to have been on this. His was a rugged, because a
high-principled and a self-reliant nature, and his consideration for the
feeling of the day was sufficient to secure attention and engage interest, but
did not prevent him from risking administration of a shock. We must not be surprised
therefore, if within less than two years after he had revived so gloriously for
all the memory of Salamis, the Athenians were in a mood to forget to whom they
chiefly owed the victory, and Themistocles was driven from the city, —the city
that he had saved, and more than resuscitated,— an ostracised refugee.
The leaders of the
opposed party to whom he owed this reverse were Cimon and Alcmaeon — the most
important among many; while Aristides, now advanced in age, held himself
honourably aloof, whether out of regard to the generosity of Themistocles in
his own recall, or to his later
1 Aristoph. Ran. 820.
2 Athen. p. 348 E.
co-operation with him
as a colleague in reform. Such an institution as ostracism—the extrusion of a
citizen from the state for years by secret ballot upon no definite charge—docs
not carry its own justification. According to the most plausible apology, it
provided a safeguard available at short notice, when the overgrown influence of
an individual threatened republican institutions, and yet might countervail
all ordinary legal procedure, or only give a hold for charging treasonable
intent when the time had ripened for treason’s fatal triumph. By such a process
a vague panic, that might or might not be truly prescient, could take security
with more certainty and more innocently than by fictitious charges for the
occasion. In a less severe contingency the State could so relieve its active
policy from the dead-lock of a nearly even balance of parties. These however
were more likely to be pretexts for ostracism than the principles of its
application. It offered too tempting a chance for the ‘supremacy of faction not
to encourage faction ; and the need of such a contrivance was warning of constitutional
defects that demanded more serious remedies. A polity strong enough to expel a
mischief in this manner ought to be strong enough to control it, strong enough
to keep a troublesome citizen in subjection, and also in reserve in case those
who were so anxious for his expulsion might themselves, when exempt from check,
become still more troublesome. Athens, that had been glad to recover the
ostracised Aristides just in time, was destined at a later day to reverse
another sentence, and be eager to revert after a serious disaster to the
counsels and services of Cimon ; and at the present time the prolonged exile of
Themistocles did not enable his opponents to ward off a crisis which his
foresight had anticipated, and which he of all others was most competent to
grapple with.
As regards the
application of ostracism in this instance, nothing more may be required to
account for it than the weariness that will supervene in free communities of
the
prolonged leadership
of even the most able and most successful single man. This ensues no doubt in
part from the prejudice caused by ever-aceumulating secondary lapses and
errors, by insolences and favouritisms, and then by misfortunes merely
unavoidable; but it is also usually due not a little to the volatility that
would have change of tone and topics ; to curiosity, especially on the part of
a new generation, as to proof of untried men of their own generation ; to the
concurrent impaet of elass cabals overbearing, each in their own, the common
interest. Full force is lent to these influences by the eagerness of growing
and excluded talent which fairly and naturally claims an opening and an
opportunity, but of talent also, new or old, which would mount to power by any
means, and can parade the contrast between a purity that has never had a chance
of going wrong, and sagacity that must needs be sometimes right in a eourse of
general denunciation; lastly comes in that jealous}", the weakness of
every sovereign power, which ever looks askanee at the exceeding prosperity of
those to whom it owes its own, and resents as an affront with all the venom of
vindictiveness the slightest hint of independenee.
In the latter respect
chiefly Themistocles was little likely to escape scot-free in the state which
had not been restrained by either respect or gratitude for Miltiades and
Aristides, notwithstanding the extension of its demoeratieal element in favour
of his most natural supporters. In the absence of information as to how party
opposition came at last to a crisis, there is significance in the notice of the
different temper in which were regarded the displays of wealth that were made
by Cimon and Themistocles respectively at the Olympic games. This must have
been at the 77th' Olympiad (472-71 B.C.), the second recurrence after the
Medica; for it could not have been in the year of the M-edica, and it was in
the immediately ensuing festival that Themis- toeles had been so universally
popular. If we were held to
Plutarch’s litoral
words as to tlie youth of Cimon at that time, we should be thrown back on
another impossibility, the 74th Olympiad, too early in the life of Cimon, too
near the death of his father Miltiades in indigence. The splendour of
Themistoeles in tents, and hospitalities, and apparatus, was carped at as the
ostentation of riches, riches that there were too many to denounce, and with
too much probability, as ill-acquired ; belonging moreover to a new man : while
indulgence was accorded to Cimon, comparatively young and of noble descent,
and lavish of wealth unimpeachable in its origin, as a recovered inheritance
derived from an ancestry renowned through Hellas.
It was not of the
nature, and probably not of the policy, of Themistoeles to dissimulate his
conception of his own merits and services out of hope to deaden the impact of
enviousness. On the contrary, a tone of almost perverse bravado seems to have
characterised both his private and his public expressions. At the very time
that the Athenians were fretting uneasily with the sense of obligations exceeding
their power of requital, he did not hesitate to twit them with their
inconsistency in finding benefits burdensome only because they happened to be
all conferred by the same man. He likened a grumbler at the large share of
advantage that he had secured for himself to the day after a feast, that should
discontentedly contrast its fare of orts and leavings with the full provision
of the da}' of the feast itself, that day but for which the day after would
have no provender of any kind, no existence at all. He likened himself to a
plane tree to which the Athenians were eager to run for shelter in a storm,
but, without gratitude or forethought, despoiled of its branches at the first
change to favourable weather. It is more likely to have been his observation to
his own son Nencles than, as we read it, that of his father Neocles to himself,
that one of his own galleys, open-ribbed and rotting 011 the shore, was a fair
type of the ultimate regard of
Athenians for their
best servants. Lastly, in days when his policy was being' vigorously impugned,
he gave expression to his claim to unerring political insight, by erecting
close to his house a fane that he dedicated to Artemis Ari- stoboule,—Artemis
of the most excellent counsel,—perhaps even by setting up therein that statue
of himself which Plutarch saw there, in company with one of his descendants,
and recognised as presenting lineaments justly expressive of his heroic nature.
The storm that he
provoked—as probably as not in the conviction that come it must, and the sooner
the better for his chance of dealing with it—broke heavily and with the
consequence that we know. His ostracism apparently dates under the archonship
of Praxiergus, 1 471-70 B.C. Among the means by which it was brought
about, we must not, out of deference to Plutarch, who is given to idealising
his favourites, be induced to overlook the natural tendency of Cimon’s
employment of his wealth. Cimon and Themis- toeles are both associated with
Pericles as principal contributors to the decoration of the city; but only in
the case of Cimon do we hear of devotion of private fortune to such public
works, the devotion apparently of spoils of war and presents of allies by which
he might without positive malversation have added to his own riches. Fame at
least told that he spent funds of his own on the fortifications of the
Acropolis, and that he directed, on the erection of porticos, the planting of
shady trees about the agora, and the reclaiming of the Academia from drought
and sterility by laying it out as a well-watered grove, with cleared places of
exercise and shady walks. Others of his generosities wooed popularity still
more directly; he scattered coin freely among the paraders of poverty in the 2
agora, and on occasion would bid a well-clothed attendant exchange cloaks with
a citizen
encountered in a garb
unworthy of his elder years and franchise. We cannot be told that he flung down
the fences of his gardens and orchards in order that the indigent, whether
native or strangers, might help themselves to the grapes and olives, kept open
house daily where the poorer citizens, of his tribe at least if not others,
might daily find a modest but welcome meal, and so be able to spare time from
labour for public concerns,—this we cannot ponder and not bethink ourselves how
such largesse would influence votes; especially when contrasted with the
disposition of Themistocles, who insatiate in getting, was never extravagant as
if from irrepressible geniality, but rather out of the ostentation that might
astonish but conciliated no man. By art then or by argument, by concerted
intrigue or as the result of conflict on a positive question of policy,
Themistocles was ousted from his position at Athens within about eight years
after the battle of Salamis, and had to consider where he would await and
perhaps also would be in best position to hasten the reaction, which he surely
counted on for his recall; the independent march of events already threatening
might be quickened by influences that he knew how to set well in train, when not
only would his foresight be vindicated, but his promptitude of resource be
again indispensable. He retired to Argos, a state not in immediate alliance
with either Sparta or Athens; with Sparta it had been in such relations of
enmity as were its pretext for taking no part in the resistance to Xerxes ;
while the grave suspicion of Medism under which it laboured was a present bar
to the sympathy of Athens. Here therefore he might seem to be resident in a
neutral state ; he was heard of however, and necessarily with interest or
apprehension, as occasionally moving about in various directions in 1
Peloponnesus.
The absence of
Themistocles is naturally signalised by conspicuous activity on the part of
Cimon. It is within ' Thuc. i. 135.
the next year—the
archonship of Demotion (470-469 n.c.)— that 1 Diodorus includes a
series of his naval achievements from Byzantium to the Eurymedon and Cyprus,
and adds to his inaccuracy a certificate in positive terms, ‘ Such were the
actions of this year.’ We are able to correct this chronology on many points
by better authorities: part of the actions thus find their, place earlier; the
assumption of command of the B}rzantine fleet and the capture of
Ei'on, as we have seen ; and the battle of Eurymedon as certainly occurred four
years later. Nevertheless there can be little doubt that some special activity
of Cimon at this time— the year after the exile of Themistoeles left him in
full power— must have given Diodorus the hint to insert such an assemblage of
his doings under the year. That it was not aggressive action against Persia
seems manifest from the following
o O
years being unmarked
by any incidents pursuant to such a present policy. But here Plutarch comes to
our aid, who states that it was in the very next year, the archonship of
Apsephion or Aphepsion, that Cimon brought back to Athens from Scyros the
relics of 2 Theseus ; and of this assignment we shall find very
interesting confirmation.
The island of Scyros
lies somewhat bjr itself off the eastern coast of Euboea; the inhabitants, who
are specified as Dolo- pians along with some Pelasgic 3 admixture,
appear to have been of inferior Hcllenisation ; even as Dolopians are included
in the Homeric realm of Achilles, but still only at its remotest 4
outskirts. The contrast that the verdant island presents in our days to the now
dry and naked 5 Cyclades was doubtless not so marked in antiquity,
but its northern portion must always have been peculiarly susceptible of
cultivation, and it had good and safe harbours. The inhabitants, hereditarily
more disposed to abuse the latter advantages than to apply to agriculture, made
the neighbouring seas unsafe
1 Diod. xi. 63. 2
Plut, Cim. 8. 3 Diod. xi.
60.
* Iliad,
ii. 6S1 ; x. 4S0. 5 Leake, JV. Grcece, iii. 3.
by piracy, and at last—an
enormity beyond the licence of Homeric days—did not even spare those who
resorted to their shores ; and among1 others plundered and detained
some Thessalian traders. The captives escaped and brought their reclamation
before the Amphictyonic council which met alternately at Thermopylae and
Delphi, and in which both the Thessalians and Dolopians were represented. A
fine was imposed, and contention waxed warm in the island when the authors of
the violence tried to shift the mulct from themselves on to the community at
large ; foreseeing failure in this scheme, they preferred to invite the
intervention of Cimon, and fulfilled their engagement to him by betrayal of the
city.
The fleet of Cimon
was probably already in the neighbourhood ; the suppression of piracy was
naturally among the duties of which Athens had assumed the responsibility, and
might be prepared to prosecute quite independently of an Amphictyonic sentence,
however the occasion of this might have brought matters to a crisis. The acceptance
of help from the traitor pirates is quite consistent with the general piracy
being the pretext or oecasion of the severe measures of the Athenian commander.
He took entire possession of the island, and disposed of the inhabitants as 1
slaves ; unfortunately not in itself a proof that they were the barbarians
they are called by Plutarch, though the tribe had evidently little hold upon
public sympathies either by habits or relationship.
The clearance of the
island was preparatory to a distribution of the hitherto e
ill-cultivated’ lands among Athenian citizens—cleruchs or holders of
allotments; according to Plutarch, this was the second benefit of the kind
that they owed to Cimon, the first having been connected with the capture of
EVon, which agrees with the interpretation that has been
given to the brief
notice of Thucydides. At the same time a solemn search was made through the
island for the remains of Theseus, who, according to tradition, had been
treacherously murdered at Scyros by King Lyeomedes. As Plutarch relates in his
life of 1 Theseus, it was as early as the archonship of Phaedon
(476-5 B.C.) that the Delpliie oracle had enjoined the Athenians to recover
these relies and deposit them honourably in their city, a notice which has led
to the conquest itself being frequently ante-dated. Thucydides has been
falsely quoted to the same effect, but his statement, though following on a
paragiaph in which he blames Hel- lanicus for inaccuracy and negligence in
chronology, only mentions the capture of Scyros as subsequent to that of Ei'on,
and does not define the interval either as long or short. We may be satisfied
however with the date given by Diodorus (470-69 B.C.), associated as it is with
whatever blunders, when we find it confirmed bjr Plutarch’s account
that the commands of the oraele, whenever asked for or given, were fulfilled
in the ensuing year (archonship of Apsephion = 469-8 B.C.).
Pausanias rather
awkwardly makes the possession of the remains the condition, not the
consequence, of the 2 conquest; but he may be credited for his
agreement with the biographer in telling how it was due to malignant
concealment that the discovery was a matter of difficulty and there was need of
a certain inspired sagacity. Such obstacles and such assistance have never
failed the resolute pietist from that time to our own to embellish the
unhoped-for recovery of sacred relies. The mighty remains were found, of course
; they were recognised by their heroic magnitude : beside them lay a spearhead
and sword, authenticated by the bronze material as of the heroic ages.
Transferred by Cimon to a trireme magnificently decorated, they were brought
to Athens, with pomp
and popular
rejoicing-, as if for the return of the very hero himself, ‘ after eight
hundred years a satire, if auy cared to point the moral, on the popular
ingratitude that was even yet not obsolete.
Among the various
comments that have been made on these transactions, it seems worth while to
signalise the following extract, though it is probably more accurately
illustrative of the genius of some unpleasant passages of contemporary history,
than of the career and character of Cimon.
‘ The whole
undertaking which was so successfully accomplished by Cimon,’ says a German
historian, f and which so firmly established his fame, was in every
respect most opportune for him. Hence a conjecture naturally suggests itself,
that the opportune occurrence of its two causes, viz. the Delphic oracle and
the complaint of the Thessalians, was occasioned by a mutual agreement: in
which case we should have to admire in Cimon not only the successful general,
but also the statesman possessed of sagacious forethought, and capable of
exerting a far-reaching influence by means of the combinations at his '
command.’
The sacred remains
found a resting-place in the midst of the city, close to what, in Plutarch's
time at least, was the site of the gymnasium. That the temple which still
remains so wonderfully preserved is justly called the Theseum has never been
questioned on reasonable grounds, though it is xmcertain, but uncertain only,
whether its erection dates quite so early. The precinct attached to it was
constituted an asylum for household slaves and other meaner victims of
oppression,— recognition of an heroic career of protection extended to the
weakest. Pausanias indicates the locality in the same terms as Plutarch,—‘ the
hieron of Theseus near the gymnasium of the agora and the collocation was
probably not uninfluenced by the national tradition that to Theseus was due the
application
1 Curtius,
History of
Greecc, 1869 ; and compare Goethe, Reineke
Fuchs, mb
Jin.
of skill to
wrestling-,—the proper exercise of the palaestra,— which had previously been a
contest of mere brute 1 strength.
The title Theseum is
fully vindicated for the structure by tin* agreement of the still existing
external sculpture with the notice of 2 Plutarch, that at Athens the
Thescia and the Heracleia were interchangeable. The metopes of the eastern
front are occupied by the labours of Hercules, and those of the western with
such parallel exploits of Theseus as his slaughter of the Minotaur, punishment
of Skiron, capture of the Maratbonian bnll, and so forth.
The frieze of the
po&tienm is sculptured in liigli relief with the battle against the
Centaurs, in-which Theseus is ever the protagonist ; the subject on the pronaos
is more obscure, but a battle against rock-hurling antagonists is recognisable,
and it would seem must represent a gigantomachia ; and in that case may
probably be the contest of Hercules against the g-iants of the isthmus of 3Pallene,
and not without allusion to the exploits of Athens and Cimon in the liberation
of that region after the fall of EYon.
Pausanias mentions
three paintings of Micon in the interior ; two of the snbjects would be appropriate
pendants on the opposite lateral walls. One was the ever-varied, ever-repeated
battle of Theseus with the Centaurs, in which Theseus had already killed his
Centaur, while between the other combatants victory was still in suspense ; the
other, the battle of the Athenians and Amazons, doubtless included again an
exploit of the hero as antagonist of Antiopa or 4 Hippolyta. The
third subject, which would be the principal, as occupying the end wall opposite
the entrance, was partly unfinished by the painter, and partly obliterated
beyond recognition. The subject of it—so I read my author—appears to have been
the adventure by which Theseus vindicated his descent from the sea-god Poseidon
from the aspersions of Minos, and ap
parently in the
presence of the youths and maidens whom he had led to Crete. He brought back
from the depths a ring that the Cretan had thrown in to test him, and returned
crowned with a coral wreath, the gift of Amphitrite.
It was fully in the
manner of the Greeks to assume that the mythical death of Theseus at the hands
of King' Lycomedes of Scyros was a quite available indictment against
successors, their own contemporaries, even apart from the late convictions for
piracy ; but Cimon had no indirect personal interest in this ceremonial
re-establishment of Theseus in his city. To Theseus was ascribed a most
important part in his father’s victory of Marathon ; the legend of the hero
told how he had mastered and bound the destructive bull of Marathon; in origin
probably it is a physical legend of the regulation of the torrent that still
breaks its bonds—a bull being the accepted type of a rushing torrent—and
damages agriculture so far as it is at present carried 1 on. The
legend may all the same have reflected at another time the conclusion of a
contest between Attica and the Marathonian tetrapolis. In the 2
Poecile Stoa, in a great picture of the battle of Marathon, Theseus was shown
rising out of the earth in the very scene of his traditional exploit to take
part in the fight along with Hercules, whose fane was on the battle-field,
Athena herself, and the eponymus hero Marathon.
In virtue of such
familiar associations it was that this dedication and pompous translation of
relics revived the glory of the earlier and more peculiar triumph of the
Athenians over the barbarians, almost as if in rejoinder to the trilogy of the
Persae; and yet the son of ^Miltiades, well warned, and with something more
than the affected modesty of Shakespear s Henry V, evaded the grudge that
attached to the self- asserting inscription of his father.
It can only be thrown
out as a vague conjecture that
Lycomedcs of Seyros
may have been connected, traditionally or invidiously, with the gens of
Athenian Lycomidae, or Lyeomedae, to whom Themistoeles claimed to be related.
They were a priestly race who administered peculiar initiations of the Great
goddesses,—of Ge or Earth, of Koure Protogone,—and sung at their celebrations
hymns of Pamphus and Orpheus; the latter few and short, and if we were disposed
to take the word of Pausanias, only inferior as poems to Homer’s, in sanctity
far 1 above. Themistoeles rebuilt the telesterion of the Lycomidae
at the tlemus Phlya which had been burnt by the Medes, and adorned it with
paintings. We learn from a fragment of Plutarch preserved by Hippolytus on
Heresies, that the mysteries of the Great goddesses at Phlya were at least
claimed as even more ancient than those of the same goddesses under other names
at 2 Eleusis.
In this year the
Parian marble, in accordance with Plutarch, dates the first tragic victory
gained by Sophocles, and Plutarch says over Aeschylus, though he grossly
antedates the retirement of the latter to Sicily in final disgust with Athens
as taking place upon this occasiou. The audience we are told were balanced in
preference, and the arehon Aphepsion, with whom it rested to determine judges
by lot, remitted the decision instead to Cimon and his fellow generals, who, by
coincidence or otherwise, were present in the theatre to make the formal
libations to the gods; ‘and so the custom originated of judges of tragedies
being ten in number, one from each tribe like the generals, and so the decision
passed in favour of Sophocles.5 The generals seem to have entered
when the plays were over; their judgment must in this case therefore have
applied to an estimate of voices.
"Without
committing ourselves to accept the details of this story in full, we need not
doubt that the name of Cimon was associated in some remarkable manner with this
tragic victory
1 Paus. i. 22. 7; i. 31. 4;
iv. 1. 8; ix. 27. 2 ; ix. 30. 12.
2 Welcker,
Gotterlehre, i. 322,
of a new poet, ancl
not without some understanding1 of a party feeling.
The presidency of the
Archon eponymus determines the representation for the greater Dionysia in his
ninth month (Elaphebolion), the spring of 468 B.C. The date corresponds with
that recorded for the Triptolemus of 1 Sophocles, a drama the fen*
surviving lines of which form part of a geographical excursus in the antique
style of those in the Prometheus, Persae, and Supplicants of Aeschylus. In this
extant passage Demeter is describing to the hero the various countries he is to
visit on his beneficent errand of spreading the culture of bread- corn. There
is a passage in the life of Cimon by Plutarch, which reads much as if it echoed
some earlier comparison of him to Triptolemus, and it is open to conjecture
that the original praise referred less directly to his home liberalities than
to the colonies that had just been settled by him in what are emphatically
called the hitherto ‘ ill-cultivatedJ fields of Scyros. ‘ The lavish
liberality of Cimon/ he says, ‘ exceeded even the antique hospitality and
philanthropy of the Athenians ; for they communicated to the Greeks, what the
city justly is proud of, the seed (corn) of food, and taught mankind the use of
spring water and the art of lighting fire ; but he made his house a common
prytaneum for the citizens, and by free communication of the best and rarest
produce of his land seemed to bring back in a manner the fabled communistic
state of the time of 2 Cronus.’
