 |
 |
 |
THE AGE OF PERICLES
A HISTORY
OF THE
FROM THE
PERSIAN TO THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
Volume II
By
WILLIAM
WATKISS LLOYD
CHAPTER XXXII. Extension of Athenian power during the
Messenian war.—Alliance with Argos and Megara. B.C. 461-460
CHAPTER
XXXIII.
The Danaid trilogy of Aeschylus.
CHAPTER
XXXIV.
Ephialtes and Pericles in opposition to
the Areopagus.—The Oresteia of Aeschylus. B.C. 459-458
CHAPTER
XXXV. War between Sparta and
Athens—Battles of Tanagra and Oenophyta. B.C. 457
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Fall of Aegina.—Her ruin and her renown
BC. 457-456
CHAPTER
XXXVII. Lingering warfare of Sparta and
Athens.—The five years’ truce. B.C. 455-452
CHAPTER
XXXVIII. The five years’ truce of
Athens and Sparta.—The peace of Cimon. B.C. 450-445
CHAPTER
XXXIX.
Athens deprived of power over Boeotia,
Megara, and Peloponnesian States.—Conclusion of peace for thirty years. B.C.
447-445
CHAPTER
XL.
Sparta and Athens.—The conditions and
genius of oligarchy and democracy.
CHAPTER
XLI.
Athenian democracy as administered by
Pericles.
CHAPTER XLTI. The
administration of Pericles in peace.—Thucydides, son of Melesias. The scrutiny of citizenship. B.C. 445-441
CHAPTER
XLIII. The colony of Thurium.—Herodotus
and the Antigone of Sophocles. B.C. 443-441.
CHAPTER
XLIV. The revolt of Samos. B.C.
441-440.
CHAPTER
XLV. Pericles and Aspasia.
CHAPTER XLYI. The Periclean conception of civilization.
CHAPTER XLVII. The Panathenaea.
CHAPTER XLVIII. The problem of politics in relation to
religion in Hellas.
CHAPTER
XLIX. The Eleusinia.
CHAPTER L.
The development of musical theory in Greece.
CHAPTER
LI. Music in the age of Pericles.
CHAPTER LII.
The Chryselephantine statues.—The
Athene of the Parthenon.
CHAPTER LIII.
The Chryselephantine statues.—The Zeus of Olympia.
CHAPTER LIV. The first charges against Pheidias.—Pericles on the defensive.—The
founding of Amphipolis. B.C. 438, 437
CHAPTER LV. Ionian philosophy at Athens.—Anaxagoras.
CHAPTER
LVI. The commencements of Sophistical
and Socratic speculation.
CHAPTER
LVII. Renewal of attacks on Pericles.
Charges against Pheidias, Aspasia, and Anaxagoras.
CHAPTER
LVIII. Approaching crisis in
politics.—Temper of Athenian and Peloponnesian allies.—Conflict of Corinth and
Corcyra, and victory of Corcyraeans.—Renewed and formidable armament of
Corinth. BC 435. 434
CHAPTER
LIX. Agitation and debates at
Athens.—The Megarian decrees.—Opposition to policy of Pericles.—Interference of
Athenians in sea-fight between Corinthians and Corcyraeans.—Serious breach with
Corinth. BC433.432
CHAPTER
LX. The revolt of Potidaea.—Athenian
expedition and victory.—The city invested.—The Dorian war inevitable. B.C. 432, autumn
CHAPTER
LXI. Corinthian agitation.—Policy and
preparations of Sparta. B.C. 432
CHAPTER
LXII. The Medea of Euripides. B.C. 431
CHAPTER
LXIII The Theban attempt on
Plataea.—Open war.—The end. B.C. 431
CHAPTER
LXIV.
Conclusion.
The Age of Pericles.
B.C. 461-431.
CHAPTER XXXII.
EXTENSION OP ATHENIAN POWER DURING THE MESSENIAN WAR.
—ALLIANCE WITH ARGOS AND MEGARA.
B.C. 461-460; 01. 79. 4.
By
the ostracism of Cimon, a party was secured in power at Athens which was not
only bent on further serious constitutional changes, but was prepared to carry
through a more important reversal of external policy than had been known in
Hellas since the conclusion of the great contest with Persia. This was nothing
less than a distinct rupture of friendly relations with Sparta. Events had long
been tending in this direction, and inducements were not wanting to precipitate
a conclusion that sooner or later must be inevitable.
Neither
the allies, who with hearty good will had conceded to Athens the control of
defensive operations against Persia, nor the Spartans who had acquiesced in it,
had anticipated how unchecked an authority the Athenian demus was destined to
acquire in consequence, and how resolutely it would be asserted. This was
something very different, as now consolidated, from the relation which Sparta
was contented with towards her peculiar allies; the partition of control over
Hellas had consequently ceased to be on equal terms, and the bitter jealousy
revealed in the course of the Messenian incidents was the signal of a crisis.
Nothing* but the home-embarrassments of Sparta, it could be plausibly argued,
had enabled the Athenian policy to proceed so far unchallenged; the end of
these was now approaching, and would certainly be the occasion for the former
leading state of Hellas to turn upon a rival, with the full advantages of her
recovered territory and secured geographical position, and with all her
released and exercised energies. It was already full late for Athens to be oil
the alert to make the most of an opportunity that might not speedily reeur, and
snatch the last material guarantees which were essential to her grandeur and
her safety. The city in all the plenitude of its sway did not require to be
admonished of the mistrust which it had already awakened, and with what
justice; and even calm advisers might deem it futile to seek any longer to
parry danger by an assumed semblance of regard for an understanding which was
known on all hands to be forfeit or obsolete. The time for prudence in this
form had in any ease gone by; it was too late either to affect or to practise
moderation; and enemies would be rather encouraged than conciliated by halt or
by retirement on the path to empire which must now, even in self-preservation,
be pursued to its end. The lingering embarrassments of Sparta must therefore be
improved without delay; whatever further acquisitions were desirable must be
grasped at onee, and possession confirmed by new alliances contracted
irrespectively of considerations which had governed during the Persian peril or
immediately thereafter.
This
policy could not want zealous advocates in the eity of Themistoeles,—there is
every appearanee that it was but an active revival of his own,—and when the
auxiliary hoplites returned from Sparta, burning with resentment at an imputed
slight, and with vexation also, it may be, at a lost opportunity, there were
leaders who were prompt to fan the flame; the demus was incited to boldly adopt
a scheme
which
assuredly was not now promulgated for the first time, and to commit the state
without delay or doubtfulness to a positive breach with all its consequences.
Under the circumstances it would be unfair to Sparta not to recognise that
their jealousy may have been very naturally alarmed by signs of sympathy with
the insurgents on the part of some at least of their professed Athenian auxiliaries.
That
Pericles had at this time already risen into importance and influence, is
proved by what we have seen of his participation in an earlier prosecution of
Cimon; but Ephi- altes still remained chief protagonist of the democratic party
and principles, and lofty as his character appears from what scanty notices we
have, we gather from these also that his tendency was to the vehement, the
extreme, the uncompromising. Such was the character of his opposition to Cimon
personally, and such it ever continued to his party and his policy.
He had
been untiring and unrelenting in prosecuting aristocratical delinquencies, and
in exacting stringent examination of the accounts which functionaries were
bound to render on expiry of their term of office ; exposures had ensued which
strengthened the authority and nerved the resolution of the popular courts as
much as they discredited the aristocratical party, and so he prepared the way
for that capital restriction of the privileges of the Areopagus which in
alliance with Pericles he was to decide against excited opposition within the
next three years, if he did not quite survive to carry it through. The same
uncompromising spirit had now the opportunity, of which it had been balked
before, in external policy; the imputed ungenerousness of his proposal to
leave Sparta in difficulties which should command the sympathy of all
possessors of slaves and rulers of subordinate provinces, was vindicated as
common sense and common prudence by the vexatious consequences of giving in to
high-flown but delusive sentiment; the peril which
B 2
had
excited commiseration for an ally, was now to be regarded as a possibility
nearer home with that insincere ally very heartily disposed, and soon to be at
liberty to promote it.
The Athenian
expedition then had no sooner returned from It home, than the demus in high
indignation distinctly renounced the alliance with Sparta, which had subsisted
since the Persian invasion, and concluded at once a treaty with the
Argives,—with the Argives who had stood aloof and in equivocal neutrality in
the patriotic war, and had since overpowered Mycenae and other towns which had
bravely asserted independence by taking part in it, had concentrated their
population with the undisguised motive of defying the interference of the
Spartans, and within a year or two had been engaged with them in actual
hostilities. Athens became a party at the same time and on the same terms to an
alliance which was apparently already subsisting between Argos and some unspecified
section of the Thessalians. By what interests and connections Thessalians were
united with the Argives does not appear, unless so for as they had both been
committed to sympathy with the Mede. Still less docs there appear, and in
result does there prove to be existent, such a tic of common advantage in the
case of Athens, as would assure a permanent and zealous co-operation; in the
meantime the temptation was great on her side to rely on the inducement of good
pay for securing and attaching such an auxiliary force of cavalry as Thessaly
alone could furnish, and as was again to be resorted to at the commencement of
the Peloponnesian war.
The
conclusion of these alliances was followed up by measures in relation to Megara
and Aegina that speedily brought on a series of collisions with Corinth, and
imperfectly recorded as these are, they are traceable to momentous
consequences. Corinth, as we have seen, had already, anterior to the Athenian
expedition to Ithomc, been engaged in the
hostilities
against Cleonae and Megara which had then provoked animadversion by Cimon. It
were vain, however, at such a crisis, to attempt to identify the primary centre
of disturbance by the first overt acts of violence; the elements of quarrel are
universally diffused, are in the air. In this case as go often precautions for
defence are open to misinterpretation as menaces of aggression, or may be
conveniently challenged as such by the stronger or the more prepared; and
delivery of the first blow is no proof of the first provocation. The signs of
the times were too threatening to be disregarded by the Corinthians with their
widespread commercial interests; and though they were usually content to appear
as supporters of Sparta when Sparta was ready to bear the brunt of action, they
were prepared now, as they were to prove at a future time, when the chief
Dorian power was paralysed or torpid, to act independently on their own
estimate of the occasion. The oligarchical principles that were dear to them
had been steadily losing ground among their immediate neighbours. At Argos,
where a bloodstained page of rather later history is to record the deadly
rivalry of democracy and oligarchy, the balance of parties was seriously
affected at the present conjuncture by sympathy with the marvellous development
and achievements of democratic institutions at Athens. Nor was it only that
this state, in all the confidence of newly restored population, and agitated by
such an example, was beginning to recur to her ever- cherished ever-futile
claim to pre-eminence in Peloponnesus as in natural succession to the sway of
Agamemnon; in the attitude of Megara there had been for some time a still
nearer occasion for disquietude. The later history of Megara bears witness that
the same oligarchical spirit which breathes in the elegies of Theognis still
survived in vigour and virulence. We can discern however by the light of
events that were presently to ensue, that years of peaceful and profitable
intercourse with Athens had promoted among certain classes
a leaning
to democracy and predilection for an Athenian alliance which promised to ripen
before long; and such an alliance would involve nothing less than a transfer of
command of the isthmus, the very outwork of Corinth and of Peloponnesus
generally.
The
motives of Corinth therefore to protect herself against the contingencies of
such an uncertain situation, are quite sufficient to explain her encroachments
on the territory of Megara in one direction, and on Cleonae in the 1
other. Megara was quite unequal to cope with such a power as Corinth, and under
the circumstances it was hopeless to appeal to Sparta ; but the open
renunciation by the Athenians of the Dorian alliance, set them free to give
active value to the sympathy which had been already expressed by Cimon; in
consequence the democratieal party at Megara roused itself still more decidedly
than at Argos, secured the upper hand, and not only renounced the Lacedaemonian
for the Athenian alliance, but called in immediate Athenian assistance. llow
great was the need of foreign support against even native opponents by the
popular party which snatched a temporary control of this Dorian state, is
implied in their present reception of Athenian garrisons, and has plain proof
in subsequent events.
Corinth
might well regard the occupation of the Megarid by the Athenians as something
more than a menace; for Athens it meant the power of impeding if not closing
the passage of the isthmus to a hostile army, an object it should appear of
such vital importance, that it was inexcusable in her statesmen not to hold
themselves bound to secure it, if not by conquest at least by an alliance,
whether obtained by conciliation or exacted by whatever means of compulsion
were available. The utmost was done at the present time to assure retention of
the proffered advantage. The site of
the city
of Megara, like that of Athens, was about a hill at some distance from the sea,
the position which was constantly chosen in earlier times, for the sake of
combining access to the coast with some security against sudden piratical
incursions. The Athenians now lent their aid to connect this capital with its
Eastern port Nisaea, by lines of parallel * walls which would enable them to
convey succour to their partisans and their own garrison, independently of
interruption by land forces.
These Long
Walls were the first of the kind that were actually built, and for anything
that is stated were a novel invention for the occasion, but it is probable that
the scheme had already been mooted, if not matured, for those which were soon
after commenced at Athens on a more stupendous scale. -
Themistocles
had recognised that it was indispensable for Athens to attach the ultimate seat
of her power directly to her port and arsenals; but his views are not recorded
as postulating more than a sufficiently extensive refuge within the fortified
circuit of the Piraeus. We are even without distinct assurance that his scheme
extended beyond providing refuge in case of a renewed attack by Persia. We
shall however probably do him injustice if we do not credit him with looking
still beyond to the very contingency of Hellenic opposition to Athenian power
which was now on the point of arising.
The wealth
and population of the city had outstripped all precedent in Greece, and even
his sanguine anticipations and his plans required to be accordingly enlarged in
scale if they were still to be adhered to in principle. The exhibition of the
value of the expedient on a smaller scale could but aid the promoters of the
more important project.
In the
meantime, if Corinth was touched by this curb upon her general control of
Megara, she was roused to exasperation by the consignment to Athens, to a great
maritime
rival, commercial always and political inevitably sooner or later, of the port
of Pegae, on the Western Crissaean gulf. Her jealousy and hatred of Athens were
excited to the utmost, and nothing1 but expectation of an
opportunity to strike with advantage deferred a serious effort to repel the
encroachment. With the isthmus blocked and a hostile fleet in command of the
gulf as it soon might be, the Peloponnesians would be finally disabled from
co-operating with the states that were best disposed to check the
aggrandisement of Athens on her northern frontier.
In the
meantime the Athenians in all the confidence of power were committed to a
remote and serious enterprise in support of an Egyptian revolt against Persia;
their participation in this war lasted for six years, which Thucydides by his
note of its conclusion enables us to fix satisfactorily as extending from
461-60 to 455 B.C.; but it is probable that in Egypt itself the movement had
begun considerably earlier, even if it did not commence as Diodorus intimates,
very soon after the death of Xerxes 465-464 B.C., when Persia was in confusion.
Inarus, son of Psammetielius, who is styled a Libyan and king of Libyans on the
western margin of the delta, at Mareia inland from Pharos, headed the
insurrection; the increased severity with which the country had been ruled
since Xerxes put down a former rising,—a severity embittered to the sufferers
by studied insults to their most cherished superstitions,—could not but
contribute to the success which at first attended his appeal, lie speedily made
such head that in a battle at Pamprenis, in a district of a military tribe and
where the hippopotamus was the especial object of religious awe, he defeated
the Persian army of occupation, and killed the commander himself, Aehaemenes,
a son of Darius and uncle of the reigning Artaxerxes. He now applied to Athens
for an auxiliary force; the notices which are casually preserved by the
scholiast
of Aristophanes, as to the supplies of corn and money that tempted the demus to
Egyptian alliance, are more distinctly applicable to a later occasion, which
however pretty certainly only repeated the circumstances of this. Inarus, with
so much of Egypt at his command, could spare money and stores in abundance in
exchange for fighting power, and mere liberality of pay and prospect of booty
in a war which promised so favourably, might alone induce the Athenians to
avail themselves of an opportunity to keep their fleet in exercise and
employment at the charge of the foreigner. Two hundred ships therefore, which
as we now incidentally learn were on service in an expedition directed against
Cyprus, were despatched to Egypt, where they entered and gained command of the
Nile, and helped the insurgents to the conquest and occupation of two-thirds of
the vast city of Memphis; the Medes and Persians however and their Egyptian
adherents retired to a third fortified section called the White Castle, or
fortress, and there maintained themselves against all efforts of their
assailants. It is only from Ctesias that we learn the name of the Greek
commander Charitimides, of whom however no mention occurs elsewhere.
There is
interest in noting the coincidence that the life of Themistocles was prolonged
precisely to the time when he might have learnt the final triumph of his
schemes for the aggrandisement of his native country. Plutarch gives his age at
death as 65, and repeats the tradition known to Thucydides that it occurred
most opportunely precisely at a time when revival of conflict between his
native and his adopted countries would have placed him in a false position; so
opportunely indeed, as to suggest that it was a voluntary retirement from a
painful difficulty. Setting aside the confusion which 1 Plutarch
introduces between this
earlier
Egyptian expedition and the operations of Cimon some nine years later, we
obtain a date which carries back his birth to about 525 B.C. and is quite
consistent with his previous history. He had lived long enough to become
assured that his interrupted and ill-requited work would lose nothing in the
hands of a Pericles; and when he bequeathed his bones—as he was worthily
believed to have done — to the earth of Attica, it may have been in the proud
confidence that not those of Theseus had better claim to protection by the
sacred sway of his own empire city.
As
naturally as the enemies of Persia applied to Athens for assistance, did the
enemies of Athens, whether barbarian or Greek,—the Persians now as recently the
Thasians,— make application, though at present with less success, to the
Laccdaemonians;—so notorious had already become the jealousy with which the
protagonists of Plataea regarded, and could not but regard, the victors of
Salamis. An envoy of the great king, a Persian noble Megabazus, arrived at
Sparta well provided with money and instructed to urge the Lacedaemonians to
invade Attica, in the hope that such a diversion must cause the withdrawal of
the auxiliaries from Egypt. Once again therefore Athens has warning how well
known to all her enemies is her vulnerable side, how strong their confidence
that on this side she is fatally vulnerable, how absolutely necessary it is
that, if she is to maintain her position, she should either establish from her
own resources or acquire by an appropriate and firm alliance, a land force
competent to cope with the renowned and veteran land forces of the states which
she must ultimately contend with; otherwise it would seem inevitable that she
must some day content her ambition—as no doubt many would argue well she
might—with such sway as it was possible for her to maintain independently of
supremacy on land. Her position in adopting the latter alternative would
have been
greatly strengthened could she have made her rivals aware how resolutely she
would take all consequences. Sparta, however, was not yet prepared, and indeed
under existing circumstances could be as little disposed to act; whether the
Messenian war was still upon their bands or not—for the date of the application
cannot be fixed to a certain year,—the suggestion to relieve the Persian from
annoyance by a hostile fleet, in order to bring it upon themselves was not
encouraging. It is possible also that the condemnation of Pausanias for
treason against Hellas in dealings with the Medes was still too fresh in memory
for the example to be publicly adopted at present, though such scruples, if they
did now have influence at Sparta, were destined to disappear before many years.
The envoy in any case made no impression, and went back to Asia 1
with what money he had left,’ with, in fact, whatever of the subsidy remained
over to him after the distribution of sums by which Spartans of position had
been found willing to encourage him to believe that he was judiciously
furthering his project. .
The
Lacedaemonians appear at the present time (460 B.C.) to have been as little
inclined to interpose in a foreign quarrel at the instance of their own
accustomed allies as of the Persians. The Corinthians were consequently left in
the first instance to take the lead in prosecuting an opposition to the power
of Athens, as they were in the best position to note as well as feel its
general progress, which touched their interests so nearly by interference at
Megara, and which it appears certain was already committed to hostile action
against Aegina, of very serious import. We owe to a valuable and celebrated
inscription the assignment to a single year of a group of events of which
Thucydides only supplies the general sequence. It records the names of some 180
men of the tribe Erechtheis who, within the year, fell in battle in Cyprus,
Egypt, Phoenicia, Haliae,
Aegina, and
Megara. The sequence of enumeration corresponds with the succession of
engagements in the several localities, so far as recorded, and therefore
presumptively of all. The fleet that was acting against Cyprus proceeded to
Egypt, and the casualties in Phoenicia may easily have been incurred by the
crews of detached vessels after the arrival of the general fleet at the Nile.
The other localities are in their proper order, as we shall see.
From 1
Thucydides we deduce with certainty the year 460 B.C. as the first of the
Egyptian war of the Athenians; and as the inscription includes the Cyprian
slain of the first year, the same date is certified for the slaughter at the
country of the Ilalieis, at Aegina, and Megara. A portion of the arehonship of
Philoeles, under which Diodorus places these events, would fall within the
twelvemonth. From the closeness with which they succeeded each other, we are
entitled to infer, (and the brief expression of Thueydides is not inconsistently
so interpreted,) that the intentions of Athens against Aegina were already
declared, if hostilities were not, in fact, commenced. We may thus explain what
we read of the otherwise unaccountable gathering at this time on the coast
opposite to the island of a Peloponnesian force, consisting of Corinthians,
Epidaurians, and certain auxiliary lioplites. The design was probably the same
that, after some obstruction, wras partially carried out a little
later, to introduce an addition of strength into the threatened island. For
this however the command of the sea was indispensable, or an unguarded
opportunity, which the Athenians did not allow them to wait for unmolested.
With characteristic promptitude they anticipated the mustering of the
Peloponnesian fleet, disembarked, and attacked them at the seat of apparently
a seafaring population,— the Ilalieis, or fishermen on the coast of Troezene.
The victory rested indeed with the Corinthians, but in a seafight
1 Thuc. i. 110.
XXII.] THE PERIL OF AEGINA.
13
which
ensued soon afterwards with the supporting fleet off the adjacent islet
Cecryphaleia, the Athenians on their own element were victorious. That this
battle was lost by the Athenians, and lost to the Aeginetans, should scarcely
be entertained on such authority as Stephanus Byzantinus against the distinct
averment of Thucydides. It is much if we may accept the testimony as good for
the concern of the Aeginetans in the encounter, in union with the Peloponnesians.
Whatever
may have been the case previously, there was now no further disguise on the.
part of the Athenians, of their resolution to proceed to extremities with
Aegina, their ancient foe, and make an end of annoyances, rivalry, and jealousy
once for all. Leocrates, son of Stroebus, the same who, with Myronides, was
hardly persuaded by Aristides, after the battle of Plataea, to consent to the
erection of the certainly well-earned Dorian 1 trophy, was in
command of the fleet which was directed against the only important Dorian fleet
in Eastern waters. The severe conflict, in which allies on both sides took
part, was decisive ; as many as seventy of the Aeginetan ships were captured by
the Athenians,— a final blow to a once formidable maritime power. A descent on
the island followed, and the siege of the city was pressed with energy that assured
its ultimate, if not speedy reduction.
The
Peloponnesians succeeded in transferring three hundred auxiliary hoplites to
the island, but we hear nothing of their services. The Corinthians hastened at
the same time to make a strong diversion by seizing the Geraneian heights and
invading Megara. They counted upon either recovering the control of this state,
or at least of obliging the Athenians, weakened as they were by the absence of
a portion of their strength in Egypt, to withdraw from Aegina, in order
to oppose
them. The object to be gained at Aegina was, however, too much held at heart to
be easily renounced ; the army there remained immovable, and Myronides, to
oppose the Corinthians, mustered a force at Athens from the men above and below
the proper military age, who had been left in charge of, or. rather protected
by the walls. The first engagement terminated with such indecisive advantage on
either side as to preclude either from claiming a victory, but as the
Corinthians were the first to retire, the Athenians had in so far the better,
and erected a trophy. Twelve days later the Corinthians reappeared upon the
field, and commenced the erection of a trophy for themselves, incited thereto
by the reproaches with which the aged men at home, in primitive Dorian manner,
had greeted them on their return, with bitter reference no doubt to the
composition of the Athenian force. But the Athenians were not slack in sallying
from Megara, killed those who were busied with the trophy, and engaged and
defeated their supports. As the vanquished retired, a considerable party
pressed in the retreat, lost the route, and found themselves in an enclosed
private plot, surrounded by a vast trench. The Athenians, who were acquainted
with the locality, barred the single outlet writh their hoplites,
and then posted the light-armed all round, and destroyed by their missiles
every man who had entered,—it would seem without allowing the option of surrender.
That these were hoplites is implied by the severity with which the loss was
felt at 1 Corinth, though the main body made good its retreat.
This
exploit of Myronides and his leading was long one of the favourite glories of
the Athenians, and the success that attended their resolute tenacity at Aegina
made it a matter of pride with them 2 afterwards to persist in every
such enterprise, when once undertaken, at whatever collateral
1 Tliuc. i. 106.
3 ]b. v. hi.
risk. The
principle sustained their spirit through many an arduous struggle, but its
inflexible maintenance was perhaps questionable policy at Potidaea, and most
certainly fatal at Syracuse.
Upon this
narrative ensues in Thucydides the ominous notice, ‘ it was at this time also
that the Athenians began to build the Long Walls to the sea’: he specifies, in
order to distinguish the third intermediate wall to the Piraeus which was added
afterwards, ‘that to Phalerum and that to the Piraeus.’ Athens was giving far
too serious provocation to the great Dorian confederacy not to bethink herself
of every available defence in case of need. By alliance with Argos and
Thessaly, by occupation of Megara, which blocked the isthmus, and of the ports
which promised command of the Crissaean gulf, and by the destruction of the
Aeginetan navy, so many guarantees for security had been acquired—albeit every
guarantee was a provocation also,—and yet all were insufficient, while the loss
of one great battle on her own territory, one unfortunate conflict with the
hoplites of Sparta and Boeotia, that were admitted to be as nearly invincible as
warriors could be, might sever communication with the basis of her power,—with
her fleet and its arsenals. The growth of the city and of the port also, which
had rendered obsolete the notion that Athens might take refuge within the walls
of the Piraeus, had been accompanied by a growth in resources that enabled the
completion of a single circuit for both to be easy of accomplishment.
The import
of such a measure in the present condition of politics could only mean
defiance,—no longer to Eastern, but to Hellenic enemies,—and was well
understood both at home and abroad. The native enemies of the democracy saw
their last and cherished hope of triumph by means of foreign intervention
vanishing before their eyes ; the Corinthians, now thoroughly alarmed, did their
best to rouse the Spartans, and were instant, and before long not without a
certain
effcct,
that whatever their difficulties or embarrassments, they must seize the passing
opportunity and interpose to prevent what would be the completion of Athenian immunity.
Both the temper in which these works were commenced and the temper with which
they were watched and challenged by home and foreign aristocracies presaged a
maturing conflict both of classes and communities.
THE DANAID TRILOGY OF AESCHYLUS.
There is much inducement to refer the Aeschylean drama of the Suppliants
to the date of the earliest proposal at Athens of the Egyptian expedition. The
one great difficulty lies in the style of the play, which as contrasted with,
that of the Oresteia, of the known date 459-58 B.C., seems to carry us further
back than 461-60B.C. This anomaly may be in some degree relieved by the
consideration that we have before us what is but a detached member of a
trilogy, and that its characteristic effect may have been intentionally so
subdued and moderated iri order to give force to a sequel; that such a
consideration is not without value may appear, if we can realise with a slight
effort what impression would be produced by c the
Choephori,’ had it always been read by us without accompaniment of the
associated dramas. Certain it is that we do not escape difficulties by throwing
‘the Supplices ’ further back; at no other, certainly at no earlier time, does
it appear that an Athenian audience could attend with sympathy to laudations
and benedictions upon Argos,— Argos here studiously brought forward as in
origin Pelas- gian, as allied, that is, with the recognised root and stock of
autochthonous Athenians. The deferential regard which king Pelasgus is made to
express for the popular sanction as indispensable, would be a counter-sense,
unless Argos at vol. 11. c
the time
were decidedly demoeratieal. The question must 110 doubt at last remain a
question, but still it may be stated as a personal impression, which has gained
strength after renewed perusal of the drama, that the drift of it harmonises
most remarkably with this precise epoch, and challenges the assumption that it
was produced when Argive interests were involved in the convulsions in the
Delta, and when Athens was under influence to give protection there to her
allies.
It seems
not impossible to recover from hints in curt fragments of the associated plays,
some probable conclusions as to the further treatment by which the poet at
least endeavoured to engage the sympathies of* Athenians at this time for an
Argive my thus.
The story
of the fifty Danaids in its most familiar form tells how they slew their
bridegroom cousins, the sons of Aegvptus, on the marriage night, and found
place in Hades in consequence among other typical examples of endless
punishment, engaged in hopelessly drawing water in broken vessels or pouring it
into a perforated cask. Polygnotus, the friend of Cimon, by the inscription on
his picture at Delphi, made them representatives moreover of the despisers of
the mysteries of Thasian Demeter. But the merits of the Danaids and their
relation to the mysteries, were understood very differently at Argos. "We
learn from Herodotus that they were actually regarded as having first
introduced the Thes- mophorian reXeT7/, or initiation of Demeter, from Egypt
into Peloponnesus, where it was adopted by the Pelasgie females and still
survived in his time in Arcadia, undisturbed by the Dorian invasion that
abolished it elsewhere. As favourable an aspect of their mythus is presented to
us by a 1 vase-painting, on which they appear as a dancing train,
each bearing a vase, before the palace of the god of the underworld, thus
1 Archaeolog. Zeitung 1S44, Taf. xi. xii. xiii.
replacing
in the function of purifying festivity, the group of Orpheus and attendants on
his lyre in the designs of vases, which are otherwise parallel in subject and
distribution. So a tradition runs that they were purified from their crime by
Hermes and Athene at command of 1 Zeus ; and Lerna, which was the
declared scene of their atrocity, appears also as the sacred passage of their
goddess Demeter to seek her daughter in the realm of 2 Hades. The
original symbolism of the water-jars of the Danaids seems to have been allusive
to the relief which was thankfully ascribed to 3 them, of the
drought of thirsty Argos, and to have been perverted afterwards by the votaries
of rival celebrations; and when we remember the spirit in which Cimon was
opposed to the Argive alliance, we may interpret that of the offensive
reflection on Argive predilections by his friend Polygnotus.
The extant
play has every appearance of being the first of its trilogy, as it postulates
no anterior dramatic action. The fifty daughters of Danaus have fled from the
hateful suit of their fifty Aegyptid cousins,—wherefore hateful and unholy does
not very manifestly appear. One tradition, which is referred to by both 4
Diodorus and 5 Josephus, coupled this retreat with that of the
Israelites, and ascribed both to no voluntary escape, but to the Aegyptian
enforcement of a true Xenela-sia, an expulsion of alien and religiously
repugnant populations. Other traditions introduce other motives, but we must
accept that of the tragedian. The simple action of the play ends with the hospitable
reception of the Danaids as not without a local claim by ancient descent from
Io, and with notice of the impending arrival of the dreaded suitors. Of the
intermediate play * we have only the name, ‘ The Aegyptians,’ but by what is
known of the third it is implied, that it covered so much of the story as the
conflict between
1 Apollod. xi. i. 5. 2
Paus. ii. 36. 7. 3 Strabo
viii. 6.
4 Diotl. xl. 3. 5 Contra Apion.
C 2
the
pursuers and the protectors of the fugitives, of which we read elsewhere, and
the compromise by which Danaus consented—but with deadly purpose against the
bridegrooms —to the marriage of his daughters. A fragment seems to indicate
that the Chorus of this play was composed of the artisans, the thalamopoioi,
who, as hinted in ‘ The Suppliants/ prepare first the dwellings of the newly
received Danaids and then the bridal chambers.
Another
fragment indicates that the last play, ‘The Danaids5—a title 1
sometimes employed as collective name of the trilogy,—commenced with the festal
rousing of the newly married, and therefore with the discovery of the murders.
AVhat treatment may have been conceded by Aeschylus to the forty-nine sisters
does not appear, but the story of Hypermnestra, the fiftieth, who spared her
husband Lynceus and secured his flight, is significant. Pausanias found the
local tradition at x\rgos, that she was brought to trial by her father before
the Argives, for her dangerous disobedience, and when acquitted by them
dedicated in consequence a Xoanon, or wrooden statue, of Aphrodite
the bearer of victory fNice- phorus), and also a fane to Artemis Peitho, the
Suasive Artemis.
A noble
fragment preserved among much garbage by Athenaeus, instructs us that Aeschylus
availed himself of this Argive tradition to introduce Aphrodite in person on
the stage, and with the same function of advocate in favour of Hypermnestra,
which he assigns to Athene as protectress of the Argive refugee Orestes—
‘ The sacred skies with love approach the earth And earth the
accomplished marriage greets with love;
When rain distilling from the dripping sky
Has kissed the earth, then brings she forth for man
His sheep-flock’s pasture and Demetrian grain;
And from this dewy marriage orchard-fruits
Have growth; and I of all am the great cause.’ (irauatrios.)
1 As by Strabo and Schol. Pind. Pylh. cxi. 27.
The broken
promise of Hypermnestra seems defended in the Aeschylean line—
airaTTjs
Sucaias ovk diroffTarcT 0eos—
and the
general tone of her exculpation is echoed in the ‘ splendide mendax,’ with
which Horace rises from a theme unworthy enough, to something like a noble
vein.
The
trilogy of the Danaids therefore was directed according to all appearance and
probability as pointedly as the Oresteia, to set before the Athenians the
divine sanction of forgetfulness of ancient rancour, of tribal enmity, with
especial reference to the so long alienated Argos.
Among the
titles of the lost plays of Aeschylus is found an ‘ Amymone,5 after
Amymone the Danaid, who was rescued from a Satyr by Poseidon as his rival; that
this may have been the Satyric play completing a Danaid tetralogy remains a
conjecture only.
EPIIIALTES AND PERICLES IN OPPOSITION TO THE AREOPAGUS.
THE ORESTEIA OF AESCHYLUS.
B.C.
459-458; 01. 80. 2.
It
is within the year of the Arclion Phrasyeleides (46059 B.C.), when the foreign
politics of the city were at such a pitch of excitement, that Diodorus dates an
event—the murder of the democratic leader E phial tes—which was traceable too
clearly to the sympathy of domestic antagonists of the demus with its enemies
abroad. Ephialtes was at this time prosecuting with all his usual vigour, and
in conjunction with Pericles, an attack on the powers of the court of the
Areopagus, an attack which owed its chief success to his exertions, though
scarcely completed before his catastrophe. The institution had been threatened
for some time, and had even been affected to a certain extent by a series of
changes of which we cannot determine the precise dates and stages, but which
were all in the same direction, and were now on the point of resulting in a
remodel which involved a social revolution scarcely less important than the
political.
"When
the legislation of Aristides conceded to the very poorest class of citizens
eligibility to the highest offices of the state, it might seem to the promoters
of the innovation that Athens indeed enjoyed the equality of laws for which
Ilarmo-
EPHIALTES
AND PERICLES.
23
dius and
Aristogeiton were believed to have died,—that democracy was not only
established, but had achieved its fullest development. The party of repression,
on their part, may have hoped that after a sacrifice which in terms was so
considerable they would be left in quiet, and the people only find out by
degrees and without excitement how rare and ineffectual was the advantage which
accrued to them. But the end did not come for them so easily. The legislation
of Cleisthenes had put a stop to the quarrels which disabled the demus from
availing itself with the force of union of all the advantages of their Solonian
privileges, and the interruption of the Persian wars was now gone by. It is
intelligible in consequence that already a series of desultory attacks upon
whatever privileges still existed, are found to have made some progress before
the great innovation of which we have distinct record, when at last Ephialtes
and Pericles came forward, two leaders who fully understood the genius of the
movement, could forecast its career and, entertaining the largest ulterior
views as to the development of democracy, were possessed of all the
qualifications of talents and position, and command of popular confidence and
support, to press it to the uttermost.
The
admission by Solon of the entire body of freemen •to both legislative and
judicial functions included as we have seen an appeal to them from the
decisions of the 1 magistrates; and this involved a power which grew
ever more important as the brief and scanty laws proved ever more insufficient
to apply to the increasing complication of affairs. It even came to be believed,
however absurdly, that Solon had made his laws purposely obscure and
contradictory, in order to throw power into the hands of the popular assembly.
It was also to the people at large, in their assembly or dicasteries, that the
officials whom they had originally elected were bound to render account and
apply for certificate at the expiry of their term of office.
These were
the powers which Solon could believe, and for his time justly, would be
controlled and steadied by the authority of the court of the Areopagus as guard
of fundamental laws, and by the elective Council which prearranged the
business to be submitted to the popular assembly. By these ‘two anchors’ was
the state to be safely moored. But the times of Solon, of Cleisthenes, and even
of Aristides were now gone by, and the movement had well set in by which,
according to both Plutarch and Aristotle, the Dicastery chiefly by the opening
thus allowed to it, engrossed by degrees the entire authority of the state and
even administrative almost as absolutely as legislative powers.
It was the
popular responsibility of functionaries which became, in the hands of
Ephialtes, the great instrument for discrediting the previous aristocratic
holders of power and preparing the way for his further innovations. The
scrutiny of eonduet in administration was pressed with unrelenting rigour, and
the abuses which could not but be brought to light by such novel proceedings
were exposed to public indignation, and visited with a severity that gave
warning of the temper with which opposition would in future have to reckon.
We are
reduced to be grateful to such authorities as Valerius Maximus and Aelian for
anecdotes of the superiority of Ephialtes to private influence and corruption,
but they are confirmed by Plutarch, who associates him with Aristides in
honourable dealing wTith public 2 money. This virtue is
too much insisted on both in his case and that of Pericles his present
colleague, not to have been exceptional at Athens, and the faet goes far to
account for influence with a popular assembly which is never susceptible of
more genuine enthusiasm than for the notoriously uncorrupt.
The
authority which was thus acquired by the agitators was directed to the
reduction of the power of the court of Areopagus, as the first condition for
changes of the extent that they contemplated. Some alterations which had
already been made in the mode of appointing magistrates, had by this time
affected it seriously and favoured further change. It was originally filled up
by the Archons, who passed a certain scrutiny on coming out of office. But the
qualification for Archonship, which Solon found a privilege of the Eupatrid
caste and opened to election by the citizens at large, had again been modified
; it was now not restricted even to the richest class of citizens, and the
appointment to this as to most other offices, and probably to the Council, was
no longer by election but by lot. The chance of the lot blocked the way to
Archonship and thence to the Areopagus, for many—it was said to have done so
for 1 Pericles—for whom, thanks to birth and influence, the course
through election would have been clear. Its position was in consequence doubly
in peril; the very circumstance that derogated from the characteristic dignity
of an Areopagite by the introduction of colleagues of inferior social grade,
excited jealousy in powerful opponents and armed them at the same time with
arguments for restricting its jurisdiction.
All
accounts agree as to the venerable dignity and high authority of the court of
Areopagus, and also as to the j oligarchical character of its
constitution, composed as it was of approved citizens holding office for life;
but information is still very defective and confused as to details of its
origin and history, and we have to be content too often with generalities as
to the scope of its functions. In its favour was venerable antiquity, for it
was earlier than Solon and intertwined with the mythical traditions of origin
which were still so dear to the Greek; it was held to be the depository
of maxims
at least, if nut something more, amounting to iindivulged pledges of the safety
of the state; and the lofty character which was ever asserted, ever admitted
for it, avouches a sterling claim to respect for purity and intelligence in
administration ; as a judicial tribunal it was distinguished, in contrast to
other Athenian courts, by the rigour with which it confined pleadings to
statements of pertinent facts, and excluded the artifices of the sophist and
rhetorical appeals to the passions.
It might
seem daring indeed or worse to attempt to lay hands on the prerogative of so
solemn an institution, and that within but a few years after it had vindicated
and enhanced its reputation by its exercise of unusual powers in the crisis of
the resistance to the 1 Mode. Considering also that it must still
have comprised many older members who had exercised authority as Archons in an
office which was now either crippled or obsolete, and at a time when inherited
fortunes were the largest, and the influences of wealth and family went
together, the class resistance must yhave been strong, and class
passions vehemently excited in defence of so main a bulwark against the surging
democracy.
The very
variety however of its functions gave opportunities for cavil or plausible
occasions for redistribution of its powers, under the so changed circumstances
of the city. The most celebrated jurisdiction of the court, and that which, as
least open to jealousy, remained unchallenged longest and was left to it at
last, extended to acts resulting in death,— charges of murder by violence,
poison, arson, and so forth ; with this had been originally associated some
supervision of administered law, of police, and even of finance. Then it
exercised certain censorial powers over life and manners, which had for some
time begun to wear an obsolete stamp, as the patriarchal days were felt to be
over, and when it
1 Aristot. Vol. v. 3.
must have
been an Athenian tenacious of antiquity indeed, who could parade himself in
flowing Ionic costume with golden cicada fastened to top-knot above his
forehead, in the guise of dignity of the olden time. Formally, however, the
Areopagites could still claim control over delinquencies in piety and morals,
with respect to cult and sacrifices, could call to account for luxury, for
idleness, for cruelty to animals, and punish upon principles of which their own
breasts were the sole depositories. In several respects the body seems to
answer to a rational definition of a high court of equity. The political
competence of the court, which seems to have been at one time very
considerable, would of necessity in the times we have arrived at prove the most
galling power of all; our information however respecting this is very
defective, partly perhaps because it was so gradually yet systematically
repressed, that at last there remained little definite to specify for formal
abrogation. Originally the power of attaching a stigma to an individual seems
to have carried political incapacity, and something like a formidable power of
veto to have involved still more importantly an authority to limit legislative
action by declaration of what was or was not fundamentally legal and
constitutional. It is indeed in the admission of such a power wherever it may
be lodged, protected in free, and restrained from arbitrary exercise, and
secured as effective by whatever sanctions, that Aristotle justly recognised
the condition of a democracy, as of any other form of government, that can
claim to be a proper polity, and not at the mercy of any occasional psepliism
obtained from a popular assembly at any moment by any demagogue; but it is this
very power that is first contested in a revolutionary time, and such
essentially was the time we are now concerned with.
The reduction
of the co-ordinate or controlling powers of the Areopagus was effected partly
by transference to new officials with specialised functions, to Sophronistae
and
Gynaeeonomi
in rospcct of morals, to Nomophylaces as guardians or remembrancers of constitutional
order; some reliance was also placed upon forms of oaths for ITeliasts, Pr)
taneis, and so forth, as curbs to hastiness and checks upon illegality, and in
reinforcement of what after all had chiefly to be trusted, the moral control of
the demus itself.
It was
before the demus was settled in full security for the newly constituted
functions which it was to hold on to so tenaciously, and apparently when the
altered status of the Areopagus had not received its last completion, and
desperate politicians might still hope, if even by treasonable intrigue with
Sparta, to rescue it, that Ephialtes was assassinated. Such a crime was not
without precedent at Athens in the days of the Peisistratids, but was startling
from its repugnancy to general Hellenic habits,especially among democracies.
It has too many parallels later on, but not till the fall of the state involved
disruption of all social, solution of all moral ties. The dagger of the
political assassin, even when it takes fatal effect, constantly fails of its
purpose, and strikes down the wrong man. It was so now; the worst that could be
dreaded from Ephialtes by aristocrat or oligarch he had already done, and only
his assassination was required to nerve to more resolute energy the movement of
which he seemed to be the heart and soul, but which was already an independent
force. Ephialtes was no more: but with his disappearance under such
circumstances vanished the last hesitations of his party as to pushing matters
to extremities; and his removal uncovered with more impressiveness the majestic
and self-collected presence of Pericles. The assassin, Aristodicus of Tanagra,
is named on the authority of Aristotle as if a well-known man. According to the
same authority he was an instrument of the oligarchical party, the party that
in after years resorted to the dagger so unscrupulously to secure their own
personal and class authority amidst the ruin of the city. No hint occurs to
charge Cimon with
complicity,
and we may set aside contemptuously the insinuation that Pericles out of bad
ambition to rule alone compassed the death of his friend and colleague. Such
motives have been acted on, but never so readily as by partisans who are prompt
to impute them rashly. The attempt to connect the murder, not to say the
assertion of its connection, with past political relations of Athens and
Tanagra is surely illustrative of historical courage rather than insight.
A year now
ensues, 459-8 B.C., which is unmarked by incidents of war, but during which we
know that the great work of the Long Walls was advancing, and further occupation
would be provided by the progress of the reforms which Ephialtes in conjunction
with Pericles had effectively initiated, and Pericles was pressing to
completion.
The
representation of the Oresteia of Aeschylus dates about the spring of 458 B.C.
under the Archon Philocles, and it is from its general purport that we obtain a
valuable date and learn that the revision of the powers and constitution also
of the Areopagites were even then still under question; the incident of the
play directly vindicates only the sanctity of their jurisdiction in trials for
acts involving bloodshed—a prerogative which they retained at last—but
expressions are introduced of large scope which present the poet as advocating,
and according to his wont, whether the Athenian audience liked it or not, not
only the aristocratical restrictions of membership but also continuance of
powers which involved a certain ultimate political control; these words he
assigns to the instituting goddess :—
‘ Hence the rock has name,
The Areopagus; here reverent Awe Of citizens, with kindred Fear, shall
wrongs Restrain by day, nor less in stilly night,
Unless themselves bring change into the laws.
If thou bedim by influx vile and mud
The sparkling waters, draught thou shalt have none.
Nor lawlessness nor abject servitude Commend I to my people’s reverence;
X >r yet to expel Dread wholly from the city;
Fur who of men is just who knows not dread ?
Then ju-tly fostering Reverence of such sort,
A bulwark of the state and city safeguard Is yours to have, as have none
else of men,—
Neither in Scythia nor in Pelops’ lands;—
This council chamber unassailed by bribes August, swift to recent, for
those who sleep A wakeful guard of the state, establish I.’
Allusion
occurs twice in these lines to the vigilance of the council as safeguard for
sleepers, which no doubt is explicable as expressive of the functions of a
body, that unlike many others of the courts, was never in absolute suspense or
vacation. The recurrence of the allusion, however, is emphatic, and intimates
a special reference, which would be significantly pertinent if the
assassination of Ephialtes had already taken place, and so lately as within a
year according to the date of Diodorus. This, as we have seen, was charged by
Aristotle upon the oligarchical party, whom Aeschylus is prepared and concerned
to distinguish from the constitutional supporters of the Areopagus, the
peculiar avenger of such deeds of violence.
The
political drift of the grand threefold drama, the Oresteia, is no less
significant in reference to external events: •since the commentary of C. O.
Muller, if not before, it has always been recognised in the stress which the
poet lays on a divine sanction for the alliance of Argos and Athens : this must
now have been of two or three years’ standing, for by the ordered narration of
Thucydides, it preceded the occupation of Megara, and the despatch of the
expedition to and these again both preceded the stirring events in connection
with this alliauce, which the quoted inscription enables us to date in the same
year as the Oresteia, but somewhat later. It was the anticipation of these
events, which could not but cast a most threatening shadow before, that would
give point and interest to much of the general subject of the drama. The Argive
alliance was already equivalent to far more than simple coldness towards
Sparta,
and the
complications which, had arisen with Corinth respecting Megara, and were
immediately impending with Aegina, so long denounced by Pericles as the ‘
eyesore of the Piraeus/ involved such extensive embroilment with the allies of
Sparta as coukl not but be expected to forthwith ripen ill-feeling towards the
great head of the Dorian states into an open quarrel. Add to this that the
project of securing Athens itself against the peril of a siege, to which all
her enemies, Hellenic and Asiatic, recognised and anticipated her exposure, by
the Long Walls extending from the city to the sea, was now in course of actual
execution. This necessary confirmation of the power of the ‘ nautical rabble ’
filled the oligarchical party with dismay, and if it were only at their
suggestion, the protest of Sparta might well be expected to be renewed. I
cannot but recognise then a reflection upon Sparta in the very choice of the
leading theme of the great trilogy, the murder of Agamemnon. The disastrous and
destructive earthquake, from the consequences of which Sparta was still
suffering in the Mes- senian war, had been recognised universally as a divine
visitation for the sacrilege at Taenaron ; and there was yet another violation
of sanctities to their charge still unatoned for, the death of
Pausanias,—Pausanias commander of all Hellas in alliance, and like Agamemnon,
his predecessor in such position, victorious over the banded forces of Asia.
Pausanias, like Agamemnon, victorious abroad, returned home, —returned indeed
if the coincidence has any worth, from the Troad,—to meet a miserable fate, a
fate which in either case, whatever the errors or the crimes, was dealt by
unworthy or unbecoming hands, and under circumstances which were now admitted
by the Spartans themselves as of gross impiety. Agamemnon dies entangled in his
bath in net-like toils, and struck down by his own adulterous wife—• Pausanias
beset by his colleagues in collusion with his most trusted adherents, hemmed
in, it was said, not without
32
11IST0U Y
OF GREECE.
complicity
and suggestion of liis own mother, within a holy precinct, and miserably
starved. This deed had already been denounced by the Pythia at Delphi as a
sacrilege, and was to furnish the Athenians afterwards with a retort, when the
Spartans recalled the much earlier sacrilege of Cylon for the sake of a very
indirect implication of Pericles as a collateral of the family. The parallel is
brought still closer home by the importance assigned in the play to the
presence of the boding prophetess Cassandra as mistress of Agamemnon, which
could scarcely but remind of the unhappy Byzantine maiden Cleonice, whose warning
shade was believed to have hurried Pausanias to his doom.
In an
essay on Pindar’s eleventh Pythian ode which dates in this same !year,
I some years since endeavoured to set forth, as I still think conclusively,
that the lyric poet also could rely and counted on the spontaneous recognition
by his auditory of this mythic parallel.
1 The Classical Museum, part xxvi.
WAR BETWEEN SPARTA AND ATHENS.—BATTLES OF TANAGRA AND OENOPHYTA.
B.C. 457;
01. 80. 3-4.
It was after the victory
qf Myronides in the Megarid, and, if we could trust Diodorus, only a few days
later, that the Phocians made an attack upon the small towns of Boion,
Cytinion, and Erineon in Doris, under Mount Parnassus, and succeeded in
capturing one of them ; according to 1 Plutarch they also assumed
the control of Delphi, which involved that of the oracle. Either of these
events might at any time have provoked the interference of the Spartans; they
were always jealous of their interests at Delphi, and Doris was recognised as
the primaeval seat of the Peloponnesian Dorians, with a consequent though
shadowy claim to their filial regard. At such a time even a slighter pretext
might have served for the despatch to the north of an expedition which was so
glaringly disproportionate to the professed object as to invite all the Dorian
partisans of adjacent states to anticipate important changes. Nicomedes, son of
Cleombrotus, and regent for Pieistoanax the youthful son of Pausanias, appeared
there at the head of fifteen hundred hoplites and ten thousand allies, and it
was quickly understood that whatever might be
1 Plut. V. dm. 17.
VOL. II. D
effected
now, was but preparation for a blow which wTas meditated against
Athens directly, in the course of the ensuing year—a blow which might even yet
be in time to unfasten her hold upon the doomed Aegina. Diodorus dates this
interference with all its consequences, and probably therefore the Phocian
aggression also, too early; it did not take place till 457 B.C., the year after
the production of the Oresteia of Aeschylus.
Although
no positive hostilities had yet occurred between Sparta and Athens, it seems
more likely that the Peloponnesian force was transported across the Crissaean
gulf, a route which was under consideration for their return, than that they
passed the isthmus unquestioned and unnoticed. The captured town was liberated,
as might be expected, without difficulty; the Phocian aggressors retired by a
convention and apparently without a battle, and the management of the Delphic
oracle was replaced in the hands of the native Dorian families. For an account
of further proceedings directed against the influence of Athens, we must have
recourse to Diodorus, and may do so with the more confidence as the brief
summary of Thucydides, by mentioning its subsequent recovery, implies that this
influence was now impaired. It seems indeed that Sparta was roused at last to
the serious necessity of exertion agaiust Athens; and if she could be roused at
all it might surely be by the peril of Aegina, of which the siege was still
proceeding, and by the threatening progress of the walls from Athens to
Phalerum and Piraeus, that were intended to deprive her of the opportunity
which had hitherto been always open, of striking a sudden disabling blow. The
time was past for delay if anything was ever to be done ; the oligarchical
party among the Athenians themselves were in sympathy with the success of the
expedition, if they had not even seconded the efforts of Corinth to promote it,
and might be counted on to lend assistance.
Very
speedily therefore, and following up the resettlement of affairs at Doris and
Delphi, the Spartan design to weaken and hamper Athens by superseding her
influence over the inland cities of Dorian relationship or sympathies immediately
in her rear, before drawing down direct Athenian opposition, was fairly
disclosed. The political system of Boeotia was thoroughly revolutionised; the
sympathies and antipathies that dated from the Persian war were treated as
bygones here, as the Athenians had already treated them at Argos; and Sparta
was now engaged in re-establishing in Thebes the power of the oligarchical
party,—the party hostile to Athens,—and that of Thebes over the Boeotian towns,
as in times previous to the invasion and defeat of Xerxes and Mardonius. The
extension of the fortified circuit of Thebes, to which assistance was
contributed, was part of this plan, and it was further carried out by
strengthening Tanagra in a menacing position on the north-eastern frontier of
Attica. No better preparation could be made for enhancing the effectiveness of
the proposed invasion of Attica itself in the ensuing year.
It was as
impossible for the Athenians to be indifferent to such proceedings as to be
blind to their drift and consequences ; and when the commander of the
expedition was disposed, in Lacedaemonian fashion, to close the campaign
promptly, whether from the decline of the season or from regard to important
festivals at home, he became aware that his movement homeward might be
seriously molested: Athenian forces occupied Pegae and Megara on either side of
the road to the Geraneian passes, and the transit by sea was out of the
question in the face of a large Athenian fleet which was now cruising in the
Crissaean gulf. The Athenians however were by no means at ease or content with
the advantages of their position; the loss of their influence over Boeotia,
however serious a mischief, might be remedied later, but in the existing
condition of party
D 2
animosities
within the walls, the prolonged encampment of the enemy at Tanagra excited
apprehensions, which Thucydides recognises as perfectly,well founded, as to
intercourse and intrigue with treacherous citizens of the oligarchical party.
The party of the suborners of the murderer of Ephialtes were the same men now
that they continued till Athens was ruined and Lysander was demolishing her
fortifications to the sound of music, and afterwards. They sanguinely believed
that if Nicomedes could but be induced to second their attempt, not only might
the completion of the hateful Long Walls be prevented, but with such aid as
treason was prepared to render, the democratical constitution of Athens might
even yet be dissolved.
Whether
prudently therefore 01* in some degree under the influence of the panic which a
sense of expectant treason is so fitted to inspire, the Athenian demus resolved
to attack Nicomedes while yet in Boeotia, rather than wait till he should at
once attempt to force the isthmus and promote other mischief on his way. The
fullest Athenian muster, strengthened by a thousand Argives, together with
other allies, and a body of Thessalian horse which was present in accordance
with the treaty, amounted to fourteen thousand men; with these an advance was
made direct upon the Spartan encampment in the lower valle}’- of
that very Asopus of which the upper stream had witnessed Spartans and Athenians
in arms together fighting side by side against the common enemy of Hellas.
Tisamenus the soothsayer of Pausanias on that occasion, was here again at the
side of the Spartan commander: before the battle took place— so at least the
tale is told by 1 Plutarch,—the ostracised Cimon presented himself
in arms at the Athenian camp and applied for permission to fight in company
with his own Oenid tribe, so proposing and so hoping to make manifest in the
XXXV.]
THE BATTLE
OF TANAGRA.
r37
presence
of his fellow citizens how unjustly he had borne the imputation of unpatriotic
Laconism. Whatever the disposition of the generals,—they .are spoken of in the
plural, and no chief and even no particular Athenian commander on the occasion
is mentioned at all,—the application was made in time to be referred to the
Council of the Five Hundred and was refused ; the clamour of his civic enemies
prevailing, who professed to believe—if under the existing excitement they did
not in truth believe—that he sympathised with the malignant oligarchy, and was
capable of seeking to disorder the array, and so to bring the Lacedaemonians
upon the city. He retired deeply disappointed, and appealed to his friends,
Euthippus the Anaphlystian and others, who had shared in the suspicion that
attached to himself, to so acquit themselves as to give proof by deeds of the
injustice of the citizens. The battle was most severely contested and the
slaughter great on both sides, but the Thessalian cavalry passed over in the
very midst of it to the enemy, and the victory remained with the Lacedaemonians
and their allies. So Thucydides: Diodorus gives details of still another day’s
battle of balanced issue and concluded by a trace ; there is much appearance
that he copied the succinct statement of Thucydides first, and then took from
another authority, which constantly furnishes him with more indulgent accounts
of Athenian disasters, the details of a version of the same engagement, which
seemed to him so much at variance as to belong perforce to a second. The
Thessalians, after deserting in the midst of a first battle, bring on a
second, we are told, by attacking the convoy of supplies to the Athenian camp;
the Athenians alarmed arrive from their camp on one side, the Lacedaemonians
from the other, and a general battle ensues. It must be said that this second
version has air appearance of having been dressed up first or last with an eye
to the Homeric description of the battle over the intercepted herds on the
shield of Achilles.
Pausanias
however also gives a first day of indecisive fighting.
Victors as
they were, the Lacedaemonians took no further advantage from their success than
to make good their retirement through the opened defiles of the Isthmus, doing
what damage they could to the Megarid, as now in Athenian alliance, on their
way. For the Athenians, that the last danger of hindrance to the construction
of the Long Walls was thus removed would alone have been a fair reward of a
victory. One other very important consequence of the circumstances of the
battle was a revulsion of feeling that at least prepared for the recall of
Cimon. His friends had obeyed his injunctions with an effect that carried not
only conviction but some remorse to his fellow citizens; to the number of a
hundred they formed a company, with the panoply of their absent leader carried
as a standard in the midst, and fighting valiantly around it fell every man.
Pericles himself was in the 1 battle, and exposed himself with
unusual desperation, as feeling bound by the point of honour to emulate his
political opponents; but happily he escaped the fatal extremity. An
ill-recorded inscription on a votive shield outside the temple at Olympia has been
variously and even yet not satisfactorily corrected ; but enough of it remains
uncorrupted by copyist or commentator to show that it refers not to the later
Athenian capture of Tanagra, but to this victory of the Lacedaemonians and
their allies over Argives, Athenians, and 2 Ionians.
The battle
of Tanagra is dated by Diodorus under the archon Mnesitheides, 457-6 B.C.; two
months later there still remained a considerable military season; it seems,
therefore, that we must date the Lacedaemonian operations in Phocis pretty
early in 457 B.C., and their retirement home
l'lut. r. I'crir. 10.
s Paus. v. 10. 4; cf. i. 29.9
at latest
a month after the commencement of the new archon- ship at midsummer.
The
celerity and persistence which had already enabled the Athenians so often to
gain upon the tardy and intermittent energy of Sparta, were peculiarly
conspicuous at this crisis. Within sixty-two days— the interval is noted with a
preciseness that unhappily is rare—a force comprising both Argive and Ionian
allies was reorganised under Myro- nides, and marched forthwith to the very
scene of the late disaster. The Boeotian army was engaged at Oenophyta, between
the Athenian frontier and Tanagra, and after a very obstinately contested
battle, entirely beaten. The testimony of Diodorus may be accepted as to the
severity of the conflict, though again by copying two narratives he makes one
battle into two, and then finds occasion to regret that of a battle which was
known to be of such importance no writer had left either a sufficient general
description or military account. Late as the season must now have been for prolonged
operations, Myronides followed up his success most fully. The Athenians were in
expectation that spring would see the long and often threatened invasion of
their own territory by the Lacedaemonians, and it was of the utmost importance
to secure themselves while it was yet time, from having to contend
simultaneously with the rancorous enmity of Thebes,—of Thebes in command of
all the resources of Boeotia. The newly strengthened Tanagra was attacked at
once and with success, and paid by the razing of its walls for the zeal with
which it had welcomed the Lacedaemonian alliance.
All
Boeotia was then overrun, and all the towns recovered for the power of the
party that had everywhere been driven into exile. It is one of the many
statements of Diodorus that we have to set aside, sometimes without other
authority, as so often on the accidental preservation of better, that Thebes
was an exception; a fortunate notice by Aristotle
informs us
of the re-establishment of the democracy there after the battle of Oenophyta,
albeit only soon to forfeit its position very much through its own ill conduct
of affairs. By the usual revulsion the opposite faction, a strong party of
malcontents, the stronger beeause including the wealthier and more disciplined,
went into exile, but only to correspond with sympathisers still left at home,
and to await the turn of fortune which should enable them again to strike for
restitution and power. The counter-revolution extended to Phocis, where all the
dispositions of Nicomedes were reversed by Myronides; the Phocians were
replaced in their influential position relatively to Delphi; and finally the
Opuntian Locrians, whose sympathy with Thebes was approved before by
fellowship in support of 1 Xerxes, were forced to surrender a
hundred hostages belonging to the wealthiest families.
It seems
to have been at this time, and probably by cooperation of their fleet in the
Crissaean gulf, which had interfered with the return of the Lacedaemonians,
that the Athenians seized Naupactus, a town of the Ozolian Locrians, which is
soon after found in their possession. It gave them an important station at the
entrance of the Gulf, of all the advantages of which they soon show themselves
well aware.
History
here parts company and reluctantly with ‘the noble Myronides,’ who is
characterised by 2 Aristophanes as the very representative of that
better time ‘when no man was so shameless as to accept pay for attending to his
political duties, but came to the assembly bringing his own provisions, bread
and an onion or two, not as in later days eager for the wage of three obols, as
if the business of the commonwealth were a job of mud carting/ The phrase
J llerod. viii. 66.
3 Ecclcz. 300.
with which
the comoedian refers to the rule or leadership of Myronides, appears to imply
that like most of the commanders of his time he had not only a warlike but a
political career; of this unfortunately we have no further notice.
FALL OF AEGINA. HER RUIN AND HER
RENOWN.
B.C.
457-456; 01. 80. 4.
The apprehended invasion of Attica in the spring of 456 B.C. did not take
place; the successes of Myronides had frustrated the original combination, and
the time had gone by for hindering the completion of those Long Walls, by
which, to the deep disgust of every enemy of Athens, of the Corinthians
especially, invasion was rendered for all time much less promptly or even
certainly coercive.
Within a
year the achievements of Myronides were followed up by the success of
Leoerates, his former colleague at Pla- taea. The Aeginetans after a final
resistance, according to Diodorus of nine months, were forced to surrender.
Their walls were levelled, their remaining ships given up, and thenceforward
they were included among the tributaries to the treasury of Athens until worse
was to befall them.
The
hopefulness that springs immortal in the human mind lias a certain tendency,
along with others better, to reconcile us somewhat easily to very painful
catastrophes when they have once gone by. Averse to admit the utter
defencelessness of mankind against any misery whatever, we are apt to find a
weak comfort in assuming that the severest sufferers
deserve
their fate by crimes, invite it by sloth or by folly, or perhaps after all are
not of natures so sensitive as to suffer with the acuteness that might be
supposed. It were more charitable and would argue a robuster faith to regard
them sometimes as martyrs in a just cause, and to find nobler consolation in
sympathy with their consciousness of an heroic compensation.
Assuredly
whatever may be our appreciation of the need of the world for the advancement
of Athens, it is difficult to witness with either satisfaction or composure the
extinction of the nationality of Aegina, when we read the odes in which Pindar
celebrates its antique renown and the living sense and emulation of it by his
friends and contemporaries, and the words of pathos in which he forebodes the
fatal term of a series of glories that extended from before the war with Troy
of mythology, down to the historic sea-fight in the bay of Salamis.
There are
extant as many as eleven Epinician odes of Pindar composed for Aeginetans. Six
of these are for Nemean victories, three for Isthmian, only one for a Pythian,
and one for the much-coveted Olympic victory. One Isthmian ode, the seventh,
celebrates a Nemean victory also. As many as seven of the odes are for
victories gained by boys; the Olympian, Pythian, and two of the Nemean odes for
boy wrestlers, and three Nemean severally, in the pan- cration, pentathlon, and
stadium. Of the four victories by adult athletes, all are pancratiast—namely,
one at Nemea and three Isthmian. The previous prizes gained by the victors or
their relatives, and alluded to incidentally, are exceedingly numerous.
The dates
of the victories and the odes that celebrate them are in many instances
uncertain within considerable limits, and the notes of the Scholiasts that seem
to promise aid are sometimes self-convicted of error.
We have
however in some odes direct and in others indirect
allusions
to the battle of Salamis and the war with Xerxes, in others more or less direct
expressions of anxiety as to the future and independence of Aegina : absence of
any such political and historical allusions in an ode is argument for its
earlier date; and with these general indications we have no reason to be
dissatisfied.
The fifth
Nemean may on these grounds be safely placed anterior to the Persian War; it is
written for Pytheas, the elder son of Lampo, an Aeginetan of distinction and of
a family apparently devoted to these contests, and for whose son Phylacidas,
Pindar wrote the fourth and fifth Isthmian odes. Neither do the third and
fourth Nemean odes present any hints or intimations that justify our giving
them on such grounds an earlier date than the fifth.
The sixth
Nemean ode, which may also be regarded on like grounds as anterior to the
Medica, supplies remarkable exemplification of the survival to this time of an
enthusiasm for gymnic victories which might be thought to be dying out under
the influence of altering manners.
The
grandsire of Alcimidas the victor, was Praxidamas, the first Aeginetan who
gained an Olympic victory, apparently as a boxer; this was in the fifty-ninth
Olympiad = 544 B.C., or sixteen years after the first usurpation of
Peisistratus. Pausanias saw his statue of cypress wood in the Altis at Olympia,
and bestows the remark that it was not so highly wrought as one for a Locrian
near it. Praxidamas gained also as many as five Isthmian and three Nemean
victories. Ilis father Socleides was undistinguished in the games, and these
glories slumbered also with his son Theon, but to be again revived by his
grandson. The same law of alternation seemed to recur in the fortune of the
grandson, who conquered at Nemea but failed at Olympia, as did also a relative
Polytimadas. This hint of correspondence gives a leading motive for the ode;
it points to the
analogy
between successive generations of men or even aspirations of the same, and the
law of general nature, by which fertility has of necessity to be renewed fciy
fallow ; and so it is that man however noble in reason, however in action like
a god, still fails to be divine. This approximation is at once marked and
limited in artfully alternating clauses— ‘ One is the race of men, another that
of gods; but still from a single mother breathe we both; a total difference of
power however separates us, as one indeed is nought—is mortal— but the gods
live on unchanged, as the brazen heaven abides a seat for ever unremoved;
nevertheless in somewhat are we likened to immortals, or in mighty intelligence
or in form; unknowing though we be by daytime any more than by night towards
what manner of goal has Fate marked out for us to run.’
Callias of
the same family, the Bassidae, gained a pugilistic crown in the Pythian games,
and Creontidas, unless the name is the patronymic of the same person, gained
others at the Isthmus and at Nemea.
Of the
Isthmian odes, which are for pancratiast victories, the fifth is the earliest,
and has the indicated sign of dating before the Medica ; but the fourth
distinctly mentions the great sea-fight. The exploits of the sons of Lampo in
the games are paralleled by implication with the glories which were won in
conflict with Asiatic enemies, by the national heroes, the sons of Aeacus, as
allies of Hercules first, and, in a generation later of the Atridae. So of the
Aeginetan pediments, we find one assigned to Telamon and Hercules, the other
to Ajax and Achilles. c From of old the island has been built
up as a tower for the ascent of lofty virtues; full many are the shafts of
which my truth-telling tongue is in possession for the loud celebration of
their praise; and at the present time Salamis, city of Ajax, may bear witness,
set erect as she has been by her sailors in the devastating storm
of Zeus,
the hailstorm slaughter of men numberless. Suppress, however, boastfulness by
silence; Zeus dispenses now this, now that,—Zeus the lord over 1all.’
This
sudden check of exultation may be due to the religious sense of the peril of
boastfulness,—or, not improbably, I think, to the circumstance that the ode was
written so shortly after Salamis, that the proximity of the Persian land force
still warned that unqualified triumph might be premature.
The
seventh Isthmian, for the pancratiast Oleander, gives expression to such a
feeling of complete relief from the great peril as would accord with a time
eusuing on the victory of Plataea, and therewithal to a depression on the part
of the poet, which is as suitable to the patriotic sentiment of a Theban, whose
country had been so seriously involved in disaster.
1 Speed, one of ye, young men, to uplift a
glorious recompense of toils for Oleander and for his youthfulness, by the
bright porch of his father Telesarchus,—a comus song, a meed both for his
Isthmian victory, and because he achieved superiority of force in contests at
Nemea. For whom I also, though with a grief in soul, am besought to invoke the
golden Muse, llelieved as we are from mighty sorrows, let us not drop into
destitution of crowns, nor do thou nurse solicitudes. But now we have come to a
cessation of ills too strong for us, let us, albeit after calamity, give public
vent to somewhat of sweetness, inasmuch as some god has turned aside for us
that stone of Tantalus, which, while over our heads, was an intolerable anxiety
for Hellas ; but the passing away of the dread has now put an end to my severe
disquietude ; and ever it is better to have regard to what fact lies at the
foot. For an insidious age impends over men and diverts the course of life; and
yet this too, give but Liberty to boot, is curable by mortals. And a man is
bound to
entertain good hope, and bound is one also who was bred at Thebes, seven-gated,
to proffer the flower of the graces to Aegina, inasmuch as youngest of the
Asopidae, twin- daughters were they born of their sire, and both alike found
favour with Zeus the 1 king.’
No
metaphor could be more appropriate than the stone of Tantalus, for the trouble
that remained suspended over Hellas, when, after the retreat of Xerxes himself,
the army under Mardonius was still wintering in Thessaly, and preparing for
that campaign which found its catastrophe at Plataea. The ode refers to the
death of Nicocles, uncle of the victor, and himself a victorious pugilist, in
terms which imply that it was recent, and also give strong presumption that it
had occurred in battle. The greatest coherence is given to the tone and topics
of the ode, if we understand that Nicocles had perished in fight against the
Persians, and thus, as an antagonist of Asiatics, forfeiting life at last in
patriotic rescue, merited the parallel in which he is not ambiguously placed
to the Aeacid Achilles—who as an Aeacid is held to be claimable as an Aeginetan
hero. It is but in due Epinieian course that the poet should blend his own
personal feelings with the predominant tone of sentiment of the victor and
friends with whom his poetry sympathised,— his own sense of tribal and domestic
bereavements with those which were affecting them, and painfully qualified
their exultation both at national deliverance and achievement of an Isthmian
crown.
In a
monograph, ‘ Pindar and Themistocles, Aegina and Athens’ (1862), I have
followed out what appear to me clear traces in the eighth Nemean ode of the
feelings with which Aeginetans, after the expulsion of the Mede, regarded the
policy and purposes of Themistocles. There is no direct evidence for the date
of this ode, but the temper which it
exhibits
is only fairly accounted for by the circumstances that followed Salamis, and by
the probable assumption that Megas, father of the victor who is celebrated, and
himself also a victorious athlete, but now dead, was in fact among the number
of Aeginetans wTho perished in the conflict against Xerxes. At an
earlier date Aegina, by yielding earth and water to the great king, albeit
under just apprehension of Athens, had assumed a false position towards Hellas.
This prejudice was made the most of to her disadvantage by Themistocles in the
hostilities between the states, which dragged on until, in the prospect of a
new invasion, Aegina, now probably controlled by a different party, joined
heartily in the patriotic exertions for defence. Iu the midst of the battle of
Salamis, Krius, though son of an advocate of the Medising policy, proudly
repudiated it as a calumny in the very teeth of Themistocles, and so taxed him
as a false accuser : he succeeded in striking the very Sidonian ship that
Themistocles himself was in pursuit of, shouting to him as he swept past, ‘
Thus it is the Aeginetans Medise.5
The battle
had been fought under the specially invoked and summoned heroes of
Aegina,—Acacus, offspring and worshipper of Pan-Hellenian Zeus, and the
Aeaeidae, Telamon and Ajax, Peleus and Achilles,—and when the Greeks came to
the division of spoil and assignment of honours, the claims of Athens and
Themistocles, as we have seen, were under one pretext or another postponed to
those of the Aeginetans. The triumph—due no doubt to tribal Dorian sympathy and
intrigue—was short and of little real worth. The fleet of Athens and the genius
of Themistocles were still as indispensable as ever ; even the pride of Sparta
bowed to contrive a compensation of unprecedented honour for the slighted
Athenian, and soon Aegina had to watch with gloomy forebodings the threatening
growth of Athenian power—and with it of Athenian presumption.
Pindar, on
the occasion of celebrating the victory of
Demis, son
of Megas, in a foot-race of boys at Nemea, laments the difficulties of merit in
contention with envy, and when he cites as a mythical example the unfair
treatment and fate of Aeginetan Ajax in competition with Ulysses for the
aristeia at Troy, is easily to be understood as glancing at the recent rivalry
of Athens and Aegina at the Isthmus. He introduces a denouncement of greed and
peculation, which in this immediate connection must be taken to indicate
Themistocles little less distinctly than the satiric verses of Timocreon, who
assailed him on a like charge by name.
‘ Evil
Cajolery then existed even of old, path-fellow of guileful glozing tales, a
treacherous-minded, evil-dealing opprobrium, — she who does violence upon all
brilliancy, but is prompt to put forward the rotten renown of the obscure.
‘ Never be
such manner of mine, O father Zeus ; may I attach myself to the simple pathways
of life, that when I die
I may fasten on my children no fame of
ill-repute! Gold is the prayer of some ; of others, land without a boundary :
but I, keeping myself acceptable to my fellow-citizens, would lay my limbs in
earth, praiser of all that is praiseworthy; but besprinkling whatsoever is bad
with reprobation.
£ The
flourishing of virtue is as when by the green dews a tree springs upward ; it
is lifted among the accomplished of men and among the worthy, like that toward
the liquid Jsky.’
At the
8oth Olympic festival, Alcimedon, an Aeginetan, gained the victory in the
wrestling of boys that is celebrated in Pindar’s eighth Olympic ode.
Themistocles was now in exile, but his aggressive policy was in full activity;
the Messenian war engaged and hampered Sparta, and Athens was swayed by a party
disposed to make the most of the opportunity for action, and once again a
boding tone interrupts
the
joyfulness which is appropriate to the great national glory of an Olympic
victory, won, though it might be, only by a boy.
‘
Beauteous he was to behold ; and not by act belying form, he conquered in the
wrestling match, and proclaimed long- oared Aegina as his native country; where
among men most chiefly is Themis worshipped, the Guardian, benchfellow of Zeus
Protector of strangers. For to determine with right judgment and not inaptly
whatsoever affair is vast and of bearings manifold, is matter of hard
wrestling; but a certain appointment of the immortals did erect even this
sea-girt land to be for strangers of all countries whatever a sacred
column,—and may the time that is now uprising not weary of the work,—this land
administered by a Dorian people in succession to ]Aeacus.’
The same
chord is struck again at the conclusion of the ode. The father of the victor is
dead,—predeceasing the grandfather,—to all appearances has died recently; and
another relative also has succumbed, as is intimated, to some acute disorder.
The domestic bereavement is chiefly touched in order to glance upon the public
peril.
‘ A
certain share there is too for the dead, according to customary rite, and
Iphion, when he hears it from Angelia (message personified), daughter of
Hermes, may tell to Callimachus of this gleaming Olympic adornment which Zeus
has assigned to their family. May he will to grant good achievements following
upon good, and to ward off acute diseases. I pray that he allow not Nemesis to
be crosspurposed for this allotment of honours, but conduct their life exempt
from bane, and so exalt both them and their city
2 also.’