It seems
characteristic of the prompt succession of genius in these Athenian years, that
the date of the first entrance of Pericles into politics is calculated to be
almost coincident with the death of Aristides. It is only by such reckoning,
not by any historical record of his earlier participation in in affairs, that
the fact is known. His father Xanthippus has been missed from story since the
victory of Mycale. It was
U
probably another
member of his family, Alcmaeon, who along with Cimon pressed forward the
ostracism of 1 Themistocles ; and it was the son of Alcmaeon,
Leobotes, who in concert with the Laconising party and agents, would afterwards
have substituted for admonitory ostracism either the severer penalty of exile
and consequent forfeiture of estate, or, even more eagerly, that of death.
Eleven years had elapsed since Salamis, and a generation was come to maturity
which had grown up in an atmosphere of enthusiasm, and regarded national
progress as a law of nature. Some great names of the past were still remaining,
vigorous and even progressive still both in politics and arts; but. the men who
were now coming into prominence had purposes and projects of their own, for
which all that had been done was mere preparation, and were urged by an
unresting consciousness of power within to claim an immediate share in the
guidance of national energies worthy of and demanding their best services.
It must have been
about this time, possibly this year, that the death of Aristides occurred ; at
a time when, for whatever cause, he appears to have so far withdrawn from
active politics that his departure involved no such change as to make a record
of it inevitable. Later writers, whilst recording the fact that he left neither
portions for his daughters nor enough money for his funeral expenses, contrast
this so-ealled honourable poverty, and the sordid poverty of his descendants,
with the worldly wisdom of Themistocles, the appropriate rewards of which were
enjoyed by himself to the last, and transmitted to his descendants through long
generations. ‘ The Seven against Thebes 5 of Aeschylus is dated as
produced under the next archon, Theagenides, and an anecdote exists to the
effect that the line in which the poet characterises Amphiaraus as e
one who seeks not to seem but to be really just5 was greeted
enthusiastically by
the audience as
applicable to Aristides. The stoiy eomes off but haltingly unless the
application can be understood as extending to the general context, which would
distinctly imply that the merits of Aristides were in marked contrast to the
unworthiness and unpopularity of his recent colleagues. An Athenian audience is
not to be lightly charged with the inept perversity of catching at the terms of
a single expression without completely apprehending its drift and purport. If
we are to accept the anecdote at all, we must take it as an expression of
regretful condemnation of a once esteemed and even venerated favourite who had
recently been found on the wrong, that is on the then unpopular, side. This may
well have been the case if, during the recent unpopularity of Themistocles
which resulted in his ostracism, Aristides had held aloof from the
persecution,—still more if he had loyally remained by the side of one with
whose character his own was so contrasted, but with whom, though once in
rivally, he had co-operated frankly in imperial organisation and domestic 1
reform.
Concurrent possibly
with these transactions, but certainly concluded later, was a war with Carystus
in Euboea—under conduct of what commander is not mentioned. Carystus was
Dryopian, and it is therefore fair to conjecture that the quarrel was connected
with the arbitrary treatment of Scyros. T\ hen Datis and Artaphernes had moved
from Delos upon Athens and Eretria, Carystus had gallantly refused to surrender
hostages or to take part in hostilities against her neighbour cities, but uas
forced to give way to positive pressure. It was probably due to the continued
influence of a Medising party then plaeed in power that the city became liable
to the penalties for which, as we have seen, it had already in vain attempted
to compound by bribes to Themistocles. Strength of position that enabled it to
resist 2 then, as it had previously
1 Plutarch; Comparison of Aridities awl Cato, iii. 5- ' He4 v'’i-
112-
U 2
encouraged resistance
to the Mede, enabled it to hold out again, although unsupported by other
Eubocan cities even of the same Dryopian kinship. The besiegers had to lament
some losses; here died Ilermolycus, who deserved best of all the Athenians at 1
Mycale ; but the defence, however prolonged by 2 obstinacy, was
hopeless of ultimate success; it ended in a capitulation, and the story brings
us upon the Carystians later °on as duly contributory to tht phoros.
1 Ilerod. ix. 105.
2 Tliuc. i. 99.
3 lb. vii. 57.
It is not easy to believe that the art of
painting had not as worthy and as remote an antiquity among the Greeks as
sculpture ; yet the almost entire absence of record of great works in this art,
and of great names anterior to the age of Cimon and his friend Polygnotus, is
in striking contrast both to tbe traditional and the authenticated records
respecting works in metal and marble. Such difference no doubt does but
represent in a general way the relative unimportance of painting throughout the
whole development of Greek art. There is no account of the production by Greek
painting, even when at its highest technical perfection, of works that could
range in dignity and scope with the great compositions of Alcamenes and
Polycletus, not to say of Pheidias; the pictures in fact that come nearest to
this standard are those of Polygnotus, almost the very first of which we have
any distinct account, and these arc too near the transition from earliest
rudimentary forms to have a chance of reaching it. It is possible that the
application of colour to the great chryselephantine statues of gods and
goddesses and to their ornamental accompaniments had in a certain degree the
effect of superseding the rivalry of painting; as indeed the very perfection of
sculpture might seem to render such rivalry hopeless. The conditions were the
reverse of those which controlled the great development of Italian art, when
even
Buonarroti, the
greatest modern genius for sculpture, renounced the chisel under the force of
circumstances, in order to embody his sublimest conceptions by what was to him
the less congenial pencil. The principle of the variegation of sculpture may be
recognised even on the Homeric shield of Achilles, where many figures and
objects which were wrought in metal, and, as must be supposed, in relief, are
distinguished either by symbolical or by apt local colours. The gods Pallas and
Ares are golden and clad in golden armour: and Fate, as she drags along the
bodies of the slaughtered, has a garment dabbled with the gore of men; the
furrows are represented, ‘ a marvel of art,’ as blackening behind the ploughs;
black clusters of grapes hang from vines supported by silver props; the watery
moat of the vineyard is azure, the fence that encloses it is of tin; the
colours of the oxen are diversified by gold and tin, and the dancing youths,
dressed in delicate glistening chitons, have swords of gold pendent from silver
baldrics. For other distinct applications of colour in Homer, there is little
to refer to, beyond the ships' sides painted red, and the ornamental staining
of ivory by Carian women; but there can be little hesitation in inferring that
the battles of Greeks and Trojans, that Helen occupies herself in working, were
conceived, and intended to be conceived, as made out in diversified and
appropriate colours. The embroideries of Phoenicia, Bab}rlon, or
Assyria are of a far remoter date, and in fact allusion is made to the
possession of Sidonian 1 specimens.
In times far earlier
than Greek legend even pretends to refer to, drawing in outline and painting in
flat tints at least had been in vogue both in Assyria and Egypt, and some of
their advanced applications might have been first borrowed directly from those
sources by the Greeks at any
time, and taken as
starting-points for further progress and improvement. It is however quite
consistent with historical experience, that a nation which is endowed with
capacity for an independent start, will not easily resign a first intention
even for the benefit of something better that is to be obtained by borrowing,
but rather pursues pertinaciously its own first idea; and when it borrows at
all, and even when it borrows freely, does so less by adopting what is alien,
than by associating and assimilating it almost beyond recognition. Even at the
present time, for all the ease and rapidity of travel and transport and
communication, the thought of modern Europe developes for the most part in
parallel lines; and not only art and philosophy, but even the sciences,
struggle in every country to continue national, and would fain assert
hereditary rather than theoretical succession. The Greeks, especially, loved to
consider all arts and sciences as having originated independently amongst
themselves; in their case, if ever, a very excusable mistake and not unnatural
boast, for never was there a race that more positively subjected all borrowings
to their individual genius.
Certain incidents and
epochs of the art of painting occur in scattered mention as anterior to
Polygnotus; and some such, even many such, there doubtless must have been; but
the notices are vague and questionable, and wanting in detailed individuality
and historical certitude, and seem for the most part merely contrived to eke
out the customary statement of progressive development by a succession of
inventors. A list, however full, of names of unknown or uncharacterised
artists, goes for nothing; and it is much if we can occasionally identify
agreement of the traditions with something more than mere general
probabilities, and connect them consistently with seats of the art in later
days.
The black figures
upon red ground of the earliest vases represent the .<<Yiagraphia, the
production of monochrome
drawings by the aid
of shadows ; and this is given as the earliest form of the art of painting as
practised at Sieyon and Corinth and Samos. So Saurias of Samos was said to have
delineated a horse after the shadow east by sunlight, and the daughter of
Dibutades at Corinth the profile of her lover after the shadow thrown by
artificial light. On the vases the delineation of figures in black on lighter
ground is helped by interior lines scratched with a sharp point through the
dark paint, and it is noted as a further advance when interior lines were
introduced in the monochrome paintings. The incised line is sometimes employed
to give exactness of definition even to the proper outlines or contours of the
black figures. With this aid and no more, groups of very considerable complication
are rendered perfectly distinct,— as for instance the four horses of a chariot
very slightly advanced beyond each other, the attendants beside and beyond
them, the warrior in the chariot; at the same time very considerable taste is
exercised in securing so much definition of the forms by free outline, as not
to throw the main balance of responsibility on the interior incised lines. The
practice of some of the earlier vase-painters, of inscribing not only the names
of persons represented,—‘Achilles’ or ‘ Ajax/—but also of objects that
perfectly and even excellently explain themselves, such as ‘ a fountain/ ‘ a
hydria/‘ a seat/ at least explains the origin of the tradition that the
earliest paintings were so rude, that man or horse or tree were undistinguishable
without such written hint and aid. That such aid was ever really required, and
thence survived by habit after the necessity had gone by, is hard to think; the
application of determinatives in hieroglyphics is a proof how, in the earliest
times, it was painting that came to the aid of syllabic writing rather than the
reverse.
In the next stage of
vase-painting, the figures are red upon a black ground; or rather they are made
out by the proper red ground of the vase being left untouehed
within their outlines
and painted black without and around them; the incised line, being no longer
applicable for the interior, is now superseded by painted black lines ; the
colour of the vase supplies a eertain resemblance to the local colour of the
nude. So Dibutades of Corinth was said to have modelled in clay the face of his
daughter’s lover, upon the outline she had drawn, and added artificial red to
the material; and Cleophantus of Corinth to have filled up outline drawings
with a red colour obtained by pounding terra cotta.
When the vase-painter
laid down the pointed tool to take to the brush exclusively, he had already
acquired command of hand in drawing-; and very refined delineation and beautiful
lines are often found associated, however strangely at variance, with the rude
principle of the process. The new proeess was soon eager to prove its own
independent powers; and preferred to continue even more strictly monochrome
than that which it superseded, renouncing some approaches that had already been
made with the black figures to the application of loeal colour, in arms and
ornaments. The distinguishing of female figures by white faces and flesh, which
had been in truth less an advanee to proper local colour than a supplement in
the way of symbolism, was given up along with irrational inscriptions, as not
only unnecessary, but obsolete. At this stage the Greek was well content for
ceramic painting to make a long halt, until it had perfected a style
appropriate to its application and opportunities; it is simple, free, and
refined, but with uo affectation of an exactness which must invariably have
failed in a proeess by its nature exeluding not only palliation of pentimenti,
but, much more, their correction.
Eumarus of Athens and
Cimon of Cleonae are names associated by Pliny with improved skill and daring
in draughtsmanship,—both of uncertain, but by manifest implication of very
early dates; for to Eumarus is assigned
renown for his
success in distinguishing male and female figures, as well as his bold imitation
of varied 1 attitudes. Cimon is credited with the further
advancement of these feats, by venturing to represent foreshortened
'"’figures, and presentations of the countenance in varied aspects—looking
back, upwards, or downwards; the expression of joints and veins, more probably
muscles; and, very important indeed, the folds and waves, the arranged or
accidental convolutions, of drapery. Here again we may trace upon the vases a
parallel advance in the direction of elegance and nature, from the stiff and
formal draperies of the archaic style, neither swayed by air nor swung by
movement, nor indicating, by apparent capacity to sink or swell, the natural
modelling of the limbs 3 beneath. If these innovations could really
be brought home to the name, Cimon of Cleonae—an Homeric dependency of
Mycenae—would justly rank as one of the best deserving masters in the history
of art.
The historical
notices thus far refer less to painting proper than to simple draughtsmanship,
which has however, at least in the case of bas-relief, an equally direct
application to sculpture. It is only when we reach Polygnotus that we encounter
hints of the proper glories of painting, for even his father Aglaophon has no
verified claim beyond standing on the record as instructor of his son.
Polygnotus was of the
wealthy island of Thasos, and his date is fixed generally by his known
relations to Cimon and to Elpinice, before she was quite so old as Pericles
thought her in 463-2 B.C. The
inscription for his Delphic picture is ascribed to Simonides, who died four
years earlier, 01. 78. 2= 467-6 B.C., and gives perhaps a more precise date.
The picture was executed by him for the Cnidians; his friend Cimon was at
Cnidus before the battle of the Eury- medon 466-5 B.C., but as this was in the
next year after the
1 Figurae omncs. Pliny, xxxv.
34. 2 Catagrapha, obliquae imagines. Ib.
3 Cf. Aelian, T. II. viii. 8.
death of Simonides,
the inference appears to be that this dedication of the Cnidians was anterior
to their participation in the spoils of Enrymedon. We are thus thrown upon an
earlier date for the motive and occasion of the picture,— to the days
immediately after the liberation of the Ionian cities and of Thasos from the
Persians, and the time of the transactions of Cimon with the Amphictyons at
Thermopylae, relatively to Scvros, 476 b.c.
Again, Polvgnotus
decorated with paintings the Theseum, which received the bones of the hero
about 469-8 B.C. As regards the style, modes, and manner of Polvgnotus, Pliny
states that he painted the drapery of his female figures as transparent; and
Lucian has a reference to the delicacy with which he depicted it as either
gathered naturally in folds or fluttering in the wind; Aelian is another
authority to the same effect. 1 Cicero names him as one of the
painters who employed only four colours, of which one was 2 black; a
simplicity for which, as it seemed to Quintilian, it could only be affectation
to profess admiration. Criticism therefore it seems was already known in
anticpiity, to be given to assert peculiar insight, to be jealous of the claims
of beauty that condescended to be manifest to unsophisticated taste, or even
that reposed on the best judgments of the past, and preferred to announce a
revelation of it where it must needs be a mystery to the rest of the world. The
better critics however, it is most certain, did not err in their lofty estimate
of the art of Polygnotus, restricted as were his appliances. Nor were his
resources in respect of colour too narrow to admit of great variety. That he was
liberal in the variegation of feminine headdresses is an unimportant matter;
more to the purpose are the notices that he did not content himself with flat
uniform tints, but compassed gradations both of tints and
tone, and so made the
first and all-important advance beyond monochrome, lie painted fishes as seen
indistinctly in the dark waters of Acheron; the vast and mutilated form of
Tityus in Hades was mysteriously obscure; the daemon Enrynomus was coloured
like the flesh-flies; the wrecked O'ilian Ajax was recognised with his sea
stains about him ; the cheeks of the abused Cassandra bore the tender blush of
her situation.
As regards
expression, the blush of Cassandra was in harmony with the beauty of her 1
brows. And his Polyxena was praised still more enthusiastically; he gave
movement to lips, exposed teeth, relieved physiognomy from archaic rigidity; he
represented the tender, the pathetic, the impulsive, the reserved, the heroic.
Hence Polygnotus is
to Aristotle the ethical 2 painter,— the ethical artist indeed as
compared either with sculptors or painters, especially as compared in his own
art with Pauson and 3 Zeuxis. Polygnotus, says Aristotle, exceeded
reality in his representation of man, Pauson fell below it, Dionysius was on
the same level.
We have most happily
a detailed description by Pan- sanias of his great paintings in the Lesche, or
public apartment for conversation, at Delphi, the work already referred to
which he executed for the citizens of Cnidus. Like so many of the early Italian
painters, and under the same influence of requirement to cover large
architectural spaces with subjects that eould not appropriately be disconnected
with each other, he had very large views of composition, both as within each
separate pieture and as demanding certain connections and contrasts of one
pieture with another. In such early combinations we constantly find a
well-marked gradation in associated dignities, so that a subordinate subject
supports a principal, whether the secondary subject be
introductory or, as
more frequently, a sequel, or as, perhaps with equal frequency, w itli no
pragmatical interdependence, but an ideal antitype.
The subjects,
disposed on opposite w alls, to right and left of the entrance, were the
Capture of Troy and Departure of the Greeks on the right; and on the other
side, scenes in Hades, including the descent of Ulysses to consult Teiresias.
The figures in each were very numerous—as many indeed as seventy—but disposed
in groups of considerable independence, so that the picture might seem made up
of a system of groups in separate though not harshly disconnected scenes. Names
were inscribed in archaic fashion, in one case even a collective description'is
added—‘The Uninitiated/ I have given 1 elsewhere a detailed
exposition of these pictures, group by group and indeed figure by figure, with
illustrative restorations for which the account of Pausanias gives inviting
opportunity. The aim at symmetry is very marked in particular groups, and still
more so in their general correspondence with each other ; in one degree less
formally than in the Aeginetan pediments, but still as decidedly in intention.
In each case we see that grace and variety are superinduced upon a sublying
arrangement as orderly as a pattern, and always more or less discernible, but
not least happy in effect when least conspicuous ; even as the disorder of
fluttering drapery owes its gracefulness considerably to the occult but still
regulative fact that it is order in disturbance.
Disconnected as the
several groups might be in action, a very considerable breadth of effect was
compassed in general composition, and that in spite of the still further
difficulty that the groups were in rows, two, three, or even more, one above
another, and—at least so far as appears—without either perspective diminution
or continuous landscape. The practice of the Apulian vase-painters, although at
a considerably later
1 Fa kener'^ .1/ ism.ni of C’a<*iru> A iniquities.
date, may be taken as
exemplifying the conventions of this style of painting, where disgrace of
failure was precluded by limitation of what was attempted ; the vase-painters
judiciously recognising the need of the limitation in their own case long
after painting in the larger sense had as wisely asserted its emancipation. In
the Capture of Troy the central portion exhibited the ruthless prosecution of
the slaughter by Neoptolemus, the demolition of the walls, and the Greek chiefs
in council on the subject of an act of sacrilegious violence by one of their
number during the sack. These groups were flanked on one side by the heaps of
slain, the burials in progress, the spared Trojans preparing for retirement
inland ; on the other by more important groups of wounded and captives, and
Greeks preparing to embark with recaptured Helen and spoil.
The groups of this
wing of the composition are more weighty and numerous than those of the other,
and were made so not without artistic design; it is thus intimated that the
first long composition is not complete in itself but demands a sequel,—found in
fact in the opposite picture,— which concludes, as this commences, with a more
impressive mass of groups. The subjects are thus not only paired antithetically,
but knit together as one in general intention by common reference to terminal
inclusions, commencing the first, concluding the last.
In the second
subject, the general scene is indicated most emphatically, no longer by the
central but by the terminal groups ; giving correlative representations of the
punishment of the irreligious and impious—Tantalus, the Danaids, Sisyphus at
one end ; Tityus, the parricidal and sacrilegious man, at the other. The
intermediate space, in contrast to the first picture, has no central
compartment, but is divided by a comparatively blank central space between two
lateral systems, each in symmetry at onee independent and contrasted. These
intermediate combinations are formed of groups of heroes and heroines, of
the Homeric period
chiefly, represented as occupants of the underworld.
It was by an
oversight that, in rearranging the groups of Riepcnhausen, I missed the
necessity for another capital modification, and failed to reverse the sequence
of groups in the second picture. Pausanias goes through the subjects in order,
beginning on his right as he entered the building; but when he reached the end
of one wall he naturally and properly enough passed over to the corresponding
end of the opposite wall, and so worked back towards the entrance. The relative
collocation of figures as opposite to each other is therefore represented
falsely by a drawing which follows the enumeration as if both series commenced
at the same end of the building.
It surprises us at
first to find that pictures dedicated at Delphi can be so entirely without
allusion to Apollo, the peculiar god of this most saered locality; but the
solution of the difficulty, though it carries us into remote associations, is
complete, and is a most remarkable exemplification of the retentiveness of
Hellenic memory for tribal connections. Religious allusion is not and could not
be omitted, but it refers to the worship not of Apollo, but of divinities whom
his splendour might have obscured but was powerless to obliterate,—to the
Pelasgic worship of the powers of earth and of the underworld, whose seat he invaded,
and only occupied at last by a compromise and alliance such as he himself
afterwards had to concede to Dion}'sus. The Amphictyons who met at Delphi also
assembled on alternate occasions at Thermopylae, at the temple of Demeter ;
and the worship of Demeter was most affected by those earlier colonists of
Cnidus who, starting from the neighbouring coasts, had again transmitted the
worship from their new seats to new colonies, and to times far later than those
we are now dealing1 with.