In the
eighth Pythian foreboding is sharpening rapidly to apprehension—to anguish. It
commences with an invocation
Pi ul. oi. s.
2 Id. fin.
of
kindly-minded Tranquillity, daughter of Justice, who for mightiest cities holds
the master-keys both of deliberations and no less of wars, which are the
safeguards and the recoverers of Peace and Tranquillity. A power she is,
disposed for the reception and requital of all gentleness, and yet only at
appropriate season;—as appropriately she knows when to let loose the forces of
resistance and destruction. Mythical and poetical examples follow of the
quelling of the disturbers and the tyrannical. And as in wars, in gymnic contests
also the influence of the gods decides, seconding toil, at times as with
accidental good fortune. ‘ These things rest not with man; it is God who is the
dispenser, as from time to time he now casts one uppermost, and now depresses
another.—A success gives wings to higher and nobler hopes, but as the delights
of man spring up in a brief moment, so likewise when they are shaken by adverse
decree, drop they to the ground. Ephemeral beings ! What is any one ? What is
one not ? Man is a dream of a shadow. But whensoever a divinely-given gleam may
come, there arrives for man a brilliant light and a gentle time of life.
Aegina, mother dear, take charge of this city with her free navy, together with
Zeus, and with the ruler Aeacus, and Peleus, and valiant Telamon, and with 1
Achilles.’
The
expressions of Pindar which have been cited from these odes, and others might
be added, are vindication of the tradition as to the vast population and
wealth of Aegina, which for such an area appears exaggerated ; they prove
incon- testibly the concern and renown of Aeginetan courts as taking cognisance
on settled principles of those intricate questions of right, even between
natives and foreigners, which characterise large commerce and gradually develop
a code of maritime law; it was such a code that Roman jurisprudence at a later
date did not disdain to adopt from the practice of Rhodes.
1 Pyth. 8.
E 2
LINGERING WARFARE OF SPARTA AND ATHENS.---- T1IE
FIVE
YEARS' TRUCE.
B.C.
455-452 ; 01. 81. I—82. 1.
The expression of Thucydides appears to imply that the fleet which
impeded the return of the Lacedaemonians by the Crissaean gulf, had
circumnavigated Peloponnesus, but even so it no doubt took advantage of the
newly acquired harbour of Pegae; no account whatever is given of its strength,
commander or further enterprises on the present occasion. It is during the
archonship of Callias in 456-5 B.C., the year succeeding the battles of Tanagra
and Oenophyta, that Diodorus dates an important naval expedition under command
of Tolmides. This is also noticed, but most succinctly, by Thucydides, whose
indication however of a synchrony with a dated event, the fall of Ithome,
enables us to assign it to a year later, 455-54 B.C. The only doubt remains
whether the numerous and important exploits whieh are ascribed to it, were
confined to a single expedition and within a single, year.
The
difficulty of the Lacedaemonians with their Messenian war was now eoming to an
end; the impending reduction of Ithome would bring it to a conclusion, and if
any further advantage of their engagement by this difficulty were to be taken
by Athens, any encouragement to be given to the
perseverance
of the insurgents, no time was to be lost; it was moreover important to repair
the defeat of Tanagra by some marked success against the same opponents, and
even to create a diversion which would prevent the expected invasion, as well
as show that the confines of Laconia were no less exposed to devastation than
the now so often threatened territory of Athens. A fleet then under Tolmides
son of Tolmaeus, was despatched round Peloponnesus. He burnt, says Thucydides,
the naval arsenal of the Lacedaemonians, captured Chalcis, a town of the
Corinthians, and disembarking gained a victory over the ^icyonians; he drove
them, Pausanias says, to take refuge within their 2 walls, and we
need not hesitate to infer ravaged the open country within reach. According to
Diodorus the expedition consisted of fifty triremes carrying four thousand
hoplites—a manifest exaggeration; the arsenal he burnt was Gythium, where he
ravaged the adjacent country and even occupied the town. Pausanias adds the
capture of Boiai and of the opposite island of Cythera which at any rate was
not retained, and a descent on the Messenian coast and capture of Methone which
he seems to misplace, both in order of time and geography, as effected before
the assault on Gythium. Other exploits followed which are far more important
than this merely destructive annoyance. The fleet visited Zacynthus and Ce- phallenia
(Diodorus seems to be ignorant that the first was a distinct island), and not
without applying some compulsion, attached them to the Athenian confederation,
and then made for the Crissaean gulf. Diodorus omits mention of the capture of
Chalcis on the northern Aetolian coast, just westward of the straits between
the outer and inner gulfs, or of the descent upon Sicyon, but records as due to
Tolmides the seizure of Naupactus, which Thucydides adverts to as having taken
place before this time, and which I have already
conjectured
was among* the operations directed against Boeotians and Locrians by
Myronides. The Ozolian Locrians, by whom it was forfeited, seem to have shared,
for all their considerable geographical separation, the obnoxiousness of their
Opuntian relatives ; they were dispossessed with as little hesitation as
difficulty, under circumstances of which we would gladly know more, and had to
make room, certainly within a very short time, for new occupants.
The
purpose of Athens in this expedition is apparent enough ; her resolute policy
was to secure the means of operating with her fleet in the waters to the
westward of Peloponnesus; the islands might be valuable for their assessments
of tribute, but far more so as affording harbours of refuge and for refitting
and 1 supplies. Naupactus again furnished a commodious port, and
held a position which commanded the entrance to the straits, by which a
Corinthian navy alone had access to the outer sea, and it was presently
committed to a garrison that could be relied on as animated by the bitterest
enmity against the Peloponnesians.
According
to the chronological dates which are afforded us by the agreement of
Thucydides, Plutarch and 2 Pausanias, it would be in the course of
455-54 B.C. that the Messenians surrendered Ithome on capitulation. Their
revolt began by a certified date in the first year of the 79th Olympiad, thus
in 464 b.c. after
midsummer, and the surrender was ten years later, which reckoned strictly would
bring it at earliest to midsummer 455 B.C., at the commencement of the
arehonship of Sosistratus. A Pythian oracle, which at any time carried especial
authority with the Spartans, had enjoined them to dismiss the supplicants of
Zeus Ithomatas;—they were oppressed by the genuine conviction that sacrilegious
violence against supplicants of Poseidon at Taenaron, had been visited upon
them by the disastrous earthquake, the proximate cause
1 Thuc. ii. So.
3 See Clinton under the year
464.
of the
war; and the warning had effect on the terms which were conceded to the
besieged even at a time when their powers of resistance were exhausted. The
vanquished Mes- senians agreed to quit Peloponnesus and never to return to it
under penalty of servitude to any captor, and on this condition were allowed
to depart with their women and children; the like immunity seems scarcely to
have been secured for their helot 1 allies. The Athenians, with no
goodwill to the Lacedaemonians, were prompt to give shelter to the refugees,
and settled them in possession of Naupactus. This in itself was open to
interpretation as a threat even if not so intended ; it was from Naupactus,
according to accepted tradition, that the Dorian invasion had passed over to
effect the conquest of Peloponnesus and the long subjection of the Messenians,
who now were seated ominously on the same vantage ground in their turn. Whether
more than a coincidence is in question must be left uncertain, and also
whether the settlement was made, as Diodorus states, by Tolmides. The Athenian
policy was justified by results, and the Messenians held their ground long and
gallantly, and soon reappear not unimportantly in history.
It was
while these successes were in progress that the Athenian expedition in Egypt
was verging to a disastrous, an almost complete catastrophe. Artaxerxes, while
the White Fort at Memphis still held out, assembled a very large force, which
was despatched to Egypt by land; it was commanded by a noble Persian, Megabyzus
son of Zopyrus, who gained a battle against the Egyptians and their
auxiliaries, drove the Greeks out of Memphis and at last shut them up in an
isle,— Prosopitis,—formed by the river. Here they held out for a year and six
months, until Megabyzus succeeded in diverting one course of the river, and so
laid dry the channel where the Greek ships were moored, and depriving them of
this
means of
defending the passage stormed what now was no longer an island. Utter ruin thus
overtook the Greek enterprise after it had been persevered in for six years,
for very few out of a large number made good a retreat to Cyrene by way of
Libya. Nor was this all; fifty triremes of the Athenians and their allies,
which had been sent to the relief of the besieged, not only arrived too late,
but having entered the Mendesian horn of the Nile before they wrere
aware of the Persian successes, found themselves attacked both from the land
and by Phoenician vessels, at such disadvantage that the maj( rity perished,
very few being able to escape. Inarus, the Libyan king who organised the
insurrection, had in the meantime been betrayed and crucified.
And this
was the end, says Thucydides, of the great expedition of the Athenians and
their allies to 1 Egypt.
The story
as told by cither Diodorus or Ctcsias concludes with very different details,
but with none that seem worthy of analysis or likely to reward an attempt at
reduction to consistency.
If any
events would make the Athenians recur to the services of the great commander
whom they had excluded from Athens, of whom they had deprived Athens for so
long, it would be such a catastrophe as this. According to Plutarch, Cimon had
already been recalled, and on the motion of Pericles, in consequence of
revulsion of popular feeling after the battle of Tanagra; yet there is
certainly no trustworthy trace of his renewed political or military action
hitherto, nor indeed for several years; still the weight of testimony is in
favour of his recall, about the end of 456 B.C., before his exile had lasted
quite five ‘2 years.
As the
expedition of Tolmides dates in the summer of 456 B.C. and the Egyptian
catastrophe within the twelvemonth, it appears that the next military
incidents which
* Thuc. i. 110.
1 Cf. frag. Theopoinp. and Corn.
Nep. ap. Clinton.
are
recorded must fall into the ensuing season, from spring onwards, of 455 B.C.
The treachery of the Thessalians at the battle of Tanagra may have disposed
the Athenians, who otherwise were still as inclined as ever to wide enterprise,
to espouse the cause of an exiled Thessalian prince, Orestes son of Echecratidas;
they associated with their own a force of Boeotians and Phocians as their
allies, and marched upon Pharsalus. The commander was probably Tolmides, whom
Diodorus mentions generally as operating ‘ about Boeotia’ at this time:
nothing whatever was effected; the Thessalian cavalry obliged the invaders to
refrain from even the customary ravage of the open country and to keep closely
together; they failed in consequence to capture the city, and had only to
return, bringing Orestes back with them. Thucydides enables us to place these
incidents in their due order of 1 sequence. Diodorus antedates them
and makes them the conclusion of the great campaign of Myronides after the
battle of
2 Oenophyta.
fNo long
time after this,’ so to translate a phrase of Thucydides which—Diodorus
notwithstanding—may carry us over to the spring of the next year, 454 B.C., the
Athenians take further measures to strengthen the hold they have already
established on the Crissaean gulf and its outlet westward. With a view to
operations on land, a thousand hoplites are embarked at Pegae on board a fleet
of a hundred triremes under the command now of Pericles son of Xanthippus. A
descent is first made in the footsteps of Tolmides upon the territory of the
Sicyonian allies of Corinth, who are beaten in an engagement, at some distance
inland, if we may trust 3 Plutarch, who even mentions Nemea, as if
the movement were in relief of allies in Argolis. Diodorus confines hostilities
to the neighbourhood of Sicyon, which
was
relieved by an advance of Lacedaemonians. Acbaia was next visited, and here the
adoption of the Athenian alliance was promptly obtained (evOvs irapaXafiovT^)
and an auxiliary force with which the expedition moved onward to the coast of
Acarnania. The influence and interests of Corinth were important in these
parts, and an attempt was made upon Oeniadae, a town at the mouth of the
Achelous on the we&t or right bank, of which mention occurs at a later date
as an ally of Sparta. The position of the town was one of peculiar strength, on
an extensive insulated hill sloping southward to the river, while a port on the
north communicated with the sea by a deep creek. By the deposits of the river
the site is now full ten miles inland, but the entire circuit of the ancient
walls still exists; the masonry is polygonal, and Leake observes that most of
the polygons are equal to cubes of 2^ and 3 feet, and the beauty and accuracy
of the workmanship are admirable. The port, which long since has been choked
by alluvial deposits, was in immediate connection with the town, and the
adjacent plain and country were exceedingly fertile, and the command of such a
position would have been an important extension of the footing which Athens had
already established westward of the Isthmus, at the islands, at Chaleis and
Naupaetus. As the usual preliminary of such attempts the territory was over-run
and even some demonstrations were made of undertaking a siege. These were
speedily renounced, but a large booty was obtained and 1 an Athenian
interest established in the country which had important consequences. On the
return of the fleet the measure of success obtained in comparison with incurred
sacrifice, seems to have been regarded as unusually creditable to the prudence
of an enterprising 2 commander.
The next
three years are passed over by Thucydides without note of an event; and we
have but scanty means of filling in his omissions.
The war on
both sides was manifestly languishing; the control of the isthmus by Athens,
the connection of her city and ports, and her command of the sea together,
would have been obstacles to the Lacedaemonians with the best good will to
molest her; otherwise there was at present no manifestation of discontent with
Athens,—at least none of discontent sufficiently prepared to act, to encourage
Sparta to throw aside what seems almost a constitutional torpor. Apart from her
indisposition for foreign wars, which 1 Thucydides observes upon,
it is open to conjecture that an explanation of her more than usual inactivity
lay in the personal character and relations of her leading men at this
time—their sloth or their jealousies—and, it must be added, not impossibly,
their corruption. The Athenians on their part had built up a magnificent
political structure; they had work before them to consolidate or organise it,
pleasure before them to employ and enjoy the extraordinary influx of wealth
that tribute and industry together poured in upon them. Thucydides accordingly
has only now to add, ‘three years’ after this time—of the expedition of Pericles—the
(Athenians and Peloponnesians concluded a truce for five years.’
It is only
by a combination of inferences, which are not to be relied on too confidently,
that I would place an enterprise of the newly settled Messenians of Naupactus
in the interval between the summer of 454 B.C. and the autumn of 452 B.C.—that
is, between the visit of Pericles to Acarnania and his attempt on the very
district now attacked, and the conclusion of the five years’ truce. 2Pausanias
is our only authority, and he does not name his own, for the circumstances. It
was when the exiles had occupied their new seat long enough to have already
organised a 3 fleet, that their military spirit, so long approved
and exercised in opposition to Lacedaemon, found a new outlet with a prospect
of
increasing'
their power and possessions, by an attack on Oeniadae, where Pericles had
already made some impression. The district appertaining* to the city was
peculiarly valuable from its fertility, the position of the city a-< already
described was most commanding, and would render it easily defensible if it
could onee be acquired. The hostilities that had already occurred between
Oeniadae and the Athenian allies and protectors of Naupactus were quite
sufficient pretext for the attack if any were required. The prowess of the
Messenians gained the advantage against superior numbers in the open field, the
city was invested, and vigorous attempts at once carried on by mining the walls
as well as by escalade, to shorten the tedious process of reduction by famine.
The defenders were overawed by this manifestation of resolution and energy,
and preferred to accept the terms of being allowed to evacuate the place, to
risking not only their own slaughter but the reduction of their wives and
children to slavery.
For a year
the Messenians held the captured city and enjoyed the possession of the
countiy, and then were in their turn besieged ; the Aearnanians had made a
general muster, with the intention in the first instance of assailing
Naupactus, which would be weakened by absence of the force in occupation of
Oeniadae. But this design had to be renounced ; the country of hostile
Aetolians lay upon the route, and in any case while the Messenians were in
command of the sea, the success of a land force alone was hopeless. It was
therefore determined to attack them instead in their new conquest. Every
preparation was made on either side to press and to resist a siege; but the
Messenians were not out of hope that they could disperse the numerous but very
mixed and irregular horde by direct conflict, and were prompt to make the
attack before the arrival of expected city contingents ; the Athenians had
succeeded against still greater odds at Marathon, why then not they,
Messenians, who on their native ground had only succumbed at last to fortune
—a phrase
of which we should be glad to know the particular reference here—and not to the
superior valour of the Lacedaemonians. The battle was engaged, under what
circumstances of provocation we are not told, immediately below the walls,
which were manned with defenders who gave effective cover to those without. The
Messenian line was thus secured against being surrounded by their more numerous
opponents, but they were outflanked nevertheless on every attempt to advance,
and, half barbaric mob as they might esteem their enemies to be, they
encountered a resistance so steadily methodised, as to give no chance of
exciting such a panic terror as had countervailed the odds at Marathon,—the
service of the god who so fulfilled his promise to Pheidip- pides on the
Arcadian mountain. Wherever the fury of their onset was directed they spread
slaughter and confusion, but as certainly this confusion was remedied by timely
reliefs and the value of fresh numbers again told. How it was that such troops
could be so handled and by whom, we do not hear; the battle was prolonged till
evening with equal advantage on either side, and then on the completion of the
Acarnanian force by musters from the various cities, the Messenians retired within
their walls. We hear of no more than a blockade; but after eight months, stores
were exhausted and the situation of the defenders was desperate. Of this
however the besiegers had gained no knowledge through deserters; and bravadoes
from the wall as to a ten years’ stock of provisions still in store, were as
rife as ever, when one night at the first hour of sleep, the camp was in alarm
at a sally from the town. The Messenians, in fact, had embraced the resolution
to force their way out and through in mass, and for the most part they
succeeded: with the loss it is true of three hundred of their number, but not
without having inflicted a still greater loss, they gained the friendly
Aetolian frontiers, which were probably not very remote, and so reached Naupactus.
Pausanias
found at Olympia a statue of Victory on a column, a dedication by the
Messenians of Naupaetus on the occasion, as he believed, of the capture of
Oeniadae; Messenians averred on the other hand that it commemorated the share
which they had at a later date in inflicting1 on the Lacedaemonians
the disaster at Sphaeteria. Pausanias gives no reason for his opinion, but we
may plausibly infer its correctness from the fact that the Nike was the work of
Paeonius of Monde, the sculptor of one of the pediments of the great Olympian
temple, which there can be little doubt were anterior to the Peloponnesian war.
I cannot
trace the authority which has been relied on by Curtius for dating the
evacuation of Oeniadae by the Messenians immediately before the attack by
Pericles; this was in autumn of 454 B.C., only two years, at the very farthest,
after the settlement of Messenians at Naupaetus,—and the interval is too
straitened for settlement there, the capture of Oeniadae, its occupation for a
year, and an eight months’ siege.
THE FIVE YEARS* TRUCE OF ATHENS AND SPARTA.------ THE PEACE
OF CIMON.
B.C.
450-445 ; 01. 82. 2-83. 2-3.
In
the relative position of Athens and Sparta at the present time, the peace which
had been concluded for no longer term than five years, could amount to little
more than a suspension of the violence of war in favour of unchecked
development of some of its still greater evils. It is one of the lesser,
because necessarily one of the transitory, mischiefs of war, that it
consecrates the slaughter of man by man, making murder a sacrifice and
organised pillage a religious duty. As a more miserable consequence, it
reverses for unlimited time the fundamental obligation of truthfulness, and
gives the natural honours of virtue to imposture and fraud. So long as active
warfare continues, the constancy which can encounter mutilation or death
without a tremor asserts itself as heroic virtue, and even dignifies what is
often little better than the insurgent instinct of the latent carnivore; but it
diverts attention utterly from the baseness of intriguers who are watching in
the background for the spoil that is to reward their mischief-making, while it
sheds the halo which is known as glory over carnage, and misery, and mire. When
peace supervenes, it is too often only for mistrust and deception to have the
field of politics entirely to themselves.
Peace to
the aggressive and military statesman is no welcome pause in favour of the
recovery of cordiality and oblivion of animosities, -but simply an armistice,
for which even the burial of the dead is a mere pretext ; the true motives are
reconstruction of array and implements of violence, and the gaining time by
the stronger to recommence at a better opportunity with at least all his
advantages. In the meantime in such war suppressed, as in war declared, it
remains a virtue still to mislead by any falsehood, and now to cajole by solemn
professions or courtesy and grimace, the nominal friends who are to be made
dupes, if possible, that they may be ultimately victims. By the leaders or by
the people who ‘ delight in war,’ war is not entered on for the sake of peace,
but peace is only accepted for the sake of and with a view to war. Euripides,
who was soon to a.-k, ‘ May not life be in fact death, and are we sure that
what we regard n* death is not the true life/ might have suggested on such an
occasion as the pnsent with ms pungent significance, is not peace war, and till
war breaks out again will Hellas ever be quit of the rankling irritability
which is inconsistent in any sense with real peace.
That Cimon
was recalled to Athens in 456B.C., immediately after the battle of Tanagra,
agrees with the statements of Theopompus and Cornelius Nepos that his absence
lasted only five years; but there are still unexplained difficulties.
Theopompus and 'Plutarch aver that he succeeded in bringing about a j cace
immediately on his recall, for which his known influence at Sparta had been a
chief inducement. But two years of active warfare, occupied by the campaigns of
Tol- mides and of Pericles, precede even a moderation of hostilities ; and
then three more intervene before the conclusion of the formal truce of five
years between Athens and Sparta early in 450 B.C. Not till after this is
concluded does Cimon
reappear
in connection with any public transactions whatever. The utmost that is allowed
is therefore the conjecture, for what it is worth, that two years of vain
endeavours on his part may have contributed somewhat to the first relaxation of
violence on either side, before the conclusion three years later of the peace
with which his name is constantly associated. Aeschines altogether perverts the
1 chronology.
Whenever
Cimon may really have returned to the city, whether after the battle forthwith,
as on general considerations is least likely, or much later, after his
intervention during slackening hostilities had contributed to a peace that was
welcome to his fellow-eitizens, we hear nothing more from this time to the end
of his life of his participation in home affairs and legislation, either as
governing their course or as a partisan in opposition. There is every appearance
that he was at last content to act in concert and sympathy with Pericles, and
to forego his former protest against the large views of authority and
independence to which Athens was definitively and irrevocably committed,—which
now at the acme of her power she had so magnificently asserted.
Whatever
distaste may have been entertained by Cimon for the constitutional changes that
had been effected during his exile, he found the new powers of the democracy
confirmed beyond all chance of reversal, unless by treasonable practices of
which he was incapable, and the cordial alliance with Sparta—the homaichmia—no
less hopelessly at an end. He seems therefore, like Aristides before him, to
have at last accepted with patriotic loyalty a state of things which had
accrued despite his opposition, and become justified by results too brilliant
to be contested. Moreover it is not generally the way of statesmen, who have
once tasted of sway and still retain their energies, to persist beyond a
1 Aesch. de Fals. Legat. li. 23. F
certain
time in a discontent that will probably exclude them from power,—not to say
that will most manifestly do so, for all time. If the general course of policy
defies their control, they are usually w illing to embrace a chance of
influencing it, or even of exercising the very secondary function of
administration, which may pass with the world, and perhaps with themselves, for
positive control.
On the
other hand, it is quite possible that Pericles, in a proposal which is ascribed
to him, may have had mainly in view to cement his new alliance with Cimon, as,
whether likely to prove practicable or not, it was at least in harmony with
the policy which had always been nearest the heart of his former rival.
To no
other period than during this lull in Hellenic discord and after the
reconciliation with Cimon, does it appear to me that we can assign with such
probability the initiation of a grand scheme, of which the draught and
description are preserved by Plutarch in terms which convey an impression of
authenticity, uncorroborated though it be by even an allusion elsewhere. This
was nothing less than the periodical assembling .at Athens of a general synod
of envoys from all the cities of Hellas, small and great, of Asia as well as
Europe, to take counsel respecting common duties and interests. The design
declared itself as in some degree upon the model of the Pan-hellenic assembly
which on the proposal of Aristides was to have been convened annually at
Plataea; this manifestly proved abortive, and a chief business which had been
neglected in consequence was now taken advantage of for an appeal to religious
sanctions, by putting forward for primary consideration the subject of the
temples that had been burnt by the Persians and the quittance of the vows made
to the gods during the course of their invasion. That some of these vows had
been entirely neglected after the peril had passed over is probable enough ;
the resolution to leave the burnt temples in their ruins was observed in some
instances, but
glaringly
contravened in others, and the necessity for sanctioned solution for such
difficulties might be plausibly insisted on at a time when the great
dedications which we shall presently have to advert to, were under
consideration. Other material interests which were proposed for discussion
concerned the freedom and security of navigation and the maintenance of general
peace. In leading principles therefore this proposed synod coincided with the
ancient Amphictionies, —such as that which claimed as its highest function the
care of Delphi and its sanctities, but was also a bond of mutual forbearance in
war if not of absolute peace among the tribes that were parties to it, and was
appealed to, as we have seen in the case of Scyros, in disputes involving
charges of piracy. Even on this limited scale however, an Amphi- ctiony ever
drooped in insignificance, or, as in the case of the Boeotian, its authority
was engrossed by a leading city. Athens assuredly had no further powers to ask
for beyond what she was already mistress of, to enable her to clear the seas of
pirates or of Phoenico-Persian fleets, or to compel the tranquillity of the
minor states; but still it was worth while to seek to legitimate her supremacy
by securing a definite recognition if only by her own allies,—still better if
by allies of the Lacedaemonians, to say nothing of the Lacedaemonians
themselves,—of the relations into which as a matter of fact they had been
brought, both severally and collectively, to her policy. There would even be au
advantage in the command of a process of recasting such relations, as occasion
might arise, without the semblance of arbitrariness. Plutarch avers that the
proposal was first mooted when the Lacedaemonians were beginning to take
umbrage at Athenian aggrandisement, but this would carry it to a time before
the great influence of its author ; we may more readily agree to his
intimation that the object of Pericles in obtaining the pse- phism was to
inspire the Athenians with a grand conception of their dignity and to elevate
the pitch of their ambition.
Twenty
citizens over fifty years of age, he says, were selected and despatched to
recommend the project,—five to the Dorians and Ionians of Asia and the islands
from Lesbos to Rhodes, five to the regions extending from Thrace and the
Hellespont to Byzantium, five more to Boeotia, Phoeis, and Peloponnesus, and
thence through the Loerian territories as far as Aearnania and Ambraeia,—the
remaining five through Euboea to the Oetaeans and the Malian gulf, the Aehaeans
of Phthiotis and the Thessalians. The mention of Peloponnesus here leaves it
uncertain whether the allies of Lacedaemon,— as Corinth and Elis, Sicyon or
Arcadia,—were to be addressed as well as Aehaeans and Argives ; but that the
invitation was universal may be inferred if only from the notice that the
scheme failed first of all in the trial upon Peloponnesus from the covert
opposition of Lacedaemon.
In terms
at least this scheme, like that of the Plataean synod, admitted of
interpretation that would extend the principles of a vast Amphictiony to a
genuine system of federation with a representative assembly; but the world was
not ripe for the requisite delegation of full powers of deliberation and
decision to representatives; and moicover representation was not likely to come
to trial on this ground alone—that joint deliberations must be futile when a
single state was certain by its power and self-will to render all opposition
nugatory. Even so, however, if this large conception of common deliberation
and concert for Hellenic peace and welfare had no other result, the
promulgation of it was equivalent to an Athenian manifesto appealing
professedly to general Hellenic sympathy and support, while covering an open
announcement at the same time of her continued recognition of responsibility
for the security of Hellas and her resolution to assert an authority as
comprehensive.
In the
meantime various enterprises were undertaken which avouched that Athenian
activity was equal to operate on the largest scale independently if so it must
be, and that
the truce
had not been obtained or consented to, to be spent in sloth.
I place
here the expedition of Pericles to the Thracian Chersonesus and the Euxine,
which was esteemed one of his most successful and salutary exploits. Diodorus
mentions rather than dates it inconsistently in the same year as the Sicyonian 1
campaign. It was an important concern for Athens indeed, but also for all
Greece, that navigation through this passage should be secure from the
depredations of pirates, who infested the coasts and carried robbery into the
heart of a peculiarly fertile and valuable district. To the Chersonesus, where
Miltiades and his ancestors had formerly governed, and Cimon his son still
seems to have retained a large property, a colony was conducted by Pericles, of
a thousand Athenians, which gave an important and welcome infusion of strength
to the cities; and he then interposed an obstacle to the incursions of the
Thracians by land, by carrying a fortified barrier across the neck of the
isthmus from sea to sea.
Either on
the same occasion or another he led a large and very splendidly equipped fleet
into the Euxine, and made a politic display, at the very outskirts of Hellenic
settlement, of the power and resolution and enterprise of the ruling Hellenic
state. He appeared everywhere as the protector of the Greek cities, and took
all means to impress on the kings and dynasts of the numerous barbarous tribes,
how formidable and vigilant a power was now at the head of Hellas. At Sinope,
which was controlled by a tyrant Timesileon, he left a detachment of thirteen
ships under Lamachus, a name that now appears for the first time, which
effected his expulsion. The lands and houses of the tyrant and his faction were
confiscated and assigned to six hundred Athenian immigrants introduced by
Pericles ;—the accession of needful strength might easily reconcile the native
emancipated citizens to such an appropriation.
A large
and successful expedition into these waters could not but impose upon the
imagination of the Greeks. It is on the return that navigators are still
constantly betrayed by the deceptive appearances of the still unbeaconed
so-called ‘False Mouth’—the origin of the fable of the Syinplegades (the
clasping rocks); but mists and storms are still more dangerous beyond. 1
Plutarch elsewhere speaks of a colony of ten thousand settlers (cleruchs) as
despatched by Pericles to the Chersonesus, of five hundred to Naxos, and half
that number to Andros, its former dependency. It seems probable that this representation
of another vast colony to the Chersonesus is a mere outgrowth of the former
more moderately numbered at a thousand, by inclusion of families, slaves, and
dependents. The settlement of cleruchs at Naxos implies dispossession of a
certain number of original proprietors of which there is no other record ; but
that is quite consistent with the course of Athenian policy in other cases.
Thus some years after Aegina has been deprived of its independence, the inhabitants
are not merely deprived and reduced at best to tenantry, but, as the easiest
solution of the difficulty of dealing with their discontents, are expelled,
their places being taken by Athenian proprietors and cultivators. A confused
and no doubt corrupt text of 2 Diodorus, of which it is not easy to
make much, assigns to Tolmides the distribution of the land of the Naxians
among a thousand citizens, which so far is not inconsistent with the measure
having been adopted on the motion of Pericles ; the obscurity of the passage
lies in an unexplained reference to his concurrent action in Euboea. A phrase
or two seem to be lost, which might have defined some incidents in that island
of which we have broken reflections elsewhere. 3 Pausanias ascribes
to Tolmides the conduct of cleruehs not only to Naxos but to Euboea, and poor
as may be the authority of the oration of Andocides on the
Peace, it
preserves at least an independent tradition of hostilities in Euboea, anterior
to the five years’ truce, that may possibly not be a mere antedate of its later
revolt. The evidence, on the whole, seems to point to the extrusion at this
time of some refractory Euboeans, who would go to swell the party of exiles
which is to be assumed in any case, and was soon to become active with
momentous results.
It was a
natural complement of this almost ostentatious display of Athenian activity,
and as natural a concession to the readmitted influence of the son of
Miltiades, that the original justification of Athenian supremacy should be
revived by renewal of hostilities against Persia, and even in Egypt, where
Athens had so recently incurred a fearful disaster. Amyrtaeus was still holding
out there in the fens to the great annoyance and serious danger of the 1
Persians, and made application to Athens for assistance. It was most probably
immediately on the conclusion of the five years* truce that Cimon was placed in
command of the large fleet of two hundred vessels, Athenian and confederate,
with which, as if to take up again his interrupted enterprise of years gone by,
he proceeded to Cyprus, and after detaching thence sixty to the relief of
Amyrtaeus, undertook with the remainder the siege of Citium. Of what value this
aid may have been to the Egyptian does not appear; instructions or past experience
may have enforced cautiousness, and we only read of it further as rejoining
when the main fleet returned home from Cyprus upon the death of Cimon. He died
before Citium,— some authors say of a wound, but the most in consequence of
disease ; Plutarch ascribes to him some previous successes, which need not be
disallowed because unmentioned in the succinct summary of Thucydides, but
which, on the other hand, gain no confirmation from the particulars—as regards
the capture of Citium certainly false—that are offered by
Diodorus.
It is probable that he had gained some even important success against a hostile
fleet before he was at liberty to settle to the blockade of that city; but
Plutarch, by his reference to Themistocles at this time as still alive, betrays
a confusion of ideas as to times, and Diodorus also seems to mix up
reminiscences of the battles of the Euryme- don and of the Persian preparations
for the suppression of 1 Inarus : it is certain that he ascribes to
the commencement of the campaign the events that brought it to a close.
Thucydides
certifies the fact of a double victory by sea and land gained by the armament
of Cimon after his death, in such curious agreement with his own earlier
exploit as to quite account for the confusion which was made by later aud less
careful historians. The siege of Citium was abandoned under the further
pressure of a failure of supplies ; the phrase employed, ‘ the occurrence of
famine,’ seems to intimate a failure of the crops of the country, or at least
inability to command them. The arrival of the Egyptian detachment would bring
some relief, and assist if it did not stimulate to the exploit that signalised
the conclusion of the expedition. Phanodemus is quoted by Plutarch as stating
that for thirty days after the death of Cimon the enemy and the allies,—we may
believe the enemy, at least,— supposed that he was still in command. The
Athenians, retiring from the south round the eastern extremity of the island,
engaged off Salamis a force of Cilicians and Phoenicians, at sea first, and
then on land,—it is clearly implied by the word of Thucydides (fi/ua), on the
same day, perhaps at the same time,—attacking no doubt the usual marine camp.
They were victorious in both engagements—though, if we may take this incident
from Diodorus, with the loss of their commander, Anaxierates—and then returned
home.
It was
after these events,—apparently, but not certainly,
after not
only the beginning, but the end of this expedition, and within the period of
the five years’ truce with Athens,— that Lacedaemon, in a war which, uneventful
as it otherwise was, had a significance that gave it a special title, and was
known from its religions pretext as the Sacred war, took military possession of
Delphi, and depriving the Pho- cians of the control of the temple, and
therefore of the oracle, delivered it over to the Delphian families wTho
were in their interest; and accepting or assuming the privilege of jproman-
teia (the right of precedence in consulting the oracle), recorded it in an
inscription on the forehead of the bronze wolf,—some well-known dedication. It
seems to have been considered as no infraction of the truce, that Pericles upon
their retirement took their places with an Athenian force, superseded the
Delphians in favour of the Phocians, and leaving the Lacedaemonian inscription
undisturbed, reasserted the jwomanteia for Athens by another on the right
flank of the same wolf.
This
incident, brief as it was, might be taken as proof, if such were still wanting,
that Lacedaemonian influence had to be reckoned with as hostile, and even
fatal, to any hope of reconstructing the Panhellenic confederation on the plan
of the psephism of Pericles. The intimate connection of Delphi had been in fact
as natural an accompaniment of the hegemony formerly allowed to Lacedaemon, as
the association of a national mantis or diviner with the general on the field
of battle. To surrender the promanteia was to acquiesce in the assumption of
the supreme hegemony by Athens, which Sparta was by no means prepared to do
even formally, as still less to give up a positive instrument of power in a
struggle which may already have had forewarning signs. It is considered by
Thirl wall that the Lacedaemonians may have been glad of an excuse of an
oracle to give wTay so far as they did to the Messenians in Ithome,
but it is still more probable that the oracle, especially as it
was at the
time under the influence of Athens, did in truth exact more favourable terms ;
and Thucydides is our warrant that a Delphic denunciation of sacrilege could still
affect the Spartans with disheartening awe.
Hostilities
between Persia and Hellas cease suddenly, and for many years, immediately upon
the death of Cimon; and this lull was in after times habitually ascribed to
arrangement under a formal treaty, of which the favourable, the glorious
terms, as they were held to be, were ascribed to the impression produced by the
persistency of Athens and the exploits of Cimon. The Peace of Cimon, as it was
called, was constantly contrasted by Athens and the favourers of Athens with
the treaty of Antaleidas, by which, in after days, Lacedacmon distinctly
surrendered the Asiatic Greeks. It matters little whether the relations of
Greece and Persia at this earlier date were really formulated in articles and
ratified as a positive treaty ; it is certain that negotiations were
proceeding at this time, svhen the most important subjects of difference could
not be left out of consideration. The mission is dated by Diodorus,-^Curtius
implies but does not give some other authority,—in 449-8 B.C., when the latest
operations of Athens had been so successful as to evince her ability and
resolution, and so give force to the tone assumed by her envoys, while the
death of the son of Miltiades, the very personification of active enmity to Persia,
opened the best opportunity for those who on either side were willing to have
rest. Persia had interests at stake in Egypt that would reconcile to
concessions elsewhere, and Athens—her best statesmen certainly—was already
beginning to be conscious that her forces might be required nearer home, while
the position that, treaty or no treaty, she had secured for the Hellenic cities
on the eastern shores of the Aegean, fully vindicated her claim to the
allegiance of the confederates. To this occasion we may plausibly assign the
exertions which 1 Plutarch 1 Pint. V. Peric.
20.
avers were
made by Pericles to check the eagerness of the Athenians to harass the Persian
seaboard or even to embark again in the Egyptian war.
According
to Diodorus, the first overtures came from Artaxerxes while the Cyprian contest
was still pending, and Persian envoys from Megabyzus and Artabanus opened the
business at Athens, where it was so far entertained that Cal- lias, son of
Hipponicus, one of the wealthiest Athenians, was sent with others as colleagues
to Persia with full powers. The mission of Persian envoys—Persians or not—to
Athens, does but repeat the incident which is avouched by Thucydides, of the
previous attempt of Artaxerxes to engage concerted action with Sparta through
the agency and visit of Megabyzus ; and the mission of Callias to Memnonian
Susa is positively certified by the narrative of 1 Herodotus.
Herodotus further informs us that envoys from Argos,—the present allies of
Athens,—were at Susa at the same time, when it was reported of them with an
invidious intention that they had invited and received assurance of the
friendly regard of Artaxerxes for Argos, on the ground of the feelings
entertained towards the city by his father Xerxes. According to Diodorus, the
terms of the treaty stipulated for the autonomy of the Greek cities of Asia,
that the Persian satraps should not assert authority within three days’ journey
of the sea—about fifty miles by the reckoning of2 Herodotus, who
gives a day’s jcurney at 150 stadia=i7{- miles, a distance which may be taken
as equivalent to the one day’s course of a horse, the limitation given by
Demosthenes,—and that no Persian long or brass-beaked ship of war should pass
into the waters between Phaselis at the eastern limit of Lycia, and the Cyanean
islands in the Euxine at the entrance of the Thraeian Bosphorus. •
These
assumed terms do certainly express conditions which
were long
observed with a degree of exactitude that would be honourable to any
co-signataries; and it is hard to believe that this was not due in great part
to the fact that they had been discussed and at least preliminarily assented
to, whether formalities of ratification may or may not have been afterwards
negleeted. The evidence on this point is contradictory enough, and it is
fortunate that the point itself matters little as bearing upon the fact of an
established understanding. Plutarch records that a copy of the treaty as
accomplished was included in the collection of psephisms made by Cra- terus,
and that the Athenians even erected an altar to Peace —Eirene—on the occasion,
and conferred distinguished honour on 1 Callias. Pausanias finds a
statue of Callias in honourable place at Athens. In later times Demosthenes and
Lycnrgus sou of Lycophron had place beside it. It might be rash, though not
unreasonable, to infer that the figure of Peace, bearing Plenty in her arms,
had especial reference to Callias who stood close 2by.
An
expression interposed by Pausanias indicates that the negotiation of the peace
by Callias though f asserted by most of the Athenians/ was not
uncontested. Callisthenes, according to Plutarch, averred that the barbarian
never made such agreement, but simply kept such distance out of alarm inspired
by the earlier victory of Cimon on the Eurymedon. That 3Theopompus
witnesses the fact that the peace was engraved on a column, wreighs
more in favour of the treaty perhaps, than his difficulty at the antedated
employment of Ionic letters tells against it.
The
exaggerations of later orators and rhetoricians only merit an advocate’s
attention, as arguments against the authenticity of the transaction. The
statement of Demosthenes, that Callias, barely escaping with life, was fined
fifty talents on the ground that he allowed himself to be bribed by the
1 Plut. V. Cim. 13. 3
Paus. i. 8. 3.
3 Theopomp.
ap. Harpocration, 'Attikois
ypdfifxaai.
Persians,
is perhaps not quite so certainly true as it has been assumed to be, but seems
at least to recognise that his negotiations were not absolutely without result;
nor, considering to what revulsions Athenian feeling was subject, is it
necessarily inconsistent with a vote of honour some time previously, or with
the fact that but a few years will elapse before we shall meet with him again
employed in another critical negotiation.
The
Athenians in after years break off negotiations with Tissaphernes, upon a claim
for the Persian to build what ships and navigate what waters he pleased, and
there does not appear any reason why such a privilege should be expressly
stipulated for, if it had never been questioned before and never been made a
matter of agreed and definite 1 restriction. That when the Athenian
power was crumbling after the Syracusan disaster, the Great King chose to
summon the satraps of Asia Minor to pay up arrears of tribute from the revolted
cities, might be “Consistent with either a previous informal moclus vivendi, or
with terms originally contrived to save Persian dignity.
Thuc. viii. 56.
ATHENS DEPRIVED OF POWER OVER BOEOTIA, MEGARA, AND
PELOPONNESIAN STATES. CONCLUSION
OF PEACE FOR THIRTY
YEARS.
B.C. 447-445*
If
national grandeur were invariably measured by extent of territorial control,
the culmination of Athenian glory and power would be marked in the present
years, but power and the glory that follows with it owe more to concentration
than to diffusion of energy, and history cannot teach more usefully than by an
example how the moral energy of a nation can surmount a deprivation of
dependencies or provinces.
As the
five years’ truce between Athens and Sparta was approaching its end, which by
due efflux of time would fall in 447-6 B.C., the opponents of Athens generally
regained spirits; the rivals of the administrations especially, which her
protectorate had sustained in power among the inland cities and tribes beyond
her northern frontier, were agitated by projects of counter revolution. The
conduct of the democracy, which rested upon her support at Thebes especially,
had been such as could only prepare a desperate 1 reaction. At last,
at a certain interval after the Athenian interference at 2 Delphi,
the Boeotian exiles, excitcd as it seems by somewhat premature impatience or a
tempting opportunity, seized
1 Arist.
Pol. v. 3.
2 Thuc. i.
113.
upon
various positions at the north-western extremity of Boeotia, amongst others
upon Chaeronea and Orchomenus, the latter especially a place of considerable
strength. Established here, they received an accession of force in a body of
Euboean exiles, were in communication with all who sympathised with their party
and cause throughout the country, and were within reach of aid from the
adjacent Locrians, of whose adherence the Athenians had only been able to assure
themselves by holding a hundred hostages of their best families in pledge.
This
outbreak, of which the consequences were destined to be as serious as sudden,
threw Athens at once into intense excitement, and an expedition was organised
to suppress it with a haste which was afterwards ascribed to the rash eagerness
of the commander Tolmides. According to Thucydides his force consisted of a
thousand Athenian hoplites together with quotas of the allies ;—which allies
and in what numbers were available at so short a notice is not specified.
Plutarch gives the same number for the Athenian force, which he says included
the youth of the noblest and most distinguished families, who responded to an
invitation by Tolmides to volunteer without regard to their turn on the
muster-rolls. This incident in itself may be held to be verified by 1
Diodorus, though he relates it as the commander's scheme for obtaining a force
more numerous than was granted to him on another occasion. There is much
appearance that the eagerness of Tolmides was stimulated by a spirit of rivalry
with Pericles, to whose expeditions his own run so parallel both in military
and colonising enterprise, as to challenge a comparison that may not have been
always or often in his favour. But with Pericles it was a maxim to leave as
little as possible in the conduct of war to the turn of fortune, especially
never to engage in battle voluntarily, unless with a considerable balance
of
favourable chances, and to prefer secure to dashing results, with such consideration
for economy of lives as justified his vaunt to the Athenians that, as far as
depended on himself, they might all be immortal. From this point of view the
expedition which was being despatched in such hot haste appeared to him
insufficient for its purpose, and he exerted himself to the utmost to gain
delay for the association ‘of other 1 force; if the demus would not
trust the judgment of Pericles, let them at any rate, he said, take advantage
of the discreetest of all counsellors—Time.’ The self-confidence of the demus
however seconded in this instance the precipitancy of the general, and the
expedition started; the only result of the reclamations of the democratic
leader having been to swell the numbers of aristocratic volunteers who were in high
hope of an independent triumph; this is recorded as the single, the disastrous
instance in which Pericles failed after great efforts to traverse a rival 2
policy.
"What
was the nature of the force of which it was urged to await the accession is not
indicated. In a suspected oration of 3Andocides—which, wThether
spurious or not, is ancient, and contains some genuine, however misjoined,
historical notes—we read that Athens took advantage of one pause of hostilities
with Sparta to organise a native body of three hundred cavalry and to hire—not
to say ‘purchase’—as many Scythian bowmen; the battle of Plataea might have
taught them the value of these arms against cavalry, and the recent desertion
of the Thessalian horse at the battle of Tanagra, and its consequences,
enforced the lesson of their special weakness. Occasional assistance had in
fact been sought—though even so too intermittently or insufficiently—by
employment of more mobile force and missile weapons; but the Athenian
difficulty was and remained, to cope on land with the heavy-armed Boeotian or
Spartan ; the decisive innovation in tactics that
1 Plut. 1 . Pcric. 18. 2 lb. Comp. Peric. c. Fab. iii.
Andocides, de Pace.
was to
countervail Spartan tenacity in line by well distributed form of attack was for
a later time.
Tolmides
traversed Boeotia, recovered Chaeronea on the borders of Phocis, apparently
without difficulty, and then putting a force in occupation turned south again
with the main body, leaving Orchomenos unattempted on the left. If he had by
this time become aware that his strength was not sufficient for pushing the
work to completion, he was at least unapprehensive of molestation as he
retired. The exiles however, under their leader 1 Sparton, had
formed a well-eoneerted plan for intercepting him, and took him completely by
surprise by a vigorous attack as he moved along the direct road through
Coroneia towards Thebes. The battle that ensued is referred to in connection
with both 2Lebadea and 3 Haliartia, localities at some
distance on either side of Coroneia which gave it its name,—an indication
probably of the loose and scattered order of the Athenians on the march. Their
defeat, though not effected without severe Boeotian 4 loss, was
disastrous and decisive; Tolmides himself fell fighting, together with a large
number of the hoplites— among them Cleinias the father of Alcibiades, who
thirty years before was a combatant at Artemisium; a considerable number of
others were taken prisoners—men belonging to families of the first position and
influence at Athens, the volunteers of-Tolmides; and there can be little doubt
that this important capture—to which may probably be added the now isolated
garrison of Chaeronea—was a main object in the plan of attack, and anticipated
as a most valuable result of victory. The trophy of the victors was standing
long after on a portion of the battle-field between Coroneia and Alalcomene,
near the temple of Athene Ifconia, the consecrated centre of ancient Boeotian
unity, the proximity of
1 Diod. xii. 6; Plut. V. Ages. 2
Xen. Mem. Soc. iii. 5. 4.
3 Paus. i. 27. 6. 4
Thuc. iii. 67.
which may
well have given enthusiasm to the assailants.
The dismay
that reigned at Athens on the news of this catastrophe may be measured by the
sacrifices which were submitted to in order to repair it so far as possible. As
a condition of the restoration of the prisoners the city wTas
required and submitted perforce to renounce control over the whole of Boeotia;
democracy was in consequence superseded at Thebes by the return of the exiled
party; all the cities resumed autonomy, and by natural reaction an impulse was
given to the reconstitution of the Boeotian system of alliance u liich the
religious sanction of an Amphictiony had helped aforetime to many of the
purposes of a political confederation. That the Locrians recovered their
hostages, of whom they had risked the forfeiture by assisting the Boeotians,
may be taken for granted.
Such was
the disastrous end of Tolmides son of Tolmaeus, whose very patronymic seems to
bespeak a certain ostentation of audacity that would easily lapse to rashness;
his removal alone, and still more its attendant circumstances, left Pericles in
a more powerful position than ever, and with a great opportunity before him of
displaying capacity to deal with a momentous crisis; of this not the least
difficulty must have been to reconcile the demus to the humiliating terms of
the peace which it became necessary to submit to. And this was not all; a
series of new public disasters ensued forthwith, to minister occasion for the
exercise of his great qualities, and finally establish public confidence in his
incorruptibility, prudence, dexterity and vigour.
Befugees
from Euboea had contributed to the defeat of the Athenians at Coroneia, but so
far do not appear as sharing in the fruits of the victory; a movement however
was already maturing in the island itself, the more formidable as concerted
with another at Mcgara and with promised
support
from the Lacedaemonians, who were now free, or held themselves to be so, from
the expiring truce.
The
outbreak in Euboea declared itself very shortly after the conclusion of the
Boeotian difficulty, and Pericles had scarcely passed over into the island when
it was announced that Megara was in revolt behind him, supported by the
Corinthians, Sicyonians, and Epidaurians; that the Athenian garrison at Megara
was cut off, except so many as had taken refuge in the port Nisaea; and that
moreover Attica itself was threatened with a Lacedaemonian invasion. He turned
instantly and brought back his army to confront the greater danger. The
Lacedaemonians and their allies, under the young king Pleistoanax, son of
Pausanias, had already crossed the borders, and, laying waste the country round
them, were advanced as far as Eleusis and the Thriasian plain. The magnitude of
the enemies’ force, and the memory and consequences of a recent catastrophe,
might alike confirm the habitual caution of Pericles in engaging ; it was not,
however, to be so put to the test; for, to the inexpressible relief of Athens,
the army of Pleistoanax very 1 soon disappeared. He had, in fact,
dismissed the allies and withdrawn home to answer as he might for what he had
done and what left even unattempted. Thus .set free, Pericles turned again upon
Euboea and speedily reduced opposition throughout the entire island,—his force
of fifty ships and five thousand hoplites easily overbearing all resistance.
The
command of Euboea and its resources was of the utmost importance to Athens; the
island had ports which in hostile occupation would afford opportunity for
intercepting the commerce of Athens as it converged to the Piraeus; and, on the
other hand, it presented an extensive fertile territory which, as close at hand
and defensible by the navy, would relieve the contingency, which could not now
be overlooked,
of the
occupation of Attica itself by an enemy. The hostility of the Euboean exiles,
who had importantly aided the Boeotians, appears to imply that the island had
been for some time under democratic ascendency, but this had evidently piven
place, after the great battle of Coroneia, to a reaction which culminated in
the revolt, and the penalties of the resettlement fell in consequence upon the
aristocracy. Pericles re-established Athenian control over the island from end
to end. The Histiaeans at the north-west extremity wrere very
severely dealt with, on the ground of their slaughter of the crew of a captured
Athenian vessel; expelled from their city they retired by convention to some
part of1 Macedonia ; their forfeited lands were distributed among
two thousand Athenians, whether as settlers, or probably in many cases as
clcruc/is, allottees or owners of outlying 2 properties.
The
treatment of Chalcis on the Euripus, w’here the island most nearly approaches
the continent, brings to an end a history which, could it be recovered in
detail, would in many respects exceed in interest even that which was closed by
the reduction of Aegina. In the unrecorded centuries that succeeded the great
revolution known as the Return of the Ileracleids, Euboean Chalcis had been a
centre of colonising spirit scarccly inferior, if indeed inferior, in energy
and success to that of Athens. A fertile territory and great mineral wealth in
copper and iron gave early support to population and encouragement to commerce;
and faction in due time and ordinary course led to dispersion upon the tracks
which commerce had made familiar. The peninsulas between the Strymonian and
Thermaic gulfs became studded with Chalcidic cities, which flourished and sent
forth colonies again ; and Cumae westward was the earliest of a series of noble
Chalcidic settlements in Italy and on the coasts of Sicily, beyond the sea
which retained from the multitude of
adventurers
who so boldly traversed it, the name of tbe Ionian. Thucydides adverts to an
early war between Chalcis and the neighbouring Eretria as having importantly
involved the rest of Greece. We find its origin referred to a quarrel
respecting the adjacent Lelantian plain; but that the people of Miletus aided
Eretria against their neighbours the Samians as allies of Chalcis, implies that
such remote interests were at stake as would easily come into collision between
the colonies so closely planted by the two Euboean cities in the Thracian 1
peninsulas. Too little is known of the course and consequences of this war;
but Aristotle is the voucher that the internal disputes of Chalcis terminated
in establishing the power of the Hippobatai—the Horsekeepers—an aristocracy of
wealth. These Hippobatai, at a much later date, lent support to the kindred
faction of Isagoras at Athens, and suffered in consequence. The Athenians,
with the new-born energy which Herodotus hails as the proper characteristic of
recovered freedom, defeated them; and as they distributed their lands among
four thousand cleruchs, who were still in possession when Datis and Artaphernes
attacked Eretria, might be supposed to have reduced the class to powerlessness
or to have expelled them utterly. If we may trust Plutarch, however, they had
re-established themselves in wealth and influence by the time which we now
treat of, perhaps by their share in promoting the revolt, and were finally expelled
by Pericles to appear in history no more.
If the
recovery of Euboea was important, and even vital for Athens, the command of the
Megarid was but little if in any degree less so. Scarcely any sacrifice, it
might seem, should have been too great to save this; but if foregone it must
be, the mere possession of the port of Nisaea alone was in itself of little
advantage, though it might tell upon the interchange of terms in negotiation.
The Lacedae-.
1 Herod, v. 99, Thuc. i. 15, iv. 120-123; Strabo x.
688.
monians
had retired with unexpected and inexplicable haste it is true, but there were
significant notices that the retirement could not be safely counted on as
final. Pleistoanax on his return home was charged with corruption, and
Cleandridas, who had been associated with him by the ephors as guide of his
inexperience, was included in the accusation. Cleandridas fled, and was
condemned to death in his absence—he is heard of afterwards in Italy; his son
Gylippus remained at Sparta, and was destined, after a glorious career against
the Athenians at Syracuse, to follow his father into exile upon the usual
charge, whether in his case justified or not, of peculation. The young king was
condemned in a fine which he was unable to pay, and he too left Sparta and
took refuge, for an exile which was to last for nineteen years, in the precinct
— in a divided-off portion in fact—of the temple of Lycaean Zeus in 1
Arcadia. From Lacedaemonians in this temper as to the failure of their first
expedition, forbearance in a second was not to be expected; that in this
instance at least they were not indignant without real cause was shrewdly
confirmed, when on the passing of the accounts of Pericles at Athens a large
sum appeared as expended, with no further explanation of its disposal than, ‘
for a necessary purpose ’ (els to hiov), and the item was allowed by the demus
without murmur or enquiry.
Bitter
then as the alternative which prudence now dictated to the Athenians might be,
there was no escape from it,— to renounce attempts to recover lost ground and
ground virtually lost, at present, and conclude peace upon the best terms
circumstances admitted. It still remained open there-* after to look forward
either to reasserting what now was surrendered, under more favourable
circumstances and after preparation, or, what seems more in accordance with the
views of 1 Pericles, to renounce the surrendered acquisitions
once for
all for others even more tempting, and to rely on such growth of the maritime
confederacy in power and wealth as would at some future day enable Athens, in
case of quarrel, to deal with Sparta and all her adherents on terms of absolute
superiority.
Peace was
accordingly negotiated between Athens and the Peloponnesians through the medium
of Callias and Chares in the course of the winter of 446 B.C., and concluded in
April following, for thirty years,—an estimated generation. Athens gave up
what, like Megara, she had already lost beyond recovery, or was least concerned
or could no longer hope to hold after loss of command of the isthmus,—the ports
of the Megarid on either sea, Nisaea and Pegae, and control over Troezene and
Achaia. By these terms she was excluded from all positive footing and even
influence in Peloponnesus, except what might still be derived from an alliance
with Argos; and thus a few years beheld her shorn of what appears to be a large
proportion of her empire, and that to the advantage of rivals who obtained it
without having themselves inflicted upon her a single defeat. The Lacedaemonians,
on the other hand, reclaimed nothing for their confederacy that they might not
reasonably hope to maintain ; Euboea, as insular, was left to Athens, and it
does not appear that even a word was wasted on the fate of the island of the
Doric Aeginetans; states not enumerated in the treaty were to be allowed to
attach themselves to whichever alliance they might 1 please. Neither
party to the treaty was to extend its alliances at the expense of the other,
and it was a consequence which was at least understood that each claimed the
right to constrain its own 2 dependents. The withdrawal of
Athenian control from Achaia on the one side and Troezene on the other, as
well as from Megara, left Argos in isolation with an extended frontier towards
Sicyon, Corinth and
Epidaurus,
exposed to any annoyance with which they might choose to sceond the resentment
or ambition of Lacedaemon; and with this prospect before them, the Argives may
readily enough have concluded on their own part a thirty years’ peace, which,
unlike that of the Athenians, was destined to run its full 1 course.
The future relations of Athens and Argos were matter for separate arrangement;
this was distinctly stated in the Athenian and Lacedaemonian treaty which was
engraved on a bronze stele set up at Olympia, where Pausanias still read it; it
stood before a memorial of the last most important Hellenic compact, the statue
of Zeus by Anaxagoras of Aegina, which had been dedicated by all the Greek
cities that sent troops to Plataea, and bore their names upon its basis. From
the manner in which Pausanias passes off to notice which of these cities had
since been destroyed, we might almost infer that along with the inscribed
catalogue he read also the terms of the alliance that contained the engagement
to mutually forbear from such extremities.
The
general basis of the present treaty was therefore the undisturbed retention by
the several parties to it of whatever power it found each possessed of and best
capablc of 2 maintaining ; but this was in fact equivalent to a
division of Hellas between them by diplomatic recognition of the legitimacy of
the control which either exercised over its allies. It is the very convention
for ruling over Hellas jointly that Aristophanes urged, after it had come to an
end, as so much more reasonable than to go on trying which belligerent state
would by fortune of war have most to be sorry 3 for. The Argives
alone amongst the allies of Athens were in a position of exceptional
independence, as compared with members of the general Ionian confederacy, and
hence the reservation in the treaty.
1 Time, v 14.
2 II). i. 140.
3 Pcncc, v. 1080.
The formal
sanction which was thus conceded to Athens on the part of Lacedaemon, so long*
the admitted head of the Hellenic world, was no slight advantage, and told with
effect in consolidating the position which she had gradually assumed. As
compared with a recognition of the right to deal as she had already been
dealing, not only with subjects, but with allies much the same as subjects, her
own reciprocal admission of the supremacy of the Lacedaemonians over the states
of Peloponnesus from which they drew no regular contributions towards a state 1
treasure, involved no concession of importance. Fourteen years later the
Aeginetans are found protesting that their autonomy was guaranteed by the 2
treaty, but we must allow more weight to the positive contradiction of
Pericles. At the utmost they can only have appealed not to the text of the
treaty, but to the assurances by which high contracting powers are wont to lull
the uneasiness of the subordinate while negotiations are pending, or to put
them off at last as having their interests cared for constructively. The treaty
contained the usual clause that any differences which might arise should be
settled, not by violence but in the way of equity or 3
arbitration—bUrj. Whether any such scheme was laid down as the Corcyraeans
proposed for the settlement of their quarrel with 4 Corinth, by
reference to independent cities or to the Delphic oracle, does not appear.
Whatever the provision,—and it would be curious indeed to know what plan could
be thought operative,—we even read at this time of references of national
disputes to an individual arbitration, —it proved as futile as is usual where
interests are concerned of states too powerful for any coercive sanction to
control the resolute contumacy of either one or the other.
This
treaty only ran for half its stipulated time, but even that was a measure of
success unexampled in Greek diplomacy, and attests the wisdom of the
negotiators in excluding terms
1 Arist. Pol. ii. 6. 2 Thuc. i. 67. s
lb. i. 78. 4 lb. i. 28.
whicli
would only make the conclusion of hostilities the immediate source of more
embittered animosity.
The
unfortunate expedition of Tolmides, then, had contributed by its consequences
to raise still higher the repute of Pericles both as statesman and commander,
while it removed his only competitor in military distinction. There is no
evidence that Tolmides had ever exercised direct influence over the assembly,
and Thucydides son of Melesias, from whom chiefly opposition there was still to
be expected, is equally unheard of in the field. Against this rival the success
of Pericles could not long be doubtful : it was not to be secured without a
struggle; but as the trusted leader of democracy, he was on the advancing flood
which no aristocratical skill and combination could long withstand.
Even in
the absence of direct testimony we can scarcely err in associating with
Pericles in the merit of this grand convention the name of king Archidamus on
the part of Sparta; he was united with him by ties of hospitality,—is attested
by Thucydides as a man of good sense and moderation, and his conduct after the
earthquake and during the Messenian war had raised him to the height of
influence. Even when his voice in favour of peace was at last overborne by the
peremptory ephorate, he postponed, when commanding in the field, the fatal
recommencement of hostilities as long as possible and hoping against hope.
In the
meantime a breathing space of fourteen years was now gained for Hellas with a
reversion of priceless advantage for the world, for therein were achieved under
the administration of Pericles, the noblest triumphs of Attic genius. Then
passion and greed, as they have so often since, were again to commit nations
pretending to be examples to mankind, to the brutalising vulgarity of deciding
differences by a hand-to-hand scuffle and personal violence, — by the degrading
and delusive lottery of war.
SPARTA AND ATHENS.—THE CONDITIONS AND GENIUS OF OLIGARCHY AND DEMOCRACY.
The position and
influence of Sparta had received from of old an acceptance in Hellas which was
due to recognition of her stability and vastly predominant power. The basis of
these was secured by conditions of social organisation that could not be
adopted elsewhere, as indeed no other state of Hellas would under any
inducement have consented to submit to 1 them, and then by some
special if accidental advantages. Among the latter geographical position is
pre-eminent; the southernmost of the Greek states, Lacedaemon, was guarded by
an extended but most inhospitable seaboard, which nowhere afforded easy access
to the interior, and even least of all at the entrance to her chief valley at
the embouchure of the Eurotas. The steep mountain ranges of Parnon and Taygetus
fence this valley on either side, and are prolonged like bastions in rocky
promontories. Inland again to the north, the frontier towards Arcadia and Argos
was peculiarly defensible, especially after it was contracted by the conquest
of the district Cynuria to the east of Parnon. Under these circumstances the
dispensing with walls to Sparta,—which was seated moreover in a carefully
selected strong position,— was in truth a matter less of bravado than of brag.
1 Xen. Laced. E. x. 8.
The
confirmed acquisition of the fertile and more open Messenia was all-important
as providing a broader area for population and supply, and this too, covered as
the country mainly was by the consecrated neutrality of the adjacent Elis, with
no additional frontier difficulty; a territory was thus rounded off which was
equivalent in extent to any three or four other states of Peloponnesus
together, especially as these were for the most part weakened by further
political subdivisions. When the government of which Sparta itself was the
immediate seat, had extinguished all political power among the provincial
towns over such an appropriated area, it achieved oligarchically the same force
of concentration which an Athenian legislator had compassed in another spirit
by making the civic franchise of Athens co-extensive with Attica.
Such was
the position which made the Lyeurgean institutions possible in the first
instance, and augmented their force when established. In these we need have no
hesitation in tracing, even apart from traditions, the dealings of a tribe of
warlike conquerors with dangerous subjects, whose obstinacy had compelled to
constant watchfulness and repression, and then the tightening of discipline
within that tribe again by an interior oligarchy. That the final definition was
given to these institutions by the resolute will and influence of a single
statesman, can as little be reasonably called in question; the tradition also
that the Delphic oracle aided him collusively, is in harmony wTith
the authority which it exercises at Sparta in far later times, and particularly
with the help which was expected from it, to a plot for remodelling the
constitution, by a politician of the stamp of Lysander.
The
realised schcme as it is known to us, with all its unsparing contravention of
human inclinations and most universal, not to say most admirable, instincts,
betrays as decided a confidence in the power of stringent institution
when
abetted by superstition, to mould submissive humanity into any form however
extravagant, monstrous and repugnant, as ever was entertained by an Ignatius
Loyola.
That the
monarchical authority was resident in families of Achaian not Dorian origin,
was in favour of the coherence of the strictly national oligarchy, while the
concurrent kingship of members of two branches weakened the opportunities of a
power which was never destined to receive reinforcement from exceptional
personal endowments. The master-keys of the state remained therefore with an
exclusive class, which possessing all the jealous acuteness and unscrupulousness
of the Venetian nobles, was as successful in maintaining a permanent political
constitution; the success was purchased however in either case at the cost of
almost all that politicians, who are better interested for the better interests
of national life, hold dear. Of that healthy constitutional permanence which
resident within gives not merely supporting framework to a state, but a vital
energy which enables it to pass from one stage of truly progressive development
to another, the Lacedaemonian constitution shows no trace. Stability was gained
by the condition of immobility, and hence when such a government was brought
into entirely novel relations, and had to maintain itself against the discontents
and restlessness encouraged by altered circumstances, no other help was
resorted to than deeds and treacheries which in cold-blooded systematised
cruelty, like the policy of Venice or the Roman papacy, cast the doubtless
deplorable but comparatively passionate and inconsistent atrocities of rivals
into the shade.
If the
legislation of Sparta deliberately put a strain on human nature to the utmost
limit of endurance, at Athens the experiment was pursued with a daring and
originality even more striking, to prove that social order and an efficiently
administered government are compatible with the very frankest concession of
liberty. Among the numberless
constitutional
experiments of the numberless independent Hellenic cities,—experiments of which
the practical side was already very frequently affected by speculation,—the
aspiration for liberty was ever a motive power, and gradually hovered around
an ideal of perfect democracy. The claim of the Hellenic citizen as free and
equal, was to feel himself habitually independent of all control whatever, or
certainly of all that he was not himself entitled to exercise in duly recurring
turn over others. Every office was therefore to be open to every citizen, with
the fewest possible exceptions of those for which special qualifications were
manifestly indispensable; and the distribution of offices by lot, and the
attachment of pay to public duties went far to countervail the influence and
opportunities of the wealthy. Consistently with this primary conception, which
moved on rapidly at Athens to its realisation, it was the function of true
liberty which consisted with democracy alone, to ensure to every freeman not
only exemption from personal constraint and the right to live as he pleased,
but participation and a direct voice in all public business—in the most
important chiefly and above all.
These
principles were pushed to the extreme when the ecclesia or public assembly of
free citizens arrogated the power of initiating public measures and deciding on
public policy by vote, independently of the authorisation of any preconcerting
Council, and of subsequent confirmation by another body.
The
arbitrary exercise of such powers, in the absence of control of a healthy
public spirit or under the stimulus of eloquent ignorance or unprincipled
talent, would evidently amount to the abrogation of all constitutional
restraint whatever. Democracy when it arrives at this pitch, says Aristotle,
is equivalent to a tyranny, and what sycophants are to individual tyrants,
demagogues,—factious orators,—become to the tyrannous multitude.
It is
after having already laid down that true equality, the admitted essence of
democracy, demands that no class should J be allowed to deal unfairly by
another, that Aristotle opens the enquiry whether this might not be attained by
the consignment of supreme authority,—which in the hands of the rich becomes
tyranny, in those of the poor ends in confiscation or in oppression of the
still more defenceless,—to the preponderance of collective property instead of
to a simple numerical majority. On this system the property of the fewer rich
and of the more numerous poor being taken into account together, the result
would effect the assignment of political power in the combined ratio of wealth
or taxation, and numbers. The principle is the same that is applied
systematically when taxpayers are classed as in Prussia, and a small wealthy
college chooses as many electors as another more numerous but poorer; and it
has been by no means disregarded in the distribution of representation between
England and Ireland at the Union, or among boroughs and counties by successive
Reform Acts. Some such principle of adjustment must needs be resorted to,
whether avowedly and candidly or not, but it is obvious how inevitable
adjustments in application may wisely or unwisely affect the ultimate outcome.
The distributions of wealth and the groupings of population may of themselves
be such as to hamper the wisest, or may give inviting opportunity to sinister
intentions. It is but with words of deep despondency that Aristotle concludes,
‘ Difficult however as it may be to discover the truth respecting Justice and
Equality in politics, it would still be easier to succeed in doing so than to
influence those who can take what course they choose ; for while the weak are
alwTays clamorous for equality and justice, those who happen to have
power in possession as constantly disregard them entirely/ The philosopher,
therefore, is not more sanguine as to the practicability of his theoretically
best expedient for social order, than the historian Thucydides as to the
cessation of the
atrocities
of war and faction, ‘ so long as lmman nature must continue what it is/
AVe can
scarcely be surprised that the speculative politician, who owns himself foiled
by the problem in the simpler form, does not, even after a valuable extension
of experience, entertain the question of framing a political system which
would have met the difficulties of an Athenian statesman in the position of
Pericles; the task in this case was certainly burdensome enough; it was nothing
less than to harmonise the largest conception of municipal liberty and equality
with the administration of a confederacy that—spontaneously 01* otherwise— had
declined into an empire ; but he had still farther to reconcile as he might, or
take the eonscquences of failure, the uncompromising aspiration for liberty
which pervaded all the cities under Athenian control with the arbitrary authority
which was claimed, no less uncompromisingly, as an attribute of their own
liberty by the Athenians themselves.
The
qualifications of Sparta for empire were far more hopeless than those of
Athens. Once more she had held fast by the traditional guarantees of her power,
and acted in prudent accordance with Lyeurgean maxims in not pressing advantages
over-far, in husbanding force, declining protracted and remote warfare, and
withdrawing her citizens from foreign sympathies and contact with foreign
manners.
These
maxims could only come violently into collision with the necessities of a
series of ever extending campaigns ; and if Sparta were to accept such
challenge it was inevitable that she must soon retire in the interest of her
institutions, or persevere only at the expense of their ruin, whether under the
simple strain or through the enterprise of such patriotic spirits as Brasidas
or Agesilaus, not to say the treason of a Pausanias or Lysander.
I11 the
nature of things, therefore, the success of Sparta in conflict with the
projects of Athens was certain to consummate the ruin of both.
With the administration of Athenian democracy by Pericles
history opens its most resplendent page, the page which should be most
resplendent if the historian were competent to do justice to what records of
its incidents — unhappily too scanty—have been preserved and recovered.
Essentially by birth and by predilections a Eupatrid, Pericles was the chosen
and trusted guide of at once the most pure and the most important democratic
government the world had ever,—nay has ever seen, and which owed this qualification
at last, very importantly, to himself. What it achieved under his guidance,
what he achieved by command of its councils and resources, it has taxed the
best powers of the best critics and the best historians, both of politics and
of the arts, to tell. What failure such a career and such a system were liable
to is a more painful but not less instructive story.
The murder
of Ephialtes was more likely to give aid than hindrance to him in carrying through
his great measure of the payment of the citizens for their attendance at public
duties. According to 1 Plutarch, quoting the authority of Aristotle
from a lost treatise, it was with the aid of a certain Demonides, of the deme
Oea, that he instituted both the
1 Plut. V. Perie. 9. H
Theoric
allowance on occasions of public festivity, and the Dicastica or payments for
service as juror. The extant political treatise of Aristotle gives the valuable
information that it was independently of Ephialtes, and therefore no doubt
after his death, that he originated the 1 latter, very possibly by
aid of the reaction promoted by that atrocity; the term employed—the
Dicastica—applies in strictness only to payment for attendance of jurors on
trials, but it seems highly probable that we are to understand it here as the
due for attendances on all public duties, including and especially the
ceclesia. In a previous 2 passage he ascribes the reduced authority
of the Areopagus and elective magistracies, to the encroachment of the
dicasteries, without mention of the ecclesia, which certainly assumed a large
share of transferred authority. The inference appears to be that he, at least
occasionally, applies the term clicasterion to the whole body of free
citizens, as inclusive of the large proportion of them who might happen to be
dicasts for the year, but who were equally entitled to take part in the general
and legislative business of the ecclesia. The matter must probably remain
uncertain, but the only consequence of assuming that the ecclesiasticon,— the
proper payment for attendance at the ecclesia,—originated at a different time,
would be to leave us in the uncertainty whether this was a little earlier or a
little later.
The
distribution of the surplus revenues of the state among the citizens was not
without precedent at Athens ; as early as the commencement of the career of
Themistocles the balance of proceeds of the Laurian silver mines had been so
disposed of, and the same principle was applied in drawing on the public treasury
for the expenses of public spectaclcs, the distribution of meat at public
sacrifices, the expenditure on sacred processions and on dramatic
entertainments that were recognised as pertaining to sacred celebrations, the
appropriate
enjoyments
of all. The demus was now not slack to regard the treasure of the confederation
as liable to bear its part even in like charges, as well as in others more
connected with the conduct of public business. The command of this fund was the
remuneration to Athens for services in past rescue and insurance of continued
security. It was fitting that those who had borne the heat and burden of the
day should have their solid reward; these were the men of Salamis, — the men of
Salamis who, in contrast to the Ionians and islanders, had preferred giving up
their city to desolation to saving it by a submission that involved lending
assistance towards the enslavement of nobler 1 compatriots, who were
as indefatigable as ever, and might be relied on as equal to any new emergency.
As regarded the diversion of the fund to remuneration of the dicasts, in this
was to be recognised a novel extension of the patriotic precedent which had
been set by Themistocles; and as he had diverted a surplus from the mere
enhancement of private ease or pleasure to a public purpose,—the construction
of a fleet which was the saving of Hellas,—so Pericles appropriated a portion
to the benefit of the demus indeed, but to their benefit in return for the
devotion of their time to public service.
The demus
thus supported made good a gradual extension of its power. That the return to
the public service was really and largely beneficial is highly probable; but
otherwise the measure doubtless had a truly revolutionary aspect,—revolutionary,
in one sense, as modifying importantly the previous distribution of power in
the state, though in another sense the reverse, as introducing a constitutional
settlement which long asserted itself with efficiency and vigour. It was by its
operation chiefly that the legislative and judicial, and even to a considerable
extent the ordinary administrative proceedings of the state, were gradually
engrossed by the
citizens
in assembly, including even the poorest who by the state payments became
enabled, and were even more ready than other classes, to give attendance and
vote. Solon long ago had admitted the demus to both ecclesia and dicasteries,
and they had since secured several advances; but the use made of such privilege
would depend upon what average class was most assiduous in attendance. The
poorest citizens would necessarily grudge time that they could so ill spare
from their occupations ; the dwellers in the country would find attendance
inconvenient; the rich might have large private interests to engross them, but
they had stronger motives to concern themselves with public business, and many
means, as in the case of Cimon, of strengthening the votes of their partisans.
Aristotle admits us into the secret of the stratagems of some aristocracies
for making concessions like those of Solon and Cleisthenes 1
nugatory. By ostensible indulgence to the needy, the rich were fined more
heavily, or even exclusively, for non-attendance; office-holding, with its
incidental burdens and sacrifices, was made obligatory on the rich but not on
the poor; and the poor were further induced to forfeit all the value of their
political privilege by an opportunity of escaping obligation to serve and
consequent liability to fine, by omitting to register, The institution of
payment for attendance on such public duties was therefore a leading stroke of
democratical counter-policy, which told with extraordinary effect.
It is
difficult and probably impossible to disentangle all the testimonies respecting
the forms and functions of the dicastery in the larger sense, or to fill up
even plausibly the sequence of their modifications.
The
constitution of the Council and the Courts however as they were fixed about
this time, may be traced in broad outline. Every year six thousand citizens of
those over thirty years of age—the same age that originally admitted to the
1 Ariet. Polit. iv. 11.
ecclesia,—were
drawn by lot, six hundred from each phyle or tribe, but from all classes
indifferently. These were the jurymen — dicasts or Heliasts, by an ancient
title derived from the assembling in the open air. One thousand of the number
were in reserve as substitutes in cases of death or absence from any cause; the
rest were divided again by lot and without regard to tribes into ten divisions,
dicasteria, of five hundred each. The lot determined also the distribution of
suits to be tried, and assigned the several dicasts for each, a manifest
security for litigants. The juries varied in numbers, scarcely were ever less
than two hundred, and on important occasions we read of as many as two
thousand, or even the entire number of six thousand.
It is
manifest that such numbers could not be spared from their private concerns even
occasionally without remuneration, and, as the pressure of business increased,
the demand upon them occupied whatever time was left free by the interruption
of the numerous festivals. The occupation fell in wonderfully with the humour
of the Athenian; it was not only that the emolument satisfied and suited him,
but he delighted in excitement, in the intellectual exercise, and sometimes
only with too great a relish, in the sense of power. Aristophanes in the ‘Wasps5
gives what is no doubt a studiously exaggerated picture of whatever was absurd
or weak or wrong in the average dicast, but his satire is confirmed in too
many points by the tenor of many of the extant appeals which were addressed to
them. It is perfectly intelligible, even from the history of the Courts at Westminster
competing rapaciously for business, how willingly the dicasteries and the permanent
officials of the courts grasped at wide and ever wider jurisdiction. By degrees
political jealousy of the independence of the allies, combined with some
admixture of well-founded jealousy as to the treatment of Athenian partisans in
provincial courts, led to a general exaction of the reference of suits to
Athens for settlement,
and so
ultimately to accumulations of arrears in business, and to that discontent with
the law’s delay which sinks deeper, as it is frequently more costly, even than
injustice, and inflicts anxiety and loss on both the litigants.
But though
1 Aristotle confirms the charge of Aristophanes that the sweetness
of the first fee of twro obols whetted the appetites of the most
numerous class of the sovereign people which at last became inordinate, it must
not be supposed that confirmation of demagogic influence was the sole motive,
or the grasp of public moneys by the dicasts the sole result of these changes.
There is every appearance, and in fact a positive testimony by an unfriendly
critic, .that their numerousness conduced to more independent, uninfluenced,
and therefore juster 2 decisions ; shorter trials and prompter
decisions were probably favoured at first, before the press of business became
unmanageable, by the competence of the courts to deal with cases once for nil;
while the comparative fewness and brevity of the laws gave free opening for
common sense and common honesty, which often have but poor chances in the
interlacing jungle of systems of procedure and conflicting jurisdictions and
pedantic limitations of evidence. That injustice was not sometimes suffered
through undue precipitancy is not to be supposed, but even so it would be the
occasional price paid for escape from scandalously clumsy processes of
eliciting truth which even when successful involve a virtual penalty and
lingering misery. Of old, as now, of course the average dicast had passions
and prejudices of his own which litigants had to make the best or tried to make
the worst of, and of old as now no ingenuity of organisation or procedure
could make up for lack of purity in the moral, or elevation in the intellectual
standard.
So it was
that by the vast social change that was con-
sequent on
the policy of which Pericles was the leading spirit, the life of the Athenian
citizen of even the poorest station was one of constant activity and
excitement, was crowded with occupations of business relieved at intervals by
amusements that only gave less exercise to his intellect because chiefly
appealing to his imagination, his sense of the sublime, the beautiful, the
witty, and the humorous. And so it was, says Plutarch, that Pericles contrived
to make the public money available in substitution of the private munificence
of Cimon. But Cimon and his party appear thus to be at least as responsible as
Pericles for any mischiefs that were inherent in the new system. The payment of
a citizen’s expenses, the compensation for his loss of time, when given by a
private person was inevitably a bribe, and for the public to undertake the
charge was really the only means of emancipating dicasts in the public interest
and escaping the abuses of a packed assembly. The franchise had been conceded
on the widest terms and was clearly irrevocable, and the choice lay between a
majority bought beforehand and the chance of a majority that had at least the
opportunity and it might be fairly hoped the sense, of independence. Peculiar
advantages would no doubt attach to assemblies composed of citizens who had
leisure to spare from the occupations either of poverty or property, or were
willing to make a sacrifice out' of public spirit, but the days of such, if
they ever existed, had gone by, and the problem of the present day was dealt
with in the best, in perhaps the only, way available.
For a complete
understanding of how it was that a constitution which included so many
elements of irregularity as the Athenian, went on working even as long as it
did with such a measure of smoothness and efficiency, we should require far
more details than can be learned either directly or by inference from the
histories and historic notices that remain. The popular assembly—the
ecclesia—was open not
only to
whatever citizens might be on the lists of sworn dicasts for the year, but of
all indiscriminately who found it convenient to attend. As time went on and the
passion for direct control of public affairs increased, it engrossed more and
more power, exercised control more and more immediately and irresponsibly. The
Council still subsisted, still was to an even important extent a
pre-considering body, and had other important functions, but it never appears
as able or attempting to hamper the general assembly. This Council of five
hundred consisted of fifty members from each of the ten tribes, above thirty
years old, elected by lot independently of property qualifications. It was paid
for attendance; and its sittings, which were almost daily, were with few
exceptions public. Seclusion of a Council so numerous would obviously have made
little difference. The ten tribes took turns through the year in an order
determined by lot for their fifty members of the council to exercise for rather
more than a month the functions of Prytanes. During this term they were the
members more especially on duty, very probably in respect of the peculiar
business of the council. Otherwise we have little specified except that they
summoned meetings of the Council and demus, and seem to have had some control
of the police of the city. One of their number was elected daily by lot as
Epistates or president of the assembly, and was for so long custodian of the
keys of the treasury and the archives. The Prytanes would thus be the proper
channel of communication between the Council and the ecclesia.
To the
Council so constituted—drawn by lot and changing annually—was committed the
important duty of checking and controlling all financial matters, the receipt
of the public revenue from whatever sources, and its expenditure. It was to the
Council that despatches of generals and ambassadors were presented, in the
first instance, and that foreign ambassadors addressed themselves, and it was
natural and necessary, in pursuance of this primary cognizance of the most
important
affairs of
state, that the Council should arrange what business, at least what business
primarily, was brought before the assembly and in what form.
These
functions as described in such general terms, seem to imply something
approaching to supreme direction of public business, and that as much by the
faculty of shaping beforehand what was submitted for approval or rejection by
the assembly, as by the prerogative of using discretion to withhold some
altogether. But in the times we have arrived at, the privileges of the Council
were but shells or shadows of those of the institution which Solon looked to as
one of his mooring anchors. The changes which had since been introduced into
its constitution, whatever their nature, had certainly and uniformly contracted
its powers and favoured the constant encroachment upon them by the frequent assembling
of the ecclesia. Under ordinary circumstances it is clear that the Council was
competent not to decide, but only to digest business for the consideration and
decision of the great council of the demus. The casual appointment of the
members and their constant changes and successions effectually precluded the
exceptional talent of an individual from recovering and sustaining its
importance. The opportunity however of temporary conspicuousness and dignity
which membership distributed so widely through the community, was no doubt
highly valued, and occasional admission to personal contact with the very
arcana of state proceedings and policy had great interest; but in effect both
Council and Prytanes were responsible committees of the ecclesia, and only
touched the most important public business to reduce it to a form in which it
could be summarily discussed and dealt with by the all-powerful demus. To the
ecclesia they even introduced ambassadors in person, to the ecclesia
communicated despatches textually; and it may be assumed as certain, that the
demus was as jealous of any important independent action or decision on their
part, as the House
of Commons
of any tampering with a money bill by the House of Lords.
For the
machinery of a government so constituted to work with ease and efficiency,—for
the conduct both of general policy and of administration with its infinity of
details, to march with even moderate harmony and energy, it seems necessary
that two chief supplementary conditions should be present, of which the first
is an establishment of permanent officials from clerks even to chiefs of
considerable departments, who by familiarity with the course of extensive
transactions in all their details and interdependence, by knowledge of
individuals, and special experience, are necessary to superiors with transitory
tenure of office, and in fact indispensable for the very guidance of those to
whom in name they are absolutely responsible.
In the
second place, it would appear that neither the decision, nor the sustained
conduct of a large policy of principle, was to be hoped for, unless opportunity
was afforded by the effective, if not the designed adjustment of institutions,
for the retention of consistent governing power by some leading mind. This was
provided in a limited degree by the existence of certain offices, which were recognised
as demanding peculiar and exceptional qualifications, such especially as that
of Strategus or General, which therefore were filled by direct appointment,
independently of the lot, and to which repeated re-election was admissible. It
is known also that on certain occasions the jealous restriction of the powers
of the Council was relaxed, whether independently, or in conjunction with permanent
and specially appointed officials. At the very commencement of the
Peloponnesian war we find that Pericles, in virtue of his office of Strategus,
exercises his discretion as to calling together the public assembly; and it is
probable that even in peace there were some offices—even that of Strategus
amongst them—which gave the holder influence
or command
in the appointment of colleagues or subordinates, through which the demus
delegated a proportion of its cherished power to trusted ministers, of which
the tampering with the lists of conscription adverted to by Aristophanes, was
but a moderate abuse. Only by the commanding influence of an individual
character, better still as supported by a class in sympathy, can any degree of
steadiness in conduct and policy be attained in a state in which the ulti- ^
mate power lies with a numerous and popular assembly. The leader or chief may
be recognised as such only indistinctly,—may be marked out by no official
title, may be superseded from time to time and more or less frequently, but to
the leader for the time being must necessarily be conceded, as such a leader
indeed constantly knows how to exact, considerable freedom of action and—quite
as important—the right. and precedence of initiation. Intelligence and
consistency of purpose in the appointing or supporting assembly may countervail
the disturbing effects of many changes, may even go far to make up by
judiciousness in changes for the shortcomings of the individuals from whom it
is reduced to select; but this judiciousness is rather to be looked for from an
aristocratical body like a Roman senate, than from a democracy like the
Athenian, which is ever much more at the mercy of the clever incapacity and unprincipled
fluency of which Nicias was so fatally in 1 dread, unless a mind of
higher order is vouchsafed to arrest its confidence and save it from its
sycophants and from itself.
In
republican Athens not only was the autocratical difficulty of hereditary
monarchy long gone by, forgotten, but the still not quite unsubstantial form of
privileged power in the influence of noble birth, was rapidly on the decline;
the choice of leaders was therefore open to the ^ demus, and the merit must not
be entirely ascribed even to
the skill
and genius of Pericles, if he retained his position so long as their trusted
guide and adviser. But it was proved too soon and even before his departure,
how large a share of the glory was due to the unreplaced endowments of the
individual. His power is ascribed by Thucydides as much to his moral as to his
supreme intellectual qualifications. We hear unfortunately but little of his
coadjutors, so scanty is our information as to the details of his
administration; except in the case of Ephialtes we have only representative
names, and of those but few; it is much if the notice occurs how seriously he
suffered by the ravages among them through the pestilence. Coadjutors of no
ordinary ability and of devotion he must have had; still, so mainly by his own
genius did he shape the policy of the country, digest the business for the
approval of the demus, and conduct administration, that as Thucydides remarks,
what nominally was a democracy was in fact a government by the head man of it,
a government not acquired by assentation, but based on thoroughly merited
respect for independence, dignity, and foresight.
It is as
futile as it is unfair to seek in the miseries of the ensuing period for an
unqualified indictment against either the democracy which Pericles ordered and
organised, or the aristocracy that still hoped to recover its ancient predominance;
it is something worse to palliate or slur over the crimes either of one party
or another in the interest of an argument. ^Athens was great by the genius and
energy of its people, which could only have had free scope for develop' ment
under the conditions of their unlimited political freedom, and under the
condition also of happily possessing and appreciating a leader in Pericles, who
was capable of sympathising with the best qualities of democracy, while himself
imbued with the refined tastes, the lofty aspirations and the superiority to
corruption that characterise an ideal aristocracy/ It was the failure of a
succession of such men that was fatal to Athens. Thucydides is constantly
cited,
and fairly
enough, as a witness against the demus, but his repugnance can scarcely on a
general view be said to countervail his admiration. And his most serious
denouncement at last is not of the people at large but of a class. He
distinctly ascribes all the mischiefs of unscrupulous and embittered faction to
the greed and ambition of the leading men in the several cities, whether
professedly democratic or oligarchic, —he makes no distinction. It was the
pretence of one set to assert the political equality of the multitude, of the
other the privilege or pre-eminence of a mild and moderate aristocracy, but
both in fact made the public a prize and a prey, became more and more
contentious, more fierce and cruel towards each other, and whenever they
succeeded in seizing power, whether violently or by a furtive vote, set no
limits to vindictive animosity. With these men considerations of reverence or
piety were none. The very best reputation that was aspired to pretended to no
more than having at any rate employed a fair-sounding pretext in compassing a sinister
end. The intermediate orders of citizens were harried by both sides, if not as
partisans in the quarrel, then out of grudge that any should stand apart
indifferent and have a chance to escape 1 scot-free.
The
contrast between Herodotus and Thucydides, contemporaries as they were, is
scarcely less and in some important points not much other than between
Froissart and David Hume; but both discern with equal clearness that in the
selfish blindness of the chief leaders of policy in her cities lay the peril of2
Hellas.
It was in
consequence of the rancour which was infused by the worst promoters of this
fundamental class-antagonism, that the difficulty of the problem for Athens in
her newly admitted and accepted position, was so seriously exaggerated by the
attitude of Sparta. Notwithstanding the turn of
recent
events, Sparta still retained the feeling’s of a power unduly overshadowed and
superseded, and was not only looked up to by the Dorian cities, but also,
throughout the length and breadth of Hellas, regarded as the natural ultimate
refuge of oligarchy. The Hellenic race, for all its common genius, common
language, and common festivals, was very far from homogeneous, and in addition
to the deeply seated tribal and traditional difference of Dorian and Ionian,
there was this still deeper and more diffusive principle of disruption
permeating society itself, and ever threatening unsettlement of the most
equally advantageous treaties.
The only
issue that a Homan, standing in place of either Spartan or Athenian, would have
contemplated for sueh a hampering opposition, would have been absolute
conquest, and if necessary or even if not so, the merciless extirpation of the
rival. But the wars between the Greeks at last were civil wars, and civil wars,
though they have horrors all their own, have also ever some redeeming
clemencies. There is still a difference between a contest to disable or even
dismember, and a fight to the death. If it was due to this difference,
however, that the conquered were never left without hope of recovery, it was
also due that every compromise was precarious in duration and could only be
maintained by very exceptional wisdom, cither in the form of just moderation
or by creating an impression perhaps more or less factitious, of the
resistless resources and energy with which any infraction of terms would
without fail be visited.
THE ADMINISTRATION OF PERICLES IN PEACE.----- THUCYDIDES
SON OF MELESIAS.—'THE SCRUTINY OF CITIZENSHIP.
B.C. 445-441.
Diodorus notes, under the archon
Diphilus (442-41 B.C.), that the world was in the enjoyment of universal peace.
The Persians were under treaty with Athens with respect to the Hellenic cities
in Asia; the peace for thirty years was subsisting between Athens and Sparta;
Western Hellas was equally at rest by the pacification of Syracuse and Agri-
gentum, of Sicily and Carthage; Italy, Gaul, and Spain were quiet. The records
of the human race at large were free for a time from tales of war and
bloodshed; an interval occurred when it remained for peace to furnish happier
incidents of varied and often dignified importance,—the festive assemblages
for competitions in arts and the contests in public games, periodical
solemnities and sacrifices to the merciful gods, the extension of intercourse
by travel and commerce, vicissitudes of taste, advance of knowledge, and
whatever pertains and conduces to the truer nobleness and happiness of mankind.
The
suspension of hostilities between Sparta and Athens was destined to last only
for fourteen out of the stipulated thirty years, but these fourteen years of
peace, preceded as
they had
been by eight of comparative tranquillity, form one of the most important
periods in the history of civilisation; within limits even so narrow of
exemption from disturbance, were comprised a development of art and a
progressive elevation of the most refined faculties of mind up to a pitch that
has set a mark to be emulated by all future ages. By the Athenians in these
years, it may be quite as just to say, as also to the Athenians and amongst
them, examples were displayed of which the beneficial influence is moulding our
being at this day, and would have done so in some degree effectively by virtual
transmission of power, though the works themselves had perished ; surviving as
these do—fragmentary, mutilated, but still how abundantly,—in literature, in
marble, in description, they remain most potent agencies to kindle and
rekindle the disinterested enthusiasm for truth and beauty that more or less
should be the light for every man who comes into the world.
From this
point of view as well as politically, a most important result of the peace for
Athens was the decided establishment of the authority of Pericles; and his
administration of the peace goes far to explain how he could have emerged with
even enhanced power from such a sea of troubles as had swept over his country,
at a time when he was among the chief at the head of its affairs. That he did
so is almost the only, but in itself sufficient, proof how little the disasters
had been brought on through his advice and faulty guidance; while the rescue of
Attica and the reconquest of Euboea were his work entirely. The checked but
still vigorous ambition of Athens was now disposed, was reconciled, to rely on
a prudent rather than a rash adviser, and well inclined to make the best of a
position which was soon discovered to have been only reduced in extent to be
more secure and more absolute than ever ; it was soon found that no check of
importance had been given by these reverses to the march of events by which
Athens was already rising above
all the
multitudinous cities of Hellas,—of the world,—as an example to the nations how
to live, a demonstration for the first time of the height of excellence that
human life in society is capable of attaining to. Wealth, and the materials for
the very best enjoyments that wealth can conduce to, had been rapidly
accumulating in Hellas under protection of the security and peace which were
due to Athenian supremacy, and had poured with greatest abundance into the city
that was the very heart of the energetic organism; and now it was that
painting, sculpture and architecture developed into such rapid and brilliant
bloom that no expenditure could be lavished on the outburst of creative genius unworthily,
while all the arts were united with the poetic drama on the stage of Aeschylus
and Sophocles, of Crates and Cratinus.
Pericles
himself, though no mean commander—in the course of his career he raised nine
trophies for victories by sea and 1 land—was also a statesman of the
highest class; and by the happiest, by indeed the very rarest of all coincidences,
although a soldier, statesman and politician, he was endowed with more than a
respect, with even more than a sincere love for the arts—in fact with a taste
as correct and elevated as it was enthusiastic,— the apanage of a nature that
could retain sensibility for original truth and beauty, undeadened by the
usually vulgarising influences of the eager pursuit and practical exercise of
political power. Even at Athens so exquisite a combination of qualities did not
gain unembarrassed opportunities without contest and difficulty. An attempt was
made after the death of Cimon to reconstruct the aristocratical party, and
politicians too obstinate to resign their cherished maxims as hopelessly
obsolete, made biddings for support from the lingering prejudice for archaism
in art, to strengthen the attack. The alliance failed, as we shall see, and
Pericles, though destined
to suffer
at a later time from a renewed political assault envenomed by artistic
jealousy, went on and went far to reduce to actuality his ideal of a state; by
his guidance and management the world beheld for a time a community inspired
through every class, with intelligence and energy, together with lively
unaffected sentiment for style in art the most refined and lofty, the most
varied and elaborate; with passionate love for the beautiful, and, at the same
time, with public spirit unrelaxed and temperate amenability to reason and to
discipline.
Pericles
survived the peace, which was concluded about April 445 B.C., until the autumn
of 429 B.C., or about sixteen years and a half, of which period we read, that
during fifteen years he was without a rival to contest the supreme direction of
Athenian 'affairs. Athens, nominally and in form a democracy, was in fact
wielded at will for this term, by the energy and genius of a single statesman,
who commanded confidence by superiority to corruption and deference, by his
dignity and independent 2 self-respect. The last opponent by whom
his position was seriously threatened or modified, now the days of Tolmides, of
Cimon, of Myronides and Leocrates were past, was Thucydides, son of Melesias.
He was a relative and adherent of Cimon, but escapes mention until the death of
Cimon, though, apparently, he was then already of advanced 3 years.
Possessing no share of military or naval distinction, he was a home-keeping
politician, but exceedingly formidable by his power as an orator, to which his
high character gave value, though, even so, and on his own exclusive ground, he
was no match at last for Pericles ; of whom he complained as a wrestler who,
however manifestly thrown, could always convince the bystanders to the
contrary, against the evidence of all their senses. But the power of Thucydides
was not exercised solely on the bema; he had
remarkable
skill in uniting and organising a party, and in giving effect to its operations
during debate. He brought all the kaloi W agathoi into communication, and
instructed and induced them to act upon system and in concert, in
countervailing the democracy. No unimportant part of the tactics that he
instituted seems to have had reference to assiduity of attendance as well as to
united voting; he arranged for the prompt and persistent following up of
opponents with speeches in reply, and systematised even the clamours and
interruptions, which in a numerous public meeting often give waverers a false
impression of the prevailing feeling of the auditory at large, and sometimes disconcert
an unwary orator.
The
leading, or at least the ostensible, principle of the party of Thucydides, was
the revival of the policy of Cimon, again in opposition and contrast to that of
Pericles, which there was some opportunity of connecting with the humiliations
and the odium that the city had recently incurred. The experience of the
recently indicated tendency among nominal allies to disintegrate, and so
ultimately ruin, empire, was not to be thrown away. The Athenian demus, so it
was asserted, was in ill repute all over Hellas, as giving in to all the
insolence and malversation that are characteristic of tyrannies. The beginning
of the mischief—of the injustice—had been the removal of the common treasure
of the confederation from Delos to Athens, under pretext of security, but to
the effect of misappropriation; aggressive 'war against the Mede was now
virtually suspended,—this was the burden of complaint of the Lesbians at a
later Tdate,—and the common fund was being unfairly applied to the
amusements and decorations of Athens; and what decorations ? Money, willingly
contributed by the allies for support of war when hostilities against Persia
were a necessity and
a fact, is
now, it was said, only exacted to be squandered on gold and bedizenments which
are giving to the city the semblance of a tawdry over-dressed woman, hung about
with jewels and trinkets,—is lavished and wasted on statues and temples costing
a thousand talents 1 each.
A famine,
or at least a scarcity that had ensued upon the peace and perhaps helped to its
conclusion, was not in itself calculated to bring composure to the public mind,
when the grievousness of its conditions became more irritating as congratulations
at escape from a worse fate lost their consolatory power by habit; a large
present of corn which opportunely arrived from Psammetiehus, who still
maintained himself against Persia on the borders of Libya, was no doubt accompanied,
whether it had been 2 solicited or not, by application for renewed
assistance; and so the question was directly reopened, whether the enterprise
cut short by the death of Cimon should again be prosecuted in his spirit.
Against
such distant enterprises, whether to Egypt or, as others wrere
already urging, towards Italy and Sicily, Pericles argued with all his force
and 3 authority. He could not but forbode that a Dorian war wrould
sooner or later have to be encountered,—he declared that he saw the stormclouds
gathering over Peloponnesus. In the meantime, remoter acquisitions must be
foregone, for the sake of consolidation and development of the power in hand
and the ‘taking advantage of the noble position which Athens still held to
strengthen influence, to brace vigour, to accumulate resources and appliances
for a war, which was certainly threatened, if still remote, and of vital
importance. As regards the allies, their carping and their querulousness,
Athens had undertaken to give them protection against the barbarian, without
calling upon them for horse, or ship, or hoplite, but money payment only; the
protection bargained for was fully
given, and
this responsibility acquitted, the further disposal of the money was no affair
of the contributories ; it was at the discretion of Athens, and of Athens
alone. A treasure was a necessary element in a state of preparation for war, no
less than a provision of stores and arms, of ships and arsenals, and crews
trained and exercised,—crews which must be paid, of course, and deserved to be
so liberally. And beyond this, Athens, and all classes of her citizens, was
entitled to reward for the benefits which had been secured to Hellas at large,
by her patriotism and energy. The expenditure of the city again, on art and
works of art, was not waste in any sense; the renown of these was something
that was not to be treated as futile or transitory; and if the garrisons, the
sailors, the fighting population had their share of the well-earned national
wealth, another flowed as fairly to the population at large. The leading
artists were themselves like the generals, whose emoluments were exempt from
cavil, and in the execution of their great works were each at the head of a
numerous army of artificers of various grades, and diversified skill and
occupation; in this manner no age was left idle, no accomplishment or natural endowment
without its opportunity and employment, no talent without a career; and so the
advantages derivable from these great works permeated, as freely as
justifiably, the entire community.
When we
consider the marvellous outburst of genius that at this time distinguished
Athens, and brought arts suddenly not alone to a great advance but in fact to
absolute perfection,—perfection at least never since surpassed,—we cannot but
be grateful even to this day that the passion and the power should so have
united in Pericles, that he resolved to take all risks, rather than they should
be starved at the eve of maturity. Nations of excessive wealth in later days,
have dissipated far greater resources in extravagant consumption or vulgar
elaboration of commonplace comforts,
—in idle
amusements and sports when not in sensuality,— in unintelleetual or clumsy when
not in tawdry and offensive ostentation—on anything* at any time but real
science and genuine art, if not on miscreations wThich make what pretends
to be art and intercepts its due resources and rewards, a burden and an
abomination to its witnesses and a byword throughout the world.
And if the
Athenian empire became, before the death of Pericles, as Thucydides admits,
intolerably irritating and odious throughout Hellas, it was on other grounds
than the mere diverting of a taxation, which with the advance of wealth in
secured peace, was constantly becoming lighter. The first condition of empire
is the existence of such preponderant power in the central state, as to enable
it to compel obedience, and this Pericles fully believed that he had been able
to secure, even against foreign aids. The second is the prevalence in the
administration of this state, of such sagacity and moral control, as in the
first instance sccures the state itself from fatal discord and parting in the
midst, and then the subjects or allies from oppression that withers, or anno}Tances
that fret and vex to desperation. It was by failure in the latter
conditions—hard conditions no doubt from the peculiar constitution and
tendencies of Hellas, —that Athenian sway was destined to break down. Conciliation
and compulsion failed alike, and it may be of necessity; the enthusiasm for the
conservation of the democracy, was a true power that nerved the Athenian
people to the greatest efforts, the greatest sacrifices, but the conduct that
should guide sueh well-strung resolution was destined to be soon unsustained
not to say grievously wanting; it was wanting chiefly by the failure in natural
succession of other statesmen of the commanding genius and consummate
self-control of Pericles, to give steadiness to the action of the state by
repressing vain pretenders; wanting from the liability of the demus to give
way, when not so con
trolled,
it was well if not even in spite of such control, to passion, to ignorance, and
lastly to superstition, that combination of the most helpless ignorance and the
most deleterious perversion of the passions.
What then
is to be said, but that a happy combination of circumstances for a brief period
brought forth the genius of mankind into transitory bloom,—circumstances on the
whole far too precariously developed for the phenomenon to be hoped for as
permanent, when so frailly existent as to depend for its best continuance on the
life-breath of a single individual. The growth was forced at last, it may be,
but the world has seen in consequence by proof, what humanity can be justified
in aspiring to, and is so encouraged to apply to the enquiry how it may be
possible at least to favour the happy manifestation hereafter, with broader
basis and sounder general constitution. And after all it is not even for
Pericles to engross all our praises; a mighty meed of admiration can never be
refused to the Athenian demus, whatever our sense of, and indignation at, its
shortcomings and its sins; when we consider how absolutely it was master of its
vast income and accumulated treasure, we must admire the self-control with
which it submitted to the diversion of so much of its wealth to the production
of works of art, and the general diffusion of fine appreciation that could
acquiesce in expenditure on art of such an exalted type. That an outcry of
economists was not wanting might be taken for granted, and also that their
protest produced considerable impression on the assembly; the works that were
executed prove that it was foiled, and the enthusiasm that sanctioned the
projects of Pericles is illustrated by an anecdote of Plutarch which we may
accept as historical, if we limit the occasion to the voting of some particular
work. A demur to a large outlay was renounced at once on his proposing to
defray the expense from his own fortune and take the glory of the dedication
for himself.
Aristotle,
as quoted by 1 Plutarch, characterised Thucydides, Nicias, and
Theramenes as the three Athenian politicians who though belonging to the
aristocratieal class,—the Eupatrids,—had a true paternal regard and kindly
feeling to the demus; and we may take this as implying, what we might otherwise
infer from the ‘ Politica,’ an approval of the views of the son of Melesias as
to the relations of Athens and her allies. These views however had little
chance of success against the appeal of Pericles to the interests and passions,
—nay also to the most rational consideration—of the crowTd assembled
in ecclesia. The systematic opposition of the party that took signal from the
son of Melesias, had the effect of exhibiting more clearly and familiarly even
to the eye, the distinction between the majority, and the grouped minority of
the wealthier and more aristocratic. They became marked out by the current and
the, at Athens especially, obnoxious designation of the Few (oAtyoi), in
contradistinction to the 2 demus; and a snatched victory or two
obtained by their party discipline went for little when their scheme of
operation had become patent and notorious.
There is
some appearance that it was this party of the Few who at last most imprudently
persuaded themselves that the old instrument of ostracism might be applied to
get rid of Pericles, whoso power had already taken a form that could be not
implausibly represented as dangerous. The cry of the democracy in danger from
excessive power of an individual, was a potent one, and the old following of
Cimon, as usual more inflexible than their leader himself had proved, was
considerable still and from the classes of which it was made up, exercised a wride
influence; even the prospect of carrying a renewed Egyptian expedition may have
exercised a charm over many who were not convinced by the objections urged
against it. The friends of Pericles were alarmed and not
unnaturally,
for what benefactor of Athens of equal eminence had escaped ostracism at last ?
Not Cimon, not Themistocles, not Aristides, not Miltiades.
Some lines
of Cratinus appear to connect the escape of Pericles from ostracism with his
parade of the Odeum, as if the quarrel with Thucydides came ultimately to a
head on the question of expenditure for this novel Structure. By what means the
close contest was at last decided might be clearer were we certain of the exact
relative date of the ostracism and a scrutiny of citizenship under new limits
of stringency, which must have fallen about the same time, and manifestly would
affect most materially the balance of parties on the voting lists. This
scrutiny was certainly a measure of Pericles; it immediately affected
participation in the supply of corn received from Egypt, but also other far
more important privileges and immunities, and apparently was adopted in a
spirit of offensive retaliation for the pressure to which Athens had been so
stringently subjected. Lacedaemon might be indifferent to such consequences,
but they touched some of her allies and their connections very severely. War
was at an end and peace established, but animosities may survive in peace with
a virulence which qualifies the most advantageous terms of a treaty by annoyances
which no clauses can provide against. The merciless greed of a victor who
forfeits all chance of a moral for the sake of a material guarantee, may thus
easily overreach itself; such case has been, and the mischief to humanity is
double when the vanquished, in their unquenched spite at powerlessness against
external foes, turn to wreak unexpended venom on aliens resident within their
proper boundaries.
So long as
there had been hope that Athens might succeed in maintaining a headship over
not only the Ionian but a large section of Dorian and Aeolian Hellas, it is
conceivable
that the
privileges of her citizenship which were constantly becoming more valuable, if
not conceded with open liberality, might at least not be guarded with the
strictest jealousy. Commerce, the arts, society, had already made Athens the
true metropolis of Hellas, and life was there to be enjoyed and acquisition of
the means of enjoyment to be pursued, under advantages that were unapproachable
elsewhere. The active intercourse and free circulation of members of all
Hellenic tribes during the eight years of at least comparative peace, had
brought in numerous foreign settlers of whom many had become allied to native
families, or 011 the ground of previous relationship had come to be accepted as
Athenian citizens. But now a revulsion of feeling set in among the majority;
repudiated, as she had been by aliens, with insult, injury, ingratitude, was
Athens to endure to see aliens or even the children of aliens in her midst in
the enjoyment of benefits which had been won without their aid and recently
placed in jeopardy with their covert sympathy? The regulation which gave effect
to the popular feeling, was adopted on the motion of Pericles,—unconscious of
the bearing it was one day to have on his own domestic relations; a stricter
definition was given to citizenship and especially by the condition of purity
of descent on the side of both parents, to the severe exclusion therefore of
even the children of an Athenian citizen by an alien mother as well as of the
naturally less regarded offspring of alien fathers and Athenian mothers. A
scrutiny was instituted and carried through with unsparing rigour. The
inducement to restrict to a smaller number the solid benefits of citizenship,
its privileges and advantages now so considerable, could not but have its
influence, but beyond this there can be little doubt that a main motive for this
reversal of a liberal and in so many aspects useful policy, was the rancour of
the defeated Athenians against relatives of enemies or rebels, the allies of
the Lacedaemonians whose native policy disqualified them for protesting—at
least
with
consistency, against an extrusion of foreigners. So numerous were the
disfranchisements under this measure as applied,—the list of nineteen thousand
citizens was reduced, it is said, by as many as five thousand,—that it was
almost equivalent to a xenelasia, a systematic expulsion of aliens, the very
sight of whom had become hateful by association with defeat, and still worse
with the terms of a humiliating treaty. This is such a sweeping
disfranchisement of a minority as Aristotle adverts to as frequent when a democracy
at once grew richer and more grasping, independently of any special provocation
or resentment.
That
Pericles should have lent his hand to a measure that contradicts the larger
policy of Solon and Cleisthenes, the great founders of the democracy, and narrowed
a basis which imperial policy required to be extended to the utmost, seems the
most serious slur upon his statesmanship that is on record; it seems probable
however, that the stroke had no little to do with seating him securely in
authority for the rest of his life, and that it was the instrument with w'hich
he succeeded in warding off ostracism from himself and diverting it upon the
heir of Cimon’s indiscriminate foreign sympathies,— his own last dangerous
rival, Thucydides. Pericles must have felt that his own escape from an
undeserved fate had been narrow, if we may believe Plutarch that from this time
his manner towards the demus changed,—that he assumed somewhat of the severity
of just indignation at an insult, and no longer cared to dissimulate his
consciousness that he stood alone and was indispensable. I am disposed to think
however that the biographer seriously antedates the occasion of this revulsion.
The
ostracism of Thucydides is dated in 445 B.C. by Plutarch’s notice that the rule
of Pericles extended to fifteen years thereafter.
THE COLONY OF THURIUM : HERODOTUS AND THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES.
B.C. 442-44I.
The effect of the
scrutiny was equivalent to a very considerable internal revolution, and might
be expected to induce discontents and disturbances of a nature to declare
themselves more distinctly than we find to be the case. It is therefore highly
significant that this wholesale disfranchisement should be found to
synchronise with an undertaking— the foundation of Thurium—that provided
foreign settlement for very large numbers from the city. Of the various motives
which are assigned by Plutarch to Pericles for the Athenian colonies, the
intent to relieve the city of unemployed and troublesome classes, would operate
here, though not as in some other cases, the purpose to set wrateh
and check upon the movements of the allies.
The
opportunity embraced was presented by envoys of the Sybarites, who arrived to
solicit aid from both the great confederations in restoring their once so
prosperous and powerful but now ruined city. Their proposal had met with no
favour at Lacedaemon, and in consequence the field was again free for Attic
enterprise to take the lead; a general proclamation was made for volunteers,
apparently on the oeca-
sion of
the eighty-fourth Olympic festival, but the dominant character of the new
settlement was, as of the old, Ionic.
Sybaris,
situated on the streams Sybaris and Crathis, to the north-west of Crotona on
the Tarentine Gulf, was originally a joint colony of the Ionian tribes of
Achaia and Troezene; its situation was central for commerce, and a fair
roadstead supplied the want of a good harbour. Its relations with the great
Asian emporium Miletus were particularly intimate; so much so, that on the occasion
of its great catastrophe, the Milesians marked their sympathy by a general
1 mourning. The surrounding country was of
extraordinary fertility, and the Sybarites extended their influence to comprehend
the rich district Siritis, that stretched along the seaboard eastward, and
which they endeavoured to secure against the encroachment of Tarentum, by
promoting an Achaean resettlement of Metapontum after its destruction by the
Samnites. This is the district in regard to which Herodotus puts into the mouth
of Themistocles the 3 assertion that it belonged to the Athenians
from of old, and had been declared by oracles (Aoyia) to be destined for their
occupation. This mythical title seems to have been grounded on some supposed
connection with the Ionians of the Troad, who were said to have migrated
thither when they retired before the 4 Lydians.
The policy
of ancient Sybaris is noted as having been peculiarly liberal in the adoption
of citizens and reception of allied towns, and a vast increase of population
was more than kept pace with by accumulation of wealth and the luxury that
became proverbial. Under these circumstances it was but by the ordinary law of
Hellenic development that a democratic movement should make resolute assault on
privileges which dated from the first years of the colony. The more numerous
Achaean section of the citizens found a
2 Antioch, ap.
Strab. 264. 4 Strabo, 264.
leader in
Telys, one of the class of demagogues who, under such conditions, were wont to
ripen quickly into the lasileus or tyrant, by both which terms Herodotus refers
to him within but a few 1 sentences. The Troezenian citizens, who to
the number of five hundred were identified with the aristocratic party, were
expelled and their possessions confiscated. The exiles took refuge at Crotona,
where a demand was made for their extradition, but probably not till after a
considerable interval, as Telys appears to have retained power for some
time,—it may be when their intrigues were becoming really dangerous, or it may
be when Sybaris believed that the time had come for its far superior force to
wrest an advantage from Crotona. From an expression of Aristotle, it would
appear that Sybaris, by some overt act in connection with the expulsion, had
incurred the dangerous odium of gross impiety, of ayos, and the anger of
Here,—according to
2 Phylarchus, by the slaughter and
exposure without burial of thirty Crotoniat envoys, and under circumstances
involving the violation of a sanctuary. It was not till after a debate which
was rendered serious by religious apprehension of like responsibilities, that
Crotona refused to surrender suppliants and accepted the alternative of war.
But besides that the Sybarites had put themselves in the wrong with the gods,
there was the still more palpable encouragement to the Crotoniats of the
presence on their side of Callias, a soothsayer of the renowned family of the
Iamids of Elis, who, warned by his omens of the issue of the strife, had
deserted his employer Telys in good 3 time. The Crotoniat leader was
the celebrated athlete Milo, a member of the Pythagorean society, which at
this time had great influence in his native city. A single battle, in which the
vastly superior —in the records the grossly exaggerated—numbers of the
Sybarites were unavailing, was decisive. The imputed irre-
1 Herod, v. 44; Athenae. p. 521.
8 Athenae. p. 521.
3 Herod, v. 44.
ligion
gave edge to the mercilessness of the victors ; the rout became a massacre, and
within a space of seventy days Sybaris was utterly ruined. The descendants of
Callias the mantis were known to Herodotus as retaining the estates that were
granted for his services on the decisive day.
The very
site of Sybaris was said to have been laid under water, by being made the bed
of the diverted river Crathis, which the phrase of Herodotus however only
implies to be that of a torrent dry in summer,—a contrast to the perennial
Crathis of Achaia, from which it had its 1name. This was but poor
satisfaction for the exiles who doubtless counted on being restored by their
protectors to supremacy in the recovered city.
The exact
date of this catastrophe must be a little uncertain, but Herodotus at least
speaks of the dispossessed Sybarites as settled, at the date of the fall of
Miletus, 494 B.C., at Laus on the borders of Lucania, upon the Tyrrhene Sea,
and at Scidrus, of which no other mention occurs except in an enumeration of
Stephanus Byzantinus.
Fifty-eight
years afterwards, a certain Thessalus, according to Diodorus in one 2
place—in another he says 3 Thessalians—made an attempt to restore
the cityw ith the remnant or rather descendants of the old inhabitants; but the
still surviving jealousy of Crotona only allowed them an occupation of six
years. How long it may have been after this last expulsion that the proposals
ensued for the new settlement which was now in question, is uncertain, and we
cannot confidently reckon back from 445-4 B.C. the date of this renewed scheme
by addition of the terms of fifty-eight and six years, to assign 510 B.C. for
the first great downfall.
4 Diodorus gives
the archonship of Callimachus, 446-5 B.C., for the third founding of Sybaris,
but the Athenian participation is very satisfactorily 5 dated
between two and three
1 Herod, v. 45 ; i. 145. 2 Diod. xi. 90. 3
lb. xii. 10.
4 lb. 5
See Clinton, p. 54. .
years
later under Praxiteles, 444-3 B-Cv> and to
this was probably due that change in the site of the new city which he notes as
determined on ‘ after a short time.’ We hear nothing now of opposition by
Crotona, which argues sufficient lapse of time to have modified political
combinations. What difficulty did occur, but slight and of short duration, was
due to hostilities from the other side—from Tarentum, against which even
Crotona now may possibly have been glad of an ally. The dispute, or rather war,
in which Thu- rium had the aid of the Lacedaemonian refugee Cleandridas as 1
general, was again respecting the Siritis; it was at last agreed to occupy it
in common, but for the honours of the settlement to be conceded to the
Tarentines; who accordingly founded Heracleia, to which Siris became the
harbour.
To Lampon
the Athenian is assigned the distinguished title of oikistes or founder—a claim
afterwards disputed,— a Xenocritus is another 2 leader. Pericles
despatched ten ships fully manned, but these seem to represent rather a
supporting force than the proper emigrant fleet, as Athens supplied more of the
settlers than any other 3 city. Lampon himself is mentioned as a
sacrificer, a soothsayer, a mantis. In this function he had given support and
encouragement to the party of Pericles in the contest with Thucydides, by
interpreting the prodigy of a single-horned ram from his estate, as promise and
sign of his unparticipated power. The assistance may have been welcome enough,
however the theory of interpretation was contemned. Anaxagoras, at least as
fast a friend of Pericles, but who could not let politics check science,
protested by dissecting the skull and showing that the external appearance was
illusory. But such services had their use, and their engagement 011 such
occasions as the founding of a colony, was a traditional necessity. Lampon
evidently was equal
to the
occasion, and an oracle was procured from Apollo that sanctioned the most
important measure of a change of site; the discovery of a fount with a bronze
funnel or spout, called by the provincials a medimnus, was taken as explaining
the meaning of the god who warned to settle where water—of which the drowned
Sybaris had had too much— was obtained by measure. Dionysius Chaleus is named
as another colleague of 1 Lampon; he had at least a son who was an
adept in working oracles and was attached to Nieias, who was likely to defer to
him only too obsequiously. In an enterprise so governed and conducted, we
cannot be surprised to find the historian Herodotus, who was now at the age of
forty-one. To him also oracles and prodigies were an accepted part of his
natural surroundings, and he was as likely to be impressed by Lampon’s
interpretation of the one-horned ram as to think worth recording in his history
the portentous dream of Agariste, the mother of Pericles, that she was brought
to bed of a 2 lion.
The new
city was disturbed at the very beginning by the same pretensions to privilege
that had been fatal to ancient Sybaris. The native Sybarites claimed, if not
exclusive at least preferential ownership of the soil, a right to the best lots
and the nearest to the town, and precedence moreover in all superior offices
and sacred celebrations for themselves,— and, more galling still, for their
wives. These first attempts at an aristocratieal system were checked at onee,
but not without a collision in which the remnant of Sybarites were all but
exterminated and the survivors expelled ; a democracy was established, and the
general organisation of the city and society then proceeded with a very
characteristic aim at system and symmetry which so far avouched its wisdom by a
long duration in prosperity. The tale of three disasters by which Apollo had
announced that Sybaris would have
1 Plufc. Ir. Niciaz, 5. VOL. II.
K
to atone
to Leucadian Here before attaining ’rest was now fully made up. The fugitives
settled by the river Traens, but, according to Diodorus, who however antedates
both the colony and this incident, were very shortly dislodged and decimated by
the neighbouring 2barbarians.
The new
citizens were classed, like the Athenians, in ten tribes, but with titles that
intimate their original countries and relationships—an arrangement that would
seem to prepare for rivalries and partisanship; the worst that we hear,
however, is a contention as to the honours of founder of the city, which was
easily appeased by the Delphic god assuming them for 3 himself. Four
out of the ten tribes, the Ionian, Athenian, Euboean, and Nesiotic or Insular,
were derived from the Athenian empire ; three wrere from the tribes
within Peloponnesus that were no parties to the Lacedaemonian confederation,
the Arcadian, Achaian, and Elcian; the absence of Troezenians seems to imply
that with them the Achaian element had remained preponderant through all
revolutions. The remaining three tribes are extra-Peloponnesian, and it seems
probable were largely made up from the numerous exiles who, in usual course,
would be extruded from their countries, now that autonomy and aristocracy were
again in the ascendant, and democracy set aside along with dependence upon
Athens;—they are Boeotian, Am- phictionid, and Dorian.
The city
was laid out on a formal and scientific plan; four long streets were crossed by
three others at right angles, a distribution which probably accommodated an
oblong agora in the centre. The four streets were named after Ileraeles,
Aphrodite, and Dionysus, and apparently Zeus, under his title of Olympian. Of
the three less important transverse streets, the names of two, Thuria and Thurina,
were connected with the eponymous fount, or stream, which is symbolised on the
coins by a
rushing bull as Oovpios, with a fish below; the third was the Heroic, or street
of the heroes.
The laws
for the regulation of the city seem to have been studied with a like aim at
completeness and symmetry, and apparently adopted, to a great extent, from the
code of Cha- rondas, whose date is uncertain—except only that he was not, as
Diodorus implies, contemporary. Among them Diodorus mentions a law for universal
education, with a state provision for that of the poor, and the establishment
of health-officers, or physicians in receipt of public pay.
It was
before this date that Hippodamus, son of Euryphon of Miletus, had given the
first example of laying out a city on a systematic 1plan; at a still
later date (01. 93. 1 ; 339 B.C.) he applied his principles again in rebuilding
Rhodes. Aristotle states that he was also the first who, without being
practically engaged in politics, disserted on the theory of the best polity;
and gives some notices of his laws which affect a principle of triplicity.
Nothing of the kind appears in the Thurian notices of Diodorus, and it seems
probable that the participation of Hippodamus in this colony was only inferred
in error from coincidence in date and agreement in principle, if not in detail,
with his combination of symmetrical system in legislation for a city, and in
the architectural distribution of its 2 plan. Stoboeus quotes
another Hippodamus as Thurian and Pythagorean, in extracts of some
3 interest.
It seems
impossible not to recognise as aimed at Thurium the Aristophanic ridicule of
pedantry in Cloud-cuckoo city, the upstart town with a site determined by a 4
diviner, proposed to be laid out symmetrically by 5 geometricians,
and generally the resort of all political theorists; even the 6
proclamation against the atheist Diagoras of Melos smacks of a con
1 Aristot. Pol. ii. 5. 12 Phot. Lex. in
Person. 3 Cf. Hesycb.
4 Aristoph. Aves v. 967. 5 lb. 6
The Clouds, v. 1073.
temptuous
reference to the preamble of the laws of the Pythagorean as pietistic, or at
least 1 incongruous. In ‘The Clouds/ brought out many years earlier,
we find Thurian diviners—Thnriomantei*—established types of quack theorists and
ostentatious 2 impostors.
In the
argument of the Antigone of Sophocles, it is stated that the poet owed his
command in the expedition to Samos, as colleague of Pericles, to the reputation
he had gained by this tragedy. The expedition in question dates about the
summer of 441 B.C., but at the Dionysia in the previous spring, under the
arehon Diphilus, the first prize in tragedy is recorded as having been gained
by Euripides. If we assume then that the Antigone took a first prize, as the
story seems to imply, it must be thrown back at least a year to the spring of
442 B.C., under Lysanias, and within a year after the date of the settlement of
Thurium. With every allowance for accidental coincidences, it is certainly
remarkable that a play which has constantly attracted attention as abounding in
parallelisms with favourite observations and maxims of Herodotus, should
appear by independent presumption to have been produced so near the time when
several accounts report the residence of the historian at Athens, preparatory
to his taking part in the Athenian colony, and his intercourse also on that
occasion with the poet.
The ‘main
question of the play,’ its clear drift in itself, is the exhibition of the
difficulty of humanity in a conflict of responsibilities, between the claims of
most saered personal duties on the one hand, and on the other the demand of a
government for implicit obedience, irrespective of private judgment, as the
condition of safety for a 3 state. The result of this conflict, as
carried to extremities in the Antigone, is destruction and ruin on both
sides—of the tyrant who pursues vengeance against an exile even beyond death,
as well as of
1 C’f.
Picul, xii. 20.
2 The
Clunih, v. 331. 3 II). 670
foil., 450 full.
the
heroine his victim. Considering the circumstances of the time, we cannot but
speculate, however slight the outcome, whether the tale of the tyrant Telys
may not have had such interest and notoriety just now at Athens, as to sharpen
sensibilities to the moral implications of the Theban catastrophe. The primary
unatoned sin—ayos—of the Sybarites, which Aristotle hints at, followed up as
it was by impious exposure of unburied enemies to be devoured by the dogs and
vultures, and the denouncement and desertion of Telys by his own mantis
Callias, premonitory of his utter ruin, have certainly a marked analogy to the
fateful difficulties of Thebes, the rancorous exposure of the corpse of the
exile Polynices, and the denouncements of Teiresias disregarded till too late.
In the
play both the asserters of rigidly enforced authority and of more high-minded
resistance to it, are alike beaten down into death and misery; and it were pity
that commentators aspiring to be moralists should adopt the low- minded
conclusions which are ascribed, with intention, to a chorus of wealthy seniors
who hug themselves on their own immunity, and should read the poet as
demonstrating by the death of Antigone the duty of discreet, unqualified,
cringing submission. Sympathies unblunted by habitual servility to
aristocracies or attendance on princes, will recognise that the better
compensations are carried over at last to the victim of cruelty, rebel though
she be; and will rest upon the conviction that on her side, after all, lie
truest strength and the strongest hope and surest trust of ultimate triumph,
however the course and character of its achievement may elude the ken of
mortals.
If the
difficulty that forms the motive of the play were pressed home, it would
clearly lead up to the right and duty of rebellion against tyranny; left as it
was, it gratified Athenians, no doubt, by exhibition of the extravagances of
personal tyranny, and not the less that the tyrant was
a Theban ;
but it carried a moral all the same that was applicable, with the most rigid
generality, to supreme power however and wherever resident, and to the effect
that administration when content to be justified by adherence to the letter of
enactment, and enactment with nothing in its favour but technical legitimacy of
origin, would involve failure and misery in every direction by insisting on its
course; that empire the most just in origin, even the most absolute, even the
Athenian, could only hope for stability by concurring with the unwritten laws
of eternal justice.
Events
were already on their way which were to prove that it was not at all too soon
for such considerations to be taken to heart at Athens.
THE EE VOLT OF SAMOS.
B.C. 441, 440.
In the
sixth year of the thirty years’ peace, under the archonship of 1Timocles
(441-40 B.C.), a date in which Thucydides is confirmed by the scholiast of 2
Aristophanes, a dispute broke out into violence between Samos, one of the three
insular autonomous allies of Athens, and the city of Miletus on the mainland,
as if in renewal of the enmity to which they had been committed in almost
prehistoric times as allies respectively of Chalcis and Eretria. For forty
years since the battle of Mycale, Samos had retained internal independence in
finance and jurisdiction, and having never commuted its federal liabilities for
a money payment, continued to maintain a war fleet, under independent control,
only with the obligation to supply a contingent for purposes of the
confederation. Peace and security had restored the prosperity of the island ;
and with a considerable increase of their fleet, the ambitious spirit of the
Samians revived, and prompted aspirations for the independence of earlier days,
and the restoration of that greatness of which the
1 Thuc. i. 115.
2 Aristoph. Vesp. 283.
monuments
still existed to excite the enthusiastic admiration of Herodotus. Samos
advanced to its ancient prosperity through the same development that summarises
the story of so many Greek cities; an oligarchy had ruled until the time came
lor it to be superseded by a democracy, which was in turn—we may almost say in
due order—supplanted by the energetic, rapacious, and luxurious tyranny of Polycrates
; it shared with Ionia the intermediate subjection to Persia, and now the
democratieal government which the Athenians had placed in power after the
general •liberation, had lapsed in some unrecorded way into an oligarchy again.
That in the relative position and engagements of the two states such a change
should have taken place under any circumstances without provoking immediate
interference or dictation by Athens, is argument for the general indulgence,
not to say laxity, of her control; the time came, however, when the popular ear
could not but be open there for loud complaints of an oppressed democratical
party. Athens ever looked askance at oligarchs as out of sympathy with her rule
by very necessity of nature; and Samian oligarchs on their part, not unwarned
nor unaware of the precariousness of their position, fretted more and more at
subordination, and were even as ready to look to Persia for help as the
Athenian oligarchs to Sparta. Not only did the temples, the palace, and perhaps
the library also of the 1 tyrant, who, semi-pirate as he was, had
been to Anacreon what Hiero wras to Pindar, still adorn the 2
city, but his fortifications and noble harbour were entire, and were elements
of power which, combined with an insular situation, gave Samos the same
advantages which had recently been secured to Athens by her Long Walls : the
confidence generated by such security of position was not without encouragement
from without, and all was ripe at last for dreams to be entertained, not
merely of
vindicating a right of independent political action, but even of contesting
with Athens the command of the sea, and competing for at least a share in
empire.
The
present quarrel with Miletus had reference to the control of Priene, a dispute
as old as the wars of Polycrates, and which, strange to say, we do not quite
hear the last of till late under the Roman Emperors ; hostilities ensued which
it was no more consistent with the position of Athens as custodian of the
general peace, to permit between her allies than against her allies, and she
interposed with a command for both to lay down arms and defer to her
arbitration. Neither on this nor on any other occasion do we hear of even such
a pretence of deference on the part of Athens to votes of a synod of allies as
Sparta was careful to exhibit before entering on the great war. It was indeed
to a sense of degradation by exclusion from all imperial rights,—to indignation
at manifest forfeiture of the proudest privilege of autonomy, the authority to
make peace or war or even to participate in such questions by deliberation,
that the resolute contumacy of Samos was largely due. Miletus, overmatched, was
now urgent for active intervention, and her application was eagerly seconded by
a certain number of men from Samos who discerned that the imbroglio must bring
about a revolution in their own government. An expedition was accordingly
despatched by the Athenians under the command of Pericles, who arrived at Samos
with forty ships to find no organised resistance; the party in power, the
Geomori, or landed proprietors of the class which had furnished an earlier as
it was to constitute a later oligarchy, were in fact resting in confidence that
all difficulty would be surmounted by the bribe which they were prepared to
offer to the Athenian commander out of funds which it was believed by some must
have been supplied by the Persian satrap. The magnitude of the temptation only
gave Pericles the better opportunity for displaying that superiority to
corruption which he is after-
wards
found appealing to with such confidence and 1 effect. He put aside
the offers of the oligarchs, with contempt superseded their authority, and establishing1
a democratical government in their place, left an Athenian garrison to support
it. At the same time he imposed a fine to be paid by instalments, — Diodorus
mentions eighty talents, about 19,500,—and as security for punctuality of
payment as well as for the continued submission of the superseded party, fifty
boys and as many adults were taken as hostages, and sent to Lemnos for
detention.
This
however was not to be so speedily the end. It was not long before a scheme of
counter-revolution was arranged between malcontents at Samos and exiles abroad,
for which the Persian satrap at Sardis, Pissouthnes, son of Hystaspes, who at a
later date furnishes Arcadian as well as barbarian mercenaries for a like
enterprise, lent his assistance. With an auxiliary force of seven hundred men,
the exiles crossed the narrow channel from the mainland at night, were admitted
by confederates into the city, and at once overpowered the demus : taking
possession of the fleet, they contrived to carry off their hostages from
Lemnos, and by way of securing hostages in their turn, consigned the Athenian
garrison and officials whom they had captured to the custody of the Persians.
Samos was thus committed to open revolt, and at once prepared to encounter the
consequences. Stesagoras, who is named as if well-known but escapes mention
elsewhere, was despatched southwards with five ships to claim assistance, and
probably to hasten assistance already promised from a Phoenico-Persian fleet:
and by the same policy which led Mitylene in a revolt at a later time, to seek
to seize on Cumae as a basis for prolonging resistance on the mainland, the
Samians now without loss of time despatched to Miletus so strong a fleet,
together with transports carrying
forces, as
to imply an expectation that a sudden and vigorous attack would give them
possession of the city.
Byzantium
revolted at the same time, but under what circumstances, with what degree of
concerted plan or promise of foreign aid, or whether through more than
coincident and spasmodic sympathy in discontent, does not appear. That a degree
of excitement was prevailing at this time, which attests the perilousness of
the crisis for Athens, appears by a movement in the Peloponnesian confederacy,
where proposals were afoot—the peace for thirty years notwithstanding—for
supporting Samos in revolt. The question was debated at Sparta in one of those
congresses of her allies which we only hear of thus incidentally, and which
probably in most cases influenced policy for the leading state but slightly, or
we should hear of them more. According to the averment of the Corinthians at a
later date, it was entirely due to their advocacy of neutrality that Athens was
left on this occasion to her own course in dealing with her own refractory 1
subjects. Corinth, in fact, had herself subordinate, if not dependent,
settlements, and, we may infer, was chary of invalidating at this time the
principle of control which we shall find her asserting on her own part
afterwards; in any case Sparta, whether as the result of deliberations, or in
consequence of deliberation being overtaken by Athenian promptitude, remained
inactive.
The
expedition of the Samians had no time to make an impression at Miletus before
it was recalled to oppose an Athenian fleet, which by its moderate numbers
evinces the haste of its equipment and despatch on the first news of the *
outbreak. Of sixty ships, under command of Pericles as chief of ten generals,
which were to be made up as soon as possible to a hundred, as many as sixteen were
detached, a part in the direction of Caria to reconnoitre the movements of any
Phoenician
fleet, and part to summon the contingents of Chios and Lesbos; this latter
detachment was under the command of the poet Sophocles. With the forty-four
ships which remained to him Pericles engaged the Samian armament of seventy
ships, of which twenty were transports, off the little island of Tragia, to the
south of Samos, and defeated and drove it to take refuge in port. His
reinforcements presently arrived, the forty ships from Athens and twenty-five
from Chios and Lesbos, and now, while maintaining a blockade by sea, he
disembarked, and after a battle in which he again had the superiority, shut up
the city on the land side also by a triple wall, of which, however, the exact
distribution is not explained.
The city
had been made exceedingly defensible by Polycrates, among other means by a
deep fosse dug by the compelled labour of captives ; and that under all the
circumstances, and considering the general advantages at this time in favour of
the defence, it should have held out no longer than it did, seems to demand
more explanation than any presumable vigour in an ordinary attack. Ephorus,
indeed, is quoted by Plutarch as authority for the employment by Pericles of engines
that were then of novel invention ; only the ram and testudo are mentioned, and
the use of these would imply the direct attack upon the walls which Diodorus
distinctly avouches. There is the less ground for calling the general fact in
question, as engines were certainly employed a few years later, though without
success, against 1 Potidaea; tradition, however, seems to have made
some confusion between the engineer’s name and nickname—Artemon Peri-
phoretus—and those of a Samian contemporary of Anacreon, notorious in his
verses.
These
operations were still in progress when a report arrived that a Phoenician fleet
was really to be expected, and
Pericles
sailed at once with a squadron of sixty ships in search of the enemy, about
Caunus and Caria beyond the Cnidian promontory, never doubting that the
armament left behind was sufficient to give occupation to the Samians. Of his
meeting with a hostile fleet, or any signs of it, we hear nothing; if
Pissouthnes had deceived the Samians by false promises, he had helped them in
some degree by misleading their enemies also. The reduction of the blockading
force and the absence of Pericles gave spirit to the besieged, and this was
encouraged by their leader, a remarkable man, Melissus, son of Ithagenes, a
speculative writer who left an impression on the history of philosophy that
still demands consideration. He organised a sally from the harbour, which had
entire success; the ships stationed on guard were overpowered, and others,
which the Athenians hastened to launch from the unfortified naval camp, were
defeated likewise. In result the Samians were masters of the sea for fourteen
days, and at liberty to introduce or send away whatever they wished or wanted.
Aristotle is quoted, or perhaps 1 misquoted, as stating that
Melissus gained a previous naval victory over Pericles himself; we cannot,
however, desert Thucydides, who says distinctly that the only Athenian defeat
that comes within the story occurred during his temporary absence.
With the
return of Pericles the blockade became again effectual, and still further
reinforcements arrived in quick succession; forty more ships from Athens under
Thucydides, Hagnon, and Phormio, then twenty under Tlepolemus and Anticles,
besides thirty from Chios and Lesbos. The presumption is strong, from
comparison of dates, that this Thucydides is not the son of Melesias, and while
it by no means follows in that case that it was the historian, it is as little
clear that it may not have been.
The
Samians made still another but fainter attempt at
a naval
attack, but as might be expected now, without success. Losses apart—and none of
any consequence are intimated— the Athenian fleet had been raised to 215 ships,
an evidence of the great power of the enemy—Isocrates gives the round number two
hundred,—and Pericles pushed on the attack, by a system of constant reliefs
night and day, which exhausted the besieged, while, at the same time, he
contrived to keep his own forces in heart under the trials, less of peril than
of tediousness, by turns of activity and relaxation, and even amusement.
Charges and counter-charges were made in antiquity of brutal treatment and
branding of prisoners, on which it is now impossible to adjudicate. It is happy
that indignation should be unanimous 011 at least atrocities of this nature,
though in truth they add but a very trifle to either the wickedness or miseries
that are involved with applause no less unanimous for the actors, in what is
known at this day as civiliscd 1 warfare. Details are wanting as to
how the close was precipitated, but in result the Samians surrendered in the
ninth month, submitting to the terms to level their fortifications, to give
hostages, to surrender their fleet, and pay the expenses of the war, which
Diodorus states reached two hundred talents,—a very moderate estimate indeed,
considering the forces employed,—partly in a present sum, and the rest in
stated instalments. It is to the honour of the Athenians, when under the
guidance of Pericles—in contrast unfortunately to the same Athenians when
influenced by Cleon— that the conclusion of a struggle so severe was unsullied
by a massacre in cold blood, which Thucydides assuredly would not have
hesitated to set down coldly had it occurred.
Byzantium
came to terms at the same time, and resumed its former condition of
dependence—of subjection.
Samian
autonomy was in this manner brought to an end ; no consideration seems to have
been admitted of the revolt
1 See the
article Guerre, in Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary.
having
been the deed of a faction only, which was as inimical to the loyal demus as to
Athens, and it may be in this view that Aristotle speaks of the Athenians as
presuming 011 the plenitude of their power to oppress the Samians, as the
Chians and Lesbians afterwards, contrary to treaty; otherwise he would appear
to assume that there was foregone provocation of the revolt in more infractions
of Samian privileges than are mentioned.
We read
nothing of a restoration of democratical government after the suppression of
the revolt, but as Samos was rendered quite defenceless for the future, the
form of its government had become comparatively unimportant to the sovereign
state. Twenty-seven years afterwards, while allegiance to Athens remains still
unimpaired, we find the Geomori, —the privileged class of landed
proprietors,—again in power, and with the usual leaning of oligarchs to Sparta,
which also, as usual, they are quite aware will not be participated by the
demus. It is not necessary to suppose that this change was brought about by a
violent revolution. In twenty-seven years there was ample time for another
section of wealthy proprietors to arise or to advance in wealth and power,—the
very opposers, possibly, of the former oligarchy, or such cautious members of
it as are ever found at such a crisis prepared to become parties to a
democratic movement, however repugnant to them, out of concern for immediate
personal safety, or if only of set purpose to gain the power to direct,
control, and ruin it. The native demus, on this later occasion, forestalled the
action of the oligarchical conspirators, killed two hundred, banished twice
that number, excluded all other members of the party from privilege of every
kind, and even forbade future intermarriage with their class. This latter
precaution seems to point to the process by which, after the revolution we have
been dealing with, family alliances between new men in power and the ousted
inheritors of power had effected the gradual transformation of leading
demagogues into oligarchs,
by
sympathy and by connection with the more ancient possessors. The confiscation
of lands was apparently found not to suffice alone as a safeguard against
revival of landed influence and aristocratic tendencies, unless all
opportunity for family arrangements were cut off at the same time ; we seem to
have a hint that in these unsettled times a title to confiscated land was
sometimes sought to be secured, in case of counter-revolution, by
intermarriages with the dispossessed, a proceeding that at once increased the
chance and carried the seeds of dangerous reaction. Oligarchy was an
ineradicable tendency, ever living as a germ if ever latent, among demo-
cratical institutions of the more stringent type; even after the later so
drastic Samian repression of oligarchy, the very party that had been most
violent against it is presently found supplying men of influence and substance
from its very midst, who are prepared to betray the cause and reconstitute the
most obnoxious oligarchical rule, only with themselves as its representative 1
administrators.
During the
first years of the Peloponnesian War, some malcontents with the government of
Samos are found established at Anaea, on the coast of Caria, whence they kept
the city in disquietude, gave harbour to fugitives and 2 refugees,
co-operated with independent Carians against the Athenians on land, and at sea
supplied their enemies with pilots in what they styled the cause of the
liberation of Hellas. It seems to be by confusion with these later incidents
that the author of the life of Sophocles refers to his participation with
Pcricks in the Anaitic war.
It should
not escape attention that the power with which Samos resisted Athens in this
conflict implies a course of undisturbed prosperity during the period that
preceded it, and confirms a parallel inference from the description by
Thucydides of the extraordinary wealth of Chios, that the
benefits
derived by the autonomous allies of Athens from their position of qualified
dependence, went far to compensate with the more prudent for sacrifices which,
in many respects, were rather galling to the feelings than positively
oppressive.
But a
sense of national humiliation is a serious qualification of material
prosperity, and the disaffection that was growing among the other nominally
autonomous allies was destined to become still more excitable, after this
reduction of Samos to absolute dependence. Chios and Lesbos especially recognised
their serious loss of an ally both powerful and sympathetic by common
interests and like position, and that an important check was removed to the
willingness, if not the design, of the Athenians to snatch a pretext for
abrogating what exceptional 1 liberties they still retained.
On the
return of the expedition to Athens, the public funeral of those who had died in
the war was conducted with great state, and the delivery of the oration that
was customary on such occasions was 'committed to Pericles. As he descended
from the bema female hands greeted him with crowns and fillets, like a
victorious athlete, and only Elpinice, the sister of Cimon, carped at a victory
which was gained over Greeks, and not, like those of her brother, at the expense
of the barbarians.
If it be
true that Pericles in his oration did contrast this siege of nine months with
the ten-years-long siege of Troy, we may be certain that the Athenian demus had
the exclusive benefit of the comparison, and that it was left for the cavil of
Ion of Chios to insinuate that he was claiming for himself to be a greater
Agamemnon.
‘The
citizens who have died for their country,’ he said, according to the more
congenial report of Stesimbrotus, ‘ are living still and live for ever; for
their immortality we have
1 Tliuc. iii. n and vi. 76. L
the same
warrant as for that of the gods, of whose being we become cognisant by the
benefits we receive from them, and by the honours which they command from all 1
mankind.’
1 Plut.
Per. 9.
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
Undeh the archon
Murichides, 440-39 B.C., is dated a psephism of Antimachus to put a restraint
of some kind on comedy (rou fxr] KOifKabeiv), which remained in force about
three 1 years. The notices of its scope are insufficient, but, in
any case, it had no extent approaching to suppression, which could scarcely be
thought of, even though we had not allusions to comedies that were produced
within the 2 interval; neither earlier or later do we hear anything
of legal checks upon abuse of general decency. Some restraint on offensive personalities
must therefore probably be understood, such as are distinctly specified as put
in force at a later date. That this measure, by whomsoever proposed, was
adopted out of consideration for Pericles, who was now at the height of his
popularity, stands at best as a conjecture; and yet the coincidence should not
be overlooked that it falls at the particular date when the Samian war, for all
its successful conclusion, is known to have been turned by comoedians into an
occasion of base disparagement, and when the comoedian most in vogue was
Cratinus—Cratinus, who ever did his best to make Pericles ridiculous, and as
eagerly displayed attachment to the memory of Cimon, from whose sister came
the sole discontented word at the Epitaphian oration.
1 Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 67. 2 Clinton, Fasti Hellen. sub aim.
L %
Earlier in
date than Aristophanes and Eupolis, Cratinus is scarcely inferior in his
ancient renown to either. Quintilian associates all three, as they had already
been associated in a line of Horace, when he sends the orators to them as to
school, and declares them to be instructors in the use of language only
inferior to Homer himself,—Homer, like his own Achilles, the one universal
exception ; the critic leaves their coarseness aside unmentioned, unremembered,
as he commends with enthusiasm their unchecked eloquence, at once lofty,
elegant, refined, a sole treasury of the charm of purest Attic diction, even
while full fraught with bitterest satire and invective. Of the personal
sympathy of Cratinus for Cimon and his party, a short fragment from one of his
plays gives a touching reminiscence :—
‘ For my desire, Metrobius the scribe,
Was, with a man divine and right hospitable,
Best leader every way of the Pan-Hellenes,
With Cimon, to wear out sleek age in festivity To my last; but he haa
failed me and gone before.’
The
manners and the mode of life of Pericles, the reserve of his public demeanour
and some contrasts of his domestic circumstances, supplied aptest provocations
for the exaggerated, the comic, and even malevolent misrepresentation which
the Athenians seem never to have relished the less because the object of them
was exercising power in a manner to command their sincerest confidence. His
first—his legitimate—wife, a relative, was the divorced wife of 1
Hipponicus, by whom she was mother of the wealthy Callias; after bearing him
two sons, Xanthippus and Paralus, she was again transferred, willing and
willingly, to another, with a satisfaction that needs no further explanation
on either side than the devotion with which Pericles had become attached, after
a previous roving passion for the Corinthian Chrysilla, daughter of Teleus—at
least so said the comoedian Teleeleidcs—
to the
celebrated 1 Aspasia. This remarkable woman was a Milesian, and is
referred to as daughter of Axiochus, as if not without known family
connections; she appears however at Athens as one of that class of
highly-cultivated and accomplished women—for the most part Ionians—the feminine
companions, hetaeme, who, independently of fortune, of rank, of any social
standing, and if by beauty not by beauty only, vindicated, however irregularly,
the natural claims of the sex to liberty, culture, and influence, from which by
national custom the females of superior Athenian families were secluded.
The
Athenian girl was brought up, or understood to be brought up, to know and see
as little of the world as possible, until she was 2 married; her own
choice was not consulted as to the husband to whom she was first consigned;
and, in case of widowhood, she was subject to be transferred to another —at
least when property was involved—with scarcely more ceremony than a chattel;
and it could be publicly inferred by Pericles himself as axiomatic that, her
life throughout, the less cause or occasion s* e ministered for being mentioned
at all among men, whether for good or evil, the more creditably her duty was
fulfilled. The world has never known a state of society i \ which these
maxims have been even partially carried out without provoking rebellion in manners,
and in literature the scoffing disrespect of marriage which is virtually a
protest, from the new comedy of Athens to the drama of modern France. The
wealth and luxury of Athens at this time necessarily attracted a concourse of
hetaerae of every class of endowments and culture up to the very highest, of
every grade of renounced or of qualified self-respect, of passion or ambition.
It seems to have been regarded as not an absolutely stupid and pointless satire
to charge Aspasia with having had, at one time at least, her
3 Xen.
Oecon. vii. 5.
own
surroundings similarly outcast from severer society, and even with entertaining
a bevy of subordinates. From this class artists derived their best 1
models; and politicians and philosophers too not unwillingly found themselves
from time to time in a society where the instincts of good taste, and the
conditions of elegance, were at least outward palliatives of laxity of morals ;
and where the sense of an existence external to civil privilege, and of
extrusion from sacred celebrations, notoriously relieved from obligation to
tenderness for conventionalities, to say no more; while it gave zest and
invitation to freest discourse and boldest questioning, and made welcome
whoever could converse with point or dissert with originality on theories, if
not on projects, that involved the subversion or reconstruction of arts, of
sciences, of philosophy, of society itself.
By the
operation of his own law of strictly-defined citizenship, it was not competent
for Periclcs to contract a fully legal marriage with Aspasia, even though her
original position had not precluded it; she occupied, however, the placc of a
wife so far as possible; not of course without scandal that was made the most
of by enemies; not without difficulties, which he adjusted his life to
overcome, as best he might, but was nearly succumbing to at lust. It was only
at the risk of misconstruction,—of vituperation,—that dignified Athenian
matrons were taken, even by their 2 husbands, to the society that
gathered at the house of the head of the Athenian empire; and it may have been
not so much from a notion of the reserve which was becoming in the head of the
state, as out of regard to the dignity of Aspasia, that Pericles himself never
accepted an invitation abroad,—never but once, to the marriage of Furyptolemus,
a relative, and then he left immediately after the libations which concluded
the ccremonial nuptials. To the son whom she bore to him,
he gave
his own name Pericles, the most public acknowledgment conceivable.
It was
probably not without some intent to countervail imputations and inferences of
irregular frivolity, that his general public bearing became so habitually
dignified, so studiously expressive of preoccupation, assiduity, reserve, as to
give occasion for the cavil of the poet Ion of Chios, who contrasted his
bearing with that of Cimon, as the supercilious and contemptuous and haughty
with all that was agreeable and free and accommodating. On like principle the
carefully organised management of his estate, and even his ostentatiously
frugal household, administered with all the minuteness of formal book-keeping,
gave earnest of that independence of illicit emolument to which he appeals with
confidence as 1 notorious, and which such an appeal implies was a
rarity among politicians. According to Plutarch, his associates were called {new
Pisistratids,’ but it seems likely that it was particularly at his legitimate
sons Xanthippus and Paralus that the comparison to Hippias and Hipparchus was
directly levelled; it would be fairly provoked by the known dispositions of
the young men, who chafed at this orderliness and parsimony of their father as
a renunciation, for the sake of power, of all that makes power worth having.
His public appearances were, in any case, marked with a gravity and sobriety
for which he had a compensation, if not a reason, at home; as for his economy
at home, he was rewarded by free direction of the public expenditure. He
reserved himself as a speaker in the ecclesia for occasions of the first importance,—like
the state galley, it was said, the Salaminian trireme,—and when he spoke he
gave to weighty matter, for all the rapid flow of his delivery, the full
distinction of impressiveness of tone, propriety of words, and collected
dignity of gesture. But no day passed that he was not seen on his
way to the
public office or the agora, and always with the composed countenance that
betokened his sense of responsibility. lie said of himself that he never
passed his threshold without the self-admonition, ‘ Keep in mind that you are a
leader of Hellenes, of Hellenes who are freemen,—of free Athenian Hellenes,’
and without a prayer that he might be preserved from the accident of a single
untoward expression ; but even so he never came forth—Antisthenes is the cited
authority—without having greeted and kissed Aspasia at his departure, and the
salutation was repeated as constantly 011 his 1 return.