I have pursued this
subject in detail in my historical illustrations of Pindar’s Sicilian Odes.
Thus is accounted for
the introduction, that might otherwise seem intrusive here, of reference by
typical incidents and inscriptions to the rites and initiations of Demeter. The
Danaids arc inscribed as contemners of her mysteries, and her Thasian priestess
Cleoboia crosses the Acheron holding her sacred cista.
The episode of
Ulysses, who consults Teiresias as to his safe return to Ithaca, connects the
subject of this picture with that of the sack of Troy and departure of the
Greeks. The successful issue of the Trojan war meets us again and again at
this time, as an adopted mythical prototype of the recent victories over the
Asiatic host of Xerxes, and was probably intended to be understood so here. At
the same time the predominant sentiment of the designs is the inculcation of
moderation in victory, especially in the matter of respect for sanctities and
sanctuaries. Neoptolemus, who had a traditional ill-name for sacrilege at Delphi,
is conspicuous here for regardless blood-thirst; and the central subject of all
is the reprobation by the Hellenic kings of the unholy violence of Locrian
Ajax.
The recovery of
Aethra, the mother of Theseus, supplies an Athenian allusion which might be
gratifying to Cimon.
The Peisianactian,
afterwards called the Poecile Stoa, at Athens was decorated with paintings,
partly at least by Polygnotus, and partly by Micon, who appears as his colleague
in another instance, and partly, as it seems, though at a later date, by
Panaenus, brother of Pheidias.
Pausanias, who gives
no names of painters, enumerates—
(1) Battle of Athenians and Lacedaemonians at
Oende in Argolis ; the battle and the painter are alike unrecorded.
(2) The battle of Theseus and Athenians with the
Amazons ; distinctly ascribed to 1 Micon.
(3) The third, which 2 Plutarch
ascribes to Polygnotus, was
at least a repetition
of the subject that he painted at Delphi,— the Capture of Troy and debate on
the sacrilege of the Locrian Ajax. This latter incident was painted again by an
Athenian at 01}Tnpia, and must have been recommended by some specific
application to current feelings, apparently as reprobating the sacrilege of
the northern Greeks, who had abetted that of the Persians. It was in this that
a portrait of Elpinice was introduced as Laodice, the most beautiful of the
daughters of Priam.
(4) And the most
celebrated—the battle of Marathon, which authorities ascribe variously to Micon
and to Panaenus.
The subjects chosen
indicate the prevailing influence of Cimon, the son of the victor at Marathon.
In the temple of the
Dioscuri at Athens, Polygnotus painted their marriage with the daughters of
Leucippus,—how treated the text does not enable us even to conjecture. Micon
painted here the Argonauts,—including, no doubt, the Dioscuri,— though the
picture was chiefly admired for the horses of Acastus.
In the Pinacotheca,
at the entrance of the Propylaea, Pausanias saw six pictures among others of
which he gives the subjects, and seems to ascribe them all—the more probably as
they seem to constitute a set—to Polygnotus.
(1) Diomedes carrying off the Palladium from
Ilion.
(2) Ulysses obtaining the bow of Philoctetes in
Lemnos. Here we have manifestly a jxiir; and the common theme of fraudulent
capture of a charm involving the fate of a city may be taken as an appropriate
warning to wardens of an Acropolis.
(3) Orestes slaying Aegisthus, and Pylades the
sons of Nauplius, who eomc to his rescue.
(4) Polyxena on the point of being sacrificed at
the tomb of Achilles. This was no doubt the Polyxena that sve have found cited
with admiration.
These two subjects
have this at least in common, that they
x
are parallel examples
of revenge, retributive or superstitious, for the death of a father.
(5) Achilles among the virgins at
Scyros,—whether at the moment of his discovery by Ulysses as represented in
many ancient works of art, especially in a very remarkable Pompeian picture,
does not appear.
(6) Ulysses himself, and the maidens along with
Nausicaa, at the river.
Here again a
parallelism is palpable,—in each picture a discovered hero and scared
maidens,—but not so any definite reference to the place 01* to the companion
pictures.
Lastly may be noticcd
the pictures in the pronaos of the temple raised by the Plataeans to Athene
Areia,—the Warrior Athene,—Pausanias says from their share of the spoils of the
victory at Marathon.
(1) By Polygnotus,—Ulysses immediately after
the slaughter of the suitors.
(2) By Onasias, a painter otherwise unknown,—the
first expedition of the Argives against Thebes.
The date of this
temple, no doubt, can scarcely but have been later than the demolition of
Plataea and its sanctuaries by the Persians, but even so, as peculiarly
commemorative of the battle of Marathon, it would be considered as built from
the spoils, while it might all the same receive dedications in memorial of
later victories.
The paintings at
least have much more obvious reference to Plataea than to Marathon. Plataeans
restored to home and territory after prolonged exile, and recovering all and
more than all after decisive victory and a general slaughter of their enemies
at their very gates, might fairly look through Homer and find and wish no
fairer antitype of their triumph than Ulysses standing in blood amidst the heaped
bodies of his enemies in his own recovered palace hall. But otherwise I am mueh
disposed to question the ascription of the picture to Polygnotus, and to
connect the subject with the much later
incident of the
slaughter by the Plataeans of the treacherously intrusive Thebans, the opening
incident of the Peloponnesian war.
The selection of the
other subject as appropriately typical of the position of Plataea at this time
has peculiar interest, because it explains how the Athenians also may have been
consistently disposed to read off the significance of the same subject as it
was treated at this time by Aeschylus in the Seven against Thebes. The
discomfiture of the Argives might seem to represent a triumph for Thebes; but
it was evidently not so regarded. The assailant himself was a Theban, and he
fell, like the Theban allies of Persia, while inciting and leading on a host of
foreign allies against those most closely united with him in blood. The whole
story was one of fratricidal and parricidal horrors, and began and ended in the
disgrace and desolation of Thebes, the direst and most inveterate, but at this
time the disarmed enemy of Plataea and Athens.
THEMISTOCLES IN PELOPONNESUS.
While the Athenians during these years were
actively exercising their own powers, and arrogating more and more independent
control over their allies, the Spartans would appear as strangely inert; but
the hints which we gather from Herodotus are found confirmed in general terms
by Thucydides, of collisions with their immediate neighbours, so serious that
they might well concur with certain domestic embarrassments to hamper wider
action. Brilliant as had been the achievements of Leotycliides and Pausanias,
their misconduct in foreign commands was more than sufficient to confirm the
national maxim of abstention from remote enterprises; and a jealous oligarchy
was on its guard against indulging the enthusiastic emulation of the young, or
affording unnecessarily a dangerous relaxation of that galling restraint by
which peace at home was systematically made for the Spartan more irksome than
war in the field. And Pausanias was still among them, humiliated and kept in
check he might be, but yet no inconsiderable power. He seems to have had some
sympathetic partisans even among the ephors; but that he was not driven into
exile like so many of his predecessors was probably due less to his personal
influence as a Heraeleid, or respect for the victor of Plataea, than to the
proof which he had already given of his powers for formidable mischief when
remote
from direct control.
In the meantime uneasy feelings of danger were gathering strength in connection
with his discontent, and even obscure suspicions of intrigue among the helots.
Under such
circumstances it might well be thought advisable by the ephors to withdraw for
a time from active interference in extra-Peloponnesian politics, and to be
satisfied with watching the movements of party at Athens and promoting as they
might so welcome a result as the extrusion of the mistrusted, or certainly
inimical, Themistoeles, and the establishment in power of the more ingenuous
and ever friendly Cimon.
But the
Lacedaemonians were soon to discover that The- mistocles ostracised might be
scarcely less troublesome than Themistoeles supreme at Athens; in no short time
their views and interests within Peloponnesus itself were thwarted in a variety
of transactions that had much appearance of proceeding in concert. We owe to an
incidental notice by 1 Herodotus of the official services of the
seer Tisamenus, our only information, that at some time between the battle of
Plataea (01. 75. 2; 479 B.C.) and the siege of Ithome (01. 78. 4; 465 B.C.) two
victories were gained by Sparta which imply two distinct wars; the first was
over the Tegeans in their own territory supported by the Argives, and the
second at Dipaea in the Maenalian 2 district over all the Arcadians
in alliance, except the Mantineans. The exception is important, but conflict
with such a league must still have been serious. That the Mantineans stood
aloof may be probably accounted for less by present sympathy with Sparta than
by jealousy of an alliance between Argos and Tegea, their neighbours on either
side, or even among the general Arcadian citics. Only a few years later they
are found annexing territory and asserting control over other
Arcadians, and then
the course of politics turns them hack towards an Argive alliance for security
against the jealousy of 1 Sparta. Unless some other equally uncited
authority is relied on, it seems to be by misreading Strabo that Curtius dates
at this time the fortification of Mantinea under Argive influence.
We arc left in
ignorance as to the interval that may have separated these victories, but may
fairly assume that each was led up to by a series of considerable disputes and
difficulties. We are equally left to conjecture, but not unsupported by strong
presumptions, as to how these complications may have been dependent on some
others of which Argos was the centre.
Argos was the usual
residence of Themistocles, and it is impossible not to connect the notice of
Thucydides that he was in frequent movement about Peloponnesus, with the
changes that followed on rapidly in various directions,—all inimical to the
influence of Sparta over even her immediate neighbours or most constant
allies,—all tending to strengthen individual states, and to dispose- them to
independence in the choice of their alliances.
It was something,
though it might not be very much, that the scattered populations of Elis were
now gathered from smaller townships into one city. This process was always
justly recognised in Greece as endowing a nation with the first condition of
vigour and independence. There is every appearance that it was by promoting
such a policy, at Mantinea especially, and then at other cities that became
ifterwards of chief importance in both Arcadia and Achaia, ,hat Argos had in
past centuries averted the entire absorption of the Peloponnesus by the Dorian
conquerors of 2 Sparta.
At Elis, which,
protected by the universally recognised consecration of its territory,
dispensed with fortifications,
the chief motive may
have been consciousness of enhanced importance from the great accession of
valuable dedications after the Persian war, of which more were already
preparing: at the same time it must be observed, that susceptibilities are
developed in the future relations of Elis and Sparta which could not have been
unaffected by this present self-assertion. The present agitations are
premonitory of the occasion when Elis, Argos, and Mantinea were to present a
bold front to Sparta, by concluding a joint alliance with Athens, offensive and
defensive, for one hundred 1years. A like movement of concentration,
but carried through with violence under circumstances peculiarly offensive to
Sparta, was now commenced at Argos,—at Argos the refuge of the restless
Athenian, and bearing marks of being prompted by the genius who prided himself
on skill to raise a small city into the position of a great one. In working for
the advancement in power of the most jealous enemy of Sparta in Peloponnesus,
he was but following out in exile the policy that he had consistently advocated
at home. Argos certainly had rejected his proposals heretofore; had held aloof
from the alliance against Persia,—had, as Herodotus avers, positively Mcdised ;
not only sent no force to Thermopylae, to Salamis or Plataea, but promised
Mardonius aid, though more than she was able or could dream of being able to
perform, to detain the Lacedaemonians within the Isthmus, and had at least
given promptest and repeated notice of their movements. Such were the sins of
her policy against Hellas; but Themistoeles, apart from a politician’s usual
tenderness towards any policy that succeeds, could only witness with pleasure
dispositions that might be turned to the ultimate advantage of Athens. Argos
had avowedly spared her resources during the Persian struggle, from the
necessity of recovering population which a defeat—a massacre—by the
Lacedaemonians had
seriously and dangerously reduced, and this policy now looked for its reward.
In the time of her weakness her authority had been contemned by the adjacent
towns,—far inferior now, whatever their proud rivalry in poetry and
mythology,—of Tiryns, Hysiae, Orneae, Mideia, and above all1
Mycenae. Pausanias tells the same story as Diodorus, that the pride of Argos
was wounded to the quick by the Mycenians having presumed,—in contravention of
her decree of neutrality,—to despatch even eighty men to Thermopylae, and the
offence had been repeated, in company with the other towns, at Plataea. Their
anticipation that they would thus engage the protection of Sparta against Argos
was frustrate. Argos seized an opportunity when Sparta was either fully
occupied nearer home, or in one of her calculated periods of seeming inaction
but secret discipline and drill, to attack them with all her force and with the
aid of 2Cleonae, a town which had a quarrel on its own account
respecting precedence at the Nemean games, and of the Tegeans, who were ever
too jealous of Spartan power to be mindful at this opportunity of their solemn
oath never to subvert the city of a confederate against Persia.
Diodorus dates these
events in the archonship of Theage- nides (b.c. 468-7), and, with his habitual
inexactness, as if commenced and concluded within the year; while at the same
time he ascribes the abstention of the Spartans from interference, to
difficulties consequent on the great earthquake, which certainly did not occur
till three years later. Mycenae offered considerable resistance, but how
prolonged before its final catastrophe there is no means of deciding. It is
most natural to suppose that it was at a later and not earlier date that the
Spartans were roused to activity at last, or chose to resume it with effective
suddenness, when, under the auspices of Tisamenus, they inflicted the defeat
upon the
Tegeans and Argives
together. The defeat of the united Arcadians was still later, but it is
probable that the Arcadian alliance was threatening trouble previously, and
even that it was this embarrassment that cut off the Spartans from coming to
the rescue of Mycenae.
Diodorus states that
the inhabitants of Mycenae were reduced to slavery; but this is a mistake, or
his word is employed loosely as it may be on other like occasions, a not
unimportant warning. Pausanias informs us that it was after a siege, prolonged
by the strength of their primaeval Cyclopean fortifications till provisions
failed, that some of the Myeenians—it is implied but few, who were probably the
anti-national leaders—retired to Cleonae, the very ally of Argos; so
considerable a number settled at Ceryneia in Achaia as to enhance its strength
and importance ; and more than half took refuge with Alexander of Macedon.
Their attraction to Ceryneia and reception there, seem explained sufficiently
by traces of some traditional connection with the city of Agamemnon, which
reflect, there can be little doubt, a true connection with the ancient centre
of Achaian power. 1 Pausanias saw there a fane of the Eumenides
which was said to be a foundation of Orestes; the temple statues were of wood,
but well executed marble statues of priestesses were about the entrance; for
those stained with murder or other pollution, or sacrilege, to enter the sacred
precinct, involved the risk of raving madness. The style of the monuments aud
the tone of the traditions alike refer us to times long gone by for their
origin.
The Alexander of
Macedon who received the fugitives is the same of whom Herodotus relates as
within his own knowledge that he presented himself as a competitor at the
Olympic games, was met by an objection of un-IIcllenic origin, but established
his claim to the satisfaction of the
Ilellanodicae, and
was admitted and matched in the contest of the stadium. It was not merely as
Hellenic but as Ilcracleid, as descendant of the Temenid kings of Argos, that
the Macedonian protected refugees from the antique metropolis of the realm of
Danaus and Pelops and Agamemnon ; so lie vindicated again his semi-mythieal
claim of descent, and afforded an example that was not lost upon his
successors, when the time was ripe for turning it to true political account in
more active interferences. It is very probable that the appearance of Alexander
at Olympia was at that second recurrence after the Medica (01. 77 = 472-71
B.C.) when Hiero and Theron were also competitors, and Themistocles and Cimon
rivals in hospitality and display. Sueh congresses of the ‘ great ones ’ do
not occur without the pretext of peaceful amusement being made the opportunity
for conferences of which results are apt to become apparent within a year or
two on the coursc of politics. The interests of Athens and of Macedon, the
sccnes of action of Alexander and of Cimon, were in close proximity in Thrace
and on the Strymon; and remembrance of the amenities of Olympia may easily have
encouraged the Athenian demus a few years later in their jealousy of Cimon’s
tenderness towards a regal guest when an opportunity was neglected of gaining a
political advantage for Athens by despoiling 1 him.
The resistance and
treatment of the Mycenians were alike exceptional. The occupants of the other
suppressed towns and of numerous scattered villages were incorporated as
citizens at 2 Argos, of which we are left to infer that the fortifications
were at the same time correspondingly extended.
THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES OF AESCHYLUS.
It was in the spring* of 467 B.C., the year
after the victory of Sophocles with his Triptolemus, that Aeschylus is now
known to have obtained the first prize with his Oedipodeia, a tetralogy or
system of four dramas,—consisting of a tragic trilogy, Lams, Oedipus, The Seven
against Thebes, and a satyric play, The Sphinx,—which had for their subject
the crimes and fate of the house of La’ius of Thebes. The titles of the
tragedies show that, like those of the Oresteia, they followed on in historical
sequence of subjects, although, in the tetralogy that comprised the Persae,
the poet had already either set or followed the example of a broader principle
of combination. The second prize was gained by Aristias with plays of which we
have only the titles, Perseus, Tantalus, and The Wrestlers ; the last
apparently a satyrie drama of his father Pratinas of Phlius, who in these
compositions was accounted inferior to Aeschylus 1 alone. The third
place only was granted to a tetralogy on the Thracian subject of Lycurgus—the
Lycurgeia of Polvphradmon.
It was to the great
surprise of very confident theorisers that the discovery of the didascalia by
Franz, in 1850, proved The Seven against Thebes, concluding as it does with the
announcement of the new dispute that gave Sophocles the
subject for his
Antigone, to be not the intermediate, but the final play of a trilogy.
Disconcerted criticism however finds consolation in the promise that as a final
play it may point more unequivocally to the main drift and purport of what went
before, and has been lost.
Far back in the story
of the first drama, as reported in the argument, lie the weakness and
intemperance of Theban Laius, who thrice warned by Apollo that the salvation of
his country depends on his dying childless, gives in to false counsels of
friends and—commencement of mischief that is to be propagated to the third 1
generation—perishes by the hands of his own son. Oedipus, whose deed is
unconsciously parricide, contracts an incestuous marriage, ignorantly still,
but by 2 mad folly (7rapavoia), a term of which the import in this
place could only be explained by the preceding lost drama. Maddened and
humiliated hy the discovery and then by the undutifulness of his sons, he
utters a hasty and fearful curse ; it is with steel that they shall share their
common kingdom between them. Fraternal hatred continues horrors that parricide
and incest have not exhausted, to the third generation. Eteocles in possession
is assailed by his brother Polyneices with six allies from Argos, each of whom
advances against one gate of Thebes; he assigns opponents at six several gates,
elects to oppose his own brother at the seventh himself, and briefly, the
brothers fall, each on the spear-point of the other.
Notwithstanding the
nature of such a subject there is in truth very little in the treatment of it
by Aeschylus to assist a theory which has obtained so strange an acceptation,
that blind immoral Fate is supreme in the tragedy of the Greeks. The
enunciation of this principle may be carried up to the Oedipus of Seneca, which
has had extraordinary influence on the developement of a modern school of
classical drama, but
scarcely further. To
affiliate it to Athenian poetry were as gross an outrage as to make Aristotle
answerable for the
o o
three unities of the
French drama, What Greek tragedy does no doubt harp on, and with an
impressiveness that awes us now, and now engages our compassion, is the natural
truth that the sins of fathers are painfully visited on the children; but it
sets forth, not obscurely withal, that this is in no slight degree because the
dispositions that produce and repeat the sins are inherited by the children,
who therefore aby the consequences not more of their father’s nature than of
their own. Familiar alike to the experience of all men, and to the records of
history—of the Tudors and the Stuarts as of the Claudian gens—is the
persistence of family characteristics and the tendency for the mischief of one
generation, when happy interposition fails, to be aggravated in the next, till
it ends by natural exhaustion; for cumulative wrong, unless stayed at
favourable 1 moment by self-sacrifice and self-restraint, to hurry
on ruin and annihilation.
The story of Oedipus,
however treated, could scarcely but involve such aspersions upon Theban
national characteristics as were always welcome to Athenians; and it is even
possible that some of those intestine quarrels in Thebes which are speedily to
become declared in political results, might already be sufficiently maliguant
to remind men of the unnatural hostilities of the sons of Oedipus. We have one
hint of a certain movement at Thebes at this time which cannot be without
significance, however difficult it may be to interpret it fully. Herodotus
tells us that it was twenty years after the invasion of Datis and Artaphernes
(490 b c.),
and therefore, allowing for the round number, within a year or two of the date
of the Oedipodeia (467 B.C.), that the Thebans, in obedience to an oracle,
restored to Dclium, close upon the Attic boundary, a statue of Apollo that had
been carried off by the fleet of
Datis, and afterwards
deposited by him, in consequence of a dream, at the sacred island of Delos.
This solemn reparation of a Median outrage can scarcely but have had some
bearing on the opprobrium of Medism which one party at Thebes had an interest
in keeping alive. The incident may well have had a party import as distinct as
the recovery of the relies of Theseus, which may indeed have suggested it.
Still it must be said that the tone of the poet is not such as to turn our
thoughts with distinct intention towards contemporary Boeotia. What then was
the crisis that at this time chiefly engaged the attention of Athenians in the
larger range of polities ?
There is this
unexampled peculiarity in the situation of affairs. From this year, 467 B.C.,
the Greek could look back to about 475, over a. happy blank, a period of about
two Olympiads, during which, after the subsidence of troubles due to the
Persian invasion, the internal peace of Hellas had had no interruption by
conflicts of sufficient gravity to occupy a brief page of the chronicles. But
an ominous change had supervened, £ the noise of battle hurtles in
the air,’ Sparta is embroiled with Tegea, ever the harbour and resort of her
exiled kings, and with Argives in 1 alliance. A victory is gained,
but a battle has again to be fought, if again victoriously, against all
Arcadia in alliance except the Mantineans. The struggle is still sustained when
Argos, her youthful vigour now recovered from the blow of Cleomenes, can seize
an opportunity to consolidate her power by the incorporation of several smaller
territories, and then by the siege and ultimate capture and razing of Mycenae,
her rival in traditional—in poetical—claims that were of no slight value for
politieal purposes.
Thus the Hellas of
the days of united glory was harshly roused from a dream of tranquillity by
revival of dire inter
necine quarrel; war
desperate and vindictive was again afoot extending- its designs to the
extrusion of nearest neighbours, the extirpation of seats of most ancient
mythical renown.
The story of Thebes
furnished a fable that brought into visible action all the passions and
excitements of this crisis; hereditary violence and crime, with Argive ambition
to aid, are found to ■ reproduce themselves
with ineradicable persistency ; and even at last, when the brothers fall
together, it seems that from their very burial is to spring a new root of
domestic dissension and political misery. The warlike spirit of the champion of
Marathon is indulged by a welcome outlet in his verse;—in the words assigned to
him by Aristophanes, ‘it is a drama brimful of the war-god, and every beholder
of it would fain be a warrior himself but it is on a long wail that the story
draws to an end ; the pomp and the clatter of war have passed away together;
the pride in the infliction and the endurance of horrors that ever tend to
reproduce more crime than they destroy, leave us to make the best of the moral
at last, that unnatural and vindictive warfare between either princes or
nations allied in blood has its happiest ending when both parties suffer alike,
and yet even then is apt to do little more effectually than enforce a pause for
the maturing of the dragon’s teeth that it has sown anew.
The story of Oedipus
was not likely to be treated by an Athenian poet, and at Athens, without being
turned in some degree to the disparagement of Thebes; but the mythus itself has
a distinct appearance of being of genuine Theban origin. The story which
connects Lai'us with Elis by his rape of a beautiful j outh, corresponds with
the evil report that associated Elis and 1 Boeotia in the coarse
abuse of a form of friendship which Homer exhibits in a still unsuspected
purity, and which, faintly surviving in historical times, was at least
believed by Plato to
be even yet recoverable. The oraele which La'ius disobeys in obtaining
offspring, points to the difficulty of surplus population, so unhesitatingly
countervailed throughout Hellas by exposure of the newly-born ; and the
consequences of his disobedience seem to embody an exemplar of the confusions
which had ultimately led at Thebes to very remarkable and exceptional
legislation. The so-called Thetic laws of Thebes were ascribed to a lawgiver
who came like Oedipus from1 Corinth. They forbade the exposure or
desertion of infants,—the practice which the ease of Oedipus exhibits as
liable to bring about the pollution of the country, however unconsciously, by
incestuous unions, certain to provoke the direst visitations of the wrath of
the gods. The babe that otherwise would have had to take its chance of death or
of rescue to an unidentified life, was, in accordance with these enactments, to
be brought immediately on birth, and under heavy penalties, to the authorities,
who consigned it to whoever offered a price, however small, and was willing to
look to its future services as a slave as remuneration for cost and tending in
the 2 meantime.
1 Aristot. Pol. xi. 9,
2 Aelian, V.
H. ii. 7.
THE CATASTROPHE OF PAUSANIAS AND FLIGHT OF THEMISTOCLES.
B.C. 467-466; 01. 78.
2.
Sparta then had been disabled by whatever embarrassments from
interposing1 in time to arrest the progress of Argos to
an aggrandizement which threatened to furnish, when time should be ripe, a
valuable ally to Athens; but she clearly vindicated her power at the first
opportunity, and in the double victories over Tegea and Argos first, and then
over the united Arcadians, the impact of her disciplined hoplites told with its
usual effect. It shattered opposition now as effectually as when in after years
Alcibiades, with diplomacy rivalling that of Themistocles, at least
succeeded—but like his predecessor 110 more than succeeded—in forcing her to
imperil her supremacy upon a single field against almost the same 1
antagonists. Spartan influence in Peloponnesus was at once fully restored, and
as a valued consequence she was in a position to free herself once for all from
the dreaded machinations of Themistocles, though the opportunity only came
about in the course of events that involved a domestic crisis of danger and
disorder.
Sharply as the
designs of Pausanias had been checked, he had never renounced them, and when he
became aware that Themistocles, fallen like himself into home disgrace, was
fretting- in his
exile with impatience and discontent, he counted at once on sympathetic rancour
as well as ancient friendship to aid him in the revolution that he was still
plotting- against ungrateful and unworthy Hellenes. Such had before been the
revenge of Demaratus against one city, and of the son of Peisistratus against
the other ; and Leotychides, who was only just dead and succeeded formally by his
son Archi- damus, had at least been in a position to be not more patriotically
employed while protected in his suspicious refuge at hostile Tegea. Party was
not unknown at Sparta, and Pausanias may have found, if not sympathy for a project
which some ascribed to 1 him,—the abolition of the ephorate,—more
probably encouragement for general innovation, among ancient comrades and
ambitious spirits who were ill content with - the renunciation of larger
Hellenic hegemony, and with the elevation and pride of Athens. Even the
Persians are certainly fouud within a year or two well informed of this latter
root of jealousy, and prompt to negotiate on the assumption of its bitterness.
Interpreting the
feelings of Themistocles by his own—of the ill-requited victor of Salamis by
his own memories of Plataea and Byzantium—he had communicated to him the Great
King’s 2 letter, which seems so completely to have turned his own
head, and no doubt also his correspondence, which was still active with
Artabanus, though without the effect he hoped for and relied on. Themistocles,
as we might expect, shook off the application, and declined to have anything to
do with the partnership, but as he declared afterwards, in admitting the
communication so far, he held it nevertheless to be no part of his to denounce
a friend; quite as little might he think it to be his part as an Athenian, not
out of hope of resuming his place at Athens, to put a stop prematurely to
transactions that, conducted as they were, could only help to
embarrass and weaken
if not to ruin Sparta,, and might probably enough put events in motion that
would hasten his own recall. TV hethcr Themistocles was made acquainted with
the domestic development of the scheme of Pausanias docs not appear; the plan
for the intervention of Persia was combined with a plot for raising the helots
in rebellion ; he could count on their memory of the spoils and exploits of
Plataea, and he held out to them the prospect of freedom and of citizenship,
which in later Spartan history is recognised as a natural reward for their
services in arms. "What progress he had made in both directions is
avouched by the reappearance before long, and in formidable muster, of a
Perso-Phoenician fleet, and then by the still more dangerous revolt of the helots
that was speedily to occur, though not before his own career, which would have
added so much to the peril, had closed for ever.
In the meantime
rumours of his intrigues reached the Ephors ; the helots themselves, slaves as
they were, had not failed to furnish even direct information ; but the maxim
was imperative, not to recognise obligation to such a source alone in a serious
charge against any Spartiat; they could only be watchful until evidence more
available arrived. And this was not long delayed. Pausanias had already transmitted
a series of communications to the satrap Artabanus, before the time came for
him to entrust one, the most important of all, addressed to the king and
intended to be conclusive, to the hands of a dependent—there is no reason to
suppose a slave—a native of Argilus in Thrace, who had been his confidential
favourite and even something more. \\ hen thus entrusted, the Argilian called
to mind, if he had not eared to dwell on his suspicions earlier, that no single
bearer of the numerous messages of which he had been
O
cognisant had ever
reappeared. He opened the packet, after having prepared himself to reclose it
with a counterfeit seal in case all was well, but found, as he foreboded, that
it conY 2
tained an instruction
to put the messenger to death as usual. Desperate and indignant he carried the
letter at once to the cphors, with whatever other information lie eonld
furnish. Yet even so, action had still to wait on hesitation, and was suspended
for further confirmation of the evidence of a foreigner, and of a letter which
however damning in purport had still been opened intermediately. Arrangements
however were made at once for procuring this.
Pausanias was
presently allowed to hear, and he heard with alarm, that his messenger whom he
supposed to be on his way to death, had taken refuge as a suppliant in a hut
within the sacred precinct of Poseidon at the promontory of Taenaron. Thither
he hurried to seek an explanation, and was greeted by the man with reproaches
for his cruel treachery, for having held him—him whom he might have safely
trusted to take his share in any danger in the negotiations to which he
referred in detail—in no better honour and esteem than to consign him to death
like the rest whom he had sent on the service before him. Pausanias made every
effort to soothe and satisfy him, and, admitting the past, could so far flatter
himself, desperate as was the ease, that he had worked upon the man, between
protests of regret and promise of vast rewards, as to urge him to quit the
protecting sanctuary with confidence, and undertake the journey without delay,
and so not frustrate what was now on the point of conclusion.
The confidence of the
Spartan king in his success could scarcely under such circumstances be very
assured, and it is not surprising that when the ephors approached him after his
return to the city he read the tokens of danger in their looks ; they had in
fact, by prearrangement of a double wall in the hut of the suppliant, been
witnesses of the entire interview. A covert sign from one ephor who was his
friend gave warning of peril, and he ran at the instant, and just in time, to
gain the sanctuary of Athene Chalcioecus—Athene of the
bronze house—and took
refuge in a small outbuilding within
o o
the sacred precinct.
The pursuers paused at the entrance, but only to beset it. A story was current
in later times, that while the ephors were considering' what should next be
done, the aged mother of the traitor came, bearing a brick, which she laid down
on the threshold without a word, and then turned and went to her home.
YYe have the
authority of Thucydides that the ephors did in fact build up the entrance,
unroof the refuge of the suppliant of the goddess, and set a watch to await
the moment when famine and exposure should bring him to the last gasp ; then,
in deference or subjection to the base logic of superstition—which however was
afterwards to fail to satisfy themselves—they drew him forth just in time to
prevent the desecration by his death of a holy place that was not held to be
desecrated by any cruelty in bringing it about. It was only due to some protest
that they did not cast the body into the chasm Caiadas, the place of shame for
malefactors, but it still was put away in ground adjacent. It seems to have
been in unworthy imitation of this insult that Athens afterwards, with less
justifying provocation, assigned a spot close to the proud dedication of
Themistoeles to Artemis Aristo- boule, for the bodies and instruments of death
of malefactors and 1 suicides. In time ensuing, the Pytlna,
concerned for the pretensions and immunities of sanctities, appended to every
oraclc that she delivered to Lacedaemonians, on whatever subject, a command to
give back her suppliant to the goddess. In formal compliance with the
injunction they then transferred his remains to the precinct—particularly to
the jjrotemenlwia of the temple—and erected two statues of him within it. Even
so their enemies held themselves entitled to refer to the repeated oracles as
imputing an ever unexpiated 2 sacrilege, and associated it with a
still less
ceremonious treatment
of Helot suppliants at Tacnaron,— very probably among the implicated in the
intrigues of Pausanias,—who were forcibly dragged from the sanctuary to
execution. For this sacrilegious outrage the Lacedaemonians themselves could
recognise divine retribution in their sufferings by a desolating
earthquake—manifest expression of the anger of the god of Tacnaron.
In the meantime the
correspondence of Pausanias was seized, and, besides the letters of the Persian
king, some documents were found that promised a colourable pretext for
implicating Themistoelcs in the crime of Medism ; and these it was determined
to make use of forthwith for completing if possible the ruin of their ever-dreaded
enemy, together with the forfeiture by Athens of the services of her most '
gifted and best deserving citizen. Envoys were accordingly sent to Athens,
where he had enemies enough to second them, to urge on his condemnation; he was
charged in his absence at Argos, and, though acquitted upon his transmitted
defence, the accusation was renewed at the instance of the Lacedaemonians, and
a proposal submitted to the Athenians, that the enquiry should be referred to
the common synedrion of Hellas to be assembled at Sparta. Diodorus speaks of an
earlier accusation, rebutted by Themistocles before his ostracism; but this is
inconsistent with his own account, that the charge was promoted by the
Lacedaemonians, as cognizant, which at that time they were not, of the secret
correspondence. Plutarch, who says that he replied to the Athenians by letter
from Argos, ‘ respecting the earlier accusations chiefly,’ specifies a formal
accusation by Leobotes, son of Alemaeon, which was also posterior to the
ostracism, and to which such letter must have had 1 reference. His
reply was in the unsubmissive uneonciliatory style that the Athenian demus had
now unfortunately for itself to listen to
nearly for the last
time; e his ambition remained what it ever had been, to
govern, and it was as little in his nature as his desire to be subjected to
rule, or therefore to surrender up himself along with Hellas, to the barbarians
who were their common enemies.3 . Notwithstanding this first
acquittal, such a reaction occurred as the great Athenian historian is given to
adverting to as characteristic of a popular assembly, and the proposal of the
Lacedaemonians gained acceptance, whether as Diodorus says by aid of bribes, or
not. It admitted of plausible advocacy; it gave the hostility of Cimon another
chance, and was flattering to his leading idea, that the action of united
Hellas might continue to be secured by a perfectly practicable cordial alliance
with Sparta. It was tempting to essay to controvert the Argive policy which Themistocles
had been working for, by a revival of the authority of the Doro-Ionian
congress, expressly to his personal ruin. A joint party was at once
despatched—the Lacedaemonians had their men ready—with authority to attach him
wherever he could be found; and the implication that he might have been seized
even at Argos may be accounted for by the ascendancy there of the friends of
Sparta, after the defeat of the allied Argives and Tegeans, as well as of the
united Arcadians. He knew his enemies, however, and even their intentions and
their movements too well, and was not to be found easity. Argos was void, and
when next heard of he was at Coreyra; he had personal claims on the Coreyraeans
for public services rendered to them, and that he should have such is again
characteristic of the man. He had evidently already discerned that Coreyra
westward was as fitted to be an advantageous ally for Athens as Argos in
Peloponnesus; and if we may trust Plutarch, the obligation that Thucydides
refers to was an award in their favour in respect of money and jurisdiction
over Leucas, a joint colony, as against Corinth. To weaken Corinth by the
encouragement of its contumacious colony, Coreyra, was a policy in
harmony with the
consolidation of the power of Argos—a policy that Athens was to adopt at a
future momentous erisis of her rivalry with Sparta. The islanders however,
whatever their good-will, could not afford to provoke both the great Hellenic
powers, though they had held themselves proudly aloof from alliance with either,
and could only speed him on his way in advance of the keen pursuit.
The Prometheus Bound of Aesch}Tlus is
of all his extant dramas most characteristic of the poet, and stands alone
moreover in the mysteriousness and elevation of its theme among all the works
of the Greek tragedians of whieh we have remains or record. The subject goes
back even to the very commencements of human civilisation, not to say of
settled cosmical order ; and all the actors, even the Chorus with the rest, are
superhuman — nature-powers, gods, or Titans, with the exception of Io, who in
her strange transformation is scarcely an exception. In this play Aeschylus
treats of the divine economy with all the epic freedom of Homer, and combines,
at the same time that he elevates, some elements of sublimity that might have
given Hesiod, but for his crudity of treatment, a dignity to which even Homer
himself did not attain.
We have no
information whatever as to the date when the Prometheus was produced, though
presumably from its style it must have been later than both the Persae and The
Seven against Thebes. I now advance a further presumption with some confidence
; it appears strange that the drama should have been so constantly read, its
passion so sedulously scanncd, and not have recalled the character of Themistocles
and his position as ostracised and at Argos; the agreement is such as to argue
strongly that Aeschylus,
with during all his
own, brought home to the Athenians the characteristics of‘ their rejected hero
even more directly than when he was among them at the height of popularity and
power. Sagacity, versatility, daring, unrivalled and combined, have conducted
the Titan, as the Athenian, to the highest power and alliances in a career
which nevertheless is suddenly arrested by a terrible reverse; but the
reverse, though in cither case unforeseen in its severity and unprepared for,
ij endured by the victims, if not without indignation and impatience, }'et in
abiding sclf-eonfidenee that sooner or later reaction must come round, and
their qualifications be again indispensable, and the exacted reparation be at
their own discretion.
Prometheus is
addressed at the very commencement of the 1 play, in terms that seem
to indicate Themistoeles almost by name; the phrase and epithet of the line,
tt)s opdoPovKov QifiiSos aiitvfifjra irat,
ascribe the faculty
of sagacious divination for which he was most renowned, recall his vaunt of it
in his dedication to Artemis Aristoboulc, and though another goddess is named,
it is Themis—an equivalent, as said distinctly by Prometheus, of Gaia, the 2Earth,
and ‘known b}' man}7 another name,’— the goddess of the Lyeomidae,
to whom Themistoeles most probably owed his own. There is a pertinence here
which confirms my rejection of a criticism that condemns the line as spurious
chiefly because too significant.
I am even inclined to
recover from the story of Prometheus a hint for history, that as the Titan
deserted his original and natural party, alarmed and disgusted by their
inability to recognise the new tactics—of craft not violence—required in a new
contest against younger 3 powers, so Themistoeles may have entered
politics like many a new man
1 Aesch. Prom. J\ lS. 2
Il>. 209, 210; Welcker, Aesch. Trilogie, p. 40.
3 Aesch. Prom. F. 206.
since, by attaching
himself to a party from which he ultimately slipped away as unmanageably
wrong-headed, or when it had served his purpose. And the parallel goes on; the
original spirit finds his energies cramped in the new connection as in the old.
Those who conquered power by the aid of forethought 1 personified,
turning incontinently to the distribution amongst relatives, of functions and
offices, the government of' the upper and the under world, the land and sea,
neglected —would even gladly have destined—poor human-kind, the unprovided,
miserable 2 demus. Prometheus alone opposed ; he secured for low
mortals a share of higher privileges, especially the use of fire, a franchise
that finally assured them from annihilation, though it made their benefactor an
object of oligarchical and tyrannous vindictiveness.
It would be a mistake
in this, as indeed in any case of the kind, to ascribe to the poet an intention
to run an exact and proper parallel: it would be enough for him to set in
action before his audience all the motives that they themselves were most
familiar with, all the passions they had recently excited or indulged.
Themistocles had as much cause as Prometheus to declaim, and it is consistent
with his character that declaim he did, against the ingratitude of the
political organism which he had reconstructed, whether chargeable on his own
particular party or not; and we might think it was the Athenian himself whom
we hear sppaking with the proud and contemptuous tones that resound from the
mask of the fettered Titan. When Prometheus tells of his services to men in
instituting the arts, we are reminded how in the earlier Satyric play of
Aeschylus, the boon of fire brought by Prometheus had already once been made
directly the symbol of the restoration of sacred and domestic hearths, and the
reappearance of civilised society after the barbaric desolation left behind by
the Mede. In Athens and at the Piraeus, by
land and sea,
Thcmistocles had been the main agent and leading spirit in these restorations;
he if any man might claim to represent a new Prometheus, as his wise counsels
had given him pretensions to such title in the war. The Athens that rose up
under the superintendence of The- mistocles, might well be asserted as sueh an
improvement on the city destroyed by the Persians, as could only be paralleled
by the change which Prometheus asserts that he introduced in the habitations of
previously exposed and squalid humanity; and the creation by him of a new port
and improvement of the war ships, might as readily be called to mind by the
assertion for himself by Prometheus, of the invention of sailing 1
vessels.
The younger gods,
insolent, ungrateful, encroaching, arc contrasted here, as in the Eumenides,
with the elder Titanic powers; whether we care to approximate them to the newly
established demus,—already betraying the tendencies of absolute power in an
extreme democracy, as distinctly as they were to be recognised by Aristotle,
indeed avowed by Cleon, and the Athenians 2 themselves,—or to the younger
generation of aristocrats who had discovered the secret of acquiring masteiy
over the demus. Prometheus, Themis- toeles-like, provoked the catastrophe that
he risked at least if he did not fully 3 anticipate, and confident
in his prescience, master of a secret that is all his 4 own, cares
not, now that it has come, to avoid provoking its further violence. He has seen
two revolutions, two catastrophes of powers in highest places already, and he
knows that, but for his besought intervention, a third must follow, more
shameful still, and more suddenly precipitate than either. Jove himself, for
all his thunders, is helpless against 5necessity, of which the
course is cognisable if not guided, not by him, but by elder more mysterious
powers, by ‘ the Triform Pates and daemonian
1 Aesch. Prom. V. 467-70.
3 Aesch. Prom. V. 268.
2 Thucyd. ii. 63; iii. 37; v.
89.
4 lb. 206. 5 lb. 518.
’Erinnyes/—whose
plans and purposes, communicated in preference to Themis-Gaia, the Titanian
mother of the 2sufferer, only come to Jove at second-hand.
There is no doubt
ample vindication in the theme, the fable dramatised, for the episode, which is
indeed not strictly an episode, of Io ; lo, ancestress of Hercules, of whom it
is prophesied that he is to be the liberator of Prometheus, and thus the main
instrument of ultimate conciliation; Io, whose frenzied wanderings under the
persecution of 3 Hera demonstrate, like the enforced servitude of
Hercules afterwards, the limitation of the power of Jove her lover, as
distinctly as does his ignorance of the seeret that is in the keeping of Prometheus,
his enemy and victim. But the sympathy of Prometheus with the persecuted Argive
heroine, and his prospect of aid from her demi-god descendant, coincide so
markedly with the Argive connections and interests of Themistocles, that we
seem reduced to choose between inferences ; either that Aeschylus at an early
date was eognisant of the advocacy by Themistocles of the Argive alliance, or
at a later date, after the alliance had become a fact, was disposed to credit
him with having anticipated and prepared for it.