The staid
composure of such a public life projected on such a domestic background,
naturally furnished the old comedy with most piquant provocation for the coarse
plain speaking that it delighted in, for ridicule and exaggeration. The very
helmet which decorated his busts, as fitly expressive of his constantly renewed
office of strategus, was scoffed at as the contrived screen of a deformity,—a
head onion-shaped; he was the tyrant called by the gods Kephalegeretes
(substitution for vecfxXrjyepzrrjs), begotten upon Stasis (Faction) by primaeval
Chronos (Time),—perhaps an implied satire on his rhetorical assertion of the
value of Time as a political councillor ; he was Olympian Pericles, a mock Jove
who thundered and lightened over Greece, and his Here was Aspasia, who had her
peacocks too, though not indeed exclusively—a jest which had some pertinence
no doubt, though ill explained. It is easy to discern in the satire that represented
Aspasia as the Deianeira to his Hercules, the trace of a parody of his exploits
at the mouth of the Aehelous, where Hercules won his bride in conflict against
the river- god ; and there might be suggestion enough in the circumstances and
festive episodes of the Samian war to account for her having been brought
forward on the ribald stage as an Asian Omphale.
At a later
date the Peloponnesian war was ascribed by Aristophanes to a base quarrel of
Aspasia; at the present time the Samian quarrel was challenged with as little
scruple and as little reason as traceable entirely to her interest for the
protection of her native 1 Miletus. What is, I believe, rather a
tradition than an invention is preserved in the Menexenus of Plato, that
Pericles owed to instructions of Aspasia no little of his general oratorical
power, and even the very matter and topics of his speech—the Epitaphion—at the
burial of the citizens who had died for their country in war. It is by no means
impossible,—there are confirmations in modern instances, —that the ascription
may have originated with himself, and have been made in all the devoted sincerity
of one who need not be the less a lover and subject to a lover’s illusions
because he is a statesman also, or even in a degree a philosopher.
I am
disposed to connect this tradition rather with the speech after the Samian war,
to which Plutarch adverts, than with the great speech on a parallel occasion,
as set down by Thucydides, but which is too accommodated in its purport to the
requirements of the opening and course of his history, not to be, however much
in the style of Pericles, to a very great extent the proper composition of the
historian- That in this earlier case the original speech should have been
flouted as the composition of Aspasia, has much the appearance of a malicious
hint that the honourable matrons who applauded it so enthusiastically had been
affronted by the inventions of a Milesian courtesan. However, as has been said,
whether the legal repression of stage personalities at this date was due to
recognised offensiveness of these particular ribaldries of this date, must be
left aside as uncertain, but is at least a plausible inference.
History,
remote and contemporary, furnishes parallels enough to render intelligible what
aid, all disadvantages
notwithstanding,
Aspasia may have rendered to the statesman even in the conduct of his
statesmanship. The society that assembled around her was no vain engine of
social or political influence; it is for the woman of social talent who governs
the coveted privilege of admission within sueh intellectual circles, of which
power and wealth are at the centre, to sway the waverers of party and the
politicians whose tongues and votes have power more wide than the range of
their own selfish objects, to observe the indications of changing impulses, to
set in circulation suggestions intended to ripen—hypothetical intentions that
are timely warnings to prudential trimmers, or, on occasion, are soon the open
challenges that provoke either a crisis or a conflict, as desired. The
opportunity of habitual conference, moreover, with a perfectly sympathetic and
confidential spirit, is a vast aid, if not necessity, for some most powerful
minds; and refreshing contact with a clear apprehension and unimpeachable
frankness has a value for the correction, if not origination, of policy, which
entitles the councillor to no little of the merit of the best decisions, and
may go far to justify the repute of Aspasia for political insight and
influence.
In such
society a hearing was familiarly given to men who, though of statesmanlike
minds, declined the difficulties or the toil, or hoped to have immunity from
the dangers, of active participation in politics. Among other names that of
Damon, the musician and improver of music, occupies a distinguished place ; he
gained the renown of standing in the same position to Pericles in politics as
the skilled trainer to the athlete,—a comoedian called him Cheiron, with
allusion to the centaur who was fabled to have tutored Achilles as efficiently
in wisdom and all knowledge as in playing on the lyre. Ultimately he had to
experience that at Athens the suspicion of taking lively interest in politics,
even in private, was sufficient to stimulate popular jealousy and afford an
opening for the animosity of the envious. That the crowd of
artists
who were now embellishing Athens with works of unprecedented as still
unrivalled genius, the sculptors, and architects, and painters, Ictinus,
Mnesicles, Callicrates,— Pheidias first and above all;—that poets and
historians in this society gave and borrowed interest and incitement, would
follow as of course, if there were not the unhappy proof, in the endeavours
which afterwards were made to wound Pericles through persecution of his
friends.
Philosophy,
it is certain, was no less freely discussed than art and politics ; conflicting
as are the details of particular anecdotes, the residence at Athens, and close
intercourse with Pericles, of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, the philosopher who was
surnamed or nicknamed Mind,—Nous,—is a certainty; and if Pericles fought
against Melissus, at Athens he was familiar with the teachings of Zeno the
Eleatic, another follower of the school of Parmenides.
The
philosophy of this school scarcely proposed more than the investigation of the
physical problem of the world; how boldly this was pressed in contravention of
popular prejudices, had again its unhappy proof in the odious charges of
impiety which were urged, at a fatal moment, against not only Anaxagoras, but
Aspasia herself.
But more
important and interesting still are the intimations, so frequent and positive
that they can scarcely deceive us, that it was under the stimulant suggestions
of these conversations that was developed the germ of the philosophy and
philosophic processes of Socrates himself. It would not be easy to concede less
to the repeated averments of Plato, whatever our general well-founded mistrust
of his treatment of anecdote or history; but an allusion of Xenophon, more
usually trustworthy for matter of fact, may be accepted as marked 1
confirmation, though in a confessedly imaginary dialogue. Aspasia is here
referred to as an authority, for the
reciprocal
duties of husbands and wives; and it is remarkable that an anecdote of her
conversation which is preserved by Cicero turns upon the same point. As here
reported, she proves indeed to Xenophon and his wife, that by their own
elicited admissions, it is necessary for them to be respectively the best
husband and best wife possible, unless each is to live in constant desire of a
different1 partner. The authority for this conversation is
ultimately the Soeratic Aeschines, and we may be glad of further illustration
from Xenophon’s Memorabilia, where Aspasia is quoted again and again with
reference to the principles on which firm friendship and constant affection
are 2 dependent. All these references have certainly a suspicious
leauing towards the topic of love, which may be thought to come, however
naturally, not with its best recommendations from Aspasia; and it were futile
doubtless to claim for the conversation around Aspasia the invariable aud scrupulous
delicacy of what we may believe to be the best and highest standard; though it
was to the eager competition and pursuit of Athenian dames of recognised
dignity, and not to the hetaerae, that Xenophon himself ascribes the corruption
and ruin of the nephew of the house, 3 Alcibiades. But we seem here,
on the one hand, to arrive at primitive examples of the Soeratic processes, not
only of interrogation, but of analysis by illustrative comparisons with
instances no matter how commonplace or familiar ; and on the other, at the
origin, with Socrates himself, of that favourite erotic illustration which
culminates in the consummate full-blown theory of Platonic love. The Socrates
of Xenophon professes to have been the scholar of Aspasia in matters pertaining
to love; the Socrates of Plato reinsists on this profession emphatically, and
draws out in detail, and with full command of fancy, of poetry, of philosophy,
a theory of love which asserts the identity of the principle under all its
forms, but traces with
enthusiasm
the gradual exaltation of the idea from the passion for personal beauty, to
that of intellectual, of moral beauty, still tending to the development and to
the perpetuation of whatever is most excellent, whatever is divine.
It is to
the art of a period of unusual wealth and luxury that we must look, if we would
judge by independent testimony, whether refined and healthy beauty grew forth
from such a soil transformed, or the mere luxury itself was the rank and
ultimate outgrowth for which all more wholesome influences were sacrificed. On
a review of Athenian art in the time of Pericles, we cannot hesitate; it is not
here that we find sensibility a mere affectation for masking and conducting to
the sensual, instead of a manifestation of sensuousness purified,
transfigured. The beauty of the human frame is here, if it ever was, displayed
as the first link of a chain which conducts us upward to the supremest moral
elevation, and not the very last, that is to be only grasped for a moment and
then foregone for ever by the nature that drops down into uttermost debasement.
THE PERICLEAN CONCEPTION OF CIVILISATION.
Suidas is the only authority
for Pericles having’ written his speeches, and indeed having been the first to
write out beforehand speeches that were to be delivered in public as
extemporised; that he spoke at least after studied preparation, whether with
strict adherence or not to premeditated words and order, might be assumed
independently from the perfection of the result, and is all we can be assured
of. True that not one authentic oration of his 1 remains, and true
even that none were in possession of antiquity ; his psephisms were the only
examples of his composition 2 extant, but the characteristics and
glory of his oratory were reflected in contemporary literature, and are again
brought before us by a succeeding generation in notices that represent the
unanimous voice of public tradition. Aristophanes spoke of the Olympian
Pericles who lightened, thundered, and convulsed all Greece, expressions which
Cicero, it would seem, from following the same authority that afterwards led 3
Diodorus into error, ascribed to Eupolis, correcting himself4
afterwards. Thucydides the son of Mclesias, as we have seen, accepted the
comparison of his struggles with him to a wrestling match, and so the comoedian
Eupolis found, in the rapidity of his
1 Quint. Imi. iii. I. 3 Diori. xii. 40.
2 Plut. V Per. 8.
* t'ic. ad Allirum, Ep.
6, lib. it
style and
utterance—a rapidity that Plutarch states was combined with unusual
sweetness—the suggestion of a metaphor from the stadium :—
* A. Powerful he was beyond all men as a
speaker;
Whenever he' came forth, like the swift foot-racers
His speech caught orators up who had ten feet start of him.
B. You
tell of a swift one. A. But besides his swiftness A certain suasion had seat
upon his lips So winning was he,—and of orators the one alone Who left the
sting behind in those who heard him.’
The
sweetness of his voice and his facile swiftness of elocution were said to have
alarmingly reminded some very old men, when he first came forward, of the tones
and manner of 1 Pisistratus. f Wielding at will the
fierce democracy,5 he exerted equal power in restraining it when
arrogant and headstrong, by infusing wholesome apprehension, and in restoring
its self-confidence when unreasonably depressed. This is the testimony of 2
Thucydides, who characterises him elsewhere as the ablest man of the time for
oratory as well as action.
The
combination of power, rapidity, and fascination that is thus avouched, is
probably not so much explained by, as it explains, the tradition of his
obligations to such varied instructors as Anaxagoras, Damon, and Aspasia ;
though the indirect influence could not be trifling upon high original aptitude,
of habitual interest in philosophical speculations, the theory as well as
exercise of art, and the excitements of society at once intellectual and
vivacious. To Plato, Pericles was still, though only by traditional reputation,
the most accomplished of all 3 orators. It suits his preceding
argument in favour of the superiority of art, as based on an exhaustive theory,
to mere casual or desultory empiricism, to ascribe the power of Pericles over
the minds of his hearers to the study of mind as expounded by Anaxagoras,—to
such a systematic analysis, under his guidance, of its various powers,
susceptibilities, and
disabilities,
as his surname Nous (Mind) may give excuse for pretending, but furnishes no
sufficient reason for believing, against Plato’s own intimations 1
elsewhere, that the Clazo- menian entered into. The tradition, however, is none
the less valuable and conclusive for the large scope, the at once profound and
subtle thought, that united with approved practical wisdom and unimpeached
patriotism to establish a prolonged sway over a more numerous, intelligent, and
sensitive assembly than the world has ever known, before or since, in
possession of absolute power
In the
celebrated funeral oration w’liich Thucydides assigns to Pericles, over the citizens
slain in the first year of the war, we have a statement by the historian, at
least a contemporary witness, of his conception of an ideal civilisation and a
fully accomplished and established empire city, and, to the extent to which
these were realised, of the characteristics of Periclean Athens. For the main
portion of this work he asserted the claim of his own, of the existing
generation, which, worthy of remoter ancestors who had at least held their own
and kept the ground,—no slight achievement in days of constant expulsions and
migrations,—had raised a still grander superstructure on the broad foundations
laid out by their immediate fathers.
In almost
every characteristic that is here insisted on or asserted, Athens is shown in
contrast to her Spartan rival, and we may discern that, whether by the orator
originally or only by the historian, the contrast is made as direct as possible.
Sparta indeed is left unmentioned throughout, but in such case omission wras
equivalent to emphasis, and contemporaries could only receive a heightened
appreciation of the distinction between the two chief polities of Hellas. As
pointedly as in the Homeric catalogue of the ships, we have drawn out before us
the moral resources of the states that are already on the point of closing in
mortal conflict; of that
which by
unflinching rigour had secured at least most admirable stability, and that
which displayed what capacities ol human progress are developed when the utmost
freedom of personal action is boldly admitted, and combined with a legally
ordered constitution that is frankly receptive of adjustment by occasional
change.
An opening
assertion of originality for the Athenian constitution reflects on the Spartan
as confessedly derived in large part from Cretan precedents; as considered on
its own merits it was manifest, and to the Athenian predilections repugnant,
that Spartan training obliterated all personal characteristics, and only
compassed a strong national organisation by reducing every citizen to a common
type of enforced mental and bodily uniformity. Restraint and reserve were heavy
in the whole social system of Laccdaemon ; the vast mass of even the freemen of
the community wTas excluded from any real participation in political
power, and therefore in the political interests which at Athens were the
every-day concern of the poorest.
Secrecy
was as absolutely the rule at Sparta as publicity at Athens; from Sparta
foreigners and foreign commerce were jealously excluded, while Athens invited
freest intercourse and gave access to all; and whereas at Athens no honest
occupation wras held to disfranchise citizens, for whom squalid
idleness was alone dishonourable, not merely trades and handicrafts, but even
agriculture itself, was held to be beneath the dignity of a Spartiate, how ever
necessitous.
The
Athenian system, Pericles asserted, set an example to other states, and was an
instruction to Hellas generally in the best conditions of national vigour and
power, and also in the most diversified and effective development of the
individual man in both mind and body.
A
predilection for liberality, frankness, freedom, pervaded all; the constitution
w as a democracy in the fullest sense; law was equal for all in matters of
private disputes and
VOL. II. m
-
differences
; and in respect of public dignities no preference was admitted to social grade
in competition with genuine endowments.
At Athens
the same men were engaged actively both in private business and in public
affairs, and even the operatives were not without information in politics;
indeed it was a peculiarity there, that one who gave himself no concern about
such matters was not held to be simply indifferent, but contemned as good for
nothing.
The same
spirit that was adopted in public administration precluded any jealous
interference with personal inclinations and habits in daily intercourse; each
was allowed to indulge his own fancy without provoking indignation, or being exposed
to the sour looks that are as annoying as direct penalties. At the same time,
this unembarrassed liberty of private demeanour was fully restrained within
limits of the public peace by uniform submissiveness to the magistrates and the
laws, and then by voluntary respect for those unwritten laws with which remain
the sanctions of the graces and decencies of life.
At Athens,
again, the labours of a life of restless activity were provided with relief and
relaxation unstinted, by institutions of public games, contests and annual
festivals, and then by habitual cultivation of the embellishments of private
life which countervail by delightfulness the inevitable vexations of current
existence. To the very vastness of the city it was due that all parts of the
world were contributory to these requirements, and that it did not enjoy the
native productions of its own adjacent territory more familiarly than those of
other climes and countries.
Consistently
with these maxims of the Athenians, and their predilection for a manner of life
of general agreeableness rather than one of irksome discipline, it was their
disposition to rely on courage which is a growth of manners rather than of
enacted laws. No contrast could be greater than the
Lacedaemonian
system, which sought to inure the young to hardness by a system of oppressive
restraint; while the Athenians gave in to a more indulgent way of living, and
yet were found no whit less equal to a conflict, when only on equal terms;
neither did their hearts fail them when danger was in prospect, nor when it
arrived were they less bold to confront it than those with whom existence even
during peace was one continued course of drudgery and drill.
The city,
again, held itself superior to the jealous policy of excluding foreigners out
of apprehension lest they should gain some advantage by what they saw or heard,
and put less confidence in stealthy preparations and deceit than in open zeal
for the work before them.
Publicity
as frank was admitted in the discussion and design of public business; nor was
it held at Athens that action was prejudiced by discussion, but, on the
contrary, that no mischief was so serious as for action to become inevitable
while previous information was still defective. Despising alike the courage
which is only due to ignorance, and deliberation which does no more than
foster dilatoriness, it was the pretension of the Athenians to unite the
extreme of daring with the most accurate reasoning out of whatever was undertaken.
‘ And they surely are to be esteemed most hardy of mind who are aware of all
risks as well as rewards, and notwithstanding are not slack to face a peril.5
Generally,
then, the city was entitled to put in this claim to admiration,—that as it
employed wealth for requisite purposes rather than for mere display to be
talked about, so it indulged in enjoyment of the beautiful consistently with
frugality, and in intellectual culture with no relaxation of active fibre.
Finally,
it was averred by the orator that the value of these principles was approved by
facts,—by the fact especially, that of all cities existing, Athens alone, when
it came to trial, proved ever superior to her reputation.
M 2
THE PANATHENAEA.
Among the Athenian characteristics insisted upon by Pericles in
the Epitaphian oration, he assigns, as we have seen, especial importance to the
relief which the city was careful to provide for the exhausting toils as well
as troubles of humanity, in a constant succession of public festivities, and by
the enlivenment of a universal diffusion of elegance and art. He asserted for
the city an equally eager, while still an equally disciplined, devotion for the
Beautiful as for the Practical, as ardent a passion for Art, in which both
unite and culminate, as for Philosophy, which penetrates to the common
foundation and sources of all. We can only surmise how his terms were justified
by the chastened luxury which may have embellished not only the private
dwellings of the Athenians within the walls, but their residences scattered
over the country, of which they were soon to witness, from those walls, the
ruin and devastation. And even descriptions, though they had been delivered at
first hand, could give at best but a poor reflex of the sacred pomps with all
their lavish apparatus and elaborate adornments, and of the periodical
competitions in every branch of cultivated prowess and skill, especially in the
musical contests that were an original institution of Pericles himself. Time
has eaten away—has washed out and
worn out
the soft investiture of this gracious, this stately organism, yet somewhat has
resisted and still remains albeit desiccated and half perished,—some subsisting
framework of which the exquisiteness vindicates to the height the enthusiasm
of contemporaries. The scanty and dismembered examples that have come down to
us of the wealth of dramatic poetry—only scanty relatively to an original
wealth almost inconceivable — approve whatever has been told or can be most
daringly imagined of the Athenian drama as represented; much in the same manner
the sculptures which have been happily rescued from the ruins of the acropolis,
maimed as we receive them by barbarism of man, and flayed by the winds and rain
of centuries, are still recognisable as works of such dignity and grandeur of
style as to raise our marvel what must have been the still higher excellence of
the temple-statues that are lost entirely—that we are left to recover a
conception of as we may from the echoes of past enthusiasm and details of
prosaic description.
The
festivals and celebrations of the Athenians were most numerous and
diversified,— every tribe, nay every family, had its own, consecrated ever by
some religious associations, and connected in most cases with peculiar rites
and private traditions. But surpassing all in interest were the public
celebrations which were conducted wholly or in part at the charge of the state,
and ever under the immediate control of its functionaries ; and on these the
solicitude of Pericles was particularly bestowed to raise them by unstinted magnificence
and study and art to the very highest pitch of combined impressiveness and
beauty. The ordinary life of the Athenian was filled up with lively excitement
in active business beyond his private affairs; whether serving as dicast or as
participant in the political assemblies—where he was auditor and arbiter of most
important policy—he was conscious in either capacity of independent power, and
flattered and stimulated day after day by finding himself appealed to
by all the
arts of most cultured oratory. Amidst these engrossments the great public
festivals were interposed, and in their turn and while they lasted claimed as
entirely the whole man. Most sacred and imposing of all was the celebration of
the Eleusinian Mysteries, which occupied several days, and comprised
processions not only within but without the city, as well as the ultimate rites
of initiation in the vast structures which were raised to accommodate them at
Eleusis. In this celebration the religious element, which was absent from none,
was predominant. The Panathenaic festival was in traditional origin peculiarly
an expression of the unity of the state, and thence of its energy and power ;
in this the political sentiment may be considered to have predominated as it
was salient everywhere amidst all the parade of artistic elaboration and sacred
accompaniments. The Panathenaea culminated at the Parthenon on the acropolis,
as the Mysteries at the Telesterion at Eleusis; the Odeum and the great
Dionysiac theatre were the scenes of the competitions in music and poetry, and
above all of the drama—the drama which characteristically was not only a union
of the agencies of all the arts, but addressed itself as comprehensively to all
the interests of Athenian life, not more to the domestic and the ordinary than
to political sympathies and the prepossessions of religion as well the
soberest as the most enthusiastic.
It is even
averred by an ancient authority, and well borne out by collection of scattered
notices, that the Athenians celebrated twice as many religious festivals as any
other Greek state; richness of mental endowment ever characterises the people
amongst whom religious sentiment, with whatever errors allied, has risen to the
height of genuine and generous enthusiasm; and never before or since have such
passion for beauty and such skill in art been united, as were pressed into the
service of these shows and pomps and festivities at Athens. The Panathenaic
festival was that which—perhaps after the Eleusinia—received the highest
elaboration,
and it was connected with the most exquisite productions of Art,—in Music,
Sculpture, Architecture, and general design. It was observed yearly in a minor
form, but the Great Panathenaea recurred like the Olympia, which it preceded by
a year, only once in four years,—at the conclusion of a period that gave an
approximate cycle of the joint phases of the sun and moon. Like the Olympia, it
was celebrated at midsummer, in the Attic month Heca- tombaion, which was at
first named Cronion from Cronus, undistinguishable even in later times
generally from Chronus, —Time personified, — appropriate deity of a
chronological epoch. The substitution of Hecatombaion carried quite as distinct
and appropriate an association with the service of Apollo, the Sun God.
The origin
of the festival as Athenaea was carried back to Erichthonius, indistinguishable
from Erechtheus, and to a mythical date even earlier than the Arcadian Lycaea,
of which the institution was ascribed to Lycaon j and it was said to have
become the Panathenaea, when Theseus united all the scattered demes of Attica
into a single state with common interest and equal participation in the
franchise of a central city. Its antiquity is certainly avouched by the
connection which it ever retained with the archaic statue of Athene, that could
be reputed to have fallen from heaven —Athene Polias—the Athene of the
acropolis, the ancient 7roA.i9. This was said to have been an object of
extended reverence at even a still earlier epoch, and was preserved in the
small temple that contained along with it many other archaic memorials of Attic
religion. This, called by Pausanias the Erechtheum, is the same of which,
reconstructed as he saw it, we have considerable remains, and must be
identified in site and occupancy at least, with the house or palace of
Erechtheus—Erechtheus earth-born, nurtured by 1 Athene or, as
another legend said, by Pandrosos,—to which,
1 Horn. Iliad, ii. 546.
according1
to Ilomer, Athene retired as if to a familiar Miome.
The
earlier temple, like the earlier Parthenon, was burnt by Xerxes; its successor,
according to an inscription dated B.C. 409, was still incomplete long after the
new Parthenon was finished, but we cannot doubt that it had been sufficiently
restored meanwhile to protect the more important sanctities. Of the earlier
building not a vestige remains; the new is of the Ionic order, enriched with
carved details and graceful mouldings of the most delicate and exquisite
execution. The restored structure, representing 110 doubt the preceding in its
chief divisions, was in the main a combination of a double eella at different
levels, with distinct porticoes one eastward on the axis of the building, the
other at the side and fronting north ; a peculiar caryatid stoa or open naos
was attached to its southern exterior wall. In this double arrangement we have already
a symbol of alliance, or it may be of treaty and reconciliation, between
interests of which the conflict had grave import in the internal politics of
Attica. The legend of the contest of Athene and Poseidon for the possession or
patronage of the land of Attica dates from far prehistoric times, but symbolises
and certifies the same conflict of interests and habits Ijetween the
cultivators and the maritime population, that is brought before us by
Aristophanes. As might be expected, the elemental aspect of the mythus was
most pronounced at the earlier date. The temple contained the salt well and
dints of the trident, by which Poseidon had approved his might, and the sacred
olive-tree that was the creation and gift of Athene. The attached naos of which
the entablature was supported by the figures of girls holding vases, must have
been the so-called Pandroseum—as belonging to Pandrosos, the ministering nymph
of dew,— the fostering influence of vegetation. Stronger arguments 1 Horn. Orfyw. vii. So,
than have
yet been combined will be required to disprove the natural assumption, that it
was here, with favourable exposure to sun and air but limited in height, that
was seen the sacred olive-tree of the temple, the eXata 7ray- KV(f)os—the
crooked olive. Here was a sacred serpent housed an fed—the ever-thirsty reptile
that is so constantly associated in earliest legends with founts and sacred
trees; recognised here, however, as Erichthonian, as type of the autochthony of
the people of Erechtlieus, the genuine children of the very soil. The sacred
lamp that was constantly kept burning in one chamber of the temple had equal
reference to Athene and to Hephaestus, god of fire and the arts of fire,—the
reputed parents according to one legend, in strange mystical way, of the primal
Athenian, Erechtheus. To legend it was also left to account for the foliage
that invested an equally mystical figure of the no doubt phallic Hermes.
An altar
of Lethe—of Oblivion—within the conjoined temples of rival powers, can only be'
significant of amnesty—of complete reconciliation. So it was otherwise told
that Theseus was the institutor of the Panathenaic festival of which this
temple was the religious centre, when, after founding .a single council hall
and Prytaneum at Athens for all the associated Attic demes, he deprecated
future intestine quarrels by the institution of bloodless offerings on the
altar of Eirene—1 Peace. It is so far a coincidence that before this
temple was an altar of Zeus Hypatus—£ Jove most High,’—which also
received only bloodless offerings, and where even libations of wine were
disallowed. Both in respect of scene and sentiment there is a curious
correspondence here with Hector’s 2 speech, when in a hasty
interval of fight he puts aside the wine which his mother Hecuba proffers for
him to drink and be refreshed, and for a libation
to Zeus on
the acropolis of 1 Troy,—‘ forasmuch as it befits not to make wine
libations to Zeus with hands unwashed, or for one to offer up prayers to him
while besmeared with defilement and gore/
Within the
temple was an altar of Poseidon, on which, by instruction of an oracle,
offerings were made to Erecli- tlieus also—whom however there is no ground for
identifying with Poseidon ;—another of the hero Butes,—a third of Hephaestus.
The legend of Butes involved an apology or justification of living sacrifices,
and by implication, of the taking of life that is involved in the use of animal
food. In this temple too wTere dedicated the most chosen spoils of
the Persians, the gorget of Masistes,—the scymetar of Mardonius.
It is in
accordance with all analogy that the original consolidation of Attica into a
single state, small as was its total area and extent, was a work of time and
difficulty, and that when happily concluded it should have been secured by
every sacred and commemorative sanction available. The traditional attachment
of the Panathenaic celebration to this peculiar group and combination of
archaic sanctities confirms this, and that the ascription of the institution
should adopt variously the mythical Erechtheus or Theseus, is only evidence for
its remote antiquity. The festival of national or tribal unity has many
parallels in other parts of Hellas,—like effects, in many cases it may be of
like independent causes, and in others, of sympathy or imitation.
The
favourite agonistic element of Ilcllenie festivals was here very fully indulged
; the Panatlienaea opened with every form of contest, as foot-races both of men
and boys,—with armour or without,—wrestling, boxing, the pentathlon, horse and
chariot races, and so forth, and even competitions in speed and manoeuvring of
triremes. Fictile vases of archaic form, that were fillod or supposed to be
filled with oil from
1 Horn. Iliad, v. 257.
the sacred
olive-trees, are numerous in museums, sometimes inscribed £ One of
the prizes from Athens,’ sometimes ‘ I am one of the prizes from Athens ’;
occasionally they also bear the name of the archon of the year.
Recitations
of poetry on the occasion, and especially of Homeric poetry, are noted as early
as Peisistratus. Pericles was the first to effect the institution of a musical
contest, of singing and of playing on pipe and lyre, and himself, as elected
athlothetes, arranged the scheme of the competition. The Odeum was a building
of peculiar plan and construction, provided for these performances.
Unfortunately we have but a general description of it: it was of capacity to
accommodate a vast seated multitude, and covered by a roof of conical form
supported by a forest of pillars. It was commonly believed that the pointed
form of the roof, and perhaps its construction, were copied from the tent of
the Great King that he left behind after Salamis, and even that the masts of
his vessels supplied the timber. Timber certainly was employed in its
construction with unusual liberality, as it was indeed destroyed at last lest
it should furnish enemies with wood for engines Even apart from artful
combination of trusses, this material had the advantage above stone of spanning
far wider intervals without danger or difficulty, and allowing the necessarily
numerous supports to be set further apart, and in consequence the obstruction
to view to be reduced importantly.
A torch-
or lamp-bearing race—lampadephoria—seems to have had a certain reference to an
astronomical aspect of the ideal Athene, and then to her mythical association
with Hephaestus, god of fire, and her associate as instructress in its
application to the arts of Mife. We find a trace of this in 2 Homer,
who taking as so often a humanised motive from a sacred legend, makes the
goddess herself bear the lamp before Ulysses as he shifts his armoury.
. 1 Horn. Hym. ad Vulc. 2
Horn. Odyss. xix. 34.
The
games—more accurately, the contests—of the Greeks expressed most distinctly
their reliance on free emulation and competition before a public for a
prize,—whether of tangible value, like those of the Homeric heroes and Hesiod's
wrestlers, or for simple meed of recognised superiority and an olive crown,—as
the most effective spur to industry and art and genius. They applied it to
contests between dramatic poets and musical performers as confidently as to
foot-racers. The value of this incitement, however, depends absolutely on the
worth of the decisions,—on the competence of the judges and their conscientious
fairness. How these conditions were secured at Athens, and indeed how at any
time and elsewhere they may be—it seems fully approved by success that at
Athens they were so^is part of a large and very important enquiry indeed. In
competitions where relative superiority could only be determined by taste,
there was the utmost scope for error, for perversity, or irresponsible
favouritism or caprice. AVe must probably assume that the decision was limited
to estimating the public verdict as conveyed in expressions of applause or
preference,—a verdict that could be relied on to stand justified in virtue of
the refined sensibility of the general auditory.
The last
day of the Panathenaic festival was devoted to a procession, which was a
display of the collective pride and strength of the Athenian population, doing
homage- to the tutelary divinity of the city—that is, to the personification of
their genius, their exploits, their best aspirations,—to that ideal of the
conjoint self-restraint and energy, acute intelligence and dexterous
manipulation or ingenuity, that are embodied in the Athene of Homer.
The
immediate purport of the procession was the escort of a splendid peplus, or
mantle, for dedication to the goddess. Here again we have an Homeric precedent,
and from the passage already cited, in the peplus laid by the Trojan matrons
across the knees of the Athene of Ilion. An antique figure
of Athene
has been discovered at Athens, which by seated attitude and treatment of the
lap, seems to indicate prepared reception of such an offering. The significance
of a peplus as appropriate dedication to the goddess, has many phases, shifting
and interchanging with varying points of view of various participants in the
ceremony. It was worked by maidens on the acropolis, not without matronly aid;
and was emblematic of the patronage of the Virgin Goddess for maidenly and
feminine art and industry; so every four 1 years sixteen maidens of
Elis worked a peplus for Here. It was carried along stretched as a sail upon a
galley that moved upon wheels concealed from sight,—the ship itself an emblem
of the shipwright Athene of mythology, who, as still seen on monuments, was
assistant at the construction of the Argo, and patroness of the ingenuity which
the Athenians exercised with such zeal and success in perfecting their
all-important navy.
A subject
was worked on the peplus which we can scarcely suppose to have been unchanged
from year to year; we read of the battle of the Giants and the Olympian Gods in
which Athene is ever so conspicuous a protagonist. The peplus of the Dresden
Athene shows a series of such combats upon square spaces forming its border.
The national heroes, as Theseus, seem to have had occasional place, but it must
have been in late and degenerate times indeed, if ever contemporaries were
introduced. Otherwise the peplus of the Goddess had renown in poetry that
suggested the most brilliant range of celestial, of cosmical imagery; that of
Zeus which Athene aided Artemis and Kore to embroider, as she took part with
them in gathering 2 flowers, seems to represent at least the annual
vegetative mantle of nature, as distinctly as the robe which the Goddess on a
vase-painting adjusts around Pandora, who is inscribed with a title of the
germinant
earth, Aenesidora. When she prepares with Here to assist the Greeks, ‘ she lets
fall the peplus—her own work —upon the floor of her 1 father,* and
then it is suggestive of the starry expanse.
Appropriately
in the festival of the Virgin Goddess, very conspicuous place and important
functions were assigned to the Athenian maidens,—to those of the most dignified
families especially, accompanied by the matronly, and attended by the wives and
daughters of the meties, or resident aliens, who were bound to the service—it
may have been a coveted distinction—of carrying their seats and sunshades.
It was
while engaged in the preparation of this pomp that the tyrant Hipparchus was
assassinated, and out of resentment at the studied insult of his rejection of
a noble maiden as unworthy to take part in it.
The
masculine and warlike attributes of the Goddess were, however, no less
distinctly recognised in the parade of the armed youth, on foot and mounted.
The cavalcade was a particularly brilliant part of the show, and studiously
arranged to have the greatest possible effect. A part was also assigned to
elder men, who were selected not without reference to the characteristic beauty
of old age. Coloured apparel was disallowed during the festival, and branches
of olive and other foliage were borne by many of the participants.
The frieze
in low relief that is carried entirely round the exterior of the cella of the
Parthenon, gives a representation of this procession, with no design to
reproduce its exact detail, but emphasising to the intelligent, at least, its
leading motives. This frieze alone is proof that the larger, the more ornate,
the unsparingly elaborate temple of the acropolis— the Parthenon—the Apartment
of the maiden—was brought into most direct relation to this chief festival,
however traditional sanctity might attach a certain precedence to the
Erechtheum and its ruder statue.
1 Horn. Iliad, viii. 3S5.
Over the
Pronaos entrance,—and thus full in front of the great statue within,—is exhibited
the delivery of the folded peplus to a boy. A boy within the age of puberty is
found elsewhere in Hellas attached to the service of Athene, though no literary
record attests the fact in connection with the Parthenon,—as with the sculpture
before us, none is now required. The attendant and instructing functionaries
are probably the Archon King and Queen,—Basileus and Basi- lissa. This group is
interposed between two other groups of figures larger in scale, not only than
these, but than all others on the frieze—they are at least as high seated as
are all the others standing. They represent, therefore, heroes or gods, and all
sit in attitudes of calm attention and easy repose : their very draperies as
unagitated as their gestures.
The group
on the left comprises Zeus, Here, and Hebe— the head of this figure had been
knocked off but has been recovered and its place identified; hitherto however
it has not been given even to those who have done much to replace the slabs in
their original order, to recognise an indubitable restoration at this point.
Eleusinian Demeter then declares herself by motherly contours, and explicitly
by the great torch that she holds ; Triptolemus and the eponymns of the
priestly families, Kerux and Eumolpus, are, as I have shown in a special
monograph, as certainly identifiable.
The course
of the Panathenaic pomp was from the Cera- meicus and through the agora to the
Eleusinium of the city, a peculiarly sacred locality, which was not occupied
even in the most crowded condition of the city during the Peloponnesian war;
and thence after a further circuit, before the acropolis was ascended, to the
Pythium, the temple of1 Apollo Patrous, who may himself be
recognised among the right- hand group.
In the
monograph already referred to will be found my
conclusions
as to the names of the rest of the group—conclusions and conjectures. To the
remarks there made on the propriety of special note of Apollo Patrous in a
parade of Athenians, who made claim in a certain sense to be his progeny, may
be added, that as the Olympic powers in these groups are antithetical to the
Chthonian, so is the God of the Pythium, where the progress of the ship
concluded, to the Goddess of the Eleusinium, which it visited immediately on
starting.
I am much disposed to the belief that the
procession of the ship, with its peplus sail and filled with both sexes
splendidly arrayed, had relation originally to the legendary but probably not
altogether fabulous expedition of Theseus to Crete,—his rescue of youths and
maidens, his concerted but neglected signal of a special sail, and to the
celebrated annual theoria to Delian Apollo, which the Athenians referred to
this legendary deliverance. The coincidence of the Panathenaea with the month
llecatombaion of Apollo would favour the fusion of the two celebrations.
Groups of
officials, male and female, the demarchs and others, are occupied in setting
forth the ranks of maidens and young men. The victims for feast and sacrifices,
the musical- accompaniment of lyres, the service of the metics, are fully
indicated; but the largest space is occupied by the pomp of chariots and
cavalry, ready to fall in, in quickening and in full career, all executed with
a mastery of relievo that has never since been equalled. The horsemen advance
in files of six or seven, and we may observe that to each file in most cases is
attached one horseman, the most remote, somewhat detached and in advance, as
if an officer. We are thus to understand that they are advancing as Xenophon
recommends on such occasions—Kara (fwXas—and each file represents a
1 company.
We see
that the sculptor gained more than he lost by
1 Xen. Hipparch. 3.
sacrificing
literal nature on some points. The riders are large compared with their horses,
and there is no allowance for perspective diminution of the horsemen remotest
from the actual front. As this frieze was to be looked at from below and from
the narrow arcade, a low relief—which however was traditional in Attica—was
imperative ; but after all, the sculpture, when once in its place, must have
been seen to great disadvantage.
The
Parthenon of Pericles, of Pheidias and Ictinus, occupied, but with a certain
extension, the identical site of an earlier Parthenon, itself no inconsiderable
structure,—a hexa- style Doric temple indeed, not like its successor an
octastyle, but of which the columns fully equalled the later in diameter. That
it was ruined by the Mede does not admit of a doubt,— whether it was one of the
great works by which Peisistratus manifested the usual instinct of the tyrant
rather than merely emulated Polycrates or Cleisthenes, or whether, as is
perhaps probable, it was of a still earlier date, is matter of uncertainty.
The
acropolis in earlier days was ever a true citadel, seat of a strong garrison,
defensible against either surprise or siege, and it may be assumed, contained
the residence of the kings at least, if not also of the later tyrants. In the
Periclean period the acropolis ceased to be even an arsenal; but while it
became still more peculiarly a sacred enclosure, it only the more naturally
retained the safeguard of the national treasure, whether in the form of coin or
ingots or sacred precious vessels, as well as of private deposits, which ever
clung to the protection of a sanctuary, The reference by Achilles in the Iliad
to the wealth contained in the temple at Pytho, implies that even so early it
was known to Homer as the same bank of deposit that we find it at the outbreak
of the Peloponnesian 1 war.
The walls
which crowned the edge of the acropolis on all its
1 Horn. Jliacl, ix. 404 ; Tkuc. i. 121, 143. VOL. II. N
precipitous
sides, were assigned traditionally, through the greater portion of their
extent, to Pelasgic workmen. The portion on the southern side was built up by
Cimon, and probably represents the extent that was thrown down by the Persians
when they sj'stematieally demolished the defences of Athens, and burnt and
desecrated its sacred buildings. Access was afforded only from the west,
through a structure of peculiar dignity and magnitude, the Propylaea—the foregate—which
was designed most happily on the same principles and in the same style of
architecture as the Parthenon, but so subordinated by lower position and lesser
scale in well-adjusted proportion and gradation, as to enhance the dignity of
the more important building. A grand and conspicuous hexastyle Doric portico
was approached by a steep broad flight of steps divided by a roadway, which
passing through a wider intereolumn to a lofty hypostyle hall and a central
portal between two smaller doorwa}Ts in a transverse wall, emerged wTithin
the precinct under a second hexastyle Doric portico, fronting eastward. The
western portico, or entrance from the city, was flanked externally by two advanced
halls of reduced height, which thus preserved for this main entrance a certain
characteristic feature reminiscent of the obsolete purposes of defensive
fortification. They had hipped roofs and columns in antis, and one was
decorated with paintings ascribed to Polygnotus. The proportions of the smaller
columns of these side buildings were most happily, most artfully adjusted, to
add dignity by contrast to those of the central group.
Within the
precinct, the first and most conspicuous object was the statue—colossal
bronze—of Athene Promaelnis, by Pheidias, and regarded as a dedication from the
spoils of Marathon. It was some fifty feet high, exclusively of the pedestal,
and the crested helmet and the point of the elevated spear were visible at sea
to voyagers approaching Athens after rounding Sunium. The shield of the goddess
was enriched
with
bas-reliefs of the battle of Lapithae and Centaurs, by the sculptor Mys,—a
subject chosen as including achievements of Theseus, the captor in archaic
legend of the bull of Marathon, and to whom even a modern legend, as we have
seen, ascribed a reappearance on the same scene, to assist his Athenians in
their contest with Datis and Artaphernes.
The
temples of chief interest within the enclosure were the small one of Nike
Apteros,—Victory without wings,—of delicate architectural proportions and
sculptural adornments on an advanced western bastion overlooking the ascent of
the Propylaea ; the double temple of Athene Polias and Poseidon, the Erechtheum
; and lastly, the majestic Parthenon, with its axis corresponding generally
with that of the plateau, and on the highest part lying off to the south-east,
approached therefore by the angle on entrance from the west, but having its
true front facing eastward. Pausanias enumerates with some care the antiquities
and sanctities which were connected with the smaller temple, but is
disproportionately concise upon the Parthenon, apparently for the reason that
detailed descriptions already abounded. The valuable notices that he does give
are supplemented importantly by the still existing remains of the building, and
by certain more modern notices of portions that have since perished in too
modern times.
The
earlier basement upon the living rock was so far extended in breadth as to
give a measure of exactly one hundred Attic feet upon the top step, or line of
stylobate. In the earlier temple the ancient name Hecatompedon, or c
Hundred- foot plan,’ was justified, it would seem, by coincidence of a
measurement taken longitudinally on the plan of the naos, and it was again accommodated
in a like direction in the new building. The general design was an oblong
cella, with six columns before a vestibule to an entrance at either end, and
surrounded by an ambulatory under a general colonnade of eight columns on the
fronts and fifteen on the flanks; the whole is erected on a basis of three
degrees, which, too
N 2
steep for
ordinary steps, confer an expression of solid and majestic dignity. The
interior was divided between the opis- tliodomus, a smaller square apartment at
the west with four columns, which was used as a public and sacred treasury, and
the longer proper naos fronting eastward. This was divided by two ranges of
columns that carried an upper and smaller order and supported ceiling and roof,
into a broad nave with two Literal aisles.
At the
further end of the naos just in advance of the returned interior colonnade,
and fronting the entrance, stood the erect chryselephantine statue of the
goddess.
The
interior received light from the roof, but what was the precise arrangement for
weather-fending the comparatively small opening which in this climate sufficed
for illumination, and what was its exact position, remain, and seem likely to
remain, unanswered questions.
Proper
scientific study, which has certain claims in every art, intervenes most
definitely in the art of architecture, to aid the last artistic determinations
; weights and dimensions must be settled here by positive numbers and
measurements, —not merely felt and appreciated,—must needs be calculated with
precision for ultimate adjustment. And here too, in virtue of his mastery of an
adequate theory, the Athenian attained to an ideal beauty no less than in the
sculptural expression of grace in gesture, in the poise and carriage of a head,
in the tones of muscularity at rest or in action that defy reduction to the
limits of a theory or decision by mechanical or numerical rule.
It was at
Athens that the general limits of proportion of the architectural members of
the Hellenic trabeative style were first decided, and then the principles of
allowable variation within those limits and of special determination in
particular cases. In the Parthenon, as I have elsewhere shown in detailed
however still incomplete exposition, every division is proportionate to its
special antithesis,—as length
to
breadth, width to height, vertical to horizontal, enclosed or solid to open or
void. The proportions employed are taken from a definitely limited scale with
differences which diverge from equality by well marked but neither sudden nor
crowded gradations. The architectural scale has to this extent an analogy to
the musical, but only disaster has ever attended the theorists who have
laboured at their identification. The architect of the Parthenon adopted or
invented a scale of proportions which advance towards equality with a constant
difference of five between the terms of the ratios. Even within this select
sequence certain ratios were distinguished for more frequent employment, and in
most important and most ingeniously varied application.
By a still
further refinement the dimensions for the design were again subject to minute
modifications in execution, to deviations in direction and delicacy of
curvature that were found requisite to countervail some distortions that were
due to disturbing effects of contrast and optical illusion.
The
triumph of plastic genius within the naos was worthily prepared for by the
wealth of elaborate, though less variegated sculptural embellishments of the
exterior; these were distributed with most accurate instinct for subordination
and enhancement of dignity, between the two pediments of which the subjects
were divine and the figures colossal in scale, the intermediate metopes or
square tablets of the frieze, of which there were ninety-four with heroic subjects,—contests
with centaurs, with Amazons, mythical and mystic subjects,—and the frieze of
the ambulatory of smaller scale again,—a quasi- symbolieal representation of
contemporary celebrations.
The
eastern pediment exhibited Athene, the goddess of Athens, in her most universal
as well as mythical relations, though the subject may have been still treated
with a certain colour of peculiar Athenian legend; this was her birth as fabled
to have taken place from the head of Zeus cleft by the Titan Prometheus,—more
immediately, it is probable, her
manifestation
thereafter among the deities of Olympus, as the very central bloom and
potential energy of general cos- mical power and intelligence.
In the
western pediment the subject was mundane, and even most distinctly
national,—the assertion by Athene of her tutelary claim to Attica. The mytlius
of the contest of Athene and Poseidon for the land had many versions varying
in circumstances and vivacity. The version adopted here was that which had most
analogy to the symbolism of the goddess as a nature-power, and which prevailed
in the mytlius that connected her with her nursling Erechthcus, child of the
productive land, and with the dewy daughters of Ceerops. She was represented as
staying the sca-god as he advanced upon the land with a briny inundation,—as
vindicating cultivation against the encroaching sea,—fertility and industry
from sterile desolation. We have a sketch of the central group as it wras
seen shattered, but still before its all but utter destruction ; Poseidon,
confronted with the interposing Athene, recoils in sudden and decisive check ;
behind him, with indications of the stealing or sunjino: waves, were
o o r» /
groups of
the marine divinities, Amphitrite, Ino and Meli- certcs, Aphrodite and Thetis,
and so forth. Advancing behind Athene wras her chariot, with steeds
Victory-reined and guided, and Erechthcus ; while Ceerops, ancestor of the
Athenians as Cccropidae, his wife Aglauros, and a daughter— this figure is
entirely lost—regarded the rescue in mingled admiration and excitement. Ceerops
is seated on a serpent,— allusive to the double nature that in mythology
symbolised the vaunted autochthony of his progeny as offspring of the soil. So
Pheidias, compromised with the cruder legend of a Ceerops, half man, half
serpent, as even the unskilled sculptor of the Selinnntine metopes, evaded the
gross transformation of Aetaeon, and showed his dogs deceived sufficiently by
the fawn-skin cast over his shoulders. The incident is definitely localised by
the personified streams of Attica,
recumbent
in the angles,—Cephissus at one end; at the other, Ilissus and Calirrhoe.
The
larger, the illimitable scope of the subject of the eastern pediment, was
expressed by the sun-god rising from the sea at one angle ; his horses’ heads
emergent above the line of the comice, and the moon-goddess, with her team,
declining at the other. The central space was thus by implication coextensive
with the cope of heaven,—the aerial canopy of Olympus, and with this range the
artful gradation of suppressed interval between group and group sufficed to
justify imagination in accepting the symbolism as sufficient.
Of the
central group of this pediment we have unhappily neither detailed description
nor drawing, nor a single fragment. Of the lateral groups there have yet been
entrusted to the world most admirable and wonderful remains. We have, as the
occupants of the extremity of the universe, at one end Dionysus reclined and
greeting the rising sun-god, and the Attic pair of Seasons; and at the other,
in marvellous modulation of symmetry, the triad of Moirai or Fates. Remoteness
is intimated in either case by indications of sympathy, rapidly but
progressively affecting them, as the central excitement is propagated
tremblingly to the very ends of creation.
On one
side, while Dionysus is yet unroused, one Season— the nearer—is already aware
of the announcing herald Iris, and just invites the attention of her associate
to the approaching messenger. At the other end the more conscious Fates are
roused from deeper pre-occupation. One of them— the nearest of the three—turns
less to regard Victory, who springs forward from beside her to crown the
new-born goddess, than herself to gaze after the goddess. The next, upon whom
her arm rests, is also roused, and is only half turned, as, even half prepared
to rise, she awakens her recumbent sister, who has been slumbering on her lap.
Sculpture here employs upon space an art of the same class and character
as that by
which, with reference to time, we are carried insensibly through a single scene
of uninterrupted dialogue by Shakespear, and accept it as covering a series of
events of many days, as between the first disgrace of Wolsey, and its most
serious consequences.
As regards
the probable treatment of the central subject, I have propounded elsewhere my
dissent from many authorities, and in favour of the view that Athene must have
been erect in the centre of her own pediment. The figure is, I believe, most
accurately represented by a type of which we have so many antique copies as to
imply a celebrated original, and that I have engaged for my conjectural
restoration. Zeus, from whose head she was said to have sprung, adult and
full-armed, would then be seated on one side, the admiring or astonished divinities
grouped around.
These
compositions, on the faith of records that cannot be mistrusted, were the most
important that ever were executed by the Greeks, as the remains sufficiently
declare them to be the work of the supremest genius in sculpture. We are lost
in wonder at the consideration that the central figures which have perished
must needs have been still more admirable than those comparatively subordinate
ones which, even in ruin, defy all rivalry and even adequate appreciation. The
so-called Ilissus and Theseus—in verity Cephissus and Dionysus,—are
comparatively well preserved, and exhibit to us statuary at a point of
perfection beyond which human genius cannot and need not hope to advance. They
are now seen, it seems strange to say, in the British Museum, more favourably
than ever they were beheld in antiquity after once they were placed in
position. There they were elevated more than forty feet above the level of the
eye, with the slabs of the tympanum in close contact behind them. So placed not
only was the fully elaborated work of the backs of the statues hidden for all
time, but even much of the most exquisitely finished of the fronts, as the laps
of the seated and recumbent
Fates, was
lost from view, it might well be supposed for ever, after once the group was
removed from the studio (ergasterion) of Pheidas and raised into its place.
Still it
is the fact that the usual position of the future spectator from below, was by
no means left unconsidered; for as an adjustment to his point of view certain
of the figures have a somewhat forward lean, as of flowers from a vase.
Executed again in the complete round as they are, we observe certain
accommodations borrowed from the more peculiar managements of alto-relievo. To
gain fuller display of the figure, departures are sometimes ventured upon from
strict natural dimensions, and, as in the case of one shoulder and clavicle of
the Dionysus, a positive is substituted for a perspective foreshortening, in
full confidence that the anomaly will be veiled for taste at least, if not for
rule and compasses.
It is not
incumbent on us to refine or super-refine with theorists of the lamp of
sacrifice, as to a ruling intention of devoutness in thus lavishing labour
beyond the need, as homage due to a sacred occasion. The works were doubtless
objects of general regard and exhibition before they were set up in place; and
even beyond the reward of admiration then to be reaped, the enthusiasm of a
prime artist in his work ever prompts to confer upon it more perfection than he
expects to be appreciated. The satisfaction of his own soul, the exhaustion of
his energies in full embodiment of his own aspirations, were motives enough for
a Shakespear to combine and finish up to the last perfection, in a single play,
a crowd of characters of which he could scarcely expect that more than one, if
one, with all the aid of his personal instruction, would ever attain to worthy
personation.
The great
authority for the architecture of the Parthenon and its refinements must always
remain the survey which Mr. Penrose executed for the Society of Dilettanti.
THE PROBLEM OF POLITICS IN RELATION TO KELIGION IN HELLAS.
One of the most
remarkable points of contrast which the politics of Greece present to those of
modern states, and indeed of many ancient also, is their immunity from complication
by religious difficulties, their exemption from imbroglios of cross influences
and interests between the administrators of temporal power and those who
claimed to be in command of penalties more than temporal,—between priests and
politicians. Evidence is superabundant of the violent interference of religious
authorities with state affairs in ancient Egypt, in Judaea, and in countries
further eastward; priesthoods were there sufficiently powerful to be the
courted allies, the dangerous rivals or actual supplanters of royalty, and the
mere quarrels of rival priesthoods were sometimes of such consequence as almost
to hustle other politics out of history. In an opposite quarter at republican
llome, it was a constant solicitude of the statesman to check with instant
severity any independent religious association, as threatening not only
disorder but perilous 1 rivalry. Hellas was in immediate contact
with regions which were the special forcing- grounds of superstitions, and the
very nurseries of fanatics or impostors who best understood how to turn them to
account for profit and power; a certain vitality of these
1 Livy, xxxix. 16.
germs even
in her midst is betrayed in the notices, obscure and imperfect as they are, of
the Orphic sects; closely allied to these, if without direct attachment, were
the Pythagorean societies, and here in full historical time a predominance of
enthusiasm seems threatened by such symptoms as their profession of ascetic
discipline, vegetarian diet, and so forth; yet the tendency is found to be
choked forthwith by intrusion of a mystical philosophy and purely political
aims, which reduce the original religious symbols to little more than
countersigns and watchwords.
What then,
we ask, was the preoccupation in Hellas of those tendencies of common humanity
which have constantly resulted in such conspicuous manifestations elsewhere?
The question is of peculiar interest in relation to Attica, because there the
religious sentiment (deisiclaimonia) was of exceptional warmth and vivacity.
The witness of monuments to this spirit is corroborated throughout Athenian
history and literature from Thucydides and Aristophanes to Demosthenes and 2Plato,
and attested with equal emphasis by 3 Paul and by 4Pausanias.
As regards institutions, the quality of the Athenian religious sentiment is
illustrated by the Eleusinian Mysteries as initiations, of which the pomp and
solemn effect were held to justify the declaration that the festival had been
accounted from of old by the Greeks at large, as no less superior in dignity to
all others than were the gods in comparison to the heroes ; and while simply as
a spectacle the celebration was comparable only with the Olympic games, in
sacred ness it was without a parallel.
A claim to
priesthood in the strictest sense was by no means unfamiliar in Greece
generally, and at Eleusis the sacred functions were administered by an
hereditary caste, the reputed descendants of Eumolpus and Kerux, — the Chanter
and the Herald,—representatives of the primaeval
1 Herod, ii. 81. 2
Soph. Oed. Col. 260 and 1007.
3 Acts
xvii. 22. 4 Paus. x. 28.
6.
ministers
of song and service at celebration of a 1 sacrifice. What then were
the obstacles that prevented the development of the natural instincts of such a
class, even independently of encouraging examples, and their considerable
participation in political power? In the absence of any trace of distinctly
repressive enactments, it would rather seem that the true check to rampant
sacerdotalism in Hellas lay in the genius of the people, in a certain popular
repugnance to tendencies which in consequence withered of themselves as in an
unkindly atmosphere. But an explanation such as this leaves us still with the
task to penetrate, if we may, to the origin of such repugnance, and of the
vigour with which it maintained itself.
Even in
the simple state of society which the Homeric poetry sets before us, we have an
incidental notice of the ascetic Selli, who with feet unwashed and sleeping on
the bare ground, are attached to the remote fane of Pelasgic Zeus at Dodona;
they appear consecrated to his service as exclusively as the cup from which
Achilles makes libation to their god and to none other ever, which is laid up
ceremoniously, chalice-like, and only put to this its single and sacred use,
and then only after special purification and with washed
2 hands.
The Selli
thus appear as an associated and almost monklike caste, imbued with the true
instinet for imposing ritual and impressive apparatus, but already either
extruded or left behind at the very confines of barbarism ; Chryses as a
different type, appears in the first book of the Iliad, attached to his temple
as a single and independent functionary, a performer of sacrifices, and
presenter of prayers, and in immediate contact with the national activity of
the Greeks.
The type
of prophet as distinct from priest is presented to us as characteristically in
Calchas, who is unattached to
either
special station or peculiar god; his gift and function is to recognise the
ominous in striking and exceptional incidents, and to furnish interpretations
which vindicate themselves by some aptness ingeniously symbolical, and falling
in with the requirements of passion or policy. But even independently he
answers an appeal to explain what offence against what god has provoked a
pestilence or fleet-detaining winds, and is prepared to indicate appeasing
remedies, which when reinforced by and reinforcing popular feeling have to be
adopted upon his bare assertion, with whatever repugnance and resentment, even
by the £ king of men 5 himself. The poet allows, and I
doubt not intends us to infer, that the denouncement by Calchas of the
unpopular impiety of Agamemnon, was procured by an understanding with
Achilles, who has taken upon him to summon the assembly; but the prophet is not
unaware that he is adopting a party at his peril, and the priest Chryses has
already been sent off trembling at the threat that his sacred character and insignia
will avail but little to protect him in case of renewed intrusion.
The
strength of the kings’ own position, which could thus from time to time assert
itself, lay not slightly in their unreserved and admitted claim of divine right
as delegates of Zeusit is in manifest harmony with this assumption that they
officiate at sacrifices with only their own heralds as subordinate assistants,
and offer general prayers and make solemn attestations on their own account on
most important occasions of battle or 1 treaty. The custom of heroic
times was continued where kingship alone survived, in Lacedaemon, and when the
army was in the field the function of priest was assumed by the Spartan king as
absolutely as that of
2 commander-in-chief.
The
faculty of the diviner is trespassed upon as freely;
Hector
waives aside an omen that does not suit him, with the noble protest—
‘The one best omen is our country’s cause.’
Agamemnon,
once foiled by Calchas, knows how to put superstition to use quite
independently on his own account, and enforces reluctant acquiescence in his
rash and passionate purpose by declaring a divine intimation to himself in a
dream. This encroachment on the pretensions of the mantis has to be accepted on
his own unconfirmed authority, and only a covert murmur is still suggested by
Nestor's significant averment that no less authority than that of the king of
men,—incontestible in any case,—would induce him to accept 1 it.
The
Homeric is thus found so far anticipating the Hellenic world as exhibiting
sacerdotal pretensions held decidedly in check, although at present by no means
quite subdued or obsolete. In later times, as reported by Pindar and Herodotus,
we find the soothsaying faculty continued as an ancestral endowment in certain
families, who employ it lucratively and professionally as they might any other
hereditary talent, or simply the transmitted rules and maxims of a technical
profession. An assumed preternatural gift in this form may be safely
interpreted as due to no more than domestic indoctrination with traditional
artifice and jargon. Accordingly when the soothsayer — the mantis — is found
habitually stationed beside the general on the battle-field, with ostensible
control over his action, we cannot doubt the usual existence of an
understanding that omens shall be favourable when they are required to be so by
strategic considerations, and not otherwise. When a general like Nicias was
candidly superstitious, the military conscquences were what might be expected.
Again we
find it customary for priestly families to be
attached
by long tradition and prerogative to certain temples and sacred localities.
Eleusis, already cited, is the prime example of all, and when the Athenian
proneness to superstition is considered, it would certainly seem marvellous
that so strong a germ in such favourable ground grew not up to embarrass civil
authority by serious and persistent conflict. We are driven indeed to regard it
as a high probability that such a conflict had already been fought out, in the
long unrecorded periods of Greek civilisation, and that some inherited maxims
and inveterate prepossessions had been thence transmitted which survived any
definite memory of their origin.
Euripides
in ‘ The Bacchae ’ works up into a romantic drama all the incidents and motives
of state jealousy that are involved in such a conflict, and precisely the same
that repeat themselves too exactly and surprisingly in Roman history centuries
afterwards, in connection with the Bacchanalia, not to have been copied
originally after nature,— derived more or less immediately from matter of fact;
the characteristics of the crisis in either case are curiously the same, even
to coincidence in phrase, that attend the imperial repression of early
Christian enthusiasm. A hint of a remote historical precedent is perhaps
preserved in the notice by
1 Cicero, that Diagondas of Thebes was
author of a law, induced by scandals akin to those which were charged on the
Bacchanalia, to prohibit nocturnal sacred celebrations, but I cannot trace the
indication further. When we scrutinise Hellenic mythology however with an
appropriate sentiment for the verity of the impressions, however mingled or
dislocated, that it preserves of ages of varied and active life, we cannot but
recognise traces of rivalries, conflicts, and aggressive agitations among
worships that ultimately settled down to the tranquil compromises of the
historic age. It is thus after the exhaustion of a series of reactions, that the
Greek of
the times we are concerned with is found earnestly interested in the due
traditional observance of certain sacred functions, and attaching only too much
respect to the faculty of the soothsayer; but still he accepted this faculty as
only one among others that were equally subjects of occasional hereditary
transmission, and what he was not reconciled to was the exclusion of the rest
of the world from sacred offices entirely, or unless by authorisation of a
corporate caste. The Eumolpids of Eleusis were to him but one of numerous
families, all with as good a title to an hereditary sacred character, however
inferior in importance; and he was far indeed from consenting that even all
such families collectively should engross control and administration of
sacrifice and sanctuary. The habits of simpler days lived on, it may be, with
transmitted vitality into historic times; but in any case, the Homeric picture
of the heroic age was an abiding influence, as it kept ever before men’s eyes a
type of natural society; a constant succession moreover of noble poets took it
in turn to vary mythology with such freedom as to preclude its hardening into
an authorised comment on ignorant idolatries, and constantly made it a vehicle
for an advancing and purer theory of moral obligation. So it became peculiarly
characteristic of the Hellenic world, to rely in unhesitating faith on the
aesthetically beautiful for guidance to the essentially good, the infallibly
true; and when the sense of beauty was so refined and so general, this
criterion gave security against many a hideous abuse. The fertility of the
imagination of the Greek admirably seconded this influence; the forms and
mythical embellishments of religion around him were most diversified, and at
the same time were universally blended and harmonised by very definite yet
subtlest analogies; they offered themselves accordingly to as many varied moods
of mind, with something of the advantage which was recognised by 1
Addison long before Macaulay, 1 Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, &c., 1753, p. 293.
as
realised for Rome in the diversified genius of her monastic orders. What is apt
to be at once a chief opportunity and mischief of sacerdotalism, was precluded
in Hellas by the circumstance that while the education of the young, in its two
great branches of gymnastics and music, of bodily and mental discipline, was an
object of engrossing solicitude, it never lapsed under the control of their
priests. The popular Hellenic sense of the active value of instruction was never
misled into esteeming what had been merely learnt by rote and not truly
acquired and adopted by intelligence, and the Hellenic passion for liberty was
too uncompromising not to repudiate a morality of blind obedience.
It seems
clear that a certain number of moral maxims, though not amounting to a system,
and at most reminding of the decalogue, obtained enunciation in connection with
the mysteries and their rites,—respect for oaths and sanctities, disallowance
of 1 suicide, filial duty, conjugal obligations, and even industry
and general self-restraint; but even so they were associated wTith
so much of natural, of poetical symbolism and the exhibition of such typical
offenders as furnished forth the Hades of Polygnotus, as to seem but like in
kind and supplementary to that general training for which parents relied mainly
on the influence of the poets.
As regards
what may be called the constitutional regulation of religion, in those public
celebrations which were recognised as expressions of the common sentiments of
the entire nation, and as rites in which every citizen had the privilege of
participating, there was a great security against priestly encroachment in the
customary elective appointment of managers or controllers. This principle
again, or the practice certainly, was of primaeval origin. Even in the Homeric
poems a Trojan priestess of the very highest distinction is spoken of as owing
her dignity to election by the 2 people. In later times this process
is constantly mentioned in com- 1 Plato, Phaedo, 62 B. 2 Horn. Iliad, vi. 300.
VOL. II. O
bination
with the still more demoeratical lot, even when election by lot was restricted
to members of one family. It is by no means certain that this system, however
ancient, was not originated with a set design to countervail class interests
and influences. A pious apology was at hand, as though the choice were thus
remitted to the god himself, but it is impossible not to appreciate here the
same operation of the election by lot in countervailing intrigue and cabal of
party, that recommended it in politics. The staff of religious officials that
Aristotle considers requisite in a well-ordered city comprises priests it is
true, but he specifies more carefully as usually a distinct class — the
conservators of the sacred edifices and other objects, guardians of the
temples, custodians of sacred property. Even as regards the properly sacred
functions, he specifies a very important class as not administered by the
priests at all, but by the civil functionaries, who in various cities were
variously styled Archons, Kings, or 1 Prytanes. For the Eleusinian
celebration an epimeletes or superintendent was taken from each of the sacred
families, but still by election; and with them were associated two others
elected from the general demus; and a majority in numbers and perhaps superior
control would be secured to the representative officials by the participation
of the Arehon basileus, who exercised by appointment the sacred prerogatives of
the primaeval kings, and seems to have taken cognisance in the first instance
of charges of 2impiety. AVhat again is most important, all evidence
and presumptions are in favour of the exercise by the state of absolute control
over the funds that supported celebrations, which were far too costly for
either private contributions or any still unsecularised temple property.
It is
highly characteristic of the Greeks that among the qualifications for priestly
appointment, personal beauty was a frequent requirement ; certain other
conditions varied 1 A rial. Polit. vi. 5. 8. 3 Flato, Euthyphron, 1.
usually
according to a sense of symbolical propriety to the attributes of a god or
worship ; the married state or widowhood was as indispensable in some cases as
virginity or celibacy in others; so in numerous instances the lapse of the
qualifying propriety involved that of the sacred office which might determine
by advance beyond the age of puberty, or even by such an incident in some cases
as the death of a child. Of the condition of consecration by a predecessor as
solely authorised transmitter of a supernatural influence or commission both
indispensable and indelible, I am not aware of a trace.
The work
of the politician may well appear to be seriously enhanced when he lacks that
help towards the general course of public peace and public happiness that should
be given by the labours of men of special aptitude and culture in imbuing the
entire population from earliest years with a sense of responsibility beyond
the sanctions of the laws, and superior to any temporal consequences whatever
either of penalty or reward. Statutes and supervision that act simply by compulsion
must ever be but clumsy substitutes for the controlling conscience of the
individual, which suffers or rejoices chiefly according to its sense of
sympathy with a recognised source of universal power and order.
Unfortunately
however the politician may often be well content with the simplification of his
labour in a state of society which does not require him to consider or
counterwork an alliance of the craftiest of mankind in the exercise of absolute
control over the most foolish. At present he has usually no choice but to apply
himself to keep or recovcr the peace as best he may, by management or the
strong arm, among sects who are all hostile to each other and all equally
positive, though in the nature of things from the extent of their differences
there is only one that can be even approximately right; on his success in such
a task depends the chance of the world’s progress towards more creditable
agree-
o %
ment upon
evidence which is the same for all and open to all alike, and towards a purer
humanity.
The
problem of the Hellenic statesman in respect to religious questions was
presented in a less violent and complicated aspect; he was doomed, however, as
time went on, to rue his neglect or failure in an attempt to keep instruction
well ahead of prejudice, no less certainly than the modern in his less easy
task to promote knowledge in the face of prepossession and the most violent
social antipathies. The worst virus of superstition is a secretion of
imposture, but to become actively malignant it requires to be in contact with
certain forms of ignorance, and where these exist without disturbance from
free enquiry and liberal intercour.se, there sooner or later the venom is
transfused, and after sweltering, however long and associated with whatever of
seeming tranquillity and beauty, declares its nature at last in offensiveness
and death.
Notwithstanding
a variety of countervailing influences, in the arts, in poetry especially, and
in the nobler inculcations which were demonstrably involved in the celebrations
and illustrative mythology of the mysteries, Athenian feeling remained still
far too subject to a low conception of the relations of religion and morality,
and unfortunately disinclined to attend to the wiser philosophers who might
labour to correct it. The most acceptable service of the gods was too generally
understood to be independent of right conduct, and often indeed a sufficient
substitute; a value was assigned to worship that was proportionate to assiduity
and expensiveness, or even sometimes to mere baseness of punctilious
sycophancy ; in this sense it ever tended towards the ceremony that is little
better than a theory of magical conjuration, which is first held to constitute
a claim and then half believed to be competent to enforce it. We find
ceremonial omission or defilement repeatedly regarded as a more likely
provocation of divine anger than any positive
wickedness;
the violation of a sanctuary, the breach of. a treaty sanctioned by solemn
oaths may weigh upon the public conscience when only failure has ensued, but
its sensitiveness is quite unawakened under memory of injustice, cruelty, or
cold-blooded massacre. .
Thucydides
himself scarcely takes us more by surprise when, as in the case of Antiphon, we
find that he regards the most admirable excellence (aper^),—a word which however
is probably here to be more fitly translated ‘ capacity,* as compatible with
organised political assassination, than when he pauses on the difficulty of
reconciling the miserable fate of Nicias with such deserts (such aptTrj) as
consisted after all only in assiduous observance beyond all Hellenes of his
time, of ritualistic proprieties.
A
mythology which is extensively and justly discredited must ultimately cease to
be even a qualified and precarious guarantee for morals; and to resist their
timely disconnection is simply to secure that, so unnaturally interlocked, they
shall perish together. The bigotry of ignorance co-operates with the angry
assaults of reason made reckless by tyranny, and with dissoluteness that
welcomes release from a present restraint with no intention to embrace another
; and in this way a state is torn asunder, because sincerity has been
checked,—it may be with but little effect as regards private cultivation of
intelligence,—but only too successfully in any overt attempt of the wiser to
carry the multitude along with them to a basis of better certified rationality.
Some
signally mean or ridiculous superstition comes constantly before us to herald
the greatest misfortunes and disgraces, or worst crimes of Athens. Before the
fatal outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, men’s minds were diverted from more
rational considerations by vague prophecies in general circulation; and the
comic poet, who is often unfortunately too ready to pander to the prejudices of
his audience when they coincide with his own animosities, may
be trusted
to have fairly hit a blot when he runs counter to them and satirises in the ‘
Peace * the influence of the vulgar and greedy soothsayer in advocating
continuance of war. Superstitious encouragement was as active as political ambition
in inciting to the flagitious and impolitic Sicilian expedition, and then did
its best to ruin the enterprise by fostering tho excitement about the mimicry
of the mysteries. The priestly Eumolpid families of 1 Eleusis hunted
Alcibiades, who had bceome at least indispensable, into exasperation and exile;
as they afterwards intrigued to frustrate his return and reconciliation, when
he had become indispensable again. The whole fortune of the state was left to
the mercy of the w eakness of Nicias out of a reliance upon the formal piety
to which was ascribed his previous course of uniform good fortune; and free
thought and restless science wrere cruelly avenged for their
contemptuous treatment by the audience of Aristophanes, when the last chance of
retirement from before Syracuse was forfeited out of silly alarm of the entire
army at the omen of an eclipse of the moon. Later still superstition played
fatally into the hands of party in condemning the victorious generals of
Arginusae against the protest of Socrates —of Socrates destined himself to be
its most illustrious victim.
In Attica
then, as little as elsewhere, is it permissible to credit a general population
with that elevated spirit of independence which indeed is ever provoked among
the few to its noblest and purest expression by revolt against the dangerous
degradation of the multitude. Neither freedom of thought nor purity of
sentiment, which for a brief moim nt promised so encouragingly, were destined
to make good any comprehensive conquest even within the limits of a single city
; and in malignant proximity to their very commencements wrc
recognise the germs of obscurantism and persecution that between them wrere
to transform the Greece of m 1 Thuc. viii. 53.
Pericles
into that of the lower empire,—of to-day. Here it was that the Athenians were
false, and fatally false, to that noble confidence in freedom which Pericles
set forth for them, and asserted as their cherished principle. For the
philosophical inclinations of Pericles himself we have sufficient evidence, but
are left too much to conjecture as to the extent to which his enlightened views
had a chance to react on his policy in dealing with the public and religious
celebrations of which he undertook the very assiduous control. Statesmen who
have in view to touch religion politically, in a free country at least, are
under the temptation to prepare their opportunities by assentations at the cost
of sincerity, of which there is one at least recorded to his charge. It seems
significant of his caution that he never was assailed on a charge of impiety;
while he was wounded, as we shall see, all the more severely through those to
whom he was most attached. The scene at his last illness probably epitomises a
serious difficulty of his life, and the relief could be but bitter of smiling
with wiser friends on one side of his death-bed, at the charms and amulets that
affectionate superstition was hanging about his bosom on the other.
THE ELEUSINIA.
The ancient religions of Hellas were not complicated to any
serious extent by tlie quasi-metaphysieal dogmas with which, in modern times,
philosophy is so apt to come into collision. The current legendary histories,
in a certain degree from their origin as well as by tendency of later
modification, insensible or designed, admitted, in most cases, of transposition
into natural types and allegories, with such manifest simplicity that whosoever
was willing to keep the peace with society could have little difficulty in
conscientiously professing them in one sense or the other, and might do so in
either with equal exemption from molestation.
Of all
sections of Greek religion this was peculiarly the case with the most
important, the mythic cycle of Eleusis; which largely owed to this its deep and
enduring influence,— an influence that in truth is not without important traces
at this day. Upon this ground it retained a hold of respect upon even subtle
minds which is far more easily explainable than many modern incongruities of
the same general nature. As regards divarication of prevalent moral theory and
moral practice, this has been so frequent in all ages as to absolve us from
seeking recondite explanations for any contrast between the assumable value of
Athenian religious sentiments and the public and private vices which might be
rampant notwithstanding.
The
history of this Eleusinian religion, even as far as recoverable, is the best
elucidation of another salient difficulty—the compatibility among the Greeks
of feelings of reverence for mythical divinities, with the tolerance and even
enjoyment of extremes of disrespect, and the unscrupulous treatment of gods and
goddesses as mere dramatic utilities, poetic machinery, puppets.
From the
diversity of worships in Greece, which sprung from a poetic soil to branch and
bloom in a poetic atmosphere, the favourite divinity of one district easily
came to be regarded in the territory of another less from a religious and
reverential than a poetical point of view. The licence of poets in such cases
was quite beyond control; and when the two aspects were presented side by side,
they could not but speedily be found in conflict, to the especial discomfort of
one who should be more sympathetic with priest than with poet. Such a challenge
left but one course open to secure the sense of awTe from utter
waste, and this was to strengthen the centre of worship by withdrawing certain
traditions from indiscrimi- minate publicity, as too sacred to be thus played
with or vulgarised; accordingly all over Greece we find legends and symbols and
interpretations of symbols connected with the particular fanes, which the
reverential Pausanias forbears to disclose or dissert upon, as being only
communicable to the initiated. Under this reservation, poetry, fanciful or
philosophical, and even grossest comedy, were allowed the fullest licence and
most fully indulged it, from Homer and Hesiod down to Aeschylus and
Aristophanes. The Zeus of Aeschylus is treated in quite as unceremonious a
style in the Prometheus Bound as in the Iliad. The husband of shrewish Here is
in truth very nearly on a par, in respect of dignity, to the deity who has to
be beholden to his victim Prometheus for a secret on which his safety, not to
say supremacy, depends. But it was not on this account that Aeschylus was
charged with impiety, but for some expressions that were taxed as
violations
of Eleusinian mystery. And here in fact the comparison runs level again with
Homer.
Whatever
may be the uncertainty as to the exact date of composition of the Iliad and
Odyssey, it must certainly fall long posterior to the full growth of the
religions of Demeter and Dionysus, the central divinities of the Eleusinian
celebrations and worship, and the reticence of the poems in respect of
precisely these divinities must therefore be understood to imply that their
position in current mythology was exceptional ; it is not easy to suggest
another motive for the poet to abstain from including them in his
characteristic series, than the real and very sufficient sense that to do so
would be trenching offensively, or even dangerously, on forbidden precincts.