Prometheus effected
his main stroke of poliey by theft, by such craft as Themistocles was ever
ready and dexterous to resort to; and both relied too confidently on their
capacity to sustain, or re-establish at least, as strong a position as ever
after discovery. The Titan pays a penalty unexpectedly severe; but to him an
immortal, with a secular term before him, the ages are destined to bring back
his opportunity. Mortal man fallen of necessity if he lays out plans that are
on a scale disproportionate to the conditions of his being; events might come
round in a decade or two that would vindicate the sagacious poliey recommended
by Themistocles, and did so, but by that time all hopes of restitution for
himself,
chances of liis
being- seen again with his strong hand on the helm of the Athenian state, were
past and over.
We are unfortunately
destitute of direct information as to the dramas that were associated and
composed with the Prometheus Bound, no less than of the date of its
production, and the field is open for speculations that have proved usually but
vague and unfruitful, as to the moral or metaphysical solution that was
finally worked out by the poet. The play as we have it breaks off upon a
suspense as declared as the first part of Faust. In the German play, however, a
difficulty is mainly constituted by the poet’s declared intention—it admitted
of but lame execution—to exhibit how deliberate seduction, followed by
careless desertion for coarse debauchery and what he does not seem to perceive
was brutal assassination, could contribute naturally to the development of a
gifted but chiefly intellectual, into a perfect character. We might be well
content to leave Faust, whose reappearance in a second part is an impertinence,
to his companion Mephistoplieles, but scarcely Prometheus to the vnlture. We
are fain, therefore, to make the most of what hints we can gather as to the
further design of Aeschylus, from some fragments and notices of the presumed
sequel, his drama of ‘ Prometheus Released.’ When all the fragments and notices
are taken together, the outcome is not inconsiderable as compared with our
disappointment in other cases.
The Chorus consisted
of. Titans, who visit their relative, now suffering under the secular torture
of the ‘ winged hound of Zeus/ that daily descends to tear his still renewing
liver. But time has brought round the contingency on which the victim of
sympathy with the wretchedness of humanity in unprovided life, relied
prophetically for deliverance. The destined liberator, Hercules, of mingled
divine and human origin, descendant of Io in the thirteenth generation, and son
of Zeus himself, appears at last; the series of labours by which he is to
initiate the relief of struggling humanity is
foretold, and his
shooting the ravening bird brings on in conclusion a general reconciliation,
of Prometheus with Zeus, of Zeus with the preservation of the once doomed and
despised race of mankind. A further hard and apparently hopeless condition of
which Hermes had given 1 warning, the voluntary renunciation of the
privilege of immortality, is fulfilled by the vicarious acceptance of death by
the centaur Chiron ; the sentence of the eternal chain is satisfied by the
assumption by Prometheus either of a ring set with a fragment of the rock, or
of a verdant crown. Conceding now to clemency what he refused to compulsion, he
discloses his secret—that the threatened fatality awaited Zeus in case he
yielded to his passion and married Thetis, who was fated to bear a son superior
to his sire. The permanence of Olympic, of cosmieal order, is assured, when the
restored Titan in festive chaplet joins the assemblage of the gods at the
nuptials of the sea- goddess with the father of Achilles.
Whether the 2
tradition of the marriage of Zeus himself with primaeval Themis was combined
with this fable, as critics have fondly assumed, remains more than uncertain,
for information fails entirely. In any case, it must be insisted on that the dignity
of Zeus, relatively either to Titans or to man, cannot by any ingenuity be
rescued as the ideal of supreme divinity. Aeschylus, even like Homer before
him, whom he owned as his great exemplar, treats the lord of Olympus but as a
representative of humanity with powers inconceivably enhanced, yet only in
respect of death exempt from the inherent weakness of humanity. In passion and
in ignorance, in hesitation and indiscretion, in his liability to be vexed and
thwarted by powers not only superior but inferior, the conditions and
cpialities of humanity are mirrored, and even of necessity exaggerated by scale
and contrast. To Zeus himself, as to the demigod and Titan, is assigned the
same invincible
O Jo
consciousness of
freedom of will that is part of human nature, hut withal the same
half-acknowledged and contradictory sense of its exercise under permission; the
relation of this consciousness to the ever-intrusivc conviction of a power existent
somewhere that must guide—in any case how mysteriously !—what seems an
independent or a drifting 2bark, is withdrawn, and surely with no
unreverential feeling, with 110 unreasonable humility, from the ken and
scrutiny of preciser definition.
In Aeschylus we find
the consciousness above all, and frequently the unequivocal expression, of the
noble&t ideal of divine attributes, of the Divinity as the supreme creative
and controlling energy, the centre of all material forces, and no less of the
highest moral power and of presiding intelligence, which gives the rule of
justice as the single norm of reward and punishment, and yet with an ultimate
appeal to indulgence and mercifulness. That this loftier ideal is from time to
time confused wTith the agencies of a plurality of gods, or with
such a defective personality as the poetic Zeus, is an inconsistency that runs
through all Greek poetry, and was not easily escaped even by Greek
philosophers; but the inconsistency tended to bccome gradually less obtrusive,
and it did not hinder the development of that sense of the unity of
providential control of the wrorld of matter, of life, of intelligence,
of conscience, which is the essence of monotheism, and towards which the poetry
of Aeschylus still doubtless marks a most important stage of advance.
That this drama,
then, must needs have been suggestive to the original Athenian audience, of
recurring applications to party conflicts and impending political difficulties,
it seems to me impossible to doubt; it is equally clear that the poet elevated
his theme far above the dignity of the most pregnant embodiment of contemporary
passion, by touching sympathies
that are common to
all reflecting mankind. The exciting interests of a day are partly attached to
and partly absorbed in a larger reference that is true for all men, true for
all time, and that is found accordingly to be conspicuously paralleled in
literature of far other genius among very contrasted populations. The
Prometheus of Aeschylus is still in the main the Titan of Hesiod, of the poet
who confronts the most salient and perplexing contrasts of life in the
simplicity of earlier days, and embodies in mythus the cruder explanation of
men upon whom they came with the surprise of novelty. In Hesiod also we have an
equivalent in forms of Hellenic mythology, of those opening chapters of Hebrew
story which, before it narrows down to the fortunes of a family or a tribe,
regard humanity under its largest aspects, and with a scope as wide as it was
destined to recur to and resume at last before its canon closed. That man should
be so low and yet so high is the fundamental perplexity in both narratives; so
seemingly neglected or deserted, and withal so manifestly highly endowed;
possessed of faculties which in their limitless capacity of development are
godlike, and yet exposed by this very possession to evils from which the lower
animals, who have so much of life in common with him, seem happily exempt.
‘ Unaccommodated man
’ is below the level of the brutes in equipment for commonest self-preservation
; his existence is only endurable, or indeed entirely possible, by the
opportunity of art and knowledge ; these save him, but only save him at first
as the veriest wretch; and are themselves dependent on that faculty of looking
before and after which distinguishes him from the brutes indeed, and how
gloriously! but at the same time gives opening for the most poignant of
sufferings, for all the agonies of fear and doubt, from which the brutes are
exempt. Endowments which however dignified are still the main conditions of
human labour and human grief, seemed to declare themselves as no rightful
apanage, and their consequences too closely resembled penalties and punish
ments, not to have
been acquired at first only by breach of law; and if so, how not then by aid
and suggestion of some ally of intellectual subtlety superior to primeval man.
The Greek mythus
ascribes the rescue of foredoomed man to Prometheus, the genius of Forecast, to
whom he owed the command of fire, chief instrument of the useful arts; who even
qualified the direst consequence of the power of anticipating evil, by
implanting in his breast the germ of Hope independent of, and even
indestructible by 1 reason. But such wresting of a privilege for man
from a grudging divinity, involved difficulty in the first instance as to the
attributes of the divinity, and then as to a reconciliation consistently with
man’s retention of the illicitly obtained advantage. Of a problem accepted in
so crude a form the solution could scarcely be less crude, and the mythologist
only escapes from his self-made dilemma by resort to a quibble, or a metaphor,
or a symbol. Poetical purpose demanded that these should be clothed in graceful
poetical forms, and so the tragedian soothes at last by a pleasing apology for
satisfaction, the distress that he had taken in the first instance little pains
to moderate; even when wilder agitation subsides, he of necessity and not
unwillingly leaves over some natural awe at the still abiding enigma of human
life; but awe not unallied with hope from the intimation that beyond these
contradictions and controversies there exists in the order of the universe a
remoter but a comprehensive and an over-ruling influence that will bring all
right at last.
1 Aesch. Prom. V. 250.
THE FIRST CONTUMACY OP ATHENIAN ALLIES.----- ADMINISTRATION
OF CIMON.
B.C. 465; 01. 78. 3-.J.
The adventures of Themistocles, from the
commencement of his flight till he found safety, protection, and honour at the
eourt of the Great King, are related with a fulness of romantie details that
enticed the attention of the historians from larger public affairs, and eover
pages it must be said, somewhat disproportionately, when we consider what has
been omitted. The story to the extent that it is unquestionable is so
extraordinary, that we are scarcely entitled to challenge embellishment on the
score of mere marvellousness, and for once the cheap criticism, which in its
keen pursuit of the ‘ unhistorieal5 so willingly erases the unlikely
from history, must own itself foiled. Head it how we will, only when we
stumble over a positive eontradietion ean we be certain that one version must
be false; and even then no mere balance of general probabilities will determine
with certainty which ought to give way. The tale seems to have been told and retold,
like that of Charles the Second fugitive from Worcester, or of the young
Pretender after Culloden, and listened to, if not with sympathy of the same
kind, with all that Greeks were so capable of feeling for dexterity and
eourage.
Even Thue}Tdides
quits larger history and condensed reflection for personal aneedote, when he
relates how the most
7 2
brilliant of Greek
careers came to an end only one degree less unhappily and disgracefully for
Greece than that of Pausanias.
There was one
tradition that told how, when it was no longer safe for him to remain at
Corcyra, the victor of Xerxes crossed over to Sicily, to Hiero, and there
parodied the mad schemes of Pausanias, with a proposal to marry a daughter of
the Syracusan tyrant, and help him to the subjugation of ccntral Greece. Such
a story only represents the conjectures of later time as to the meaning of the
direction of his flight, and a likely field for employment of his talents and
resources. Hiero was already dead (467 B.C.), and his dynasty was dropping to
ruin ; otherwise Themistocles might not have shunned his court out of
apprehension as to lingering rancour for his opposition at the Olympic
festival. His political friends had failed in power at least, if not good-will,
to protect him from their common enemies; he was now wound up to throw himself
into the arms of his personal or political enemies, and to appeal to their
credulousness, or generosity or interests, to refuse to sacrifice him even to
friends of their own. Doubling on his pursuers he passed over to Epirus, to the
seat of Admetus, king of the Molossians, whose nobler nature he was prepared to
confide in, though in his day of power he had opposed him also in some
negotiations,—veiy probably connected with the dissensions of Corcyra and
Corinth as to territories on the mainland,—which had been referred to
arbitration at Athens. His residence here seems to have continued for some
months ; and here he may have had hope to remain unmolested, if it be true that
at this time he was joined by his wife and children from 1 Athens.
But again the strongest pressure of demands and threats was applied by the
Lacedaemonians upon his generous-minded host, through envoys of high
distinction. Admetus, however,
declared himself
bound to protect his guest by the most stringent national sanctions of
hospitality ; for Themistocles had claimed and appealed to them in a form which
in that region admitted of no denial—prostrate on his hearth as a suppliant,
and holding in his arms the child of the house. Whatever might be said or
thought,—that Phthia the wife of Admetus had really in the absence of her
husband compassionated the persuasive Athenian, whose command over the
sympathies of women seems always assumed to be unfailing, and instructed him
in the formula and ministered the opportunity, or that Admetus himself had
suggested the ceremony to supply the pretext,—the difficulty was the
same; there was still no sign of it yielding to any increased urgency, when it
was found that Themistocles had again disappeared, and the clue to the course
of his retirement was broken.
In the meantime the
untiring and unresisted activity by which Athens was gradually wearying her
confederates into willingness to commute maritime service and even equipment
for money payments, the rigour with which these were exacted, and the general
imperiousness with which she comported herself in administration by
assumptions injurious to the dignity of autonomy, were on the point of inducing
collisions premonitory of a change in history. Her authority was to be almost
simultaneously repudiated by the two important islands, north and south, of
Thasos and Naxos. These are the first assertions of a right of secession of
confederates from a qualified union, which might now seem from the inactivity
of Persia to have answered its purpose, and to be maintained for little else
than to aggrandise a power which threatened to be quite as oppressive, or
certainly more arbitrary than under the changed circumstances would be quietly
endured.
The discontent of
Thasos was brought to a head by an extension which was given about this time to
the establishment on the Strymon, that had been maintained by the Athenians
ever since they wrested Eton from the Persians, after a
difficult siege. They
despatched a colony (465 ij.c.)
consisting of 10,000 settlers, Athenians and general volunteers, for the
purpose of taking into occupation a very favourable position about
fivc-and-twenty stadia up the river, where it issues from a lake, and which at
the time was in the possession of the Edonian Thracians. The name of the site,
the Nine Ways, —Ennea Ilodoi,—indicates its importance as commanding the
communications between the fertile plains of Thrace, the district Phyllis to
the east, and Macedonia and the Chalcidie peninsulas westward. It was here that
Aristagoras, thirty- two years before, had endeavoured to found an independent
settlement, and had come to the end of his turbulent and mischievous life. A
main temptation for the Athenians consisted in the riches of the adjacent gold
mines, which after being worked for centuries remained still unexhausted, and
were to continue so to reward still more richly the energetic administration
of Philip of Macedon. The precise form of these gold deposits does not seem to
be recorded or explored in modern times; but the Athenians had appetising
experience of the profitableness of silver mines as worked at Laurium by slave
labour—the machinery of the ancients—for these had been to her the equivalents
as a basis of prosperity of the coal and iron deposits of England. Thrace also
had its silver mines, and no bait for industry or for adventurous rapine is
more stimulative of popular greed than pure metallic riches. The Thasians seem
to have shared the advantages of these mines, in harmony if not in regulated
partnership, with the Thracians, before the Persians interfered, and not
unnaturally expected and claimed to re-enter upon all their privileges after
their expulsion. It was not so however that the Athenians interpreted their
rights ; the right of conquest has been willingly substituted many a time since
and down to our own days, for the more modest claims of reward for rescue,
after honourable rescue has served its purpose as a pretext for interference.
If the protests of Thasos were disregarded, the
Thracians who were
ousted at Ennea Hodoi were not likely to be treated with more delicac}r
in further operations, and it was not long before the smouldering enmities
burst out into flame on both sides.
At the same time, as
if in sympathy and probably not without some intercommunication, discontent was
coming to a head at another centre. Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades, and
renowned for its productiveness, especially of wine,—as appropriately expressed
in the mj'thic encounter on its shores of Dionysus and Ariadne,—had early
connection with Athens and a political story in many respects similar. Here
again, as so often elsewhere, the circumstanccs of unquestioned later
intercourse go some way to vindicate a much earlier mythus as springing from a
radical fact; and the visit of the truant Theseus on his return from Crete
matches with the notice of Herodotus, that the natives of Xaxos, as also of
Ceos, were lonians of Athenian descent. Aristotle quotes Lygdamis of
1 Naxos as an example of the oligarch who
becomes a tyrant by taking up the cause of a demus, glad of any leader, against
his own 2 class. His rule seems to have been shaken off like that of
Peisistratus at Athens, by whom on his recovery of power, and after a victory
over the Naxians, he was reinstated, and whom he requited afterwards by aid in
men and money to accomplish his own third and final 3 restoration.
A parallel fate still
attends the Naxian tyrant when the Spartans, after expelling the Peisistratids
from Athens, put an end to his authority also, and re-established their
favourite and avowed form of government, an 4 oligarchy.
About 500 B.C. the
demus of Naxos gains the ascendant and expels the leaders of the party of the
so-called ‘ Substantial ’ men (5 avbpes tG>v ira^eou’), who
apply forthwith to Aristagoras, the despot under Persia at Miletus, and in
concert with him invite the interference of the Persians.
1 I’ol. v. 5. 1. 2
Athenaeus, 34S. 3 Herod,
i. 64.
* Plut. dc Malirj. 21. 3 Herod, v. 30.
We bear on this
occasion a glowing and somewhat marvellous account of the power and prosperity
of the island; Paros, Andros, and others of the Cyclades, are dependent on it;
it is wealthy in money and slaves, has a considerable fleet of long vessels,
and can muster 8,000 heavy-armed men, as large a force as Athens sent to
Plataea. Such a representation of power corresponds with the magnitude of the
armament, 200 vessels with a large force of Persians and Ionians, which we read
was assigned by the satrap Arta- phernes for the expedition. A surprise was
intended but failed; the Naxians were found to have withdrawn, with all their
transportable property and abundant victual, within their walls, prepared to
stand a prolonged siege. They had, in fact, received timely warning by contrivance
of the Persian commander himself, the same Megabates whom Pausanias afterwards
and as it seems in consequence mistrusted, who had quarrelled with Aristagoras
on a point of discipline and authority in the conduct of the 1
expedition. A siege of four months’ duration consumed the funds of both the Persians
and the Greek adventurers, and was then given up, the exiles being left behind
to do the best they might, with the aid of some fortifications constructed for
them.
The. repulse was
remembered and revenged by Datis and Artaphernes, who on their way to Euboea
and Marathon, 490 B.C., burnt the city and its temples, and carried off as
captives all who had not taken timely refuge in the mountains. After this
warning, all the Cyclades except the westernmost, Cythnus, Seriphus, Siphnus,
gave earth and water, and contributed to the fleet of Xerxes, the Parians
onlyjr; holdjng. aloof from both sides to watoh the result; Naxos was
controlled by a Medising faction, but could now only make the poor contribution
of four ships, and these were carried over to the Greeks by their commander
Democritus.
It is probable enough
that the island nevertheless did not escape some severity when visited
afterwards by the fleet of the victors.
Still it is scarcely
conceivable that any treatment could have goaded the islanders into defying the
power of Athens as now developed, and with all the confederation at command,
unless they had encouragement to look further for support. It is scarcely to be
doubted, in fact, that the ancient leaven of oligarchical Medism insensibly
recovering was again at work, and that the expected aid was to come from the
Persian fleet, which now after a long interval appears again reinforced and
reorganised. We are thus conducted to the further inference that the plans
which had been just matured by Pausanias in concert with Persia, when his
treason was discovered, had been arranged to take effect by a combination at
this very point.
Whatever was the
offence, declared contumacy in respect of subsidies or suspected intrigue with
the barbarians, Naxos was attacked by the Athenians as in revolt, besieged and
ultimately taken, after what length of resistance is not stated, perhaps by
surprise or 1 storm. This, says Thucydides, was the first of the
allied cities that were successively reduced to subjection in contravention of
compact (ttapa to kadzo-Tr/Kos),
—as if in his opinion the punishment was unfairly strained beyond the
provocation—a result ensuing for the most part on refusals of assessed quotas
of money or ships, or in certain instances, of crews for service. The
forfeiture of autonomy by the Naxians probably involved in the same penalty the
smaller of the Cyclades that had retained connection with them; and signs of
eagerness on the part of Athens to make the most of a welcome opportunity may
have alarmed communities who had otherwise little sympathy with Naxos.
Whatever the progress
of the siege, the presence of a large
fleet was not
required after the investment was completed ; and thoug-h Cimon may have commenced
the siege, he would be at liberty during its progress to proceed in search of
the Persian fleet, respecting which information had been received, and which
it must be supposed the Naxians were still expecting.
The brilliant exploit
that followed is thus related in the summary of 1 Thucydides. ‘
After this attack on Naxos, occurred the land fight and naval fight of the
Athenians and
O o
allies against the
Medes, at the river Euiymedon in Pam- pliylia, when the Athenians under command
of Cimon, son of Miltiades, gained a victory in both on the same day, and captured
and destroyed Phoenician triremes to the number of 200 in all.’ Another
authority which, if genuine as it appears to be, is still closer to the time,
is a metrical inscription—of dedicated spoils, says Diodorus, but apparently
sepulchral— that has come down to us in several copies with but slight
variation. The double achievement is here described as the slaughter of many
Medes on land, and the capture or victorious destruction of ioo Phoenician
ships with their full complement of men in the open sea (tv ireXayei).
In both these
statements it will be observed that the land victory is mentioned first; this
is of importance when we come to examine and compare the more detailed statements
of Plutarch and Diodorus, both of which, but the latter especially, seem made
up out of earlier conflicting narratives.
The original fleet of
Cimon consisted of 200 Athenian triremes, constructed with all the latest
improvements and most efficiently manned. To Themistocles were due the changes
that had increased their speed on the one hand, and then the important
qualification of handiness in evolutions, facility in turning, dependent
partly on form, partly on
drill of the rowers,
that were together essential to advantageous manoeuvring in action. Cimon
himself had endeavoured to combine with these a more ample accommodation for a
fighting crew by a greater breadth of beam, and the addition of a certain
gangway to the decks, apparently to afford passage for hoplites from one end of
the vessel to the other without interfering with the 1 oarsmen.
"With this armament he proceeded along the coast from Ionia southward and
eastward, expelling Persian garrisons wherever he found them established in the
maritime cities of Caria and Lycia; some of these were pm’ely Greek and others
of mixed population, or at least bilingual, from commerce and intercourse with
such surrounding alien populations, however Hellenised in manners, as the
Lycian Tramilae. Every new city thus acquired for the confederacy brought in of
course an addition to the (popos—an apportioned rate of subsidy. According to
Plutarch his immediate starting-place was Cnidus, on the Triopian promontory,
but that the Cnidians did not now for the first time join the confederacy is
proved, interestingly, as we have seen by their dedication at Delphi. The only
resistance in the course of these operations that we read of as of any
importance, occurred at Phaselis, a Lycian city on the western shore of the
great Pamphylian gulf. The citizens were chiefly Greek, but nevertheless well
content with the share of quiet and prosperity that they were in possession of
under Persia, and declined either to revolt or to give reception to the fleet
of Cimon. After the usual preliminary of plunder and devastation inflicted on
the open country, a serious attack was at once commenced upon the fortified
city. Extremities, which from the temper of Cimon on the occasion—impatient as
he wras for action elsewhere— would have been severe, were prevented
by the intervention of the Chian allies, who had friendly relations with the
city
from of old, an
interest sufficiently explained by concern in the constant flow of commerce to
and from Phoenicia, as well as inland, which its harbour accommodated. They
mollified Cimon, and by shooting' missives attached to arrows over the walls
succeeded in opening negotiations, which ended in the wealthy Phaselitans
agreeing to pay ten talents and to commit themselves to a breach of former
connections by joining actively in the enterprise against the barbarian. With a
fleet increased by these and other allies to 250 or 300 vessels, so Diodorus
contradicts himself, Cimon now sailed direct for the mouth of the river
Eurymedon, which flowing southwards enters the sea at the head of the gulf,
where both the fleet and army of the Persians were stationed. Aryomandes, son
of Gobryes, is named as chief in command, though the fleet was under
Tithraustes, a base- born son of Xerxes, and the army under Pherendates his
nephew. Of the number of their vessels there is no account to be relied on,
they were 350 in the history of Ephorus, and increased to 600 in later
authorities; both appear to be grossly in excess, as collated with Thucydides
and the inscription, perhaps even with the notice that a squadron of eighty
Phoenician vessels was still expected.
It was the object of
Cimon to force an engagement before these could join from Cyprus, and he
pressed forward to the attack ; the Persians wTere equally anxious
to evade it and retired into the river, but finding that conflict was unavoidable
even there, were fain at last to essay a sally in considerable force. It is
probable that only a proportion of their vessels were afloat, and in any case
the restricted space put numbers at a disadvantage; in a very short time they
lost heart and made for shore in order to disembark and gain protection of the
land army. The retreating vessels that were nearest inshore discharged their
crews, but of those behind large numbers were either captured or sunk with all
hands on board. In this instance as so many others, from
the dependence of an
ancient fleet upon a camp ashore, the battle repeats many circumstauces of that
at Mycale, which no doubt furnished a model for emulation ; Cornelius Nepos
indeed confounds one with the other. The easy victory so far only excited the
enthusiasm of the Greeks, and Cimon, now encouraged by success and the spirit
of his troops, disembarked his large force of lioplites and boldly attacked the
army. The contest however here was vigorously sustained by the Persians, who
again vindicated the courage that Herodotus credits them with in the battles in
Greece; though again it was no match for the Athenian combination of superior
arms with courage and discipline. The victory of Cimon was at last decisive aud
crowned by that valuable reward, the capture of the Persian camp, replete as
usual with riches, in addition to prisoners who were little less valuable for
ransom. Plutarch agrees with the inscription as to a large capture of
prisoners; Diodorus records the exaggeration — 340 ships taken and over 20,000
men slain.
This compound
conflict was, according to Plutarch, the double victory by sea and on land on
the self-same day which was celebrated as having a point of advantage in comparison
with Salamis or with Plataea. He adds that the expected Phoenician
reinforcement did not escape. Cimon had information of their rendezvous at
Hydrus (? Idyrus or Cyprus), and was upon them before they had certain news of'
the disaster of the main force. To this occasion, if anywhere, we must assign
the stratagem by which Diodorus relates that Cimon drew the enemy into the
toils, approaching them in the captured vessels of their friends and with crews
disguised in barbaric costume. This is, in fact, the order in which Polyaenus
introduces the stratagem. Such a later engagement may have been the fight in
open sea of the inscription, as distinguished from that which is localised by
Thucydides at the embouchure of the Eurymedon, aud with
which, as so closely
ensuing-, it would afterwards easily and not unnaturally be confused and
combined.
Diodorus garnishes
his narrative of these events with a wealth of details that would be valuable
indeed, but that they are hopelessly discredited by his blunders in geography
and time. He places the expedition to the Eurymedon years before events that we
know from Thucydides preceded it, and transfers the first battle by sea to the
coast of Cyprus, as also does Frontinus, following it up with a night attack on
the Persian camp by the Eurymedon, which is aided by a double delusion on the
part of the barbarians, who mistaking their assailants for Pisidians fly for
refuge to the falsely seeming Phoenician fleet, only to perish miserably.
He appears to have
been misled in part by a false reading of a line of the inscription, which as
he gives it specifies the destruction of ‘multitudes of Medes,’ not fon
the land’ simply, as in other copies, but ‘ in Cyprus.’ This however clears up
but a small part of the confusion. Broken fragments of history may be involved
amongst it, but certainly, if we make an attempt to disengage it as a merely ‘
tangled chain nothing impaired but all disordered,’ we shall fail entirely.
Victories so gained
we might expect to find followed up energetically, and Cyprus is at hand, which
before and afterwards invited attempts to swell Athenian power and revenue at
the expense of Persia; operations however cease here suddenly; a new danger
recalls the 'fleet and the commander northwards, a disaster of the Strymonian
colonists and the open defection of Thasos. The colony of 10,000 settlers,
Athenian and foreign volunteers, represents an enterprise on an enormous scale
at its commencement, and probable plans for still further extension. Pausanias
reckons it as a third Athenian expedition that ranges with their mythical adventure
with Iolaus to Sardinia, and their colonisation of Ionia, and we find it rated
along with the vast armament
with which Pericles
reduced Samos, and the still vaster Syracusan expedition. The Thasians were
threatened with interference in their Continental emporia and 1
mines, and not only were the Edonian Thracians ejected from Nine Ways but an
advance was made inland as far as Drabeseus. The effect of this boldness,
however, was to alarm and unite a number of tribes, who set upon the intruders
unexpectedly; a storm seems to have been taken advantage of to cover the
2 surprise, and with such sueeess as to be
fatal to nearly the entire force. Then perished Sophanes, son of Eutyehides,
who had deserved best of all the Athenians at Plataea, and was here in joint
command with Leogrus, son of Glaucon. This crushing catastrophe raised the
enthusiastic hopes of the Thasians, discontented as they were and plotting already,
for the recovery of lost ground of their own. The opportunity was the more
inviting, as they had already been encouraged to count upon that active
sympathy at Sparta with the repression of Athens which was to develope
afterwards with such momentous results. In preceding generations Sparta had won
the confidence of Hellas by her readiness to interpose for the suppression of
governments whose genius was absolutely opposed to her own, and the same zeal
with which her oligarchy was credited in opposition to individual
3 tyranny, was now looked to with
confidence as available against an arbitrary democracy that threatened still
more seriously to become her enemy and rival.
The policy that
Athens would apply to such an emergency was already exemplified in the ease of
Naxos; no failure of loyal adherence to the confederacy as Athens chose to administer
it would be admitted ; and an attempt to vindicate infringed liberties was to
be visited by their entire forfeiture. Cimon, as might be expected, had no
difficulty in defeating the Thasians at sea. He captured or destroyed their
licet of thirty-three
1 ships, and then, probably after a land engagement also, as
Thucydides mentions battles, commenced a blockade, the usual process of
reducing a strongly-fortified city ; and its three years’ duration in this case
argues not only the resoluteness of the besieged, but the well-furnished
premeditation of the revolt.
1 Plut. Clm. 14.
THEMISTOCLES IX PERSIA. HIS
DEATH.
Ix the meantime if
Persia, in consequence of this withdrawal of Cimon, was indulged with a
respite from annoyance on the Greek frontier, her recent defeats had a
reaction at the centre that filled her palaces with discord and bloodshed, and
the life and reign of Xerxes came to an end under circumstances that affccted
the relations of East and West for a considerable time. Three of his sons are
named, of whom Darius is called the heir aud still but a youth or a young man,
though Hystaspes, two years younger (Ctesias), is old enough to be entrusted,
according to Diodorus, with the satrapy of Bactria ; he makes, however, no
further appearance by name in history, and Artaxerxes, the youngest, of an age
to be referred to as a boy, is assumed as the next heir after Darius. Against
the dynasty so represented, a plot is formed by an Hyrcanian, Artabanus,
commander of the royal guards, himself the father of seven sons of power and
ability. His immediate confederate is Spamitres (Ctesias), or Mithridates
(Diodorus), his friend, and, though his relative, a eunuch, who was at the head
of the domestic establishment of the palace. Possible apprehensions apart, of
which hints occur in a various account of the catastrophe that was known to 1
Aristotle, there was suggestion enough for an ambitious man in the
o o “
a a
observation of the
declining energy of a self-indulgent monarch and the declining reverence for a
reign that had been marked by a constantly recurring series of military
disgraces, and had lost in their course so many of its most devoted supporters.
In a night of horror and confusion, Xerxes was murdered in his bed, and the
young Artaxerxes, roused from sleep to hear that the crime was due to the
impatient ambition of his elder brother Darius, beheld him dragged forth,
vainly protesting as he was taxed with guiltily simulating sleep, and hastily
despatched on the spot. For seven months thereafter, Artabanus, as regent,
governed so absolutely as to be admitted by 1 chronologists for that
term into the series of Persian monarchs.
Even so soon he was
prepared to take the last step to undisguised possession by the removal of the
youthful Artaxerxes, relying especially on having secured, as he believed, the
adherence of some malcontent connections of the royal house in support of his
own and his sons’ influence with the army.
Xerxes had been
considerably indebted to Megabyzus for the recovery of Babylon, and had
rewarded him not only with the golden 2 plinth—or flat cylinder
according to 3 Ctesias and as represented on the Naples vase—of ten
talents, with which Persian kings recompensed the accepted responsibility of
bold and successful advice, but also with the hand of his daughter Amytis. The
dignity of the alliance was, however, seriously qualified by the laxity of her
manners; and the admonitions of Xerxes, when appealed to by the exasperated
husband, had been as futile as might be expected, considering the shamelessness
of his own intrigues. Even this check was removed by his death, and the
brooding jealousy of the brother-in-law of Artaxerxes marked him out to Oriental
sympathies as prepared for any extremity of revenge, even
1 Manetho
ap. Syncell. Cf. Clinton, p. 314 g. 2 Aelian, V. H. xii. 62.
3 Ctesias, p. 117.
though it ruined the
dynasty that had exalted him only to more conspicuous disgrace. Megabyzus,
however, Oriental husband as he was, was still a politician, and a politician
of insight and experience; he eould estimate at their true value the oaths by
which a double traitor professed to bind himself, and set no more on whatever
he was invited to give in exchange. On the other hand he was not himself
without military following and influence, in aid of the traditions of loyalty
and the prestige of the house of Darius, which the misconduct of only one
successor and an interval of twenty years had by no means cancelled. He formed
a just appreciation of the fundamental strength of character of Artaxerxes,
young as he was; and for the rest, the risk was great either way, and he could
trust to his own courage and promptitude to turn the balance on the side where
he cast in his fortunes. Artaxerxes justified his confidence, and was equal to
taking part in a counterplot which, by resolutely suspending its execution
until the very moment chosen by Artabanus for the crisis of his own, brought
all the leading conspirators within reach together. The occasion was a grand
military muster, at which not only the Regent but three of his sons were
present,—present in arms and with their adherents, but ignorant of the feelings
with which they were watched by an associated force. A tumult, not in itself
surprising to many, suddenly arose in the group around the person of
Artaxerxes. The details of the incident of eourse were variously related ; it
was even said that it began by the king complaining of the tightness of his
body armour, and proposing to try on that of Artabanus, who proceeded to divest
himself (Justin), and unarmed or embarrassed in disarming was stabbed there
and then by Artaxerxes himself. Artaxerxes was slightly wounded, and Mega-
byzus much more seriously, before the general conflict that ensued ended in the
complete suppression of the conspiracy and the deaths of the three sons of
Artabanus. In the
a a 2
investigation that
followed, the particulars of the first plot came to light, and the eunuch
Spamitres expiated his complicity in the murders of Xerxes and his eldest son
by a death of prolonged and disgusting 1 torture.
The date of the death
of Xerxes is one of the most happily certified points in the chronology of
these times, and supplies a limit for the dates of several events in Greek
history proper. Diodorus assigns it to the archonship of Lysitheus (July 465
B.C. to July 464 B.C.), after a reign of over twenty years. It is shown by 2
Clinton, on comparison of the canons of the Persian kings, that it would fall
about the first month of that arclion, and the proper accession of Artaxerxes
seven months later, about February, B.C. 464.
It was, according to
Plutarch, within this interval, while Artabanus was still in power, that
Themistoeles arrived at Susa ; an assignment which is in accordance with the
siege of Naxos being in progress when he passed into Asia, and with the revolt
of Thasos, which was proceeding in the fourth year of King Arehidamus of 3
Sparta (464 B.C.), being still later, as stated by Thucydides.
But many of the
details inserted by Plutarch as to the reception and demeanour of Themistoeles
at the Persian court and his intercourse with Artabanus are manifestly late
inventions 01* hopeless exaggerations, connected as they are with the
untrustworthy accounts that told not only of his arrival at Susa but even of
his death at Magnesia, during the life of Xerxes. The combination most in
harmony with the brief note of Thucydides, is that he arrived in Asia during
the power or usurpation of Artabanus, but did not reach the Persian court until
after the revolution that overthrew him.
Such a gap as
intervened between his disappearance from Molottis and his reception at Susa,
is the vety playground of
1 Ctes. Pers.; Plut. Artax. ii. 16. 2 Clinton, p. 314, note b.
3 Plut.
Cim. 16.
conjecture, but of
curiosity also, which may be trusted to have gathered many facts that are worth
the gleaning of history. The conclusion of his story is warning to historical
criticism not to reject fairly authorised tradition, on the mere ground of its
inconsistency with antecedent probability ; if such a principle sufficed to
guide through the uncertainties of the past, there need be little mystery for
us even about the future. He had known how to conciliate the warm zeal of two
young men of Lyncestis, a district between Macedonia and Epirus, who from their
engagement in inland trade were fully acquainted with the obscure passes and
by-roads of the continent to which he might trust to baffle the most vindictive
pursuit. By aid of their untiring guidance he made his way from sea to sea, not
neglecting, as it seems, to obtain a useful oracle at Dodona on his 1
way, and arrived at Pydna in the Macedonian territory of Alexander, where he
took passage, in a false name, on board a merchant ship bound for the coast of
Asia Minor. Stress of weather carried the vessel direct upon Naxos, where the
Athenians were engaged on the siege, and where to run in would have involved
fatal recognition, while it would require much to induce a Greek skipper to
forego even the rest and refreshment offered by such an opportunity, to say
nothing of shelter from really dangerous weather. Themis- tocles put himself at
once so far in the man’s power as to declare who he was and what was his
jeopardy, but appealed to him at the same time in a manner to compel him to the
required decision. He overawed him in the first instance by the distinct
intimation, that to betray him would be fatal to himself, as the Athenians
would be given to understand that his intention had been to assist the escape
of their enemy for a bribe; his only chance of avoiding this catastrophe was to
keep the sea at any inconvenience and any risk, and to permit no soul to land
till the voyage 1 Plut. Them. 28.
eould be continued.
When it was quite clear that intimidation had done its work, it was time
enough to clinch it by a promise of rich reward, which was afterwards
honourably performed. After battling with the weather and privations for a
whole day and night, the vessel resumed its course and reaehed Ephesus. Asia
had dangers of its own for the fugitive, and he was now nearer to those who
could claim, it is said, an immense reward of 200 talents proclaimed by the
Persian king for the capture of his most misehievous enemy. Plutarch refers to
the ‘ following of Ergoteles and Pythodorus.’ as to men notorious and on the
lookout for him; and about Cumae, the old station of the Persian fleet after
Salamis, as if it were still in Persian occupation. Xenophon long 1
after finds the adjaeent towns under the control of descendants of Demaratus
and Gongylus, to whom the Persian had granted them in reward for treaehery to
Greece. He was in this neighbourhood when he moved, in disguise, inland to
Aegae, where he had a host Nicogenes, a man of vast possessions in Aeolis ; so
vast indeed that Diodorus seems to confound him in consequence, under the name
of 2Lysi- theides, with the magnificent and ill-requited host of
Xerxes,— he may have been a descendant,—whose tale is told by 3 Herodotus.
With resolution that astonished and alarmed his friend, he proposed to avail
himself of his intimaey with Persians of position, to prosecute the plan of
presenting himself at Susa ; and accordingly, in eompany with his 4
friend, he started on the journey in a litter, which was closely curtained and
jealously watched as the conveyance of an Ionian female destined for the harem
of a Persian magnate. Besides hints of direet personal introductions, we have
in Thucydides notes of a missive said to be addressed by him to the Great King,
whieh reappear in Plutareh paraphrased as a 5 speech. He represents
that he had strictly limited all the misehief
1 Xen.
Hell. iii. 1.4. 2 Diod.
xi. 56. 3 Herod, vii.
29-38.
4 Thucyd.
i. 137; Diod. xi. 56. 5
Plut. Them.
28.
that he had wrought
against his father, Xerxes, to the requirements of self-defence ; and as soon
as these were satisfied had seized the earliest opportunities to do him all the
service in his power. He claimed a balance of gratitude as due to him for
secret information at Salamis, and for his hindrance —which Thucydides takes
occasion to say was none of his— of the disruption of the Hellespont bridge. It
is on this same account of friendly disposition to Persia, that he has now been
driven into exile; he comes prepared and able to render signal service, and
only solicits the suspense of a year, that by the acquisition of the Persian
language he may be enabled to do full justice to his plans.
The reception of
Greek fugitives was the common policy of the Persian court, on the usual
principle of all powers that seek for pretexts, or not hesitating about
pretexts desire only instruments, for interfering in the politics of
conterminal states with a view to ultimate conquest and appropriation. There
might seem to be somewhat of barbaric hebetude in the readiness with which the
subtle refugee was entertained, notwithstanding experiences of double dealing,
in the cases of Histiaeus, or Aristagoras; but to a certain extent such
traitors were indispensable to Persia for administration of Greek cities and
districts, if they were to continue to yield the tribute that was the chief
reason for holding them : and there were always abundant instances of able men
who were rendering most valuable services to Persia, and proved to be quite content
to advantage themselves at no greater sacrifice than desertion or even betrayal
of national and party connections. His reputation for wisdom—how could it be
otherwise?—was at Susa before him, and his arrival could not have been more
opportune. The young king, who had himself just emerged from a sea of perils,
was struck with surprise and admiration at his daring and dexterity. He seemed
to hold in his hand a solution of those difficulties of dealing with the Greek
frontier which had been fatal to his father, and even it
may be of others that
were still surrounding' him at home. It is perfectly credible that, as is told,
his elation found vent in unusual festivity, and even his sleep was interrupted
as he broke out at midnight into exclamations, ‘ I have got Themistocles the 1
Athenian.’
Notwithstanding his
years, Themistocles mastered the new language with incredible facility, and as
readily acquiring and accommodating himself to the customs of the nation, came
more than safely through all the jealousies or animosities of the palace and
court. The sister of Xerxes, and aunt therefore of the king, was fain to
renounce or suppress her feelings against the enemy of her sons who had
perished at Salamis : he was received to greater favour than ever was Greek refugee
before him : admitted to the royal huntings, to the private amusements, and
even the domestic relaxations of the king, and was taken into confidence in
his most important councils. At this time, says Plutarch,— and it may well be
believed after the revolutions and violence that had just passed over,—there
were many innovations and changes in progress with respect to the court and the
royal friends, and considerable jealousy was felt towards Themistocles on the
part of men of dignity, as presuming to make free observations respecting them
to the king. It was on such an occasion that the Athenian, who is characterised
for us by Thucydides, was in his proper element; and the characteristics indeed
that are specified by the historian are given as explanatory of the influence
that he acquired with Artaxerxes. ‘ For Themistocles,’ he says, ‘ displayed
most absolutely what is the force of natural endowment, and was in this respect
conspicuously more than another worthy of admiration. For by native intelligence,
and independently of either previous or occasional information to assist it, he
formed on briefest deliberation the soundest judgment respecting
affairs as they
occurred at the instant, and no less with respect to the future was most
excellent in forecasting what was likeliest to ensue. He was capable of giving
account of any business he had in hand, and did not fail of an apt judgment as
to what he was without experience in ; and as to a matter that was still in a
state of obscurity, he, at least, foresaw what would be for the better and what
for the worse. To sum the whole, by the force of his genius and by rapidity of
study he was the ablest of men to decide on a sudden what was necessary to be
Ulone.’