The historic evidence must be taken as complete, for the early prevalence of
the worship of Demeter in Thessaly and deep down in eveiy locality associated
with the wide Pelasgic name, for its association on equal terms at Delphi, for
the primaeval veneration of its legends in Arcadia, at Argos, in every seat of
the Achaeans, and for its peculiar association with the Ionian colonisation of
Asia Minor. The general antiquity of the legends and mystical worship of
Dionysus may not be so easily or so fully demonstrated, but the single
exposition suffices for the argument; and if proof is in default of the equal
antiquity of Dionysus Iacchus at Eleusis, this only strengthens our inference,
by bringing down the fresh vigour of the wine god, as a divinity commanding
awe, more nearly to the Homeric date.
It is
highly important to notice a distinction which is made by Homer between the
divinities which, however participating primarily or at second hand in the
character of personifications, had this abstract quality almost overlaid and
obliterated, and the purer and more recognisable nature-powers that he
occasionally introduces. The rays of the latent Helios are only discernible
occasionally and fitfully glancing from the Trojan Apollo, as the producer and
dissipatcrof pestilence,
or the
smiter of overdone Patroelus on the back; and a symbolical Theogamia is truly,
no doubt, but only just discernible in the fraudful encounter of Here with her
spouse on Ida. But when these divinities are in any case appealed to with
unusual seriousness, their nature-character reappears ; Zeus is then Greatest,
most Glorious—as cloud-compeller, as habitant of Aether; and the all-seeing Sun
is attested by name, with the Rivers and with Earth, along with the powers that
judge the perjured in another 1 state; and so again elsewhere
associated with Jove are Earth, Sun, and the
2 Erinnyes. When Poseidon, in the Iliad,
hesitates to defer to the positive commands of Zeus, Iris reminds him that
there is still a superior sanction for the authority of the elder, —there are
the Erinnyes to be reckoned with,—and he gives in at 3 once.
In such
instances we discern an indication of a sense of sanctity which deepens as,
renouncing the poetically- heightened and decorative figments of poetry, it
recurs to the unsophisticated, unornamented suggestions of nature; and such
appeals form an intermediate term between the imaginative and the properly
sacred theology of the poet.
Demeter is
literally mother Earth, and equally literally her daughter was recognised as
representing the fruits of the Earth, especially of bread corn; and Dionysus,
the god of wine, was as unambiguously the equivalent of wine, or more generally
of the humidity in all forms, which is a condition of both vegetable and animal
growth. By natural extension Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus were the symbols
of universal death and life,—of life transmitted, of life to revive again,—the
presidents and judges therefore of the underworld, of the realm below the
all-receiving and all-rendering earth. It was the palpable readiness with which
the cycle of legend connected with the worship of these divinities, lent itself
to interpretation as a natural and beautiful symbolism,
1 Horn. Iliad, iii. 276. 2 lb. xix. 259. 3
lb. xv. 204.
that
relieved the cultivated mind from the shock of confronting mere gross
fabrication or error; and that a burden lighter than many are now bending under
was laid on the victims of unwilling conformity.
The course
of human existence moves on from birth and growth, with many an alternation of
happiness and trouble, to inevitable decay and final death. But hope travels
with us along through the intermediate alternations,—hope frequently illusive,
but frequently justified,—consummation in itself of the joy that it only
promises; and hope, if only of kindly relief, stands by us to the very last.
The story of our physical life has constant parallels in our moral experiences;
joy is in conflict with grief as life with death-, for ever vanquished, for
ever resurgent; and most familiar observation is ever reporting the law as
universal. The poetry of the very earliest times, which blended with a
rudimentary natural philosophy, recognised types of a parallel career in all
nature ; for it is not alone that the story is the same for life in all its
familiar forms, but the law of life seems to be reflected, and so the powTer
of life to assert itself, in the successive incidents of a single day from
sunrise to sunset, in the erratic changes of the moon, the vicissitudes of the
seasons,—to all of which some stages and incidents of life so accurately
conform, as well as to the intimations of still larger astronomical cycles. On
every side the invitation only awaits a lively creative faculty to body forth
intelligible forms, to personify the powers of nature; and the indulgence of
the impulse under enlivening enthusiasm gave birth to ideal beings, associated
with sequences of such typical incidents, conceived as of like faculties, nay
of like passions and susceptibilities of joy and grief, only without, and
sometimes even not without, the last weaknesses of all,—as man himself. So was
achieved a representation of the superiority, and yet at the same time, the
analogy of general nature to the individual man, in the sequence of whose
generations, even as night and winter
are ever
recurrent yet ever transitory, life young and healthy, life irresistible,
irrepressible, comes ever forth afresh to take the places given up by disease
and decrepitude. But if a certain sympathy was recognised between human
weakness and the secessions of the governing power of nature, it was scarcely
to be avoided that the sympathy of the divine with the human should be
hopefully interpreted for human participation in its strength. The
ever-reviving year, which avouched the unconquerable force of divine energy,
was taken as type and earnest of that which is manifested, in so many respects
so similarly in the individual,—is experienced in the ever-recurrent and
invincible conviction that the principle of consciousness, as the highest
manifestation of all existence, must needs be the most indestructible.
It is not surprising
then that a certain parallelism runs through so many of the Greek legends, and
also through those of other races. That those of the Greeks were so various was
due partly to the fertility and versatility of their imagination, and then to
its receptiveness and to the vigorous independent genius of various tribes,
with strong but limited local associations, that took inspiration largely from
special surroundings. By fundamental kinship still, the fusion of various
mythologies was readily effected, and if ever we find traces of such
antagonisms as occur in connection with Dionysus, or the Demetrian or Solar
worships, we find them afterwards or elsewhere as infallibly woven into one.
No deeper
cleft or more marked distinction can be discovered in the general Hellenic
system than between the Olympian, especially the Solar, mythologies and the
Chtho- nian, which deal with the gods and doings of the underworld ; while the
worship of Dionysus seems to break in as wildly but irresistibly intrusive
everywhere; and yet the alliance Mas most close,—was Amphictionic,—between the
Delphic fane of Apollo and that of Demeter at Thermopylae. At
Delphi the
peaks of double Parnassus and the two pediments of the temple were severally
assigned to Apollo and Dionysus ; at Eleusis, Dionysus is associated as
Iacchus in the most sacred celebrations, and almost every other god may equally
be traced there as admitted under some pretence : a poet at
least—Aeschylus—could even venture, though not without surprising his contemporaries,
to interchange the twin sister of Apollo with Persephone, and exhibit Artemis
as a daughter of 1 Demeter.
The
religion of Apollo appears almost alone in the period we treat of, as at all
comparable with that of Demeter in political and moral influence. The oracle of
Delphi still retains most important influence, even upon public affairs, and
the control of the temple is jealously contested and stipulated for in
treaties. It seems to have exercised peculiar authority at Lacedaemon, but was
evidently held in awe at Athens also. The imputed corruption of the Pythia by
king Pleistoanax was believed by the Spartans to explain their disasters in the
war as reasonably as the impious disregard of treaties by the Thebans at its
commencement, and their own breach of oath in rejecting the offers of
international arbitration according to the terms they had sworn to. Their
confidence revives when the Athenians are involved in a like 2
impiety. How the Athenians could be acted upon by oracles and prophecies is the
favourite taunt of Aristophanes, and Thucydides confirms it when he records
the prevalence of absurd prophecies that preceded the Lacedaemonian and the
Syracusan 3 wars, and how the rage of the people on failure was
directed against their religious as much as their political advisers. They
ascribe their grand disaster at the battle of Delium to their desecration there
of the temple of Apollo, and seek to expiate the sin by clearing the island of
Delos of its inhabitants—by a renewed 4 purification.
1 Herod, ii. 156. 9
Thuc. vii. 18.
8 lb. v. 26; viii. 1. 1
lb. v. 1.
Afterwards,
when they suffer still another serious defeat, at Amphipolis, they bethink
themselves—on the prompting of an oracle—that this presumed act of piety was
mistaken, and at the very time when they are staining themselves with the
slaughter of the surrendered Scionaeans, attempt a ritualistic rectification by
bringing back the expelled Delians to their island of Apollo.
If only in
virtue of the influence which the conception of Apollo is thus found to
exercise over both Ionians and Dorians, the contrast or opposition of Olympian
and Chtho- nian gods is clearly not sustainable as complete and absolute; any
more than the restriction of mysteries and initiations to the Chthonian
worships. Apollo had his terms of indignation and even of servitude, as other
gods were enchained at times ; but still, as was natural, the gloomiest or most
solemn aspects of our state were attached by especial association to the
personified powers of the earth,—of earth, receiver of the dead,—whose surface
is the very party-wall of separation between light and darkness. It was here
that mysterious celebrations could find suggestions of deeper depression, — the
opportunity likewise for more vehement rebound. Excitement of this kind is the
staple of religious enthusiasm; and when the craving for it becomes habitual,
it is the part of the administrators of religion to give it periodical
satisfaction with whatever heightening means they have still to command.
Religious
functions in which mystery heightened awe had vagrant professors all over
Greece—impostors, some beggarly, some bedizened, who vaunted their power, for a
fee, to purify by a peculiar process from moral as readily as from bodily
infection, to release even from the mischiefs and miseries of inherited sins ;
and rituals with such pretensions, more or less dignified, were localised far
and wide. Eleu- sinian mysteries were not restricted to Attica, but it was due
to long tradition in an undisturbed seat, no doubt also
to the
religious sensibilities of the people and to the aptitude of their genius for
elaborating symbolical and significant ritual, that the antique celebrations
were organised here to the highest degree of dignity and impressiveness ; and
so they became,—clothed as they were still with the character of a national
institution,—more extensively venerated throughout all Greece than any others.
It was something more than mere appliance of the resources of fine art, that
could so transform into dignity the inventions that in baser hands were
fraudulent or vulgar — the affectation of seclusion and reservation and
secrecy, the promulgation of inexplicable dumb-show, or explanations the more
insisted on as the more paradoxical, the requirement of faith in moral, if not
material, changes which are destitute of all proof whatever except the
invincible imperturbable assurance of the assertors.
The more
obvious drift of the Eleusinian my thus in its leading lines was the
representation of the annual death or torpor of vegetation succeeded by
reappearance and revival. Demeter, — mother-Earth, — seeks her vanished child
sorrowing, and nature droops sympathetic with her grief. By kindly guidance
the lost is found, — life, hidden for a period in the under-world, is restored
to the upper, and the fruits of earth are again available for man. The story
had abundant variations; a very interesting form, and certainly very ancient,
is preserved in the so-called Homeric hymn. The causes and motives of the
friendship of Demeter for Eleusis are as variously told;—its result is the
present—the revelation—of bread corn and instruction in agriculture as the
conditions of civil society ; and all the world was thus, the Athenian vaunted,
indebted for these to the cultivators of the fertile Thriasian plain. But the
living sojourn of Persephone in the under-world provided her faithful votaries
with protection even there, as her own return was warranty for their survival.
So when Dionysus the joyous god became
associated
in this or in a similar worship, he too became a president of the nether world
; and thus the worshippers of the Great Goddesses, Demeter and Persephone, and
of Dionysus, were bound by further responsibilities that elevated their
conception of the ends of life, and substituted good hope of future and happy
existence for uncertainty or horror of its end.
Full
participation in the mysteries was a matter of several stages,—a certain
sponsorship of an introducing mystagogue was adopted; and only after some
certification of worthiness was admission granted to the rites of sanctifying
purification, in the city and at the sea shore adjacent. On a subsequent day a
vast procession or rather pilgrimage started from the Cerameicus along the
sacred way and through the mystic gap to Eleusis ; this was the conducting of
Iacchus, who was not so specially localised at Eleusis as the Great Goddesses.
The procession was due at the time of the battle of Salamis, when the whole
land was occupied, and Eleusis itself desecrated by the Persians; and while the
sea-fight was going on, the excited Greeks could believe that through the
confusion and clamour, a cloud of dust was visible along the sacred way, and
the mystic cry heard as though the gods themselves were protesting against the
barbaric and sacrilegious interruption.
Modern
parallels from Italy or Sicily—parallels that are largely but survivals—are
scarcely required to explain how in ordinary times a throng with the most
sincere and solemn religious intent should lapse on its route into hurry and
scuffle, into horse-play and jeering, as if at a wild fair,—how all this should
even be required by sanctifying usage, and seem to over-excited votaries to be
justified as deepening the calm that was presently to succeed.
The scene
of the most sacred of the ceremonies at Eleusis was a vast hall, constructed by
the architects of Pericles, about one hundred and sixty-seven feet square, and
capable
VOL. II. p
of
containing under cover as numerous an assembly as would fill the theatre that
was open to the air: the ruins of this were excavated, as far as circumstances
permitted, by the mission of the society of Dilettanti. The building had a
Doric dodeeastyle portico, but this, according to 1 Vitruvius, was
added long after by Philo, an architect employed by Demetrius Phalereus. Four
original architects are named. Vitruvius, in agreement with 2 Strabo
ascribes it generally to Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon; but according
to Plutarch, Coroebus set the columns of the interior and completed the always
delicate operation of placing the architraves ; the diazoma,—which may probably
here be a gallery, as it is sometimes equivalent to the praecinctio of a
theatre,—was added by Metagenes, and also an upper order of columns, while
Xenocles crowned the whole with an arrangement of roof that provided for the
admission of light from above; an arrangement due here, as there was no
peristyle to interfere with windows in side-walls, to the requirement of
seclusion, perhaps also to facilitate the sudden and entire exclusion or
readmission of light. This was the Telesterion,—the mystic selcos; it fronted
the south-east, and was enclosed by a pentagonal peribolus, of which one side
was parallel with its back wall, where a terrace of thirty-six feet wide was
hewn out of the scarped rock, and the others followed the general lines of the
crest of the eminence it was placed on. That it was sacred to the Great
Goddesses is a matter of course,—it is referred to as a hieron,—but it does not
appear that it was ever regarded as in the narrow sense a temple,—a naos or
abode of the divinities there worshipped. So it is remarkable that in this most
sacrosanct of localities we hear nothing of a primitive statue of traditional
antiquity and accredited with supernatural origin or powers, like the Aeginetan
statues or even the Athene Polias of the Athenian Acropolis. Neither do we hear
of any great temple-statue
1 Vitr.
Praef. 7. 2 Strabo 9, p. 605.
at
Eleusis, or any Chryselephantine work such as the relation of Eleusis to Athens
might seem to demand. The religious awe that seals the lips of Pausanias at
Eleusis as elsewhere, is not sufficient to account for the total absence of any
reference whatever to such works, in the range of historical records of the
arts and artists.
It is perfectly
made out from hints in contemporary writers, and declarations of hostile
Christian writers, who themselves were later contemporaries and must have
spoken, however contemptuously, by no means at random, respecting matters that
were notorious among so many, that a main portion of the ceremonies was a
semi-dramatic exhibition of the mythical story of the Goddesses, leading up to
the ultimate display before the initiates of certain symbols; from having been
admitted to behold these the fully initiated was Epoptes —an eye-witness — and
therein lay the completion of a graduated series of experiences, involving a
moral crisis which made him conscious of a sense of full admission—of completeness.
The entire function was expressed by the word that implied consummation,
completion, accomplishment,— an opus ojperatum,—reAer^.
The
representation probably adhered to a certain general outline, and even to many
particular details of ritual, but without excluding variations of the form of
the mythus represented, and some at least of the symbols displayed. Aeschylus,
who himself was of the deme Eleusis, is said to have helped the effects by
inventing the ceremonial Costumes, which most probably were transferred to
other rites and survive before us to this day, even as the custom survives of
the suppression of the profane name of the 2 consecrated. Besides
the official herald, the chief torch-bearer, and the attendant at the altar,
personifications of the divinities themselves and of their attendants were
introduced. In one or other mythical incident,
Divinity
itself was represented sorrowing, suffering,—the Passion of Deity was set
before the eyes of man so touchingly as to move him to compassion and with such
adjuncts of singing and scene, as lulled him at the same time into a state of
pleased susceptibility. Most perfect silence was absolutely enjoined on the
initiates, who looked and listened. Sacred maxims and moral inculcations, as
well as exemplar judgments, had their places in the representation of the
authorities that were to sway in the under-world. The whole assemblage at one
stage took part in a representation of the search of the bereaved mother for
the missing Persephone ; utter darkness was superadded to silence, to enhance
expectation and awe, and at the climax, when some peculiarly sacred and
decisive office was consummated by hierophants and priestesses, darkness was
suddenly dispelled, the ( Light of Eleusis ’ shone in a blaze
of splendour, and the transition was so treated as to convey to the initiate—now
initiate no longer—the conviction of his admitted intimacy, his spiritual
communion with 2divinity.
The sense
of privilege and of the obligation of secrecy heightened the awe, made
compatible as it was with the exciting influence of an enthusiastic crowd of
associates. Some symbolism connected with the mythology,—irrational or even
gross enough sometimes, if we may trust reports,—made the mystery only more
impressive as in some respects demonstrably inscrutable; and sometimes a
deeper meaning than recipients could definitely interpret, gave no little help
to the hold upon them of what uniform and obvious intelligibility might
threaten to reduce to commonplace.
A certain
merely ceremonial value could not but come to be attached to these mysteries,
or remain attached to them from their erudtr origin. Mere formal participation
in them might be and often was reckoned as a charm against misfortunes of life,
1 tcL Sdicqka. twv
vaQlw avrov, Herod, ii. 171.
3 Stobae. 1
20. 2S, p. 466.
as
initiation at Samothrace was held to secure against shipwreck; but the main
result and tendency was to strengthen the sense of moral responsibility, by
conditions and obligations of worthiness far other than ceremonial, and by
lively experience of a spontaneous response within to the assurances adumbrated
by mythus, and type and symbol; that they conveyed and confirmed a hopeful, a
cheerful trust, in the futurity beyond the grave, cannot in the face of the
evidence be seriously doubted, and that this ever tended to generate, and
indeed was for the most part explicitly connected, as its condition, with an
elevated tone of general purpose, is equally 1 certain.
The
Homeric hymn relates as the origin of these mysteries, that Demeter, before
returning to Olympus, in recognition of merits of natural piety revealed to the
family of her benefactors,—‘ to the princes Triptolemus and Diodes, to Eu-
molpus and Celeus, the mode of service in her sacred rites and described her
venerated orgies, which may by no means be neglected nor pried into nor
blabbed; for great is a certain divine sanctity that puts check on speech.
Blest is he of mortal men who has beheld them; but he who has neither
completion nor participation in these rites, has never such destiny beneath the
broad shadow, as even though in death, he might have 2had.’
In the
same poem, early as it may be,—reminiscent indeed of days when Athens and
Eleusis were still separate states,— we come upon traces, perhaps expressed in
a manner not undictated by irony, how mere ceremonial, especially in the forms
that were profitable to the administrators, was pressing forward to establish
itself as on the same level with, if not yet quite as an alternative of, proper
meritoriousness. Persephone, returning with her mother to the upper world, is
to be sovereign mistress there of whatsoever possesses life and motion, and to
have the greatest honours along with the immortals,—
1 Plut, Consolatio ad Uxorem,
x. xi.
2 Homeric
Hymn, vv. 473-482.
‘ and a
punishment for all time shall there be of the wrongdoers, who do not
conciliate thy might with sacrifices, acting with piety, paying the gifts that
are 1 befitting.’ The alternation of phrase is in the very spirit
of formulas that the world has long been and long will be familiar with.
It was in
the conditions and consequences of these mystic initiations that Plato found
the aptest illustrations of that purification from carnal defilement which was
to be wrought on the soul by philosophy, and of its appropriate reward in an
eternity of happiness. After such preparation for death by philosophy, he
represents Socrates as saying, ‘ the soul departs to that which it
resembles,—to the Invisible, which is at once Divine and Immortal and
Intelligent, where it is its lot on arrival to be happy, being released from
error and foolishness, and fears and undisciplined passions, and the other
evils of humanity, and will even, as is said of the initiated, most veritably
pass all time thereafter in society of the 2 Gods.’
That for
nobler minds the better conception of the worth of initiation truly extricated
itself from puerile jugglery, is witnessed sufficiently by the elevated terms
in which the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone are adverted to by poets and
philosophers and orators,—by Pindar, Sophocles, Plato, Isocrates; their
encomiums are summed up in the words of Cicero, though with the usual
indifference as to distinguishing the moral influence from the mythical
traditions through which they were operated : —
‘ Manifold
as are the contributions to the life of man, so excellent and divine, which
have owed their birth to Athens, there is nothing among them superior to these
Mysteries, which were the means of reclaiming us from wild and uncivil life,
and softened us to humanity; and as they are called initiations, so, in fact,
we recognise them as principles —commencements—of life, and accept them not
only as a
warrant
for cheerfulness in life, but also of a better hope in 1 death.’
‘ That
man/ says Pindar, e goes down blest below the caverned earth
who has beheld these things,—he knows the end of life, he knows the divinely
conferred commencement.’ To this a fragment of Sophocles is precisely parallel.
‘ Thrice happy they of mortals who go to Hades after they have witnessed these
solemnities, for to them alone is it given there to live; but there the rest
endure all kinds of miseries.’ These miseries are more distinctly specified or
figured by Plato and Isocrates as darkness and filth, in which the uninitiated
are plunged, while the initiates are happy amidst Elysian light and flowers.
The same representation is further elaborated in a mythus of Plutarch, to which
Dante is not without obligations for much of the imagery of the 2
Paradiso. In the picture of Polygnotus at Delphi, the uninitiated were
represented as the Danaids employed for ever, like other exemplar types of
impiety, as Sisyphus and Tantalus, on fruitless and ever disappointed labour.
On the
other hand, we may seem to have here a declaration of the ignoble theme that
the omission of sacred initiation is punishable as severely as the worst of
crimes, but this is only one of the confusions that inevitably haunt the
subject. Nowhere do we find in antiquity the impudent assertion that initiation
supersedes the condition of virtuous life for happiness in futurity; at most it
is implied that men will scarcely be virtuous independently of initiation, the
least that can be ever asserted if rites are to be very importantly magnified.
It is a matter of more significance to observe that Pindar in one place connects
with initiation the very form of future happiness, which in another he assigns
to the good, with no allusion to initiation 3 whatever:—e
Wealth, when embellished with virtue, suppressing wild and deep anxiety,
brings
1 Cic. dc Leg. ii. 14. 2
Plut. de Sera N. V. sub fin.
3 Pind.
Olymp. ii. vv. 102-140.
opportunity
for this or that,—a conspicuous star, a veritable beacon-light to man; but
whosoever may possess it knows well what is to eome, that of those dying here
the lawless souls immediately pay penalty, and one there is below the earth who
judges sinfulness done in this, Jove’s empire, and pronounces sentence by dire
necessity. But the good, having sun alike at night-time alike by day, look ever
on a life relieved from toil, neither vexing with laborious hand the earth nor
water of the sea, in that abiding-place. There along with the honoured of the
gods, as many as have delighted in faithfulness of oaths, pass an existence
free from tears; the rest endure suffering not to be looked upon. But as many
as, steadfast until the third time, have been brave to restrain their souls
from injustice utterly, complete the path of Zeus by Cronos’ tower, where the
airs born of ocean breathe around the island of the blest, and flowers of gold
are blazing, some from resplendent trees on land, while the water nourishes
others, with braids of which and chaplets they bind about their heads; by
upright dceree of llhadamanthus, whom Zeus, the spouse of Rhea, occupant of
throne high over all, has for his prompt bench- fellow.’
The
mysteries then,—the Eleusinian especially,—it cannot be doubted, had an
important, and to a great extent a wholesome, influence 011 religious
sensibilities, enhanced and guided the consciousness of moral responsibility,
and tended to give composure to minds that were too much disposed to ascribe to
Divine power the jealousies and wanton cruelties of human, or were liable to
despair from comparison of conscious faults with the requirements of stern
perfection. That this influence should be too much and too often missed in the
public and private life of Athens, is but in accordance with human unsteadiness
and inconsistency, as the most sensitive conscience has alternations of
callousness, when it is self-eajoled, and laid asleep or deliberately stifled.
Still the value of ceremony, of
sacramentalism,
could not be strained so nearly to its utmost without incurring* its special
liabilities to error and abuse; the outward form would of necessity dissever at
times from the inward purport, observance take the place of service, and formal
assent of penetrating conviction.
The
fundamental mytlius of the celebration again, for all its poetic, its moral,
its philosophical significance, was still a mytlius, and dangerously connected
with sacerdotal agencies having interests to conserve, and too likely to
protect them in a manner to vulgarise symbolism and degrade lofty ideals. It
was when the Athenians were becoming anxious about their Sicilian adventure,
that the persecutor’s cry of Atheist was raised against Diagoras the Melian, a
reward of a talent offered to his slayer, and of two to whosoever should bring
him in alive. Charges of impiety were ever too easily entertained by the
Athenians, especially against those who, scorning to close their hands over
truth which they knew concerned all or none, must needs proclaim their
discoveries and forego the immunity conceded by the contempt of the world, by
insulting its 1 self-complacency. The odious form of the charge
against Diagoras is quite explained by the independent testimony that his true
offence was disparagement of the mysteries, on grounds which many think good
against the fantastic pretensions of free-masonry—that if what they disclosed
to some was really beneficial, the sooner secrecy was abolished, and all the
world made wiser, the 2 better.
The
elemental, what may almost be called the meteorological basis of the mythus, to
which it owed so much of its command over human sympathy, and a sense .of which
was consequently never entirely lost, conduced to an especially unfortunate
collision with progressive thought, which was already making some of its most
important advances along the lines of physical enquiry. It was here that
political opposition to Pericles was to seize an opportunity to enlist the aid
of 1 Plato, Euthyphron, 2, 3. 3 Schol. Arist. Av. 1075.
superstition
; his son, at a later date, was destined to be a victim of a like coalition.
And so the story goes on; it was when Socrates, who had opposed this last
injustice, was himself compelled to drink poison on the charge of not
worshipping the gods that the state worshipped, that a cloud eame over the best
hopes for the recovery of Athens, by the alienation of some of her noblest
sons; and when we read how Eurymedon the hierophant assailed Aristotle on a
charge of impiety, and compelled him to retire from Athens and so spare the
city another like disgrace, the sympathies of humanity are finally reconciled
to the closing of a once glorious history, and to the transference of the
leading interest of the world to other climes.
That
religion can only be saved from disgrace, be rescued for true reverence, by
freest scope being given to intelligence, and by repudiation of complicity
with convenient ignorance on one hand, and insincere reticence on the other, is
a principle that is not sufficiently taken to heart at this day; we can
scarcely expect it to be so by the general world, while those who can set forth
most learnedly and lucidly what mischief has been due to the neglect of it in
the 1 past, are judicially blind to its application in the present.
1 Compare, or rather contrast, Rt5nan, Lcs Apotrcs,
lxiv and 341.
The more closely the
traditions and testimonies as to Greek music are considered the more difficult
does it prove to entertain a doubt as to its genuine value and importance even
in very early times. The specific dignity ascribed to it in the scale of the
arts by a race which of all others was most sensitive to beauty, and the
agreement of general descriptions of its styles and development with modern
historical experience, may together be safely accepted as conclusive. We must
accept the accounts of the excellence of Greek music as of Greek painting also,
on what might have been our only ground for confidence in that of Greek
sculpture. We have had proof and warning of the respect that is due to antique
authority, in the absolute vindication by the recovered works of Pheidias of
that supremacy in art which was so enthusiastically ascribed to him; precisely
as in poetry, the ancient fame of Sappho, which might well seem extravagant if
unsupported by evidence, is established for ever by the fragments that, few and
short as they are, so fully justify the terms of her most unqualified
encomiasts.
Our
difficulties as to Greek music are perhaps increased in some directions to the
full extent that they are relieved in others by the scientific or
quasi-scientific treatises on the art
and its
theory that have come down to us : when the systems they expound are, after
much labour, most successfully evolved and reduced as far as maybe to
consistency among- themselves, it is only for them to become manifest as in
great part cumbersome, pedantic,—‘learning’s luxury or idleness/—even when
most to the purpose, and to drive us into hopeless straits when we attempt to
reconcile them in many respects of ehiefest importance, with the demonstrable
conditions of all true music. Our ease in the study of ancient architecture is
just reversed in that of music ; the Greek theory of architectural proportion
may be said to be lost to the moderns so far as literary record is concerned,
but executed works in which it was employed and embodied are before us from
which to recover it, if we do justice to the opportunity, and which meantime
vindicate to our senses the essential value of its principles ; the ancient
musical works have perished entirely, and we are left with dissertations that
constantly bewilder when they do not mislead us, and certainly teach us nothing
of scientific truth that is not better learnt otherwise and elsewhere.
The
conclusion appears to be inevitable that in music at least, the practice of the
ancients was under very slight obligations indeed to theory,—certainly to the
theory that has been preserved,—and indeed was probably far in advance of any
that wTas ever in their possession. This consideration has a bearing
on the question how far the ancients,—at least the Greeks anterior to the
Alexandrian period,—were in possession of harmony. The extant scientific
expositions have no place for it amidst all their refinements and overrefinements
of distinction and analysis ; and so far it must be said that there is even no
direct evidence whatever for their practice of part-singing,—no explicit
development of the principle of simultaneous harmony ;—no classical definition
of a chord is discoverable among them, and only an occasional phrase or two
remain which intimate unequivocally as a fact observable in practice, that
associated instru-
ments or
voices did not invariably proceed in unison. Such phrases may be taken as
presumption or rather proof that sympathetic vibration told on the living even
as it does on dead material, and that the fingers and the voices of executants
responded with more delicacy and variety than the speculative were competent or
ever ventured to attempt to define and systematise. The subject, like the
theory of the key-note, presents itself to Aristotle, but only obscurely, as
open to enquiry, and suggestive of problems to which he sets down the most
plausible solutions that occur to him at the moment. He is in some cases
shrewdly near the mark, but had the matter been more distinctly recognised and
well understood he would have certainly dealt not in enquiries but in
exposition.
The first
Greek scale that we hear of is that of the four- stringed—the tetrachord lyre,
which had sufficed at an earlier period, — as indeed it might still suffice for
many ancient ecclesiastical chants; the strings were named with reference to
their position when the instrument was held for playing, —the top string, the
next to top, the next to bottom, the bottom string; by an inconvenience which
was perpetuated, the order of these positions contradicts that of pitch, as producible
by the vocal organs,—the so-called top string giving the gravest note and the
bottom string the acutest.
It is
highly significant that an important change in the Greek musical scale was
ascribed to Terpander, and thus referred to an epoch in close proximity to
Archilochus, who so daringly revolutionised the traditional scheme of poetical
rhythm. The rhythm, the time of Greek music, was distinctly marked by the
strict metrical accentuation of the verse that it for the most part
accompanied, and innovations in metrical forms could scarcely but involve
modifications of characteristic tune.
To
Terpander of Lesbos, the island which owed its musical inspiration to Thrace,—
at least according to the mythus of
the head
of Orpheus floating ‘ down the swift Hcbrus to the Lesbian shore,5
was ascribed the constitution of the heptachord 1} re and scale by the
addition of three more strings. Among his poems occurred the lines which are
quoted by
1 EuclideS; and with slight difference by 2
Strabo.
‘Hfifts toi Terpayrjpvv diToaTep^avTts aoiSrjv
*EirraTdvq)
<p6pfiiyyt viovs KtXaSrjaonev vfwovs.
‘But we, repudiating a four-toned chant,
Will sound forth novel songs to a seven-strung lyre.’
How this
lyre with seven strings, which is still familiar to Pindar and to Phrynis, was
tuned, is matter of considerable obscurity from the conflict of testimony; a
conflict so positive as to favour the inference that there was diversity in
even contemporary practice. Certain notices distinctly aver that the first and
last of the seven strings were at the interval of an octave, which would
involve intermediately one of those excessive intervals that are not unusual in
primitive natural scales, and are even thought by some conducive to a
characteristic charm ; other testimony avers as decidedly that the octave was
incomplete, and that the seven strings of Terpander were so tuned as to
constitute a double or repeated tetrachord, by the central string being
regarded as common both to the upper and lower sets of notes, and tuned at the
interval of a fourth from cither
3 extreme. This fourth or middle string would
thus give the highest note of one tetrachord or system of four notes and the
lowest note of the other, and the same sequence of intervals would recur in
each. The highest note in this case would be a full tone below the omitted
octave, as the seventh string so tuned would be too flat by a comma for perfect
consonance.
Hypate (ist). Mesd (4th). Net6 (7th).
240 : 320 : 426.66—the accurate ratio requiring 423. viz. 5 : 9
: : 240 : 432; and 432 : 426.66 : : 81 : 80.
1 Euclides, Introd. 19. a Strabo, c. 618.
* Nicomachus, pp. 9 and 17; Meibom. 52.
In the
heptachord lyre the extreme pairs of strings either way were still named, the
topmost and next to topmost, the bottom string and the next to the bottom. The
central string had its proper name, Mese, the mid-string; the acuter above it
was the next to middle (Paramese); and the graver below the Lichanos, or string
played by the index, or literally, the tasting finger.
In every
scale, however afterwards extended, the title of Mese—the midmost—is taken as
marking the central and proper seat of the most important note of a melody, and
thus usurps the distinction of a proper key-note. Musicians like the ancient
Greeks, who were content to retain their melodies within such restricted
limits, might not unnaturally have first sought the appropriate consonances
with a particular note above and below it, but the requirement by the ear of
the octave of a note which asserted itself as a key-note, was certain sooner or
later to induce an extension of the scale.
The
completion of the sequence of intervals of a proper octave was ascribed by
common consent to Pythagoras; according to one very definite account he
effected this by the addition of an acute note in unison with the gravest of
the former set; but .we have the quoted original words of Philolaus, the
Italian Pythagorean, a contemporary of Socrates, which are also reported in
substance by 1 Nico- machus, to the effect that the change that he
made was by insertion of a note, which dividing an excessive interval of a tone
and a half between the fifth and sixth degrees of the former heptachord system,
left a semitone between the fifth and sixth and a tone between the new sixth
and the seventh.
Whether by
extension or by interpolation, the admitted result was a series of notes which
correspond in order of
intervals
with the modern Minor scales of the natural notes:—
A. B.*C. D. E.*F. G. A.
The
satisfaction of the ear might be the sole warrant for this extended system as
it had been for the tetraeliord; but the Samian was credited with a further
discovery,—the dependence of this satisfaction on definite conditions of physical
proportion,—the mathematical relation of musical concords to the condition in
respect of tension, of simultaneously vibrating strings—that may take rank in
significance with his celebrated geometrical theorem. This was as genuine, as
pregnant a scientific acquisition, though the statement of it and of the
illustrative experiments only eome down to modern times, misconceived and
misreported. Even in its more genuine form the discovery seems pretty certainly
to have stopped half way, and failed to cover what was perfectly within its
scope and might seem to present itself for obvious application, the verified
and complete division of the harmonic monochord.
Hence
arose in antiquity the controversy between the schools of musicians, of which
one adhered to a system that was brought out defectively by a false scheme of
mathematical proportions, while the other appealed to the final test of the
sensations—the independent, exercised, and cultivated ear. The Section of the
Canon, that is, the division of the monochord, by Euclid, preserves for us
most exactly at least one ancient theory of the relations of the notes; the
process of the geometer is painfully and curiously clumsy, and at last provides
some notes that are not inconsiderably out of tune; his exposition is of course
far later than the time we are concerned w’ith, as are all other extant
treatises on the subject ; but we are reduced to consult them for indications
of traditional science that was far more likely to fall short of antique
practice than to improve upon it.
The
allegiance of Greek music to song could not be more
forcibly
declared than by adoption of a standard scale of notes, each with its proper
name, and extended with direct and exclusive reference to the compass of a
human voice as comprised within two octaves.
The very
gravest note, which while still audibly musical was not regarded as available
in singing, was taken as a limit in one 1 direction, and the octave
of this was the Mese, or Midnote in an extended series rising to the
disdiapason or double octave, the assumed limit of vocalisation 2
upwards. Within the octave the consonances are given in the order of intervals
of the octachord lyre; and in consequence the places of the semitones remain
those of the modern minor mode, and the assumed gravest note, the so-called
Proslambanomenos,— or the complementary note not actually attached to a tetrachord,—becomes
identified with our A of the F clef.
At once,
with his usual deference to traditions and appreciation of the value of
precise proportions, the Greek now looked out with interest for as many
tetrachords of the original model as were obtainable within these extended
limits. Four present themselves at once, which repeat the primary sequence of a
semitone followed by two tones, in order from below upwards. The tetrachord of
the top strings, that is of the gravest notes, extended from B to E; and that
of the middle strings extended from the same common note E —the highest of one
tetrachord and lowest of the other— to a.
A like
pair is repeated necessarily an octave above,—the tetrachord of the so-called
disjunct from B to E, with that of the extreme from E to A.
It will be
observed that these two sets of coupled tetrachords are separated, or
disjoined, by an interval of a tone between A and B, which, though adjacent
notes, are never combined in the same tetrachord. This anomaly, how-
1 Gaudentius, p. 6. 2
Arist. Quint., p. n, Meibom.
VOL. II. Q
ever, was
remedied, and the first pair of tetraehords was extended to a triplet, by the
substitution of B flat for B natural; that is, by lowering1 B a
semitone when required, to obtain the sequence A, B?, C, 1D.
This
triplet of tetraehords formed the so-called ep'wjnaphe, —superconjunction,—and
it seems to have been by this extension that command was gained of the ten
varieties of interval and the triple range, that were claimed for the lyre of
Ion of Chios, the contemporary and competitor of the great Athenian
dramatists:—
lift B(Ka0dfxova ra£tv (Xovtra Tas
cvfjxpcovovcas apfxovias rpidSovs.
IIplv fitv o' ItttSltovov \f/aWov
riaaapa Travrtt '’EWrjves, o-naviav fiovaav aap&ficvoi.
The
readings of these 2 lines have been variously tortured by the
editors, but without obscuring or making very much clearer their general
drift,—a contrast of the richer effect which could be produced by the triple
system of tetraehords obtainable from ten strings, as compared with the
previous universal use of such combinations as were scantily afforded by the
lyre of seven strings. By inclusion of one still higher note, e, and the
natural as well as the flattened B, command is obtained of a fourth symmetrical
tetraehord, that of the disjunct strings, and a complete arrangement of twelve
strings which agrees with the lyre of Melanippides.
It will be
found that the series of standard notes which were thus decided, corresponds
with the natural notes of the pianoforte, with the single addition of one black
key for Bb. If tuned accurately by ear they supply two series of the Minor
mode, upon A and D, and two of the Major, upon C and F. The elements of the
Major as well as of the Minor mode were therefore potentially present in the Greek
permanent or standard scale, though their essential characteristics seem
never to
have been adequately recognised and distinguished, at least in theory ; if
theory—in the state that it is recoverable from the records, which are not
inconsiderable in extent —were to rule alone, we should have to explain as best
we might how the uniform practice of the Minor mode should comport with the
lively and hopeful, the eager and sanguine temperament that we know so well was
most prevalent in Hellas.
This
series only provides for the male voice, but we find it 1
recognised, that it might be repeated an octave higher, by adopting a instead
of A as Proslambanomenos,—the assumed note,—and continuing the series of notes
proportionately each to each ; this would cover the usual range of the female
soprano voice within the two highest tones. A certain number of notes thus
acquired an occasional, in addition to a permanent title, and hence a new
source of confusion and perplexity.
The scope
of the entire passage referred to is however much more extensive and much more
important; it even covers all the contingencies of the modern system of keys;
it distinctly states that any note comprised within the octave at any interval,
might be taken as the commencement of a scale, from which the intervals would
follow on in order according to the model of the fixed series constructed upon
the lowest note A as Proslambanomenos; the result being of course that the name
of each particular note, whatever it might be in the fixed scale, would be
liable to be changed, when indeed not sharpened for the occasion and superseded
by an adjacent2 semitone.
The age of
the authority for this, the Greek writer Gaudentius, can only be fixed
conjecturally as anterior to Ptolemy, but it seems most probable that the
musicians of whom we have such wonderful representations, availed them-
selves of
the natural liberty that is here eoneeded, rather than submitted implicitly to
restrictions which, according' to Aristoxenus amongst other expositors of the
theory, allowed every successive semitone of the octave to be taken as lowest
note of a scale, but then dictated adherence to the series of intervals as they
follow on in the fixed scheme, with a result which would necessarily be in most
cases inherently defective.
According
to the strict accounts, the three most ancient so-called modes, which in fact
are scales of tones and semitones, were the Dorian or proper Greek, the
Phrygian, and the Lydian, which were distinguished by the different places of
their semitones, but were at the same time attached to gradations of
characteristic pitch ; the Dorian being the gravest, though still it would seem
unaccountably high for the voice, and the Lydian the most aeute. It is not easy
to understand the characteristic value of a scale that could not override an
alteration in pitch ; or in ease it could do so, on what principle so much
stress is laid on the separation of these modes by a single tone. The proper
Dorian octave commenced upon the note E, the gravest of the tetraehord of the
middle strings; and according to Plutarch, if the notes between E and A, or
Proslambanomenos below, were not employed in this mode, it was from a sense
that they were unsuited to its genius, and we may accept the fact whatever may
be the value of the explanation.
With
respect to the Lydian and Phrygian modes, from the stress that is ever laid on
their aeuteness relatively to the Dorian, the most natural inference is that
they were customarily taken upon higher degrees; beyond this it seems probable
that traditional differences of rhythm and of style as most comprehensively
understood, however undefined by the speculative and perhaps undefinable, had
more concern in the power and diversified character of the several modes, which
are consistently asserted by too high authority for us to
doubt them
for a moment, than any differences in construction of scale even when most
formally adhered to.
|
&1L MI
o>B'
s a
(i
*
A.
Proslambanomenos (<£0oy- yos). — Complementary note; gravest note of the
Hypate hypatSn.—The
top string of the top set.
Parhypate
hypatdn.—Next to top of the top set.
-lichanus.
— Forefinger string of the top set. diatonos.— String of top set at in.
terval of a tone.
D. Hypaton
F.
Hypate
mesQn.—Top string of the middle set.
Parhypate
mesfln.—Next to top of the middle set.
G. Mesdn
lichanus.—Forefinger
string of the middle set. diatonos.— Stringof middle set at interval of a
tone.
MESE.—The
middle string; antiphone or octave of Proslamban omenos.
Paramese.
— Next to the 'middle string.
Trite
diezeugmenon.—Third string of the disjunct set. Or, Paranete (or diatonos)
synemnien6n. — Next to lowest of conjunct set.
Paranete
diezeugmenon. — Next to lowest of disjunct set.
Or, Nete Synemmendn.— Lowest of the conjunct set.
Nete
diezeugmendn.—Lowest of the disjunct set.
Trite
hyperbolaion.— Third of the extreme set.
- Paranete
hyperbolaion.— Next to lowest of extreme set.
Or, Diatonos hyperbolaifin.— First of extreme set at in. terval of a
tone.
Nete
hyperbolaion.—Lowest string of extreme set (acut- est note).
Melody can
take slight liberties with intonation which are forbidden to harmony, but only
avails itself of its full resources when it plays round those perfect
consonances of a note as tonic with its dominant and mediant especially, that
are the natural, the indefeasible characteristics of the major and minor modes.
Allegiance to this principle may be ignored or repudiated in theory, but if the
purest and richest effects of musical expression are ever attained notwithstanding,
it must be because the asserted independence has become for the executant a
mere pretence or a vain supposition.
In the
Chromatic scale an interval was adopted in the tetra- chord of a tone and a
half, and in the Enharmonic, of two tones; the minute intervals associated with
these could only have provided the musical value of ornamental passing notes.
It is
therefore difficult to escape the conclusion that half the distinctions and
limitations that are set down by the authors of the seven treatises, were as
little regarded or recognised by ancient composers and executants, as the exhaustive
distinctions and nomenclature of the botanist are by the flower as it grows and
blooms, or rather as the rules and nomenclature of metre that are so
ridiculously dear to the grammarians, were by the lyric and dramatic poets.
Indeed as much is implied by Aristoxenus, who was as near to the time of the
better music as to have been a pupil of Aristotle, and who condemns all the
theories of music that were still nearer to the times of the greatest musical 1
composers, as most defective.
The
ancient theorists on music evidently stood in much the same relation to the
great composers, as critics like Aristotle to Epic and Tragic poetry. It was
only with difficulty, and then defectively, that scientific analysis could give
account of the laws of most successful imaginative action, and then
was too
ready to regard its discoveries as rules which had been observed and were bound
to be observed by the imaginative, with care and consciousness. It has been
much the same in the history of later music, of which the so-called old masters
are declared to have worked for the most part empirically in their practice of
harmony, and to be constantly justified only by facts and principles with which
they were unacquainted, and which are often at variance with their own rules so
far as they regarded any.
The best
elucidation of the Greek musical scale that I have been so fortunate as to meet
with, is by General Perronet Thompson, in an appendix to his pamphlet on the
Principles and Practice of Just Intonation (4th edit, i860); more recently the
work of Mr. Chappell on Ancient Music has added largely to our knowledge,
especially in regard to ancient musical instruments. From the confident
expositions of ancient music by Boeckh and his successors, I have always risen,
wherever the fault may be, with a sense of sorrowful disappointment and stupor.
MUSIC IN TIIE AGE OF PERICLES.
The erection of the Odeum
by Pericles, a vast covered structure of novel design especially suited for
musical performances, is significant of the important changes that were
proceeding about this time at Athens as well in musical taste as in musical
art: these displays took the usual Hellenic form of competitions under the spur
of emulation, whether for a simply honourable crown or for a prize of solid
value in addition; and the musicians were not slower than the other artists of
the period to respond to a universal demand for what was not only beautiful but
of daring novelty.
The traditional
chronology of Greece is marked into periods from very early times by a
succession of musical schools and also of masters who were usually poets, and
the fame of whose traditional inventions and performances was accepted with the
utmost faith in historic times and confirmed, we are assured, to an important
extent as well by references to them in abundant contemporary literature, as by
the actual survival of their compositions.
Hellas
made liberal acknowledgments for musical instruction to the neighbouring
Asiatic states and to Thrace, and less distinctly to Egypt; but still, as in
all the arts, claimed to have developed this also from most rudimentary
beginnings by independent native genius. These pretensions, that seem often
extravagant, are not without a certain justification;
whatever
suggestions the Greek might derive from abroad, he managed to combine in the
first instance with his own system in possession, and sooner or later succeeded
in stripping both of casual encumbrances and sophistications, took nature for
his guide in penetrating to the primary germ of truth, and from that started
anew; when he did not rely on nature exclusively, he usually adopted nothing
that he did not compel into consistency with nature.
It is
probably due to the closer and earlier influence of Thrace or Phrygia, that
Hellas seems to have assimilated so little of what the music of Egypt was to
all appearance capable of furnishing. We have no representations or
descriptions of Greek musical instruments of any time, that can compete with
those which are pictured on very early Egyptian monuments. The primitive lyre
of the Greeks is poor indeed beside the Thebaic harp, and it seems still more
strange that we should be left without even a hint that familiarity with the
variety of notes obtainable by stopping a monochord, had not led them before
the age of Pericles and the citharode Phrynis, to the neck or finger-board of
which precedents occur in hieroglyphics and Egyptian wall-paintings that are of
still earlier date.
It were
vain to pretend to assign even general dates, but it is certain that we are
more likely to err in giving dates too late than too early to some of the
Egyptian notions that run parallel with Hellenic, or still more run* beyond
them. The notice is but late of the solmization of the Egyptian priests on the
vowel sounds, of their ascription of these sounds and notes to the tones of the
several planetary spheres, of the recognition of them in consequence as symbols
of the Divine energy or the Divine name, and the reverential resort in
consequence by some religionists to only vague inarticulate sounds as
admissible into 1 worship. Traces however of the same notions are
rife in traditions of Pythagoras as well as 1 Pseudo-Demet.
Phal. de Pronun.; Nicomachus, p. 37, Meibom.
in dreams
of Plato, and not alone in their cruder form, but as blending with a mystical
cosmogony of which the roots may lie far deeper in the ages before Plato than
their branches extend among the wild ramifications of Gnosticism afterwards. There
is every probability that archaeology will ultimately trace even the earliest
Egyptian notions of this class to a Chaldean or 1 Assyrian source.
Aeolian
Lesbos was the seat of an early school of Greek music, and here the greatest
name is Terpander, who was considered to be a contemporary of Archilochus, or
even to have preceded him; the music of this school was more especially that
of the lyre, and as it was inspired by poetry, was regarded all but exclusively
as accompaniment to the voice in singing verse of even epic and elegiac form
and tenor, as well as melic and dithyrambic. The early music, like the early
poetry, was characterised by a sedate and elevated decorum even in the midst of
movement and impassioned 2 excitement. To citharodic music, of which
the instruments were the lyre and the cithara, the aulodic,—the music of the
pipe—of which the earliest cultivation is referred to barbaric Lydia and
Phrygia, was almost as much in opposition as in contrast. Olympus is one of the
greatest names connected with this, and Aristotle appeals to the notorious
effect of his extant melodies in rousing enthusiasm, as a convincing proof and
primary example of the power of music to influence ethical emotions for good or
evil.
The
evidence for personality of both Terpander and Olympus is somewhat confused
and conflicting; Olympus especially, although probably the later, doubles with
a clearly mythical namesake, and though the expressive name of Terpander is as
little valid against his reality as that of Pericles or Demosthenes, it
probably favoured the attachment of mythical accretions that otherwise would
have floated loose. What is
most
important, however, at present is most certain also, that at the date of the
Persian War the Hellenic world was in possession of abundant highly admired
works of musical invention that had come down from antiquity associated with
these names together with traditions and poetical notices of the stages by
which their musical art and their instruments had become developed.
The recovery
of Hellas after her struggle with Persia was in fact marked by a novel start in
music as in all the other arts; and even more innovations were hastily
originated than were pursued or persevered in. In earlier times the pipe had
shared with the lyre in the musical instruction of youth, but had been
afterwards given up on account of its incompatibility with the use of the
player’s voice ; it was now resumed, and obtained a certain popularity even at
Sparta, although practical music did not there make part of the established
education, and the Spartan declined to use a musical instrument, though
holding himself bound to be capable of discriminating good melodies from bad,
or correct from 1 false.
At Athens,
as might be expected, the pipe had much more universal and lasting vogue; and
the Athenian youth cultivated it almost without exception. It was again taken
into the course of school teaching at a time when wealth brought leisure and
prosperity, and pride in novel empire was encouraging experimental enterprise
in every 2 direction. That it relapsed into disrepute was due—at
least so Aristotle avers— to the experience of its inefficiency in respect of
moral influence; and the like consideration condemned a number of other
instruments which from their excessive demand on manual skill and sustained
application were held to be fitly abandoned to the professional.
These
alterations of private taste, however, reacted only the more powerfully upon
the art as it was presented by the
technically
instructed. Rhythms and harmonics ascribed to Terpander had been preserved in
forms that seemed consecrated by their designation of Nomes—laws ; but the
uniform simplicity of the ancient citharodia was becoming rapidly antiquated in
the age of Phrynis, which was that of1 Pericles. Considerable
fluctuations of taste had doubtless occurred in the course of previous
centuries ; and hints of such that cannot be mistaken are preserved even in
mythical and semi- mythieal stories ; but the changes which came now into
question were far more developed and far more decisive.
Phrynis
was a eitharode or lyre-player, of Lesbian Mity- lene, and a pupil of
Aristocleitus of the family or gens of Terpander, who was at his acme at the
time of the Medica. This date agrees with the pupil Phrynis being the first to
gain a victory at the musical contests of the Panathenaea, of which the primary
institution is assigned to Pericles. The scholiast of Aristophanes places this
under the archonship of Callias (456 B.C.), the date of the battle of Oenophyta,
which seems inconsistently early—and difficulty is not quite surmounted if we
adopt as a correction the archon Callimachus, and bring the date down ten years
later. That his time, however, falls narrowly about the period we are concerned
with is sufficiently proved by the allusion in the Clouds of Aristophanes to
the popularity of his innovations.
Phrynis
was said to have been originally an aulode—a player on the pipe,—a story that,
even if only a stoiy, may have been suggested by the peculiar character of his
music, which the fact itself was well calculated to account for; the imitation
01* emulation on the lyre of styles appropriate to the pipe is enumerated by 2
Plato among the corruptions of music. Aristophanes charges him with introducing
‘ intricate mazes/ that were the very destruction of the muses themselves ;
‘far different this style from the traditional harmony that camc down from our
fathers,—the loud far-travelling strain that 1 l’lut. dc Mas. 6. 3 Plato, Legg. iii. 700.
was
prolonged in the old chants, expressions of the mingled modesty and energy of
the antique education that formed the men of Marathon1.’
The style
of Phrynis was only one early intermediate term in a sequence of musical
revolutions which all tended towards complexity; these are set forth as
instructively as amusingly in a fragment of the comedian Pherecrates, and
vindicate our immediate epoch as still remote from the degradation of music
that was ultimately to ensue.
In a
comedy entitled after the centaur Chiron,— Chiron himself a master of the
lyre,—Music was introduced as a female in much disordered condition and attire,
uttering her complaints to Dikaiosyne,—most fitly translated here, Mrs.
Rightmindedness,—a fair equivalent of the c Right reason’ of
Aristophanes, whom we have just been attending to on the same theme.
The
following translation observes for the most part the corrections proposed and
approved by Meineke :—
‘ I will relate it then, nothing loth; for in hearing, you—
And I, in telling,—both alike have pleasure at heart:
My griefs then first began with Melanippides,—
He was the first of the set who took me in hand to enfeeble me,
And rendered me loose and languid with his dozen strings;
And yet was he a man in a way sufficient
In regard to me, considering the afflictions of the present state;
But Phrynis tossing in a kind of whirl-about of his own,
Rolled me up and twisted me and spoilt me in all manner of ways, Getting
out of seven strings a dozen harmonic scales.
But even so was he a man that in some way suited me,
For if he did make a blunder or so he set it to rights again:
Also the reprobate scoundrel Attic Cinesias,
By the extra-harmonic turns he forever made in the strophes,
Did such a deal of damage that it came about with the poetry Of the
dithyrambs, precisely as with shield-arms at the right-about,— And what should
be to the right was found on the left hand side. However this man too I found
notwithstanding bearable;—
But, oh ! Timotheus!—oh, my dear,—he has so touzled me
And fretted me to shreds that it is a scandal. D. And, pray, who
May be this Timotheus? M. A certain Milesian red-polled knave
Who has evil entreated me; all the others that I have named This one has
gone far beyond,—singing labyrinthine strains Of notes like a disturbed
ant-hill,—out of all harmony and scale and holiness :
And Bhould he light on me anywhere wending by myself alone He strips me
naked, be sure, and trounces me with his dozen strings.’
The last
complaint of the treatment to be expected by Music when caught by herself seems
to refer to purely instrumental performances,—to what Plato rebuked as an
abuse when melos and rhythm were divorced from words—from
1 priixara.
The stops
of decline which are here counted up as still later than Phrynis, are argument
that the earlier innovations, startling as they may have been, were chaste
refinements superinduced upon antique austerity,—a transition that in the age
of Pericles took place in every art, Plato is a witness quite near enongk to
the time we treat of, to be cited in corroboration of the complexity that was
already in course of introduction into the music of the lyre ;—what then was to
be expected in wind instruments ? He recommends that the cithara should be
employed in musical instruction on account of the clearness of its notes, but
he deprecates bestowal of attention by those who have but three years at
command for the useful part of music, upon diversified tones and
artificialities that only tended to confusion. He refers specifically to
playing a different set of notes on the lyre to those which were set down by
the poet to be sung,—that is, as it would appear, to accompaniment in
harmony,—to the intermixture of very close and very wide intervals, of very
rapid with slow, of acute with grave, and lastly, the licentious adapting to
the lyre of rhythms of every sort and
2 kind.
The
distinct statement of Aristotle is conclusive for the existence down to his
time of a body of musical composition that was ascribed to Olympus, and that
must necessarily have
originated
before the date of uninterrupted history as he was familiar with it. The
evidence is no less conclusive as to the survival of the melodies and
compositions that were ascribed to Terpander,—the nomes already alluded
to,—however they were preserved, whether by tradition or, as expressions imply
and even assert distinctly, by his invention of sufficient notation; the
allusions and references of later miscellaneous writers and grammarians are in
harmony with significant phrases in the lyric and comic poets and in Plato, and
testify to a matter of fact in terms which demonstrate that it was too familiar
to require collateral confirmation. The evidence is overwhelming, take what
view of it we please, that in the age of Pericles the Greeks were in possession
of what, however transmitted, was equivalent to an extensive and varied
musical library; apart from the popular airs that lived on in association with
particular songs in various localities, we find constant and consistent
reference to a vast variety of compositions which were called nomes, of which
the structure was systematic but varied, and manifestly of considerable extent.
The odes of Pindar, who was of a family of pipe players, were sung to music,
and their ever-varied yet strictly elaborated rhythms may warn us not to rashly
assign limits to the study, the ingenuity, or the genius of the Hellenic
masters of rhythm. The titles Orthian and Trochaic nomes imply adaptation of
other rhythms than those of the Homeric hexameters to which, as well as to others
of his own, Terpander was said to have accommodated nomes. 1 Pollux
gives as many as seven expressive titles of the divisions of one of these
nomes, which probably was so far analogous to the works of Polygnotus in
another art, as combining great simplicity in parts and broad principles of
artistic design with unsuspected subtleties of composition. The polycephalic
nome, of which Pindar ascribed the invention to Athene herself,
pursued
all the phases of the adventure of Perseus in slaying the Gorgon, and was
mimetic of the excitement of the contest, and even of the hissing snakes of the
decapitated head.
This nome
however was adapted, as might be supposed, for the pipe, the perforated tube
that single or double was played with a mouthpiece, and corresponded in this
respect to the modern flageolet or clarinette. It was with the name of Olympus
that the earlier effective cultivation of this instrument, which admits and
invites a greater variety and livelier succession of notes than the lyre, and
lends itself more readily to outbursts of excited musical invention, was
associated. In fact, before the modern application of the bow to stringed
instruments, the pipe in some form was the sole resource by which the sustained
notes of the voice could be matched instrumentally. It is consistently,
therefore, that Olympus was held to have invented the Enharmonic scale and new
and more rapid varieties of rhythm, which corresponded with a laxer treatment
of intervals; various compositions are also referred to as nomes of Olympus. A
fragment of Archilochus which tells of Lesbian paeans sung to the accompaniment
of the pipe, is a significant intimation that familiarity with its
characteristic powers may not have been unconcerned with his feeling for
metrical novelty and variety. For the music itself, it is beyond doubt that the
wind music of Lydia and Phrygia reacted upon the Lesbian school, and introduced
an element of wildness which it was for Greek genius to attemper and harmonise.
The
importance which we find assigned by the 1 ancients to the moral
influence of music in education is partly and occasionally due no doubt to the
comprehensiveness of the term music as they understood it,—the general
discipline of the mind antithetically to that of the body as expressed by the
term gymnastics. But even in a narrower sense than
this,
music was understood to comprise as its constituents in the very closest union,
speech, harmony, rhythm, that is, words, tune, and time; all in most recondite
harmony, all consenting to a common effect. A noble or a vulgar tune was in
consequence scarcely conceivable by the Greek of this date as disjoined from
words of corresponding import, and so much was this agreement and combination
the rule, so universally did the spirit of poetry dictate that of melody and
of rhythm, that any one of them independently was recognised as carrying of
necessity the influence of all the others. The association of certain rhythms
with particular musical modes or keys rendered this interpretation still more
habitual and natural. Aristotle and Plato are for once in agreement here, that
music—music pervading all education and combined with poetry—has a far more
intimate effect than any of the plastic or graphic arts in touching and
stimulating the feelings directly, and thence in moulding taste,—the sense of
the fit and becoming,—and in modelling character by making the love and
preference for the graceful and the good habitual and at last1
spontaneous. Repeated references to the speculations of Damon and his school would
suffice to avouch that these conceptions were fully realised at the date of the
erection of the Odeum, though fully conclusive evidence did not carry them back
to the earlier Pythagoreans.
2 Polybius, writing in the last age—in the
latest years— of Hellenic nationality, pauses to aecount for the exceptional
savagery of an Arcadian tribe, and furnishes by his explanation an interesting
notice how musical culture pervaded provinces of Hellas of which we know too
little. It was to antique law-givers of Arcadia, so this testimony runs, that
institutions were due which in the districts where they were better observed,
successfully softened the harsh manners that were assumed to be natural in a
rigorous climate, by combining with the unembarrassed association of the sexes
the influence 1 Arist. Pol. viii. 5. 1340; Plato, Repub.
iii. 11. 401. 2 Polyb. iv. 20-21.
VOL. IT. It
of music,—k
of music, that is, of the genuine kind.’ From earliest childhood the Arcadians
were taught to sing hymns and paeans to the gods and heroes of their native
land; as boys, as youths, and even up to the thirtieth year they were under
obligation, though amidst the austere surroundings of a hard life, to keep up
practice of the more elaborate nomes of renowned composers, to exercise
themselves not only in parade to martial music as used by the Spartans, but
also in dancing and the music of the pipe, so as to take part in choruses at
the Dionysiac festivals, and to qualify themselves to sing when called upon in
turn at private festivities. Nor was the musical instruction confined to the
men, for the Arcadian women also took part with them in frequent assemblies and
sacred celebrations, and choruses like that in the Cretan dance on the Homeric
shield, were habitually composed, in obedience to ancient Arcadian legislation,
of maidens and youths together.
Modern
experience proves no doubt that however far the art may have acted as a
palliative, prevalence of exceptional musical taste and even of distinguished
musical genius have remained compatible still with the most uncouth of all
national manners and with sufficient laxity of morals. It was however from the
realities of life under sueh ancient conditions as we read of here, that poets
derived that idealised Arcadian life which the world could now ill spare from
poetry and from pleasing habitual associations; and while Polybius, so familiar
with the country, ascribes the origin of these humanising institutions to
remote antiquity, he proves their continuance to much later times than we are
now concerned with, by his reference to the nomes of Philoxenus and Timotheus;
and statesman as he is, he still retains such true Hellenic confidence in their
moderating power as to urge the illiberal tribe that occasioned his digression
to embrace, with God to aid, among the better influences of culture, that of
music above all.
PARTHENON.
That the mythological
beings and narratives of the Greeks have the same relation to earlier Oriental
originals—Aryan or however else designated—as the diction of their poetry and
common intercourse, is to be inferred with confidence, and may be cheerfully
allowed independently of demonstrations, which are apt to be tedious when even
conclusive. The question in its due relations deserves all the attention that
has been devoted to it hitherto, and even somewhat more, but does not concern
us here. To the consideration of Hellenic history in its higher and more
instructive aspect, it can scarcely be said to have closer relation than
consideration of the squalid habits of cave-dwellers bears to a theory of
constitutional government, and for our present purpose may happily be left
aside.
Mythology
in its progressive refinement and advance in the direction of Hellenism, went
of necessity through a parallel process to the commencement of proper Hellenic
language; whether the roots of this language in origin may have been rude or
refined, suggestive or clumsily obscure, it was their common fate to be
subjected in employment, to a continuous play of interests and impulses all
tending to adjust them to the only purpose for which they were required,
and
especially to render them expressive up to the standard of the sense of
expression of those who were making* eager use of them. This main requirement
of communication governed the progress, and quite as importantly, the arrest of
their modification, and so the value of a sign at first little better than
conventional, was eked out with all the power of natural significance that is
so richly at command in varied vocal inflection; and in like manner the
primitive traditions,—the roots of mythology,—however coarse, or clumsy, or
commonplace in origin, were so moulded by Hellenic sentiment and lively
invention under persistent regard to happy symbolism and poetical personification,
that the flowers and fruit owed far more at last to graft and culture than to
the wild supporting stock, original and even indispensable as this might once
have 1 been.
The
harmony that is observable between the Olympian Zeus of Homer and that of
Pheidias, and of both again with the characteristics of the Hellenic race, is
not more salient than can be readily explained from the fundamental unity of
the race despite all its divisions and dispersions, and from the secondary
consolidation of that unity which was largely promoted by the Homeric epos
itself; but a harmony equally striking obtains between the Homeric conception
and Pheidiac model of Athene and the special characteristics of the Athe
1 It is but candid, however, and it is certainly curious,
to notice how different a view may be taken of these matters. Since the above
was written, Professor Max Muller has thus expressed himself before the
Congress of Orientalists, Sep. 1874: ‘As long as we had only the mythology of
the classical nations to deal with, we looked upon it simply as strange,
anomalous, and irrational. When, however, the same strange stories, the same
hallucinations, turned up in the most ancient mythology of India; when not
only the character and achievements, but the very names of some of the gods and
heroes were found to be the same, then every thoughtful observer saw that there
must be a systQm in that ancient madness, that there must be a
meaning in that strange mob of gods and heroes, and that it must be the task
for comparative mythology to find out what reason there is in all that mass of
unreason.’
nians,
that by no means lends itself to so obvious an explanation.
Two
distinct sources contribute to an elucidation of the ideal of Pallas Athene;
one of these is the Homeric poetry which lies remote in undated periods before
the proper commencement of recorded Greek history; the other is to be traced
through the hints and memorials of local worships of which particulars were for
the most part rescued by Pausanias just before their late and final extinction,
though important aid is still derivable from intermediate literature. When we
collate the two representations which are thus obtainable from history and
traditional cult on the one hand and from poetry on the other, we learn to
respect the significance of the dictum of the religionist Herodotus as to the
functions of Homer and Hesiod—of the schools of poetry, that is, which these
names respectively represent—in reducing mythology to order and unity; it was
they, he said, who constructed a Theogony for the Hellenes by assigning to the
gods their titles and distinct claims to honour and their occupations, and
indicating their several characteristic symbols and 1 forms. But
many limitations which by virtue of poetic genius became accepted absolutely in
poetry, were only imperfectly and occasionally taken up by proper religious
faith to be held in regard by the administrators of cult. Popular and priestly
tradition held on its own way from age to age, whether in rigid routine or
following a development of its own ; divinities of the same original name and
title yielded to the conflicting influences in various degrees, and appear
with most incongruous qualities and attributes in different localities; such
gods as Hermes, whom it suited the poets to subordinate, are found to have
retained, in some instances to have acquired, an ascription of supreme
authority, while others so conspicuous in poetry as Apollo or Athene receive
but casual regard as associated with some quite incidental and secondary
function.
1 Herod, ij. 130.
But the
comparison of the contrasted phenomena of this double stream of supernatural
imagery brings out one very curious and instructive agreement—instructive as to
the process by which the poet gave the foree of poetic unity to his novel
creations without quite losing hold of inveterate popular associations. It
beeomes patent and demonstrable how he seized the current characteristic of a
god or hero, that was most to his purpose as furnishing a requisite supplement
to his filling pantheon, and then, while reducing without scruple the
importance of all other associated aspects and traditions, was on the watch for
what they would furnish of poetic materials, and made use of them to enrich
his effects with illustrative ornament or even to give piquancy by covert
reminder of the original, deliberately falsified, suggestion.
The Athene
of Ilomer is the virgin goddess who is most in favour with her father Zeus, who
even dons his proper aegis and vicariously wields his power; she is a warlike
goddess, a dispenser of strength and vietory, but in virtue of her intelligence
and deliberateness is in the strongest contrast to the brutal Ares, who fights
for fighting sake on any side indifferently and in turn, and is always
humiliated by her; she gives her protection in preference to the heroes whose
valour is combined with enthusiasm and yet with self-command, with ingenuity,
invention, shrewdness, and presence of mind. And then as a goddess so
conspicuously intellectual she cannot but regard the arts of peace ; she is
the model of feminine accomplishment; the instructress of girlhood in works of
the needle and the loom, she weaves her own robe and embroiders that of Here
herself; and the application of energy and ingenuity even to ship-building and
to metal work, make her a fellow worker with Hephaestus in decorative art; and
under her guidance the simplest technical functions are elevated to the dignity
of a truly demiurgic ideal.
Such are
the leading lines of the characteristics which Ilomer combines in the
magnificent ideal of Pallas Athene;
and if the
qualities which he ascribes are not superior to their besetting abuses, and if
he does admit a passing lapse to passion or even caprice, it seems to be by no
oversight, but as a designed intimation that even Athene wras no
more utterly superior to all weakness than the rest of her immortal colleagues,
nor further removed from that kinship with humanity which was recognised in
all of them; nay, that even divine as she was, she still was feminine. Such an
ideal, it is manifest, is quite at variance with that of the Athene mother of
Apollo or wife of Hephaestus in old Attic traditions; but still such traditions
are glanced at, are betrayed, as not unfamiliar to the poet, in the complaint
of a rival of Ulysses that from the partiality of Athene to him she might be
his mother. The Athene of Mothone, in Messene, wTas above all things
meteorological, Athene Anemotis—Goddess of Winds ; while it is only
incidentally that Homeric Athene provides a favourable wind, is herself a
breeze as elsewhere a falling star, and spreads or disperses mists. At Argos
and at Sparta, Athene was the sharp-sighted—Oxyderces, or Ophthalmitis
—protectress of eyes; in poetry the function is employed to clear the sight of
Diomed and enable him to discern gods from mortals. In worship again Athene is
in some localities a health goddess, and the poet is so far reminiscent of the
ascription as to describe how she gives lightness to the limbs of Diomed and sustains
the strength of the grieving Achilles by infusion of nectar and ambrosia;
elsewhere as a light goddess she is worshipped with a torch festival or with an
ever-burning lamp, and on coins she appears bearing a lamp, as she literally
carries a golden lamp to light Ulysses at midnight labour, and metaphorically
makes daylight for Achilles as she precedes him through the battle.
At the
same time it appears impossible to dissociate the origination of the Homeric
ideal of Athene from a predominance of the associations which belonged
peculiarly to the Athene of Attica. The Homeric goddess personifies so
remarkably
the characteristics of the Athenians,—their combined energy and
intellectuality, their warlike spirit and artistic genius,—that Pheidias seems
to have worked with an imagination no more excited by passionate appreciation
of the Attic life around him than responsive to the inspirations of the
primaeval poem. It is no real disparagement of the poet if we recognise that
the sculptor embodied an ideal of more self-contained dignity than suited the
requirements of a progressive and diversified fable; he was restricted to a
single phase, and choosing the noblest, he chose a phase which is still
Homeric.
That a
goddess should reflect the genius of her worshippers, in itself causes no
surprise ; it is familiar how the votary ever chooses, if indeed he does not
even make, his god after his own image; Athene was certainly not adopted as the
eponymous divinity of the city out of regard to the long posterior Homeric
description ; it is most consistent to infer that whatever her form and
attributes in original local cults elsewhere, she was here gradually and even
insensibly endowed with all the qualities and graces that were most esteemed,
admired, and worshipped by the Athenians,—by the Athenians of Attica. The
Athens of Attica is but one of several cities of the name, but all others are
comparatively insignificant, and quite without title to claim share in the
special personification.
Ilomer it
is true is very chary of giving glory to the Athenians, or even mentioning them
or their leaders, an indication of bias of which the late Colonel Mure seems
to have been the first to appreciate the importance and significance. It can
scarcely be, but there is hostile, or at hast unsympathetic animus in
qualifying the brave resistance of Mene- stheus to the Lycians, by making him
call with urgency for supports that Ajax plainly thinks are beyond the
requirement of the occasion. But still he specifies the house of Ereetheus on
the acropolis as the peculiar residence of Athene, and
mentions
her attachment to Marathon, and the conclusion from the whole appears to be
irresistible that Athenian genius had already declared itself long before the
period when Homer wrote, far back in the ages when his materials were taking
the form that was to bloom at last in perfect poetry.
Pheidias,
the greatest of the Athenian, indeed of all Hellenic artists, is recorded to
have been one of the pupils of the Argive sculptor Ageladas, and it seems to
have been one happy consequence of the unpatriotic course which was taken by
Argos in the Persian war and its sequel, that art in one of its seats at least
was left to undisturbed, unsuspended progress. So it came forward with powers
not merely undiminished but matured, to memorise the" victory, but it was
due to the coincidence of the seat of native artistic genius with political
power, that the ideal of Pericles governed the style and scale of the general
dedications at Olympia as well as of the proper commemorations of Athens.
Of the
statue of Athene in ivory and gold that Pheidias executed for the Parthenon—an
embodiment not more of the ideal of Homer than of the Athenian character—we owe
our knowledge chiefly to a description by Pausanias as an eye-witness;
confirming illustrations are supplied by Thucydides, Plutarch, and a notice by
Pliny, and various antique copies display a general agreement with the described
action and attitude.
The
figure, which was erect, had a height, inclusive of the pedestal, according to
Pliny, of twenty-six cubits or about thirty-eight feet, the utmost consistent
with the loftiness of the naos in which it was placed. The summit of the
statue would range with the level of the centre of the sculptured frieze of the
cella. It was therefore considerably smaller in scale than the Zeus of Olympia,
which was a seated figure, and even so reached to the utmost height available
in a naos that cannot have been much, if at all, less lofty.
The
goddess was represented as clothed in a chiton or tunic,
reaching
to the feet, and over it, as in Homer’s description, wore a robe also,—a peplus
of heavier texture no doubt, and providing the favourite contrast of broader
folds and sweeping lines; originally, at least, this was of solid gold weighing
forty talents, and being removable, was taken into account as part of the
disposable national 1 treasure. The gorgon head on the aegis of the
goddess, originally of gold, had been sacrilegiously removed by the time of
Isocrates; Pausanias found it replaced in ivory. The face, hands, and no doubt
the arms were of ivory ; the pupils of the eves were of coloured 2
stone. The material of the aegis, which must have contrasted with the gold
Gorgoneion, is not specified ; if the chiton was of ivory it may have
contrasted with the flesh by an imparted tint, or perhaps was sufficiently
relieved by the lines and shadows of closer delicate folds.
The helmet
of the goddess was crested with a sphinx, and on either side of it in relief
was a griffin—a lion body with head and wings of an eagle; she stood holding a
spear with her left hand, beside it was her shield, and on her extended right
was a Victory,—four cubits, or about six feet high, apparently of ivory. This
height of the Nike or Victory probably includes that of her wing tips or
elevated arms. At the foot of the spear was a serpent, which, says Pausanias,
may be Erichthonius, and in any case was a symbol of the earth-born
Cecropians,—of the Athenians in their pride as autochthonous, offspring of the
soil; a certain reminiscence is also involved of the sacred serpent of the
smaller temple of Athene on the acropolis, of which Herodotus has wonders to
relate as of the genius of the locality.
On some
coins of the Seleucidae, with which may be also compared a coin of Side in
Pamphylia, we have types which we can safely assume to be copies of the
Olympian Zeus and of the Athene of the Parthenon ; the workmanship is far from
fine, but
except in workmanship the differences are slight. In some examples the Victory
is shown as turned towards the goddess and extending the crown to her, but
usually the crown is extended to the front, as if towards the spectator of a
temple statue. In the most distinct specimens we see that the spear, which
rests on the ground, is supported against the hollow of the left arm of the
goddess, while her hand below lies easily upon the top edge of the shield.
Virgil has
a description which agrees with the position of the serpent as between the
goddess and the shield, where however, as we shall see, it must have been so
disposed as not to obscure the view of the interior of the shield and its
decorations.
‘ At geraini lapsu delubra ad sumrna dracones Effngiunt: saevaeque petunt
Tritorddis arcem,
Sub pedibusque Deae clipeique sub orbe teguntur.’
Yirgil, Aen. ii. 225.