How complete were the
confidence and admiration he commanded was proved by his dismissal ultimately
to comparative independence, as governor of Magnesia on the Maeander, and of
its district, which extended, as it surprises us to find,—but perhaps only
because the Persian chose to assume so,—even to Myus, intermediate on the
seaboard between revolted Miletus and adjacent Mycale. In barbaric formula,
Magnesia, with its revenue of fifty talents in the year, was assigned to supply
him with bread, and Myus, on a gulf abounding in fish, with condiment,—that is,
with salt relish,—Lampsacus on the Hellespont with wine, for which Thucydides
implies that it was more preeminently celebrated in that day than his own,
scarcely a generation later,— Perkote in the same neighbourhood with bedding,
and Palaeskepsis in Aeolis with wardrobe.
There would seem to
have been some particular purpose in furnishing him with occasions for
authoritative visits at widely separated points on the frontier. Mention occurs
of some ill-feeling on the part of a Persian, Epixyes, Satrap of Upper Phrygia,
abutting on these northern grants, of such rancour and so dangerous that
Themistocles ascribed his escape to divine favour, and founded in
acknowledgment at Magnesia a fane of Dindymene, mother of the Gods, of which he
madr
his (laughter Mncsiptolema
priestess. On another occasion he was in peril at Sardis; in the temple of the
Great Mother there he came upon a bronze figure of a maiden with a pitcher —a
Kore hydrophorus—two cubits high, spoil taken from Athens, where he himself had
dedicated it when lie presided over the water supply, from the fines of
fraudulent abstractors. His suggestion, prompted by whatever motive,—an interesting
one however interpreted,—that he should be allowed to restore it, aroused
indignation which he only pacified by conciliating with the aid of bribes the
indirect interposition of the occupants, probably Ionian, of a Persian harem.
At Magnesia he remained in wealth and dignity, amidst a numerous family. Much
of his property in Greece had been saved by timely transfer to Argos, and some
was even transmitted to him from Athens by his friends, in evasion of the
general confiscation of all that could be attached there—still an enormous sum.
Such friendship was perilous, and it is disagreeable to find on record that Epicrates
the Acharnian was even put to death, and that too at the instance of Cimon, for
having aided the escape of his wife and children. It would be a poor
extenuation that they were regarded and retained as hostages for the dangerous
exile. Political rancour of this stamp was of bad example, and bore fatal
fruits at a later time, when the resentment of such an exile as Alcibiades was
envenomed by the execution of his adherents and friends.
So long as
Themistoeles was known to survive, his life and possible action could scarcely
be left out of political consideration at Athens; it is observable, however,
that whatever promises he may once have held out at Susa, there is no hint or
slightest indication, between his arrival there and his death, of any renewal
of Persian aggressiveness, or preparation for it, against Greece. The
persistence of his favour notwithstanding, would almost of necessity imply
that his counsels had been given and had weight in favour of a purely defensive
policy on this frontier, where attempts to recover full command
of the coasts and
islands were manifestly futile, unless all the consequences were to be accepted
of reviving the disastrous projects of Xerxes, not to say of Darius, against
Europe. Apart from such designs, which in any case demanded reconstruction of a
powerful fleet, there was no better frontier for Persia after all than an
interior line of Hellenic and semi-Hellenic towns contented, as we have found
was the case with Phaselis, to be at peace and to pay tribute, whether through
Persian or Hellenic satraps. It was by such representations that Aleibiades at
a later date reconciled Tissaphernes to favouring the Athenians against the
Lacedaemonians—on the ground that if they were allowed to have their way with
the cities on the coast they would even help the Great King to his with the
inland Greeks, and might be trusted to have no designs to penetrate 1
further.
His countrymen may be
considered to have made some reparation to Themistocles, when, despite his
equivocal position, they never brought themselves to credit him, whether
ostracised at Argos or exiled and proscribed in Asia, with any really
treasonable activity against either Athens or Hellas. His death, at the age of
sixty-five, is assigned to about 460 b. c., at a time when Athens was again
resuming active hostilities at Cyprus and in Egjqri, and it was thought to have
occurred too opportunely for his honour not to have been voluntary. Thucydides
concludes for his death in course of nature, but still records the report that
he destroj'ed himself in despair of being able to perform what he had promised
to the Great King against the Greeks. Another report that he places on record
at the same time, that it was by Themistocles’ own command that his relatives
seeretljr transported his bones to the soil of Attica, harmonises
better with those versions of his death that ascribe it, not to inability, but
to unwillingness to injure his 2 country. The
story that the mode
of his death was by a draught of bull’s blood at a solemn sacrifice seems
derived in some recondite manner from a traditional rite of his tribe of
Lycomidac. Such a draught was the test of the priestess of Ge ( = Gaia- Themis
of the Prometheus Yinctus) at Gaius in Arcadia, where it seems implied that
death ensued on a false oath. Compare, however, another Persian instance, but2
compulsory. "With Aristophanes, who alludes to this form of his
catastrophe, * to die like Themistoeles’ is to imitate the noblest of 3models.
That even at Magnesia
he had not been inactive in his boasted faculty of making cities prosperous, is
intimated by the magnificent monument raised for him by the citizens in the
midst of the agora, as if to a second founder, and by the honours which were
continued there to his descendants through long generations.
1 Paus.
vii. 25. 8. 2 Herod, iii. 15,
and Creuzer’s note.
3 Arist.
Equit. 84.
THE SEVENTY-NINTH OLYMPIAD.—CORINTHIAN AND RHODIAN VICTORS.
The year after the death of Xerxes—the second of
the Thasian War—brought round at midsummer (464 b. c.) the seventy-ninth Olympic festival, and of some of its
incidents we have authentic illustrations that most happily supply certain
social characteristics which are all-important for the appreciation of the
period. For two of the victors on this occasion, Diogoras of Rhodes and
Xenophon of Corinth, Pindar composed epinician odes that have come down to us
entire, and for the latter a scolion of which the fragments—all that are
left—are even more important and interesting.
Xenophon, of the
noble family of Oligaethadae, gained—a success unprecedented—the double victory
of the stadium and the pentathlon ; his father forty years before had been
victor in the foot race, and Pindar opens his ode with the proud epithet for
the family ‘ Thrice-Olympian-victoried.’ This instance furnishes a conspicuous
example—but only one among abundance of others in all parts of Hellas proper
and even in Sicily—of hereditary distinction in the games, in the case of
families of high social and even political importance. Rut it is still more
interesting as preserving intimations of the interior characteristics of
Corinth at this time, of which we know too little ; as indeed how little do we
know of the endlessly varied characteristics of the inner life of any of the
numberless Greek
cities except Athens. Corinth was always the most influential of the
Peloponnesian allies of Sparta, by true sympathy of Dorian race, though most
contrasted in manners and pursuits; she was very soon to be the most active of
the agitators against the power of Athens—to a very great extent in consequence
of points of agreement unfortunately diverted to irritating contact and
collision. A gleam of light is flashed for a moment by Pindar into the deep
obscurity of a busy, energetic, and luxurious social system, and we are bound
to make the most of its revelations in the interests of history. In his two
poems for the same victories at different celebrations, two sides of Corinthian
life are presented to our view—two aspects that are in more than Doric and
Ionic contrast.
Corinth was still at
this time, as of yore, aristocratic, and in the enjoyment of the prolonged
tranquillity which Pindar was ever disposed to associate with the predominance
of ‘ the Best.’ Justice, Order, and Peace are the characteristics that he
asserts for her under presidency of the Seasons, the Horae, which are
personified by him, as they had already been by Hesiod, under ethical
titles—Dike, Eunomia, Eirene—though still without forfeiting their epithet of
the ‘ many-flowered.’ To the influence of these goddesses are due the wealth of
the city, the virtues that triumph in the games, and the ingenuity that
originates novelty alike in the aesthetic and the useful arts. The poet cites
as examples of Corinthian inventiveness, such as her citizens assert the value
of in their taunts to the stationary 1 Spartans, the dithyramb which
Arion had commenced when in favour at the Court of Periander; improvements in
the harness of horses, and the decoration of the expanded wing-like pediment—the
aetoma—of the temples of the Gods. Thucydides credits them with the invention
of the 2 trireme. Intellectual, poetical, warlike, gymnic distinc-
tions are all
ascribed to the inspired prompting of the goddesses of all established order
and beauteous development. The Seasons in their conjoint natural and ethical
aspects are interchanged by the Greeks not unfrequently with the Moirai, the
Fates, or arc associated with them as correlative expressions of the ultimate
energies of all change and movement; and it is therefore highly probable that
they are to be identified with the Moirai whom Pausanias finds associated with
the nature goddesses Demeter and Kore in theiu temple on Acrocorinthus, where
the priestesses had a faculty of divination by dreams.
The usual mythical
example of the qualities that are celebrated in the victor is in this case
Bellerophon, son of the god of the Isthmus. It was he who invented the bridle,
or rather the bit—the very condition of any effective horsemanship ; which in
his hands was equal to controlling even the winged Pegasus, the favourite type
of Corinthian coins, with the head of Athene on the obverse ; this knowledge
came to him in a dream which he invited by couching near the altar of
Athene—the Athene Chalinitis doubtless of the fane known to Pausanias on tlr's
spot. This mode of consulting the gods was chiefly resorted to for suggestion
of cures for diseases, and hence the poet calls the bridle ‘ a mild
medicament,’ ‘ an equestrian philtre.’ After recounting the achievements and
then the fate of Bellerophon, Pindar recurs to the catalogue of victories of
the family of Xenophon, and ends with a gracefully covert injunction—itself a
flattery—to moderation and modesty.
But even so we should
still miss the point—as it has been missed—of the parallel of Bellerophon, but
for regard to indications that survive in the fragmentary scolion. From these
it appears that Xenophon, like his heroic antitype, ascribed his victory to
suggestions of a goddess, and like him acknowledged the favour by a sacred
celebration; while that the goddess was not Athene, but Aphrodite, explains a
reticence
that befits Epinician
dignity, though the circumstances could not but be notorious to the audience of
the ode and be reeo<r- nised as pointing the aptness of its allusions.
Corinth was wealthy
above all through the advantage of her situation, where in closest connection
between two seas she held between East and West the gates of commerce, which
willingly avoided, even at the cost of some land carriage, the long and
dangerous sea route round Cape 1 Malea. The influx of strangers, of
mariners, of wealth 011 travel, of £ wayfaring licentiousness,’
brought into importance in this Dorian city an institution which is not
paralleled even at Athens—the attachment of vast numbers of female hierodules
to the temple of Aphrodite as consecrated ministers and contributaries to her
revenues. To the prayers of such a tribe to their patroness did the Corinthian
State resort, and not shrink from admitting obligation for the repulse of the
Mede. Their intercession and their participation at a solemn sacrifice were
represented in a dedicated picture, and Simonides—the most renowned
contemporary poet in this quality—furnished the elegiac inscription that has
come down to us. To this goddess had Xenophon addressed himself, and now with
his double Olympic crowns evinced his gratitude by a festive sacrifice, and
therewith the dedicated services of one hundred of these ministrants. Pindar,
who is only taking the plaee of Simonides, writes the scolion for the occasion
; not, however, be it said, without introducing very deeided expressions to
the effect that, after all allowance made for those who have to accept a
necessity graeefully, the task he had himself undertaken was embarrassing and
incongruous enough, and craved almost equal indulgence.
These were the
contingencies that, according to Strabo, explained the Greek metrical
proverb,—more familiar in Horace,—that Corinth was not a city to be visited by
every
man. With wliat persistency
such characteristics clung to the locality, even after the desolating Roman had
passed over it, is well known from the injunctions and warnings which were most
urgently demanded by Corinth Christianised.
The victory of the
Rhodian Diagoras at the same festival was gained in the pugilism of men; he was
son, father, and grandfather of Olympian victors—his son Dorieus was even
victor, as pancratiast, in three successive Olympiads. Thucydides introduces a
reference to the occasion of his second victory as useful for defining a date.
Diagoras belonged to
the Heracleid families that had once ruled at Rhodes with kingly power, and
still retained certain political predominance. His father Damagetus is alluded
to as in a leading position, and Dorieus is found in a military command in the
Peloponnesian war after the island had joined the enemies of Athens. When
fortune of war threw him into the power of the exasperated and seldom lenient
Athenians, he owed his life—so at least it was said—as much to the admiration
of his magnificent frame in presence before them as to the glory of his 2
deeds.
It is only among
Dorians, as of Corinth, Rhodes, or Aegina, that we still meet with men of
birth, position, and power taking this personal concernment in contests of physical
strength and skill, which seems out of place at the stage of civilisation now
attained by Hellas, whatever might be the case in the simplicity of antiquity,
in the contests at the funeral games of Patroclus, or at the court of Alcinous.
In one respect the civilisation of Homer seems even a degree more refined, for
we observe that he is careful to commit to the rough hazards of the pugilism in
which Diagoras excelled, only personages so utterly unimportant or secondary
as Epeius and Euryalus. The prizes of this contest are the most insignificant
of all—the victor has only a mule; and
1 I Cor.
vi. 13, 20. * P&ud. vi 7- 5-
B b
in this contest alone
does the poet allow sympathies to be seriously disappointed, as if in rebuke
for their engagement about so coarse a conflict—the victory being given, with a
certain contemptuousness, to a boaster and a bully.
Pausanias found the
statue of Diagoras at Olympia, by a leading sculptor, Callielcs of Megara, and
with it an entire group of victors all of his family. Pindar composed for him
the beautiful seventh Olympic Ode, which was afterwards seen set up in letters
of gold in the temple of Athene at Lindus in Rhodes.
Although at present
not only popularly, but by Herodotus as well as by Pindar, the cultured perfection
of the bodily frame could be taken as presumption of all the virtues and all
refinement, voices had already been raised in Greece— that of Xenophanes
particularly — against the excessive glorification of athletic prowess.
Training became, as on the modern raee-course, too much valued for the sake of
the particular contest to have regard to any purpose beyond, and the primary
justification of the system fell out of view and was frustrate. Euripides, who
was of such age as to have been born at Salamis sixteen years before our date,
on the very day of the battle in which Aeschylus was a warrior, and for which
Sophocles, as a beautiful youth, sang the psean to the lyre, was soon to
denounce the pride of the athlete in terms as sour and severe as those which
were echoed afterwards by philosophers, statesmen, and 1
physicians.
1 Eurip. frag. Autolyc.; Plato cle Rep. iii. 410 ; Arist. Pol. viii. 3 ; Galen de vol. tuend.
TIIE RISE OF PERICLES.—REVOLT OF THE HELOTS.— SURRENDER OF TIIASOS.—
B.C. 464-3.
The brilliant victories of Cimon, the additional
subsidies that he brought in from new confederates, to contribute, together
with the spoils of enemies, to the riches and embellishment of the city, went
far to complete an influence already fostered by his popular manners and lavish
employment of his own great wealth. So it was that he threatened to ‘1
out-demagogue ’ his political rivals; and among those who were driven in
consequence on new demagogic arts, were some who would perhaps have preferred to
aid the conservation of whatever aristocratical elements the constitution
still retained, might this only be done consistently with their own emergence
to power. Such was especially the position of Pericles, of distinguished birth,
but who as son of Xanthippus, the prosecutor of Miltiades, might find himself
of necessity on the side of the opponents of his son. He was at present only
gradually coming to the front, but working meanwhile influentially in the
councils of a party of which he was content for a time to leave to others the
ostensible and perhaps invidious guidance. It was his policy, indeed,
1 Pint. PcricIes, 9. B b 2
even after his
eminence was declared, and partly it was believed from his apprehension of the
catastrophe of ostracism which ever threatened an Athenian statesman, to work
in association with others and hold himself in reserve for special occasions.
Political management had now become more than ever a task of delicacy and
danger also. The Athenian demns had assumed a self-consciousness and a
self-will which made it a necessity for one who hoped to rise to political
power to reckon with it as a personal entity of special character, having its
own passions, and aims that were ever acquiring more positive and resolute
definition. Still more urgently than in the case of Solon did it now behove the
aspirant to legislative influence to consider what proportion of the best he
might venture to go for as possible ; it was well if he combined with
administrative ability such true political insight as to extend this proportion
by the force of his own character, and were spared the weak descent into
assentation, the lazy adoption of only so much of the desirable as was easiest,
or unprincipled furtherance of whatever would carry most favour at the hour.
Cimon, on his part,
seems to have trusted too much to the power of popularity when opposed to a
popular movement, and to have been little disposed to pursue the example which
had been set by his master and colleague, Aristides, of conceding a change
which had become inevitable, and so at least gaining an opportunity to qualify
if not to control it. Encouraged by his successes and personal favour, he
stood firm on his political lines, and prepared to defend a policy which was
the reverse of popular, and a political theory that the consequences of his own
proceedings were naturally tending to discredit. At this very time he was
engaged as a commander in promoting a change of relations between Athens and
her allies which gradually impaired the cordial understanding with Sparta
which he had most at heart, and at the same time so stimulated the pride of the
demus as to
make them ever more
and more restive under restrictions whieh lie would himself have preferred
rather to tighten than relax.
As fear of the
barbarian declined, the confederates began to find, first the obligations and
then the burdens of the assessment of Aristides, the price of their rescue and
continued safety, intolerably irksome ; those who were bound to personal
service on shipboard, to supply crews to their own or Athenian ships, were
especially recalcitrant, and became ever more unwilling to give up the ease of
life on land, and the tranquil pursuit of wealth, in industries never so
profitable as on a recovery of security after war. To Cimon Plutarch assigns
the origination of the policy of accepting composition for personal service,
first in unmanned ships and then in money payments which would always provide
crews, and those more entirely under Athenian control. Crews were, in fact,
taken in rotation from among the Athenians themselves, who thus with liberal
pay acquired maritime habits and warlike discipline, in every way at the
expense of allies who sunk unawares into the position and experienced the
treatment of subjects and servants. Disputes as to the money payments before
long involved state prosecutions, and compulsion which was sometimes so
severely administered as to aggravate the already serious discontents. In the
meantime every Athenian oarsman, every artisan in the dockyards of the
Peiraeus was acquiring the self-consciousness of a unit in an imperial state;
and every trireme that left the national port carried men who had risen with
the extension of the 1 marine, and indulged, as the new men of new
empires will and sometimes brutally, in the demeanour of superiority.
The reaction on home
politics at Athens of this constantly advancing spirit of pride and
independence, soon led to
agitation not merely
to shake off restraints, but to share in the immediate control of affairs and
in its appropriate rewards. The efficiency of administration might be liable to
become impaired by the changes so induced, but in this case, from the temper of
the times, even any corrective policy could scarcely but involve a further concession
to democracy. It seems to have been a conflict on some of the questions which
were soon to induce capital constitutional changes, that first seriously
affected the position which Cimon had gained by his liberalities as well as his
services, and so rendered a single reverse in his conduct of external politics
for him an irretrievable disaster.
Tribute and the
commutations for service were already accumulating at Athens the surplus
treasure which was afterwards to supply a fund for her magnificent public monuments,
and Pericles, now acting in conjunction with Ephialtes, was the first to
declare that it might be fairly drawn upon to contribute to the enjoyments of
her so well-deserving citizens. It was apparently by the institution of the
theoricon, —of the payment to poorer citizens to enable them to participate in
the national festivities of the Panathenaea and the Dionysia,—that a system was
commenced which had the most important and gravest results, and in the meantime
at least countervailed the private donations of Cimon, and probably committed
him to unpopular opposition. Since the erection of a costly stone theatre in
place of earlier and more simple accommodation, a charge of two obols had been
made for seats, which, small as it may seem, was sufficient to shut out many on
occasions when as members of the ruling body they seemed to have every right to
be present. The periodical theatrical entertainments were a chief part of a
public celebration at a sacred Dionysiac festival: whether in their comic or
tragic manifestations, they were addressed most immediately to the same public
sympathies and interests that agitated the political assembly, and the
democratic spirit
required that the
audience should be the same. A payment by the state of the admission money of
the poor was in reality but a circuitous form of public subvention to the
expenses of the theatre,—the condition which in modern times has too certainly
proved indispensable for the prolonged maintenance of either the poetical or
the musical drama at the highest standard. The poor citizens by this assistance
were in effect admitted free to the theatre, on the same principle that they
might participate in the sight of a costly national procession through the open
streets, or in the enjoyment of public parks, or gardens, or porticoes, of
which the expense had been defrayed out of either foreign tribute or the home
taxation which only touched classes above them. That the multitude should be
allowed such an enjoyment at a rcduced cost, or even gratis, is in itself no
more of an anomaly than that they should walk cost free past a noble building
or through a gallery of pictures.
\\ e are destitute of
precise information as to the dates of successive extensions of this principle;
but Plutarch, right or wrong, distinctly states that it furnished one of the
instruments by which Pericles and Ephialtes were enabled to make head against
Cimon, and the theorieon appears to be the example of its application
which has least connection with movements that occurred after the party victory
was decided. This victory was not long to be delayed, and was due at last to
the collapse of Cimon’s policy of a close alliance with Sparta; events were
already in progress to vindicate the sagacity of those who mistrusted it all along
as a delusion and a snare. The Thasians were not reduced till 463 B.C.; in the
previous year, the fourth of King Archidamus, they were still sanguine of
relief, 011 the ground, according to Thucydides, that the Spartans had
distinctly promised to render it by the invasion of Attica, which it was
believed would infallibly cause the siege to be raised. The tradition was still
in force and was to continue for some time longer,
that the delivery of
one strong- blow by Sparta in a short expedition in the interval of her
festivals would suffice to redress a grievance and assert the respect due to
her authority; even considerably later a mere threat, 01* certainly a demonstration
of an intention to invade, was expected to constrain a reversal of Athenian
policy. The relations of Sparta and Athens for still a year 01* two onward
agree with the statement of the historian, that if not the negotiations, the
results of them certainly, were very successfully kept secret.
Whatever may have
been the precise form of their promise or the value of their intention now, the
collision that was to come more furiously, and fatally, hereafter, was deferred
by a catastrophe which gave the Spartans full occupation at home, and which, by
involving- them as one of its consequences in a ten years’ war, within their
own borders and for very existence, was to accustom them perforce to sustained
efforts. Their country was wrecked by an earthquake more terrible than had ever
been known, and the city of Sparta itself was the centre of the convulsion :
chasms opened in the valley, vast masses were detached from the impending*
summits of Taygetus ; of the city shaken down or overwhelmed by landslips,
five houses at most were left standing,—such is the record; large numbers
perished, and by one peculiarly destructive and lamentable accident a great
assemblage of youths were crushed to death by the fall of the building in which
they were exercising. Even in the midst of this distress and disorder, the
apprehensions of the ruling class were turned to a peril which was always with
them, and never more threateningly than of late since the treason of Pausanias—
the helots. And with good reason : when Archidamus hastened to give the signal
by trumpet that withdrew the citizens at once from all occupation in salvage of
lives or goods, and they mustered instantly under arms, it was not a moment too
soon; the helots were already collecting in the
surrounding' country,
and preparing to surprise their t}rrannous masters in the midst of
their trouble and confusion. B}' the promptitude of the king they were foiled
and had to retire, but it was only to commence a struggle that was to last for
ten years.
The helot class were
for the most part descendants of the Mossenians, whom the Dorian conquest had
reduced to
1 slavery; ehiefly, it is possible, of the
lower and inferior classes of the Messenians, who ma}' not have enjoyed full
privileges even before the conquest, while ages of studied repression since had
imbruted them still further : but strength was infused into their cause by the
sympathy and accession of Messenians and the perioeei of Thouriae and Anthea
especially. This class enjoyed a restricted franchise in their several
townships, but was subordinated in every respect to the Spartiats, and had oppressions
of its own to complain of; what was most important now, they had experience and
discipline from having served in the Persian war not onl}' as lightarmed but
as hoplites. First or last the war, stamped with the character of a helot
insurrection as it might he in origin, became a revival of the lost cause of
Aristodemus, a struggle for the recovery of Messenian nationality : the old
Messenian acropolis—the precipitous hill of Ithome—crowned by the temple of
Zeus Ithomatas, was seized and obstinately maintained ; and later history,
following Thucydides, relates the vicissitudes of the third Messenian war. The
courage of the insurgents was roused and sustained by a confidence in divine
support, which even the Spartans could not pretend to disallow as unnatural and
unauthorised. An earthquake was the appropriate sign of the power and anger of
Poseidon, the earth-shaking god of Homer, and of this god the most venerated
sanctuary, at Taenaron, had been grossly violated by them in the persons of
vainly suppliant helots. His severe visitation of the indignity was recognised
thrmigh-
out Hellas, and while
it roused the insurgents to enthusiasm, was not without effect in unnerving
even Spartan confidence.
To provoke the
hostility of Athens at such a time was out of the question; it was much if the
secret treaty eould be kept a secret, and the Thasians in consequence were left
to their fate. In 463 B.C. they surrendered on hard conditions ; their navy
was given up, their walls demolished, a large immediate payment was cxaetcd,
decided probably by an estimate of inability to pay, without the irony, not
exclusively modern, of reference to formally calculated expenses of the war;
and a future annual, subsidy—now rather a tribute—was assessed : lastly, the
islanders had to cede the mines which were the immediate origin of the dispute,
and their possessions on the mainland. Of these 1 Thucydides
mentions Galepsus and Oesyme as Thasian, and 2 Herodotus Stryme
further eastward on the coast; and Seapte Hyle,— renowned for all time as the
retirement of Thucydides in exile,—is noted as especially valuable for
productive gold mines. Festus mentions its silver mines also, and observes the
derivation of the local name from mining. The exact situation of Seapte Hyle,
or Scaptensula of Roman writers, is uncertain; but the influence which
Thucydides speaks of as possessed by himself in the neighbourhood of
Amphipolis, implies that his gold works were not remote from the Strymon.
Another important station on this coast was Daton, more directly over against
Thasos, and which, according to Leake, commands an eastern pass only second in
importance to that westward at Nine Ways (Amphipolis). A fragment of
3 Strabo ascribes to it advantages of
which some are perhaps transferred in error from Nine Ways, and Ei'on,—its
lake, and rivers, and docks,—made peculiarly valuable by the ship timber
available at hand, in addition to fertile plains and
lucrative gold mines.
The expedition to the Strymon, which had come to ruin so disastrous at Drabescus,
is connected by Herodotus with Daton, and probably made this its immediate base
of operations in advancing inland ; for it is precisely between Daton and
Drabescus that were situated the mines which Philip of Macedon found afterwards
so profitable, and which gave occasion to his founding his city, so celebrated
in story sacred and profane, of Philippi.
It seems therefore
ascertained that the Athenian scheme extended to taking possession of these
mines also, and gaining command of the entire district between the Strymon and
Daton, including the beautiful and fertile valley of Phyllis. The defeat at
Drabescus had not only checked encroachments in this direction, but crippled,
if it did not for the time defeat, the intended settlement at Ennea Hodoi; and
the Athenians, disappointed by the failure of Leogrus at Daton, were in a
temper to be discontented with Cimon that he had not made up"for it by
acquisitions in'the neighbourhood of the Strymon, at the expense not' merely of
Thracians but ot Macedonia.
hatever gains he
might have brought home from the subjection of Thasos, the popular greed for
mines was comparative^ disappointed ; it was objected to him that he had
neglected an opportunity of wresting from Alexander of Macedon some
metalliferous districts — the same doubtless that Herodotus speaks of as
adjacent to Lake Pratinas above Nine Ways. A pretext would not be wanting if it
need be waited for, were it only in imputed consequential damage by permitted
if not open aid to rebels : that he had foregone such an opportunity was
ascribed to his reception of bribes from the Macedonian king, and upon this
very serious, and indeed 1 capital charge, he was put upon his
defence. At Athens then, no less than at Lacedaemon, a grudge against even a
successful commander found a convenient opening in
the accusation that
he had held his hand too soon, and in ascribing- the lapse, whether truly such
or not, to the influence of’ corruption rather than of prudent moderation, or
at most to the astuter diplomacy of his opponents. The recoil of this injustice
was apt to be serious: no inconsiderable proportion of the Athenian demus was
in after years to be detained by Nieias before Syracuse, against his own better
judgment, and to a miserable catastrophe, from his conviction that most of
those who were then loudest for the necessity of retirement would, at home, be
clamorous in ascribing it to his acceptance of bribes from the enemy.
Pericles was at least
popularly regarded as attached to the party of the accusers of Cimon, if, as
Plutarch records, he was one of the publicly appointed prosecutors ; but we may
safely set down as a mere inference of the biographer—convicted moreover on his
own showing—that he was the most violent ; for Plutarch himself has a tale of
the not ineffectual intercession of Elpinice, sister of Cimon, who made a
personal appeal to him. She is one of the few Athenian ladies whose names come
up in anecdotes of any kind, much less of public affairs. Her distinguished
beauty and perhaps her own manners, along with the notorious youthful laxity
of Cimon, were sufficient to set afloat the scandal, which the comedian Eupolis
found amusing, that there was more than fraternal love between them : she was
however only his half sister, and several examples in Greek history of the
time,—an instance comes before us in the royal family of Sparta,—prove that
such relationship did not preclude lawful marriage, which is one recorded
version of the connection. The Thasian painter Polygnotus, whose attachment to
Cimon left many traces in his art, introduced her portrait among the captive
Trojan women, in the pieture wTith which he gratuitously decorated
the Poeeile stoa. She was his model for Laodiee, ‘ the most beautiful,’ says
Homer, ‘ of the daughters of Priam,’ though certainly he pays the same
compliment elsewhere to Cas
sandra; but it were
hard indeed if such a compliment from an admiring- painter is to be urged as
even the support, much less the ground, of a disparaging imputation. Ferieles
set aside the appeal with a verse of rather obscure pertinence, whieli it is to
be hoped was intended and understood as a compliment, though it scarcely sounds
so.
EriHALTES AND TI1E DEMOCRACY.----- ATHENIANS
BEFORE ITHOME.
CI5ION OSTRACISED.
B.C. 461.
The indictment failed and Cimon was acquitted.
Pericles was more indulgent than Elpinice had perhaps anticipated from her
reception; he supported the accusers, but by a single and that a markedly
perfunctory speech. What we read of the defence of Cimon himself seems to imply
that he had had some personal intercourse with Alexander. He appealed to the
dicasts whether it was his known way to attach to himself wealthy foreign
hosts—Ionians or Thessalians—as was the manner of others who found their recompense
in services and gifts, and not rather to the simpler and self-restrained
Lacedaemonians; the riches which he valued were spoils captured from an
enemy,—their application, to contribute to the adornment of the city. The
latter reference was a proud allusion to the places of public resort, the
gardens and porticoes laid out with elegance and always open, to which at his
own instance the spoils of Mycale had been largely devoted, which became a
marked characteristic of the city, and of such popularity that the love of frequenting
them had important influence on the habits of Athenian life, and it may even be
said on the development of Athenian philosophy.
The same fund had
supplied the cost of completing1 the south wall of the acropolis.
Satisfied with his
civic victory over his accusers, Cimon was before long again absent from Athens
on an expedition of which, as of so many others during this period, no particulars
remain. But the party of his opponents had not been idle during his absence,
and the success with which they could avail themselves of it goes far to prove
that the forbearance of Pericles in the prosecution might be due to consciousness
of strength that could afford to be magnanimous. The most ardent and active
promoter of change at this time was Ephialtes. Under which of the many
influences that dissolve the alliances of politicians he had renounced his
former connection with Cimon does not appear; the breach was certainly serious
and final. He seems to have been one of the first among Athenian politicians who
perceived the advantage of uninterrupted presence at the centre of political
action. AYe 1 read how, at some time after the battle of Mycale, he
sailed unmolested beyond the Cheli- donian islands with a squadron of thirty
ships, as Pericles on another occasion with fifty, but this is the only notice
that occurs of his holding a command. He evidently united with an energctic and
even passionate character the sagacity to discern at what point an old
established system might be assailed not only with success, but with the best
promise of a series of successes afterwards.
There is very strong
presumption that the great attack of Ephialtes upon the Areopagus dates several
years later; but intermediately, though at uncertain dates, very considerable
reductions, probably due to his influence and exertions, had been made in the
authority of the archons, the council, and other magistracies,—especially
through the substitution of appointment by lot instead of by election.
Phitiireh assorts
that the great stroke against the Areopagus had been delivered already, as if
by one comprehensive change j though this will scarcely stand against counter
evidence. But Cimon in any case may have recognised with clearness that unless
recent legislation could be turned back upon its course, it must of necessity
involve innovations even still more serious, of some of which no doubt there
was already notice; and he did not flinch from a resolute attempt to stand in
the gap. But it was without avail. The spirit of the time was too strong for
him, and such legislation under such circumstances ever proves irreversible.
Foiled, however, in
his enueavour to mould constitutional policy, he had a brilliant, though as it
proved only a fallacious, gleam of success in foreign, the occasion of which
seemed to arrive most opportunely. The Messenian war had now reached its third
year, with seven still to come, and was taxing all the resources of the
Spartans. Even though we make very considerable deduction on the score of
exaggeration from the terms of Lysistrata in 1 Aristophanes, they
will still be evidence for the anxi?ty and urgency with which Sparta appealed
to the general allies, among them to Athens, for assistance : ‘ Know ye not how
on a time the Laconian Pericleidas came hither as a suppliant of the Athenians,
and sat with sallow face in his scarlet cloak at the altars, begging an army/
Of particular disasters we have but one note, and that undated, doubtless out
of many and more serious. It is preserved in an anticipation of history by
2 Herodotus, in order to put on record the
fate of Aeimnestus, slayer of Mardonius at Plataea. Leading 300 men in the
course of this war in the plain of Stenyclerus, he was set upon by the
concentrated Messenian forces and perished with his entire following. At
present the difficulty of the Spartans was of a kind that had long been among
their greatest. The
insurgents
were established in Ithome, of which the natural strength was aided by
fortification, and defied the besiegers, who repeated their past experience of
the inefficiency their military system to cope with enemies defended by works.
The fact that time was not patiently relied on to force a surrender by the
failure of food, is pretty certain proof that sufficient progress had not been
made in the field for the city to be fully invested; but even on account of the
difficulty and tediousness of this process, it may have been thought more
prudent and promising to risk a blow under whatever disadvantages at the very
head of the rebellion in its chief stronghold at once. ' '
Herodotus
incidentally alludes to a victory gained by the Spartans, under the auspices of
the seer Tisamenus, over the Messenians in the neighbourhood of Ithome; but he
only dates it generally, as after two previous victories, over the Tegeans and
Argives first, and then over the united Arcadians, and before the open quarrel
with Athens and the battle of Tanagra. It is always possible that it was only
by these loosely dated victories—if they are to be brought down so low—that
Sparta had succeeded in checking the active sympathy with the insurgents of
the three states within Peloponnesus which were always most jealous of her
power; and that the severe cost of these victories, if not also of that before
Ithome, accounts for the urgent supplication for Athenian aid.
The sympathies of the
advocates and adversaries of a Laco- nizing policy at Athens were now declared
in all the contrast of an open debate, in which the opposed protagonists again
were Cimon and Ephialtes. The] larger confederation of entire Hellas, of
Dorians and Ionians conjointly, which had triumphed at Salamis and Plataea, was
still formally subsisting. notwithstanding the division of states as grouped
under the several headships of Athens and Sparta, but with the cessation of
conjoint action against the barbarian had been gradually sinking into
ineffectiveness. Athens had had no motive for repudiating it, so long as she
was unmolested in the course which it suited her to regard as consistent with
it; and at most had only recognised her obligations under it, when in the
revulsions of party she was found too willing to co-operate with Sparta in
hunting down Themistocles. But a conflict of interests between the two great
divisions of the alliance had been gradually ripening, and the time was come
when one or the other might hesitate to sacrifice a separate advantage for the
sake of securing what was only to be enjoyed in common. Athenians were not only
conscious of views as to excluding Sparta more and more from leadership, and as
to becoming most decidedly independent of her remonstrances or interference,
but were well aware how much their intentions affected the pride and sympathies
of Spartans. Unknown as the Thasian intrigue might be—and that it should not
have got wind within two years after the surrender is extraordinary—the
plain-spoken arguments of Ephialtes would not lack of cogency. ‘ Why should
Athens furnish an army which would simply help to set on its legs again a power
that was a natural rival and antagonist to Athens ; better allow it to lie
prostrate, and learn to abate in pride and pretension by experience of being
trampled on.’ There is a more generous ring about the reclamations of Cimon,
which come to us through Ion of Chios, his contemporary and friend. ‘ Let us
not be indifferent/ he said, Ho seeing Hellas becoming maimed on one side, nor
consent that Athens in future should have to draw without her yoke-fellow.’ It
is intimated that the assembly decided to grant the prayer of Sparta rather out
of deference to this sentimental patriotism than from any considerations of policy,
though in truth such were not wanting of sufficient force to exert an influence
even upon the popular party. To sustain Sparta was for Cimon and his friends to
conserve a mainstay of the party throughout Hellas which willingly held on to
old traditions, old institutions, to the authoritv of families of lofty claims
to descent from mythical heroes, not to say from demigods, and gods,—"to
keep up a bulwark against the ever-advancing inroad of limitless democracy ;
but support of the grand confederation was also the best guarantee for that
internal Hellenic harmony which was but indifferently secured, and which was a
condition for the prosecution even on the part of Athens alone, of attacks on
the barbarians as profitable as they were glorious, for which full
opportunities still remained on the coasts of Asia Minor, in Cyprus and even
possibly in Egypt.
Cimon was of all men
in the best position to understand what were the feelings of the allies of
Athens as to their state of semi-dependence, and to be assured that while
nothing would so much confirm the heartiness of their adherence as the sense
which the activity of Athens would convey of their safety and the extension of
their commerce being due to continued exertions against Persia, there could be
no better check to the intrigues of the seriously discontented than evidence
that Sparta was in such cordial alliance with Athens that no assistance would
come to them from that quarter. On the other hand, among the usual supporters
of Ephialtes and his party there were those to whom a display of generosity,
tempting enough in itself, was even more s< when, besides the gratification
of pride by the exhibition to all Greece how superior, how indispensable was
the Athenian union of dexterity and skill with courage, an opportunity was
proffered for interference in the internal politics of Peloponnesus, and a
prospect of exerting such influence upon the course of the war as would tell
very importantly on the terms of its conclusion.
According to
Aristophanes, Cimon marched with the large auxiliary force of 4,000 hoplites;
other succours are specified incidentally of Plataeans, Aeginetans, and the Mantineans,
who on another occasion, as we have seen, when all Arcadia was banded against
Sparta, stood 1 aloof. An anecdote of his march gives welcome
information as to some conflicts of parties and states about the Isthmus; his
unceremonious passage through Corinthian territory was challenged in the terms,
that those who knock at strange doors should not enter without the master’s
permission. fYet you Corinthians,’ wras the retort, fnot
only omitted to knock at the doors of the Cleonaeans and Megarians, but broke
them down and forced your way in in arms, considering that all things have to
give way to the right of the stronger.’ The feelings which are here indicated
as already existing between Corinth and Megara had arrived at their state of
excitement in disputes about boundaries, and were to have important results
before long; the interference with Cleonaeans may have been either the cause or
the consequence of assistance rendered by them to the recent aggressions of
Argos. There is something unpromising at the outset, for the cordial
co-operation of Dorians and Ionians, in the offhand treatment and tone thus
assumed by the Athenian towards the firmest allies of those whom he was on his
way to assist, if not to rescue.
The consequences in
fact of a want of cordiality were soon manifested, and were very serious
indeed. ‘The chief motive of the Lacedaemonians,’ says Thucydides, c
for calling in the Athenians was their reputation for ability in the attack of
fortresses, as this was the point in which they were themselves deficient;
while from the tedious prolongation of the siege of Ithome, they would fain
take it by assault.’ They seem to have been quite as incompetent to estimate
the difficulty of the task as to execute it, and were disappointed to find
that the city did not fall at once; disappointed and alarmed likewise, as they
began to recognise what might be contingent on the continued presence of such a
force for an indefinite time. The disposition of Cimon was one thing, hut that
of Athenians under his command and drawn from a community upon which he was
fast losing his hold might be and no doubt was something very different. The
Lacedaemonians were startled, we are told, and it can easily be believed, at
the daring spirit of innovation which they witnessed for the first time
displayed and probably paraded so near to them, and were even apprehensive lest
the mere anti- Dorian tendencies of aliens might induce them to entertain
proposals from the besieged in Ithome at variance with the views of those whom
they came to assist. Such jealousy in such a nation as the Spartans might be
excited by the simple ordinary demeanour of such allies as the Athenians ; and
any superiority in military dash and brilliancy under excitement of the
occasion, when other allies were looking on, might reasonably enough be felt by
them as impairing their own dignity and authority, however little it could
touch their established reputation for valour.
Their resolution was
taken ; Athenian assistance was being purchased too dearly and desperately, and
Cimon was dismissed abruptly enough, though with as handsome acknowledgments
as Spartan nature admitted, on the ground that, as an assault wTas
deferred, the aid of his force was in fact no longer necessary. But other
allies were still retained, and on the return of the expedition, indignation at
Athens recognised a pointed slight and was roused to the highest pitch ; there
wras indeed no escape from interpreting dismissal under such circumstances
as involving either an imputation of treachery, or—scarcely if at all less
galling—of incompetence for the task which had been undertaken with such
confidence.
This failure
completed the reversal of Cimon’s long popularity, and one more great Athenian
turned upon the track by which he had contributed to drive out another still
greater before him, and passed into exile under ostracism (401 B.C.), doomed
but for previous recall to be deprived of Athens, as Athens to be self-deprived
of him, for ten years.
END OF VOL. I.