The
description of Pliny mentions a bronze sphinx as sub ipsa cuspide, as if the
spear had been held with point reversed, perhaps from some confused interchange
of serpent and sphinx; or it may be that we should read casside for cuspide,
and that the original reference was to the crest of the helmet. As regards the
sphinx in that position, I am willing to take the risk of assuming that the
emblem was introduced with the same intention of hostile reference to Thebes
that is distinctly declared, as we shall see, on the Olympic throne. The place
assigned to it is fully justified by the Homeric description of the helmet of
Athene as ‘ fitted with the spoils of a hundred cities ’:—
Kvvirjv—
XpvaiiTjv
kKarov iroXiow irpvKieffff’ apapviav.
Homer, Iliad, v. 743.
Griffins
are symbols that especially pertain to Apollo, and perhaps may have carried
here an allusion to the pretensions to influence at Delphi which Pericles had
asserted in rivalry to the Lacedaemonians.
‘There is
considerable analogy between the Athene of the
Parthenon
and the Zeus of Olympia; the daughter like the sire is shown as the disposer of
Victory, but helmeted as she is and with arms at hand, rather of the victory
that confers imperial rule than the peaceful trophy of the olive crown.
There was
a like parallelism in secondary adornments; on her basis the birth of Pandora
in the presence of the divinities replaced at Athens that of Aphrodite in
corresponding position on the basis of Olympian Zeus. Battles with Amazons, and
of Centaurs and Lapithae, the accepted types of the contest with the Medes and
semi-barbarous hosts, occur in both instances. The edges of the sandal soles of
Athene were chased with the battle of Centaurs; the convex of her shield bore
the battle of Theseus with the Amazons, no doubt as against invaders of Attica
according to the tradition, and not this time as comrade of Hercules in a
distant expedition. The interior of the shield, which however was probably more
conspicuously presented to view from the front, had the subject of the battle
of Gods and Giants, in which Athene herself was ever a protagonist.
Pliny
notes that the divine spectators of the birth of Pandora were as many as XX, a
number which has much appearance of having replaced the falsified numerals XII.
*
Victory,’ he also adds, ‘ being especially admirable’; and here again it seems
likely that he transfers the admiration due to the Nike of four cubits on the
hand of the goddess, of which he makes no other mention. The frequency of the
introduction of Nike in birth-scenes, as on the vases, and indeed among the
witnesses of the birth of Athene on the pediment, only increased the liability
to such an error.
The
appropriateness of the subject of the birth of Pandora is found in the importance
of the function which is ascribed to Athene on the occasion in the primitive
notice of Hesiod, and was still further enhanced in the special traditions of
Attica. In Hesiodic legend it is Athene who arrays Pandora, the recent work of
Hephaestus, and on a remarkable vase-
painting
we see her in company with the god, disposing the graceful peplus around the
figure.
Another
chryselephantine Athene, on the acropolis of Elis, was ascribed to 1
Pheidias, but according to Pliny was a work of Colotes, who assisted Pheidias
with the Olympian Zeus; the scale of the figure is not noted. On the helmet was
a cock,—as combative bird, says Pausanias, or perhaps a symbol of Athene
Ergane, as goddess of workers early- wakeful. To Panaenus, who also co-operated
in the great Zeus, was due the painting on the interior of the shield.
The
chryselephantine statue of the goddess within the naos of the Parthenon
completed the dedication, and only such a work as this is described to be,
could have added a crowning grace to the majestic sculptural enrichments of the
exterior.
When to
these works are added the elaboration of the design and the exquisite
workmanship of the temple itself, the fifteen years of the sway of Pericles in
peace seems a marvellously short period indeed for their production by artists
of whose activity after all they do but represent a portion. Make what
allowance we may for preparation and study anterior to these limits, the
achievement has still but one parallel for combined rapidity and perfection,
and that is in the single modern work which can compare with it in loftiness of
scope and of success, the Sistine ceiling of Michael Angelo.
The
Parthenon, however, still remains the only building in which the arts of
sculpture and architecture, which should be sisters, have yet been successfully
associated in equal and harmonious perfection,—neither sacrificed to the other,
each appearing to receive as much of enhancement from the other as it
conferred.
What
remains of these sculptures were rescued just in time from impending, from ever
advancing destruction, are the chief glory of the British Museum; they
vindicate even yet
the terms
in which Plutarch characterised them with astonished admiration eighteen
centuries ago. I cite in preference the quaint but racy and by no means
insufficient translation of Sir Thomas North, by whom, though only intermediately,
the passage is thus Englished.
‘ And thus
came the buildings to rise in grace and sumptuousness being of excellent
workmanship, and for grace and beauty not comparable (incomparable): because
every workman in his science did strive what he could do to exeel others, to
make his work appear greatest in sight and to be most work- manly done in show.
But the greatest thing to be wondered at was their speed and diligence. For
where (whereas) every man thought those works were not likely to be finished in
many men’s lives and ages and from man to man, they were all done and finished
whilst only one government continued
still in
credit and authority For this
cause therefore
the works
of Pericles made (made by Pericles) are more wonderful because they were
perfectly made in so short a time, and have continued so long a season. For
every one of those that were finished up at that time, seemed then to be very
ancient touching the beauty thereof; and yet for the grace and continuance of
the same it looketh at this day as if it were but newly done and finished,
there is such a certain kind of flourishing freshness in it, which letteth that
the injury of time cannot impair the sight thereof; as if every of those
foresaid works had some living spirit in it, to make it seem young and fresh,
and a soul that lived ever which kept them in their good continuing 1
state.’
1 North’s Plutarch, p. 165.
THE CHRYSELEPHANTINE STATUES *. THE ZEUS OF OLYMPIA.
But of the numerous
dedications to the Gods in acknowledgment of the liberation of Hellas from the
Mede, the most important in every respect was the Chryselephantine statue of
Zeus at Olympia, with its accessories. Among these would be included indeed the
temple itself, if we are justified in assuming that it was designed and
constructed purposely to contain the statue. The vastness of the structure is
not in itself conclusive on this point. The temple at Samos and the earlier
Parthenon were both on a still larger scale; but when Pausanias states that
both statue and temple, as he saw them, were from the spoils of Pisa upon its
subversion by Elis, the ascription may safely be transferred to earlier monuments
which were now superseded, though not supplanted in the traditions of local
patriotism. It may not even be safe to assume that the native architect
mentioned by Pausanias,—a Libon, of whom no more is known,—was really the
designer of the later temple.
This
temple was the largest hexastyle of the Doric order of which we have knowledge
in Greece Proper, and only surpassed in magnitude in Peloponnesus by the later
Ionic temple of Athene Alea, built by Scopas at Tegea. The stylobate measured
95 feet in front by 250 feet. The columns had a lower diameter of 6-70 feet,
exceeding those of the
octastyle 1
Parthenon. The external height of the fayade Mas 68 feet, and the internal
height was taken advantage of to the very utmost by the colossal figure of the
god, which, seated as it was, according to Hyginus, reached to 60 feet in
height,—a manifestly excessive statement. Pausanias suppresses the dimensions
as only derogating from the grandeur of the impression which the figure
produced, especially when viewed from a station which seems to have been marked
by Pheidias himself. The material of the temple was the porous but hard stone
of the country, which received a coating of marble stucco of extreme tenuity,
that conferred upon it all the sharpness and brilliancy of marble. The roofing
tiles alone were of the Pentelic marble of which the Parthenon was entirely
constructed. The ruins, or rather the scanty vestiges, have been investigated
and published by the French expedition to the Morea, but the over-elaborate
engravings are at variance with the statements of the text to an extent that
baffles satisfactory study of the architecture. Both the pediments were
occupied by important sculptural compositions, but of the metopes, only those
of the inner porticos in antis of naos and opisthodomus, which provided
precisely twelve spaces for the twelve labours of Hercules. It can only be by
accident that the enumeration of Pausanias leaves one out. Hercules, son of
Zeus, was the great model and prototype of all gymnic prowess, and his concern
in the institution and ordination of the Olympic competitions and festival was
a theme for Pindar and the poets generally.
The
predominant idea of the dedication in that ultimate state of completeness
referred to in our accounts, the idea which accordingly found distinct
expression in the subjects of the sculptures and paintings, was a recognition
of Zeus as dispenser to the Greeks of victory, and of all its conditions and
accompaniments, as beauty and strength and virtue;
in the
contests of the Olympic games immediately, where all Hellas was assembled, but
then by natural extension in that great war for freedom, which Hellas had waged
in true Olympic union and confederation. At the same time some special recognition
could not but be demanded for Elis and the guardians of the temple; and then
the fact that the works were chiefly designed and executed by Athenian artists,
and during the period of Athenian ascendancy, might be expected and is actually
found to have given an Athenian bias to the treatment of the very largest
theme,—a bias which the artists were clearly at no pains to disguise.
The
subject in the eastern pediment was by Paeonius, of Mende in Thrace, but of
what artistic school is unknown. His age is fixed by another occasional
dedication as contemporary with the settlement of the Messenians at Naupactus
(454 B.C.). In this front composition were represented Pelops and Oenomaus, at
the moment previous to the chariot-race which was the typical precedent of the
contests of the games. The statue of Zeus,—a standing figure, as I
read,—occupied the centre. Immediately under the apex at his right, the spectator’s
left, stood King Oenomaus, father of Hippodameia the prize, and helmeted as wTe
see him on the vase-paintings on like occasion, where his panoply contrasts
with the light Phrygian garb of Pelops, and alludes to the penalty of instant
death which was incurred at his hand by the suitor who was overtaken. His wife
Sterope was beside him, Myrtilus, his treacherous charioteer, was seated before
the four horses of the chariot, behind were two other grooms or attendants; the
river Cladeus reclined beneath the slope at the extreme angle.
The groups
on our right hand answer in enumeration figure for figure; Pelops and his
hoped-for bride Hippodameia,—who in some vase-paintings shares his chariot in
the race,—his charioteer and horses and chariot, and two grooms, and again in
the narrowing angle a river, the Al- pheus, which received superior honours at
Elis to the less
vol. 11. s
regarded
Cladeus, and was therefore fitly attached to the side which was destined by the
gods to win. The description which makes the symmetry so palpable does not
intimate any principle of movement sufficient to render the composition
properly rhythmical. We are at liberty to infer from a vase- painting not
unplausibly, that the particular incident represented was libation on an altar
before the god,—the solemn ratification of the terms of the fatal race.
According to the story, it was by a base compact with Pelops affecting Hippo-
dameia, that Myrtilus withdrew his master’s lineh-pin,—this act again is found
represented on a vase,—and lost him the race, but only to reap destruction for
his pains, instead of the stipulated shameless recompense.
As we know
nothing of the style of Paeonius, it were futile to conjecture particularly how
he contrived to adjust the four horses abreast to the comparatively shallow
pediment. It is probable, however, that resort was had to the same modification
of perspective, of relievo, and even of symbolism, that was so admirably
applied in the Parthenon, where it is manifest from the fragments of the horses
of Athene’s chariot, that the more remote at least were treated with the
flatness of even bas-relief.
Indications
of a composition more studied and certainly not so readily divined, appear in
the description of the sculpture of the other, and secondary pediment,—the
battle of the La- pithae, or more properly of Theseus and the Centaurs at the
marriage of Pirithous. Pirithous aided by Caeneus was in the central group; on
one side was the Centaur Eurytion seizing the bride; on the other, Theseus
wielding an axe,—the sacrificial axe it may be, of the interrupted
festivity,—combated other centaurs, of whom one had seized a girl and another a
beautiful boy. On the Phigaleian frieze sueli seizures of girl and boy by
violent centaurs are represented on a single slab. This composition, of which
the description unfortunately proceeds 110 further, was ascribed to the
Athenian Aleamenes,
wlio
worked congenially on an exploit of the Athenian hero. Pausanias was contented
with the explanation that the selection of the subject was justified in
Pirithous being a son of Zeus, and Theseus a descendant rather more remotely.
The subjects of the two pediments pair in a general sense, as both involve a
contest for a bride,—in each case also a Hippo- dameia, in a manner a
personification by name of the horse and chariot races of the festival. Both
victories are gained over opponents of brutalised habits and customs, and hence
are naturally emblematical of that superseding of coarse and violent manners by
milder and more graceful civilisation, of which the Olympic festival, with its
sacred truce and emulative contests for an olive crown, the symbol of peace,
was so apt a celebration. In place of any further justification of
appropriateness we must allow for the Athenian predilection of the sculptor for
an exploit of the Athenian hero. Conspicuous however on the very front of the
temple, whenever placed or restored there, was seen in the late age of
Pausanias at least a memorial of Athenian disaster; a gilded Victory surmounted
the apex, and below it was a golden shield bearing the Gorgon Medusa and an
inscription in four elegiac lines, which describe it together with a phiale
within the naos, as a tithe paid—if the readings must indeed be accepted
— on account of the victory gained at Tanagra
by the Lacedaemonians and their allies over the Argives, Athenians, and
Ionians. In any case the memorial was well fitted to recall how gloriously
Athens within sixty-one days retrieved her disaster on the same ground by the
victory of Myronides at Oenophyta.
On passing
under the front portico, the intervals of the two columns in antis of the
pronaos, were closed by bronze gratings and doors. In front of the column to
the right was a statue of King Iphitus, crowned by Echecheira, or Truce,
—personification of the suspension of enmities which was appropriate to, and
indeed probably a prime motive of the first
s %
institution
of the Olympic Pan-Hellenic festival. Within, the statue of the god of the
temple was visible at the further end of the naos. A range of columns on either
side supported an upper range, and certain galleries, that in the words of
Pausanias gave approach to the statue,—that is no doubt, afforded and were
contrived in order to afford, better and closer points of view. A winding stair
led still higher to the roof.
The
colossal figure of the god, of which the most conspicuously lavish materials
were ivory and gold, was seated on a highly enriched throne, raised upon a
sculptured basis. On his head was a wreath mimetic of olive leaves,—the olive
leaves that formed the most coveted crown of the games. His right hand extended
a Victory of like costly and beautiful materials, wreathed and holding a
fillet; his left hand held a sceptre, enriched with a decorative diversity of
metals, and surmounted by an eagle, as in the Pindaric description. The
agreement of various copies on coins and in bronzes assures us that the upper body
was uncovered; the robe from the lap was of gold, and wrought and variegated
with figures of various animals and of flowers, exclusively lilies. The symbolical
pertinence of the latter here is not very obvious, though Artemidorus assures
an athlete of an Olympic victory when he dreams of lilies. Pausanias however 1
finds at Delphi a statue of Zeus, an Aeginetan work, dedicated by the Meta-
pontines, with eagle on one hand, thunder in the other, and wearing a coronal
of flowering lilies. . The legs and robes of the god were free from contact
with the front of the throne below, and the golden-sandalled feet rested on a
footstool supported by golden lions.
Pheidias
said, or was reported to have said, that he derived his ideal of the god from
the Homeric description of Zeus when he gives the assenting nod to supplicating
Thetis, his dark eye-brows more expressive by the bowed head, and his ambrosial
and luxuriant curls drooping responsively with the 1 Faus. v. 22. 4.
movement
that sent a quiver through vast Olympus. So benignity attempered majesty and
awful might, and all antiquity recognised the supreme embodiment of
graciousness with power, of condescension with absolute control; in the words
of JDion Chrysostom, ‘a representation as perfect as it was possible
for human imagination to conceive of the ineffable nature of the divinity, in
mildness and dignity superior to all agitation, the giver of growth and life
and all good things whatever, at once the father and saviour and guardian of
mankind.’ For full eight centuries such were the sentiments that the genius of
Pheidias could inspire.
The throne
itself was highly enriched, diversified with gold and various marbles, with
ebony and ivory, and ornamented with painted groups and sculptured figures. The
portion of the pavement in front of the proper basis or podium was of black
stone, with a raised margin of white marble to retain the oil which was applied
to preserve the work against the moist atmosphere of a marshy locality. Such at
least is the account. In what precise manner it was admitted to contact with
the central core and so countervailed either the unequal expansion and
contraction of such a variety of materials, or any other liability to decay or
damage, is not readily explained.
The great
mass of such a figure could not be supported on a throne that rested merely on
four free legs, and an inner support was therefore provided below the seat,—a
solid square pier with an Ionic column at each angle, which afforded at the
same time a further opportunity for enrichment.
At each
leg of the throne were four figures of dancing Victories, no doubt one on each
front of the detached leg, whether the core of this were square or cylindrical.
Monumental antiquity supplies many models for restoring them with drapery at
once formal and ornate in elaboration, and
1 Dion Chrysostom (temp. Trajan), Or. XII.
with hands
touching as they stand a-tiptoe, side l>y side and back to back. In
horizontal line below their feet ran a bar from leg to leg, carrying
statuettes, and on the continuation of the legs below the bars, the feet of the
throne, were two other Victories, in what attitude is not specified,—two only,
for the evident reason that in this position the internal sides would be
invisible. Conjecture may be allowed to indulge itself by applying here the
ancient designs of kneeling Victories sacrificing bulls.
Behind, on
the upper part of the throne which rose above the head of the statue, Pheidias
introduced on one side figures of the Graces, on the other of the Seasons,—three
of each,—Seasons and Graces alike, as Pausanias observes, the daughters of
Zeus.
The arms
of the throne were supported above the front legs by figures of Sphinxes with
Theban youths in their clutches, and below these and apparently along the sides
of the seat or cushion of the throne, were compositions of Artemis and Apollo
slaying the children of Niobe.
On the
general basis of the throne the subject was wrought in gold, of Aphrodite
(Venus) rising from the sea to be received by Eros and crowned by Peitho
(Persuasion) in the midst of an assembly of goddesses and gods; in the Homeric
hymn she is crowned and arrayed and conducted by the Horae (the Seasons). The
cosmical reference of the scene and incident was conveyed in the same manner
as in the triangular composition of the Birth of Athene on the Parthenon pediment.
At one end was Helios in a chariot, at the other Selene,—but here on a horse or
mule. Paired divinities, witnesses of the birth of the queen of all delight and
beauty, are on either side ; Zeus and Ilera next to Helios at one end; Poseidon
and Amphitrite, divinities of the element from which the goddess rises at the
other, next to Selene. Then on either side of the central group, Apollo and
Artemis, Athene and Hercules answer on our right, to Hermes and Ilcstia. an
omitted
god, apparently Hephaestus, and Charis on our left, next to Zeus and Hera. The
symmetry thus declares itself;—
Helios in
chariot,—Zeus, Hera,—Hephaestus (?), Charis,— Hermes, Hestia;—Eros, Aphrodite,
Peitho;—Artemis, Apollo,
— Athene, Hercules, — Amphitrite, Poseidon, —
Selene and horse.
Peitho
here replaces Himeros, who, according to Hesiod, in company with Eros,
conducted the new-born goddess to the assembly of the gods. I assume that this
composition was visible as a whole and at once upon the front of the basis,
whether this was on a right line or curved. It would be the height of
inconsistency to break so symmetrical a series round the angles of the basis,
and to relegate the most important witnesses, Zeus and Hera on one side and
Poseidon on the other, to the remote and obscure angles.
The
constant reference in Pindar’s odes for victors in the games, to the beauty of
their forms, explains a special appropriateness of this subject to the throne
of Olympic Zeus. A victory in the games—the Olympic games especially—was
vindication of the essential sympathy of moral and personal beauty or
perfection. The same severe training that gave the victory perfected the form
of the victor, whose highest fame it was to be, 1kcl\os KakXiara re pefa?. Much the same moral is expressed
by the association here,—as so frequently on the vases,—of Heracles with
Athene.
Welcomed
by the pre-existent Eros, the original influence that summoned order forth from
chaos, and crowned by the power of all-persuasiveness, the goddess appears as
bringing the last charm to creation to complete the harmony that the Olympic
truce was designed to introduce and to perpetuate. It can scarcely be without
intention too, as helping the elevated scope of her influence, that the three
goddesses who most immediately receive her, are precisely Hestia, Artemis, and
Athene, the virgin three who, according to the Homeric
1 Pind. 01.
ix. 140.
hymn, were
alone unsubjugated by the impulses of which the control was a recognised
condition of the health and energy of the Olympic athlete.
This
subject on the basis of the throne was brought into view at once from the front
along with the correlative and complementary Graces and Seasons above the
throne at the back,—the personifications of all orderly succession and
beautiful arrangement and development in heaven and earth, in natural and
organic, in intellectual and moral existence.
The next
most conspicuous ornaments were probably the Sphinxes under either arm of the
throne, and the fate of the Niobids at the sides of the seat. These again are
companion subjects, and not selected without a distinct and yet not inappropriate
or intrusive bias of Athenian partisanship. Both catastrophes are Theban ; and
Pheidias here, on the dedication for Hellenic deliverance from the barbarian,
branded as enemies of Hellas and of Zeus the protector of Hellas, the
traitorous Thebans who had done their best to promote the threatened
subjugation of Hellenic culture by barbarian violence. How distinctly this
emblem of the Sphinx destroying Thebans would carry such significance to Greeks
of the time, we learn best from Aeschylus. In the Seven against Thebes, the spy
describes the assailant of the fifth gate, Partheno- paeus, as bearing on his
shield,—to match the defiant and contemptuous emblems and inscriptions of his
compeers,—
‘The raw-devouring Sphinx, our city’s shame,
Her form stud-fastened, brilliantly embossed;
Beneath her holds she a Cadmeian man,
A target so for missiles thickly showered.’
Eteocles
recognises the taunt of the assailant,—
‘On hostile shield,
Who bears the image of that hateful pest;
Beneath our walls sore battered she will rail At him who fain would carry
her within.’
The
subject of the slaughter of the children of Niobe was probably divided,—the
deaths of the daughters by Artemis on
one side,
of the sons by Apollo on the other. Niobe was the daughter of Ampliion of
Thebes, and in punishment of her arrogance the twin gods slew her children 011
Mount Ci- thaeron, the very scene of the battle of Plataea, where the Thebans,
fighting with obstinate goodwill on the unpatriotic side, suffered so severely,
and that too at the hands of the Athenians.
The
decorations of this throne therefore convey an Athenian denunciation of Thebes,
as distinctly as the inscription on the golden shields on the architrave of the
temple at Delphi,— “ The Athenians from the Medes and the Thebans when they
were fighting against Hellas.”
The
intention is brought home by contrast of pointed allusions to the patriotic
exploits of Athens.
On the bar
at the front of the throne behind the legs of the god, were eight figures
representative of the various contests of the games; one of them, a youth
binding a fillet round his brow,—a diadumenos,—was said to be Pantarces, an
Eleian youth and favourite of Pheidias, who conquered in the wrestling match of
boys, in the 86th Olympiad, 436 b. c.
On the
other bars was represented the battle of Hercules and a numerous troop—among
them was Theseus,—with the Amazons. The number of both together, Amazons and
opponents, was twenty-nine. The phrase of Pausanias implies his impression
that Hercules was distinctly the protagonist, and Theseus, the Athenian, his
ally. In the Phigaleian friezes Hercules is decidedly the protagonist in the
battle with Amazons, and Theseus is not to be distinguished with certainty. In
the other subject of the same frieze,—the battle with the Centaurs,—the same as
that of the western pediment at Olympia, it does not appear to me that Hercules
is to be recognised at all; it seems probable that the chief group here was
introduced on the central bar, that at the back of the throne.
The battle
with the Asiatic Amazons was the rcceivccl mythical type, which at this time we
meet with over and over again, for the conflict of the Greeks with the loose-
robed Asiatics, Persians or Medes. In the present subject the pre-eminence
which is conceded to Hercules seems to intimate that it was introduced as
properly a type and recognition of the great Plataean victory which was gained
by united Hellas indeed, but under the leadership of the Heraclcid Spartan,
Pausanias.
Of the
four sides of the great pier that supported the throne below the seat and
within the pillar-legs, the obscured front was simply painted blue. The other
three were severally enriched with three paintings by Panacnus, according to
Strabo a cousin of Pheidias by the father’s side, and associate contractor in
the work. He contributed the general colouring of the statue, the tinting
probably of the ivory of the nude, and, it is stated particularly, the
enrichment of the robe.
It is the
wont of Pausanias, as approved by instances at Delphi and ^myclae, to enumerate
a series of subjects in the order in which he arrives at them, as he moves
along most uninterruptedly and conveniently. In the present instance, as in
others, we are enabled to recover the more rational ordination without
difficulty. His enumeration is as follows, in order of the numbers attached:—
3. Ilellas
and Salamis. 6. Ilippodameia and
mother. 9. Two llesperides.
2.
Tlieseus and I’irithous. 5. Ajax and Cassandra. 8.
Achilles and Penthcsilea.
1. Atlas
and Hercules. 4. Hercules and
Nemean lion. 7. rrometlieus and Hercules.
From the
symmetry that comes out, and that is salient in this form of tabulation, it is
clear that he took each division in succession, from above downwards, or else
and in some degree more probably from below upwards. Each triplet commences
with a pair of female figures, and ends with an exploit of Hercules. That the
triplet, which is shown as
1 See my dissertations on the Pictures of Polygnotus
at Delphi, and on the Throne of Apollo at Amyclae, in Falkcntr’s Museum of
Classical Antiquities.
placed
centrally, was really central, and therefore at the back of the throne, is proved
by the properly terminal character of the exploits of Hercules to the right and
left,—his adventure with Atlas and Prometheus,—brother Iapetids, respectively
at the extreme west and east of the world as accepted in Greek fable.
The
struggle with the Nemean lion, one of the most frequent subjects on archaic
vases, was typical of the prowess of the athlete.
On the
uppermost line, we have in the centre Hippodameia, daughter of Oenomaus, as
first Olympic prize gained in the chariot race by Pelops ; to the right a pair
of Hesperides holding golden fruit, the reward of the concluding labour of
Hercules; to the left, and most important, personified Hellas, accompanied by
Salamis, who held the decorative beak of a ship,—the symbol of the sea-fight in
which Athens, her fleet and her commander, guided confederate Hellas to victory
over Xerxes.
The
Athenian Theseus is placed just below Salamis, but no note is given of
occupation to guide to a further significance of his introduction. Pirithous
is a Thessalian hero, and the Athenians had, at least at this time, Thessalian
allies. Achilles, in corresponding plaee to the right, was supporting the dying
Amazon Penthesilea, whose beauty, youth, and valour he is said to have
compassionated after he had slain. Here again, unless an allusion to Artemisia
be not thought too remote, illustration is again at fault. The central subject
at the back of the throne was the sacrilege of the Locrian Ajax, in dragging
Cassandra from refuge in the sanctuary of Athene. The Locrians, like the
Thebans, abetted Xerxes, and were afterwards persistently their allies against
Athens; and it is observable that this same misdeed by which the Locrian hero
incurred the vengeance of the goddess of Athens, was again combined with
another commemoration of the Athenian victory in the Poecile stoa.
A still
more special drift, however, may be a warning here of the divine anger that
awaits the desecrators of sanctuaries, and especially those who do violence to
statues of the gods. Cassandra is usually represented clasping in her distress
and resistance the statue of Athene.
At Megara,
in a temple of Zeus Olympius, Pausanias found an unfinished statue of this
class, which, so far as it was executed, was ascribed to a native artist,
Theoeosmos, assisted by Pheidias. The face, or head alone, was properly
completed in ivory and gold; all the rest was made up of clay and plaster. The
wood that was to have been employed still lay half-wrought behind the naos.
Above the head of the god were the Fates and Seasons, as at Elis the Graces and
the Seasons. The work was interrupted by the Peloponnesian war, when Megara and
its citizens were utterly impoverished by the annual ravaging expeditions by
which Athens revenged the zealous part which they had taken in bringing it 1
on.
The
commencements of this kind of work are not to be dated so accurately as this
note of its conclusion, but Pausanias saw at Sicyon a chryselephantine
Asclepius, beardless, with sceptre in one hand and pine cone in the other, the
reputed work of the early sculptor Calamis.
1 Paus. i. 40. 3.
THE FIRST CHARGES AGAINST PHEIDIAS.—PERICLES ON THE DEFENSIVE.—THE
FOUNDING OF AMPHIPOLIS.
B.C. 438,
437; 01. 85. 3.
For the three years that
follow the reduction of Samos in 441-40 B.C., under the archonship of Timocles,
the records leave us uninformed as to any definite political events. We know,
however, that within this period the architectural and sculptural works of the
Parthenon were rapidly advancing towards completion; and the archonship of
Theodorus, 438-7 B.C., is a certified date of the dedication of the
chryselephantine statue of the goddess. Statue and temple, together with all
their enrichments and accompaniments, formed an harmonious whole, which was at
once the most costly dedication that had ever been devoted by the Greeks to the
honour of the gods, and one to which, for refinement in dignity and beauty, the
world could show no rival. The beauty that here was realised did not simply
exhibit an extraordinary advance on whatever had been beheld before ; it
touched a limit where art might well seem not only hopeless and incapable of a
further advance, but so fully satisfied in all its highest aspirations as
neither to expect nor desire it. It was the high distinction of these works,
that while they attained the utmost development of elaboration, they declined
no whit from the sober dignity of earlier art, but united correctness
and finish
with unimpaired spirit, and severity with grace. Archaic art had been
gloriously successful in embodying a loftiness of expression which rose
superior even to associated crudity, not to say occasional grotesqueness, but
style in perfect and serene purity was now achieved for the first time. The harmony
in execution of so vast and multifarious a work would in itself imply the
control of one presiding mind of largest grasp and most vivid imagination and
fertility, endowed moreover with the faculty of inspiring the zealous co-operation
of a number of other men of high, however subordinate genius. Such mastery of
mind pertained most certainly to Pheidias, who was entrusted by Pericles with
the supreme direction of the works of even the architects, of whom Ictinus
among others who are named, as Mnesieles, Callicrates, and Carpion, was the 1
chief.
The
co-operation of numerous sculptors also, who were not all of equal and some not
even of unusual merit, was part of the necessity of the ease, and is proved by
differences in perfection of execution and even of design in the extant
remains. It is only a marvel that the differences are not more salient or
considerable.
Glorious
as was the result for both artist and statesman, the peril of such glory was
unhappily proportionate. Inevitable danger lay in the provocation of artistic
jealousy in rivals and of interested spite in political opponents, and worst of
all, in the susceptibility of the governing power,—the general dcmus,—to
conceive base grudge at any extraordinary personal distinction. It has already
appeared too often that no notion was more familiar to the Greeks than the
ascribed disposition of the gods themselves to take offence at sustained
prosperity, however guiltless, however merited, as though it implied a
dangerous example of independence or an intolerable affront. In this unworthy
conception they did but
transfer
to Olympus the too authentic characteristics of supreme power below; and
unfortunately seem at the same time to have found justification for themselves
in tyrannical caprice by such precedent and example of the divine, and even to
have recognised in their own jealousy the authorised operation of that of the
gods.
The date
which is given by Eusebius for the dedication of the chryselephantine Athene
(438 B.C.), is confirmed by appropriate coincidence with a year of the great
Panathenaea (01. 85.3), and then implicitly by the scholiast of Aristophanes,
who, quoting Philochorus, gives an interval of seven years between archonships
of Pythodorus and Scythodorus, corresponding to that between the first
difficulties of Pheidias and the outbreak of the war. This confirmation is not
vitiated by the glaring transposition of the place of Pythodorus, who was the
later archon, or by Scythodorus, a name unknown to the lists, being substituted
very manifestly for the Theodorus of the earlier date.
It was
under the archon Pythodorus that the Peloponnesian war broke out,—so rapidly
through years of prosperity does the Athenian empire arrive at a struggle for
existence,—and according to the scholiast, it was precisely seven years before
the commencement of the war, that a public charge was brought against Pheidias
of having embezzled a portion of the gold that was supplied to adorn the
statue. The notices which are quoted by the scholiast from Philochorus, include
some statements that are certainly false, as, for instance, that Pheidias on
this attack retired to Elis and was there put to death ; but there is
circumstantial confirmation of such a charge of embezzlement having been made
at this time, and that it was quite distinct from another charge at a later
date of which the consequences were fatal.
Even so
then was it. The completion of a service acted
as a
signal for malice to attack the benefactor. This wonder of human genius and
national glory was scarcely in its place, an objcct for the admiration of the
Hellenic world, when the enemies of Pericles could anticipate that such an
occasion would render the sovereign people anything than less averse to subject
him, if not to open attack, at least to annoyance and insult. The direct attack
might come later ; preparation was made for it by testing his ability, in the
existing temper of the people, to protect the friend in whose genius culminated
all the glories of his administration.
By conecrt
with a party so inspired, one Menon, who had been engaged in some of the work
under Pheidias, took station at the altar in the agora, as putting himself
ostentatiously under protection of the gods, and demanded public safeguard in
coming forward as an accuser. A certain Glycon was prepared to aid the
factitious importance of the occasion, and on his motion it was committed to
the generals to take order for the safety of the proposed informer.
It is said
that the manner in which this accusation wras at once disproved was
by simply weighing the masses of moulded gold of the drapery of the goddess,
which in accordance with a precautionary suggestion of Pericles, had been so
adjusted as to be removable at pleasure. The arrangement had certainly been
made with the view that so much intrinsic value, —no inconsiderable portion of
the national treasure,—should be available in case of need, but probably also
not without reference to anticipated cavil. However this may have been, the
charge wTas certainly met with confidence and successfully rebutted.
The spirit which prompted it, however, was not so easily set at rest. The cost
of these great works had been enormous, and however enthusiastically it may
have been voted some years before, the usual weak reaction gave a tempting
opportunity to those who had vainly opposed the outlay at first, to question
accounts, to impute neglectful or extravagant expenditure with the scarcely
covert intent of
implying
malversation and even to help a spiteful purpose by reopening the question of
the original policy. When the deduction from the accumulated state treasure
came to be counted up, it could not but appear formidable, and, especially as
further outlay was proposed, could easily be represented as disproportionate,
indefensible, inexplicable. Presuming on the public temper, which was likely to
be more irritable under the loss of one expected satisfaction, Dracontides
ventured on a proposal that carried an imputation more directly upon Pericles
himself, as well as on his previous auditors, of complicity in irregularities.
The hostile motion, so to call it, was for transferring the supervision of his
accounts to a different body, the Prytanes, in addition exacting offensively a
special security for integrity even in their case, by requiring them in giving
their award to take their ballots from the altar on the acropolis. The
invidiousness, or something more, of this scheme to countervail collusion by
arrangements that were likely enough to be planned to assist conspiracy,
appears to have been successfully traversed by an amendment of Hagnon, which
had for effect the substitution of a more numerous tribunal of 1500
dicasts, and required that the charge, which seems to have been framed with
sinister intention in loose or ambiguous terms, should be precisely specified ;
as of appropriating public money, of receiving bribes, or of wrong and 1 injury. If we could for once
accept Plato as a good witness on a point of history, we must admit that the
Athenians convicted Pericles of theft and were very near punishing him with 2death. But this account is
demonstrably a mere confusion of a charge that was abortive, with the fine
which he paid at a later date after commencement of the Peloponnesian war, and
on quite other grounds. A proof of his immunity, and even of a triumphant
reaction on the present occasion, lies in the fact that a most im-
T
portant
and peculiarly expensive public work,—the Propylaea, —was begun this very year
and carried on under his supervision to completion some four years after.
Ilarpocration is the authority for these dates, and an anecdote of an accident
to the architect 1 Mnesicles, helps us to the concern of 2
Pericles. Athene was honoured by him with a statue on the acropolis, as a
health-goddess, under the title Hygieia,—the Healthful,—for intimating to him
in a dream the herb that would be salutary to his bruised friend. The incident
has some appearance, under all the circumstances of the time, of purposely
ostentatious orthodoxy.
The
services of Hagnon, perhaps also of his dicasts, may have had their
acknowledgment in the organisation of an important and promising colony which,
not without the cooperation of 3 Pericles, he led to Thracc the
very same year. On the other hand, it seems to have been by way of compensating
themselves for reluctant magnanimity that the Athenians now repealed the
restrictions which had for some time remained imposed upon comedy, and so let
loose ribaldry again, and doubly embittered, upon Pericles and all his
belongings.
Since the
reduction of Eion by Cimon, the Athenians had continued to hold this important post
at the mouth of the Strymon; but thirty-two years had now elapsed since they
made the attempt to effect a settlement on an important scale further inland,
at Nine-ways, which came to an end, as we have seen, in the disaster at
Drabescus. This attempt was now to be renewed, under what immediate
encouragement besides the general tempting advantages of the site does not
distinctly appear, though these might well be sufficient. It was only
twenty-five stadia up the river from the emporium of Eion, but it commanded the
bridges by which the road from Macedonia and the Chalcidic peninsula
communicated
with
Thrace and the Hellespont; while a long tract of marshy lakes was an obstacle
to a ready passage higher up, and the inland roads about the upper Strymon were
exposed to interruption from wild tribes,—Pancoeans, Odomantians, Dercaeans,
Paeonians, Graians, and La'ians,—of little coherence among themselves, and
uncontrolled either by Macedonia on the one side, or by whatever authority
might occasionally be dominant in 1 Thrace.
Nine-ways
was thus, as its name might indicate, at the very cross-road of commerce, and
that in the centre of a region of great natural and mineral resources; and not
only was there promise of the settlement yielding a large revenue to Athens,
but it was of peculiar advantage as securing the passage down the river to the
coast of the ship timber from the northern forests, which was required in such
large supply for her navy. The position was also important as, together with
command of the river below, securing the frontier between Macedonia and the
allied cities on the coast of 2 Thrace.
The site
was in the present possession of Edonian Thracians,—the same tribe that had
brought to an end the earlier project and the turbulent life of Aristagoras.
This tribe had at one time extended to Mygdonia, to the west of the Strymon,
but like the Pierians, like the Bottiaeans, had been extruded by the constant
encroachment of the Macedonian kings. They were now apparently both weakened
and divided, for a few years later Pittacus, a king of Edonians at the adjacent
Myrcinus, appears as an ally of Athens.
From
Nine-ways in any case they are now expelled by Hagnon, son of Nicias, who took
forcible possession of the site for a new city, of which he was to have the
honours, still recognised as almost heroic, of 3 founder. Ei'on on
the coast, was the base of his. operations, and there is no notice that the
opposition which he met with was very formidable.
The
winding river almost surrounded a tongue of land, upon which was situated a
hill so steep as to be suitable for an acropolis, at the same time lending
itself to fortification. This he cut off by a long wall extending across the
isthmus from bank to bank. The enclosure so formed was entered from the west by
a bridge across the Strymon, which however, as planned, gave access only to a
suburb. "Within this was the true circuit of the walled eity, which, in
allusion to its double aspect and access towards sea and continent, received
the name Ampliipolis.
A proportion
of the settlers were naturally Athenians, and indeed there is little doubt that
this is the colony which Plutarch refers to as despatched by Pericles to
Thrace, to the number of a thousand, to share settlements with Bisaltic
Thracians. Other settlers were associated, however, from adjacent garrisons and
towns, and, under the usual pressing requirement by a new' colony for
sufficient population, were accepted, it would seem, with somewhat rash
indiscrimination. Certainly within a few years the Athenian element is found
to be in a 1 minority, while among the miscellaneous residents are
included a number of citizens from Argilus, a town which by its position and
its origin, as a colony of the hardly-dealt-with Andrians, and as liable to be
superseded by the new neighbour, was disposed from the first to regard it with
feelings of dislike and jealousy that were soon to bear evil and treacherous
fruit.
If we may
put faith in 2 Polyaenus, and believe that Ilagnon was at the
pains,—by suggestion of an oracle of course,—of removing the reputed bones of
Rhesus to his new city from their resting place in the plains of 3
Troy, there would be implicit proof of his anxiety to conciliate the native
Thracians, and also an illustration of the extent to which they had become
imbued with Hellenic associations.
The
phenomenon is much the same that we find avouched both by legend and the
fictile vases, for Apulia and Etruria. The charm of Hellenic culture seems
constantly to have made such impression on merely conterminal or only most
distantly related tribes, as to gain currency for Hellenic poetical legends,
especially of the Trojan cycle, while at the same time native self-assertion
gave sympathy in preference to the opponents of the Greeks.
Hagnon
came before us previously in command of vessels which were sent as
reinforcement to Pericles in the Samian war, and it is remarkable that he was
then, however accidentally, associated with a Thucydides, who, if the
historian, had interests of family, and property, and influential connections
in the region of Thrace about Amphipolis. Again he is to appear in 430 B.C.
associated with Cleombrotus in transactions at Potidaea, and the next year as
an envoy to Sitalces, king of the ’Odrysian Thracians. It is probable that
Hagnon like Thucydides had original connections with Thrace, but history has
left him, like so many other important Greeks, a characterless name. The views
that prompted the foundation of Amphipolis were fully justified by the results;
but the short tenure of the place by Athens, and the circumstances under which
it was lost, betray, it would seem, a want of apprehension on the part of the
demus or their advisers, of the special dangers that it was exposed to, or how
they were to be precluded. While the new city appears to have been allowed
almost complete independence, and no sufficient care was taken either to secure
a preponderance of Athenian over associated population, or the presence of such
a governor and garrison as should enforce loyalty, it is scarcely surprising
that local interests and attachments should grow up that invited and reconciled
to a severance of the tie with Athens.
The
consequences of this Athenian colonisation of Amphi-
polis were
indirectly most momentous. They fall without the limits of the present history,
but are entitled to be adverted to here, though sleeping yet in their first
causes; for it was by the settlement we now record, that Athenian power and
interference were brought into sueh immediate neighbourhood with Thrace on the
one hand, and Macedonia on the other, as to prepare for collisions more than
ordinarily serious, and that a new element of excitement was introduced
precisely at a time when these countries were swayed by rulers who, however
contrasted in other respects, were equally remarkable for energy and ambition.
Perdiecas,
the son of the Alexander who figures in the events of the invasion of Xerxes,
was now king of Macedonia, and appears to have inherited a double portion of
his father’s talent for political equivocation, with the same reliance on the
state-craft of helping busily to excite jealousies and set quarrels abroach,
and then prospering by giving aid in turn to all who were disposed to ruin
themselves by quarrels. This regal family claimed to be, and Thucydides no less
than Herodotus allows the 1 claim, originally Temenids from Argos.
Their kingdom -was a result of gradual growth, commencing indeed from conquests
on the seaboard, but distinguished at the very first from so many other purely
maritime colonies of the Greeks, by the readiness with which it spread inland
and the firm grasp which it took of large districts and varied tribes. In this
tendency there was augury already of the power that was ultimately to crush all
other Greek states by command of overwhelming land 2 forces, and of
a military discipline that was not frustrated of its great results by
narrowness of views and means, or by demoeratieal instability or
insubordination,—the power that was to give that political union to the
qualifications of the Greek which was vainly striven for by Athens through mere
maritime predominance,
and which
when Aristotle wrote his Politics was still out of all expectation, though he
could not but notice that if achieved it would easily give into the hands of
the Greek the control of the 1 world. The spirit of intrigue that
subserved the aggressive policy of the later Philip, was developed already in
all its unscrupulousness with Perdiccas. No treaty, no engagement with either
Greek or Thracian would bind him. There was no promise that he would not
readily make, none that he would not either openly or secretly be false to with
even greater alacrity. In the story of his changes there is but one principle
to which he seems constant—to foment dissension among his neighbours, and
never to lend aid but with a view to complicate a fray rather than to decide
it.
Confronted
and contrasted with Perdiccas, was Sitalces son of Tereus, King of the Odrysian
Thracians, who from small beginnings had acquired sway and influence together,
that extended from the Hellespont to the Strymon,—from the Pierian gulf to the
Euxine, nay to the Ister. Thucydides gives an account of this power, with
details that are the more valuable from his own personal connection with
Thrace, and enumerates the various tribes which Sitalces, not without aid of
his large revenue, was able to unite, some few years later than the time we
treat of, so as to invade the territories of Perdiccas with an army of horse
and foot to the number of a hundred and fifty thousand men. Of this aggression,
one of the many broken promises of Perdiccas was the immediate provocation,
and another motive was fulfilment of a promise that he himself had made to the
Athenians. The gathering of so vast a host created alarm that was not limited
to the enemy attacked. Thessaly was thrown into agitation which extended so far
south as Thermopylae; and in the north, independent Thracian tribes about the
upper Strymon, and all Greek cities hostile to Athens, were in
apprehension
of attack. How it was that notwithstanding the ineffective resistance that
Macedonia was prepared to make, the expedition came rapidly and with little
result to an end, belongs to the detailed story of a later time; what we are
now concerned to mark, is the present condition of these regions as evidenced
by ulterior consequences.
To the
sense of narrow escape from a great peril was no doubt due the energy with
which Archelaus on succeeding his father Perdiccas, established fortified
places throughout his kingdom which might provide protection and refuge in
future, cut direct roads of communication and provided organisation and
equipments for cavalry and hoplites, and instituted general military
preparations of more importance than all his eight predecessors 1
together,—in fact, laid down the general lines of the inheritance that Philip
was to transmit complete to Alexander.
Among all
these complicated and conflicting interests there were still some others which
were to declare themselves even sooner as elements of disturbance, and were
known already as in preliminary ferment; Oisyme and Galepsus among other cities
were reminiscent of ancient connection with independent Thasos; and still more
ominously of coming trouble, the Dorian sympathies and Dorian connections of
Potidaea were maintained by systematic intercourse with its metropolis,— with
Corinth ever inimical to the interests and jealous of the glory of Athens.
1 Thuc. ii. 100.
Critics of the style of
Thucydides have noticed the frequency and even reckoned up the number of
instances of his contrasts or co-ordination of the efficiency of words and
deeds ; the funeral oration assigned to Pericles contains alone some sixteen
examples. What has been called a sort of monomania of the writer may be better
interpreted as undesignedly significant of the exceptional importance of
speech in the Athenian world. The contrast of Athens to the sententious and
taciturn Sparta was of course most marked, but it evidently existed no less in
respect even of other states of Hellas. The forms of the constitution and the
maxims of her free administration gave fullest range to that open declaration
of opinion, the loss of which is reckoned by Aeschylus as a penalty of
submission to Persia more degrading than arbitrary taxation or even Oriental
prostrations. Words in a free country are the most important of all political
actions; and the powers which language had asserted in the assembly and in the
law courts, were now invoked as eagerly to set forth or controvert the various
theories of philosophy which after flourishing undisturbed in independent
seats, were here to be confronted, compared, and called upon to vindicate
influence, honour, and even existence.
Miletus,
the city of Aspasia, was the native seat of that philosophical movement the
fostering of which was to be one
of the
dangerous charges against her when the enemies of Pericles, in an attack too
soon to be renewed, connected her name with the prejudice against Anaxagoras.
Thales of
Miletus had been followed by Anaximander of the same city, and then by
Anaximenes ; other speculators attach themselves to the same school of thought;
Xenophanes of Colophon, in the neighbourhood, and Pythagoras of Samos, the
island that was in most intimate relations with Miletus, followed on; and when
Persian conquest overwhelmed Miletus, one carried the movement forward at
Crotona, and the other at the new Phocaean settlement of Elea in southern
Italy. Here they were not without successors, and while Sicily took the
contagion and produced Empedocles, Parmenides of Elea and his disciple Zeno
transferred their personal influence to the great centre of Hellenic
intelligence and enterprise at Athens.
Meantime
Ionia was not effete: Ileracleitus of Ephesus became renowned, and then
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, and lastly Hippodamus of Miletus, the propounder of a
theory of society organised with constant reference to the type of
architectural distribution.
The
extensive commerce and travels of the Ionians of Asia seem to have widened
mens’ minds as to the theory of the universe, much as the telescope of Galileo
the circumnavigation of the globe, and the discoveries of Newton reacted not
more on physical science than on religious theory. Without doubt also we must
take into account the stimulant influence of a position exactly at the
confluence of the contrasted habits of thought of Hellas and of Asia.
Anaxagoras
of Clazomenae was born of a distinguished family, and inherited possessions
which he took so little care to administer, as to furnish both Plato and
Aristotle, in their several ways, with an illustration of the difference
between philosophers and sophists,—between wisdom and worldly wisdom. There is
the usual chronological confusion and
difficulty
as to his precise age, but the fact that his accusation cannot long have
preceded the Peloponnesian war, gives a period of about twenty years previously
to 431 B.C., as covering his philosophical influence at Athens. The limitation
which is supplied by the notice of Aristotle, that though older than Empedocles
his actual service, or at least theoretical position, comes in later, is
chiefly to the advantage of the still more loosely dated Agrigentine.
Socratcs
must have been nearly thirty-seven years old when Anaxagoras was driven from
Athens; but it is indicated in the Phaedo, that he only acquired knowledge of
his doctrines through his books; evidence from the same source for the personal
acquaintance of Socrates with Aspasia might seem to imply that he was already
included in the same circle of society, but the two facts—such are the
disappointing accidents of social intercourse—are by no means incompatible.
The great
work of Anaxagoras was 'On Nature’ (-nepl Qvacctis). In this was probably
contained the chapter on scenography, which is alluded to by Vitruvius. He was
credited in antiquity with mathematical 1 acquirements, and the
contingencies of Perspective are well calculated to lead up to such a problem
as the squaring of the circle, which he was said to have considered and may
have been the first to state.
A very
important because a cardinal position, is assigned to Anaxagoras by Aristotle,
in his summary of the earlier developments of philosophy. The earliest, he
says, of those who philosophised conceived of the principles of all things as
purely material; of such nature with them was elementary existence, which
whether regarded as in itself single or manifold, remained incapable of
increase or diminution, and only subject to various modification. Thales, the
archegus of this philosophy, affirmed that the primary existence was
water,
induced apparently by the observation that moisture is the condition of all
impregnation and growth, and also competent to develope heat, the condition of
life.
Anaximenes
and Diogenes, he proceeds, assumed air to be anterior to water, and the prime
element of all simple bodies ; Hippasus the Metapontine and Heracleitus of
Ephesus, fire ; and Empedocles, adding earth, adopted four elements regarded as
ever constant in themselves and susceptible of growth only in the sense of combination
and resolution of quantitative aggregates. Such a conception seemed to
Aristotle, as it may seem to others, to represent nature as if built up out of
so many bricks or blocks of stone.
To these
theorists succeeded Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, who propounded that elementary
principles were infinitely various, each kind having its peculiar and identical
quality as much as water or fire, all unchangeable in themselves, but
susceptible of endless varieties of combination.
‘ Up to
this point causation might seem represented as resident solely and entirely in
matter ; but the very statement of such views conducted theorists to the
further step in enquiry,—if all variety is due to change, whence change ? for
the subject of alteration does not alter itself; wood does not form itself into
a couch nor bronze itself into a statue / we further require, as we should say,
says Aristotle, a principle of motion,—a prime mover.
‘ The
primitive assertors of the unity of primary substance were not conscious of any
difficulty on this score; but others with a sense of the difficulty,
endeavoured to evade it by a gloss, which seems to amount to a paradoxical
disallowance of the reality of any 1 change.
Parmenides alone indicates a conception of some such requirement, at least to
the extent of his admission of a pair of causes. Those however who recognised a
plurality of principles were more consequent in
the
recognition of fire as a natural motor relatively to water, earth, and the
like, its contraries. •
* But
again the principles of the speculators did not appear to their successors
sufficient to explain the generation of the phenomena of the universe, and they
were compelled, as was said before, by the very matter of fact, to look
further; for that the fitness and beauty which appertain to certain things and
which others attain to, should have for their cause fire or earth or aught else
of the sort, was not likely, nor was it likely that they should think so ; nor
does it hold consistently that what is of such vast import, should be committed
to the spontaneous or the accidental. When one therefore said, that as in
living creatures, so in nature, the cause of the orderliness of the universe
and of all arrangement, was Mind (Nous), he was like a man in his sober senses
coming amongst a set who had previously been talking at random.’ Hermotimus of
Clazomenae was reputed to have been an earlier propounder of this view, but by
Aristotle it was only traceable clearly up to Anaxagoras of the same city. By
this conception a principle was provided which accounted for the apt excellence
of modes of existence, and was at the same time a naturally motive agency.
Even so
the philosophers, who from the first only substituted abstractions for the
poetical Tethys and Oceanus and the rest, appear to have been again anticipated
by poets; for Hesiod says that Chaos existed first, and then broad-bosomed
Earth, and then Love, distinguished amidst all the immortals as the most
beautiful and thus the generator of that beauty and order that Aristotle found
unaccounted for in the purely physical systems. These earliest physicists and
cosmogonists in fact, seem engaged for the most part in transposing into prose
or into dogma the personifications in which the poets had undertaken to embody
the main divisions and the totality of being.
But even
Anaxagoras, says Aristotle, and the complaint is an echo of the Platonic
Socrates, employs his principle
only
partially and inartificially. He makes along with others a happy hit by
accident, like an untaught swordsman, not seeming fully to understand the value
of what he says most to the purpose ; he treats Mind (Nous) as a cosmopoeic
agency, but only drags it in when at a loss and as a last resource, in default
of a forthcoming material 1 explanation.
Mind, as it
works in the world of Anaxagoras, lias, on the one hand, more analogy to mere
animal and vegetative life, or at most to blind instinct, than to the agency of
"Will with purpose and Intelligence, and, on the other, threatens to
resolve itself into merely a more subtle mode of matter.
Ilis most
characteristic physical doctrine was that of Homoeomereia, an opinion at
variance with the theory either of definite atoms, or of a single primary and
homogeneous substance. He held that material particles are infinitely
divisible, but of distinct, of specific qualitative differences, original and
not derived from mere modes of juxtaposition; capable of being mixed up
together, so that each and all may enter into the composition of every several
object, the appearance of the object depending on the presence of the most
numerous or the most conspicuous superficially. He held that the very elements
of other speculators were conglomerations of multifarious particles; or some of
them at least, for the account of Lucretius appears to partially conflict with
Aristotle. The illustrations which are given of his opinion show how it was
deduced. Observation of the phenomena of nourishment and growth seemed to
evince that everything might be produced from everything, and therefore must be
mixed up along with ever}rthing. Bones and flesh, most diversified
products, were obtainable from most diversified materials of food, and
vegetable growth gave parallel phenomena; the deduction he drew was, that these
results owed their peculiarities not to recomposition of the same elements that
in other modes gave contrasted peculiarities,
1 Arist.
Meta. i. 4.
but to the
drawing out and aggregation of special particles that’had been latent before,
involved in a mass of others heterogeneous. Such he conceived to be the mode of
operation of Vitality in modern phraseology,—or as he denominated the unknown
but manifest agency, of Nous; and when a power was recognised so universal and
so marvellous in its operation, as competent to select and aggregate all animal
and vegetable organisms, it was perhaps in truth less an overstrained than a
grand generalisation to ascribe to the same the origination of all order and
organic arrangement of any kind, that comes within our ken.
‘All
things he held were originally mixed (muddled) up together, and upon them
supervened Nous’
Applying
this abstraction to the arrangement and origin of the cosmos at large, he
connected it again with the phenomenon which struck him there as of most potent
significance,—the marvellous rapidity of movement of the heavenly bodies. It
may appear simple enough at the present day to make an appreciation of this
rapidity, within limits that are both certain and marvellous enough, by mere
comparison of time with even a readily-observable geographical radius, but in
early days it must have required a strong mind to give due value to such an
estimate.
To this
inconceivably swift revolution, regarded as due still to Nous, Anaxagoras
ascribed the determination of two systems,—the Upper or Outer, and the Under
or Inner,—respectively the Aetherial and the Aerial, the one characterised as
rarefied and heated, the other comprising all density and chillness; and he
assumed as in accordance with ordinary observation, that the specifically solid
must needs, be aggregated about the centre of revolution, and the less compact
more remotely beyond.
But there
was a consequential liability, he pursued, for some solid masses to become
detached in revolution by centrifugal force,—so conceived though not so named;
of these
the sun
was one, which but for speed of revolution would be brought again to the earth,
or as would now be said, would obey the gravitation they are still subject to.
The countervailing force was included in the operation of Nous. The luminousness
of these projected masses he accounted for by the rapidity of their motion
causing them to become incandescent.
In these
speculations there is at least no hint of the distinction which had such
detrimental vogue, between the essential nature of the forces affecting earth
and heavens. The earth, which originally was in a condition of mud, was
according to these vestiges of creation, dried by the heat of the sun, which at
the same time, by plentiful evaporisation, caused the waters of the sea to be
salt and brackish.
Anaxagoras
knew the light of the moon to be derived from that of the sun; its eclipses
also he ascribed as truly to the shadow of the earth, if also to that of some
intermediate bodies invisible to us,—perhaps a vague deduction from planetary
transits; the eclipses of the sun he ascribed exclusively to the interposition
of the moon.
For such a
speculator at such a time we must not grudge the epitaph, in Greek of admirable
terseness:—
Here, he
who through the heavenly scheme did pass Most near to truth, lies Anaxagoras.
The story
that the fall of a vast meteoric stone in the Thracian Chersonnesus was
predicted by Anaxagoras, naturally implies no more than that it was taken as a
palpable confirmation of his views as to the nature of the heavenly bodies. The
step was easy, and probably had been made already in the case of the eclipse of
Thales, to credit the speculator wrho furnished a plausible
explanation of a rare phenomenon, with having predicted it.
Theories
of this nature wTcre peculiarly obnoxious to the religious
prejudices of the Athenians; and long after, when Aristophanes sought to add
venom to his ridicule of Socrates,
he picked
over the speculations of Anaxagoras for imputations that he knew would be too
irritating for their gross inapplicability to be attended to. In one sense
perhaps, Socrates may be said to have suffered for his own injustice to the
studies of Anaxagoras. His recorded, or at least imputed objections to the very
direction of these studies, are certainly futile enough; the bent of his own
genius, the very superior and even prior claim to attention of his own
subjects, may perfectly justify his declining to bestow labour where for him it
would be a fruitless or thankless hindrance; but physical studies have their
dignity and their advantage, no less than ethical and moral; and moreover some
of the worst of moral mischiefs are countervailed among the vulgar most
effectually, and perhaps only at all, by promoting reasonable ideas on the
subject of the material nature that they recognise themselves as most
absolutely in contact with. Some better instruction on the subjects of which
Anaxagoras treated, and to which he was certainly leading the way, might have
saved the Athenians from the crime of condemning Socrates on a false or a
futile charge. If Socrates really, as Xenophon represents, deprecated such
enquiries as presumptuous prying into secrets that the gods would not have 1
known, he himself conceded the major premiss of his accusers.
1 Memorab. iv. 7. 6.
Socrates was bom Olymp. 77.3 =
469 B.C., some forty years before the death of Pericles; his life therefore
runs on concurrently with the period that we are concerned with up to an age
when his character certainly, and probably his reputation, must have been well
established, lie was a younger contemporary of the actors in the Persian war,
and of several of the greatest names of the schools of Ionian and Italian
philosophy. It is in later years than wc are concerned with, that events
forced him forward incidentally into opposition, now to democratical and now to
oligarchical violence and injustice. IIow early he assumed that public position
in whicli we are familiar with him, as a general and unwearied discourser and
arguer, cannot be told; it may have been earlier, and some indications point
this way; it may have been later, but in any case the interval of which we are
endeavouring to recover the characteristics has large claims on the distinction
that attaches to his career. It is to his prolonged life that we owe all the
results of his personal influence upon the much younger Plato; but he might
have perished earlier and still not have failed to communicate that decisive
impulse to philosophical thought which not only turned it aside from previous
barren channels, but was potent
enough to
overrule even the energetic idiosyncrasies of Plato himself.
The
earlier schools of philosophy from Thales downwards,— the Ionian and the
Italian, which in the main were derivatives of the Ionian,—are almost fully
characterised as dogmatical and physical, as occupied with enunciations that
regarded almost exclusively the material world as subject for the most part to
purely material influences, and with little concern for proof either by
evidence or consistent inference. They agreed, as we have seen, in proposing to
divine, some by one significant hint some by another, the original constituents
of natural phenomena as resolvable into elements familiar or imaginary, —into a
single primary element, into two, three, or four,— earth, air, fire, water, or
somewhat more dense than fire or less so than air,—or into a conjectural
infinite multitude. Even this thin semblance of natural philosophy disappeared
among the Pythagoreans, who, taken by some not unimportant mathematical
coincidences, ran wild into mysticism, and the paradox of asserting numbers and
numerical relations to be* not conditions but the elements of phenomena,—a
theory, says Aristotle, more suitable for some world where matter should be
destitute of weight than for our own.
So it was
that when Anaxagoras, as concerned to account for the beauty and the fitness
which are much more remarkable, and, indeed, essential characteristics of
phenomena, than mere casual aggregation, introduced the postulate of Nous,—
Intelligence,—he seemed, as we have seen according to the words of Aristotle,
to make his appearance among a set of triflers like one man at least in his
sober senses; and yet even Anaxagoras was more disposed to treat his new factor
as r a physiological, if not mechanical, than a moral agency, and especially
made shipwreck by not recognising the distinction between intelligence and 1
vitality.
It is not
to be supposed that theories on such subjects, dogmatical as they usually,
random as they frequently were, could occupy active and ingenious minds without
many valuable conceptions presenting themselves, and the significance of many
prerogative instances being firmly grasped. The titles at least of some
important geological chapters were correctly interpreted from the phenomena of
fossils ; the assumptions with respect to atoms were not absolutely remote from
those which have proved so fruitful in our own day. The Pythagorean theory of
the musical scale is in principle a large—a fundamental—part of the theory of
civilised music, and the correlative speculations on heavenly harmony are no
whit more wild than those which Kepler brooded over so long, and that helped
him shrewdly on the way to recover the laws of planetary velocities and
distances. Conceptions of importance were also involved in the theories of the
unity of nature,—the increasing flux of all phenomena and their
transmutability,— the equivalence of decay and reproduction. Above all the
freedom of speculative thought was asserted and maintained, and the philosopher
came forth as a rival to poet and mythologist in moulding the opinions of men
as to the universe, and of necessary consequence, as to their relation to it
past and to come.
Strict
scientific basis and assuring procedure however were ignored and unknown. The
most genuine observations of nature served and were chiefly valued as hints for
a mass of guess-work ; one system had all the recommendations and all tho
difficulties of another, and in result conviction was as little ministered to
the hesitating mind as help afforded to the exigencies of life.
As a
natural result, the experienced lack of any outcome of certitude produced a
school of theorists who averred that no certitude whatever was obtainable, that
phenomena were in their nature fleeting, our senses deceived in the very act of
exercise ; that quite as much and as certainly could be ad
vanced
against any view whatever as in favour of it; and doubtless as regards a
multitude of the views propounded this was pretty accurately the case.
The
subtleties of these discussions sharpened wits that soon found other exercise.
The art of proving both sides and either side at will was only too readily
available an instrument for practical life in communities where important
interests were always in suspense upon decisions of citizens who either as
jurors or ecclesiasts were equally open to be swayed by artful or able oratory.
So was the trade of the sophist in its most shameless form engrafted on the
profession and training of rhetoric ; and the spurious art of confounding
knowledge and ignorance, simplicity and complicated falsehood, which took its
start among contentions in Sicilian law courts was transferred to only too
congenial a soil in the Athenian, and brought power and celebrity and gain.
Such are still the rewards of advocates who are only paid so highly because
their talent is counted on and competent to make up for any want of goodness in
a cause. Such are still the grounds on which the affectionate regrets for a
Follett or a Scarlett are oddly mingled with admiring, with envying
reminiscence and anecdotes of their skill in bewildering the judgment of twelve
honest men in a jury box.
Antique
simplicity and traditional belief were thus during the years we have been
passing through, becoming more and more seriously insulted and assailed on all
sides. The morals that had subsisted, if only as unenlightened habits, through
habitual attachment to semi-mythical associations and sanctions, were
jeopardised by enthusiasms for one or other of the materialistic philosophies;
and even more deeply grounded principle was not unshaken by the repudiation of
all certitude, and thence by the ulterior sanctions of moral responsibility,
and of any essential difference between truth and falsehood. For the multitude
with whom immediate consequences make up their only standard of right and
wrong, the experience
was most
unsettling, that falsehood could be made to do duty for truth, and falsehood in
consequence obtain all the advantages that should be the consecrated privilege
of good faith.
The
reaction threatened to be scarcely less disastrous. Enough still remained who,
between bigotry and better sobriety of mind, were horrified at insulting satire
upon time-honoured mythology, though it only referred to the sun and moon, and
were ready to condemn all physical and astronomical speculators as leagued for
the supersession of Zeus by Dinos or Vortex, and all who insisted upon more
recondite distinctions, as teachers how to make the worse appear the better
reason. The general break-up of accepted systems, inevitable at last from their
innate weakness, was provocative of course of pertness in the young, gave opportunities
of piquancy to the wit of the comedian, and was promulgated in contemptuous, if
scarcely more formidable utterances, from the safe covert of the tragic masks
of Euripides.
Upon the
agitations which produced such a conflux of moral excitement and intellectual
innoAration, an entirely original influence supervened, when what
may be not inappropriately called the ministry of Socrates had its
commencement, and Athens became gradually conscious of a new stimulus applied
in an entirely novel form. A centre of talk, of lively discussion, became
familiar in palaestra and portico and agora, and even in preference about stalls
and shopboards, that allured and detained listeners,—the more intelligent the
more irresistibly. But the personality to which the interest attached was
plain even to grotesqueness,—simple to slovenliness in contrast to the parade
of the well-paid lecturers and tutors ; and in even stronger contrast, flowing
periods and balanced phrases and artificial antithesis were replaced by short
interchange of question and answer, by phraseology that affected the
conversational, and illustrations taken in preference from
the
commonest trades and occupations ; and, above all, presumptuous self-assertion
was renounced for volunteered profession of ignorance, and requirement and
readiness to be instructed. Modest* however, as were the claims of Socrates,
one who ventured to engage him in discussion or to undertake to enlighten him,
was apt to Lave a severe lesson for modesty in his own. The men who professed
to give a plausible account of any subject, if not to pfove anything on either
side of whatever question, here met their match. The professed sophist found
himself over-mastered by an adversary appa-* rently unarmed and weaponless, and
was not merely convicted of failing to prove what he had promised, but
sometimes actually shown to have established unintentionally precisely the
reverse, and if in his confusion he should rashly grasp at an indicated outlet
of escape, it might be but to find himself once more as mercilessly entangled
and again at bay*
The more
honest assertor of a genuine opinion fared some degrees better, but had his
lesson in self-knowledge too; he was challenged to explain his own meaning,—to
indicate clearly to begin with, what he was talking about or proposed to talk
about,—was tracked from one loose and ill-considered explanation to another, and
was happy at last if his questioner took the matter out of his hands, and
clearing away irrele- vancies rewarded candour by putting him in a position to
at least commence another conversation upon the subject more satisfactorily at
some future time.
Socrates
was original both in the subjects that he discussed and the method he
employed,—both in the main purport of his enquiry and his system of procedure.
He left aside entirely the physical and cosmogonical speculations of the Ionian
schools that were still rife all around him; he was content,—«a little too
easily,—^to disparage the value, possibility, and even propriety of natural
investigations, but concentrated his interest on what he might fairly assume
to be previous and more important questions, the nature of true
knowledge
and the means of arriving at it, and the relation of knowledge to true
happiness and true virtue ; his interests were above all ethical, moral,—the
duty and the dignity of man and the right use of his intellectual powers as a
means to elevate him most nearly to perfection.
AVith
these intents he gave the same challenge to the dogmatism of the sophists, to
the most candid essays towards the discovery of truth, and the
casually-associated notions of ordinary life. He demanded definitions,—statements
with accuracy and clearness of the subject matter, so far at least as it was
conceived by the mind. This, says Aristotle, and the independent records fully
support him, was a service to philosophy that is rightly adjudged to Socrates,
and then the exemplification of the process of acquiring such definitions by
induction,—not indeed the larger systematic induction of Aristotle himself, but
an application of its principle in a familiar way, by resorting first to the
simplest concrete instances, and then by comparison of one with another excluding
successively all the irrelevant, and so obtaining an unequivocal expression, a
distinct and definite idea that was available for science.
So it was
that Socrates starting ever from uncertainty, ‘doubted,’ as it has been
admirably expressed, ‘men’s doubts away/ He resettled, or showed the way to the
resettlement of, convictions that were becoming hopelessly bewildered by the
arguments as to the perpetual flux of all phenomena, and the consequent
unreliableness of all the senses that are the source of knowledge ; and at the
same time he sanctioned the severest tests for the criterion of the knowledge
of which he asserted the possibility as well as the priceless value.
If only in
his vindication of sincerity in speculative thought and exposition, Socrates
was a moral as well as a philosophical reformer; and if it was his tendency to
overstrain the dependence of virtue upon knowledge to an assertion of their
essential identity, the example of his life agreed
with the
tone and tendency of all his enunciations, in fixing an unimpeachable standard
of independence and nobleness both in feeling and in action that is worthy of
the best yet open to the emulation of the most uninstructed. Accepting his task
in the conviction of a divinely imposed mission, he pursued it through a course
of what the world regards as wretched privation and unrewarded self-denial; and
simply by such an example and by his living words, and without leaving behind
him a written page, he conveyed that impulse to a circle around him that has
ever since been propagated in ever-widening circles to the world, and continues
as vital and as valuable as ever to this day.
It still
remains incumbent to bestow some paragraphs on the position of Socrates
relatively to contemporary polytheism, —to venture on more would involve a
dissertation.
The
calumny was manifestly monstrous that fatally connected the imputed heterodoxy
of Socrates with materialistic theories of the heavenly bodies,—the sun and
moon. He had ever explicitly declined all physical enquiries as matters of too
secondary interest, as well as of too formidable difficulty to divert him from
the subjects that were most urgent and more within grasp. This charge was
evidently fastened upon him simply because it was one that was most obnoxious
to Athenian prejudices, and had been already associated with his name by the
libellous, the venomous malice of Aristophanes.
Of the
theories of the Clazomenian, Socrates was fully cognisant. It is more uncertain
how far he was so with the system of Democritus of Abdera—with its principle or
developments.
The name
of Democritus must at least be mentioned in connection with the age of
Pericles. He was already thirty at the epoch which we have reached,—the eve of
the Peloponnesian war,—an age at which few philosophers have not already
seized the conceptions that are the germs of their widest influence and best
originality. True that his varied
and
extensive travels must have consumed many years, and perhaps deferred their
embodiment in those writing's which have now entirely perished but which were
the delight of antiquity for purity of style and lucid exposition ; true that
there is even some uncertainty whether he ever visited Athens. But the peace of
Pericles was still the period when the germs were posited and definite
expression secured for ideas which were afterwards to be taken up in the main
by Epicurus, and transmitted through a line of teachers who continued ever face
to face in opposition to those who traced back their intellectual succession to
Socrates.
The
assumptions of Democritus might seem to exhaust every possibility of
simplification; they win the prize in the race for the invention of premisses
which within the briefest possible terms take for granted beforehand every
conclusion at which it is desired to arrive. The primary elements, he asserted,
are infinite in number and one in kind, but differ from each other in figure
and form (axrjfia and el80s). By the concurrence of these atoms were evolved
the gods themselves, as well as organisms of form and magnitude superior to
men, that originated the traditional belief in the existence of gods. The
Greeks were familiar with the conception of a close relationship and common
origin of both gods and men, and evolution that was competent, either according
to the theory of Empedoeles or ot Democritus, to produce the one might be
consistently trusted to give account of the other.
The notion
that matter is so much more a reality than mind, so much more naturally
conceived as an efficient agency, found favour with these ancient philosophers
as curiously as has been the case with a considerable school of the moderns.
Yet surely the students and professors of ‘ visceral metaphysics,’ as thinkers
above all things, seem therein to pay themselves the very poorest compliment,
and the more inconsistently as their usual errors scarcely lie in the
direction of humility.
The
evidence is not more conclusive for the complete want of sympathy of Socrates
with speculations of this class than for his explicit adhesion to the popular
theology of his country and his time. He sacrificed to the gods of the
Athenians and deferred to the oracles that they consulted; and so it appears
could rehut with justice the charge that he did not worship the gods that the
state worshipped.
In this
respect indeed he seems to be still at disadvantage as compared with
Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic schools, who in verses that dated with
the infancy of Socrates or earlier, had denounced in terms most unequivocal the
gross absurdities of the popular polytheism, and given expression to a
marvellously lofty conception of the divinity that should justly claim the
reverence of man. Thus Socrates at Athens was placed between speculators on the
east and on the west, of the passing and the advancing generation, and would
seem along with the errors to have missed the better light of both the poetical
and the physical theorists.
Nevertheless
the influence of Socrates upon religious development was most important of
all,—and how is this accounted for? Socrates did sincerely enough worship the
gods that his native state worshipped, but he entertained a deeper and more
solemn reverence for somewhat far beyond them. Even in this respect he did not
travel out of the truer scope of a principle that was implicitly accepted by
the Greeks of every age. Greek religion from its purely polytheistic side,
seems the negation of all true religious sentiment, for it is consistent with
arbitrary variation and coarsest disrespect; but on the other hand, underlying
all the tangle of traditional and poetical legends there was ever at least a
vague, but still very positive, acceptance of the notion of the Divine as a
transcendent reality. The superhuman might be currently thought of and
addressed as manifested in beings of various grades and functions, and often
approaching very near indeed to humanity and its weaknesses; but in
another
direction it was faintly recognised as soaring beyond sight towards an infinite
of superiority in power, in intelligence, in morality. A shadowy monotheism is
discoverable even in Homer, where the Zeus of passion and intrigue has slight
affinity, and only casual nominal connection, with * the Greatest and most
Glorious,’ who is adjured on most solemn occasions and relied on as the certain
seconder of all righteous enterprise, and the punisher of the ill-doers and the
oath- breakers, In Aeschylus, as we have already observed, the same
equivocation appears, but the loftier ideal has become already more defined;
apparently quite as much so and even more independent of mythology than in the
systems which the Orpliics and Pythagoreans had engrafted on or borrowed from
the 1 mysteries. In the case of Socrates it is beyond question, both
from the most trustworthy records of his own conversations and even more from
the developments by his most devoted disciples, of ideas that they owed
avowedly to his inspiration, that he gave the conclusive and determining
impulse to a veneration for the Divinity—to Oeiov—as distinguished from and
above the mythological gods. The tone of his instructions was thus to give
permanence to the previously fugitive monotheistic element of Greek religion,
but by no means a presumptuous definition of form, and especially to attach to
the recognition of it a sacred sense of absolute dependence and of moral
responsibilit}r.
When the
time came for his enemies to raise a popular clamour against him, they could
find no better hold than his fantastic or perhaps superstitious references to
the promptings of his daemon; but the dieasts who condemned him, under the
influence of whatever spitefulness and ignorance, were clearly not altogether
under a false impression that they had before them the teacher who had
inflicted upon the polytheistic system that they were piously and timorously
anxious to preserve, the severest wound it had ever yet received.
Pitiful as
may be the display of Athenian superstition, the reflection is very serious how
far modern society may not really be disentitled to be supercilious on such a
matter in regard to the ancients. There are those to be answered first who
point to the diversities and divarications of existing opinions, on subjects
which are of equal and that the highest interest to all, and which all can
study with access to the same evidences and authorities, and who infer that in
such a crowd of controversy,—as only one party can be even approximately
right,—the vast majority, to say the least, must needs be sunk in ignorance, in
dullness, and in superstition. Culture which has no outcome in a better
approach to unanimity than we see, must needs be still rudimentary enough, and
may be best and will be fully employed in seeking how to cast off the
opprobrium, and so avoid the imminent recurrence of the worst disgraces, the
worst enormities that stain and deface the annals of the past.
RENEWAL OF ATTACKS ON PERICLES.--------- CHARGES
AGAINST
PHEIDIAS, ASPASIA, AND ANAXAGORAS.
According to Pkilochorus, as
quoted by the Scholiast on Aristophanes in the passage already referred to, it
was after having been exposed to a charge in respect of the Athenian statue,
that Pheidias went to Elis and there worked upon the colossal chryselephantine
statue of Olympian Zeus; that he retired as condemned and exiled is a statement
on the same authority that as we have seen must be set aside. The next Olympic
festival came round two summers after (Olyrn. 86=436-5 B.C.), and the work
could not then have been fully completed, as a figure of Pantarccs, a favourite
of the sculptor, who conquered on this occasion in the wrestling of boys, was
introduced by him in an accessory ornamental group, binding his head with the
fillet of victory. There can be little doubt however that already, before the
Athene of the Parthenon wTas completed, this still larger and still
more elaborate work had been commenced, and to a certain extent advanced, under
the aiding and able hands of coadjutors of whom twTo are
named,—Panaenus, a relative of Pheidias, and wrho is also called by
Strabo a ‘ fellow-contractor/ and the sculptor Colotes.
The dates
of these wrorks have an importance for political history, as the
misfortunes of the sculptor are connected with difficulties of Pericles, and
supply a certain chronological term
where
there is lamentable dearth of such guidance. Valuable lines of 1
Aristophanes inform us that the ill-treatment of Pheidias by the Athenian
demus, which warned Pericles too surely of a coming assault upon himself, was
antecedent to his promotion of a certain obnoxious decree against Megara; this,
as we learn 2 elsewhere, was already in force in 433-2 B.C., that
is, within five or six years after the dedication of the Parthenon, and only
two or three after the Olympiad of Pantarces’ victory. Thus we obtain a limited
interval within which, but where exactly I cannot decide, must be set down the
renewed annoyance of the sculptor and the opening of the most dangerous and
malignant attack that Pericles was ever called upon to encounter. Again it
continued to be the poliejr of his enemies to make proof of the
feeling of the demus towards him by assailing him obliquely through his
friends, and by charges that in some degree might appear to reflect upon him
personally, besides being insultingly offensive to his sympathies.
Pheidias
again was to bear the brunt in the first instance, and this time fatally,—this
time at the very culmination of his largest Hellenic glory. How shall this be
explained? It is much to be feared that now again opportunity was proffered by
the same base jealousy that was active before,— the irritability with which an
ochlocracy as readily as a tyrant, a trades union as readily as a self-made
capitalist, resents superiority as an injury and an insult. The art of Pheidias
was as conspicuously patriotic at Elis as at Athens; the renown of Athens was
scarcely more splendidly set forth by the Parthenon and its adornments than by
the artistic and mythical embellishments of the Olympian temple. Assembled
Hellas was challenged here to recognise an expression of the gratitude for
fescue which was indeed due to the gods in the first instance, but due also to
the Athenians as chief
agents in
affecting it. That such a display might have been resented as unfair and
offensive by Dorians,—by Spartans and Corinthians,—might seem not unnatural. We
have however unfortunately no right to be surprised if the Athenians themselves,
who had been unwilling to concede any peculiar merit to Miltiades in the
victory of 1 Marathon, and were still not ashamed to be flattered by
a gird at his self-assertion in a comedy of Eupolis,
Mt\T. Ov 7cip pci r^v MapaOwva rijv (fiT)v piixvvt
were
piqued at the admiration of assembled Hellas for works of which the conception
and execution were so distinctly due to individual genius whoever supplied the
means,—to the unrivalled art of Pheidias, to the promotion and supreme
statesmanship of Pericles; if the tempation to cavil and accusation which had
been indulged on the occasion of the former great artistic achievement
successfully carried through against both economical and artistic, perhaps
dogmatical opposition, was not felt again in greater force, as the coincidence
of times wou’d intimate, on this renewal of provocation. The passion for
equality so ennobling in better forms, is capable of a degeneracy that will
disbelieve if possible, and if not will, at any rate, and in face of any
disgracefulness, deny and do its best to degrade individual superiority that it
is hopeless for a multitude to 2 emulate. It is difficult to ascribe
any less dishonourable source for the venom of the attack that was now
concerted against the happiness and the honour as well as the political power
of Pericles. In these incidents we have a signal of the break-up within the
body of the Athenian community of that loftier spirit which for so long at
least, had been carried over from the contest with the Mede. The warning is
serious, and prepares us for the time when the impudent cavils of Cleon will be
so far encouraged as to annoy the last years of Pericles ; when his
unscrupulous
and blustering*
oratory will be found a little later in command of the ear of the demus, and
ever exerted to promote rapacity and sanguinary violence, and with unhappy 1
success.
It was
made matter of accusation against Pheidias that in the reliefs which enriched
the exterior of the shield of the Athene Parthenos, he had introduced a
likeness of Pericles as a beautiful figure engaged in combat with an Amazon,
and another of himself as a bald elder lifting a stone with both hands. The
features of the warrior were so far concealed by his protended spear as perhaps
to make the likeness a matter of conjecture, but in any case to invite the
imputation of purposed concealment of a conscious fault. It seems clear that
the sting of this charge must have lain in the imputed identification of
Pericles with Theseus, in the subject of the contest with Hippolyta,—the
ascription to the head of the republic, of the independent position of the hero
who, though popularly recognised as a promoter of democracy, was truly a king.
What malice or mischief should be spied in the sculptor giving his own
semblance to an Athenian of heroic times, heaving a mass of his own familiar
marble as a missile, it is difficult indeed to imagine; at most it could be
tortured into a profession of hearty support to all enterprises of the
protagonist. To condemn Pheidias on such a charge, was to imply the equal or
conniving guilt of Pericles; and to leave Pericles unmolested notwithstanding,
was to parade a willingness to let the charge be understood as a mere pretext
for wanton insult.
Pheidias
was consigned to the prison that had once received Miltiades, and there like
Miltiades he died,—some authorities known to Plutarch averred that it was by
poison, and through management of those who sought to cast the odium of the
deed on Pericles, as though he had reasons for seeking and was capable of
taking means so flagitious, to preclude revelations.
It does
not appear that these likenesses on the shield, whether real or supposed, were
held to be in any respect sacrilegious; and the accusation of Pheidias may
therefore have been unconnected, unless as sounding the disposition of the
demus, with a psephism which was carried by a certain Diopeithes, and opened
new opportunities for preparing the very desolation of the household of
Pericles by the ruin of Aspasia and Anaxagoras. By the terms of this,
indictments were receivable against such as * disallowed matters divine/— more
nearly translated perhaps as 'supernaturalism,’ — or ‘ inculcated theories
respecting things above the earth ’ (/xe- TapiTiwv). Apprehending too surely
the seriousness of the danger, Pericles enabled Anaxagoras to quit the city in 1
time, and so disappointed his enemies of their intention of causing to glance
off upon himself the imputed impiousness of his friend. But he was not so
easily quit in the next instance ; Ilermippus, a comic poet of considerable
endowments, with an animus reminiscent perhaps of the suspension of comedy,
brought an indictment against Aspasia under the new law, charging her with
impiety, and also with the shameful crime of facilitating intrigues of free
women with Pericles; in a fragment of a comedy apparently later in date he
still inveighs against him as * King of the 2 Satyrs.’ So we read of
an imputation on Pheidias, brought up perhaps at this same time, of allowing
his studios to be made a rendezvous for the like purpose. Cimon had been
openly charged by a comoedian with what was represented as incest with
Elpinicc, and Pericles only took his turn when taxed as an intriguer with all
and every— with wives of friends, of his own son. Without constituting
ourselves guarantors of the morals of Pheidias and Pericles, to say nothing of
Aspasia, we may perceive that these charges were combined with the skill that knows
too well how to fix a moral slur by a doctrinal prejudice, or as alternative, a
still more hated and perilous doctrinal prejudice, by a moral slur.
1 Plut. V. Per. 17 and 32. 2 lb. 33.
True no
doubt, that some of the juster principles of old Attic morality may have been
scandalised by the position which the Milesian occupied at Athens, and by the
countenance she received from women of distinguished families however
unassailable themselves in rectitude and dignity,—it may be by some strongly
marked examples of departure in such society from the antique standard of rigid
morals; — and yet on no occasion in its history does the Athenian demus lower
itself more lamentably near to the contemptible, than in entertaining this
persecution of an accomplished woman, — this cruel torture of the statesman to
whom they owed so much. The cavil of Plato may be held to touch the case nearly
indeed, when he asks, what was the true moral value of the guidance of the
Athenian people by Pericles for so many years, if at the very conclusion of it
they seem so much worse than at the beginning. Though indeed we may question
how far worse, when we remember the treatment of Miltiades, Aristides,
Themistocles, Cimon. He only succeeded in rescuing,—in ‘begging off1
Aspasia, by demeaning himself to supplications of the dicasts to the extent of
exhibiting himself in tears, by efforts and submissions irrelevant to the
course of justice, and scarcely more humiliating for Pericles, than disgraceful
for the court that could either endure or exact them. A Greek would see in this
degradation the inevitable visitation of a Nemesis which he believed ever beset
exceptional prosperity and glory. No moral, if moral it can be called, was more
familiar to the serious 1 historian, the solemn tragedian, than this
common fate of the exalted, whether innocent or guilty indifferently, the
grudge of the Gods,—it was for the clear intellect of Aristotle first to calmly
disallow 2 it. This privilege of supreme power the demus was now
capable of asserting for itself, and so too strictly
1 See the last speech of Nicias in Thucydides. 2 Arist. Metaph. i.
2.
X 2
justifies
citation by Aristotle as illustrating the essential tyranny of popular
government when freed from all restraint; but the occasion was peculiarly
ill-chosen now for indulgence in tyrannical caprices.
Anaxagoras
retired to Lampsacus, a city of which the coins exhibit a lamp as symbol of its
name; it is probable that in this and nothing more, we have the suggestion of
the inconsistent story that Pericles, who enabled him to safely reach this
retreat, was reproached by the philosopher for neglecting to supply with oil
the lamp of which he was willing to profit by the beams.
In view of
more precise indications, Diodorus must be understood, like Philochorus, as
merely introducing the account of the accusations of Pheidias and Anaxagoras,
and not as dating them, in the first and second years of the 1 war.
1 Diod. xii. 39 ; Sehol. ArLstoph. P. 604.
APPROACHING CRISIS IN POLITICS.—TEMPER OP ATHENIAN AND
PELOPONNESIAN ALLIES. CONFLICT
OF CORINTH AND CORCYRA,
AND VICTORY OF CORCYRAEANS.—RENEWED AND FORMIDABLE ARMAMENT OF CORINTH.
B.C.
435-4; 01. 86. 2.
At the time when the Athenians found an indulgence in
turning to vex, discredit, and perhaps disable their greatest statesman, they
were elate with sovereign power and confident in the success with which their
ambition had carried them on to unexampled prosperity, and above all in their
incessant activity as contrasted with the absence of any indication that Sparta
was either disposed or competent to again rouse herself and strike for the
undivided headship of the Hellenic world. And yet the times were in truth more
critical than they supposed. The prolonged peace had enriched Athens with
treasure and munitions, and strengthened her by a numerous, energetic, and
high-spirited population, but it had swelled the resources and raised the heart
of other cities also. The Aeolian Lesbians had yearnings towards their ancient
Boeotian and Lacedaemonian 1 associations ; while the Dorian
populations under her control, the Aeginetans especially, and cities about the
coasts of the Aegean, from Thrace to Lycia, could not but contrast their
position with that of members of the Dorian confederation; the mere
accumulation of
1 Thuc.
iii. 3.
grievances
true and false, if only those which are incidental to the best administrations,
was beginning to tell seriously; and there were no slight seeds, and for the
observant no insignificant symptoms of restlessness and discontent, even among
the more nearly related and sympathetic Ionian communities. Athenian
administration was confessedly not conducted in a manner to allay irritability;
and growing uneasiness on the look out for sympathy gave encouragement to
projects of revolution from any quarter among spirits that were too eager for
disturbance to weigh very precisely the value of sanguine hopes of
emancipation.
Nor is it
to be supposed that Sparta, torpid as she seemed, was really unresponsive to
the commencement of a new era of agitations. The control of the state was in
the hands of the elder and even the aged; but a new generation of the aged had
arrived at power, since the forfeiture if not the willing renouncement of
extended Ilellenie control on the misconduct of Pausanias. The larger views
that had since become so rife abroad did not fail to find their way in here, or
even to arise, as they are wont, by sympathetic development, while they
ministered excitement to unproved as well as younger ambitions. In the course
of the prolonged Mes- senian, the Arcadian and Argive conflicts, a Spartan of
the better stamp of Archidamus might have seen too much of war to be enamoured
of 1 it; but otherwise the nation had become more decidedly and more
actively military in spirit than ever, and a party of which Brasidas was soon
to be the type and leader, was eager for enterprises of a scope which were in
contradiction to the very conditions of Spartan constitution, and destined to
prove so fatally. The vigour and designs of this party are masked no doubt by
affectations of coyness and holding back under the most urgent solicitations
and protests of allies; the comedy is the same that had
covered
the preparation and equipment of the vast force which Sparta sent off at
a'moment’s notice when it suited her to Plataea; and we shall see with what
energy the ephorate pronounced for war at last. These dispositions could not be
unknown to the leading politicians among the Dorian allies, and on the Dorians
ultimately and on the Lacedaemonians chiefly, rests the responsibility for the
war.
It was
repeated and perhaps believed at Athens not many years later, that the war was
deliberately brought on by Pericles, who took this way to make himself again
indispensable, out of alarm at an indication of declining popularity in his inability
to protect Pheidias from the animosity of the demus. Others who ascribed to him
the same policy stated as the motive his wish to preclude close scrutiny of the
accounts, which would have to be rendered, on completion of the Propylaea,
433-2 B.C. A public policy still more rash has no doubt often proved a
temptation to precipitate action for a politician in a difficulty; but when we
fairly appreciate the inflammable conditions of society at this time and on all
hands, it is a far more reasonable view of the coherence of events to infer,
that the notoriety throughout Greece of the discredit and disgrace of a
statesman whose name seemed identified with glorious success,—who so long had
directed the power of Athens with all but absolute command, and ever unfailing
resolution and skill, concurred unhappily with impatience and envy of her sway,
to revive the hopes and stir the energies of every enemy she had. The testimony
of1 Aristophanes may be cited equally and more credibly to this
effect; and in this view the penalty that the Athenians paid for their unworthy
and cruel caprice was severe indeed.
It was a
misfortune of the very supremacy of the genius of Pericles, that so soon as
those who were on the watch for his downfal believed that they were about to be
gratified, the
Athenian
empire was forthwith regarded as headless, and enemies and malcontents hoped
everything from the development of disorganising influences which these
disputes displayed in such malignancy. The present signal disappointment of
such hopes might be accepted at Athens as conclusive; but the encouragement
which had been given to them had the usual fate of being misinterpreted and
over estimated abroad, where the genius of the democracy was less accurately
understood. We find in consequence that when the Lacedaemonians commence the
war, they entertain the vain confidcnce that to bring about the forfeiture by
Athens of the services of Pericles, as successfully as they had formerly
deprived her of Themistocles, they have only to appeal to tho superstitions
which his countrymen had employed so eagerly in wreaking their own spite, but
prove surprisingly ready to put aside with contemptuous disregard when it does
not suit them to spare or to offend him.
So it
becomes only too intelligible how the Dorian world was in such a temper that
when an obscure quarrel at the outskirts of Hellas gradually implicated
Corinth, the opportunity was made the most of to bring back among the Dorian
cities the life which only lives with organization and activity; and how then,
upon an interference of Athens, a spirit of evil antagonism was declared that
committed the two sides of Hellas to deadly conflict.
It was in
the second year of the 86th Olympiad (435-4 B. c.) that the attention of Athens
was forcibly diverted from internal faction to external politics; and the more
forcibly because the movement which challenged attention had its spring and
pivot at Corinth. Corinth had been a jealous opponent of Athens from the very
rise of her power,—had cavilled at her claims to honour in the Persian war, had
striven to hinder the completion of her system of fortification by the Long
Walls, and was known to retain so bitter a memory of the blow inflicted on her
by
Myronides, as to make any malice probable ;—and lastly it was in favour of
Corinth that Megara had renounced the alliance which was so valuable,—so
vital,—for Athens.
For some
time a quarrel had been in progress between the island of Corcyra and
Epidamnus, a town on the coast of Thesprotia, which Athens might be content to
hear of as having burnt itself out, or not to hear of at all, but that Corinth
was now taking measures of interference which could not but attract attention,
whatever domestic quarrels had to be laid aside meanwhile. The Epidamnians
occupied a promontory on the Illyrian coast, just within the Ionic gulf, or
Adriatic sea; their city had been founded by Corcyraeans with participation of
Corinthians and other Dorians, and in accordance with ancient custom, the
leader and founder, Phalius, son of Eratocleides, a Heracleid, was adopted from
the mother city of Corcyra—Corinth itself. The situation of the city favoured a
highly profitable trade with the tribes,—barbarians they are called,—of the
interior ; it grew large and populous, but a check to its prosperity had
supervened and it had latterly declined, a not unnatural consequence of a
change by which a wealthy oligarchy had first grasped a strict monopoly of the
inland trade, and then instituted a scheme which does not sound promising, for
conducting the whole through a single 1 agent. From this or other
provocation they were assailed by the demus, and driven into exile, but
engaging the aid of the barbarians as allies, were enabled to so harass the
city by sea as well as land that its occupants would gladly have come to terms
on the basis of mutual concessions. In their distress the demus sent envoys to
Corcyra to appeal as to a mother city for aid in appeasing this domestic
discord; there they took station at the temple of Here, in the same formal
attitude of supplicants which was assumed by the Laconian Pericleidas,
when he
came to solicit an army at Athens, in itself therefore no intimation of
apprehended disfavour.
The
sympathy of the Corcyraeans however, or at least of the party who were in
power, was uncompromisingly in favour of the dispossessed oligarchs, and the
appeal was rejected. Repulsed here, the Epidamnian demus, again in agreement
with precedent and custom, made application to the God of Delphi for counsel,
but in the prompting form of a question whether they should assign over their
city to the Corinthians as their founders, and seek from them the protection
which they stood so urgently in need of. The god vouchsafed accommodatingly the
reply which was so pointedly asked for, and asked for no doubt with full
consciousness that Corinth would eagerly gratify a jealousy of long standing by
any action unwelcome to Corcyra. 1 Herodotus traces back this
animosity to incidents in the time of Periander, and even so, it is indicated
as a continuation from the very foundation of the colony. Among subsisting
irritations, the most important were probably due to commercial rivalry, to
interference in the pursuit of wealth and enviousness of the success of
juniors. Corcyra had grown too rich and powerful to remember the ties which had
been acknowledged when the Heracleid Phalius was invited to lead her colony,
and even later when she had co-operated with Corinth to protect Syracuse from
Hippocrates—Syracuse a colony which was in the same common relation to both as
Epidamnus. But now the Corcyraeans had bethought themselves to claim the
suecessorship of the antique Phaeacians of the Odyssey, and to be inheritors of
their maritime glory and their wealth; and renounced in consequence all
customary recognitions of duty, and concessions of precedence on public
occasions which they had once allowed to Corinth as their metropolis, no
trifling insult in itself, and doubtless significant of other substantial
opposition.
During-
the contest with Xerxes, the island had held independently and suspiciously
aloof, and subsequently, assuming to be on a par with the wealthiest Hellenic
communities, and confident in her power as mistress of a hundred and twenty
triremes, had not cared or condescended to attach herself to either the Dorian
or Athenian confederacy. The possession of such a fleet by an independent state
of unfriendly disposition, was fitted to excite jealousy at any time, and
especially in the condition of tension which political feelings had now
attained to; with fair customary pretext therefore, but moreover with the
hearty goodwill that is born of a chance to reap an advantage while wreaking a
revenge, the Corinthians undertook the pious service demanded of them, and
entered upon it with a thoroughness of which the intention could not be
mistaken. The influence of Corcyra at Epidamnus was to be finally superseded,
and if opposition offered, Corinth was resolute and even eager to seize an
opportunity to try conclusions with Corcyra herself.
Volunteer
colonists were invited who should restore welcome vigour to the enfeebled city,
and support was engaged to be provided by a garrison of Corinthians together
with Ambracian and Leucadian allies ; there was already no uncertainty as to
how these proceedings would be resented at Corcyra, and in order to avoid
interference at sea the expedition was despatched over land as far as the
Corinthian colony Apollonia.
Even as
had been anticipated the news that their colony had consigned itself to
Corinth, and was receiving in consequence such hearty aid and reinforcement
roused the Corcyraeans to the highest indignation. They had in the meantime
given cordial reception to the ejected Epidamnian oligarchs, who in their turn,
but more successfully, appealed to the sanctities of tombs and blood
relationship, and had acceded to their solicitations for aid not towards peace
and
conciliation,
but to effect with some promised Illyrian cooperation their full and forcible
re-establishment. A squadron of five-and-twenty ships, which were to be
followed speedily by more, was at once despatched to Epidamnus with a
peremptory demand for the restoration of the exiles and dismissal of the
Corinthian settlers and garrison. The summons was disregarded, and the
Corcyraeans proceeded to blockade the city by sea with forty ships, as well as
on the land side across the isthmus in concert with the Illyrians. As soon as
the investment was complete a renewed summons gave notice that,'upon immediate
surrender, the strangers might retire unmolested with whatever Epidamnians
cared to accompany them, while the penalty for remaining would be to incur the
last treatment as enemies; again no reply was made and the siege went on.
The
reception accorded to this news by the Corinthians evinced that the consequence
of their policy wras regarded as presenting rather an opportunity
than a difficulty; and that the humiliation of Corcyra, and the destruction of
her naval power, were resolved on at all costs. The treatment of Samos by
Athens, was to receive a Dorian application in the West. A new expedition on
the largest scale was at once hastened forward, both to raise the siege and to
infuse fresh strength into the colony for the future. Public proclamation was
made of a new colony to Epidamnus, open to volunteer settlers on terms of
complete equality in citizenship and with the option of either sailing with the
expedition, or securing participation by a contribution of fifty Corinthian
drachmas; the standard of these,—in any case less than a franc,—was somewhat
below the Attic. Volunteers and contributors were alike numerous. The
Leucadians and Ambraciots, who had special local interests, provided
respectively ten and eight ships, and the Cephallenians of Pales, four ; of
Peloponnesian allies, the most zealous were the Megarians, who joined in eight
ships equipped by themselves, declining the proposal
that they
should embark in Corinthian ships to avoid the possibility of being intercepted
by the Corcyraeans before junction. Hermione sent one ship, Troezene two, the
Epidaurians five, the Eleians sent money and vessels unmanned, the inland
Phliasians sent their aid in money and so also did Thebes. The contingent of
the Corinthians themselves is stated at thirty ships and three thousand
hoplites, of whom however only two thousand are in question afterwards ; the
fleet counts up here sixty-eight ships with an unspecified number from the
Eleians, which, taken as seven, make up the total of seventy-five as given in
the same passage. The absence of Sicyonian assistance is observable.
The extent
and the spirit of these preparations might well produce excitement at Corcyra,
but not at Corcyra alone ; to Dorians they signalised revival of Dorian
activity, and the possibility of a reassertion for Dorians united under one
energetic centre, of that ultimate control of affairs and the universal
consideration which had once obtained as of course, but had now for so many
years been in abeyance.
The^
cities of Greece were teeming with a youthful population, which was familiar
with the poetic celebration of warlike prowess and exploits, and had been
fostered amidst poetical encouragement to emulation of ancestral glories,
though as yet for the most part without experience of the bitternesses of
warfare, especially between Greek and Greek. Sparta was still looked to as the
natural head of the Dorian world, and her action was counted on as ultimately
decisive ; but her notorious impassiveness was not to be waited for by the more
impulsive, who reckoned confidently that it must be roused, and would be, by
their restlessness before long and certainly at last. While such feelings were
fermenting among the Peloponnesian and Boeotian cities, they could not but be
reciprocated by agitation in other quarters, and it is even unlikely that the
Corinthians themselves could indulge
in
activity of sueli scope and scale, unless anticipating reaction in excitement
elsewhere.
How
soon,—yet it was now only a question of months,— the attention of Athens was
withdrawn by these events from the engrossments of internal objectless faction,
is not to be decided with exactness. Enough however had occurred already that
might be expectcd to touch her to the quick. The mere semblance of a vigorous
confederate action of which she was not at the head, was certain to hurt her
pride if it did not alarm her; the interest displayed in it by Thebes would be
offensive, but the conspicuous zeal of the Megarians, over whom she had
exercised control for fifteen years, and the defection of wThom was
so detrimental to her position, together with the meaner participation of other
former allies or tributaries, Ilermione and Troeztne, were calculated to be
peculiarly exasperating.
At Corinth
meanwhile preparations wrere at their height when envoys appeared
there from Corcyra to protest against further interference as w^ell as against
what had been done already; others from Sicyon and also from Lacedaemon,
arrived writh them to take part in the discussion, but the latter at
least, as it appears, by no means committed to their view of the dispute. The
Corcyraeans pressed the withdrawal by the Corinthians of their settlers and
garrison from Epidamnus, as from a city wdiich did not in any way pertain to
them; on this point in any case they proposed a reference to some Peloponnesian
cities to be mutually agreed on, and engaged to abide by their decision; or
else they were content to refer the dispute to the Delphic oracle. The last
proposal would seem hazardous for them, considering the bias already displayed
in the response accorded to the hostile Epidamnians, but the Corinthians were
probably on their guard against it in any form as a mere device to gain time
for the siege; they replied that they could only treat on the condition that
the besieging Corcyraean fleet and
barbarians'
land army were at once withdrawn; there was no fairness in the continued
application of force during the very time that the question of right was under
discussion in Peloponnesus. So let it be, was the reply of the Corcyraeans,
but then the Corinthian garrison must be withdrawn also ; or as an
alternative, let the forces on both sides remain under armistice until the arbitration
is decided;— but even this suggestion apart from allowed revictualling in the
interim was futile.
Whether
Corcyra might have been willing to retire from the position she had taken or
not, it was now clear that she had no longer the option, as Corinth manifestly
was bent on war, not so much for the sake of Epidamnus, as from eagerness to
gratify at once her ambition and animosity, at the expense of her insolent
colony. Under these circumstances it was manifest that no concession in respect
of the siege could be made with safety ; the crisis so familiar to laborious
diplomacy had arrived ; the negotiations had reached that stage of futility
which is due to at least one party believing itself the stronger, and being
resolved to snatch an advantage right or wrong and however shamelessly, and to
neither having the slightest faith in assertions or engagements however
solemn. That the Corcyraeans had little aid from the Lacedaemonian envoys, whom
they may have hoped to commit to an authoritative interference, is clear from
their last significant enunciation; in case of war becoming a necessity, those
who forced it upon them would have only themselves to blame, if in their
pressing need for succour and support they were obliged, however reluctantly,
to make other friends than their present. The allusion to the Athenians was not
obscure; and it was addressed to those who were aware that it was quite in
accordance with Athenian ambition and enterprise to give welcome to an opportunity
for re-entering on their former abortive schemes of Western ascendancy.
There was
the more reason that no time should be lost;— in the spring* of 434 B.C. the
Corinthian fleet was equipped, allies mustered, and the expedition sailed,
seventy-five vessels strong carrying two thousand hoplites, direct for
Epidamnus; —a herald sent before declared war against Corcyra in form. The land
force designed to operate against the Illyrians, was commanded by Archetimus
son of Eurytimus, and Isarchidas son of Isarchus. The fleet was under three
commanders,— each no doubt of a division, though the first named may have been
chief; Aristeus son of Pellichus, Callicrates son of Callias, and Timanor son
of Timanthes. A Corcyraean herald in a swift boat met them at the inlet of the
Ambracian gulf and denounced their advance beyond the promontory of Actium ; a
fane of Apollo on this headland was destined by a caprice of fate to witness
the opening sea-fight of the greatest of the Greek civil wars, as four
centuries later that which was to close the long series of the Roman. The
conflict with the Eastern levies of Antony did not more certainly introduce the
Augustan Caesarism, than that between Dorians and Ionians which ensued from
this Corcyraean quarrel, the subjection of all republican Hellas to Alexander.
On the
hasty return of the herald with no message of peace the Corcyraean fleet
immediately put to sea. Even at such a crisis the forty ships occupied at
Epidamnus had not been recalled, the promise of success was now so immediate as
to give the greatest inducement to hold on at all risks. A fleet of eighty
could still be made up, though only by refitting every craft, however old, that
could be rendered seaworthy. The Corinthian fleet paying no heed to the herald,
had continued its course and a battle ensued at once, which appears to have
been fought in the straits between Corcyra and the mainland. The result was
greatly to the advantage of the Corcyraeans, who however are only recorded as
destroying fifteen out of the numerous armament opposed to them, though they
may have inflicted disproportionate damage
and
captured or disabled many more. They erected a trophy on their own promontory
of Leucimne, and then, reserving their Corinthian prisoners, put all others to
death,—a worthy commencement of the barbarities that were to be familiar in the
years coming on.
On the
very same day, but scarcely in consequence of news or signals of the disaster
to the relieving fleet, Epidamnus surrendered. The severity of the terms which
were submitted to by the besieged, proves their extremity; the foreign settlers
who had been introduced, and to whom in the first instance the option of
retirement had been offered, were sold as slaves; the Corinthians only were
reserved as prisoners for the further advice of the victors, upon a general
anticipation we must suppose of the contingencies of ransom or exchange or
release upon advantage by treaty.
The fleet
of the Corinthians and allies retired altogether very soon after their
defeat,—the rather as the proposed rescue of Epidamnus was a failure, and the
enemy, left in full command of seas, proceeded to ravage the country of the
Corinthian colony of Leucas, annoyed the hostile allies generally, and
especially burnt Cyllene the arsenal of the Eleians, in revenge for their contribution
to the hostile fleet and treasury. At last, as summer advanced, the Corinthians
again sent out ships and a land force to protect their allies in distress, and
camps were formed at Actium and at the Cheimerion promontory, in positions to
watch if not command the most important passages between the islands and the
mainland.
This first
reverse proved to the Corinthians that they had under-estimated the difficulty
of their task, but nothing was further from their intentions than to renounce
the original design of reducing the pride and power of Corcyra ; their
disasters and the fate of their captured allies only superadded rage to
resolution. The whole year after the sea-fight, and the following also, were
devoted to reorganising and
strengthening
their navy; new ships were built, stores and equipments provided, and crews
attracted by high pay not only from Peloponnesus but from the rest of Hellas
and very extensively from among the Athenian allies.
AGITATION AND DEBATES AT ATHENS. THE
MEGARIAN DECREES.
OPPOSITION TO POLICY OF PERICLES.—INTERFERENCE OF ATHENIANS IN SEA-FIGHT
BETWEEN CORINTHIANS AND CORCYRAEANS. —SERIOUS BREACH WITH CORINTH.
B.C.
433-432.; 01. 86. 4.
It
is not surprising, after the events narrated in the last chapter, that we have
now to attend to signs of excitement and agitation at Athens, where imperial
jealousy alone if not prudent apprehension made indifference to foreign naval
preparations on such a scale impossible. The terms of the thirty years peace
with Sparta put restraint upon direct interference; but certain measures were
resorted to which could not but embarrass these proceedings, and while they
gratified the peculiar animosity which had been excited by the conduct of
Megara, bear the marks of having been dictated by a more serious ulterior
policy. In the dearth of records, a notice supplied by Aristophanes of the complications
that arose amidst this excitement, is most welcome and important. Dicaeopolis
in the Acharnians addresses the spectators directly as to the origin of the war
with Sparta, in a vein of seriousness which is scarcely veiled by accompaniments
of comic tone and treatment. He intimates that quarrel was first declared by
the exclusion of Megarian produce from the Athenian markets, a loss and
annoyance that was aggravated by the severity with which denuncia-
Y 2
tions of
smuggled commodities, however trifling, were followed up by seizures and
confiscations. This vexation however, he pursues, was trivial and local;
matters became more serious when in the unfriendly relations of the states each
afforded a ready refuge for the fugitive slaves of its neighbour. Dicaeopolis
here, as is his cue, imputes the first offence to his fellow citizens, and
extenuates the retaliation, of which he gives a version in proper comoedian’s
style,—a quarrel after all only about the abduction, and that in reprisal, of
some girls of the bevy of Aspasia,—a vagary that surely his audience can be
indulgent to; ‘ yet on no better provocation was it that Olympian Pericles
thundered, lightened, and convulsed Hellas, and passed laws to exclude the
Megarians from town and country, from sea and land, in fact from creation, to
the tune of the old song; ’—the allusion was to a scolion of 1
Timocreon.
There is
here positive implication of already two stages of the hostility which was
directed first against Megarian inland trade, and then extended, on a ground of
quarrel of which the harbouring of escaped slaves was the pretext, to the
expulsion of Megarians personally, not only from the agora of Athens, but from
her territory, and from the use of all ports within the Athenian empire.
Thucydides puts on 2 record the same serious complaint of Athens
against Megara for giving refuge to her fugitive slaves, which is parodied by
Aristophanes whether purely on his own account or only as repeating with
embellishment a current sneer at Pericles that was already well on its way to
become a calumny. The wealth of Athens public and private was largely invested
in the productive labour of slaves, who are said, however, to have been treated
more humanely there than elsewhere—with a liberality indeed that was repugnant
to the 3 oligarchical. The war that was to bring so much general
misery, brought to the slaves at least a further politic
alleviation
of their lot, but nevertheless did not indispose them to effect their escape in
thousands;—slavery at the very best is the bitterness of death, and even during
peace the nearest frontiers—the Boeotian, and still more temptingly the
Megarian, for the Athenian slave and the Athenian for the Megarian slave—were
looked to with hope that was not always vain, and was never less likely to be
disappointed than when ill-feeling was rife between the neighbour states.
The
Megarian interest that suffered in the first instance was concerned with the
supply of farm produce, and the loss of the market of Athens, so near at hand
and of such capacity and wealth as to have fostered extensive arrangements for
meeting its constant demand, would have been a serious blow to prosperity at
any time. It could not be dealt without involving considerable inconvenience at
home. The more reason was there for addressing every popular prejudice that
might help to reconcile Athenian households to a political measure that touched
them immediately in the cost of kitchen stuff. Accordingly we find that the Megarians
were further taxed not only with encroaching upon some border or neutral
ground, but even with raising their produce sacrilegiously by cultivating
dedicated land ; the boundary of Megara abutted on the precincts of the
Eleusiniau 1 goddesses, and it was from impiety in this quarter that
the Athenians were peculiarly susceptible of sacred horror.
The date
at which these annoying restrictions were first imposed, and the precise
intervals of their several stages, are not recoverable ; but the severity with
which they were enforced from the first, is manifest argument that something
beyond simple occasioual spite induced the Athenians to forego at this time
their own advantage and accommodation; and there is strong presumption that one
motive was the opportunity of hampering the assistance which was being rendered
to Corinth by an ally.
1 Paus. i. 39.
Athens who
by her dependencies commanded so large a proportion of the seats of production
and channels of interchange, was now the central mart and great storehouse of
Hellenic commerce, and her markets and warehouses would be first drawn upon,
and probably through Megarian agents and territory, for the stores and
munitions that Corinth was so diligently collecting, and this at a time when
high pay was known to be tempting away mariners to a rival 1 fleet.
The command of the sea and of so many ports and emporia by Athens, gave her a
power which was well understood, and we may be certain was employed to
embarrass the commerce of her political 2 rivals; and besides a
general motive to give notice of her power in this respect, both resentment and
policy urged the direction of it at the present time to the injury of Megara.
No other course could be so promising to prompt or promote a reaction there in
internal politics in favour of the party that had once carried over the country
into the Athenian alliance, and might be expected if an opportunity presented,
to be willing to renew it, especially when aided by a smart lesson as to what
was implied in its forfeiture. The coolest Athenian statesman might be disposed
under present circumstances to do his utmost and at any cost to force the
countiy back into alliance; and the popular feeling that seconded the policy
would be ready to gratify resentment on its failure by the infliction of any
degree of annoyance, and even of misery.
The air of
Hellas was already heavy with the clouds that were so soon to burst in war, and
all the contingencies of an invasion of Attica, which was notoriously counted
upon to open if not to conclude it, were haunting the minds of the Athenian
population; how then should not the forfeiture of the security which had once
been effectual in barring the passage of a Lacedaemonian army be exasperating
indeed ?
What the
depth of this feeling was at the present time is gauged by the vindictiveness
with which Megara was soon to be harassed by the expulsion of her citizens
wherever Athens ruled, and then especially devoted to ruin after the war broke
out, when the Athenian generals were bound by oath to ravage the country yearly
in revenge for the desolation of their own, and did in effect wreak such vengeance
to the uttermost.
There is
every appearance then that the spirit of the Athenian demus was now roused to a
high pitch of jealous excitement,—the jealousy of an empire at an activity in
its neighbourhood which it neither initiates nor controls, and of which,
surrounded as it is by combustibles, it mistrusts the course and end. The
preparations in progress at Corinth for chastising a contumacious colony, and
that by a naval force, the peculiar pride of Athens, pointed directly to
emulation, not to say rivalry, of the position and policy of Athens. Corinthian
money was tempting sailors from all quarters, and there was the prospect that
the already powerful ally of Megara would add the 'large navy of Corcyra to her
own, and threaten seriously the influence which Athens still retained in the
western waters, where she for a time had had the supreme control, and which she
had continued to foster not without views to contingencies of future wars. The
arguments that Thucydides makes the Corcyraeans lay before the Athenians, to
prove how their interests were concerned in this quarrel, were assuredly before
familiar to them more or less definitely and were precisely of a nature to
influence their temper at the present time.
And what
then was the disposition of Pericles at this conjuncture ? That he had always
recognised the danger and anticipated the probability of a Dorian war,— of a
contest reopened between Athens and the confederacy under the headship of
Sparta, is expressly declared;—whether he desired it is more questionable ; at
least he must have desired,
whether it
was to be invited or accepted when inevitable, that Athens should enter upon it
with all advantages of preparation and opportunity. It is possible indeed that
his stored treasures and full arsenals and numerous and practised fleet, might
seem sufficient to demonstrate the hopelessness of attack and constitute the
strongest security for peace; but it is the tendency of such vast precautions,
though honestly adopted in the interests of peace, to excite suspicion,
irritate jealousy and to provoke sooner or later, and even in the face of all
prudence, the very outbreak that they might seem to render too desperate to be
dreamed of. Political moderation beyond what Athens could even afleet is
required, if excessive precautions for defence are not to be interpreted as
only preludes to unlimited aggression. One very important public work had been
carried out by the direct proposal of Pericles, that could only be regarded as
significant of his tense of how resolute an attack the city might yet be
exposed to,—and was urged by him with a vehemence that the comoedians indeed
could cavil at afterwards as in contrast with its tardy execution. This was the
erection of a third interior Long Wall, that made the enceinte of the
fortifications of Athens completely continuous with those of Piraeus, instead
of resting on them by only one of a pair of long walls which, with the other
extending to Phalerum, left an intermediate coast-line unprotected. That this
precaution was extreme is in no way proved by the fact that during the
Peloponnesian war it was not found necessary to man or guard this middle wall;
such a precaution would only be necessary after an outer wall had been taken;
in the meantime the mere existence of the inner line rendered an attack on the
outer wall futile.
Precautions
apart, the genius of the administration of Pericles since the thirty years
peace had ever favoured the conservation rather than the violent extension of
the empire. It is the glory of his rule that, successful as he had been in war,
he governed ever in the interest of peace; that Athens
under his
control was warlike but not militarised,—that the military element was ever
retained in that subordination to civil authority which alone entitles a state
however vigorously organised, to the title and honour of being in a true sense
civilised. This policy is ascribed to him in various scattered notices; it is
the same that inspired his economy of the blood of the citizens in his actual
military expeditions. There is much appearance that his draft on the state
treasure, * for a needful purpose/ when Cleandridas was persuaded to evacuate
Attica, was but one of many that furnished, as is said, even annual bribes to
leading Spartans, who are so constantly assumed as chosen spoil of corruption.
But even so he was thought to be conscious, while apprehending as keenly as he
might the value of indefinite deferment, that he was purchasing not peace but
time, and that war must come at last. The career in which Athens had advanced
and continued to advance so long under his guidance, could not but excite
apprehensions and jealousies, and had been prosecuted with an energy which was
a counter-sense unless it presupposed resolution to hold on in spite of any opposition.
The time was rapidly ripening for these feelings to come into full and fatal
play on both sides.
It was now
manifest to the Corcyraeans, and could be no secret throughout Hellas, that the
designs of Corinth were directed to their subjugation, and were about to be
prosecuted with a force which it would be hopeless for them to resist unaided;
and as the temper of Sparta had been sufficiently proved in their former
negotiations, their remaining hope of an alliance lay in the alternative of
working upon the jealousy and apprehensions of Athens. At Athens their envoys
found a rival Corinthian embassy, prepared if possible to counterwork their
inducements and persuasions; and Thucydides embodies in speeches assigned to
them respectively, the considerations that were brought into question. In each
we find the ordinary tone of diplomacy
correctly
represented by a sufficiency of appeals to justice, honour, gratitude and so
forth, and therewithal intermixed or following them up, such reference to what
is politic and intimation of what is resolved on in any case, as leaves no
excuse for misapprehending the value attached or expected to be attached to
ostensible conscientiousness. The Corinthians, we read, assumed as a notorious
probability, that the larger war was impending; so much the more impolitic was
it for the Athenians to provoke what after all might be deferred if not
averted,—but what their taking part with Corcyra would infallibly bring about
as involving a breach of the treaty by hostilities directed against themselves.
Corinth had hitherto* as in the case of the revolt of Samos, been the
scrupulous vindicator of the right of the superior states to control—to
punish,—their dependents ; if Athens now adopted the cause of malcontents, she
might find, it was significantly intimated, that she had more to lose than gain
by the application of the 1 principle. It would be well indeed, if
the seriousness of the occasion suggested a concession in such a matter as the
Megarian misunderstanding, secondary as that might be;—for at a crisis like the
present, an indication of friendship, as necessarily then an indication of
hostility, would tell with unqualified 2 force. This passage
supplies clear proof that legislation inimical to Megara had already been
initiated, but was not yet strained to the severity and rancour that is
ultimately ascribed to 3 it.
The
arguments of the Corcyraeans went as directly to the purpose, only from their
confidence in their case as addressed to motives of policy, were less overcharged
with moral appeals. They admitted that their present jeopardy convicted them of
error in having proudly held aloof from alliances; but the very magnitude of
their peril was guarantee of the value which they would now attach to
protection. The advantage
1 Thuc. i. 40. a
lb. i. 42.
8 Piut. V. Per. 30; Time. i. 139.
that would
accrue to the Athenians in rescuing them was most important; to affect
unconsciousness of the fact that a Peloponnesian war against Athens was on the
point of breaking out were absurd; this attack upon themselves was indeed and
manifestly an immediate preparative for it. The Corcyraean navy was next in
importance after those of Athens and Corinth, and the present question was,
whether Athens was to have the benefit of it, or it was to go to strengthen the
maritime power of her immediate enemies. With respect to the treaty for thirty
years peace, its terms were quoted as expressly permitting the unattached
cities to join whichever federation they pleased, and as perfectly covering the
proposed alliance,—though this point, in view of the known resolution of the
Corinthians, might be put aside; under these circumstances it was surely wiser
and safer for Athens to gain an accession of power and with it accept the risk
of a breach of the treaty, than by fallacious confidence as to its permanence
forfeit the advantage for the behoof of an inevitable adversary. The Athenians
might naturally desire that theirs should be the only strong navy, but inasmuch
as another was in existence already, it were well for her to have it on her
side. The future of Corcyra was in fact not more at stake than that of the
Athenians; the proposed alliance would give them the command of a position
which was likely to prove- most important for the coming struggle, as it would
enable them to intercept all supplies and communications between Peloponnesus
and the Dorian colonies of Italy and Sicily;—finally and in brief, it was for
Athens to decide whether to anticipate or be anticipated by the
Corinthians;—whether to fight, as fight they would find they must, with the
fleet of Corcyra ranged along with their own, or against it as strengthening
their enemies.
One of the
most influential and in a degree a plausible argument by which the Athenians
were afterwards induced
to interfere
in Sicily, was the encouragement which is here 1 urged, that so they
would intercept the aid and supplies that might otherwise give strength to
their enemies in Peloponnesus—a motive which Aristophanes caricatured in his
project of the Birds to starve out the gods by intercepting the fumes of
sacrifices receivable from mankind. On a first debate in the Athenian assembly,
the decision inclined in favour of the Corinthians, from a predominant
reluctance to risk dissolution of the treaty. On a second day however this
resolution was modified; great importance was attached to the conservation of
the treaty, and also to the island remaining independent of Corinth for the
very reasons indicated by the envoy; with respect to the Corcyraean fleet,
assistance from it might be well foregone, so long as it did not fall into
possession of the Corinthians, and especially if it could be committed to
contests with them, that would weaken both and so increase the relative power
of the Athenian. It seems scarcely conceivable, but even so is not impossible,
that all this was propounded in so many words in the public assembly; the
suggestion may have been dropped by one orator or another and had weight at
last. The Athenians accordingly persuaded themselves, or allowed themselves to
be persuaded, that their interests would best be served by concluding a purely
defensive alliance with Corcyra, in terms that only bound each to protect the
other and their respective allies from actual invasion of territory. In pursuance
of this policy, with the concurrence and apparently at the suggestion of
Pericles, they shortly despatched ten ships under command of Lacedaemonius son
of Cimon, of Diotimus son of Strombichus, and Proteas son of Epicles, with
orders to avoid a conflict with the Corinthians, unless they attempted to land
at Corcyra or any of its dependencies, but in that case to do their utmost in
opposition. The smallness of this squadron was no doubt calculated, it would
cer- 1 Thuc. vi. 90; Ariatoph. Av. 185.
tainly seem
rather sanguinely, as adjusted to the very peculiar and difficult service
expected from it. It was not intended to deter the Corinthians from coming to
an engagement with the Corcyraeans to the damage of both fleets, and yet it was
relied on as sufficient to give warning to them in the very probable event of
their victory, of the disposition of the Athenians, and so without direct
conflict and compulsion deter them from debarkation. The squadron however had
not long left port, when resolution was strengthened once again; excitement
arose and was encouraged as to what might be the event in case the Corinthians
chose to disregard ulterior complications with Athens and were not deterred
from using their superiority and taking possession of the island at all risks.
This contingency must have been considered by Pericles however he defended his
policy against what was now urged with effect, that the ships sent were
insufficient as a countervailing force, and in case of a conflict would have
been simply sent to destruction. Cavillers imputed to him the intention to
preclude at least the son of his ancient rival Cimon from a chance of worthily
distinguishing himself, if not to involve him in disaster. In the end twenty
more ships were sent to follow and reinforce the first squadron of ten.
We have
here an example how the sovereign assembly asserted its right to interference
directly and from day to day with the proceedings of its most trusted minister
and adviser; this sudden reversal of his policy was certainly unfortunate in
result, and, carried as it was on the strength of base imputations on his
motives, gives warning of the continued confidence of the opponents who were
still ready to attack him with direct malignity.
The
commanders of the second squadron were bound by the terms of their commission
to adhere to precisely the same instructions as the first; but the animus under
which they were despatched could only be held to imply that active
intervention
at an earlier moment would be easily condoned. Andocides the orator, whose
ill-omened name occurs here for the first1 time, was associated in
the command with Glaucon.
About the
same time another expedition of thirty ships with a thousand hoplites, under
command of Archestratus son of Lycomedes, with ten colleagues, was sent to act
against the coast of Macedonia. The terms of Thucydides would imply that the
hostility of Perdiccas, their former ally, was provoked by the Athenians taking
sides against him with his brother Philip and another relative, Derdas. But we
shall scarcely risk doing Perdiccas injustice, if we assume that this was not
before he had alarmed them by the intrigues which he was soon to prosecute
openly. Over and over again he is found undermining and deserting allies so
soon as they threaten to gain power at the expense of the common enemy. The
exact boundaries of his territories towards Thrace could not be easily fixed,
and those of his influence, to say nothing of his interests and designs, were
more extensive. He may have regarded complacently enough the check that
Athenian power had given to his Thracian neighbours, but the strong position at
Amphipolis was now equally obnoxious to himself; and the time was ripe,
especially as he was fully acquainted with the generally uneasy state of Hellas,
when he might be expected to foster whatever elements of discontent with
Athenian rule were to be found in Dorian Potidaea and the towns of the
Chalcidic peninsula.
In the
meantime the reinforcement of twenty ships reached Corcyra, and as they hove in
sight of the island came upon a scene that proved how critical was their
appearance.
The
Corinthians had collected a fleet which mustered at Leucas to the large number
of 150 ships, under command of Xenocleides son of Eutliycles with five
colleages. As many as ninety of these ships were their own,—the Ambraciots
furnished
twenty-seven, Leucadians ten, Anaetorians one, and in addition, the Eleians
sent ten ships and Megara twelve as before. Coasting the mainland they first
occupied the port Cheimerion at the mouth of the Acheron, and there established
the usual camp which was required for the supply of the ancient war-fleet,
within sight of the southernmost extremity of the island. The Corcyraeans on
their part equipped no ships under command of Meiciades, Aisimides, and
Euiybatus, and established a station on one of a group of islands called Sybota
off the Thesprotian coast over against Corcyra; and on the island itself,
within sight and upon its promontory Leucimne, was stationed their land force
together with a thousand Zacynthian hoplite auxiliaries. The first ten Athenian
ships under Lacaedaemonius had by this time arrived.
The
Corinthian commander moved forward his barbarian allies to a station on the
coast nearly opposite to the island, and quitting the harbour before sunrise
with three days’ provisions on board, apparently in preparation for prolonged
pursuit, encountered at daybreak the Corcyraean fleet already at sea and
bearing down upon them. Order of battle was at once taken up on both sides; the
Attic ships, prepared to watch the action, were on the right of the
Corcyraeans, who arranged their own in three divisions under the several three
commanders. The Corinthians, already mistrusting Athenian neutrality, placed
their own ships which were the best of their fleet against the Attic and
Corcyraean left, the Megarians and Ambraciots on their extreme right, and the
other allies in the centre.'
From the
large number of the ships, the extent of sea they spread over was very great
even before the incidents of action dispersed them still wider, and the
sea-fight that ensued was on a larger scale than any that had ever before taken
place between Greeks and Greeks; but it was fought in a style that according to
improved Athenian tactics was already
obsolete.
No application was made of the manoeuvre that had already told with effect at
the battle of Salamis,—the diecjolus, by which an assailing ship was so
directed by the prompt obedience of a trained crew, as to snap and sheer away
the oars of an opponent with its bronze beak as it rapidly glided past it and
so to render it unmanageable, or to sink it by forcible and effectively
directed impact; manoeuvres of this class, which were only available when
rowers could be relied on as practised to respond to the signals of equally
practised commanders, were not to be attempted by a hastily collected and
improvised war-fleet. The present conflict had therefore much the semblance of
a land-battle; the engaged ships from the closeness of their order became
entangled, and remained immoveable, while hoplites, darters, and bowmen fought
from the decks, and militar}' strength and courage were relied on for victory
amidst general clamour and confusion, independently of any proper nautical
skill.
The
Corcyraeans gained the first advantage on their left wing, where twenty of
their ships dispersed their opponents,—the Megarians and Ambraciots,—pursued
them as far as the continent, and then sailing to their camp burnt and
plundered the unguarded tents. The absence however of these twenty ships
aggravated still further the disparity of the remainder, which were thus at
perilous disadvantage. The ten Athenian ships could afford some help for a time
by simply making threatening demonstrations wherever they saw the Corcyraeans most
distressed ; but as they nevertheless still withheld from actual conflict out
of regard to their imperative instructions, the value of this relief was soon
exhausted, and the Corinthians, not seriously checked, were pressing hard on
their enemies, who were already in manifest retreat. The Athenian assistance
now became less equivocal, the commanders apparently being carried away by sympathetic
excitement to a direct contravention of orders, and
perhaps
encouraged by knowledge how strong was the feeling at home in favour of such a
policy, worsted though it might have been in the decisive debate. Before long
as of necessity all discrimination was renounced, and Corinthians and
Athenians were committed to undisguised and positive conflict.
In the
confusion of the battle the fleets had become intermixed, friends and enemies
were not always distinguishable, and as the Corinthians, intent only on
slaughter and caring neither to take prisoners or to draw off the hulls of
disabled vessels, passed the wrecks of their defeated right wing in their
pursuit, many of their own friends became victims of their undiscriminating
fury. Only when the retreating Cor- cyraeans had gained their shore did the
Corinthians turn to the recovery of their dead and of the wrecked ships ; of
these they secured the greater number and drew them away to a deserted harbour
of the Thesprotian coast, called like the adjacent islands Sybota, where a
force of auxiliary barbarians from tribes on the continent always in friendly
relations with Corinth, had already rendezvoused.
The action
had begun in the morning, and it was now late in the afternoon; the Corinthians
had lost thirty ships, but on the other hand they had destroyed or disabled
nearly seventy out of the smaller fleet of the Corcyraeans, and captured one
thousand prisoners; their relative superiority was therefore immensely
increased, and they were eager to follow up their blow decisively and without
loss of a day. But the Corcyraeans were still resolute, and animated at once by
the efficiency of the Athenian assistance and by dread of an immediate descent
on their island, they drew out to meet the re-advancing enemy; with what ships
they had still uninjured and with every other that would float, they could
oppose forty at most, supposing their left wing to have rejoined, against the
enemy, who after deducting specified losses, would still have 120. To their
great surprise, just as the customary
vol. 11. z
battle-cry
before the onset was being- raised on both sides, the Corinthians were seen
first to back water and then to retire; it was precisely at this moment in fact
that they descried the approach of a large but uncertain number of ships which
could be recognised as Athenian, and they drew off entirely as night fell. The
Corcyraeans also retired to Leucimne as soon as they became aware of the new
arrival, uncertain in the increasing darkness as to its character and in dread
of fresh enemies, until as the Athenians came on rapidly making way with their
oars through waters encumbered with wreck and corpses, they recognised and
welcomed them with joy.
The peril
of Corcyra had now reached a pitch that would have justified the largest
application of the Athenian instructions, though this had not already been
settled in the battle. The next day their thirty vessels and as many of the Corcyraean
as were seaworthy, sailed out in case the lately victorious enemy proposed to
renew the contest. For this however the Corinthians were not prepared, although
their ships were launched and arrayed. In the position which they occupied the
very number of prisoners whom they had to guard was an embarrassment; their
harbour afforded no means for so far repairing damages sustained by hulls and
tackle as to give them a chance against unimpaired ships; and their great
anxiety was lest the Athenians should consider that the conflict of the day
before had dissolved treaties and blockade them at their station. In this
difficulty they despatched messengers in a boat, without the ensign of a herald
which would have implied recognition of a state of war, to convey a protest
against gross infringement of treaty by open interference in arms between
Corinth and her enemies, and to challenge the Athenians either to admit the
treaty as in force, or to distinctly repudiate it and assert the rights of a
state of war by putting them to death as captives. The Corcyraeans within hail
were clamorous that the messengers should be taken at their word, but the Athe-
man
commanders gave the reply, that they respected the treaty and would offer no
hindrance to the movements of the Corinthians in any direction, provided they
did not molest the Corcyraeans,—the allies of Athens. Under these circumstances
there was nothing for it but for the Corinthian fleet to give up and return home.
So Corcyra
was rescued; but this, says Thucydides, was the immediate cause of the
Corinthians going to war with the Athenians,—the active part which the
Athenians took against them on the side of the Corcyraeans in this naval battle
notwithstanding the subsistence of the treaty.
THE REVOLT OF POTIDAEA.—ATHENIAN EXPEDITION AND VICTORY.
THE CITY INVESTED.—THE
DORIAN WAR INEVITABLE.
B.C. 432, Autumn; 01. 87. 1.
Foiled as they were in their great attempt the Corinthians did
not make for home without seizing an opportunity by the way to injure Coreyra
and defy Athens, by treacherously seizing Anaetorion at the mouth of the
Ambracian gulf,—a town in which Coreyra had the same common interest with them
as at Fpidamnus,—and consigning it to Corinthian occupants. Of their captives
in the sea-fight they sold eight hundred who were slaves;—two hundred and
fifty, among whom were some principal men of the aristocratical party, they
retained as prisoners and treated with much consideration in the hope of one
day employing their intervention for the recovery of influence at Coreyra. The
restoration of these captives to their native city at a later date for a
fictitious ransom, led to one of the bloodiest conflicts of faction that stain
Hellenic annals ;—first fruit in this kind of the outbreak of Lacedaemonian and
Athenian rivalry, and taken by Thucydides as occasion for that impressive
summary of the demoralising influences of the war, after which he dispenses
with intruding moral judgments on any particular actions and incidents
whatever, however revolting and 1 atrocious.
1 Thuc.
iii. 81-3.
The report
of the actual collision with the Corinthian fleet and the protests it called
forth, at once awakened at Athens apprehension of a retaliatory stroke in a
dangerous quarter, and certain precautionary measures were taken at once, but
still with an inadequacy that could be only due to a reluctance to admit the
full urgency and peril of the crisis.
A roll of
gathering murmurs had already been heard from the Corinthian colony of
Potidaea, among other subject allies about tlie confines of Thrace and the
Macedonian dominions, and probably had not been without effect already on the
relations that the city had assumed towards Perdiccas. The kingdom of Macedonia
had gradually expanded to a most important extent, though its successive
acquisitions were still only in process of consolidation, and portions of its
nominal area were occupied by independent but severally insignificant tribes.
From the borders of Thessaly and Illyria it extended eastward as far as the
margin of the valley of the Strymon, where it approached the important native
Thracian power; while on the south-east it covered the entire base of the great
Chalcidic peninsula. Perdiccas had gained his kingship by supplanting an elder
brother 1 Alcetas; another brother Philip was however in possession
of a government on the upper Axius, which is referred to as if it were an
independent 2kingdom; under what circumstances he held this is
uncertain, but his relations to Perdiccas were now openly hostile; at a later
date he is found expelled and a refugee protected by the ruler of Thrace, who
had so much cause for jealousy of the aggressive and encroaching power. The
same jealousy was naturally participated by the newly settled Amphipolis, and
accordingly- Hagnon its founder is active a few years later in concerting with
the Thracian Sitalces the great expedition which has already been adverted to.
A former
condition of friendly relations and alliance
between
Perdiceas and Athens had come to an end previously to the Corcyraean
complications, and as Thucydides states, in consequence of the Athenians having
made common cause against him with his brother Philip, but whether, as is
rather implied, gratuitously and not under certain provocation, can scarcely be
determined. At the very time when tlie quarrel with Corinth had reached a state
of extreme tension, the Athenian armament under Archestratus, consisting of
thirty ships and one thousand hoplites, was on the Macedonian coast in preparation
to co-operate with the expectcd land force of Philip; and if it did not become
known at Athens by transmitted information, it was certain to be confidently
inferred, that in the notorious temper of the Chalcidic cities the influence
and intrigues of Perdiceas could not be wanting to give them encouragement to
revolt. Among these cities the great Corinthian colony of Potidaea was the most
important; the strength of its position on the isthmus of Pallcne, and the
spirit of its inhabitants, had enabled it, as we have seen, to make a gallant
and successful defence against the Persians; afterwards it had too much
interest in their complete extrusion from Europe not to support the continued
activity of Athens, and thus with other neighbouring cities it became
contributory to the pJioros. As a Dorian colony however it continued its
traditional connection with metropolitan Corinth, and accepted thence annually
certain officials styled Epidemiurgi, who may have enjoyed no more than the
honorary precedence which Corcyra gave such deep offence by repudiating, but
who might be trusted to provide a natural channel for constant interchange of
sympathies and expressions of the growing discontent.
In the
existing relations between Athens and Corinth on the very subject of
interference with colonies, as well as between Athens and Perdiceas, it was
manifestly important to take security against defections in this quarter at
once.
Commands
were in consequence despatched to the Poti- daeans to demolish the wall of
their city on the side of Pallene, and so disable themselves from revolt by
rendering it accessible to Athens from within the isthmus, while the defences
towards Thrace were preserved,—to deliver hostages and to dismiss the
Corinthian Epidemiurgi forthwith and once for all. It was expected too
sanguinely that the mere awe of Athenian authority and known rigour would
produce obedience to these injunctions, and they were not backed by a force
prepared to exercise present compulsion. The Potidaeans therefore took the
opportunity to plead at Athens for the recall of the commands, and while
prolonging the negotiation to the utmost t© gain delay, employed the interval
to concert measures for a revolt in case of non-success, or indeed in any case.
Perdiccas on his part was in full activity; he opened communication with
Corinth to urge promotion of a revolt, and even sent his own envoys to
Lacedaemon where Potidaea was already praying for protection, and Corinth was
urging invasion of Attica and denunciation of the treaties; at the same time he
succeeded in extending the area of the now inevitable defection, and the
general Chalcidian and Bottiaean allies of Athens gave entertainment to his
proposals, moved by what specific grievances on the one hand and sympathies on
the other does not appear.
The
Athenians at last more fully roused, despatched orders to their Macedonian
fleet to proceed to Potidaea, and there effect the demanded demolition of the
walls and take off the hostages. Before this time however the Potidaean envoys
had become aware that no relaxation of terms or deferment of execution was to
be obtained at Athens, the Corinthians had made a secret but solemn engagement
to support them in
1 contumacy, and above all, the
negotiators at Lacedaemon had obtained from those at the head of affairs a
promise,
whatever
it might be worth, that hostilities against the Potidaeans would be the signal
for that invasion of Attiea, so often threatened, which was relied on as prompt
and infallible relief. Timely warning of the diversion of the Athenian fleet
was in consequence conveyed to the city, and when the Athenian commanders
arrived they found it in open revolt; their squadron was manifestly
insufficient for operations of the difficulty and on the scale that would now
be required, and they decided to return at once to the coast of Macedonia,
their primary destination, and the rather as ‘ Philip and the brothers of
Derdas,’ with whom they were engaged to co-operate, had already descended from
the interior in force.
The
example of Potidaea now spread further, and at the suggestion of Perdiccas a
number of the towns that were at the mercy of Athens by their position on the
coast of the Chalcidic peninsula, were deserted and dismantled by their
citizens with a view to the formation of a single strong city at Olynthus at
the head of the Toronaean gulf, at safe distance from the sea. To compensate
for the lands which they abandoned Perdiccas assigned to them an adjacent
district of Mygdonia about lake 13olbe for so long as the war might continue.
The news
of this defection speedily reached Athens, but already before additional forces
were despatched, they were overtaken by events that enhanced still further the
seriousness of the emergency and called for greater exertions. A force of one
thousand six hundred hoplites and four hundred light armed, had been gathered
at Corinth in anticipation of what was now announced ; it reached Potidaea as
early as the fortieth day after the declaration of revolt, and, as the Athenian
fleet had retired, encountered neither opposition nor obstruction; it was under
command of Aristeus, who had some special relations with the colony, and to
whose popularity at Corinth also was due the enlistment of the
greater
number who joined the force as volunteers, together with other Peloponnesians
who served for pay. Aristeus was son of the Adeimantus who commanded the
Corinthians at the battle of Salamis, and whose conduct is vindicated by
Herodotus not equivocally against Athenian aspersions.
At Athens,
in view of these preparations, a force of two thousand citizen hoplites and
forty ships was placed under command of Callias, son of Calliades, as chief,
with four colleagues. He first proceeded to the coast of Macedonia to effect a
junction with the former expedition; there he found that it had captured
Thermae, and was engaged on the siege of Pydna; he united in the prosecution of
this at first in the hope no doubt that an overwhelming force would give speedy
success; but time was pressing,—the more so as the landing of Aristeus became
known • and a hasty truce and treaty of alliance was concluded with Perdiccas,
who was only too happy to liberate his own territory without giving any
security to disable him from becoming again an enemy whenever it suited him. An
obscure sentence of Thucydides refers to operations against Beroea, which no
ingenuity of interpretation has yet given warrant for bringing into the
narrative. The collective force, which now comprised three thousand hoplite
Athenians, a considerable number of allies, and six hundred Macedonian horse
under Philip and Pausanias, a son or brother of 1 Derdas, proceeded
to evacuate Macedonia by easy marches, for which the nature of the composite
army might account, round the head of the Thermaic gulf;—the ninety ships
accompanying along the coast. On the third day—but from what exact point is
uncertain—Gigonos was reached, of which the exact position is also at present
uncertain, but at least within a short march of Potidaea, and with a port or
roadstead of a certain
2 capacity, and there the troops
encamped. The retained connection with Philip promised but ill for the new
alliance 1 Schol. Thuc. 2
Hesych.
with his
enemy, and intimates how little this was valued or relied on, though Thucydides
affords no hint as to the cause of its sudden dissolution. Accordingly
Perdiccas has scarcely time to establish Iolaus as regent, when he is already
in the camp of the enemy under the walls of Olynthus, and in command of their
cavalry, which numbers however only two hundred. The command in chief of the
foot army was committed by vote of the allies to Aristeus ; with these he took
up a position on the isthmus, having Potidaea behind him, and concerted a plan
in case the advance of the Athenians was made in this direction, to summon to
his aid the Chalcidians and allies without the isthmus and the horse of
Perdiccas, by preconcerted signals over a short interval of open country; in
this manner he hoped to involve the enemy in a double conflict at the same
time, front and rear, or front and flank.
Callias
and his colleagues on the other hand detached a few of their allies and their
stronger body of Macedonian horse towards Olynthus on their left, to keep the
enemies in that direction in check, while themselves quitting camp and marching
direct upon Potidaea. They found Aristeus in position and with his force drawn
up in array of battle ; and with no more loss of time than was required to
marshal their own, advanced to the attack. Aristeus himself was on one wing
where he had posted the best soldiers both of the Corinthians and others also,
in reliance apparently that the diversion from Olynthus in response to his
signals, would compensate for weakness towards the other extremity of his line.
It was due to this confidence that though he not merely repelled the attack on
his own wing, but put his opponents to flight, he forfeited all the advantage
by following up the pursuit, and returned to find that the other Potidaeans
and Peloponnesians were routed by the Athenians, and had taken refuge within
the walls. Ilis own force was in consequence equally in danger of
having its
retreat cut off whether he made for Potidaea or Olynthus. The concerted
diversion had entirely failed of effect, not so much from the advance of
opposing cavalry that scarcely came in sight, but in consequence of the
cessation of signals after the first, caused by the rapid success of the
Athenians,—it is difficult not to think partly in consequence of the deliberate
half-heartedness of their commander Perdiccas, who, after a short advance, had
withdrawn to the shelter of the walls of Olynthus;—the horse therefore took no
part in the battle on either side. Aristeus, in his desperate position,
resolved to make for Potidaea by a dash of which the only chance of success lay
in its unexpected daring. Closing his men up so as to expose them as little as
possible, he made a rush through a storm of missiles and succeeded with
difficulty, by wading, in getting round the mole by which the Potidaean wall
across the isthmus was extended seawards, losing some of his number, but saving
the majority. The Athenians gave up the Potidaean dead under truce, and erected
their trophy. The loss of the Potidaeans and their allies in the battle was
nearly three hundred,—the Athenians lost 150 and Callias their commander.
The
Athenians were now able to shut off the city by a wall across the isthmus
northwards, but did not consider themselves strong enough to divide their
forces to construct and guard another on the side of Pallene ; an additional
force however of sixteen hundred hoplites soon arrived from home, under
Phormion son of Asopius, who landed at Aphytis on the eastern coast of Pallene;
he advanced slowly towards Potidaea, laying waste the country as he went, and
finding that the provocation produced no sortie, constructed without
interruption the counter-wall on this side which, together with the cruising
fleet, made the investment of the city as complete as accidents of weather and
the seas admitted.
1 Diodorus,
who strangely misarranges these incidents,
mentions
as contemporaneous the foundation by the Athenians of the city Letanus on the
Propontis, respecting which further information is required.
Ultimate
or even prolonged resistance was now hopeless for the Potidaeans apart from help
from Peloponnesus, or, as Thucydides interposes—apparently with the plague of
Athens in mind—some accident out of all reasonable expectation. Aristeus
therefore counselled, with a view to spare consumption of food, that an
opportunity should be seized when the wind was favourable for ships to quit the
city and adverse to the cruising squadron, for all the troops but five hundred
to get away, he himself volunteering to share the greater peril by being one to
remain. Failing to gain acceptance for this measure, he resorted as the next
alternative to an endeavour to give the best turn possible to affairs without;
he succeeded in eluding the Athenian guardships, and reaching the Chalcidians,
carried on war as he could, by one successful ambush especially near the city
Sermylion, and at the same time set in motion applications for succour from
Peloponnesus. Phormio on his part with his sixteen hundred lioplites
devastated Chalcidice and Bottice—within rather indeterminate limits,—and
captured sundry towns. Aristeus was destined to a bad end soon after the
outbreak of the general war;—intercepted in Thrace when conducting a mission to
solicit the aid and interference of Persia, he was carried to Athens and on his
arrival fell a victim unheard to popular revenge for past and dread of future
mischief, and was cast out unburied, professedly in reprisal for his part in
like merciless treatment by the Spartans, of the crews of some captured 1
merchantmen.
The battle
of Potidaea dates about the end of October, 432 B.C. little more than six
months after the great sea-fight at Corcyra; within six months more, in the
ensuing spring, was to occur the decisive outbreak of the Peloponnesian war.
The
Corinthians had now changed places with the Athenians or something more. When
they had taxed the Athenians for protecting a colony against a metropolis which
it repudiated as such, and to which it had certainly never held itself hound
for tribute or contribution, they had especially appealed to the sanctioned
rule that the head of a confederation might impose restraint on its
subordinates. They were now themselves abetting and aiding by armed assistance
the contumacy of a subordinate city of which the accepted obligations to a
superior were beyond question. Still, even at the pass to which matters had
arrived, the position as between Athens and Corinth admitted of being treated,
at least diplomatically, as short of actual war ; setting aside what was
suspected, and even what both sides knew but neither wished to admit as positive
and known, the expedition of Aristeus might be regarded as neither emanating
from nor sanctioned by the state of Corinth, but as a private enterprise,—his
personal connections and influence having notoriously had so much concern in
it. The Athenians, had it really now been worth while, or had there been time,
might justly have demanded an account of connivance that was inconsistent with
the terms of alliance between friendly powers; but the expedition had resulted
in so serious a difficulty for the Corinthians, that no repudiation of it on
their part, had they been disposed to make it, would have helped them through
the difficulty. After the defeat at Corcyra it might have been possible for
them to forget past damage from considerations of prudence, but the loss and
danger that were impending for them at Potidaea, left them no alternative but
to disregard all conventions, and put in motion openly every influence they
could command, to bring down upon Athens the scourge of a general Dorian war.
B.C. 432 ; 01. 87. 1.
The net had closed round
Potidaea,—the fall of the city was a mere matter of time, if of time, and would
not only compromise most important material commercial interests at Corinth,
but it was impossible to anticipate what severe treatment might not follow for
the large number of Corinthians and Peloponnesians shut up there, to say
nothing of the Potidaeans themselves, in whom from connection and relationship
they had an interest almost as sensitive.
The
messages of Aristeus therefore were scarcely required to stimulate the
Corinthians in rousing the energies of Sparta from their seeming
insensibility;—seeming, for it is by no means to be inferred that the little we
hear of any direct agency of Sparta in agitating for this war, is due to their indifference
still less their repugnance to it. In any case, whether this hesitation were
due to mere inertia that was to be overcome, or to the reserve that will only
relax under a pressure which guarantees a certain tension of earnestness, the
Corinthians knew well that upon themselves must rest the task of rousing the
spirit and exciting the impatience or ambition of Dorian Hellas. They were
unwearied therefore in urging the joint allies to support their own envoys at
Sparta, in clamour against the imputed infractions by Athens of the terms of
the treaty and the injuries inflicted by her on Peloponnesians, and at last
were rewarded with
success.
At last the Lacedaemonians—after due indulgence of taciturnity—made the first
overt step to re-asserting their claim to the headship of general Hellas, from
which they had so signally receded by the terms of the thirty years' peace, and
announced that they were prepared to entertain complaints against Athens not
only from the parties to their own proper confederacy but from 1
whencesoever, from malcontents therefore also among the Athenian confederates.
To this class belonged the Aeginetans, who, besides being galled at their
severance from the general body of Dorian states, among which they had once
held proud position, may probably have experienced exceptionally harsh
treatment as ancient enemies of Athens. They could only set forth their
grievances and aspirations secretly, but did so with no unimportant effect,
whatever may have been the truth of their averment that the autonomy of which
they were deprived had been stipulated for in the treaty; to this class also
belonged the Aeolian Lesbians, who, perhaps still earlier, had applied to
Sparta to abet them in 2 revolt. Aristophanes even avers that cities
subject to Athens, galled by the pkoros and apparently apprehensive of
increased burdens, gave large bribes to leading Spartans to influence them in
favour of 3 war. According to Thucydides, the Lacedaemonians heard
the public statements and complaints in their usual assembly, and amongst the
rest in order, one from the Megarians, who, in addition to other matters of
dispute by no means trifling, alleged as an especial violation of the terms of
the peace by the Athenians, not merely now the prohibition of their commodities,
but the exclusion or rather expulsion of their citizens from the market of
Athens and from all ports under her dominion.
The
Corinthians last of all, after permitting these charges to have their full
inflammatory effect, came forward to announce a positive resolution that
clenched the agitation.
The
oration assigned to them breathes from beginning to end a tone of outspoken,
warning discontent; ‘ the present sufferings of Hellas from the preponderance
of the Athenians which have just been listened to, they say are all due to the
past remissness of Lacedaemon which first permitted the restoration of their
city walls, and then in spite of remonstrances and representations, the raising
of the Long Walls, and now calls us together to consider whether we are
injured, which ought to be plain enough, instead of how we are to be
protected.’ They taunt the Lacedaemonians with overlooking at the present time
the inordinate growth of a hostile power under their very eyes,—with a
negligence still more absurd than when formerly, in spite of timely warning,
they allowed the Mede to arrive from the extremity of the earth at their doors
before rousing for defence; that the Mede failed after all was mainly due to
his own blunders,—‘to his tripping himself up,’—an allusion it would seem to
the disablement of Mardonius by the desertion of Artabazus, and in disparagement
of the Dorian victory of Plataea; no thanks again were due to Sparta for the
rescue which came about through the mismanagement of the Athenians themselves
and the incaution of Tolmides; while in certain cases,—the reference was
apparently to Thasos and perhaps to Aegina,— hopes of aid from Sparta had been
encouraged only to be falsified at last, and to deliver those, who in reliance
on them, were otherwise unprepared, to utter ruin.
The
contrast between Athens and Sparta in respect of genius and policy is set forth
in terms that are almost sarcastic. The Athenians,—so the historian represents
the Corinthians as declaring,—are habitual innovators and as rapid in putting
their plans into effect as in conceiving them; daring even disproportionately
to their power, adventurous in the teeth of their own reason, admitting no
hesitation in delay of action, and ever prepared to leave home with alacrity
for foreign enterprise; sanguine under
whatever
difficulties, always making the most of a victory and yielding in the very
slightest degree to discouragement under a defeat; £ they exert all
the powers of their minds for the good of their city as bound most strictly to
its service by native ties, and imperil life and limb on its behalf with as
much indifference as if they were risking only those of others, —of helots, it
may be, or perioeci. With them the nonattainment of an object counts as a
positive loss, and any acquisition is regarded as a trifle relatively to
something more important thereafter; even in case of a disaster they
immediately conceive other hopes instead which make up for it; for with them
alone,—so rapidly does commencement of action ensue upon a resolution,—to covet
is one and the same thing as to take possession. In this way amidst labours and
perils they toil their whole lives through, and are so constantly engaged in
acquiring as to leave the very least time for enjoyment of what they possess,
regarding, as they do, activity upon duty as their real holiday, and unbusied
tranquillity more of an infliction than labour and occupation; insomuch that
he would rightly characterise them who should say of them in brief, that they
are born neither to be quiet themselves nor to permit the rest of the world to
be quiet.’ The Lacedaemonians on the other hand are rebuked not merely by
implications but with much plain speaking,—for their indifference to anything
beyond the merest conservatism, their slowness to recognise the force of the
soundest arguments and adopt a decision, or to make a clearly necessary
exertion and one worthily commensurate with their real power; with their
unwillingness to incur any ' risk of loss and their inability to banish apprehension
of a constantly impending danger, as if,—so it seems to be implied,—the trouble
from the revolt of the helots was not now fairly at an end ; in fine, with
their general sluggish and obsolete home-keeping habits and policy.
But the
sting of the arguments of the Corinthians lay in VOL. ii. a a
their last
words;—{It is now high time,’ they said, ‘that tardiness should be
renounced once for all; let the Lacedaemonians be true forthwith to the promise
which they have given to the Potidaeans, and to others also, by invading
Attica, and not abandon men who are united to them by friendship and by blood
to those who are also their own greatest enemies, nor drive the rest of us
unwillingly, but, deserted as we find ourselves, excusably before Gods and men,
to seek another alliance and attach ourselves where we cannot feel equal
sympathy or have ties as sacred. On these points deliberate well and resolve to
maintain a leadership of Peloponnesus not less important than as it was delivered
to you by your fathers.’
It is not
easy to understand this threat as of other import, than that the Corinthians
might be driven by urgency of their position, relatively to the policy and acts
of Athens, to encourage the Argives to reassert their always existing claim to
the headship of Peloponnesus in place of Sparta. That they contemplated the
possibility of making terms with Athens for alliance is not to be thought of.
It is to Argos that they do resort and transfer their alliance and that of the
other Peloponnesians, when the zeal of the Lacedaemonians for the war slackens
in its eleventh year after the death of 1 Brasidas.
The
characterisation of the Athenians which is contained in their speech, is no
doubt open to suspicion as anticipatory in some points and introduced a little
out of place by Thucydides, for the sake of securing its early expression in
his history; the years immediately preceding the speech seem to illustrate it
much less pointedly than those which follow; but on the other hand, it may be
accepted as representing the conviction of the Corinthians, that Athens was
indeed on the point of resuming activity and aggression, and had
given
signs of doing so. Indeed they boldly point to Athenian action at Corcyra and
Potidaea as proof of snch a preconceived design; though as we read Thucydides,
they are taking a liberty with the understandings of their hearers or their
political ignorance, inasmuch as Corinth herself was the first mover of both
these conflicts. That she did so move however in the first instance does not
absolutely contravert her thesis; preparations that place a jealous or
suspectedly jealous enemy in a position to be wantonly offensive whenever he
chooses, can scarcely but be admitted as a challenge, —sometimes equivalent to
an overt act of offence,—though it may or may not be prudent to notice and is
usually a gross mistake to respond to it.
It
happened, the historian proceeds, that Athenian envoys were at this time at
Sparta on other business, and at their own request they were admitted to make a
counter representation ; they declined, we are told, to consider themselves
called on to make a defence before the Lacedaemonians in respect of particular
charges that might have been brought together against their city from various
quarters; but they seized the opportunity while setting forth the past-
services of Athens to Hellas, to remind of what exertions she had been capable,
and at the same time to convey an impressive intimation of her present power
and the strength of her position, and her determination to maintain it at all
hazards.
The speech
assigned to them embraces in consequence scarcely more particular reference to
the complaints that were agitated among her own allies than had been made by
the Corinthians, but it adverts to the undoubted prevalence of discontents,
for the details and animus of which,—so necessary to be borne in mind at this
crisis,—we are driven to look to other sources of information.
Among
these there are few more instructive and interesting than the tract by an
unknown author on the ‘ Polity of the Athenians,’ which from a superficial
resemblance to the . a a 2
‘ Polity
of the Lacedaemonians * by Xenophon, got caught among that author’s works and
has been floated with them safely over waters that engulfed mueh more of more
pretension. It contains sufficient indications to carry it back to the time
when Athens still enjoyed the sway which had been consolidated by Pericles and
was at the present time in question, although it seems to date after his death
and when meaner men were in the ascendant. It cannot in any case be later than
414 B.C. when the particular system of taxation that it alludes to as still
existing was changed. The satirical drift to which the composition owes its
value as a summary of grievances, is declared in the opening paragraph, and is
pursued throughout with vivacity and wit together with some ingeniously
equivocal candour, that together have sorely bewildered the clumsy erudition of
at least one commentator.
‘ I have
no praise to give to the Athenians,’ says the writer, ‘for the choice of their
particular form of polity, inasmuch as it is equivalent to a choice that the
rascals shall enjoy prosperity at the expense of the honest men; but I will
make it clear that such having once been their election, they are in fact
admirably promoting the security of this polity all the time that they seem to
the rest of the Greeks to be only blundering.’
Some of
the testimony that ensues is so distinctly honourable to at least the sagacity
and activity of the Athenians, that it lends itself to interpretation as not
intended otherwise ; such is the exposition of their universal acquirement of
nautical skill in constant expeditions upon public service or to private
possessions out of Attiea; of the advantage derived from their maritime
preponderance for acquisition and administration of extended sway, and of the
extraordinary influx of wealth which resulted from free interchange with the
most extensive variety of markets ; testimony this to qualities that only an
enemy thinks it reasonable to decry as the shrewdness of knavery. Again, the
imputations of the
writer
turn on some points of oligarchical repugnance that no doubt contributed
considerably to the prejudice against the Athenians, but tell in truth not
slightly to their honour. Slaves who at Lacedaemon stood in awe not of their
own masters alone but exhibited abject deference to all other freemen, were
allowed at Athens what the author regards as offensive independence, were
indulged as an encouragement to productive labour, with even more than comfort,
and in dress and general appearance were so little distinguishable from the
ordinary citizen, that a man who should have no thought whatever beyond simply
ill-treating a slave, was liable to get into serious trouble by finding that he
had struck a citizen. The airs and assumptions permitted to freed slaves and
metics —resident aliens—which would be entirely to the honour of the Athenians,
even though their motive were solely to encourage sources of mercantile profit
and public revenue, are spoken of with like unqualified disgust.
• A different view from the writer’s may
also be taken of the participation which he carps at, of the demus at large, in
feasts and festivals and distributions at the sacrifices, all at the public
expense, and of their enjoyment of a large and beautiful city, and use of such
gymnasia and baths as only a few rich could afford from private resources.
Finally,
the admission is very considerable, that if the maintenance of the democracy is
to be assumed—and the writer himself excuses the demus for the assumption, ‘
for it is allowable' for every one to take care of himself —it is not easy to
suggest what improvement the administration of it admitted unless in some
trifling changes here and there.
The case
for democracy is supposed no doubt to be thus reduced to an absurdity, but
party and prejudice apart, the suspicion is not to be repressed, that the case
for an oligarchy might fare as ill with an equally ill-disposed interpreter,
and indeed that any oligarchical example that Greece ever provided, would
certainly fare still worse. More pertinent
hints are
supplied as to the openings for abuse, that are to account for the discontent
of the allies under the empire of Athens; but when we consider how the
conditions of the time rendered serious abuses inevitable in any case, and compound
for exaggerations, we shall look among them in vain for justification of such
an outbreak as was now relied on to repress them at the risk of infinitely worse.
The
Athenians are 1 charged with systematically and in the spirit of
partisans depressing the wealthy in the allied cities, who are referred to as
identical with the * honesti men or
* the worthy,’ from conviction that power
in the possession of this better class would speedily be turned against the
authority of Athens ; they therefore fine, banish, and execute them, it is
affirmed, for behoof of the base or rascally party, —the poor in fact;—and so a
city is ruined because its improvement in tax-paying power is thought of less
consequence than its disablement from conspiring by reduction to poverty,—to
barest necessaries for living and working, especially as individual Athenians
grew rich meantime by the spoliation.
It was in
pursuance of the same policy that the allies were subjected to another great
grievance, the obligation to carry all their disputes at law before the courts
at Athens. By this means some of the most important aflairs of the allies were
retained under home control, and the same leading purpose of always favouring
the demus was kept in view, and any disposition in the subject city to do even
justice to parties ill-disposed towards Athens, and much more to favour them,
was countervailed. Then additional advantages from this policy accrued to the
Athenians, in the fees of the court and its officers, the duties payable at the
Piraeus, an increased demand for lodging and for services of hired-out slaves,—
and not least the gratifying accession of importance to every
citizen
however humble, from the salutations and solicitations with which he was beset
by the litigants when proceeding to discharge his duty as a juryman. It is
highly noteworthy here that the writer recognises a security for honesty, and
impediment to bribery, in the numerousness of the juries, and deprecates
reduction of their numbers; and he 1 admits, moreover, that if the
suits were conducted at home, the friends of Athens would have no fairer
treatment than her enemies met with at Athens.
In any
case however it is easy to see what opening was afforded by the universal
social conditions, for intrigue and injustice, and Aristophanes gives help to
realise the wantonness, and corruption, and caprice, that doubtless too often
trespassed on the domains of aweful justice.
Delay is
specified as a great aggravation of the worst mischiefs of the system; the
pamphleteer professes to candidly admit that bribery would sometimes quicken a
process, but avers at the same time that no possible amount of bribery would
remedy this evil; the business hours and days were quite inadequate for the
administration as organised, to get through its work. How could it be otherwise
in a city, which in the first place kept more public festivals than any other
Greek 2 city, indeed at least twice as 3 many, and then
had its, own multifarious business to conduct besides, of war revenue, and
legislation, daily domestic and foreign incidents, and so on through a long and
diversified enumeration, and on the top of all undertook to settle more
law-suits than occurred in all the rest of the world together.
It is
remarkable that throughout this series of invidious charges against the
Athenian demus, no reference is made to the oppressiveness of the assessed
contributions, or to apprehensions as to the amount being raised. Enough
however and more than enough is set forth to shrewdly illustrate the
general
irritability that the Athenian envoys do not pretend to deny as existing under
Athenian domination.
To return
to their speech ; it is probably more characteristic of Lacedaemon than of
Hellas generally at this period, that the young men among their audience are
assumed by them to be ignorant to an extraordinary degree as to leading
particulars of the stirring events of only fifty years before.
Repudiating
then any obligation to justify themselves to the Lacedaemonians as if they were
before a legitimate court, or to do more than make a passing reflection on the
inconsistent perversity of the malcontents, the envoys set forth the
obligations of Hellas to Athens in the repulse of the Mede, at Marathon, at
Salamis, and in the later liberation of Ionia; Athens provided the largest
number of ships, and the genius of Themistocles,S whose merits as commander had
had special recognition at Sparta, and sustained their zeal to the end, when
for any aid that the Laccdaemonians could or would have rendered, general ruin
was inevitable. They had earned and merited their empire, and were bound by
every consideration not merely of interest, but of honour, and most of all by
requirements of security and self-preservation to hold and maintain it. The
abuses charged against them were no more than the natural and inevitable
incidents of empire, and far milder than would be suffered from others in their
place; they claimed credit for a moderation that had been by no means
experienced from the Lacedaemonians formerly, and would not be again in case of
their succession to power, to say nothing of what had been endured under the
Mede. The very outcry that had risen against them was argument of this
moderation, for it never could have gained such head unless encouraged by
Athenian indulgence of complaint. So with reference to the grievance which wras
made of Athenian litigiousness, it originated entirely in the freedom with
which resort to law was conceded in cases that under other governments would
be settled arbitrarily; the veiy men who would
submit
tamely to the injustice of a superior, are perversely ready to raise a clamour
as if injured, and as by an equal, intolerably, when a decision goes against
them after they have enjoyed full liberty of pleading on equal terms.
‘ The
strong,’ they pursued, ‘ always do and always must govern the weak; and it is
our belief moreover that we deserve to rule, and the Lacedaemonians have
admitted as much, who only now on a calculation of advantage, put forward and
press upon us the plea of justice which never yet diverted any one from an
advantage that he was able to assert by might. We Athenians gained our empire
in the first instance by desert, have administered it with as much moderation
as can be expected from human nature, and claim to be entitled to enjoy it
without grudge ;—in the cases when discontents and even defections occurred, we
could not renounce control over our allies without danger; to do so would have
been to make over at once so much power to already unfriendly Sparta. Sparta,
by the genius of her native institutions, is incompetent to take the place of
Athens; and has good reason to remember how little, formerly and ever, her commanders
when away from home have been given to respect those institutions or indeed any
restriction whatever.
* Finally, war is a very serious and a very
uncertain matter, and usually terminates after much suffering in negotiations
which might as well have come first. Let differences then, be decided
judicially as was stipulated by the treaty, and do not be hurried hastily by
persuasions and complaints of others, into mischief all your own;—otherwise, we
take the Gods of ratifying oaths to witness, that if you are first to enter
upon war, we will defend ourselves with our best energy in the course where you
set us the example.’
The
veteran king Archidamus is represented as counselling delay to raise money and
prepare for war, or still better negotiations, and reference to preclude its
necessity; but after all, it could not but weigh that in the meantime the
siege of
Potidaea was going on and might be concluded ; and the Ephor Sthenelaidas
clenched the matter in a few overbearing words.
c I fail to
understand the prolix speech of the Athenians, for amidst an abundance of
self-laudation, I observe no trace of a denial of their injurious conduct
towards our allies and the Peloponnesus; as regards their having acquitted themselves
well formerly against the Mede, on that very ground they are in fact deserving
of double punishment as not being simply bad, but as having moreover lapsed
from the better; as for ourselves we are the same now that we always have been,
and if we continue right-minded, shall not connive at our allies being
wrongfully dealt with, nor admit delay in succouring them; there is no question
of delay in the ill- treatment they are being subjected to. Our opponents no
doubt have abundant money, ships, and horses, but we on our side have good
allies, and are bound not to betray them to the Athenians. And it is not to
legal processes and words that we have to resort, to afford protection against
wrongs which are anything in the world but matters of words; but wTe
are called on to redress them with all speed, and by exertion of our full
power. And let none pretend to teach us that it is becoming for us who have
received an injury, to proceed to deliberation ; on the contrary it is fitting
for those to deliberate, and for a long time too, who have in mind the
commission of an injury. Give your votes then, O Lacedaemonians, for war as
fits the dignity of Sparta, and do not permit the further aggrandisement of
Athens; and let us not be false to our allies, but with the gods to aid, make
onset on the 1 wrong-doers.’
Sparta
concludes with an appeal to divine approval and protection, as confidently as
the Athenians, and as unhesitatingly as the parties to any modern war. The
mockery so
far is on
a par between ancients and moderns, but where Sparta in her reverses could at
least recal how wantonly she had provoked the gods by declining the reference
of the dispute to arbitration, according to a treaty sanctioned by solemn 1
oaths, it scarcely appears that the vanquished of modern times accuse
themselves of more than imprudent and inopportune response to planned
provocation, however the victors in their self-complacency may afford to
derogate from the merits of superior numbers, discipline, and astuteness by
afterthoughts of piety or philanthropy.
Votes in
the Spartan assembly were given not by ballot but outcry; Sthenelaidas however,
who was desirous to commit the majority in favour of war as absolutely as
possible, professed himself unable to distinguish the preponderance of voices,
and bade those who were of opinion that the treaty had been dissolved by the
wrong-doing of the Athenians to move to one side, and those of the opposite
opinion to separate to the other. The majority for the breach of the treaty
was very large, and this vote no doubt was decisive of the question though not
expressly of the immediate declaration of war. When the allies were called in,
the public announcement was still only to the effect that in the opinion of
the Lacedaemonians the Athenians had done wrongfully, but that it was purposed
to convene the whole of the allies and take a general vote in order that war
might be undertaken, should it be so agreed 2 upon, after common
consultation.
The year
had already so far advanced beyond the season for military operations, that
this further delay might not seriously affect the views of the Corinthians, if
they could rely on the intention of the Spartans who were used to affect
hesitation when most resolved and when already prepared for sudden action. They
lost no time however in their anxiety to hurry on a decision that might still
save Potidaea,
by
canvassing the cities individually, and met with such response that when the
congress assembled, the majority united in complaints against the Athenians,
and voted as they had been solicited, for war. In the speech that Thucydides
ascribes to the Corinthians on this occasion, we have some further hints to
what an extent their extraordinary zeal was due to commercial considerations.
It seems clear that it is not merely to the inconveniences and loss that had
been inflicted on the Megarians, but to the like as not apprehended but already
experienced bitterly by themselves, and indeed by the maritime allies
generally, that they make allusion, when they warn the inland allies that the
mischief will speedily touch them quite as severely, by the check given to
their foreign trade and the obstacles to their receipt of imports in exchange.
The indication seems conclusive that whether correctly or not, the Corinthians
saw in the Megarian decree the first sign of an intention of the Athenians to
make their power of controlling commerce an instrument for promoting political
power; it was apprehended that the same spirit which had dictated the revision
of the census of Athenian citizenship for the benefit of the privileged
citizen, was now disposed to exclude competitors in foreign trade, and
establish within the Athenian confederacy a kind of commercial franchise to the
manifest detriment of the Dorian states, and most especially of commercial
Corinth. Athens, they declared, was a tyrant city, and no more to be tolerated
by Greeks than an individual tyrant in a city; it was now a question whether
cities still free were to be reduced to servitude by her, or to unite their
forces and by timely resistance and war secure a permanent and probably— so
blind are men!—a speedy peace. The loss of a single sea- fight might be fatal
-to Athens—did Thucydides write this with the fatal catastrophe of Aegospotamos
in mind ?—and in any case if the war lingered, between contributions and
credit, especially with the treasuries of Delphi and Olympia,
there were
abundant resources for equipping fleets and manning them by tempting away the
hired crews by which the navy of Athens was now in very large proportion
manned. Athens was assailable by land by an ejoiteickismus, or fortified post
on her own territory, and by defection of her allies, the great sources of her
revenue. War was become a necessity to assert the dignity of Dorians, the
freedom of Hellas, and enduring peace. The responsibility for the breach of
treaties rested with the Athenians—the God of Delphi approved their cause and
had promised success. Thucydides intimates that this last assertion lacked positive
confirmation; it is not impossible that he favoured a doubt from a lingering
tenderness for the oracle.
The debate
concluded, the Lacedaemonians collected the votes of the representatives of all
the cities large and small in order, and the majority—though a majority
only—decided for war, and war with no further delay than was necessary to
complete or advance preparations.
Negotiation
was now virtually at an end; expostulation, discussion, treaty were cast aside,
and the two sides of Hellas, the most advanced populations of the world, were
committed — common language and common sympathies notwithstanding, — to the
disgrace of renouncing the proper instruments of right and reason and resorting
for settlement of their differences to personal violence. Diplomacy in its
largest sense has its happiest but- most rarely exercised function in averting
war; but in this largest sense it includes far more than is concerned in any
direct negotiation. Wars have ever been numerous which the challenging power
would never have provoked, the challenged would never have accepted with rash
susceptibility and a light heart, had the certain cost been known beforehand
only to the extent that with reasonable power of interpretation might have been
and therefore ought to have been known. In these cases the charge of failure
lies with the diplomacy
and its
adjuncts that have failed to know or to succeed in communicating the relative
resources, and even approximately the height of resolution and standard of
military ‘skill and prowess of the parties to the quarrel. The mischief of
course lies still deeper in the body politic when the alternatives of peace and
war rest with a man 01* a class or a profession that loves war for its own sake
and is only too willing to embrace all its risks for the gambling chances of
fortune of war. The price to be paid for an advantage is then no consideration
whatever when it is coveted by one party that is resolved to obtain it at any
cost and held by another that had rather die and possibly had far better die
than surrender it. The centuries that have elapsed since the Peloponnesian war
have certainly not advanced the most cultivated sections of the world to
exemption from such liabilities even among themselves ; must we say with
Thucydides, and never will f while human nature remains the 1
same.’ Modern wars make up in frequency for a falling off in duration, while
the greed and the falsehoods and even the enslavements that prepare and
conclude them are in no degree less flagitious. It is a miserable consideration
that the most conspicuous result of the advance of science is to succeed in
crowding within a campaign of a few months or even weeks more crime and
slaughter than are extended so revoltingly through the years of the long-drawn
Peloponnesian war.
A certain
pretence of negotiation was still carried on by Sparta for the sake of giving
the fairest colour they could to the war, and for the possible chance also of
re-awakening faction and dissension at Athens, or blinding the more hopeful
there to the imminence of their danger and so checking preparation. A first embassy
summoned the Athenians to clear their city of the pollution incurred by the
ancient sacrilegious slaughter of the adherents of Cylon.
This guilt
was attached to the family of Alcmaeonids to which Pericles belonged, though
only by the mother’s side ; it was incurred in rash however patriotic zeal
against an attempt to establish a tyranny, and had been punished by banishment,
first by the Athenians independently, and again by a second expulsion of the
living who were inculpated and by ejection of the bones of the dead, when the
Lacedaemonian Cleomenes interfered in Athenian politics only to abet tyranny
again. It was futile now for the Lacedaemonians to hope that Athens would
deprive herself at their bidding, on such a pretext, of the leader from whom
they expected most resolute opposition ; it was much if they succeeded in
furnishing his enemies with a pretence to impute to him, as subject to charge
of sacrilege, the responsibility of the war. The recent outcry that had been
raised against him, the outrages he had been subjected to on the ground of
irreligion, might have encouraged this attempt; and indeed the Athenians by
their reply to it were self-convicted of hypocrisy and caprice in their recent
invidious proceedings. The Lacedaemonians only elicited the retorted challenge
to purify their own city from the pollution of slaughtered supplicants on
occasion of the death of Pausanias and revolt of the helots. Again it was
thought worth while to call upon the Athenians formally to raise the siege of Potidaea,
to restore the autonomy of Aegina, and, what was most insisted on, as the
matter on which the question of peace or war depended entirely, to repeal the
decree by which citizens of Megara were excluded from the market of Athens and
from all ports within her dominion. A general refusal was returned, but as
regarded the Megarians the charge was especially insisted on of their sacrilege
in cultivating certain land on their frontier towards Eleusis, that was
consecrated to the great goddesses—the opyas—as well as their unneighbourly harbouring
of fugitive slaves. This charge of sacrilege was probably, as we have seen, not
preferred now for the first
time, but
seems to have entered into the pretexts for the original hostile decree of
exclusion; it is only consistent with circumstances of this time or at most a
few months later, —when war had broken out,—that a direct summons upon this
matter was sent to Megara and on to Sparta by a herald, Anthemocritus,—a mode
of communication proper to a state of war. The message, which Plutarch appears
to have read in a psephism of Pericles, was expressed with studied mildness.
Pie never returned alive ; his death was charged upon the Megarians, and his
tomb, perhaps a cenotaph, was erected by the Thriasian gate fronting towards
Megara ; the war with Megara was declared to be heraldless, truceless, implacable
; an oath was imposed on the generals on assuming office to make two incursions
into their country yearly, and proof remains that for a certain time at least
the obligation was fulfilled and the Megarians reduced to the utmost distress
through privation of all produce from their territory ; death was denounced
against any Megarian discovered on Attic ground. The terms of this decree were
charged upon Pericles, though its ostensible promoter was Charinus.
Last of
all, three Lacedaemonian envoys whom Thucydides names as if otherwise
well-known, Rhamphius, Melesippus, and Agesander presented themselves, and
leaving aside all reference to former demands, made the blunt announcement of
the basis on which the quarrel was to be set and finally fought out;—c The Lacedaemonians are
desirous for the continuance of peace, and if you restore the Greeks to their
autonomy, peace there may be.’
A final
discussion was thus brought on at Athens, that embraced all contingencies and
all proposals, and especially the question of the Megarian decree by the repeal
of which some were even still so sanguine as to believe, or at least they
professed to believe, that all differences might be composed. The
considerations that were conclusive the other
way, are
given by Thucydides in a speech of Pericles. He resists still, as he had done
all along, the policy of the slightest concession; the first will only induce
greater demands, for war at last, in the disposition now manifested by the
Lacedaemonians, is inevitable. As to the progress and result of the war, he
does not extenuate its sacrifices or probable duration, but is sanguine as to
the result. Attica without the walls must no doubt be abandoned to devastation,
and all attempts renounced to protect it by a battle in open field; such a
sacrifice is as nothing compared to that of lives of citizens who will always
be able to replace it by wise employment of their special advantages; Athens has
a superiority at sea that will more than compensate by power of offence, has
exhaustless naval stores, has skilled native naval officers, and need not fear
seduction of her crews by invitations to contend against such odds; Athens has
superior wealth and the advantage of unity as against a confederation, in
giving coherence, persistency, and promptitude to action.
Thucydides
inserts in the speech a warning sentence that may perhaps be challenged as
representing the later reflection of the historian rather than an actual
apprehension of Pericles. The great danger of the Athenians, he says, is from
themselves not from their opponents, lest they should give way to a desire to
extend their dominion,—as in result they did in respect of Sicily so
fatally,—while the war is still going on, and bring upon themselves fresh
perils of their own seeking. It is however by no means impossible that a
tendency that so soon declared itself with such reckless energy may have
already announced itself as in their nature. The words are so far confirmatory
of some independent notices that Athens had already cast eyes of longing
towards Italy and Sicily, that we may so interpret the suggestions held out by
the Corcyraeans, and give some faith to the tradition which Plutarch records,
that the dissuasions of Pericles had
VOL. II. b b
been
employed to lay such restless projects to sleep. This view it will be perceived
at once confers increased significance upon the jealousies of Corinth, as
alarmed for her free if not exclusive use of western waters. The enquiry then
remains, no doubt, how it is that Thucydides should not have set down more
directly and distinctly a fact which was so important in its bearings.
The final
reply conveyed to the envoys,—again involving a retort,—was in terms that were
dictated by Pericles: * The Megarian decree shall be repealed at the same time
as the Lacedaemonians renounce the general xenelasia by which, in parallel and
uncontested consistency with treaties, they exclude from their own territory both
us and our allies; we are prepared to concede autonomy now to the cities, if it
was as autonomous that we held them at the time of making the treaty, and
whenever the Lacedaemonians shall permit their cities to enjoy autonomy at
their several wills and pleasures and without restriction to convenience of
their own. AYe are prepared, in agreement with the provisions of the treaty, to
submit to adjudication, and will not be the first to begin war, but against
those who do begin it, will stand on our defence.’ The unqualified control
which Sparta exercised over her perioeci—over the provincial townships of her
wide territory, which Athens here quotes as authorising her far wider
control,—was to be challenged again in parallel terms by Epaminondas when the crisis
of the fate of Sparta was hurried on by her jealous disallowance of the
supremacy of Thebes over the towns and cities of all 1 Boeotia.
Even so
communications were not broken off for a time, and took place still as if in a
state of peace, that is without the intervention of heralds, though with
caution and mistrust, for enough had already occurred to involve dissolution
of the treaty and afford ample pretext for resort to hostilities.
THE MEDEA OF EUHIPIDES.
B.C. 431; 01. 87. 1.
The Medea of Euripides was exhibited at the Greater Dionysia, at the end
of March or beginning of April 431 B.C. The representation falls therefore in
the midst of the excitement created by the hostile attitude and preparations
of Corinth, and by discussions as to the exclusion of the Megarians, not now
only as traders from the agora of Athens, but from all ports and marts under
Athenian control, and from Athens and Attica under any circumstances, upon pain
of death. Peculiar interest therefore will attach to the play should it prove
to bear the manifest impress of reference to feelings that could not but be
generated amidst such heat;— should we find that Euripides, it matters not
whether deliberately or instinctively, seized a great opportunity to treat a
special theme that could never be so keenly appreciated as at a time of such
specially exalted sensibilities ; that he was equal in fact to what his enemy
Aristophanes indicates as the recognised function of a tragedian at Athens,
—the wholesome education of public political sentiment; a function the even too
inartificial discharge of which in other dramas, is his vindication from the
indifference to public interests, with which the same enemy is so shameless as
to charge him.
b b 2
Time has
been more indulgent to Euripides, than to Aeschylus and Sophocles, in so far
that nineteen or twenty of his dramas have been spared, against only seven for
each of the great tragedians with whom he comes naturally into comparison and
competition. Even so his preserved works bear but small proportion to what has
perished; for the plays of Euripides which are recorded as in the hands of
ancient critics numbered between seventy and eighty. It would be strange indeed
if no inequalities were observable among works produced in such prolific abundance;
differences are manifest among the dramas of the elder tragedians, differences
in finish and scope and even in style, although it is probable that we possess
more than a fair average of their masterpieces. Allowance must therefore be
made in all fairness for the probability that among the larger number of
Euripides such inequalities must be still more salient; certainly his
reputation would have been the gainer, had seven selected plays survived alone
in this case also; let us say—Ion, Hippolytus, Iphigeneia in Aulis, Iphigeneia
in Tauris, The Bacchae, Aleestis, and Medea.
Born it
was believed on the very day of Salamis, his earliest production of a drama is
dated—with some uncertainty however—in his twenty-fifth year, in the 8ist
Olympiad, 456 B.C., when he gained the third prize. From this time onward he
exhibited perseveringly through a period which covers all the most important
years of the supremacy of Pericles, and extended again beyond it. Sophocles,
who began thirteen years earlier, was his greatest rival, and with superior
success throughout; but he had many others, and it is matter of wonder that the
prizes recorded as assigned to him, should be so few, and those so constantly
the inferior. It is difficult to set aside the suspicion that this seeming want
of appreciation, implies that he was on some account an object of popular
disfavour, and treated with scant justice accordingly. This is the more
conceivable when we regard
the
traditions of his life, and after turning to his works, examine how far the
disparaging or scurrilous reflections of his contemporaries appear really
justified.
All
accounts agree that personally he was a retired, reserved man, immersed in
books of which he had a remarkable collection, harsh and even morose in the
expression of opinions, with the independence that comes naturally as the sense
of superiority grows upon a student, and soured moreover by the misconduct of
two wives in succession,—of one of them after she had borne him several
children. The expression of his well-known bust, is as remarkably in
accordance with these characteristics as that of Sophocles with his ascribed
serenity of mind and temper under any circumstances 1 whatever.
There is
much appearance that the notorious domestic misfortunes of Euripides had been
interpreted on some occasion as giving edge to reflections on the sex, which,
bitter enough sometimes no doubt, need not have been keener or more bitter than
he was wont to bestow on other classes. The satire caught at as prompted by
personal experience, pointed an ill-natured jest as to his inveterate
woman-hating, and so would easily become established as part of the stock of
the comoedian, who was never scrupulous as to delicacy or justice when his
purposes required a butt. What excuse for such a slur is deducible from the
numerous extant tragedies of Euripides, is but qualified and equivocal, and it
is contradicted indeed by their most salient characteristic, replete as they
are with the most pathetic and withal the noblest feminine idealisations. When
we remember Macaria, Alcestis, Phaedra, Iphigeneia, Medea, we can think of no
other Greek but the poet of Andromache and Helen, of Briseis, Nausicaa,
Calypso, Penelope, as possessed of equal sympathy with the fund of blended
tenderness and heroism,
that is in
feminine nature, or an equal compassionate sense of the aberrations to which it
is liable, and of its susceptibility of suffering under the stings of roused
or disappointed passion. Never assuredly has the latter sense been known to
characterise the dulness and bigotry that constitute a mere vulgar misogynist.
The conditions of womanhood at Athens were too unnatural and unfair not to
react unhappily upon feminine society, but the severest denunciation of the consequent
corruption only enhances the beauty of natures that are set forth for our
tenderness and admiration. AVhen we turn from these creations it is revolting
to have to attend to the imputations on the delicacy of the poet that issue
from the slanderous and impure lips of the author of the Lysistrata; it is with
scarcely less repugnance that we find Aristophanes condoned for all his
grossness and worse, and not even for the sake of his better moments, his
imagination and his wit, but exalted as a moralist and guide by modern
philosophisers, to say nothing of tutors and divines, on the very ground of his
correction of the influence of Euripides. This prejudice might probably never
have been so carefully fostered, but that it served to reinforee the position
of those who eould only understand the conservation of the antique virtues as
bound up with antique ignorance and error; and inconsistent as it may seem,
presaged the loosening of all moral restraints in the family to ensue from
satiric denunciations of the monstrous immoralities of Olympus.
Euripides
was held up to prejudice as a fellow worker with Socrates and Anaxagoras, and
with a true, but withal an honourable basis of reasonableness ; through the
medium of fictitious characters and situations with equal dexterity and daring,
though covered now by eloquence and now by lyric brilliancy, he made the widest
possible public aware what questions were being agitated around them, and
warned a community which was readily alarmed at some innovations while standing
on its pride of intellectuality, of problems
which it
would be necessary to face before long. Terse paradoxes pointed by application
to visible dilemmas, sent away his audience with matter for thought and lessons
in humility also, from which as so presented they would find it hard to escape.
The prevailing tone of so many of his dramas makes it clear that neither
ridicule nor popular disfavour diverted him from his chosen course; and the
story is quite in harmony with his general spirit, that when the theatre once
rose in outcry at some startling sentence, he came boldly forward and told the
people that they were there to be taught, and not to presume to teach him as to
what he knew far 1 better.
There is
no reason to doubt, even apart from some recorded instances, that Euripides as
a competitor with Sophocles, must have produced his plays in trilogies, in sets
of threes, whatever may have been the usual principle of their sequence and
dependence. We have already considered the Aeschylean trilogies; the
connections of some of the preserved plays of Sophocles,—so I have convinced
myself,—may be established as satisfactorily, and only so can the moral
enunciations of some of them be vindicated and explained; they are excluded
however by date from our present consideration; if this be so, and I must
assume it here, we may well believe that many a play of Euripides as we have it
disjoined from an original organism, carries but a truncated purpose, and would
require for full appreciation to be reunited to its proper introduction or
sequel.
The Medea
is known to have been the first of a tetralogy of which we have scattered
notices, but from which it survives alone; the titles as preserved are, —
Medea; Philoctetes; Dictys; Theristai (messores), a satyric play. On this
occasion the first prize was adjudged to Euphorion, son of Aeschylus, who
produced a play of his father’s;
Sophocles
obtained the second, and on no occasion did he ever take a lower place; it
surprises us, after recognition of the wonderful union of beauty and power in
the Medea, to find that Euripides stood last. Such an assignment provokes the
question whether the judges were not swayed by feeling, which in their case may
certainly have been quite as natural and could hardly be more gross than
perverts the modern criticism of Schlegel. That party feeling of some kind
clung to the Medea when it was first produced is sufficiently in evidence. 1A
scholiast gives a tradition that the poet was charged with having received five
talents from the Corinthians, for relieving them from the odium of having
killed the children and shifting it upon the mother. But this supposed
obnoxious version of the story, so far from being repudiated was actually
recognised by the Corinthians themselves, and consecrated by their public
monuments and 2 celebrations. If Euripides avoided it, no doubt he
did so for good poetical reasons of his own, and that which he adopted was not
his own invention but had currency 3already.
The value
and interest of the tradition lies in the point, that in any case it carries an
implication of a certain feeling against the poet, for being over indulgent in
one way or other to the Corinthians, at a time when the Athenians had so much
reason to be incensed against them. The audience may doubtless have expected,
not unreasonably, that an opportunity so obvious would not be lost at such a
time for presenting the most offensive aspect of the mythical murder, wThich
the Corinthians themselves admitted they were bound to mourn for and expiate by
periodical ceremonies. But a poet docs not usually care to be divined ; and
Euripides especially was wont to obtain his effects rather by shocking than
satisfying an expectation. Medea adverts to the fatal rancour that the children
would aby from the * Corinthians,
1 On v. 9. 2 Paua. ii.
3. 5. 8 Arist. Rhet. ii. 23.
4 Medea, vv. 1056-1236.
for it is
to these that she refers and not to Jason, as supposed by Schlegel, in
indulgence of a prejudice; but the thought seems to find utterance merely as a
wild palliation of her own passion, a touch of nature like Othello’s momentary
selfpersuasion that he is bound to kill Desdemona ‘ lest she should betray
more men/ There was enough independent poetical value in this, to absolve from
a necessity to assume a suggestion in passions of political bearing. That these
however were not unattended to will become apparent I believe, when we
consider what intense and poignant feelings, what hardships and heartburnings
had been induced precisely at this time by the peremptory expulsion of the
Megarian allies of Corinth from Attica; the interests and ties of long
residence, and family connection of natives of the nearest conterminal state of
Athens,—induced of necessity if only by closest and constant commercial
intercourse,—could not but be most intimate and numerous, and were now suddenly
disrupted; the children of mixed marriages with Megarians being probably shown
no more mercy than others. The considerable party that in opposition to
Pericles, and professedly in sanguine hope of preserving peace, made strenuous
endeavours to obtain the cancelment of the decree, would assuredly take care
that the evils past and to come, which they ascribed to it, were kept through
all these months as vividly as possible before the public mind.
The theme
of the play is in truth an exhibition of the rancorous feelings of enmity and
revenge that are of necessity generated by such a measure; it opens with an
aggravation of the miseries of the deserted Medea by the notice of the
Corinthian Creon, that she and her children are to vacate the territory
instantly under pain of death. The moral is not unqualified by hints of
provocation given by the extruded victim, and then of the danger of allowing
her, exasperated and of such suspected nature as she is, to remain,—danger even
from the short respite of a day. On the other hand
the great
spring of her exasperation is shown to reside unequivocally in the injustice of
her enemies. The interchanges of right and wrong seem therefore inextricably
involved, and misery is distributed at last almost equally in every direction.
As regards
a satisfying moral drift, the play is, as its position in the trilogy
indicates, an introduction rather than a solution. What this might have been,
it were but an exercise of ingenuity to endeavour to recover with any pretence
to certainty or precision, by study of the fragments of the lost plays and
comparison of recorded forms of the fables, though it is not easy to withhold
from some general speculation.
The
Philoctetes seems to have presented the healing by reconciliation of a breach
of much the same nature as is hopelessly angry in the Medea, a reconciliation
effected by Ulysses, who not unaided by divine interposition, countervails the
appeals of the Phrygian envoys to the vindictive passion of the so deeply
injured hero. In the Dietys, Danae, who as exposed to destruction by relatives
together with her infant child, repeats a motive of the Medea, is consoled by
the hospitable Dietys for the absence of Perseus as if he were already dead,
though he doubtless reappeared and triumphed. Danae, who drifted helplessly on
the sea, with the nursling who was destined to such high deeds and happy
fortune, is certainly in striking contrast to the fierce Medea carried through
the air with the bleeding corpses of her children slain by her own hands in
spite and passion; and it is difficult to think that the punishment of
Corinthian Creon for his cruel and summary expulsion of Medea was not
contrasted with the rewards of Dietys, who protects the exposed and expelled
Danae and Perseus.
The
satyric play comprised some episode or version of the story of Theseus and the
Minotaur, in which he stands much in the same relation to the deserted
benefactress Ariadne as
Jason to
Medea. It may be remarked that the diplomatic reservation of Aegeus, who will
undertake to protect Medea against any enemies when she presents herself as a
refugee at Athens, but declines to be an aggressor against Corinth on her
behalf, seems curiously to reflect the qualified terms on which the Athenians
undertook to protect Corcyra while still hoping to keep treaties with Corinth
uninfringed. Such a significant motive might have masked originally the inartificiality
of this episode, which has been taxed by critics from Aristotle downwards.
The
characteristics of the Athens of this period, with which Hellas at large might
have many a just quarrel, but of which she was meanly jealous instead of being
justly proud, find worthily beautiful expression in the lines of the chorus :—
1 Happy from of old are the Erechtheidai; children they of
the happy gods and fostered on the noblest art from a land sacred and
undevastated, as they move ever delightfully through brightest aether; there
where it is told that on a time yellowhaired Harmonia produced the nine
unsullied Pierian muses; and ’tis averred that Cypris quaffing the waters of
fair flowing Cephisus, breathes upon the land the temperate sweetly breathing
airs of the winds; and ever dressing her locks with wreaths of roseate blooms
despatches the Loves, the assessors of skilfulness, as helpers and aids for
excellence of all kinds
1 whatsoever.’
This might
seem to have been written to rival a very celebrated passage in the Oedipus
Coloneus of Sophocles, which would then be dated much earlier than is usual;
indeed a not unplausible argument may be combined in favour of this view,
though it cannot be allowed a place here.
1 Medea, 824-843.
THE THEBAN ATTEMPT ON PLATAEA.—OPEN WAR.—THE END.
B.C. 431 ;
01. 87. I.
The pertinacious
hostility of the Corinthians is constantly in the foreground throughout the
preliminary agitations against Athens, but we must not lay upon them too
exclusively the responsibility of the war. That rancour as inveterate was
especially shared and zealously seconded by the Thebans is soon to become
apparent, though they escape mention hitherto unless as contributories along
with many others to the attack on Corcyra; as the war goes on wre
find that the Boeotians are the zealpus promoters of the revolt of the 1
Lesbians, who, more nearly related to them by race than to the Athenians, were
naturally disposed rather to fight on their side than under compulsion against
them. We have the frank avowal of Thucydides that the agitators were justly
conscious of a general discontent among the allies of Athens at the rigour of
her supreme control, and especially of a growing apprehension among the states
that were still exempt from it—of which Chios and Lesbos wTere the
chief now remaining—that the tenure of their autonomy was from day to day precarious,
and was certain at last, under one pretext or provocation or another, to follow
that of the Samians, Thasians, Naxians, and
Aeginetans.
Already before the outbreak of the war the Lesbians had sounded the
Lacedaemonians, though without effect, as to what support might be yielded to
them in a 1 revolt. Along with these feelings of injury and natural
alarm there was doubtless also a base alloy of envy at the marvellous and
unrivalled advance of a single city in so short a time. Greece certainly would
not be Greece, human nature would not be human nature as it has existed, and
whether corrigible or not is existing hitherto, if this were not so ; such a
spirit we have observed as being too often rife among the Athenians themselves,
and it was now to visit their community disastrously from without. Still there
were doubtless abundant real grievances in the imperial, the imperious system
established by Athens, such as the Greek of the time unfortunately knew no
better, and indeed no other way of contending with than by fighting; and below
all throughout Greece and fostering the ferment there was the restlessness of
untried spirits who wished for nothing better than an excuse and an opportunity
for fighting, being only anxious to exchange peace for turmoil and the rewards
of industry for the chances of power and plunder, and the congenial fellowship
of those who love licensed and emancipated violence for its own sake.
It is
difficult to put aside the conviction that universal familiarity with slavery
in these ancient societies corrupted the conscience in every ruling class, and
encouraged conduct and demeanour that went far to make the most reasonable
subordination seem an intolerable requirement for men who cherished the
self-respect of freemen. How the peculiarly hateful form of Spartan helotry
operated on character it is scarcely necessary to urge; but even the much
milder type of slavery among the Athenians gave an accepted and everpresent
justification of a view of authority and the privileges it implied, that was
transferred too readily from the household
to the
state; the natural right of the superior to control the inferior, especially
the inferior not only in might but in merit, was so far overstrained both in
theory and in practice, that Athens, even while professing to assert, as to a
great extent indeed might be asserted with justice, that her supremacy was
good, was best for Hellas, failed signally, and perhaps can scarcely be said to
have attempted, to hold together her confederation by other bonds than those of
force; the demus too easily adopted, at the suggestion of such counsellors as
Cleon, the conception of a tyrant city, and gave occasion to enemies to put
themselves forward as champions of that very freedom of Hellas which Athens in
her better days gained her supremacy by asserting and defending.
‘ Neither
side/ says Thucydides, ‘ contemplated a small matter, but nerved themselves for
the war; and naturally enough, as men are usually sanguine at the commencement
of an enterprise. There was moreover at this time a flush of youth in
Peloponnesus and in Athens also, that from mere inexperience of war took to it
with anything but reluctance, and all the rest of Hellas was thrown into high
excitement at the coming conflict of the two principal states. A profusion of
prophecies obtained circulation; venders of oracles chanted them as well in the
cities engaged in the war as in all others. Delos too had been shaken by an
earthquake, which had not occurred previously so far as Hellenic memory
extended, and this was declared and was believed to be a sign of somewhat to
come to pass; and whatever else occurred of like unusual character contributed
to the general agitation. As regards the sympathies of the Hellenic world these
went for the most part with the Lacedaemonians, as well on some other accounts
as principally because they announced as their object the restoration of
freedom to Hellas; and all, w’hether individuals or states, put forth their
strength, in order to be able to co-operate with them in some degree by speech
or action, insomuch that every one regarded himself as hindering work
unless he
was personally concerned in it. In such passionate aversion did the majority
hold the Athenians, some from desire of being released from, their sway, and some
out of alarm lest they should be brought under it.’
The
history, of which the proposed term is the commencement of the Peloponnesian
war, might now close, but the incident that marks its actual and uncompromised
outbreak with blood is too characteristic not only of its miserable course, but
of its contrast with the confederate patriotism of Salamis and Plataea that
opened our story, not to be admitted as its natural conclusion.
The land
forces and sea forces of Dorians and Ionians, of democracies and aristocracies,
of military alike and of commercial states, of the rustic almost to rudeness
and the refined to the verge of luxury, had then made common cause against the
aggressive foreigner and against what few traitorous Greeks were his abettors.
The last victorious struggle was consecrated on the spot by solemn pledges of
prolonged, of eternal alliance, for the same grand and noble and truly national
ends; that very scene of glory and goodwill was now destined to witness its
irreparable, inexpiable disrupture. On this same spot Thebes is again to be in
conflict with Plataea, and against Athens, but now with Lacedaemonians to aid;
Lacedaemonians who, professing the liberation of Hellas, have no earlier
thought than to seek the aid and favour of Persia, which could mean nothing
less than consent to abandon to the barbarian again the line of glorious cities
of which the former struggle had saved some remainder,— not from ruin, it was
too late, but from absolute extirpation. Athens, once in the front of united
Hellas, has now to suffer from that grudge against the great and glorious, that
has left too serious blots on her own renown ; to protect herself from perils
and animosities that beset greatness however great, however merited, and that
she had unhappily failed to crush in their causes—had failed perhaps fully to
apply her genius to
attempt to
crush,—from the consequences of ignorance and vice which it is given to no
mortal genius to avert or countervail.
It was in
the early spring of the year 431 B.C., while as yet no denouncement of a state
war had been made formally by heralds, and the sanguine on either side were
still, however absurdly, not out of hope of continued peace, that the
Athenians were suddenly made aware of the true character and imminence of the
struggle to which they were committed ; a hasty night messenger brought word
that Plataea had been treacherously surprised by the Thebans, and was then in
their occupation. Measures had already been taken to seize every Boeotian on
Attic ground, when only a few hours later a second messenger came in with news
that the citizens already, before the morning, had risen upon the intruders
with success and held the greater part of them captive. A herald was now
despatched to bid the Plataeans await the result of deliberations at Athens
before dealing with their prisoners; on his return forthwith he had to report
that the injunction—probably anticipated—was too late, and that a final
decision had already been put in execution before his arrival.
The
incident had occurred on this wise. Among the first rewards that the Thebans
might naturally promise themselves from the impending war, was the recovery of
at least the territory that had been transferred from them to the Plataeans
after the defeat of Mardonius and his Greek allies, to say nothing of glutting
an ancient revenge; while to those who could postpone vengeance to policy,
there seemed a fair opportunity of recovering the city itself by help of
a'party within it, whose importance was as usual over-estimated, and reuniting
it to the general Boeotian system. Generations of sympathetic intercourse and
alliance had made Plataea far more Athenian than it had ever been Boeotian; but
when has the materialistic greed for territory or a strengthened position
been checked
by such considerations? The often-promised invasion of Attica by the
Lacedaemonians could not now be long delayed, and by shutting up the Athenians
in their own city would cut off Plataea from any chance of relief, and leave it
in its isolation with no prospect but ruin. Even in the time of the Persian war
the city had contained sympathisers with Thebes and her policy; and among the
parties that now were running high there were not wanting some men of position
who were more than ever in favour of defection from the Athenian alliance,
which was so visibly pregnant with disaster. In the meantime the difficulty of
taking a well-defended and well-provided walled town was then so great, as
proved in this very instance afterwards, and the annoyance so serious that was
to be expected from the city as an advanced hostile post of the Athenians, that
the temptation to the Thebans to take advantage of the security in which it was
lulled at a time when war was manifestly only waiting for the seasons, and to snatch
the prize at once, proved irresistible. Opportunity was offered by traitors
within Plataea. A certain Naucleides and his adherents, who as men of family
and 1 wealth were the natural enemies of Athenian democratical
ascendency, concerted a scheme with a Theban of importance, Eurymachus son of
Leon- tiades, for reuniting their city to the Pan-Boeotian alliance, and
securing at the same time the destruction of their own party rivals.
Thucydides
sets down with much care in the best way he can contrive, the date of an event
that was the very commencement of the series of which he proposed to write the
history with novel chronological accuracy. It occurred, he says, in the
fourteenth year of the peace that had been concluded for thirty years after
the reconquest of Euboea; in the forty-eighth year of Chrysis as priestess at
Argos, the forty-
eighth
also, we may add, since the siege of Scstos, with which Herodotus closes his
history; when Aincsius was eplior at Sparta, and two months were yet remaining
of the archonship of Pythodorus at Athens ; in the sixth month after the battle
of Potidaea ; at the commencement of spring, and towards the end of a lunar
month, and, as it comes out afterwards, at a time of sacred festival at 1
Plataea, a circumstance that was in fact probably counted on as reducing the
chances of vigilance, and was one day to be remembered as an aggravation of the
outrage. As the Athenian archonship ended at midsummer, we are brought to the
end of April 431 B.C., in which month, according to 2 Boeckli, the
new moon fell on the 7th.
With aid
of the traitors and under cover of a moonless night, no difficult}' was
apprehended in introducing into Plataea a band of Thebans sufficiently numerous
to overawe the townsmen ; a larger body was to follow in support after time
allowed for the surprise and seizure. The distance to be traversed was not more
than seventy stadia, between eight and nine miles.
The first
party numbered a few over three hundred; Eury- machus was among them, but the
commanders were the Boeotarchs themselves,—Pythangelus son of Phyleides, and
Diemporus son of Onetorides. So unapprehensive were the Plataeans, so
undisturbed in their confidence of peace as still subsisting, that not only
were population and property out in the unguarded open, but no regular watch
was set about the wralls and gates of the city. The night turned out
stormy, with a very heavy fall of rain ; but in the meantime the advanced
party, who had commenced their march as early as darkness would screen it,
found a gate opened by Naucleides as agreed upon, and, while the citizens after
the excitement of a day of saered festivity were just sunk to sleep,
established themselves in the agora without molesta
tion. The
Plataean conspirators, successful so far, were eager and urgent that now was
the time to go to work by proceeding direct to the lodgings of their enemies.
The Boeotarchs however had not joined the expedition without other and larger
designs; relying on their gained position, and on the support which was on its
way and immediately expected, misled also perhaps by the traitors’ own previous
representations as to the general feeling of the citizens, they believed that
they had only to abstain from violence to secure Plataea as a voluntary ally
instead of as a conquest, and so to hold it by a title of admittedly safer
diplomatic 1 validity. Apart therefore from any misgivings as to the
justification of the enterprise, they had no intention to sacrifice this
political object to gratify the private spite of traitors for whom they had no
further use; taking up regular military position, they made formal proclamation
by a herald for all the citizens who consented to adhere to the Pan-Boeotian
alliance in accordance with ancient institutions, to join them in arms.
The
Plataeans, roused from sleep to find the Thebans already in possession of the
city, despatched instantly the first messenger to Athens, but, alarmed in the
darkness at the supposed force of their enemies, proceeded, as soon as it
appeared that no positive violence was being committed, to the invited parley;
the Thebans could affirm afterwards that they even concluded an agreement,
which indeed the native confederates had every motive to hurry 2
forward. Among the general body of citizens however there was no disposition
whatever to renounce the Athenian alliance, and when closer intercourse
betrayed the real numbers of the intruders and suggested the possibility of
overpowering them, it was at once resolved to make the attempt. While the
treaty was still going smoothly on, they set to work on preparations with
emulative energy; they busily blocked up all the main
thoroughfares
from the agora with waggons, in order both to obstruct exit and to supply
defensible barricades, and then pierced the party walls of the adjacent houses
so as to afford themselves the means of covert concentration for the moment of
sudden attack. No more could be done than the time sufficed for, that would
still allow the onset to be made unexpectedly and while the darkness lasted that
was relied on to increase the alarm of the enemies and put them at most
disadvantage among unfamiliar localities. In all haste therefore, before break
of day, the rain all the while pouring down in torrents, they suddenly sallied
in the most unexpected manner from the houses and eame at once to a hand to
hand fight in a rapid onslaught. The Thebans, on finding how they had been
beguiled, at first closed up together and persistently withstood their
assailants wherever they eame on; and even exhausted as they were by exposure
all through the night to relentless rain, succeeded twice or thrice in
repulsing them; dismayed however and bewildered by the clamour and assaults of
the citizens themselves and by showers of tiles and stones that the women and
servants with screams and outcries hurled upon them from the roofs of the
surrounding houses, they soon gave way and fled as they might through the city.
Very few were acquainted vith the directions in which flight was still
possible,—the main thoroughfares being blocked,—through lanes dark and deep
with mud from the rain; and followed as they were by pursuers who knew every
turn they must take, many were intercepted and killed. The gate of the city
that had been opened to admit them had since been made fast by a Plataean with
the spike of a javelin thrust through the bar in place of the removed pin, so
that there was no exit even here. Another gate was found unguarded by a party
of the fugitives who hewed through the bar with an axe furnished to them by a
woman, and some got away here, but not many, as the alarm was soon given.
Others,
as they
were hunted through the city, managed to get up on the walls and jumped down,
but in most cases to perish, in addition to those who were killed dispersedly
about the city. The greater number however had kept together in a body, and so
far succeeded in making their way through the streets as to reach the walls at
a point where they came upon the unfastened doors of a large building; in the
belief that these were gates of the city and afforded a passage through to
without, they rushed headlong in; the doors were instantly closed behind them
and they found themselves caught. The Plataeans were already resolving to set
fire to the building and burn them as they were, when they agreed to surrender
themselves and their arms, together with whatever other Thebans might still
survive about the city, to be dealt with by their captors at discretion.
In the
meantime the larger force which was expected from Thebes was still only on its
way, delayed by the storm which had made the country roads heavy and so swelled
the Asopus as to render it not easily fordable, when it was met by fugitives
who announced the miscarriage of the surprise that it was hastening to support.
In just apprehension as to the extent of the catastrophe, the first thought of
the commanders was to seize whatever Plataeans and property could be collected
in the open country, to serve as hostages and security for any Thebans who
might still be alive and prisoners. Even while this was in meditation a herald
arrived from the Plataeans who already anticipated the danger. They denounced
the act of the Thebans in attempting to seize their city during peace as an
impious violation of sacred treaties,—that it was nothing less was recognised
long after by the conscience of the 1 Lacedaemonians,—and declared
that they would kill the prisoners whom they held at the first violence that
should be done to their citizens 1 Thuc. vii. 18.
without;
on the evacuation of their territory they would give the men up. Such at least
was the Theban account, and declared to have been confirmed by oaths; and the
tone of Thucydides implies that he more than suspected it to be true,—he would
otherwise scarcely have allowed the definite statement of fact to precede the
qualification so independently. The Plataeans on the other hand affirmed that
they had never consented to give up the men at once, but only in case of any
agreement being come to after discussion, but with whom does not appear, and
perhaps was left diplomatically ambiguous. That they afterwards thought it
worth while to deny having taken any oath implies an admission that some
concession on their part was at least understood. The Thebans however had as
yet no prisoners in hand, and as the threat was instant and peremptory they may
have been scarcely in a position, considering the irritating circumstances and
what lives were in jeopardy, to insist on the full stipulation. In result they
refrained from inflicting any damage and retired, and then the Plataeans
hastened to withdraw their moveable property within the protection of the
walls, and without waiting for communications from Athens that might check
their eager vindictiveness, put all their prisoners to death, to the number of
iSo, without delay or mercy; Eurymachus, who had practised with the traitors,
was among them.
Within a
few years the fortune of war reversed the position of Thebans and Plataeans,
but only gave occasion for the bad example to be followed, of allowing vengeance
to override all considerations of either policy or generosity, of humanity or
prudence. When the time came that Plataea was forced to surrender to the
Lacedaemonians, two hundred Plataeans pleaded vainly in their turn for honest
observance of conditions that were only granted to be illusory, against the
Thebans who were too important to their allies not to be indulged in what
seemed such natural reprisals. Alcidas the
Lacedaemonian
admiral had shortly before even slaughtered captives indiscriminately who had
never borne arms at all, while the Athenians on their part had eagerly
responded to the provocation by killing Salaethus the Lacedaemonian in all
haste, without regard to the chance of bartering his immunity for the benefit
of their besieged Plataean allies, and presently in cold blood put to death
above a thousand revolted Mitylenians. At a later date they settled the refugee
Plataeans in the territory of Scione, which they had cleared upon its capture
after revolt by putting all males of the age of puberty to death, and selling
the women and children as slaves; the Lacedaemonians who had encouraged their
revolt having left them unprotected in their treaty just before. So the
accumulation of ever-gathering guilt went on, until every considerable city in
the length and breadth of Hellas had been drenched with slaughter by Hellenic
hands, and the mischief came to forced cessation at last by exhaustion chiefly
of the vitality that it preyed on. As the Peloponnesian war commenced so it was
destined to conclude; after the last fatal battle of Aegospotamos, which
virtually brought it to an end by the destruction of the last Athenian fleet, a
sanguinary threat—whether fact or not—was pretext sufficient for the Spartan
commander to massacre in cold blood three thousand prisoners, including their
generals.
After such
an event as the Boeotian outrage, preparations for hostilities both at Sparta
and Athens could only be instant, eager, undisguised. It was still early1
spring when Archidamus reached the isthmus and the frontiers of Attica, at the
head of the Lacedaemonian army and two thirds of the forces of the allied
Peloponnesians, and with the large supplies required for the proposed campaign.
He was in full expectation that notwithstanding his great strength the war
would begin with a battle; it seemed impossible that the Athenians, even if
they did not oppose the invasion in the first instance, should 1
Thuc. v. 20.
not soon
give way to the impulses of indignation when they beheld their country ravaged
and were themselves enduring what they had so often and so proudly inflicted on
others. He took occasion therefore to prepare the commanders of his mixed
forces for a very severe and impetuous conflict, and especially to urge that
110 blind confidence in superior numbers should induce neglect of
discipline,—of implicit obedience to orders in the face of a foe of such known
energy and so fiercely exasperated.
Even yet
he would not quite renounce the hope that some concession might be wrung from
the Athenians by the demonstration how positively Sparta was in earnest, and
so the last arbitrement of war be averted—war that it was to the honour of his
nature that, commander and king as he was, he had learned by very familiarity
with it to 1 abhor. He made therefore one more attempt to open
negotiations, notwithstanding the murmurs of the allies, who grudged delay
that the Athenians were availing themselves of to secure their
2 property. He despatched as envoy a
Spartiat, Melesippus son of Diacritus, but his mission was vain. The Athenians,
wound up to reliance on the counsels of their strategus Pericles, had already
taken their measures and decided their plans. Their resolution was finally
nerved to the height of the occasion which, long anticipated, long foreboded,
had come at last. Their authority over the confederation might have passed into
something too much resembling a tyranny, but there it was, as difficult to
resign as it might be to retain ; Pericles was himself quite clear, and had
succeeded in convincing the demus, that there was no other choice but to
abdicate their position entirely or fight out the quarrel at all risks and
sacrifices. By the very scheme and completion of their ports and arsenals and
long walls, as by the whole course of their policy, they had given a challenge
to Hellas, and it was now
the
occasion to prove that they had the courage to answer all its consequences. The
open country of Attica with all its wealth that could not be transported, with
all its delights and luxuries and freedom, had to be, and had already been,
abandoned to coming spoil and ruin and insult; if Pericles might have
absolutely ruled, Athenians hands would have avouched Athenian resolution by
anticipating Lacedaemonian in the work of destruction.
As it was,
the sacrifice could not be made without severe pangs. The Athenians had a
peculiar affection for domestic life in the country, a survival, so Thucydides
believed, from the primaeval habits of the population in days before the
scattered townships, under an influence which he ascribes to Theseus,—under an
influence certainly of prime historical importance,—renounced loose
organisation to share a single government and recognise a common religious bond
about the central Athenian acropolis. It is to the sense of power that was
generated by this union, however originated and carried through, that must be
ascribed very much of that proud selfconsciousness of the Athenian demus
which, however latent in the background, was ever a most powerful influence in
political history. The public opinion of Athens was swayed from time to time by
demagogues and the orators of the day, who might guide or misguide opinion
according to the measure of their talents or wisdom ; but the energy of the
people, whether for good or ill, was due to a public spirit that was felt as a
general inheritance from a noble ancestry, and that asserted itself again and
again after grossest errors and direst reverses, as destined to natural
sovereignty. It was this primaeval union and the spirit that its hearty acceptation
had produced, that made possible the might that Athens had certainly exercised
in the centuries of the great colonisations, and that was the basis of her
later and more happily recorded empire. But even at this later period
Thucydides still rccognised surviving traces of the earlier state of things in
the diversity of
religious
traditions and celebrations that were localised in the various, country
districts, and so cherished that to quit them was felt like expulsion from a
native seat. Still more than by the rich who had to abandon seats of delightful
retirement, was this felt by a portion of the population that seems not to have
been few in numbers, a resident yeomanry—agricultural proprietors. These men
were fully entitled to the franchise and rights of citizens when they did
present themselves at the assembly, but did so rarely and ever with decreasing
chance of influencing a division, as the constant extension of the city gave
vast preponderance to the classes who were always on the spot, and had but rare
attachments to properly rural interests.
Euripides 1
describes the characteristics of the country citizen who interposes in a debate
at Argos, in opposition to a suborned orator : —
‘ Another
rose who controverted him,
Of form
ungainly yet a manly man,
But rarely
seen to speck city and agora,
A yeoman
(avrovpyos)—such the country’s sole salvation,
But
shrewd,—disposed for ways that march with words,
.Sincere,
and practised in an unblamed life.’
The plays
of Aristophanes supply abundant Athenian illustrations and parallels of the
unsophisticated but shrewd cultivator whose shrewdness may be no match for the
imposing orator at first, but who sooner or later reverts indignantly to
common sense. In the Peace, the agriculturists— the yecapyoi—are so represented
as to imply that the farmers of their own land were numerous in Attica, and
they are the only class who give a hand heartily to haul the goddess Eirene out
of her well, and succeed at last when they have all the work to 2
themselves, to the disgust of all the traders and manufacturers, the
contractors of antiquity, the oracle vendors and intriguers for military
commands, to whom prospect
of peace
was as hateful as to the very slaves for whom war was the dawn of hopeful
escape to freedom. f O day,’ they exclaim, ‘so longed for by the
right-minded, by the agricultural, how fain would I behold you and greet my
vines again, how eager am I from long long ago to salute again the fig-trees
that I planted as a boy. . . . Think but, O men, of the way of life of the old
days that the goddess provided us, of country cates and figs and myrtles, of
the sweet must, of the bank of violets about the well, the olives and all that
we have had to regret, and for all render thanks to the recovered goddess/ And
later in the play occurs another picture of the neighbourly junketing and
domestic happiness and plenty in the country which, taken from nature, is true
to nature for all 1 time.
To what
extent the violence that was inflicted on such habits was resented we can only
infer,—resisted it could not be in the face of the decision of the civic
assembly, which was powerful enough to overrule also the resistance or
reluctance of the wealthy, who knew too well what sacrifice both of wealth and
ease would be demanded of them in a state of war. The condition of sacrifice on
all hands had become inevitable, and was recognised at last to be so, and then
was resolutely made. Athens would not have been Athens had she not resolved, in
the last resort, to abide by the determination so long and so definitely
announced, to withdraw in case of a formidable invasion of Attica within her
walls and secured connection with the port; and thence, in virtue of maritime
superiority, backed by large accumulated treasure, to assert and maintain
empire over islands and peninsulas and sea-coast cities, and regardless of any
treatment whatever of her own home territory, to so harass that of her enemies,
so cripple their resources and trade and generally vex their population, as to
bring to terms the strongest confederation that could be formed against her
empire.
1 Aristoph.
Peacc, 1130-1170.
Such was
the policy that the Athenians on the advice of Pericles, and after whatever
hopes and hesitations and misgivings, were now wound up to taking their stand
upon with all its perils and responsibilities. How just was his confidence in
the courage and resources of Athens, was proved to the astonishment of her
enemies by the course of the war. One, two, or three years at the utmost were
assigned at its commencement to her possible resistance should the Peloponnesians
at last really invade Attica; yet in the seventeenth year after the first
incursion, and after being harassed by a hostile post permanently established
on their territory, they were to be found with powers of resistance not too
exhausted to deter them from even the Sicilian 1 war.
When
Melesippus presented himself, the clearance of the country had already been
completed as far as was practicable, the cattle and stock of the farms carried
over to Euboea and the smaller islands, families moved into the city with furniture,
utensils, and even wooden fittings of the dwellings. The extended area that had
been given to the city by the walls of Themistoeles might have been
insufficient for the increased population of Attica even though it had not been
already covered by the progress of building. The overcrowding was extreme, and
was soon to have more serious consequences than inconvenience. The space
between the Long Walls was fully occupied, and all sacred enclosures except
only very few; and the refugees overflowed still into the towers on the walls
and any the vilest shelter. The intrusion into the Pelasgicon was held by some
to have been forbidden by an oracle, and to have involved the punishment of
desecration. Thucydides disallows this with something of the air of
repudiating a superstitious notion, and yet he seems scarcely equal to
disallowing all value in the oracle, as he provides the god with an
equivocation that saves his credit; the prediction,
rightly
read, imported not that to occupy the Pelasgicon was unlucky, but that ill luck
would be marked by the occupation.
But even
so the resolution of the Athenians was staunch, and it was determined, in
accordance with the advice of Pericles, that no communication should be
entertained from the Lacedaemonians, either by herald or envoy, so long as
they had a hostile army in the field. Melesippus therefore was admitted
neither to the general assembly nor to the council. He was commanded to quit
Attica the same day, with the notification that further intercourse must be by
formal embassy from Sparta after the army had retired home. A guard conducted
him to the frontier under orders to prevent his holding communication with any
person whatever on the way; there he was dismissed, his message undelivered,
his demands undeclared, but not without his utterance of one too true a presage
for the escort to carry back from him, as he parted:—‘ This day,’ he said, * is
to be the beginning of great calamities to the Hellenes/—ort 17'Se ■>)
rjiiipa rot? f'EAA^crt ptyaXvv kclk&v 1 ap£a.
1 TIjuc. ii. 12.
CONCLUSION.
Pericles survived the
commencement of the war two years and a half, and for so long he succeeded,
though against great excitement and under some experience of the vacillating
support characteristic of the masses—the phrase of Thucydides is significant
indeed from such a 1 writer—in holding the Athenians to the policy
on which he counted for success; such was the extraordinary power of the state
at this time, that Thucydides believes the confidence to have been fully
justifiable, and that not even the infraction of his policy by the Sicilian
enterprise would have had results of the last seriousness but for more
deeply-seated mischief in the conduct of the people and their political
constitution.
In the
first of these years the Athenians saw from their walls the army of the allied
Peloponnesians in occupation of Acharnae, the most important of their
townships, and ravaging the plains around and between the mountains Parne and
Brilessus ; destroying, that is, whatever could be destroyed of works of
cultivation and industry, and not merely annual crops, but the olive and vine
and fig and other productive trees, a loss irreparable for years.
The next
year, but earlier in the summer, the invading
1 Thuc. ii.
65, oirrp opiXos irotuv. Cf. ib. iv.
28; viii. I.
force made
a longer and more relentlessly destructive 1 stay of forty days,
during* which they completed the devastation of the plains round Athens and of
the length and breadth of the country, as far as the Laurian silver mines and
the promontory of Sunium.
Athens at
home could only protect the country immediately adjacent to the walls by aid of
the cavalry of her Thessalian allies, but was not wanting on her part in
contributing to the calamities that Hellas was beginning to reap in abundance
from this quarrel. The first blow fell on the Aeginetans, who had too
notoriously and too rashly helped forward the war not to be, in their exposed
situation, amongst the first and severest sufferers. Their island was cleared
of its ancient possessors, man, woman, and child, and assigned forthwith to
Athenian occupants and owners. A certain number of the deported Aeginetans
dispersed themselves over Hellas, but others settled together at Thyrea, a
maritime district that was granted to them by the Lacedaemonians on their
Argive frontier. In this position they made themselves the adherents of Sparta,
and speedily incurred the sanguinary vengeance of Athens. The costly siege of
Potidaea was still proceeding, a strain on even Athenian energies and
resources, but nevertheless a force of one thousand hoplites and four hundred
archers‘was despatched in one hundred ships to harass Peloponnesus in the
absence of so large a proportion as two-thirds of its defenders. Fifty more
ships of Corcyra and other western allies joined, and after annoying the
coasts, an attempt was made upon Metlione, at the west of the Laconian
territory. The town was saved by a reinforcement that reached it by a bold dash
under Brasidas son of Tellis, whose name occurs thus early in the war to
reappear again and again during its course, and always importantly. The seaboard
of Elis was then visited with hostilities, and Corinthian settlements or allies
about the mouths of the Achelous ; and in conclusion
Cepliallcnia was gained for the Athenian confederacy without a battle.
Another
expedition in thirty ships was concurrently directed against Locris, ravaged
its coasts, even captured Thronion, and brought away hostages and gained a
battle. It was important to secure Euboea against violence from this side, and
a station was established against both enemies and pirates on the previously
desert island of Atalante, off the Opuntian coast.
The
activity of the year was not yet exhausted—this year of foretaste of calamity
and discord. No sooner was Attica evacuated by Archidamus, than the time came
in the autumn for the Megarians to be dealt with, as the rancour which they had
displayed might have led them too surely to expect. Pericles himself took the
command of the largest force that Athens, now in the full flush of unimpaired
strength and population, had ever sent out, reinforced as it- was by that which
had already returned with the fleet from Peloponnesus. This was the first, and
no doubt the most destructive, of the annual incursions into the Megarid that
continued to be made throughout the war in accordance with the vindictive
Athenian decree. Three triremes also were permanently stationed at Salami s,
that cut off the Megarians from all ingress or egress on this side by 1
sea.
At the
beginning of the next summer, however, almost exactly at the reappearance of
the Lacedaemonian invaders, broke out in Athens the dreadful plague, of foreign
origin, but more than naturalised within the close and excessively overcrowded
city, that was to confound by its consequences all the calculations of
Pericles, to dishearten and disturb the people, though not indeed to a degree
beyond his power to revive their resolution and regain their confidence; more
fatally, to reduce very seriously their strength and numbers, their fighting
power; most fatally of all to remove disproportionately the better spirits of
its social system, and to leave behind germs of moral deterioration in the very
blood of the polity that turned all remaining energy to embarrassing
selfishness and factious struggle.
The
physical operation of the mischief is described by Thucydides in painful
detail, but not with more emphasis than the unhappy moral canker to which the
fall of Athens was so largely due. The recklessness and heartlessness, the
shamelessness before God and man of those who were living* in constant
apprehension of miserable death that seemed to visit indifferently the good and
the bad, the wise or the imprudent, are set forth by the historian in terms
that do but anticipate, in the case of plague and pestilence, the
demoralisation that he has soon to put on record as consequent on the miseries
of the persistent scourge of war.
Pericles
had no successor as a single ruling mind endowed with a self-control only
equalled by power of controlling the wild impulses of the democracy. Those who
followed him had no better resource than to bid against each other for the
favour of the assembly by flatteries and assentation, and a private end in
every case took the place that is due to a noble patriotic purpose.
So far as
political well-being can only be saved by the interposition of heaven-born
genius, it may seem that human prudence is absolved from forethought. This is
the masterstroke in the game of political life that is reserved by a power
beyond human ken and human control. Still, even if this must be so, the
warnings of history are not entirely worthless if they teach us that genius
itself has double value when acting through the social condition, and this at
least does not seem so entirely withdrawn from our influence and culture. But
here the historian must resign to the philosopher; it is to him the world must
look to determine the problem how social intelligence and morals can be so
disciplined as best to favour the development of high-minded genius, to supply
it with best aids and instruments when it does appear, and when it is not
vouchsafed to us, to relieve to the utmost the misfortune of the world in
being driven to rely on the commonplace and second-rate perforce.
Of the
statesmen who have reached the brink of such a conflict as the history has now
conducted us to, few indeed of those to whom is due any considerable influence
in the origin and conduct of wars, have claim to the credit of truest
statesmanlike wisdom. The forecast of a threatening danger and the roused
instinct of self-preservation have doubtless hurried ere now the wisest and
most high-minded and sometimes even the most collected to turn prematurely
into the war-path; and the inborn weakness of humanity may, in some such cases,
be condoned. But occasional lapses of the better spirits are far from
constituting the majority of the mistakes that reputed statesmanship has to be
ashamed of. As the vast movement of the drama of civilisation unfolds
independently, it is for ever falsifying the anticipations and convicting of
shallowness the most concerted projects of the selfish, the shrewd, and the
unscrupulous. Even when violence and fraud, when war and diplomacy are hugging
themselves on what seems unqualified success, the turn of a single leaf of the
book wherein all has to be written, is constantly ready to demonstrate that as
their designs were sinister the end of all their exertion has, happily for the
world, been no less antagonistic to their intentions than to their hopes and
wishes; that they prove to have been engaged in consolidating the very powers
which they designed to dissipate ; in endowing with moral force those whom they
deemed to have disabled for all time by mulcting of material; and that while
doing their deadliest to promote social subservience, they have only obstructed
for a time and that to the quickening afterwards, the triumph of free action
and unfettered thought, of class-emaneipation and enlightenment.
Refuse we
not then our tribute of admiration to a statesman who even as nearly as
Pericles, to a population that for all its errors and shortcomings, with as
effectual a sincerity as the Athenians, are proved to have co-operated, and to
so large an extent not unconsciously, with the main purpose of the system to
which our human life belongs; who exerted noble powers and unrivalled energies
in a direction so extensively coincident with that along which, by influence of
the Divinity that shapes the ends even of enemies, the best interests of our
race seem beneficently destined, if only through many a struggle and after long
ages, to make good a really successful and permanent advance.
THE END.